i 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF READING FACES: 

PHYSIOGNOMIC THEORY AND HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________________________________ 

 

 

 

A Thesis 

Submitted to the  

Temple University Graduate Board 

 

 

___________________________________________________________________ 

 

 

 

In Partial Fulfillment 

Of the Requirements for the Degree 

MASTER OF ARTS 

 

 

___________________________________________________________________ 

 

 

By 

Elisabeth Michelle Berry Drago 

May 2010 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Ashley West, Thesis Advisor, Art History 

Dr. Marcia Hall, Art History 

 

 



ii 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 

By 

Elisabeth Michelle Berry Drago 

2010 

All Rights Reserved 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iii 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

 

 

This project explores the work of Hans Holbein the Younger, sixteenth-century 

printmaker and portraitist, through the lens of early modern physiognomic thought. This 

period‘s renewed interest in the discipline of physiognomy, the art and science of 

―reading‖ human features, reflects a desire to understand the relationship between outer 

appearances and inner substances of things. Physiognomic theory has a host of 

applications and meanings for the visual artist, who produces a surface representation or 

likeness, yet scholarship on this subject has been limited. Examining Holbein‘s social 

context and artistic practice, this project constructs the possibility of a physiognomic 

reading of several major works. Holbein‘s engagement with physiognomic theories of 

appearance and representation provides a vital point of access to early modern discourse 

on character, identity and self. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iv 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

 

 

         Page No. 

 

ABSTRACT........................................................................................................... iii 

 

LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………... v 

 

CHAPTER 1: ORIGINS AND ADAPTATIONS  

OF EARLY PHYSIOGNOMIC THEORY....................................…………....….. 1 

 

CHAPTER 2: PHYSIOGNOMY IN HOLBEIN‘S SPHERE....……………....…. 13 

 

CHAPTER 3: READING FACES IN THE PICTURES OF DEATH………......... 31 

 

CHAPTER 4: APPEARANCE AND IDENTITY  

IN HOLBEIN‘S PORTRAITS..........................................………………...……..... 51 

 

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….... 72 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………........ 75 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



v 

 

 

 

LIST OF FIGURES 

 

Figure            Page  

Figure 1.1 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Whitehall Mural (cartoon), 1537..............  79 

Figure 1.2 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Abbott from the Pictures of Death, 1538...80 

Figure 1.3 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Jacob Meyer (study), 1516.......................  81 

Figure 2.1 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Folly, 1515...............................................  82 

Figure 2.2 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Scholar in the Market, 1515.....................  83 

Figure 2.3 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Wisdom, 1515...........................................  84 

Figure 2.4 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Folly Descending the Pulpit, 1515...........  85 

Figure 2.5 – Lucas Cranach the Elder, Crowning with Thorns, 1509.......................  86 

Figure 2.6 – Hans Burgkmair, Portrait of Christ, 1511............................................  87 

Figure 2.7 – Hans Burgkmair, Portrait of Christ, 1512............................................  88 

Figure 3.1 – Anonymous, Archbishop & Knight from the Dance of Death, 1490....  89 

Figure 3.2 – Anonymous, Abbot & Magistrate from the Dance of Death, 1490......  90 

Figure 3.3 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Judge from the Pictures of Death, 1538...  91 

Figure 3.4 – Anonymous, Besotted Abbot Riding a Jawbone, 1480.........................  92 

Figure 3.5 – Hans Weiditz, Besotted Abbot Riding a Jawbone, 1530.......................  93 

Figure 3.6 –Die Todtenfresser, Text by Pamphilus Gengenbach, 1522....................  94 

Figure 3.7 – Albrecht Dürer, Justice from the Ship of Fools, 1494..........................  95 

Figure 3.8 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Monk from the Pictures of Death, 1538...  96 

Figure 3.9 – Lucas Cranach the Elder, Monk Calf, 1523..........................................  97 

Figure 3.10 – Lucas Cranach the Elder, Papal Ass, 1523..........................................  98 

Figure 3.11 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Fool from the Pictures of Death, 1547...  99 



vi 

 

 

 

Figure 3.12 – Hans Weiditz, Physician and Assistant, 1521.....................................  100 

Figure 3.13 – Hans Holbein the Younger, King from the Pictures of Death, 1538... 101 

Figure 3.14 – Jean Clouet, Portrait of Francis I, 1525.............................................  102 

Figure 3.15 – Physiognomic Illustration 1, Text by Bartolomeus Cocles, 1536.......  103 

Figure 3.16 – Physiognomic Illustration 2, Text by Bartolomeus Cocles, 1536.......  104 

Figure 3.17 – Albrecht Dürer, Angel with the Sudarium, 1516.................................  105 

Figure 4.1 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of  Jacob Meyer, 1516................  106 

Figure 4.2 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach, 1519.... 107 

Figure 4.3 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, 1523......  108 

Figure 4.4 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, 1523......  109 

Figure 4.5 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Derich Born, 1533..................  110 

Figure 4.6 – Remigius van Leemput, Copy after Whitehall Mural, 1667.................  111 

Figure 4.7 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Anne of Cleves, 1539..............  112 

Figure 4.8 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Christina of Denmark, 1538....113 

Figure 4.9 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, 1523...... 114 

Figure 4.10 – Quentin Massys,  Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, 1517....................  115 

Figure 4.11 – Quentin Massys, Portrait Medal of Desiderius Erasmus, 1519..........  116 

Figure 4.12 – Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, 1526.......................  117 

Figure 4.13 – Hans Holbein the Younger, Self-Portrait, 1542-1543......................... 118 

 

 

 

 

 

 



1 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1: 

ORIGINS AND ADAPTATIONS OF EARLY PHYSIOGNOMIC THEORY 

 

The sixteenth-century interest in physiognomy, the art and science of ―reading‖ 

human features, reflects a desire to understand the relationship between outer 

appearances and inner substances of things. In a period of increasing travel and trade, as 

well as social tension and unrest, it provided a methodology for character assessment and 

identification, while also interacting with current developments in natural philosophy and 

theology. Physiognomic theory has a host of applications and meanings for the visual 

artist, who produces a surface representation or likeness. The work of Hans Holbein the 

Younger (1498-1543) will, for the purposes of this study, become my access point for an 

exploration of physiognomy in the world of the sixteenth-century printmaker and 

portraitist. In this project I will demonstrate how, and why, his works might be seen to 

participate in a culture of physiognomic thought, as well as their potential for a 

physiognomic ‗reading‘ by contemporaneous viewers. 

 Scholarship on Holbein, while abundant, has in the past lingered on questions of 

the artist‘s geographic location (Basel or London), divided the analysis of his works 

according to mediums (paintings or prints), or focused on his career as portraitist at the 

expense of his other endeavors. Recent volumes, such as those compiled by Susan Foister 

and Christian Müller, attentive to the particular concerns of England and Basel 

respectively, have praised Holbein‘s versatility even as they continue to isolate prints and 

painted portraits.
1
 In this project, I will address concerns belonging to both mediums, 

allowing for their interconnectivity and reciprocal influences, while also attending to their 

                                                           
1
 Susan Foister, Holbein and England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). See also Christian 

Müller, ed., Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515-1532 (New York: Prestel, 2006). Jochen 

Sander, Hans Holbein: Tafelmaler in Basel (1515-1532),  (München: Hirmer Verlag, 2005). 



2 

 

 

 

unique visual strategies and functions.  

 Despite the early modern concern about appearances and the status of 

representation itself, physiognomy and the visual arts is an underdeveloped pairing in 

existing art historical scholarship. This oversight is perhaps more a reflection of modern 

disciplinary divisions between science and art than of the historical reality of fifteenth- 

and sixteenth-century culture, when the boundaries were not yet so clearly defined. 

Historian of science, Josef Ziegler, has well established the omnipresent undercurrent of 

physiognomic thought and the social uncertainties that cemented its popularity across a 

broad portion of the socio-economic spectrum, and Eniko Bekes has taken the step to link 

it to written and visual descriptions in her study of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.
2
  

Bekes‘ exploration of physiognomic theory as a tool for the ruler‘s self-fashioning has 

informed my argument that Holbein‘s commissioned portraits can be engaged with in a 

similarly productive vein. Steven Greenblatt‘s foundational work on Renaissance self-

fashioning, in fact, featured Hans Holbein the Younger‘s Ambassadors and described the 

process of early modern identity construction through outwardly projected images and 

appearances.
3
  One could argue that physiognomic thought as it was understood in the 

early sixteenth century was a contemporary attempt to redress, or cut through, the 

superficialities of constructed appearances to reach a core of essential truth. For a viewer, 

therefore, familiarity with basic physiognomic theory could be a valuable tool for 

interpreting the truth of inner character beneath layers of costume and accrued attributes, 

                                                           
2
 Joseph Ziegler, "Text and Context: On the Rise of Physiognomic Thought in the Later Middle Ages,‖ in 

De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in 

Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. Yitzhak Hen (Tournhout: Brepols, 2001). See also Eniko Bekes, The 

Physiognomy of a Renaissance Ruler: Portraits and Descriptions of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary 

(Saarbrèucken: VDM Verlag, 2009). 
3
 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1984). 



3 

 

 

 

while for a maker or patron of art it could be a means of conveying a level of 

authenticity. 

I propose, however, that it is not only Holbein‘s portraits that can be approached 

fruitfully with physiognomic knowledge. His Dance of Death woodcut cycle (1538) 

presents a virtual catalog of ―types,‖ distinguished by their settings, costumes, racial and 

socio-economic indicators and, as I will argue, their potential for physiognomic readings. 

Their function as prints—portable works in multiples that could be sold in sets and later 

would appear in book form— will provide another avenue for exploring physiognomic 

theory outside of commissioned portraits. Without claiming that Holbein intended a 

―pure‖ physiognomic reading of his works, it is undeniable that he engaged with 

universal questions of likeness and representation in an era when physiognomic thought 

was one piece of the ongoing dialogue, and that his work was viewed and consumed by 

individuals who were well aware of these concepts. Our understanding of the 

Renaissance preoccupation with self-construction and identity will necessarily be an 

incomplete one without a closer look at the ways in which physiognomic theory might 

subvert or sustain a reading of character in contemporaneous imagery.  

 

The Authority and Ancient Origins of Physiognomic Theory 

  For what reasons, and to what purpose, was the ancient discipline of 

physiognomy so fully revived in the twelfth through sixteenth centuries? One factor must 

certainly be the widespread rediscovery of ―lost‖ classical texts in the late medieval 

period, paired with the growth of scholarly libraries and the foundation of universities 

across Europe. Physiognomy was incorporated into the programs of these universities 



4 

 

 

 

during the fourteenth century, while physiognomic texts were recorded in major medieval 

libraries from the ninth century onwards.
4
  But their presence in libraries and in the 

university curriculum does not answer the question of why there seems to have been a 

resurgence, what societal needs it fulfilled, and how it became such a broad cultural 

force.  To understand the flourishing of physiognomic thought in the early modern 

period, it is helpful to trace a brief history of the theories from their classical foundations 

to their later interpretations. It must be pointed out that the reach of physiognomy was 

wide and varied: far from a ―niche‖ or elite discipline, it appears in the history of 

medicine, natural sciences, trade and travel, rhetoric and politics, and in the visual arts.  

 Ziegler has defined physiognomy as ―the art of deciphering one‘s character by the 

external appearance of his or her bodily organs.‖
5
 In the classical tradition, Pythagorus 

and Hippocrates were typically claimed as founders of the discipline, though little is 

known about the first actual practitioners.
6
 The earliest surviving physiognomic treatise 

of the classical period is the Pseudo-Aristotle‘s Physiognomica. Though this work is no 

longer attributed to the philosopher, Aristotle wrote frequently on physiognomic topics, 

including an important passage from the Analytica Priora: ―For if a peculiar affection 

applies to any individual class, e.g., courage to lions, there must be some corresponding 

sign for it; for it has been assumed that body and soul are affected together.‖
7
 The 

Physiognomica echoes this sentiment: ―the soul and body appropriate to the same kind 

always go together.‖
8
 The text identifies three types of physiognomic study: first, 

                                                           
4
 Bekes, 12-13. Also Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 160, 174-176. 

5
  Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 159. 

6
 Bekes, 9-10. 

7
 Cited in Elizabeth C. Evans, ―Physiognomy in the Ancient World,‖ Transactions of the American 

Philosophical Society 5 (1969): 7. 
8
 T. Loveday and E.S. Forster, trans., ―Physiognomics,‖ in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan 

Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 805a1-805a17.  



5 

 

 

 

comparisons to the traits of animals; second, comparisons between races or groups of 

men; and third, a cataloguing of emotions or passions which contort or shape facial 

characteristics. Each are addressed in turn: qualities of the skin, brow, hair, eyes, mouth, 

nose, shoulders, and so forth, in conjunction with the personality traits they mark. The 

closing remarks promote a hierarchy of traits in reading character: ―The most suitable 

part of all is the region of the eyes and forehead, head and face… In a word, the clearest 

signs are derived from those parts in which intelligence is most manifest.‖
9
 This 

statement holds obvious implications for portraiture, to which I will return in later 

chapters.  

 The Physiognomica was subject to multiple translations and commentaries, 

including a thirteenth-century translation by Bartolomeus de Messana and more than one 

fifteenth-century edition.
10

 New texts in the thirteenth century built on classical 

knowledge: the first of these is considered to be Michael Scot‘s Liber de Physionomia (c. 

1230), followed by Pietro D‘Abano‘s Liber compilationis physiognomies (1295). The 

influence of Aristotle, and those texts considered spuria, or ―after‖ the philosopher, was 

felt in nearly every field of the medieval arts and natural sciences: astronomy, astrology, 

politics, theology, and medicine were among them. A changing understanding of man‘s 

place in the natural world was both supported and expanded by the rediscovery of 

Aristotle‘s ―natural philosophy. His teachings proved central to the development of early 

modern academic culture.
11

 In this we can begin to see how, if not entirely why, 

physiognomy was so well-received throughout diverse fields.  

                                                           
9
 Ibid, 814a6-814b8.  

10
 Bekes, 12-13. 

11
 Joan Cadden, ―Trouble in the Earthly Paradise: The Regime of Nature in Late Medieval Christian 

Culture,‖ in The Moral Authority of Nature, eds. Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago: University 



6 

 

 

 

 

Medieval Applications of Physiognomic Theory  

From the first, it appears that physiognomy was intimately tied with the field of 

medicine. The Roman physician Galen, writing after Hippocrates, emphasized a 

physiognomy closely tied to the bodily humors, claiming that his predecessor found it 

indispensable for the proper diagnosis of patients.
12

 Galen‘s systematic treatment of an 

individual‘s complexio, or composition, as originating in qualities of flesh and 

temperature (warm, dry, soft, firm) in combination with physical humors (blood, bile, 

phlegm, gall) and the temperaments over which they ruled (sanguine, melancholic, 

choleric and phlegmatic) was synthesized completely into the canons of medical 

knowledge of the early modern period, already settling into common knowledge by the 

thirteenth century. Physiognomy was thought useful for the scholar and the practicing 

physician. Michele Savonarola was both: his fifteenth-century practical handbook of 

medicine, Practica maior, included a section on the identification and diagnosis of 

physiognomic signs for treatment, while his Speculum physiognomiae was a specialized 

treatise dedicated to Leonello d‘Este, Marquis of Ferrara. In this period, too, the lines 

between medical and cosmological knowledge were flexible or even indistinct: physical 

signs might be as easily read in diagnostic as well as astrological texts, as the qualities of 

heavenly bodies and planets were considered to correspond with the individuals they 

governed.
13

  

                                                                                                                                                                             

of Chicago Press, 2004),  207-231. See also Steven J. Williams, The secret of secrets: the scholarly career 

of a pseudo-Aristotelian text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003) 
12

 George Boys-Stones, ―Physiognomy and Ancient Psychological Theory,‖ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the 

Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 2007), 99-101. See also Bekes, 9-10. 
13

 Valentin Groebner, "Complexio/Complexion: Categorizing Individual Natures, 1250-1600,‖ in The 

Moral Authority of Nature, 365-370. 



7 

 

 

 

 The desire for a systematic approach to wellness was one aspect of 

physiognomy‘s popularity. Social uncertainty and the need to ‗size up‘ one‘s peers or 

enemies was surely another. Elements of this, too, are rooted in antique precedent: 

Polemon, writing in the second century CE, aimed many passages specifically at the 

identification of enemies and those of poor moral character. A fourth-century Greek 

translation lists one of the goals of physiognomy as ―[guarding] against the vices of the 

bad before having to experience them.‖
14

 Perhaps ingrained in the drive to detect 

character traits and flaws is a desire to predict the possible behaviors of such an 

individual, to assess their potential for nobility, honesty, violence, or deceit. As Martin 

Porter suggests, ―the dividing line between character and future, like the temporal line 

between past, present, and future, is thin, even permeable.‖
15

  

 This was certainly a concern for those medieval thinkers who adopted 

physiognomic theories to their own uses. Roger Bacon, writing in the thirteenth century, 

instructs kings and lesser rulers to choose their advisors, servants and friends with 

guidance from physiognomic theory, with a particular eye for those individuals 

susceptible to corruption.
16

 It was not only nobles who stood to benefit from a clear and 

scientifically-grounded framework for passing judgment on those they encountered: 

increased social and geographic mobility and the explosive growth of trade after the 

twelfth century, however opportune, thrust many individuals into uncertain encounters. 

