Linear perspective in the “Portrait of a young man” by Ambrosius Holbein in the context of the Northern European art of the XVIth century

The paper analyses the perspective in the “Portrait of a young man” by A. Holbein. It looks into the approaches to perspective and the artistic style, formed by the former, outside Italy. The method of the perspective drawing reconstruction is employed. The resulting image is assessed according to the laws of geometry. The analysis reveals several specific features of the painting. The artist has no aim to create the logical unified space according to the rules of linear perspective. Orthogonals don't converge to a single vanishing point, several horizon lines are used for the depiction of the objects. This indicates that the artist has no knowledge of the perspective theory while being successful in imitating images based on it. Frontal ribs of all the rectangular shapes are parallel to the picture plane. The feature that can be seen in many works of art of the period shows that the restrictions of the linear perspective dictates the composition of paintings even when it was used as a style only. The paper also explores the incorrect depiction of circles in perspective by A. Holbein and the fact that the figure does not match the architectural background in terms of foreshortening and position in space. The design used for the rendering of the arch is analysed in a special section of the paper. It is pointed out that the design is identical to that used by Hans Holbein in the Portrait of Jakob Meyer and his wife. The comparison of the portraits undertaken shows that both artists knew some techniques of perspective drawing, but did not understand that perspective is a type of central projection. The study concludes that, firstly, the “Portrait of a young man” by A. Holbein is a typical example of how the XVIth century Northern European artists worked with perspective. The space in the picture isn't depicted according to its rules, the image is stylised so as to look like paintings made according to those rules. The paper highlights that the one point perspective was the only kind known to the artists of the epoch, consequently, they used it as a model for stylization even when they did not produce the correct geometry. Secondly, it is almost evident that the members of Holbein's workshop were not familiar with the scientific theory behind the perspective drawing. That, among other things, indicates that the usage of optical implements for the creation of anamorphosis by Hans Holbein is highly probable. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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