All Intensive Purposes

This morning's Financial Times has an interesting piece by Chuck Close about Holbein's technique in his painting of Erasmus of Rotterdam. (A larger version of the painting is here.)

. . . Holbein has an amazing touch - it is almost invisible in something this small. It is as if it has been blown on to the painting by a gust of wind.

There are no individual brushstrokes that signify one hair. So how did Holbein get his image to look like fur if the marks are not symbolic, if the mark does not stand for fur? By painting the situation rather than the symbols of fur.

What does that mean? When light falls on something made up of lots of little stuff, it becomes very soft. It hits some of those hairs and falls between the others, casting a shadow. Think of the difference between a telephone pole casting a shadow on a street and then on grass. The shadow on the street has a hard edge, but the minute it hits the grass, the edge becomes soft. You do not have to paint every blade of grass to get someone to understand that they are looking at grass - you paint the situation of grass. It lights differently and shadows fall differently. That is what Holbein has managed to do here.

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The enduring allure of "Erasmus" can also be attributed to the fact that it is in such good condition. Holbein mixed a lot of oil and varnish into the paint. If you look at the picture from below, you can see that part of the physicality of the piece is that it is glazed with a very liquid medium - unlike Botticelli's application of paint, which is so dry that when you view his canvases you feel as if you need a glass of water. "Erasmus", by contrast, is so rich that it is as if we are watching over Holbein's shoulder while he's creating it. For me, this makes his painting a totally contemporary experience, because it is a record of the decisions he made and is in virtually the same condition as it was when he produced it.

As well as Holbein's use of paint, his composition is incredible. Everything in the picture is sliding under the shapes of the fur collar, leading your eye up the collar to the big mass that is Erasmus's head. It almost looks like a lily opening up; like a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe - the gap between the collar could be a gully with water rushing through it, the head a dark mountain range. To me, that abstract flat reading is very important to this painting - it comes out at you; some of the shapes resemble something else, and then you settle into the picture for what it really is.