As Ziegler notes, there were few reliable means of information-sharing in this period by 

                                                           
14

 Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 2005), 48-49. 
15

 Ibid, 48-49.  
16

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 181. 



8 

 

 

 

which to establish the bonafides, or even identities, of strangers.
17

 A system that could 

quickly and thoroughly assess the character of potential business partners, political allies, 

companions and others was an invaluable asset. 

 Identity, however, was not considered a simplistic or straightforward concept. The 

Secretum Secretorum, supposedly an educational epistle from Aristotle to Alexander the 

Great (though likely instead a collection of Hellenistic and medieval Arabic and Latin 

knowledge), problematized the idea of ―physiognomic determinism‖ and the notion that 

reading an individual‘s true self could ever be truly straightforward. In the text, a life-like 

portrait of Hippocrates is brought by his students to Physionomyas for interpretation. 

Examining the image closely, the physiognomist names Hippocrates a degenerate, and is 

met with derision by the philosopher‘s students. Rather than joining them, Hippocrates 

answers that the diagnosis of his natural tendencies is correct, yet credits ―reason‖ as the 

force holding his natural impulses in check.
18

 In this narrative physiognomy is indeed 

credited with an ability to read the truth of inner substance, albeit a truth that can be 

complicated and mediated by force of will and self-direction.  

 Translated from Greek to Arabic in the ninth or tenth centuries, from Arabic to 

Latin in the twelfth century, and from Latin to Italian, French, Dutch, English and 

German by the fourteenth, the Secretum Secretorum would prove to be one of the most 

widely read and collected texts of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, and 

endures today in over five hundred surviving manuscripts.
19

 The legend of Hippocrates 

and Physionomyas was retold and debated from the twelfth-century writings of Albertus 

Magnus to sixteenth-century German author and pamphleteer Bartolomäus Cocles, who 

                                                           
17

 Ibid, 182. 
18

 Groebner, 361.  



9 

 

 

 

included the tale in his own work, Physionomi vnd chiromanci: Eyn newes 

complexionbüchlein (1504).
20

 Roger Bacon would come to a similar conclusion for a 

different audience: Christians, he wrote, could not be judged by the standards of physical 

examination, as ―divine grace‖ could overcome any natural flaws.
21

 The next chapter will 

delve further into the relationship between physiognomy and contemporaneous religious 

imagery, specifically as it pertains to the perfection of Christ and depictions of vice and 

virtue. 

 The question of ―truth‖ in the representation of character is highly relevant to the 

present project. Returning briefly to Polemon, we observe that he cites many 

physiognomic types from personal history, describing his political rival Favorinus as 

―greedy and immoral beyond all description‖ with ―puffed-up eyes‖ and slackened 

cheeks; while his account of the Emperor Hadrian centers around his beautiful and 

―luminous‖ eyes, which were ―bluish-black, with sharp vision.‖
22

 It is impossible to 

ignore the socio-political relationships of the individuals to whom he referred with such 

vivid imagery. Jaś Elsner has suggested a connection between Polemon‘s emphasis on 

the eye and the lofty gazes of imperial portraiture, in turn linking rhetorical descriptive 

language, visual art and physiognomy. In this view all three become ―potentially parallel 

and sometimes even intertwined methods for persuasive, encomiastic or polemical 

cultural relations.‖
23

 This interpretation is particularly significant after a translation 

through time and geographic location: as Stephen Greenblatt has noted, the early modern 

period was marked by ―an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human 

                                                                                                                                                                             
19

 Williams, 1-2, 7-9, 30-32. 
20

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 162. Also Groebner, 361 (Footnote 2.) 
21

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 163. 
22

 Jaś Elsner, ―Physiognomics: Art and Text,‖ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, 207-208. 



10 

 

 

 

identity as a manipulable, artful process.‖
24

 Many important physiognomic treatises were 

dedicated to powerful men, including Michael Scot‘s Liber physiognomiae, written for 

Frederick II, and indeed it appears that physiognomy was of special interest to those 

seeking an origin or authentication for the concept of ―nobility.‖
25

  Holbein‘s 

commissioned portrait of Henry VIII [Figure 1.1] has long been seen as an influential 

shaper of the King‘s public image, and in light of physiognomic theory new questions 

will arise. The fourth chapter of this project will return to this concept of the creation and 

interpretation of identity through portraiture.  

 The comparison between written description and artistic depiction is not 

incidental. Physiognomy‘s impact on the creation of art appears in the counsel of 

Philostratus the Younger to would-be painters, from the text of his Imagines. His 

instructions mirror the Physiognomica in their concern for those physical traits that are 

thought to show the internal life of their owner:  

For he who is to be a true master of the art must have a good knowledge of 

human nature, he must be able to discern the signs of men's character, 

even when they are silent, and what is revealed in… the expression of the 

eyes, and the character of the eyebrows, and, to put the matter briefly, 

whatever has to do with the mind.
26

  

 

  Physiognomy also figures largely in texts by ancient writers who exhorted 

naturalism in painting, as in a passage from Pliny‘s Natural History, where the 

astonishing portraits of Apelles are examined by a physiognomist, their ―perfect 

likenesses‖ serving as substitutes for their absent sitters. Of this anecdote, Elsner says: 

―Physiognomics is here brought to bear not only on any old paintings…but on the 

                                                                                                                                                                             
23

 Ibid, 206. 
24

 Greenblatt, 2. 
25

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 177. 



11 

 

 

 

uniquely lifelike portraits of Apelles himself, in which representation effectively 

transcends the normal limits of art.‖
27

 The Renaissance preoccupation with naturalism, or 

lifelikeness, was drawn in part from a rediscovery or reinvention of antique aesthetics. 

Leon Battista Alberti, in his foundational De Pictura (1435) and De sculptura (1436), 

echoed Philostratus in his encouragement to artists to attend to those physiognomic 

details that would better capture the inner nature of the sitter.
28

 Holbein‘s commitment to 

complex and detailed physical description can be observed in both his printed Pictures of 

Death [Figure 1.2] and in his method of approaching portraiture, as seen in a study for his 

1516 portrait of Jacob Meyer. [Figure 1.3] Ties between physiognomy and naturalism in 

art will be explored in greater detail in the following chapters.  

  Like its initial inventors, later translators and practitioners viewed physiognomy 

as both an art and a science, one which ―derive[d] its roots from a system of knowable 

causes which can be deciphered through rational reasoning.‖
29

 Physiognomy represented 

a philosophical system by which to explore the relationship between of appearance and 

substance, paralleling and sometimes problematizing Aristotle‘s view of the soul as ―the 

form of a natural body potentially having life.‖
30

 It also presented a particular challenge 

for those charged with representing visual ―truths.‖ It is in the visual arts that I intend to 

most fully demonstrate the far-reaching absorption and revitalization of physiognomy 

during the time of Hans Holbein the Younger. Complicated by the creation of personal, 

political and professional character, as well as social tensions, visual representations of 

human faces are inescapably tied to self-identity and the perception of the identities of 

                                                                                                                                                                             
26

 Evans, 45. 
27

 Elsner, ―Physiognomics,‖ 204. 
28

 Bekes, 26.  
29

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 160. 



12 

 

 

 

others. Holbein, as both painter and printmaker, will now become the focus of an 

exploration of physiognomic theory and its implications for the social history of image-

making. 

 

  In the next chapter, I will explore the specific cultural milieu in which Hans 

Holbein, his audience, and his patrons encountered and interacted with physiognomic 

theory. I will discuss physiognomy‘s place in vernacular literature, humanist canons, and 

discussions on the ―perfection‖ of Christ, as well as its transmission through the visual 

arts. A third chapter will explore Holbein‘s Dance of Death in relation to established 

physiognomic types as representative of group identities. Facial features and physical 

attributes, interacting with racial, social and economic indicators, will be explored 

alongside contemporaneous texts and related imagery in an attempt to draw out potential 

physiognomic meaning for the inclined viewer. A fourth chapter will explore Holbein‘s 

portraits and treatment of individual likenesses as participants in the tradition of 

Renaissance self-fashioning. The descriptive detail of these works and Holbein‘s 

―rhetoric of realism‖ make certain artistic claims to authenticity and accuracy that must 

be examined in light of physiognomic theory and the expectations of patron and 

spectator. A final closing will draw together the related threads of print and portrait to 

create a fuller understanding of Holbein‘s artistic practice and the reception of his works, 

as these relate to the role of physiognomic thinking in the history of art. 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                             
30

 Boys-Stones, ―Physiognomy,‖ 47. 



13 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2: 

PHYSIOGNOMY IN HOLBEIN’S SPHERE 

 Physiognomy permeated early modern culture at multiple levels, altering or 

encouraging the manner in which individuals regarded themselves, their neighbors and 

those outside their own cultural boundaries. In this chapter, I will explore the presence, 

influence, and continuing development of physiognomy in the circles around Hans 

Holbein, his audiences and patrons. Sixteenth-century trends in art, language, travel and 

commerce indicate both an academic attraction to the theory of physiognomy, and an 

immediate and practical urgency met by physiognomic knowledge as it related to 

concerns about appearances, traits, and internal qualities of character and substance. 

Through examples from high and low culture I will provide the context for the reception 

of Holbein‘s images and reconstruct Holbein‘s own exposure to physiognomic theory 

before introducing his most direct visual responses in the chapters that follow.   

 

Humanism, Physiognomy, and Holbein’s Education  

 Hans Holbein the Younger was born to a family of artists in the German city of 

Augsburg during the last decade of the fifteenth century. His father was both a painter of 

altarpieces and of portraits, who left behind numerous sketchbooks and portrait studies 

drawn from life. Christian Müller has addressed the potential effects of the elder 

Holbein‘s artistic practice on the younger. While the details of his early training are not 

known, Holbein the Younger‘s use of silverpoint and red chalk to carefully capture 

images of his sitters mirrors the technique used by his father.
31

 One of the earliest records 

                                                           
31

 Christian Mueller, ―Hans Holbein the Younger as Draughtsman,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The 

Basel Years, 1515-1532, 29-30. For biographical detail, see Jochen Sander‘s ―The Artistic Development of 

Hans Holbein the Younger as Panel Painter during his Basel Years‖ in the same volume, 14-18. 



14 

 

 

 

of his ability and interest in depicting fine detail in portrait images can be found in his 

marginal illustrations for a text of Desiderius Erasmus‘s In Praise of Folly, completed 

shortly after the artist relocated to Basel. The book was owned by Oswald Myconius, a 

humanist and educator who was responsible for instructing Holbein in the scholarly 

language of Latin. The text served as an important introduction in more than one 

capacity. With it, Myconius engaged Holbein in the most current humanist thought, while 

the illustrations drew the positive attention of Erasmus himself, who would later become 

patron and personal reference for the artist.
32

  

 The manuscript, written as an address in the assumed voice of the personification 

of Folly, introduces its narrator in terms that echo the central conceit of physiognomic 

theory: ―…[A]s if any man, mistaking me for Wisedome (sic), could not at first sight 

convince himself by my face, the true index of my mind? I am no Counterfeit, nor do I 

carry one thing in my looks and another in my breast.‖
33

 Erasmus‘s narrator expresses the 

foundation of physiognomy itself, the belief that virtue or vice may be read through 

bodily appearance. His use of ‗counterfeit‘ similarly corresponds to contemporaneous 

discourse on the practice of artistic truth and the imitation of nature, which will be more 

fully explored in the following chapter. Holbein‘s marginal illustrations, notably his 

image of Folly itself, are lively and engaging, articulating fine facial details in small 

strokes. In the image accompanying these early introductions, his figure of Folly regards 

his bauble face-to-face, as one might look in a mirror. [Figure 2.1] Importantly, these 

                                                           
32

 Lothar Schmitt, ―Education and Learning among Sixteenth-Century German Artists,‖ in Hans Holbein: 

Paintings, Prints and Reception, eds. Mark Roskill and John Oliver Hand (Washington, DC: National 

Gallery of Art, 2001), 73.  
33

 Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, trans. John Wilson 1668 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 11-12. 

 



15 

 

 

 

small images also captured expression and ―qualities of character,‖
34

 with insightful and 

satirical observations of human behavior. In one such image, a scholar turning to regard a 

well-dressed young woman steps into a market woman‘s basket of eggs—a clear and 

pointedly humorous example of the dangers of being distracted by sheer superficial 

beauty. [Figure 2.2]  

The delicate rendering of facial features adds an additional layer to these 

charming marginal images. Allegorical figures, which are meant to embody specific 

qualities or characteristics, are depicted in portrait-like detail, and witty or satirical 

associations may be read in what they represent and the manner of their physical 

representation. A figure of Wisdom, for example, appears beside his foolish child as an 

aged man with a long beard and prominent nose, while the audience for Folly‘s imagined 

panegyric is at the end revealed to be wearing fools‘ caps themselves, with gaping 

mouths and unruly hair. [Figures 2.3 - 2.4] These latter traits appear in physiognomic 

treatises as representative of the behavior of dogs and beasts, whose teeth and mouths 

protrude in a show of unmannerly wildness.
35

 These illustrations are appropriate to their 

source: this and Erasmus‘s other writings contained numerous references to 

physiognomic discourse, both direct and indirect. His On the Education of Children 

(1506-9) instructed parents to watch for those personal traits and inclinations in their 

children that would be apparent by physical signs, after praising Aristotle‘s method: ―I do 

not believe it is merely idle speculation to define a person‘s character on the basis of his 

facial appearance and expression and of his physical bearing and presence…it is a moral 

                                                           
34

 Müller, ―Hans Holbein the Younger,‖ 29. 
35

 Swain ―The Physiognomy Attributed to Aristotle,‖ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s 

Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 653.  



16 

 

 

 

failing to ignore these signs once they have become clear to us.‖
36

  

 Holbein‘s close reading of the Erasmus‘s Praise of Folly text seems a necessary 

aspect of his complex and entirely suitable images. As an artist working north of the Alps 

both during and after the career of Albrecht Dürer, Holbein‘s exposure to humanist Latin 

treatises is not surprising. Though no formal art academy would be founded in the North 

until the seventeenth century, the sixteenth century was increasingly marked by attempts 

to codify artistic knowledge and to engage with the production of art on a theoretical 

level. Dürer‘s own treatise looked to Italian models and set forth a methodology by which 

artists could engage with geometry, perspective, and human proportion. On a practical 

level, artists also participated in the growth of the publishing industry and the popularity 

of printed books. As book illustrators, those artists with a greater command of literacy in 

Latin and the vernacular allowed for a high degree of collaboration with publishers and 

authors. Holbein‘s own instruction in Latin began after his move to Basel, at the time a 

major center for publication and printing.
37

  

 Holbein‘s interest in Latin also conforms to contemporaneous expectations for the 

liberal arts. The perceived elevation of painting had much to do with the reception of 

classical treatises on art; most notably Pliny‘s Natural History, for its treatment of 

Apelles‘ portraits as both the pinnacle of representative likeness and as physiognomic 

exempla. Theoretical writings of humanist scholars on the subject stressed many of the 

same points. Erasmus praised Dürer as the Apelles of his time, and indeed the figure of 

the ancient painter held great relevance for sixteenth-century artists. Holbein himself 

famously painted Lais of Corinth, the courtesan who captivated Apelles and became his 

                                                           
36

 Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 83-84. 
37

 Schmitt, 73-76. 



17 

 

 

 

Muse, and signed some works with an emblem which took the form of Apelles‘ own 

legendary tablet.
38

 But the ambiguity and suspicion with which some humanists regarded 

painting displays an undercurrent of tension between representation and the truth of 

appearances. In his Ciceronianus of 1528, Erasmus draws together physiognomy with the 

portraits of the classical painters: ―As far as was possible, he [Zeuxis] transferred the 

form of the living person to the mute image… some artists, we are told, made it possible 

for a physiognomist to read off the character, habits and life-span.‖
39

 Yet in the next 

lines, Erasmus rejects the idea that the soul can be truly present in such a work, which 

represents only the ―skin‖ of the sitter. Even in his Praise of Folly, he outlines the many 

deceptions possible in painting, from the superstitions of the faithful before painted 

saints, to the overvaluation of appearance at the expense of true existence. These 

statements consciously echo the concerns of Plato, who decried a reliance on the senses, 

as they are subject to a constantly shifting world and their interpretations cannot be 

trusted.
40

  

 These dueling traditions of Aristotelian and Platonic thought with regard to 

appearances and representation alternately reaffirmed and challenged the foundations of 

physiognomic theory and of artistic depiction. This debate can be most clearly articulated 

in portraiture, often discussed as either ―capturing‖ or ―counterfeiting‖ the sitter‘s 

likeness and presence. Holbein‘s illusionistic and complex work seems perfectly suited to 

participate in this discussion, and indeed the fourth chapter of this project will address 

these concerns more fully. For now, I will limit myself to remarking on his close 

                                                           
38

 Oskar Bätschmann, ―Holbein‘s Hand,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 113. 
39

 Jürgen Müller, ―The Eye of the Artist: Hans Holbein‘s Theory of Art,‖ in Hans Holbein: Paintings, 

Prints & Reception, 142. 
40

 Müller, ―Hans Holbein the Younger,‖ 141-143. For a discussion on the Renaissance conception of vision 



18 

 

 

 

relationships with prominent humanists and the high probability of his encountering 

physiognomic commentaries and theories of appearance within the bounds of his artistic 

training and professional career.   

