4 ms·

Where are the bones of Hans Holbein?

28 points by prismatic 6y ago

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> maybe Holbein let himself be thrown in a common grave No one gets to choose where they are buried. You may put your desires in a will or even purchase a grave site, but the choice is ultimately not yours.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
TLDR: Likely in a common burial pit for Plague victims as has been thought for a long time. > I had not found the remains of Holbein, but it did feel like a message from him. This article is more about the author contemplating death and Holbein than about solving a mystery.
- thaumaturgy 6y ago
  Reading the article from the top, at the title, down to the last paragraph, felt a lot like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. 18 paragraphs of meandering prose just to end with, "Welp, who knows?"
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    I mean... this piece is literary nonfiction, largely about the legacy of Holbein, and only incidentally about the actual mystery. It's a good piece! It's not a news article or a Wikipedia entry and not intended to distribute facts as effciently as possible. If you don't like literary nonfiction that is your prerogative (and I actually have a lot of sympathy). But I feel like you're being uncharitable and holding this author to the wrong standard. It's like reviewing a sonnet by saying "the rhyming is distracting."
    - thaumaturgy 6y ago
      That wasn't it at all and I appreciate literary nonfiction just fine. The author promised something at the very beginning that they didn't deliver by the end. Had the article instead started with, "I spent some covid time learning about Hans Holbein and his death", that would have been fine and I probably still would have read it, had it been posted here.
delsarto 6y ago
If looking for some isolation entertainment there was what I thought an excellent series "The Tudors" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors) which is a fictionalised, but still fairly accurate in the big picture, retelling of Henry VIII's life, probably available on streaming services (Stan in Australia). I watched it in parallel with looking up most people who appeared on my phone to get more, and more accurate, details and found it all fascinating. Hans Holbein plays a part as Henry's favourite painter and this is how I learnt about him.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I've been watching a BBC series that does historical re-enactments, and in particular the series on building a castle, and the one on monastic farming in the early days of the Tudor Kings: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96 The historian keeps mentioning in a very jovial way that at the beginning of the Tudor era The Church was the second biggest land owner in England. That doesn't sound jovial to me. Further, the burgeoning middle class was developing in part as sharecroppers on church land, half of England's exports were sheep wool, the Church is responsible for a large fraction of the social safety net, owned many of the mills (and enforced a monopoly with the sharecroppers) and was selling booze at festivals. It paints for me a much more complex picture of Henry VIII's motivations for breaking with the Church. There's this sort of notion that it was a frivolous thing for him to do and now I'm examining that assertion a bit more skeptically, as spin. There were so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it objectively represented a threat to sovereignty, one that was growing larger by the decade. I'd nearly convinced myself to watch The Tudors and now I think I probably will.
  - gilleain 6y ago
    His break with The Church is usually considered frivolous because the focus is often put on his desire to divorce. The real goal was to have _legitimate_ male heirs. It was never much of a problem for kings to have affairs, even out of wedlock children. For example, Henry FitzRoy - a son from an affair. However, as you mention, the church had a lot of wealth including land. Conveniently, once Henry was 'pope' of his own religion he could go about stripping the monasteries of their wealth. Actually I don't know what was done with that money. Presumably it was part of the motivation, but who knows.
erikig 6y ago
Speaking of Holbein and bones, that anamorphic skull in his famous painting "The Ambassadors" has always made me feel simultaneously puzzled, annoyed, curious and amazed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)

28 points by prismatic 6y ago

> maybe Holbein let himself be thrown in a common grave No one gets to choose where they are buried. You may put your desires in a will or even purchase a grave site, but the choice is ultimately not yours.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

TLDR: Likely in a common burial pit for Plague victims as has been thought for a long time. > I had not found the remains of Holbein, but it did feel like a message from him. This article is more about the author contemplating death and Holbein than about solving a mystery.

thaumaturgy 6y ago
Reading the article from the top, at the title, down to the last paragraph, felt a lot like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. 18 paragraphs of meandering prose just to end with, "Welp, who knows?"
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  I mean... this piece is literary nonfiction, largely about the legacy of Holbein, and only incidentally about the actual mystery. It's a good piece! It's not a news article or a Wikipedia entry and not intended to distribute facts as effciently as possible. If you don't like literary nonfiction that is your prerogative (and I actually have a lot of sympathy). But I feel like you're being uncharitable and holding this author to the wrong standard. It's like reviewing a sonnet by saying "the rhyming is distracting."
  - thaumaturgy 6y ago
    That wasn't it at all and I appreciate literary nonfiction just fine. The author promised something at the very beginning that they didn't deliver by the end. Had the article instead started with, "I spent some covid time learning about Hans Holbein and his death", that would have been fine and I probably still would have read it, had it been posted here.

delsarto 6y ago

If looking for some isolation entertainment there was what I thought an excellent series "The Tudors" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors) which is a fictionalised, but still fairly accurate in the big picture, retelling of Henry VIII's life, probably available on streaming services (Stan in Australia). I watched it in parallel with looking up most people who appeared on my phone to get more, and more accurate, details and found it all fascinating. Hans Holbein plays a part as Henry's favourite painter and this is how I learnt about him.

hinkley 6y ago
I've been watching a BBC series that does historical re-enactments, and in particular the series on building a castle, and the one on monastic farming in the early days of the Tudor Kings: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96 The historian keeps mentioning in a very jovial way that at the beginning of the Tudor era The Church was the second biggest land owner in England. That doesn't sound jovial to me. Further, the burgeoning middle class was developing in part as sharecroppers on church land, half of England's exports were sheep wool, the Church is responsible for a large fraction of the social safety net, owned many of the mills (and enforced a monopoly with the sharecroppers) and was selling booze at festivals. It paints for me a much more complex picture of Henry VIII's motivations for breaking with the Church. There's this sort of notion that it was a frivolous thing for him to do and now I'm examining that assertion a bit more skeptically, as spin. There were so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it objectively represented a threat to sovereignty, one that was growing larger by the decade. I'd nearly convinced myself to watch The Tudors and now I think I probably will.
- gilleain 6y ago
  His break with The Church is usually considered frivolous because the focus is often put on his desire to divorce. The real goal was to have _legitimate_ male heirs. It was never much of a problem for kings to have affairs, even out of wedlock children. For example, Henry FitzRoy - a son from an affair. However, as you mention, the church had a lot of wealth including land. Conveniently, once Henry was 'pope' of his own religion he could go about stripping the monasteries of their wealth. Actually I don't know what was done with that money. Presumably it was part of the motivation, but who knows.

erikig 6y ago

Speaking of Holbein and bones, that anamorphic skull in his famous painting "The Ambassadors" has always made me feel simultaneously puzzled, annoyed, curious and amazed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)