They highjack artwork and historical atrocities for entertainment that is, actually, propaganda and provide a merely superficial examination of things, coupled with spin representative of modern leftist currents which taint the analysis and reporting e.g. the drawings of a teenager admired for worldly knowledge, which are nothing more than common teenage angst and immaturity represented as doodles any fool would do in a boring high school class, in notebook margins when a fool is a fool as most teenagers are. They tell YOU what to think. Indeed, the entire Ministry of "Truth" is very busy these days and is busy with Newspeak at every turn. Only thing is, they are much better at it than Orwell imagined.
"It's astonishing that such a fine and engaging art history class is free and available to us at any time. We live in an amazing time" I made the same comment on another video I enjoyed about dragonflies and someone commented that I had to pay for the electricity, the computer, the internet connection etc so I needed to grow up because only children believe that things are free. So while it is indeed an amazing time in which to live, we must share that time with douche bags. 😃
@@toshikotanaka3249 I think a lot of people may think it is free, but that is perhaps a philosophical point of view with which others may or may not agree. People think about things differently. When they come across as rude about it, it may be, that, we tend to read into the "tone" of the response in a negative light more often than a positive light. That happens in emails and texts all the time. I think most of us kind of read into things, I know I do. But of course, they could actually be nasty. RU-vid usually has ads, so, you pay with that time while they try to sell you something. Also, Google tracks what you watch, so you pay with some loss of privacy. So, while you may not lay out any money, something of worth is exchanged, ad revenue to google, your viewership information habits to target other ads which Google sells. So, yes it is free, but in some sense you do pay and money is made. Same with TV and radio. But as you mentioned from the "other commenter" you do have to make some outlay on your part, so he's not wrong really, even if he is rude. But again you can look at it your way as well. It kind of depends on how you make the calculus. Best wishes!
@@lisamckennon3025 I'm pretty sure Bernie Sanders was traumatized when he lost a bet and was forced to binge-watch a season of the show. Mr. Leach achieved mighty things: "Leach appeared in the Vice Channel series, 'Most Expensivest," with the rapper 2 Chainz. The episode, aired in late 2017 and was titled, "Viva Las Vegas." It included a scene with Leach and 2 Chainz eating blinis with caviar and syrup." Sadly, Leach died broke and in total obscurity. Just kidding! 😉
My late brother was a fine artist with works in galleries, homes, and businesses from Taiwan to Paris. One of my fondest memories is of him and I having coffee on the patio while he explained art - the materials, techniques, and symbology. Because of him I’ve come to love artists like Holbein, Caravaggio, Hopper…This channel ‘teaches’ art history like my brother did, so thank you from my heart. 💖🌹
Exactly! You can see their true selves on the canvas or paper (except in his paintings of Henry VIII - who looks very assembly line regal). Seeing Holbein's cartoon of Henry VIII was a revelation. You can see the spiteful vindictive monster sneering at the artist.
I have always loved Holbein's art. He brings his sitters to life. His attention to detail is breathtaking and in my opinion was the greatest portrait painter of all time. This was a great documentary. Thanks for posting.
Well, I have to disagree with you there. Not about Holbein’s skill; he was skilled, but in my opinion not the greatest portrait painter of all time. I would award that title to John Singer Sargent, whose skill, especially his portraits of Edwardians, takes my breath away.
@@loditx7706 with all due respect, it is unfair to compare Holbein to Sargent. Completely different time periods. Painters are influenced by technics and trends of their time. Sargent, whom I greatly admire as a portrait painter, was no doubt influenced by Impressionism. That Holbein could create such modern portraits of his subjects in the 16th century is truly amazing. Holbein has more in common with the style of Ingres, 200 years later.
When you encounter a Holbein portrait face to face you are overwhelmed by its power and realism. That is the magic of great art. By comparison, what you often find in many museums is merely second rate.
I know this video is a couple of years old now, but I wanted to say thank you for such an engaging and thoughtful presentation on an artist I really enjoy. Your video has helped me introduce my 6 year old son to Holbein and now he wants to visit the museum to see the pictures in person. I have promised him to make that happen. Thank you!!