 

The Physiognomic Perfection of Christ  

 Holbein was a portraitist as well as a maker of religious images, yet for an artist 

of the early modern period, the most famous face was surely the face of Christ. The face 

of Christ provided a measure of physical perfection that was accentuated by way of 

contrast with other figures he encountered in the Passion story. Devotional images that 

depicted his life and Passion, particularly those images that humanized and emphasized 

his suffering, were in increasing demand from the late medieval period onward. New 

Latin narratives (or elaborations on the old), intended to add emotion and anecdotal detail 

to the Gospels‘ somewhat spare reports, were a common aspect of thirteenth- and 

fourteenth-century written devotions. In Germany and the Netherlands, popular Passion 

tracts in the vernacular further expanded on these texts for a wide audience. This trend 

was paralleled in roughly contemporaneous imagery, both in painting and especially with 

the development of printmaking. By the fifteenth century, scenes of Christ‘s ordeal and 

sacrifice were no longer restricted to stark biblical descriptors and a limited cast of 

accompanying characters, but might instead contain new incidents and torments, varied 

locations, a wide number of onlookers and soldiers, and grotesquely elaborate physical 

description.
41

 The beauty and physical perfection of Christ in contrast to the distorted and 

                                                                                                                                                                             

and perception in painting, see Alexander Nagel, ―Leonardo and sfumato,‖ RES: Anthropology and 

Aesthetics 24 (1993), 7-20. 
41

 James Marrow, ―Circumdederunt me canes multi: Christ's Tormentors in Northern European Art of the 

Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,‖ The Art Bulletin 59, No. 2 (1977): 167.  



19 

 

 

 

ugly appearance of his tormentors—a reoccurring element in many of these works—

holds a number of implications that directly relate to early modern physiognomic 

thought.  

 It has been suggested that a kind of ―typology‖ was at work in the development of 

these Passion narratives and tracts, whereby allegorical references from Old Testament 

stories and psalms were drawn out into more literal incidents set in the context of the 

New Testament.
42

 James Marrow has explored the animal imagery of Psalm 21and its use 

as a source for northern depictions of the Passion.  Within the original psalm, the enemies 

surrounding Christ are described as calves, bulls, lions, unicorns and dogs. This latter 

comparison became omnipresent in Passion tracts and devotions, with references to 

Christ‘s tormentors as ―malicious dogs… raving dogs… cruel dogs… crying and 

howling.‖
43

 As mentioned in the previous chapter, associations between human facial 

traits and their exempla in the animal kingdom were also a significant factor in 

physiognomic description. In the treatise commonly attributed to Aristotle, the writer 

states that ―Projecting upper lip and gums mark those fond of abuse, on the evidence of 

dogs.‖
44

 Likewise, Polemon reported: ―If you see the mouth and teeth project, this is 

similar to the mouths of dogs; it is [one of] the signs of baseness, and of someone who 

loves enmity and anger.‖
45

 Animalistic comparisons were continued and expanded in 

fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Passion images. Here the lolling tongues, bared teeth, 

crouched postures, distorted features and general unruliness of the crowd would have 

invited comparisons by the viewer to the behavior and attributes of dogs and other beasts. 

                                                           
42

 Ibid., 168-169.  
43

 Ibid., 174. 
44

 Swain, 653.  
45

 Robert Hoyland, trans., ―The Leiden Polemon,‖ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, 415. 



20 

 

 

 

In many cases, the link was made explicit: artists like Martin Schongauer and Lucas 

Cranach the Elder included images of dogs in certain Passion prints, uniting their 

depictions of the animals to human figures within the composition through posture, facial 

details, or expression. Marrow calls Cranach‘s imagery in his 1509 Crowning with 

Thorns ―physiognomic,‖
46

 and indeed it appears that viewers were invited to view the 

animalistic features and profane nature of Christ‘s tormenters as mutually reinforcing 

[Figure 2.5]. This represents an accessible and immediate route by which both literate 

and non-literate audiences might begin to interact with physiognomy.   

 Physiognomic comparisons were known to many members of the clergy or laity 

in the fifteenth-century North. Since the late Middle Ages, Aristotelian physiognomic 

treatises copied by monastic scribes had stressed the importance of cataloguing and 

identifying those traits which marked a tendency towards sin, though with an important 

caveat: outwards signs that accurately indicated a sinful inner nature could be controlled 

by the practice of good deeds and the reform of the soul. The nobility of such a struggle, 

and its proximity to Christian dialogues on the nature of humanity‘s vices, seems to have 

made the pagan discipline of physiognomic belief palatable to many within the Church. 

The twelfth-century German bishop and theologian Albertus Magnus wrote extensively 

on physiognomy, and his work was later adapted for eleven chapters of the Responsorium 

Curiosorum (1476), attributed to Konrad of Halberstadt. The Responsorium was a 

practical manual designed for preachers and priests confronted by their congregations 

with common questions from natural philosophy and the sciences. This handbook, 

published in Lübeck, offered answers to questions relating to ‗correct‘ physiognomic 

                                                           
46

 Marrow, ―Circumdederunt,‖ 175, 178-179. 

 



21 

 

 

 

readings of prominent facial features: what disposition, for example, does a large 

forehead, small forehead, curved eyebrow, bulging eye indicate? The development of 

such a book represents the learned knowledge of its sources, but the necessity of its 

creation may also reflect the interest and curiosity of the general population, or the drive 

of its writers to influence the latter. The Church‘s wide audience and influence in both 

popular and elite spheres suggests the possibility of an equally broad audience for a basic 

awareness of physiognomy. As Joseph Ziegler writes, the popularity of handbooks of this 

type, and the reoccurrence of physiognomic metaphors in printed sermons, may indicate 

physiognomy‘s usefulness to clergy as a ―mirror of vices and virtues.‖
47

  

 Vice took many forms, but virtue was often represented in the physical perfection 

of Christ. His appearance- and its historical veracity- was a topic of vital importance to 

early modern writers, humanists, theologians and artists. In this period, the search for the 

authentic face of Christ was motivated not only by religious devotion, but also by a cross-

cultural search for historical knowledge and origins stretching back to the antique. The 

Veronica Veil provided one early source for Christ‘s visage. According to the legend, 

first recorded in the eleventh century and cemented within the Passion narrative in the 

fourteenth, a woman along the route to Calvary stopped to wipe the brow of Christ and 

was rewarded with a miraculous image of the Holy Face on her cloth. This cloth was 

displayed as a contact relic in Rome to crowds of thousands during the Jubilee of 1350, 

and by 1370 the indulgence offered to those pilgrims who looked upon it numbered 

twenty thousand years.
48

 Scholarship has explored the legitimizing effect of the Veronica 

legend on the production of holy images, as well as the echoing of the divine vera icon—

                                                           
47

 Ziegler, "Text and Context,‖ 168-173. 
48

 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: The 



22 

 

 

 

made without human hands—in the virtuosic brushstroke-sublimating work of portraitists 

and painters such as Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer. Joseph Leo Koerner has traced 

specifically northern responses to the vera icon, emphasizing links between Van Eyck‗s 

Holy Face of 1440 and Dürer‘s Self-Portrait of 1500, but he has also observed that both 

works bear a striking resemblance to a famous contemporaneous textual source for 

Christ‘s physical appearance: the Lentulus Letter.
49

  

 In the early fifteenth century, a letter began to circulate describing the features of 

Christ, supposedly from an eye-witness account of the Roman patrician Publius Lentulus. 

Lorenzo Valla claimed that the text had been discovered in 1421 on the Capitoline Hill in 

Rome, while a city guidebook of 1481 asserted that it had been found somewhat later in a 

ruin near San Giovanni. While it is now believed that the text was in fact a thirteenth-

century invention, likely a monastic document intended to aid meditation and 

visualization, it was deeply influential in the following decades.
50

 Its importance here is 

its clear reliance on the vocabulary of physiognomic descriptions for its ekphrasis. 

Clearly composed within these traditions, the letter evokes the character of Christ by 

closely detailing those signs of his outward appearance. The translated letter describes the 

figure of Christ as follows:  

He is a man of medium size; he has a venerable aspect, and his beholders  

 can both fear and love him. His hair is of the color of the ripe hazel-nut,  

 straight down to the ears, but below the ears wavy and curled, with a  

 bluish and bright reflection, flowing over his shoulders. It is parted in two  

 on the top of the head, after the pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is  

 smooth and very cheerful, with a face without wrinkle or spot,  

embellished by a slightly reddish complexion. His nose and mouth are  

faultless. His beard is abundant, of the color of his hair, not long, but  

                                                                                                                                                                             

University of Chicago Press, 1993), 81, 86.  
49

 Koerner, 80-104, 103. 
50

 Gerhard Wolf and Giovanni Morello, Il Voto di Christo (Milan, Electa, 2000), 221. 



23 

 

 

 

divided at the chin. His aspect is simple and mature, his eyes are  

changeable and bright. He is terrible in his reprimands, sweet and amiable  

in his admonitions, cheerful without loss of gravity. He was never known  

to laugh, but often to weep. His stature is straight, his hands and arms  

beautiful to behold. His conversation is grave, infrequent, and modest. He  

is the most beautiful among the children of men.
51

  

 

It seems possible that the Lentulus Letter was drawn from the same sources as a 

thirteenth-century Latin manuscript of the Secretum Secretorum found in the library of 

Cerne Abbey. The text consisted of an additional end-chapter describing Christ‘s physical 

appearance through many of the ideal or ―best‖ physiognomic traits presented in the 

preceding treatise. While the language of the Lentulus Letter is not always identical to 

this earlier description of Christ, it may represent an attempt to legitimize or support the 

practice of physiognomy and its ability to represent ―truth,‖ in this case the outward truth 

of Christ‘s perfection and virtuous inner nature. Like the Lentulus Letter, the text 

describes his medium stature and erect posture, bright eyes, parted beard, complexion of 

―moderate redness,‖ and the long, straight hair which curled past the ears. It also 

attributed to him a ―sanguine, Jovian‖ temperament in accordance with contemporaneous 

belief in the bodily humors.
52

 

 Interest in this ―knowledge‖ of the face of Christ was widespread, and provided a 

new source of material for artists like Holbein and his contemporaries. Portrait medals 

presenting a likeness of Christ, with his face in profile in the style of Renaissance rulers 

and the antique examples they emulated, had already appeared in the middle of the 

fifteenth century. The earliest examples may have been created for the court at Ferrara, 

                                                           
51

 Anthony J. Maas, ―Publius Lentulus,‖ in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton 

Company, 1913), I-610b.  
52

 Ziegler, ―Text and Context,‖ 171-172.  



24 

 

 

 

by two artists renowned for their portrait medals: Pisanello sketched one version, and 

Matteo di Pasti cast another.
53

 It was from medals of this type that Hans Burgkmair 

derived his profile design for a new printing of the Lentulus Letter, which by that time 

held a particularly high status north of the Alps. A fine manuscript edition of the letter 

was sent by Pope Alexander to Frederick the Wise of Saxony in 1500, while at the same 

time a German translation was published in Augsburg by Erhart Ratdolt. Burgkmair‘s 

illustration, above Ratdolt‘s translation, was included in a 1511 schoolbook from the 

Nuremberg press of Johannes Weisenburger. This image, among other ―authentic‖ 

portraits of Christ that drew on the same written description, provided important models 

for artists throughout the following centuries.
54

 [Figure 2.6] Burgkmair‘s woodcut profile 

of Christ is highly meticulous, capturing fine details in the hair and beard, with an 

emphasis on clearly-defined facial features. This print, and a 1512 broadsheet for which 

he took a second medal as a model [Figure 2.7], creates a mutually reinforcing claim to 

authenticity: those who doubt the truth of the image are referred to the historic legitimacy 

of the text, while those who doubt the text can be reassured by the seeming authority of 

the image above.
55

  

 This ―accurate‖ portrait of Christ, embodied in the form of a human male, 

provides more than a piece of historical evidence or a pure image for devotion. It models 

physical and spiritual unity, a body in harmony between inner and outer being. The 

duplication and widespread distribution of these painted and cast portraits gives weight to 

the idea of physiognomic thought as ‗cultural currency,‘ widely known and engaged with 

throughout every level of contemporaneous culture. As much as these medal and printed 

                                                           
53

 Wolf, 215-216. 
54

 Koerner, 116-118. 



25 

 

 

 

portraits were derived from classical and Renaissance examples, they also set a new and 

authoritative model for humanity itself, an archetype of perfection celebrated by 

humanists as the ―most beautifully constructed of all sons of men.‖
56

 Christ‘s ideal image 

accentuates and clarifies the imperfections present in all others, but his form opens a 

unique path to self-awareness. In the words of the fifteenth-century Strasbourg reformer 

Johann Geiler von Kaiserberg, ―Only the one who… perceives his own body becomes 

aware of how far he is from perfection.‖
57

 In these terms, physiognomy provides not only 

an urgently needed self-awareness, but also the potential for salvation. 

  

Travel, Identity, and Social Mobility 

 Self-awareness, and in turn awareness of the selves of others, forms a third 

portion of this discussion framed within the new mobility of people in the early modern 

period. Holbein‘s career would lead him on numerous journeys throughout his life: first, 

from Augsburg to Basel as a journeyman artist, later from Basel to France for a brief 

time, and later still to England on multiple occasions, where he worked for the humanist 

Thomas More and the English royal court.
58

 His role as international traveler was not 

unique. Increased travel and trade had thrust many regions of Europe into close proximity 

by the sixteenth century, following routes that continued to be traced by pilgrims all 

across Europe, especially in jubilee years like 1500. The rapid growth of cities, based in 

large part on mercantile exchange and commerce, corresponded with the development of 

regional and international markets, drawing isolated villages and towns into new spheres 

                                                                                                                                                                             
55

 Wolf, 220-221. 
56

 Koerner, 104-106, 116. 
57

 Groebner, 373. 
58

 Sander, ―Artistic Development,‖ 14-18. 



26 

 

 

 

of communication. New patterns of interaction required new social strategies for creating, 

building and sustaining relationships. One such strategy was the proliferation of identity 

papers- passports, travel documents, bills of health, letters of reference and other 

credentials, which supported the claims of their subjects and provided those that they 

encountered with a sense of official legitimacy. To these we can also add registries of 

slaves and indentured servants, and warrants for arrest. Interestingly, all of these papers 

increasingly recorded and codified the physical appearances of their subjects. Skin color, 

scars and marks, clothes, and physical attributes were documented to attest to the 

authenticity of the bearer who held them or was described by them.
59

 

 Specifically, the term complexio, or complexion, appears in these records with 

some frequency, having evolved in meaning from the combination of bodily humors 

(blood, bile, phlegm, gall) to a collective reading of internal and external physiognomic 

signs. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century accounts of slaves sold and freed in Italy listed 

their height, build, the shape and features of their faces, birthmarks, and skin color 

ranging from olive, yellow, brown, black, purplish, greenish, and red. Valentin Groebner 

has examined the close associations in contemporaneous literature between skin color 

and bodily humors, drawn less from modern conceptions of ―race‖ than from ancient 

categorizations like those found in the works of Aristotle, Pliny and Vitruvius. Varying 

climates and geographies of the foreign world were seen to produce individuals of 

corresponding temperament. In hot southern regions, black and yellow bile might 

produce a ―greenish‖ skin tone and ―wise, weak, swarthy‖ individuals, while the cold 

regions far to the North produced fair-skinned persons too high in moisture, resulting in 

                                                           
59

 Groebner, 364. 

 



27 

 

 

 

―thick‖ humors and ―sluggish‖ minds.
60

 Here, skin color is not simply an outside 

indication or classification, but a reflection of internal character and composition, 

seemingly well-suited to physiognomic interpretation.  

 Despite the supposedly ―factual‖ nature of identity documents, their usage was 

not free of implied meaning or prejudice. Gypsies, recorded as having dark skin and curly 

hair and originating in the East, were widely believed to have the ability to alter their 

appearances, and so in the mid-sixteenth century were stripped of their travel documents 

by legislation of the Holy Roman Empire under the accusation that any papers held by 

such a person would be, by nature, falsified.
61

 Suspicions regarding travelers were 

common and pervasive. In 1530, the English Parliament passed an act that set forth 

prohibitions and punishments for roaming ―beggars and vagabonds,‖ though this was so 

widely defined as to include pardoners, shipmen, and itinerant scholars from the 

Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Fear of plague and contagion spurred some 

prejudices, while others were stirred by religious difference and class tension. 

