Portrait as Performance
Meet the Tudor characters that populated Hans Holbein’s world
If you’ve ever been sucked into the world of Tudor England, whether by Wolf Hall, The Tudors, or one of the novels about Anne Boleyn, you’ve likely met Hans Holbein. Born in 1497, he learned to paint from his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, and went on to become arguably the finest portraitist of the 16th century. Now Holbein: Capturing Character, the first major show dedicated to the artist in the United States, is being held at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City through May 15. Smarty Pants jetted to the Big Apple to bring you on an audio tour of the exhibition with Austėja Mackelaitė, the Annette and Oscar de la Renta Assistant Curator at the Morgan and a co-curator of the exhibition.
Virtually follow along our stops on the tour:
- Erasmus of Rotterdam
- Images of Death
- Sir Thomas More
- Richard Southwell (and preparatory drawing)
- Simon George (and preparatory drawing)
- Portrait of a Woman
Go beyond the episode:
- Take a virtual walk through Holbein: Capturing Character
- Read the first few sample pages of Hilary Mantel’s letter to Sir Thomas More
- “The Story of a Stare Down”: Penelope Rowlands investigates how two antagonists from Tudor England ended up facing each other on Fifth Avenue
- You should really (re)read the Wolf Hall Trilogy
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