@Jutta D I went with my husband last week to the Walker Art Gallery to see 'The Tudors' . It is promoted as a “once-in-a-generation” exhibition . We did thoroughly enjoy being able to see this full collection which included 68 works from the National Portrait Gallery Collection, alongside paintings from the Walker Art Gallery’s collection and a selection of additional loaned objects - some of which have rarely been on public display. If you are able to visit Liverpool then I would really recommend this exhibition.
@@twoofsix3b3g I would love to visit Liverpool, but it is a long drive from TX. *wink* As my little guy gets older and as the world comes back on line, we will be able to travel more. I am so glad you got to see it. It sounds like a dream come true.
@@juttad2127 Wow Yes , the large state of Texas is a fair old distance to travel to Liverpool indeed ! I hope that one day you can make the journey to our shores ... but please don't reserve your visit to the capital, London . There is much more to see on this little island.
This was absolutely brilliant. I just love the enthusiasm of the narrator. Holbein was so amazing but he must have been living on a knifes edge. What fearful times they were.
A bit cliche and pretentious though. I guess that's something you have to have as an art historian. Seems impossible not to, because most AHs I've ever met talk exactly like him.
Seems I'm in a minority of one but he drives me nuts, with the exaggerated emphasis on EVERY. SINGLE. WORD, like we're five years old. Which is a shame because it looks like a really interesting programmme, if only I could get through it.
I can vouch for the sentiment regarding the portrait of More at the Frick. When I was there, up close, for a moment it really seemed like he was about to turn around and look at me, it's so amazingly lifelike.
We recently watched Wolf Hall and one of the scenes that stood out was of Holbein painting the famous Thomas Cromwell portrait. This was a fantastic documentary - thank you
Rembrandt also had enormous talent. The tremendous care and patience he took in the painting of his subjects, especially the intricacies of their Elizabethan-style collars is unmatched. His paintings though dark and dreary were still magnificently detailed and awe inspiring.
Oh, it's fantastic. Those velvet sleeves are *amazing*, and then the tiny details like the little speckles of grey in the stubble! By contrast, to me the Cromwell portrait is a lot colder and less luminous, and I have to think that was in part down to Cromwell wanting to be painted in a particular way - the face he wanted others to see, giving away no secrets about his interior life. An Official Face for a Statesman, not a portrait of a personality. Though Holbein lets some of the personality show through, despite all that.
You kind of have to take it with a grain of salt because a royal/prominent portrait is also propaganda, as the presenter noted. Like, the famous portrait of Henry shows him as a strong and vibrant monarch, when in reality, his health was starting to fail at that time of his life. However, that doesn’t discount the extraordinary detail he was able to capture. His paintings do look like photos!
@@sarah_noodle true, yes. I suppose I’m thinking that even though his subjects are often made to look better than they were, it gives one a good impression of just people of the time…ie their clothing, hair styles and sometimes make up. Photographic quality.
Poor Holbein, what a crazy time to live in. Your every move calculated to not get your head chopped off. He really did bring that era to life under an immense amount of stress.
I was an art history major & Holbein & Jan Van Eyck were always my favorites. And Jan Vermeer. The Flemish. Holbein’s sketches are nothing short of stupefyingly beautiful. Such a gift he was given!
To call it a gift is to completely disregard all the hard work, time, and practice an artists places in to honing their skills. They don't just wake up one day with such impressive abilities.
@@ingloriousbetch4302 what you don’t realize is no amount of hard work, time, & practice will enable you to be a gifted artist. It’s a gift that we have no say over. I know; I was given the gift. It just came out of me. I became a successful portrait artist because God gave me the gift of being one. I’ve known other people who have spent hours, days & years working very hard to be a gifted artist. They’ve failed because they did not have the gift. It’s something you are simply born with. Period. Regardless of what you say. I’ve done nothing to deserve it. It just IS.
What an extraordinary artist Hans Holbein was. I didn't even know of his existence before I watched this video. His paintings of Cromwell and Sir Thomas More were incredible, down to the very stubble on his face, and so very lifelike, that as the presenter said, 'you could feel their breath.' I would love to go and see his paintings and especially the long narrow painting of the crucified Christ! That was so deeply moving. It really made me think and I suddenly felt like I had been physically there when The Saviour Jesus Christ was being buried after he'd died on the cross. What an incredible gift, why isn't his name lauded alongside that of Leonardo Da Vinci. He was certainly just as skilled! It's such a shame that some of his works were destroyed!