Interestingly, some of these nomadic individuals- astrologers, physicians and quacks, 

magicians- were regarded with suspicion for their associations with fortune-telling and 

those arts which interpreted bodily signs, such as chiromancy (palm reading) or 

metoposcopy (reading of lines on the forehead.) ―Physiognomers,‖ also recorded as 

physiognomantiers or fisnomiers, appear less frequently, but were targeted alongside 

other practitioners of divinatory or diagnostic arts, earning inclusion on Henry VIII‘s list 

of those ―superstitious folk‖ whose habits bordered heresy. It is possible that 

physiognomy‘s ability to cut through layers of constructed meaning (and constructed 

                                                           
60

Ibid, 376-379. 
61

 Ibid, 374-376. 



28 

 

 

 

identity, as we shall see in the fourth chapter of this project) may have complicated its 

use in the hands of those marginalized by social hierarchies. Non-literate practitioners, 

often gypsies or travelers, were primarily singled out for persecution by the authorities. 

Although it may have been difficult to separate entirely literate from non-literate 

physiognomy as it traveled between elite and popular spheres, Martin Porter has 

suggested a link between the evolution of the sixteenth-century culture of the book and an 

increasing suspicion against ―folk‖ physiognomy as an illiterate or non-literate 

knowledge system lacking codification and regulation. It is possible that this suspicion 

was partially based in the wider difficulty of establishing credentials in this period: a 

second act of Parliament in 1530 warned against those ―feyning‖ knowledge of the art, in 

order to deceive their victims with stories of ―destenyes deceases (sic.)  & fortunes.‖
62

  

 Despite any misgivings about its abuses and falsifications, physiognomy was 

unceasingly popular throughout the sixteenth century. Vernacular works, mostly 

anonymous, circulated in great numbers. One German Complexionsbuch, drawn from 

varied sources, was printed and re-printed in editions dating from every year between 

1511 and 1517, and enjoyed twelve additional reprints before 1550.
63

 Texts and 

pamphlets quoted a multitude of earlier authorities, from Michael Scot to the Secretum 

Secretorum, playing on an early modern love of lists, references, and allusions to 

classical origins. These references increasingly expanded to include visual examples, 

first-hand observations, and historical accounts. Some social uneasiness seems to have 

driven their production, or perhaps been encouraged by the same. For those anxious to 

uncover concealed enemies, size up potential business partners, or quickly assess a new 

                                                           
62

 Porter, 130-139. 
63

 Ibid, 128-129. 



29 

 

 

 

contact, physiognomy provided a comprehensive and logical method. Some texts even 

boasted of their ability to expose ―reckless disgraceful people,‖ presumably those 

important to avoid at all costs (or at the cost of one‘s own reputation).
64

 

 Physiognomy was not, however, limited to the discovery of potential threats. A 

Complexionsbuchlein printed in 1536 and attributed to Bartolomeus Cocles recited the 

tale of Hippocrates and Physionomyas, yet for a closing section on the composition of 

German bodies turned to the histories of Tacitus. The classical historian was often quoted 

in this period in the context of German national pride and identity. According to the text 

of the Complexionsbüchlein, despite the Germans‘ barbaric history and all the 

corresponding physical indicators of this behavior, and in contrast to other barbaric races 

dwelling still in their natural state, the German people were marked by ingenuity and 

ambition and so overcame their original nature (and Nature itself) to become masters of 

progress, war, and invention.
65

 One can imagine a German reader turning to the mirror 

after such a passage. Not only an echo of Hippocrates‘ virtuous overcoming, and of the 

Christian faith said to transform natural vice, physiognomy here serves the role of self-

classification, national identity, and the formation of a group character. The early modern 

period was marked by a self-consciousness regarding identity, an awareness of its 

potential for manipulation. I will return to this theme in greater depth in the fourth 

chapter of this project, as I approach Holbein‘s portraits and the shaping of personal or 

public identities.  

 The cultural climate of the sixteenth-century North was one in which 

physiognomic theory, in one of its many guises, might as easily have been discussed on a 

                                                           
64

 Groebner, 372. 
65

 Ibid, 380-381. 



30 

 

 

 

street-corner as recounted from a pulpit, dissected in a Latin text, recorded in a travel 

document, illustrated in a vernacular pamphlet, or ―read‖ from an image. From simple 

proverbs to the most complex theological analogies, physiognomy served and shaped a 

rapidly expanding world in its search for revealing truths. Holbein‘s role as a maker of 

images situates him at the nexus of these concerns. Having established physiognomy‘s 

place in a broader culture, I will now narrow my focus. The two following chapters will 

address Holbein‘s prints and portraits, respectively, exploring their disparate strategies 

and claims to authenticity without losing sight of their interconnected creation. In the 

next chapter, as I move to discuss Holbein‘s Pictures of Death, I will explore more fully 

the authority of prints and their role in establishing canons of knowledge, including those 

relating to the classification of character types and social classes.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



31 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3: 

READING FACES IN THE PICTURES OF DEATH 

 In this chapter, I will expand upon Holbein‘s connections to physiognomic theory 

as I examine his most famous woodcuts, the Pictures of Death (begun 1526). Cycles of 

this type depicted various individuals‘ encounters with a personification of Death, often 

accompanied by verses on mortality. Holbein‘s images are particularly lively and visually 

complex. As Peter Parshall has noted, it is precisely that complexity and their ability to 

stand alone as visual narratives which makes them images of their time, ambiguous and 

layered, concerned with individual self-reflection and the capacity for multiple 

readings.
66

 I argue that the format of these images, and Holbein‘s concern for detailed 

visual description, provides a wealth of physiognomic traits and distinct physical types 

which can potentially be ―read‖ as indicators not simply of class or rank, but also of 

character, and therefore of inner nature. Drawing on textual and visual sources, I will 

examine contemporaneous stereotypes and popular attitudes relating to the professions 

and characters displayed within this series, linking and contrasting these portrayals with 

sixteenth-century understandings of physiognomic theory. Additionally, I will explore the 

developing role of prints in the creation, dissemination, and authentication of systems of 

knowledge such as physiognomy. 

 The late medieval concept of the ―Dance of Death‖ originates in several 

traditions.
67

 One was surely the liturgical dramas of the danse macabre, a vivid 

enactment of the inevitability of death and the need for repentance, intended to 

accompany and highlight spoken sermons. A second potential contributor is the ars 

                                                           
66

 Peter Parshall, ―Hans Holbein‘s Pictures of Death,‖ in Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints and Reception.  
67

 Natalie Zemon Davis, ―Holbein's Pictures of Death and the Reformation at Lyons,‖ Studies in the 

Renaissance 3 (1956): 97-98.  



32 

 

 

 

moriendi, illustrated manuals that outlined the temptations and pitfalls experienced by the 

Christian soul in the process of dying. The Dance of Death emerged as a new model for 

exploring mortality, a favorite subject of the late Middle Ages. Its earliest recorded visual 

interpretation took the form of a monumental mural decorating the arcades facing the 

Parisian cemetery of the Holy Innocents. Painted in 1424, the mural and its 

accompanying verses comprised a kind of processional ―dance‖ in which Death arrived 

for each dancer in turn, heedless of their social prominence or worldly associations. 

Kings and popes participated at the head of the dance, followed by lesser nobility and the 

ranks of the church, who were in turn followed by members of the merchant and trade 

classes, and finally by laborers and those of lesser status. Laity and clergy appeared 

intermingled, while no women appeared at all. In 1485, the printer Guyot Marchand 

produced a volume of woodcut illustrations after the mural. A second edition, which 

added female characters, was published both on its own and in combined editions, and a 

Latin re-print of the French followed in 1490. Mathieu Huss‘s Grande Danse Macabre 

was published in Lyons in 1499, and the popular fascination with the Dance of Death 

continued throughout the sixteenth century.
68

 

 Holbein‘s Dance of Death, printed in 1538 as Les Simulachres & 

Historiées Faces de la Mort, represented both a continuation of this established theme 

and a new vision for the subject. The project was commissioned by Melchior and 

Gaspard Trechsel, sons of a German printer operating in Lyons, for the publishers and 

booksellers Jean and François Frellon. The actual block-cutting was done in Basel by 

Hans Lützelburger, one of the most skilled block cutters of the time and one of the few 

                                                           
68

 Ibid, 97-98. See also William M. Ivins, Jr., ―Introduction,‖ in The Dance of Death: Printed at Paris in 

1490, (Washington: Library of Congress, 1945), viii-x.  



33 

 

 

 

capable of carving tremendous detail on such a minute scale. Single-sheet prints of the 

images alone, in incomplete sets of forty, were released before 1538, probably before the 

blocks left Basel. The first ―complete‖ printing included forty-one images completed by 

Lützelburger before his death in 1526, while a later edition of 1547 incorporated twelve 

additional woodcuts by a different hand. The images were accompanied by conventional 

verses and biblical quotations similar to those present in earlier versions of the Dance of 

Death. Curiously, Holbein‘s name was absent from the work, which credited only the 

block cutter and publishers.
69

 It has been suggested that this may be due in part to 

satirical elements within the work, combined with the predominantly Catholic sentiment 

in Lyons at the time and Holbein‘s recent appointment to a court position with an English 

Protestant monarch.
70

  

 A satirical and even highly critical undercurrent appears to varying degrees in 

most versions of the Dance of Death, despite the hierarchical structure of the dance itself. 

Verses alongside the mural at the Klingenthal convent in Basel, painted around 1440 (and 

later duplicated or imitated in 1480 at the Dominican‘s churchyard in the same city), 

include a negative remark on the practice of indulgences accompanying an image of the 

pope.
71

 Similarities in sequencing, composition and subject matter indicate this earlier 

work contributed to Holbein‘s own designs, though it is likely that he also looked to 

numerous printed sources.
72

 The Pictures of Death were repeatedly utilized by Catholic 

and Protestant alike. The1538 edition was prefaced by an essay from Jean de Vauzelles, a 

prominent Catholic cleric, while a 1542 Latin version, translated by George Oemler (a 

                                                           
69

 Stephanie Buck, ―The Images of Death and the Triumph of Life,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The 

Basel Years, 1515-1532, 117-118. 
70

 Parshall, ―Hans Holbein‘s Pictures of Death,‖ 87. 
71

 Davis, 99-100. 107-109, 118-120. 



34 

 

 

 

friend of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon), replaced this introduction with a 

translator‘s note and the inclusion of an anonymous quasi-Lutheran treatise entitled 

―Medicine of the Soul.‖ The fact that church censure fell solely on the 1542 text suggests 

that such a response had more to do with the inclusion of the latter treatise, liberally 

borrowed from the writings of Lutheran pastor Urbanus Rhegius, than with any perceived 

irreverence in Holbein‘s images.
73

  

 Comparisons between Holbein‘s Dance of Death and their predecessors reveal a 

shift from a medieval conception to a model more firmly rooted in early modern 

discourses. The impersonality of Death, and its ultimate inevitability, defined the tone of 

early versions. Figures from the 1490 Latin edition of the Dance of Death are already 

divorced from the earthly realm by the vagueness of their setting, a flat decorative garden 

framed with architectural portals. The pairs of the Archbishop and Knight, and Abbot and 

Magistrate, while rich in linear detail, offer no clues to their earthly behavior, good or 

bad, nor to their spiritual destination. [Figures 3.1 - 3.2] Though their accompanying 

verses offer some criticisms or warnings (the Abbot, in particular, is described as rotund 

and informed that the largest are the ―first to rot‖), the images are largely restrained and 

dignified, emulating participants in a courtly medieval procession. The abbot is not 

depicted visually as he is mockingly described in the text.
74

 The four characters represent 

a limited range of facial and physical descriptors: all are roughly the same height and 

build, their ages indicated by the addition of lines and wrinkles around the mouth and 

chin, and only slight variations in the shapes of mouth and nose. Their function as 

symbolic players or stock characters in a universal dance is fulfilled by their essentially 

                                                                                                                                                                             
72

 Buck, 119-120. 
73

 Davis, 107-109, 111-113, 121-130. 



35 

 

 

 

neutral or generalized physical representation.  

 In contrast, Holbein‘s Abbot and Judge [Figures 1.2 & 3.3] provide distinct facial 

details—facial details that indeed resonate with physiognomic discourses of the day. His 

Abbot is a corpulent figure who matches the conventional description, but Holbein has 

expanded on the older texts by portraying him also with a downward-sloping nose nearly 

overlapping his upper lip, furrowed brows, a drooping mouth, and large jowls that 

partially obscure a thick neck. The Judge, slightly smaller in build, displays a broad 

―Roman‖ or ―Aquiline‖ nose, a thick upper lip, double-chin, and fine, straight hair. 

Unlike their counterparts, Holbein‘s figures are placed in recognizable contemporaneous 

settings that reflect their social roles: his King banquets, while his Judge sits in decision 

with two petitioners before him. Likewise, his Lawyer, Physician, Merchant, Sailor, 

Preacher, Farmer and others are depicted in the midst of their familiar professional 

activities. Holbein‘s images do not refrain from commenting on corrupt practices, nor do 

they leave narrative detail or commentary to the text below: his Judge and Town 

Councilor both turn away from a poor man to attend a rich one, and his Monk resists 

Death to clutch feverishly at a full donation box.
75

 Their virtuosic detail and intimate 

scale demand close looking and study, while the introduction of narratives and character 

to the images themselves invites reflection and analysis. Holbein‘s vision of Death is 

directed towards the beholder, relying on their interpretation to unlock and unpack the 

many potential meanings.
76

  This personalization of Death directs, and even requires, a 

                                                                                                                                                                             
74

 Ibid, 99. 
75

 Davis, 101-104. 
76

 Christiane Hertel, ―Dis/Continuities in Dresden‘s Dances of Death,‖ The Art Bulletin 82, No. 1 (2000): 

87-88. 



36 

 

 

 

more personal response.
77

  

 Who was Holbein‘s audience? Certainly both Catholics and Protestants, and an 

international clientele: the book was published in Latin and French, and the Frellon 

brothers secured their German distribution ―under the Arms of Cologne‖ from the first. 

Parshall has correctly suggested that the sophistication of the images directs us to a 

similarly sophisticated and elite audience, one equipped to decipher and appreciate their 

complexity.
78

 This would seem to coincide with the receptive audience for physiognomic 

theory, at least the learned variety that predominated in scholarship. In being pocket-size, 

however, Holbein‘s Pictures of Death, also shares aspects of small scale with the more 

popular vernacular physiognomic manuals by authors like Bartholomaeus Cocles, 

illustrated with inexpensive woodcuts and sold on the market to broader appeal.
79

 

Holbein‘s woodcuts are of a more refined quality than those, but his Pictures of Death 

held wide appeal. Parshall notes the enduring popularity of this work among humanists, 

scholars and educators of northern universities as an alba amicorum.
80

  In these heavily 

personalized ‗albums of friendship,‘ images (usually cycles like Holbein‘s, or emblem 

books) were rebound with blank pages and inserts from other volumes, and offered to 

visitors and friends to record thoughts, notes and personal inscriptions.  

  That Holbein‘s visual strategy would encourage individual reading and 

interpretation seems fitting for the social circumstances in which these images were 

created for an increasingly anonymous public. The images themselves do not directly 

support one reading or doctrine over another, but rather present a narrative ambiguity or 

                                                           
77

 Ivins, The Dance of Death, x. 
78

 Parshall, ―Hans Holbein‘s Pictures of Death,‖ 85.  
79

 Porter, 108. 
80

 Parshall, ―Hans Holbein‘s Pictures of Death,‖ 87. 



37 

 

 

 

obliqueness that supports multiple (and simultaneous) interpretations. On one hand, this 

can be seen as a ―survival strategy‖ by which to navigate the increasingly polemical 

climate of the Reformation, in which images were increasingly subject to scrutiny. But it 

is also an appeal to the beholder to search for hidden meaning, a period-appropriate call 

to personal moral reflection, and an opportunity to wrestle with dense, and vitally 

important, philosophical questions on mortality and the state of the soul.
81

 Recalling the 

words of the preacher Johannes Geiler von Kaiserberg, it was thought that by this 

introspective and rigorous process, one might come to self-knowledge and self-

betterment. Holbein‘s pairing of heightened descriptive detail in the physical 

representation of his subjects with these questions of internal character now becomes the 

pathway by which I will explore the potential for a physiognomic reading of the Pictures 

of Death. As the constraints of time and scope will prevent me from remarking on each 

image at length, my primary subjects have been selected from a range of secular and 

religious ranks: the Abbot, the Judge, the Monk, the Fool, and the King. 

