Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus

Erasmus of Rotterdam, the prince of humanist scholars and author of the satirical In Praise of Folly, is caught in profile at his desk, pen in hand, mid-sentence - the whole portrait organized around the quiet labor of writing. Holbein renders the hands and the concentration with cool precision against a patterned ground. He made several portraits of Erasmus, which the great man sent across Europe as a kind of intellectual calling card; two of them are in this collection. It was Erasmus who gave Holbein the letter of introduction to Thomas More that launched his English career - and More's portrait is here as well.