Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/469

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In Augsburg. 439 His Veronica, in the British Museum, and the wings of an altar-piece, with figures of the Virgin, Mary Magdalen and other saints, in the Stuttgart Gallery, are among the principal. Martin Schaffner (fl. ab. 1499 — 1535) was also one of the painters of Ulm of this period. (b) The Augsburg School. We have now . to turn to Augsburg, where we find a school arising, characterized by a more decidedly realistic tendency than that of Ulm. At the head of this school stands Hans Holbein the elder (ab. 1460 — 1524), father of the Holbein who did so much for English art in the reign of Henry VIII. In the works of the founder of the great Augsburg School the influence of the Van Eycks and of Rogier van der Weyden is far more notice- able than in those of the masters of Ulm. The elder Holbein's S. Sebastian with the Annunciation, and SS. Elizabeth and Barbara, on the wings in the Pinakothek, Munich, is considered his principal work. Hans Holbein the younger (1497 — 1543), son of the painter named above, was not only the greatest German exponent of the realistic school, but one of the first por- trait painters of any age ; and, moreover, one to whom the British School of painting owes more than to any other master. Inferior in grandeur of style and fertility of imagination to his great cotemporary Diirer, he excelled him in truth to nature, in feeling for physical beauty, and in command over all the technical processes of his art. Born of an artist family, and surrounded from babyhood by artistic associations, Hans Holbein early acquired a mastery over all the elements of desigu, as is proved by the remains of a series of frescoes executed for the Town Hall of Basle