 

Physiognomic Indicators and Holbein’s Pictures of Death 

 As my first subject, I will address Holbein‘s image of the Abbot, centered 

between two translations, Latin and French, of a Biblical passage from Proverbs: ―He 

will die, for lack of discipline (instruction), and in the multitudes of his folly he shall be 

deceived.‖ His features are slightly distorted by the agitated resistance he provides, 

struggling to free himself from Death‘s grip in a manner not altogether befitting a cleric 

certain of his virtue.
82

 The text no longer makes reference to his physical form or weight, 

                                                           
81

 Ibid, 87-88. 
82

 Davis, 103. 



38 

 

 

 

but Holbein has chosen to represent the Abbot as a man of some great size, with a large 

and rounded face [Figure 1.2]. The treatise according to Aristotle identified several of 

these features as traits of an ―insensible man,‖ listing ―the jaws big and fleshy… neck 

thickset; the face fleshy and rather long,‖ while a dissembler is ―fat about the face, with 

wrinkles around the eyes.‖
83

  Polemon also had much to say about such features, claiming 

that thickness in the neck ―indicate[s] evil and bad anger, and remoteness from learning.‖ 

Equally damning, ―much flesh on the cheeks… indicates drunkenness and laziness,‖ 

while a ―very large head indicates lack of knowledge and understanding.‖
84

 A 1528 

English translation of the Secretum Secretorum tersely characterized this physique as: 

―Shorte, thycke, fete and flesshy, betokeneth to be folysshe, and full of injury.‖
85

 Yet 

these ―negative‖ traits are not so straightforward. For the Pseudo-Aristotle, a man who is 

―robust-looking, well covered with plenty of moist flesh‖ may also be found to be 

―mild.‖
86

 Polemon regards a drooping mouth as a potential sign of both weakness and the 

more desired humility.
87

 And despite the negative association with a thickset neck, the 

Secretum Secretorum advises against the reverse, as well: ―He that hath a sklender necke, 

is hote, deceytfull, and folysshe.‖
88

  

 Satirical images of clerics in this period regularly tread on vicious and unflattering 

ground. Accusations of gluttony, intemperance and drunkenness were particularly 

popular approaches by which to discredit church figures. An anonymous depiction of an 

abbot from 1480, so inebriated that he reclines in a monumental jawbone drawn like a 

sled, was given a second treatment in 1530 by Hans Weiditz, well into the Reformation 

                                                           
83

 Swain, 645-647. 
84

 Robert Hoyland, trans., ―The Leiden Polemon,‖ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, 411, 419, 421. 
85

 Robert Copland, trans., The Secrete of Secretes (London: Robert Copland, 1528.) 
86

 Swain, 647. 



39 

 

 

 

conflict. [Figures 3.4 - 3.5] Weiditz‘s image increases the weight and fleshiness of the 

figure, emphasizing the overfull drinking vessels and the effort of the sled-pullers, 

conflating the immoral nature of drunkenness and sloth with the physical traits of size 

and girth. Another related theme was that of the clergy as ―devourers,‖ as in the cover 

illustration for Pamphilus Gengenbach‘s Die Todtenfresser (―Devourers of the Dead.‖) 

Arguments against the church‘s profiting from services to the dying are here gruesomely 

interpreted as a pope, bishop, nun and monk partaking in a literal feast upon a corpse 

[Figure 3.6]. The image recalls similarly didactic secular illustrations against the vices of 

gluttony and overindulgence in drink.
89

 Holbein‘s image participates in this tradition, yet 

unlike these overtly polemical examples, the Abbot holds no cup, utensil, or any other 

symbolic indication of indulgence or immoderation. The text‘s suggestion that the Abbot 

lacks ―discipline‖ encourages a negative appraisal, one that would have been specifically 

familiar to contemporaneous audiences on both sides of the Reformation split. Yet a final 

reading of character relies on physical description, one that is to some degree mutable 

and subject to interpretation.  

 Holbein‘s Judge is preceded by a quotation from the second chapter of the book 

of Amos: ―And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof‖ [Figure 3.4]. He is seated 

between two standing men, the left in simple clothes with parted hair of medium length, 

the right in more elaborate dress with a thin, short face and a full purse open in his hand. 

The Judge directs all his attention to the latter figure, with a palm extended and an 

expectant gaze. This has been interpreted as a sign that he has chosen to rule in favor of a 

                                                                                                                                                                             
87

 Hoyland, 415. 
88

 Copland, Secrete of Secretes. 
89

 Christiane Andersson, ―Popular Imagery in German Reformation Broadsheets,‖ in Print and Culture in 

the Renaissance, ed. Gerald Tyson and Sylvia Wagonheim  (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 



40 

 

 

 

rich man over a poor one.
90

 The Judge‘s features are sharply defined, particularly his 

prominent nose. According to the Pseudo-Aristotle, when such a nose is ―strongly 

aquiline and demarcated from the forehead by a well-defined articulation, it indicates a 

proud soul, as in the eagle.‖
91

 Pride is mentioned again in relation to the ―slightly deep-

set‖ eyes, invoking the proud soul of the lion.
92

 But an aphorism provided by the 1474 

Liber de homine of Girolamo Manfredi adds: ―A hawked nose that boweth to the upper 

lips signifieth malice, deceit, untruth and lechery.‖
93

 This enlarged upper lip is also 

subject to strong interpretation, and represents one ―fond of abuse‖ and charged with 

―folly,‖ a trait associated with dogs, apes and mules.
94

  

 Folly was a favorite topic of the early modern satirist, and it found no greater 

outlet than Sebastian Brandt‘s 1494 Ship of Fools. In its text and illustrations, it 

catalogued over 100 types of fools, among them those obsessed with money, love, food 

and drink, and other vices. In its pages is also a personification of Justice, shown as a 

blindfolded woman with symbolic scales and swords of judgment. Yet in this case, the 

ends of the blindfold are held by a Fool. [Figure 3.7] This pointed irreverence towards the 

figure of Justice was part of an ongoing dialogue on power, authority and corruption. 

Humanists and other writers of this period condemned dishonest judges in the harshest 

possible terms. Erasmus, in his Education of a Christian Prince (1516), referenced Plato 

as he charged that those who enforce the law must be ―the least corruptible of men.‖ 

Further on, he laments their interest in payment, specifically relating the demise of the 

noble profession with the acquisition of money: ―This profession was once the preserve 

                                                                                                                                                                             

143-146. 
90

 Davis, 101. 
91

 Swain, 655. 
92

 Ibid, 657. 



41 

 

 

 

of the best men in society, bringing little profit but much honor; but nowadays the profit 

motive has corrupted it.‖
95

 Holbein‘s Judge is presented in the act of receiving funds 

from a petitioner, an image that holds damaging connotations for a viewer already 

inclined to skepticism towards the profession. This evaluation can be upheld in a reading 

of his features. A viewer with strong personal associations to the practice of law or the 

enforcement of authority might be encouraged to mindfulness towards improving their 

own habits. 

 The figure of the Monk [Figure 3.8] receives a similar treatment by Holbein to 

both the Abbot and the Judge: the Monk‘s panicked response to Death and attachment to 

a donation box echo their respective follies. Holbein provides the Monk with a medium 

build and stature, a face of middling slenderness, a nose that broadens at the base, and 

long ears. The treatise of the Pseudo-Aristotle remarks favorably on the moderate size of 

the face, indicating that such a width is best, but states that a ―nose thick at the tip means 

laziness, as witness cattle.‖ Likewise, ―Men with… large ears [have] the disposition of 

asses.‖
96

 Curiously, both the cow and the ass were mobilized by Reformers as symbolic 

elements of anti-clerical propaganda. The so-called ―Monk Calf,‖ a monstrous birth 

discovered in Saxony in 1522, was repeatedly depicted in broadsheets as a deformed calf 

with a bald spot and a thick flap of skin overhanging its back. The calf derived its popular 

nickname from these features, which purportedly resembled a tonsure and cowl. The 

workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger produced a striking image of the animal in 

1523, the same year in which it reappeared in numerous polemical anti-clerical pamphlets 

                                                                                                                                                                             
93

 Porter, 214-215. 
94

 Swain, 647.  
95

 Rummel, 270. 
96

 Swain, 655-657.  



42 

 

 

 

by Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. The work also featured the ―Papal Ass,‖ a 

famously grotesque creature with the head of a donkey rumored to have been found on 

the banks of the Tiber in 1496
97

 [Figures 3.9 – 3.10]. Holbein‘s image of the Monk does 

not overtly indicate either of these creatures, nor their able-bodied beastly counterparts, 

with the exception of a potential physiognomic interpretation. The image is clear and its 

narrative distinct: one does not need to read the Monk‘s features to comprehend his 

attitude, nor to sympathize with or condemn him, but an understanding of physiognomic 

theory enriches the image and links it to previous works. This would have required an 

audience familiar with both Reformation visual conventions and a scholarly knowledge 

of physiognomy, which I have previously demonstrated was very likely the case. Part of 

the rewards of Holbein‘s cycle is the learned viewers‘ pleasure of recognizing or 

attributing a physiognomic meaning to the images and perhaps also of confirming 

previously-held beliefs or biases.  

 The image of the Fool was among those twelve images added to the cycle in the 

printing of 1547, one which has been commonly viewed as consistent with the style and 

conception of the original images and therefore confidently attributed to Holbein
98

 

[Figure 3.11]. It is also a figure who appears most welcoming to a physiognomic reading. 

Though the Fool carries an air-filled bladder, a comic prop often attached to the Fool‘s 

bauble or staff, and the dangling ears of his pointed hood are visible above his shoulder, 

the hood has been pulled away, granting the beholder total access to his facial and cranial 

forms. The Fool‘s pointing gesture also serves to advance the viewer‘s eye directly to the 

face. The Fool‘s small, egg-like skull, arching eyebrows, wide-open mouth, long ears and 

                                                           
97

 Andersson, 122-132. 
98

 Buck, 118. 



43 

 

 

 

curling nose contribute to a distorted visage. Rolandus Scriptoris, in his Reductorium 

physonomie of the fifteenth century, remarks on the intellectual poverty and lack of sense 

among those with small, spherical heads, through which images do not have enough time 

to travel to form memories or perceptions.
99

 Pseudo-Aristotle also claims that a peaked 

head indicates shamelessness and directs attention to the outward arch of the brow: 

―Eyebrows that droop on the nasal and rise on the temporal side, silliness, as seen in 

swine.‖
100

 The Fool‘s wide stance, with knees and feet pointed in opposite directions, 

accentuates the lifted garments that lay bare his genitals. This stance is also considered to 

be characteristically feminine, while his sideways gait and turned-away body is identified 

as an obsequious or servile ―gesture of the flatterer.‖
101

  

 The Fool‘s large and exaggerated nose, as well as the open step and unflatteringly 

bared genitals, participate in a long tradition of ―folk‖ physiognomy and humor which 

held that the size and deformity of the nose was directly proportional to overt sexual 

impropriety and lewdness. The large nose‘s association with the male member was also a 

recurring feature. Though one of the most famous representations of oversized noses and 

foolish behavior—Hans Sebald Beham‘s ―Nose Dance‖ woodcut, accompanied by verses 

by Hans Sachs—would not be published until 1534, the concept was deeply entrenched 

in popular culture by the beginning of the sixteenth century. The German satirist Thomas 

Murner included a woodcut of a large-nosed woman in his Logica memoratiua (1509), 

claiming that all flaws and faults in her immoderate personality were rooted in, and 

symbolized by, her sizeable olfactory organ. A woodcut series by Hans Weiditz 

                                                           
99

 Joseph Ziegler, ―Heredity and Physiognomy,‖ in L’hérédité à la fin du Moyen Age. Colloque, Calenda, 

(31 March 2003, http://calenda.revues.org/nouvelle2900.html), 13-14. 
100

 Swain, 659. 
101

 Ibid, 657- 659. 



44 

 

 

 

published in 1521 provided satirical images of various professions and also took pleasure 

in deriding the nose. The humor in his image of the Physician and Assistant relies on a 

depiction of the two individuals with gargantuan noses and misshapen bodies, while the 

―assistant‖ wears a cap resembling a fool‘s hood
102

 [Figure 3.12]. Foolishness was clearly 

among those natural or characteristic traits that could be distinguished by conventional 

physical signs. A physiognomic reading of Holbein‘s Fool would come to a similar 

conclusion, whether one relied on scholarly or folk physiognomy for source material. 

 While I have focused predominately on negative traits, there are a number of 

images that could provide a neutral or even positive physiognomic reading by certain 

signs. One of these is the image of the King, under whose image the French verse begins, 

―Thus today he is King, tomorrow he will be in a closed tomb‖ [Figure 3.13]. It is 

believed that this particular figure is drawn to evoke Francis I, King of France when 

Holbein‘s cycle was designed and published. That he is shown seated at a feast table as 

he is approached by the skeleton of Death has been taken by some as a negative 

indication of privilege or indulgence.
103

 A well-known 1525 portrait of Francis I, painted 

by Jean Clouet, shows some similarities in style of dress and in the long, slender nose and 

small mouth of the king. [Figure 3.14] However, Holbein‘s King possesses a 

conspicuously forked beard in contrast to the rounded beard of Clouet‘s portrait. The 

parted beard, as mentioned in the second chapter, was a distinct feature of the Lentulus 

Letter and a convention for the depiction of Christ, the most perfect of all physiognomic 

models.
104

 Here, the viewer is not limited to class indicators or setting in a reading of 

                                                           
102

 Alison Stewart, Before Bruegel: Sebald Beham and the Origins of Peasant Festival Imagery 

(Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008), 170-171. 
103

 Davis, 101. 
104

 Koerner, 103. 



45 

 

 

 

character: virtue or nobility may be known through physical traits either outside of, or in 

combination with, symbols of status.  

 As objectionable as it may seem to a certain twenty-first-century sensibility, close 

associations between physical beauty and virtue existed for the early modern viewer. 

Deformity and irregularity of form conversely held strong connotations of vice and 

deformity of the soul.
105

 Yet physiognomy was a complex system of signs allowing for a 

degree of room for interpretation and examination: as with the case of Hippocrates, it was 

possible to be ugly and virtuous, and the reverse was also dangerously true. One‘s 

reading might also in part be influenced by one‘s own individual status, group identity, or 

political and religious affiliations. This limited selection of images within the Pictures of 

Death has provided a wealth of physiognomic indicators that correspond to, or participate 

in, contemporaneous stereotypes, iconographies and discourses. The physiognomic 

ambiguity present in many of Holbein‘s images may appear problematic, but I believe 

this to be a potential asset: the Pictures of Death do not function as illustrations of a 

physiognomic treatise, and therefore they have no need to assert their authority as literal 

illustrations. Their flexibility and multiplicity allows them ―openness‖ in their ability to 

interact with a canon of physiognomic knowledge in the eyes of a range of beholders. 

 

Prints and Systems of Knowledge 

 Holbein‘s dense and complex prints are the work of an artist attuned to theories of 

representation and appearance, yet the importance of printed images to the physiognomic 

culture of the sixteenth century has received limited attention. As we have seen, 

physiognomy was ubiquitous in this period, emerging from spheres as various as 



46 

 

 

 

theology, art theory, social exchange, and the natural sciences. It should come as no 

surprise that the work of artists and printmakers such as Holbein, Cranach, and Weiditz 

contain features that might have been read as ―physiognomic,‖ or that point to the 

revealing union of soul and body: the medium of print was one particularly suited to a 

dialogue with physiognomic theory. The role of prints in disseminating canons of 

knowledge and their unique claims to the representation of visual truth interact with 

physiognomic theory at multiple points.  

 First, prints were considered a highly suitable format for the dissemination and 

analysis of scientific and empirical knowledge.
106

 The sixteenth-century preoccupation 

with the encyclopedic compilation of information was well-served by prints. 

Physiognomy was among those disciplines whose dissemination and systematization was 

assisted by the development of prints and printed books. A 1536 edition of the 

Physionomiae et Chiromantiae Compendium of Bartolomeus Cocles contained numerous 

woodcut illustrations of stock physiognomic types, cataloguing their facial features and 

appearances in legible, linear images for study. [Figures 3.15 – 3.16] While anatomy, 

botany, astrology and the host of the natural sciences were all subject to enthusiastic 

interest in the cataloging of knowledge, this desire to codify or collect also extended to 

more fanciful or literary subjects. The Ship of Fools and its contemporaneous equivalents 

(including Hans Sachs‘ later Book of Trades from1568) provided ―taxonomies‖ of fools 

and popular roles, humorously cataloguing their features and foibles for the better 

identification (or the scathing condemnation) of their real-life counterparts.
107

 The 

                                                                                                                                                                             
105

 Porter, 184-186. 
106

 See for example, William Ivins‘ argument for prints as ―exactly repeatable pictorial statements‖ in 

Prints and Visual Communication, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1969), 2. 
107

 Glenn Ehrstine, ―Foolectomies, Fool Enemas, and the Renaissance Anatomy of Folly,‖ in Fecal Matters 



47 

 

 

 

similarities in format between printed ‗catalog‘ texts of this type, and Holbein‘s Pictures 

of Death, may indicate that viewers could potentially have seen them as participating in a 

parallel tradition.  

 Holbein‘s Pictures of Death do not act purely as illustrations of physiognomic 

theory. However, a physiognomic reading of many of the images within his cycle may be 

seen to interact with established thought or long-held beliefs, contributing to and 

reinforcing an existing canon of physiognomic knowledge. Their authority stems in part 

from their high level of detail and finish, but also from their role as prints. As a medium 

of multiples, the printed image contains several unique claims to authenticity, ones not 

shared by paintings or drawings in their singular forms. By their repetition and 

duplication, prints were self-reinforcing. The widespread presence of a printed image 

contributes to a belief in its trustworthiness—or creates the conditions for its own truth-

value—and allows the information contained within to be independently evaluated by a 

multitude of parties.
108

 The production of large quantities of prints under the auspices or 

imprimaturs of professional publishing houses further contributed to their legitimacy. 

Many publishers were granted their privileges by governing bodies or rulers, and had an 

interest in maintaining a good reputation among their audiences and patrons.
109

  

 Prints also were understood to have value associated with the practice of eye-

witness accounts. Their ability to be created with relative speed, great graphic legibility, 

and often in conjunction with movable type made woodcuts, in particular, eminently 

suitable for the reporting of current events, the spreading of urgent ―new‖ knowledge and 

                                                                                                                                                                             

in Early Modern Literature and Art, Jeff Persels and Russell Ganim, ed., (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 96. 
108

 David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550 (New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 1994), 239. 
109

 Charles Talbot, ―Prints and the Definitive Image,‖ in Print and Culture in the Renaissance, 199.  



48 

 

 

 

scientific discovery, or promptly responding to cultural shifts that called for new modes 

of visual expression. This responsiveness and ―first-hand‖ perspective correspond with 

the emergence of a new language with which to describe these pictorial strategies. The 

term contrafactur, ‗counterfeit,‘ was brought into additional use in Germany during the 

late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.
110

 It described an image purported to carry 

authority on the basis of its direct reference to an original or prototype. Contrafactur was 

used by printmakers to confer a special level of veracity or legitimacy. In the case of 

broadsheets chronicling portents, natural events or monstrous births, the descriptive 

language often insisted that the subject had been drawn from life, or copied from the 

work of an artist acting as first-hand witness. As in the case of the Lentulus Letter, the 

legitimization effect was bi-directional: facts, measurements, dates, times and places 

included on a print cemented that print‘s authenticity, while prints served to confirm 

accounts by their ubiquity and graphic representation.
111

 The suitability of prints for 

recording and creating knowledge can be observed in their popularity as materials for 

collecting. While some collectors focused on individual artists or schools, many others 

compiled prints thematically or encyclopedically, building visual canons of knowledge 

by subject.
112

  

 But perhaps most relevant for physiognomy is the relationship between printed 

proof and matrix, or impression and ―original.‖ As in the legend of the Veronica Veil, the 

creation of an image by printed impression means that the impressed image holds the 

form and an indexical trace of the original; by its nature, the direct contact between 

                                                           
110

 Peter Parshall, "Imago contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance," Art History 16 

(1993): 554-579 
111

 Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 237-239. See also Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, 

Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 182-187.  



49 

 

 

 

source and duplicate confers a degree of legitimacy on the copy. As Charles Talbot 

writes, ―Giving proof of authenticity by means of an impression was familiar to everyone 

in the Middle Ages who had seen an official document affixed with a seal.‖
113

 Beyond 

the purely physical traces of impression, the print also retained symbolic or invisible 

traces of its matrix, the power of its presence or authority in borrowed form, as the Veil 

retained its power as a sacred contact relic. Printmakers were highly cognizant of this 

connection, as evidenced by the frequency and inventiveness of their vera icon images. 

Albrecht Dürer‘s 1516 etching, Angel with the Sudarium, provides an especially 

thoughtful play on this theme: the angel lifts the veil above his head, resembling a 

printmaker with a fresh proof pulled from the press [Figure 3.17].
114

 The evocation of the 

Veronica Veil also speaks to a second meaning for the impressed image, particularly 

those reproduced by the means of the printing press. The technological aspect of 

mechanically reproduced images suggests (however falsely) a work created without 

human hands, an acheiropoietoi, which makes claims to embody its own unmediated 

truth. The print can act to conceal the hand of its maker in the manner of its creation, and 

as such the miraculous pressing of the Veronica Veil was seen as a precursor, 

establishing and authenticating the printed image.
115

 

Theories of impression, so vital in the dialogues of early modern print culture, are 

ultimately central to the discipline of physiognomy. The core concept holds that the body 

is an impression of the soul, a physical expression of an intangible truth, the signs of 

                                                                                                                                                                             
112

 Peter Parshall, ―Prints as Objects of Consumption in Early Modern Europe,‖ Journal of Medieval and 

Early Modern Studies 28, No. 1 (1998): 27-31.  
113

 Talbot, 199. 
114

 Koerner, 86-103. 
115

 Ibid, 84-85, 94-95. 



50 

 

 

 

inner nature ―ineliminably (sic) inscribed in one‘s body.‖
116

 This Aristotelian belief was 

widespread in the sixteenth century and informed systems of knowledge as diverse as 

theories of vision (impressions, or species, formed on the mind by the observation of 

natural phenomena) to theories of human gestation (impressions formed on the child by 

the mother). Printing processes, or other reproductive means for forming impressions, 

such as minting or stamping, also were frequently referenced by contemporaneous writers 

as tangible examples of this process.
117

 The natural science of physiognomy allows the 

practitioner to read the subject‘s features with the same informative clarity that a viewer 

might behold a legibly printed image. Here the soul is matrix, and the body its proof.  

 In the next chapter, I will turn from prints to portraits, exploring the 

contemporaneous emphasis placed on observation of nature and the painting of portraits 

―from life.‖ Examining Holbein‘s career as a portraitist through several notable 

examples, I will explore the ramifications of physiognomic theory for a portrait painter, 

whose role in this period was understood not only to be the creator of an ―accurate‖ 

likeness, but also the fashioner of a desired visual identity for the sitter. Holbein‘s 

portraits, in their virtuosic detail and meticulous rendering of flesh and complexion, 

attention to physical traits, and suppression of the brushstroke, make certain claims to 

naturalism and authenticity. I will attempt to construct the reception and understanding of 

Holbein‘s ‗rhetoric of realism‘ in the physiognomic culture of the sixteenth century. 

 

 

 

                                                           
116

 Boys-Stones, 31. 
117

 Katharine Park, ―Impressed Images: Reproducing Wonders,‖ in Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. 



51 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4: 

APPEARANCE AND IDENTITY IN HOLBEIN’S PORTRAITS 

 In the first chapter of this project, I noted the long association between portraiture 

and physiognomy, from the portrait of Hippocrates and the myth of Apelles‘ perfect 

likenesses, to the instructions of Pliny and Philostratus the Younger to aspiring painters. 

In every case a strong correlation exists between so-called ‗naturalism‘ in visual 

representation and the ability of portraits to be read as substitutes for the sitters. 

Holbein‘s enduring fame as an exceptional portraitist provides an opportunity to engage 

with the physiognomic implications of creating a life-like representation of the 

individual. Beyond the established role of portraits as ―substitutions‖ for absent 

individuals, commissioned portraits were a powerful tool for self-fashioning and could 

serve as an expression of power, status, and personal virtue or character. In a culture 

where costumes and other props were outward marks of one‘s constructed self and social 

status, what role might detailed physical description of the face and hands be understood 

to play in relation to inner character, and how might Holbein‘s ‗naturalism‘ have been 

understood in physiognomic terms by contemporary viewers? Holbein‘s portraits of 

Erasmus will be of particular importance here as a sitter with demonstrated faith in 

physiognomic theory, as expressed in such texts as the satirical In Praise of Folly and the 

didactic Education of Children. I shall compare Holbein‘s painted and printed portraits of 

Erasmus with other known portraits of him ―from life‖ in order to discuss the 

expectations and claims of contemporaneous portraiture to portray the truth of outer 

appearances and inner substance.  

 

                                                                                                                                                                             

Caroline Jones and Peter Galison, (New York: Routledge, 1998), 254-268. 



52 

 

 

 

Holbein’s Portraits and the ‘Rhetoric of Realism’ 

 While a detailed profiling of Holbein‘s long career in portraiture is not possible 

here, a brief outline of several major commissions and the reception of his works will 

provide a helpful grounding for a discussion of his heightened use of ‗naturalism.‘ 

Among his earliest commissions was a 1516 double portrait of Jacob Meyer, newly 

elected Burgomeister of Basel, and his wife Dorothea. [Figure 4.1] A preparatory 

drawing of Jacob Meyer in silverpoint, with the addition of red chalk to capture effects of 

shading and complexion, shows Holbein‘s concern for capturing facial features in 

exacting detail, giving only cursory outlines to the shape of his hat and clothing. [Figure 

4.3] This is a practical approach used by artists during this period, allowing for costuming 

and background to be finalized in the studio. However, Holbein‘s focus on the 

physiognomy of his sitters reminds us that the central component of portraiture is 

likeness, the depiction of facial details that mark the individual. By all accounts, Meyer 

was delighted with the portraits and Holbein received a number of successive 

commissions from Meyer and the City Council.
118

 Also in Basel, Holbein completed a 

1519 portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach, son of a prominent university master and 

publisher, and himself a humanist scholar. [Figure 4.4] The portrait‘s inscription, 

composed by Amerbach, praises and affirms Holbein‘s realistic mode: ―Although only a 

painted likeness, I am not inferior to the living face; I am instead the counterpart of my 

master, and distinguished by accurate lines.‖
119

 Amerbach‘s inscription allows the image 

to ‗speak,‘ alluding to the ancient topos of lifelikeness in portraiture. In this way the 

image is granted a voice, the one facet of the living person that it otherwise lacks. 

                                                           
118

 John Rowlands, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger (Oxford: Phaidon, 1985), 21-22. 
119

 Stephan Kemberdick, ―Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel 



53 

 

 

 

Already by this time it appears that Holbein‘s attention to physical description and facial 

traits was a highly prized aspect of his work.  

 Amerbach‘s inscription also points to a broader humanist view of the art of 

portraiture. The portrait was thought to act as an embodiment of memory, a trace or 

reminder of the living subject that would remain after death. Holbein‘s style appears to 

have been particularly suited for this purpose. Erasmus, a close comrade of Amerbach, 

would request two portraits from Holbein in 1523. [Figures 4.5 - 4.6] The first of these, a 

gift to William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was accompanied by a letter that 

reassured the recipient that in the event of Erasmus‘s death, Warham would retain ―a bit 

of Erasmus‖ through the ―painted rendering of [his] features.‖
120

 I will discuss this and 

other portraits of Erasmus in greater detail below; but here I will note that after these 

commissions Holbein was provided by Erasmus with a letter of recommendation to the 

English humanist Sir Thomas More. More‘s 1527 portrait, painted during Holbein‘s first 

sojourn in London, was one of many subsequent works for the ―intellectual aristocracy‖ 

of court circles.
121

 Holbein‘s second stay in England also provided several commissions 

from merchants of the powerful and international Hanseatic League. Seven were 

completed between 1532 and 1538. Two of these include inscriptions testifying to the 

veracity and lifelikeness of Holbein‘s painted representation. A 1533 portrait of Derich 

Born states, in letters that appear illusionistically carved into a stone ledge, ―Add but the 

voice and you might wonder if his father or the painter created this.‖ Similar to the 

allusions of Amerbach‘s inscription, this suggests that the painting lacks only the voice of 

                                                                                                                                                                             

Years, 1515-1532, 194-195. 
120

 Matthias Winner, ―Holbein‘s Portrait of Erasmus with a Renaissance Pilaster,‖ in Hans Holbein: 

Paintings, Prints and Reception, 155. 
121

 Andreas Beyer, ―The London Interlude,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515-1532, 



54 

 

 

 

its subject to completely embody the individual it represents; high praise for Holbein‘s 

skill in portraying the figure. [Figure 4.7] An earlier portrait of the German merchant 

George Gisze includes a similar phrase: ―he has in life such eyes, such cheeks.‖
122

  

From the mid-1530s, Holbein also served as a court painter to King Henry VIII 

and set the standards for the king‘s official court portraits in images that would be copied 

and repeated in numerous media thereafter. A wall painting by Holbein in the King‘s 

Privy Chamber at Whitehall Palace, dated to 1537, contained life-size full-body portraits 

of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour standing before posthumous images of Henry VII and 

Elizabeth of York. Though the original was destroyed by fire, a portion of Holbein‘s full-

scale cartoon and several copies remain. [Figures 4.8 - 4.9] Holbein‘s choice to depart 

from the original drawing (in which the monarch is shown in three-quarters view) to 

depict the monarch‘s head in a direct frontal pose—gaze confronting the viewer—was a 

relatively unusual one that lent gravity and presence to the figure. But it has been 

suggested that the frontal pose may contain additional meanings beyond the forceful 

image it presents. Selected especially for his talent in portraiture, Holbein was personally 

sent by Henry VIII to record the features of prospective brides, including Anne of Cleves, 

Christina of Denmark, Anne of Lorraine, and the daughters of the Duke of Guise. The 

two surviving works, which depict Anne of Cleves and Christina of Denmark, exhibit a 

full-length frontal positioning with clear features and prominent hands. [Figures 4.10 - 

4.11] Portraiture of potential brides, who would be called upon to bear healthy male 

heirs, was expected to provide a reasonably accurate and highly legible likeness in order 

                                                                                                                                                                             

66-71. 
122

 The Latin quotation is borrowed from a Dürer engraving of 1519, emphasizing that such claims to 

accuracy and vividness were an established topos for Renaissance portraiture, both painted and printed. 
Foister, 206-213. 



55 

 

 

 

to eliminate those with visible physical deformities or ‗defects.‘ In this view, Henry 

VIII‘s frontal posture displays his physical vigor and unblemished, even features, 

demonstrating his suitability as both ruler and sire.
123

 

 At this point we may state that Holbein‘s fame and reputation as a portraitist was 

based in part on the ‗naturalistic‘ or lifelike quality of his images. But naturalism itself is 

a sophisticated visual strategy, not an uncomplicated replication of reality. Holbein‘s 

naturalism makes a number of claims for the painter‘s ability. How is his naturalism 

achieved, and to what end? What is its interaction with physiognomic theory? 

 First, the close relationship between naturalism and physiognomy is rooted in the 

observation of physical traits found in nature. This belief was borrowed in part from the 

ancient instruction of painters, such as in Pliny‘s Natural History, and comprised a major 

part of the training of the early modern artist, as well. Leon Battista Alberti‘s influential 

De Pictura (1435) emphasized the need for the aspiring artist to observe the many 

variations in the human form and encouraged memorization and categorization of 

existing types.
124

 He was among those who urged artists to attend to physiognomic 

studies, the better to represent both inner and outer substance.
125

 Artists including 

Leonardo Da Vinci explored physiognomy through studies from life and the creation of 

grotesque human heads, while Albrecht Dürer‘s Four Books of Human Proportion (1528) 

included studies of ―abnormal‖ physiognomies.
126

 Dürer‘s treatise insists that the diligent 

artist ought to record the figure ―down to the last detail… in the clearest and most 

                                                           
123

 Ibid, 175-181, 191-196, 200-203. 
124

 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 

91-93. 
125

 Bekes, 26-27. 
126

 Moshe Barasch, Theories of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 246. 



56 

 

 

 

meticulous manner, and the tiniest wrinkle and speck should not be omitted.‖
127

 Yet he 

writes elsewhere, ―no man can ever again make a beautiful image from his own thoughts, 

unless he has filled his mind with such things through much copying [from nature.]‖
128

 In 

his model the success or ‗beauty‘ of the work finds its source in its relationship to nature, 

a nature studied, remembered as a sense impression, and then recalled and transformed 

by the hand of the artist-creator. The work‘s authority comes from its naturalism, a 

convincing representation of a natural likeness.  

 Pomponius Gauricus‘s De Sculptura of 1504 presented an even more explicit link 

between portraiture and physiognomic thinking, combining practical instruction for 

artists with a chapter of classical physiognomic theory. The work is both a compendium 

of workshop knowledge (primarily bronze casting, modeling, and the carving of ivory) 

and adapted ancient theory, relying on the treatise of the Pseudo-Aristotle for much of its 

physiognomic influences. Gauricus‘s text, composed in Latin with some Greek, mimics 

ancient treatises in its categorical listing of facial features and the qualities of ―soul‖ 

which they reflect, yet the work as a whole represents a new bridge between 

physiognomic theory and physical description for the practicing artist.
129

   

 Holbein‘s method for capturing the features of sitters through careful drawing 

from life, initially using silverpoint, later included the use of colored chalks and pre-

colored surfaces in various light tones which simulated the colors of his sitters‘ flesh. He 

frequently made use of written notes on color in the margins of these drawings, with a 

particular emphasis on the colors of skin, eyes and hair. Later, more elaborate portrait 

studies were further worked in pen or brush to define facial features. Sub-surface 

                                                           
127

 Cited in Koerner,142. 
128

 Ibid, 162-163. 



57 

 

 

 

investigation of Holbein‘s painted portraits have shown that the artist relied on traced 

drawings (or, less frequently, pouncing) to directly transfer the image to the prepared 

surface, maintaining with exactitude the existing proportions. Some alteration of the 

underdrawings does exist, mainly in the adjustment of gaze or position of the head, or to 

allow for a change in costume. Small adjustments, such as the number of wrinkles, have 

been specifically made in a few works, but overall it seems that Holbein‘s concern for 

maintaining the proportional arrangement of the face and the contours of its discrete 

features was a consistent one.
130

 Holbein‘s painstaking attention to subtle facial details in 

both drawing and finished painting have assisted in establishing his reputation for 

naturalism. In addition, his meticulous recording of facial traits and coloration through 

his studies and sketches echoes the work of the physiognomic writers, composing their 

commentaries, and of the close reading of the physiognomists before their subjects.  

 The handling of paint, and the creation of a convincing illusion of reality in the 

rendering of flesh and texture, is also Holbein‘s trademark. His materials speak to his 

concern for qualities of surface. The linseed oil with which he often mixed pigments for 

flesh was complemented by the use of pine resin, which added realistic luster and shine to 

textures of satin, fur, and foliage. The tonality of certain portraits has been altered by the 

use of a grey ground, adding natural modulation and depth to facial shadows.
131

 

Holbein‘s handling of translucent oil colors and layers of glaze concealed his 

brushstrokes that might otherwise disrupt the illusion of a new reality, or that might 

otherwise call attention to the fabricated status of the image. This effort to hide the trace 

                                                                                                                                                                             
129

 Barasch, 243-247. 
130

 Foister, 48-52, 59-61. 
131

 Ashok Roy and Martin Wyld, ―The Ambassadors and Holbein‘s Techniques for Painting on Panel,‖ in 

Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints and Reception, 101-105. 



58 

 

 

 

of his hand and the subtle modeling of forms supported the illusion of real flesh and real 

texture. Holbein‘s painting claims a ‗truth‘ in representation only previously found in 

nature itself. But a surface that conceals the painter‘s hand, in effect creating the illusion 

of real existence over prolonged labor, paradoxically directs the viewer to the painter‘s 

genius. Rhetorically, it links Holbein with paragons of antique art, such as Zeuxis and his 

rival Parrhasios, the painter who deceived the former by painting a curtain so naturalistic 

that Zeuxis moved to brush it aside. It also brings to mind the famous Apelles, whose 

portraits could be subjected to a physiognomic reading as easily as a living human 

subject.
132

  

 Holbein‘s techniques frame the artist-creator as a student of nature, one whose 

observation and talent allows him to replicate the living face convincingly and reliably. 

From nature he draws his authority and the ‗truth‘ of his image, yet it is by his own labor 

and the skill of his hand that this naturalistic effect is accomplished. His portraits, praised 

for their lifelikeness, emulate antique examples. It is in this spirit that I will now turn to a 

physiognomic examination of some of Holbein‘s numerous portraits of Erasmus. The 

potential for a physiognomic reading of these works would seem to be supported by the 

humanist‘s familiarity with physiognomic theory and the pervasive presence of the 

discipline in the educated circles in which both Holbein and Erasmus traveled. 

 

Holbein’s Portraits of Erasmus 

 I will begin with Holbein‘s first portrait of Erasmus, commissioned in 1523 as a 

gift to William Warham, who was Erasmus‘s patron and close friend. [Figure 4.5] The 

                                                           
132

 Oskar Batschmann, ―Holbein‘s Hand,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515-1532, 111-

115. This claim is first made by Pliny in his Natural History. 



59 

 

 

 

humanist is depicted clothed in a black robe richly trimmed in fur, sitting at a table or 

ledge. A closed volume sits before him, on which his hands rest. To the left, a 

Renaissance pilaster with detailed ornamental foliage stands before a green background 

curtain. An inscription in Greek running along the sides of the closed book‘s pages 

translates as ―The Herculean Labors of Erasmus of Rotterdam,‖ an association 

underscored by the inclusion of the pillar, a likely reference to the pillars erected by 

Hercules at the edge of the world. Further back, a shelf with three additional books and a 

glass vial can be seen. Along the edge of the angled volume, a second inscription, likely 

penned by Erasmus, speaks for Holbein‘s inimitable skill and likely also alludes to his 

own efforts: ―No one will ever be my imitator as easily as he will be my denigrator.‖ This 

claim echoes one reportedly made by the ancient painter Zeuxis in an inscription below 

his own celebrated portrait of a famous athlete. The artist was praised by Pliny for his 

ability to make visible the ―very soul‖ in his portraits. It cannot be incidental that Zeuxis 

is also the painter lauded by ancient writers for his command of naturalism, one so 

convincing that the birds themselves were said to swoop down to pick at his painted 

grapes.
133

  

 Holbein depicts Erasmus with a fair, peach-toned complexion and graying hair 

with touches of blonde and pale brown. His skin is unblemished and even in color. His 

mouth is long. His lips are thin but definite in shape, the top resting on the lower, with a 

v-shaped indentation above the top lip. His long, narrow and somewhat aquiline nose is 

softened by the three-quarters view, but Holbein is careful to show the curving arch in the 

middle portion rising away from the forehead. Erasmus‘s eyes are pale with some 

                                                           
133

 Matthias Winner, ―The Terminus as a Rebus in Holbein‘s Portraits of Erasmus,‖ in Hans Holbein the 

Younger: The Basel Years, 1515-1532, 157-162, 165.  



60 

 

 

 

reflective highlights, set back into the face with hooded lids. His chin is broad, with a 

slight indentation in the center, and his jaw is square. Curving lines accentuate the lean 

facial muscles and high cheekbones, but Erasmus lacks deep wrinkles around the mouth 

and brow. His hands are long-fingered and of medium slenderness, without particularly 

pronounced knuckles, and their tone is slightly darker than his highlighted face. The nails 

are broad and those of his writing hand are stained with ink.  

 A physiognomic reading of these traits seems to fall along two lines: the first, an 

association with pride and strength, the traits of the lion; and second, marks of intellect or 

understanding. For both Polemon and the Pseudo-Aristotle, Erasmus‘s thin, long mouth 

can be compared to the mouth of the lion, signaling strength and pride. The squareness of 

his chin, and its ―four edges‖ created by the center separation, are also remarked on as a 

sign of strength and boldness.
134

 Likewise, the Pseudo-Aristotle names a slightly deep-set 

eye as an indication of a ―proud soul,‖ again referring to the lion as the animal 

counterpart.
135

 Erasmus‘s pale and slightly pinkish-hued complexion seems to correspond 

with contemporaneous beliefs in the link between qualities of the flesh and geographic 

location and temperature. His pale skin and blonde, straight hair were thought to belong 

to Northerners, owing to the suppressed internal heat of their bodies and the constriction 

of their pores by the cold. It was believed that this resulted in abundant blood, warm 

flesh, and a courageous internal character.
136

 Turning to qualities of intellect, his smooth 

brow is among those traits thought necessary for a ―lover of knowledge and a collector of 

information.‖
137

 Polemon further indicates that broad nails appear as indicators of good 

                                                           
134

 Hoyland, 415. Also Swain, 651. 
135

 Swain, 657. 
136

 Ziegler, ―Heredity and Physiognomy11-14. 
137

 Hoyland, 395. 



61 

 

 

 

memory and intellect. The Secretum Secretorum attributes good sense and judgment to 

long-fingered men, setting them among the wise, educated and noble of humanity.
138

 

 Perhaps most curiously, several of these visible traits taken together form 

Polemon‘s conception of the ―pure Greek,‖ whom he praises for good temperament and a 

love of learning. His description is as follows: ―[he] is of medium stature… white in 

color, mixed with red, medium in flesh… quick to learn, neither small nor large of 

head… In his face there is squareness, in his lip slimness, and his nose is pointed and 

evenly proportioned. His eyes are moist, bluish-black… and very luminous.‖
139

 These 

physiognomic readings must be considered alongside the portrait‘s references to Hercules 

and Zeuxis. The lion‘s connection with the Greek demigod Hercules could only lend 

credence to Erasmus‘s claim of ‗Herculean‘ labors in the eyes of the educated viewer.
140

 

In this case, a reading of Erasmus‘s features enhances and affirms the portrait‘s 

underlying associations. His link to Hercules and to the features of the lion suggests a 

strength and commitment to much labor, thematically uniting the civilizing force of 

Hercules‘s brawn and Erasmus‘s writings. The reading also sustains the image of an 

individual bold enough to forge his own opinions, yet rooted in the authority and 

legitimacy of classical knowledge. A collective physiognomic interpretation of Holbein‘s 

Erasmus might be summarized by the educated viewer as attempting to present an 

intelligent, wise, and intellectually courageous thinker—in this case, providing a kind of 

visual corroboration of what has been demonstrated fully in his writings.  

 The lion, with whom Erasmus shares some physiognomic traits, is also associated 

with early church father and author St. Jerome, favored by many humanists, and the 

                                                           
138

 Bekes, 32. 
139

 Hoyland, ―The Leiden Polemon,‖ 427. 



62 

 

 

 

Biblical evangelist St. Mark,
141

 both of whom are consciously evoked in Holbein‘s 

second portrait of Erasmus, also dated 1523. [Figure 4.6] Erasmus was known to hold a 

special regard for Jerome, and during his lifetime produced numerous translations and 

commentaries on Jerome‘s work, most notably ‗improving‘ Jerome‘s Latin Vulgate with 

his own Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament in 1516. In this portrait, the 

author is shown seated at a writing desk, pen in hand, once again clothed in a black robe 

and scholar‘s cap. The sentence he is putting to paper states that he is composing a 

commentary on the Gospel of St. Mark, which indeed he was in the midst of finishing in 

1523.
142

  The profile view affords a better outline of Erasmus‘s prominent nose and chin. 

In addition, the profile reduces traits to their essential qualities by providing a clear and 

legible ‗outline‘ of the features. A second version, completed in the same year, subtly 

compresses the posture of the sitter and defines in slightly sharper detail the lines of skin 

that gather at the neck. [Figure 4.12] The slenderness of his cheeks and the hollow 

depression beneath the cheekbone, more apparent in this second version, are attributes of 

a gaunt face to which the Pseudo-Aristotle ascribes the qualities of ―assiduity‖ and 

diligence. Leanness of the face is also listed elsewhere in the same text as the sign of a 

―talented‖ man.
143

 A reading of ‗diligence‘ and ‗talent‘ would have been considered 

appropriate responses to an image of the writer hard at work, laboring over a project of 

pious devotion that is simultaneously an expression of his own personal understanding 

and knowledge.  

 Quentin Massys‘ 1517 Portrait of Erasmus also focuses attention on the sharp, 

                                                                                                                                                                             
140

 Bekes, 17-20. 
141

 Martin Kemp, The Human Animal in Western Art and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

2007), 6, 39. 
142

 Jochen Sander, ―Erasmus of Rotterdam Writing,‖ in Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515-



63 

 

 

 

high cheekbones and the depressions defining the scholar‘s cheeks. [Figure 4.13] Here, 

too, Erasmus is shown as an author bent over a desk with pen in hand. In this case, the 

text of the open work is his own translation of Paul‘s Epistle to the Romans, while behind 

him a volume of the works of St. Jerome can be seen on an open shelf. The portrait 

displays Erasmus‘s features in three-quarters view; as with Holbein, Erasmus would 

commission a second work from Massys in profile, this time a portrait medal completed 

in 1519. [Figure 4.14] The Latin inscription on the medal affirms that the work was done 

from ―the living model‖ (effigies viva.)
144

 Similarities between Massys‘ and Holbein‘s 

physical depictions of Erasmus are numerous; from the thin, pointed nose, four-part chin 

and square jaw, to the small, fairly deep-set eyes, long fingers, thin lips and lean face. 

The face of the Massys painted portrait appears slightly elongated and more narrow, 

shortening the mouth, which is owed in part to the angle of view. His depiction of 

Erasmus‘s eyes gives them a dark cast, without much reflection. The ―even black‖ of the 

eye, however, was taken by Polemon as a sign of ―reliability and goodness.‖
145

 It does 

not appear that a physiognomic reading of Massys‘ work would stray far afield from that 

of Holbein‘s. Erasmus‘s presumable satisfaction with the work, supported by his later 

commissioning of the medal, suggests that he considered the portrait a success in 

representation. 

 Erasmus‘s response to the features of Dürer‘s engraved portrait of 1526 was less 

favorable. [Figure 4.15] The portrait once again places Erasmus at his desk, engaged in 

the act of writing, with a stack of books on a ledge at the front of the picture plane. A 

                                                                                                                                                                             

1532, 292-294. 
143

 Swain, 645, 655. 
144

 Winner, 97-98. This portrait of Erasmus was one half of a diptych showing on the other side Erasmus‘s 

humanist friend from Antwerp, Peter Gilles. The ‗friendship diptych‘ was commissioned as a gift to 



64 

 

 

 

plain frame in the background displays an inscription which also appeared on Massys‘ 

cast medal: ―The better image will his writings show,‖ a statement perhaps 

acknowledging the limits of physiognomic reliability but also an ancient artistic trope of 

false humility. The staging of the image has more in common with earlier painted 

portraits, but it was this medal that Erasmus himself suggested Dürer might use as an aide 

for his own design.
146

 Portable, durable and produced in multiples, the medal would have 

presented an easily available model. The printed work was eventually created after a 

drawing Dürer made in the author‘s presence in 1520, though Erasmus considered the 

final work ―not similar‖ (non similis mihi) to his own likeness.
147

 Dürer portrays Erasmus 

with lean cheeks, square jaw, a pointed nose, downcast eyes and prominent hands. His 

chin, however, seems rounded and blunt, protruding more forcefully than those of the 

other portraits. The shortened width of the mouth and thickened lips create a deeper 

shadow between the bottom lip and chin. Likewise, the hooded eyes and half-closed lids 

seem to bulge forward away from the hollow below his brows, accentuating the 

shadowed circles. Roundness of the chin was considered by Polemon a sign of 

effeminacy, and some sixteenth-century treatises claimed ―If the ende of the chin bee 

rounde, it is a signe of feminine manners… the chinne of a man must bee alwaies square 

(sic.)‖
148

 Polemon calls protruding eyes ―repulsive,‖
149

 while the text of the Pseudo-

Aristotle condemns the same as a sign of ―imbecility‖ and likens round, bulging eyes to 

                                                                                                                                                                             

Thomas More in England as a way to conjure the absent sitters‘ presence to their distant friend.    
145

 Hoyland, 343. 
146

 Andrée Hayum, ―Dürer's Portrait of Erasmus and the Ars Typographorum,‖ Renaissance Quarterly 38, 

No. 4 (1985): 667-668.  
147

 Winner, 98. 
148

 Hoyland, 415. Also Porter,195. 
149

 Hoyland, 365.  



65 

 

 

 

those of cattle.
150

 By necessity, a printed portrait in black and white also cannot capture 

nuances of complexion or facial coloring, but it seems unlikely that this would have 

negatively influenced Erasmus‘s opinion of the work. It was Erasmus, in fact, who, in his 

laudatio of 1528 for the recently deceased Dürer, would praise Dürer‘s mastery of the 

black line, declaring that he surpassed even Apelles but without the benefit of colors. In 

the same passages, he credits Dürer with the ability to depict even ―characters and 

emotions… the whole of man as it shines forth from the appearance of the body.‖
151

 Here 

Erasmus credits the artist with the ability to form a likeness that speaks to the ―whole‖ of 

man‘s joined internal character and external physicality, a quintessentially physiognomic 

concept. His demonstrated belief in physiognomic representation, when considered 

alongside his dissatisfaction with Dürer‘s printed portrait and its subtle dissimilarity to 

the physiognomic models presented by other works, may add an additional layer to our 

understanding of the ‗Erasmus‘ which Erasmus wished to present to the world. His 

positive reception of Holbein‘s work may indicate that it is Holbein, of all his portraitists, 

who most successfully captured this desired image of self. 

 

Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning 

 Erasmus‘s portrait commissions represent a conscious and sophisticated strategy 

for the distribution and treatment of his likeness. His painted portraits were costly 

endeavors that allowed him to give prized gifts to patrons and friends, while his printed 

portraits were able to be widely distributed on their own or incorporated into editions of 

his printed texts. His awareness of the value and potential of portraiture seems to have 

                                                           
150

 Swain, 657. 
151

 Koerner, 168-169. 



66 

 

 

 

been particularly keen.
152

 His repeated choice of Holbein as the executor of these works, 

and his dissatisfaction with Dürer‘s engraving, might suggest a matching concern for the 

depiction of his features. The subtle differences in these artists‘ renderings of the 

humanist and the physiognomic implications associated with those traits are meaningful 

in light of Erasmus‘s own responses. His belief in physiognomy, and his desire to present 

a particular self-image, may have influenced his own reception—or rejection—of these 

works. 

 Holbein‘s portraits of Erasmus represent a sophisticated attempt at constructing 

the identity of the sitter, an encompassing appearance that could convey truthfully and 

reliably both inner and outer character. It is significant that the first decades of the 

sixteenth century, a period of intense interest in physiognomic theory, was also marked 

by a growing awareness of those processes that contributed to the creation of personal 

identity. Stephen Gleenblatt‘s term ―self-fashioning‖ conveys a sense of a deliberate 

outward shaping or presentation of self, one that is able to be manipulated and directed. 

As he writes, self-fashioning represents ―the cultural system of meanings that creates 

specific individuals by governing the passage from abstract potential to concrete 

historical embodiment.‖
153

 Commissioned portraits seem an ideal vehicle for self-

fashioning, as they both represent and embody the status of their sitters. As objects, they 

speak to the status, wealth and taste of their patron. As representations, they present the 

physical form of their subject alongside clothes, jewels, architecture, coats of arms, 

books, and other indicators of social rank and personal achievement.  

 Yet while these and other outward symbols have been explored at length in 

                                                           
152

 Sander, ―Erasmus of Rotterdam Writing,‖ 292-294. 
153

 Greenblatt, 5-6. 



67 

 

 

 

scholarship, little attention has been provided that address the relationship and possible 

tension between impulses for self-fashioning and the apparently unchangeable truths 

revealed by one‘s physiognomy. The urgency of physiognomic knowledge is due in part 

to its potential for revealing the internal qualities that may be concealed or mitigated by 

outwards factors such as costume, setting, or material goods. Eniko Bekes‘ exploration of 

physiognomy as it relates to images produced of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, 

has provided one vital source for the conception of this project and shows how the 

deliberate manipulation of physiognomic rhetoric might contribute to the drive to self-

fashion. Her work has linked visual representation with consciously physiognomic 

rhetorical description by court writers. Panegyrics composed in the late fifteenth century 

by Corvinus‘s most favored humanist scholar, Galeotto Marzio, provided a flattering 

physical description of the king that adhered to the most desired physiognomic traits from 

the works of the Pseudo-Aristotles. In addition, Antonio Bonfini, court historiographer, 

provided a detailed physical description of Corvinus that borrowed heavily from ancient 

descriptions of Alexander the Great, considered the most perfect example of the 

physiognomic ‗lion‘ type. The features of the lion were granted to Corvinus in nearly 

every portrait created between 1480 and 1490, including manuscripts, medallions and 

donor portraits specifically commissioned by the king. This purposeful association with 

the image of Alexander, the Ancient ―conqueror of the East,‖ is made more compelling 

by the fact of Corvinus‘s multiple military incursions into Ottoman territory.
154

 The 

ubiquity of physiognomic thought during this period would have assured that many 

viewers of these images, both at court and those recipients of portraits abroad—ally and 

                                                           
154

 Bekes, 31-35, 38-41,44. 

 



68 

 

 

 

enemy alike—would have read and understood the meaning contained in Corvinus‘s 

well-defined features. Physiognomy provided Corvinus and his humanists with the 

perfect vehicle for fashioning an identity rooted in ancient authority, yet which spoke 

perfectly to contemporaneous concerns and anxieties. 

 Joseph Ziegler has also observed physiognomy‘s widespread influence among the 

ruling class, noting that the bulk of late medieval physiognomic treatises were dedicated 

to nobles. Michael Scot‘s dedication to Frederick II was followed by Pietro d‘Abano‘s 

1295 treatise, dedicated to the ruler of Mantua; Roland l‘Ecrivain‘s work, bestowed on 

the Duke of Bedford; and Michele Savonarola‘s fifteenth-century treatise, dedicated to 

the Marquis of Ferrara. The source of many later works adopted for the popular market, 

Bartholomeus Cocles, dedicated his 1504 treatise to the son of the dictator of Bologna. 

Ziegler infers that physiognomy served a particularly desirable purpose for the nobility 

during this period, linking physiognomic theory to contemporaneous dialogue on the 

‗origin‘ of nobility. Ancient treatises, most notably the Secretum Secretorum, also had 

called on rulers to select their advisors using the discipline of physiognomy in order to 

select the most virtuous and suitable candidates. This knowledge was revived and made 

to suit new purposes, benefiting the noble as well as the rising middle and professional 

classes. For many late medieval thinkers, at the edge of the Renaissance, old notions of 

hereditary nobility were increasingly insufficient. Physiognomy provided a useful system 

by which to authenticate individual nobility based on virtue, independent of rank or 

parentage and based only in legible bodily signs.
155

 The visibility and mutability of 

portraiture again suggests its suitability for this process of self-fashioning.  

                                                           
155

 Ziegler, "Text and Context,‖ 177-181. 

 



69 

 

 

 

 Yet physiognomy was equally capable of overturning or subverting a desired 

public image as creating it. The De Humana Physiognomia of Giovanni Battista della 

Porta (1586) featured portraits of notable Italian personalities, confirming the established 

reputation and appearance of each individual with its correlating physiognomic 

interpretation. As in the union of printed image and printed text, the image and its 

physiognomic description are mutually reinforcing. However, in these cases, this 

physiognomic ‗truth‘ was not always a favorable one. Della Porta‘s text places an earlier 

portrait of the large-nosed poet and scholar Angelo Poliziano alongside a negative 

appraisal of those with overlarge noses, claiming these people ―despise[d] the works of 

other persons.‖
156

 Here, a physiognomic reading of an existing portrait is used to 

undermine the dignity of the sitter. The close control exercised by Matthias Corvinus and 

others over their own images suggest an awareness of this possibility. It may even be that 

Erasmus was conscious of this prospect, as he favored one likeness over the other, even 

responding cautiously to a printed portrait which would have been widely distributed and 

read, and therefore more difficult to control. Physiognomy‘s claim to revealing inner 

truths was not only a vehicle for the public promotion of a virtuous identity, but 

potentially a tool for discrediting such an image.  

While state portraits and images of nobility represent one aspect of fashioning a 

public self, the rise of an increasingly mercantile society, in which new and complex 

modes of patronage and commerce operated, pushed concerns of identity and status to the 

fore. A prosperous and literate middle class, like many of Holbein‘s patrons, was 

centered in urban hubs of culture and artistic exchange, and sought to assert its status 

through new models of representing and defining the self. This process was also at work 

                                                           
156

 Bekes, 28. 



70 

 

 

 

in the status of artists. The elevation of the art of painting to one of the ‗liberal‘ arts, and 

its increasing disassociation from the status of skilled labor, was in large part due to an 

intentional campaign waged by artists and art theorists.
157

 For many artists, the self-

portrait was an increasingly viable means of promoting their skill and creative identity.
158

 

Though no painted self-portraits by Holbein survive, a fine drawing dating from 1542-

1543 records the artist‘s vision of himself.
159

 [Figure 4.16] His complexion is even, 

unblemished and peach-toned; his square chin, neat beard, and luminous, slightly deep-

set eyes provide an image of moderation, according to current physiognomic thought. 

Simply clothed, with a solid background, Holbein discards outward markers of status and 

draws the viewer‘s attention to his own highly detailed features and the descriptive 

naturalism of his face, beard and hair, and the steady gaze of his eyes looking outward. In 

this way, his portrait may be seen to participate in the most current physiognomic thought 

of the period. This interaction with the complexities of classical and contemporaneous 

theory, so closely tied to philosophy and the liberal arts, is yet another avenue by which 

the artist may attempt to elevate their artistic practice.  

  

 Holbein‘s highly naturalistic portraits claim to represent accurate likenesses of 

their subjects. Understood as substitutes for absent sitters, Holbein‘s portraits could 

provide the opportunity for focused observation and analysis of both external form and 

internal character, rather than the mere fleeting glimpse of a passing encounter. 

Portraiture participates in the system of physiognomic knowledge not by the presentation 

                                                           
157

 Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and 

the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 3-5. 
158

 Koerner, 55. 
159

 Rowlands, 239. 



71 

 

 

 

of popular types, but in its potential for revealing the unique truth of the presented 

individual. While it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove or disprove an 

intentional use of physiognomic theory by either painter or patron, the ubiquity of 

physiognomic thought and its close ties to the rhetoric of naturalism make it likely that 

these works may have been viewed in such terms. Physiognomy‘s fitness for creating and 

manipulating a desirable self-image or public persona further endeared it to the elites of 

the sixteenth century. Holbein‘s patrons and social circle can be firmly placed within this 

category. It is likely in this cultural context that responses to Holbein‘s vivid works were 

shaped in part by the widespread belief in the physiognomic link between body and soul. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



72 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION 

 

 There is much to suggest that Holbein‘s work could have been viewed in 

physiognomic terms by his audience. The ubiquity of physiognomic thought in the 

culture of the sixteenth century indicates that much of his viewership was attuned to 

theories of appearance and representation. Physiognomy‘s presence in canons of medical 

knowledge and its place among natural philosophical texts, as well as its popular 

incarnations in vernacular pamphlets and in period theology, point to a widespread 

dissemination. Likewise, it is easy to imagine that Holbein‘s viewers were among those 

intimately familiar with conventional depictions of Christ and his tormentors, drawn from 

physiognomic studies or supposed eye-witness accounts, or with other prints relying on 

physical types to carry symbolic or satirical meaning. Holbein‘s early exposure to 

physiognomic thought, and the physiognomic interests of his patrons, indicates that he 

was aware of the possibilities for physiognomic representation. Whether or not his focus 

on detailed descriptions of the face and body held direct physiognomic meaning for his 

own practice as an artist, there remains a high probability of physiognomic interpretations 

by his audience. 

 How, and why, might an audience have looked to Holbein‘s images for 

physiognomic ‗truths‘? As we have seen, images are closely connected to the verification 

or creation of information, whether this is contained in a cycle of prints cataloguing types 

of flora or fauna, or a ‗lifelike‘ portrait of a prospective bride or absent friend. Holbein‘s 

prints and paintings represent two distinct strategies for representing visual truths. His 

prints, through their status as impressed multiples and their participation in an emerging 

culture of ‗first-hand‘ knowledge, may have offered viewers a confirmation of their 



73 

 

 

 

biases or beliefs, linking a wider tradition of ancient and medieval physiognomic theory 

to contemporaneous ‗types.‘ Alternatively, his painted portraits provide a more 

individualized encounter with physiognomic theory in their claims to be vivid substitutes 

of their absent sitters, allowing for a supposedly accurate reading of traits, as well as the 

shaping of a desired self. Yet both rely on Holbein‘s exceptional skill in capturing those 

legible facial details thought to be most revealing of inner character. Though subject in 

part to important differences in the presumed audience and function of prints and 

paintings, it is clear that physiognomic thought extended beyond any simple division of 

mediums. 

 I have approached physiognomic theory through Holbein in large part due to his 

enduring reputation for naturalism and lifelikeness. As I have demonstrated, his ‗rhetoric 

of realism‘ is a strategy that claims representational veracity, and as such, it is closely 

tied to contemporaneous physiognomic discourses on outward appearance and inward 

truth. That these discourses are also present in the work of his contemporaries and peers 

will hopefully be further explored in future scholarship. Naturalism, particularly in the 

attentive depiction of the human form, was an approach taken by a multitude of 

Renaissance artists both north and south of the Alps, from Jan van Eyck and Albrecht 

Dürer to Leonardo da Vinci and the Florentine School. Theories of art that stressed 

naturalism, such as the writings of Leon Battista Alberti, are also seen to have 

encouraged physiognomic studies. Scholarship on Renaissance naturalism, as an 

intentional artistic strategy rooted in the authority of nature, has in large part neglected to 

address the link between naturalistic images and the widespread belief in the 

physiognomic meaning contained in such representations.  An examination of these 



74 

 

 

 

connections will result in a more nuanced view of the reception of ‗lifelike‘ images. 

 More broadly, physiognomy also may help to shed additional light on those 

Renaissance concepts of self—of self-knowledge and self-presentation—that shaped, and 

were shaped by, images. The early modern preoccupation with the flexibility and 

mutability of identity brings physiognomy to the fore of the period‘s cultural and artistic 

concerns.
160

 As new patterns of interaction called for physiognomy to act as a secure 

method for evaluating individuals and predicting possible outcomes, changing roles and 

social mobility likewise called for new artistic outlets that could engage ideas of the 

constructed self. Physiognomy represents an important and continuous link between 

modern, early modern and pre-modern notions of self.  

Holbein‘s complex and naturalistic work is situated at the nexus of these 

concerns. His prints and portraits fully demonstrate the range of challenges and meanings 

inherent in depicting the human face, both ‗type‘ and individual, in a period of social 

anxiety, mobility, and change. Physiognomy‘s perceived ability to reach a core of inner 

truth through outward signs holds vital potential for future art-historical scholarship on 

portraiture and other types of images that present private truths and public identities. Our 

view of those representations can only be enriched by a more layered understanding of 

the physiognomic construction of early modern selves. 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                           
160

 Porter, 307. 



75 

 

 

 

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79 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1.1 

Whitehall Mural (Cartoon) 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533 

 

 



80 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1.2 

Abbot, from the Pictures of Death 

Hans Holbein the Younger, (Hans Lützelburger, Block-Cutter), 1538 

 

 

 

 



81 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1.3 

Jacob Meyer, Preparatory Drawing in Silverpoint & Red Chalk 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516 

 



82 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.1 

Folly, Marginal Illustration from Praise of Folly 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1515 

 

 

 



83 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.2 

Scholar in the Market, Marginal Illustration from Praise of Folly 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1515 

 

 



84 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.3 

Wisdom, Marginal Illustration from Praise of Folly 

After Hans Holbein the Younger (Reproduction) 

(London: Reeves & Turner, 1876) 

 

 



85 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.4 

Folly Descending the Pulpit, Marginal Illustration from Praise of Folly 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1515 

 



86 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.5 

Crowning with Thorns, Woodcut from the Passio D. N. Jesu Christi 

Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1509 

 

 

 

 



87 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.6 

Lentulus Letter with the Portrait of Christ, Woodcut 

Hans Burgkmair, 1511 

 



88 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.7 

Lentulus Letter with the Portrait of Christ, Woodcut 

Hans Burgkmair, 1512 

 



89 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.1 

Archbishop & Knight, from Guyot Marchand‘s Dance of Death 

Woodcut, 1490 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



90 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Figure 3.2 

Abbot and Magistrate, from Guyot Marchand‘s Dance of Death 

Woodcut, 1490 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



91 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.3 

Judge, from the Pictures of Death 

Hans Holbein the Younger, (Hans Lützelburger, Block-Cutter), 1538 

 

 

 



92 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.4 

Besotted Abbot Riding a Jawbone, Woodcut 

Anonymous, 1480 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



93 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.5 

Besotted Abbot Riding a Jawbone, Woodcut 

Hans Weiditz, 1530 

 

 

 

 

 



94 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.6 

Die Todtenfresser, Woodcut 

Text by Pamphilus Gengenbach, 1522 

 

 



95 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.7 

Justice, from the Ship of Fools, Woodcut 

Albrecht Dürer, 1494 

 

 

 

 



96 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.8 

Monk, from the Pictures of Death 

Hans Holbein the Younger, (Hans Lützelburger, Block-Cutter), 1538 

 

 

 

 



97 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.9 

Monk Calf, Woodcut 

Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1523 

 

 

 



98 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.10 

Papal Ass, Woodcut 

Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1523 

 

 

 

 



99 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.11 

Fool, from the Pictures of Death 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1547 

 



100 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.12 

Physician and Assistant, Woodcut 

Hans Weiditz, 1521 

 



101 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.13 

King, from the Pictures of Death 

Hans Holbein the Younger, (Hans Lützelburger, Block-Cutter), 1538 

 



102 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.14 

Portrait of Francis I 

Jean Clouet, 1525 

 



103 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.15 

Physiognomic Illustration 

Text by Bartolomeus Cocles, 1536 

 

 

 

 



104 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.16 

Physiognomic Illustration 

Text by Bartolomeus Cocles, 1536 

 



105 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.17 

Angel with the Sudarium, Woodcut 

Albrecht Dürer, 1516 

 

 



106 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.1 

Portrait of Jacob Meyer 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516 

 

 

 



107 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.2 

Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1519 

 

 

 



108 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.3 

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus with a Renaissance Pilaster 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523 

 



109 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.4 

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523 

 

 



110 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.5 

Portrait of Derich Born 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533 

 

 

 



111 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.6 

Copy after Whitehall Mural 

Remigius van Leemput, 1667 

 

 

 

 



112 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.7 

Portrait of Anne of Cleves 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539 

 

 



113 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.8 

Portrait of Christina of Denmark 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538 

 



114 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.9 

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523 

 

 



115 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.10 

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus 

Quentin Massys,  1517 

 

 

 



116 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

Figure 4.11 

Portrait Medal of Desiderius Erasmus 

Quentin Massys, 1519 

 

 

 

 

 

 



117 

 

 

 

 
 

Figure 4.12 

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus 

Albrecht Dürer, 1526 

 

 



118 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.13 

Self-Portrait 

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1542-1543