Holbein is so greatly underrated, probably because he’s not one of the Italians, but I think he’s the greatest portraitist, ever. The way he can capture the essence of a person in a just a few lines in his sketches is just amazing and his paintings glow with life. His portraits are so realistic and compelling, I don’t think Leonardo can hold a candle to him.
Henry the 8 was complaining and yelling loudly at him because he portrayed "Anna von Kleve" , the fourth wife of Henry, much prettier than she really was. Holbein waited until the King 's wrath was calming down and explained that it is usual painting princesses this way!
I truly can't say that Holbein is 'underrated'. His paintings might be not a part of the pop culture like Mona Lisa is, but he is renowned as a great Renaissance master worldwide
Hohlbein is huge in Germany ! And as for Portraitists , the brought up a few good ones but check out the 4 british Reynolds Romney Ramsay and Gainsborough let Alone Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun or Angelika Kauffman . I'd take one of they're works over an Italian at anytime :-) ( with the exception of artemisia Gentileschi ( amazing renaissance portraitist )
This was immensely enjoyable and I got quite emotional with your closing statement on his artwork. There is nothing more enjoyable than the unspoken conversations that creators such artists, composers and authors initiate through their work that travel through time and centuries to talk specifically to us and to teach us about their stories , beliefs , experiences and emotions. Thank you so much for this video, I am quite moved ❤❤❤
Thank you for bring Waldemar Januszak's documentary on Holbein's portraits to us...such a delight to have such an enthusiastic narrator to guide us to some of the hidden aspects that captured the personalities of each sitter.
ChristophersMum, agreed. He has interwoven the extraordinary Holbein's artistry and the events of all those lives and the times so masterfully. He has presented us with his own living art.
Saw another documentary by Waldemar Januszczak on early Christian art which blew my mind. He is an outstanding teacher. I want to watch everything he's done.
Oh yeah, the one where he explained how an entire belief system started with some junk from a souvenir stall? Just wait until you get to the Baroque or the Impressionists. ;-)
@@Qwazier3 I have to totally agree on the skull. I cannot imagine how he did that. Or even had the concept??? And why?? I don’t believe all that convoluted crap the guide was spewing. Art historians have had 300 years to play around with hidden symbolism, which no contemporary viewers would have grasped. If he was making philosophical statements with his art it was much too subtle for his times.
@@finallythere100 You should check out RU-vid videos of Royalty Now, which discusses just that. Also shows modern representations of people like Anne Bolyn, Cleopatra and others based on existing artworks and what was written about them.
Google 'greatest portrait painter'. You have him ahead of some big hitters there, Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Vermeer, Kahlo, da Vinci. Safer to say, 'one of the greatest'.
Holbein put previous portrait painters in the shade. Many of the later artists mentioned were more interested in expressing themselves than making portraits. Waldemar wonders what Holbein could have done with greater opportunities. Or more time...
A superb documentary. I thought I knew Holbein's work fairly well, and am familiar with Tudor history too, but found lots of fascinating insights here. The critique of 'The Ambassadors' is art criticism as its best.
Accidentally I found this documentary and because my interest for history I decided to watch it! Thank you for uploading this wonderful presentation of Holbein ́s Art. He was a great artist. His pictures seemed to be better than today's photos. I didn 't know much of his life, I only knew that he suddenly died of plague while he was painting a picture for the King. The host is a marvellous story-teller and he reminds me of David Starkey who has the same style talking about history!
Loved this! As a foreign national living in UK , I've learned so much in less than an hour and this was delivered in such an interesting and engaging way. Thank you. 🙂
His portraits also capture his veiled interpretation of their inner characters that he expressed in such subtle ways... If you study them greatly , you will start to feel the " vibe " and his own feelings for his subjects that are brilliantly hidden under the guise of propriety and duty for his service he had to uphold on a major degree. However his honesty shines with a tinge of insight..
I would like to add that his interpretation concerning The Ambassadors as a vanitas painting is deep and insightful. He is very clever and able to arouse a passion for art.
Has anyone every read the book: "Humanism and the wreck of Western Civilization"? It is no more than 150 pages but brilliant, and The Ambassadors is analyzed quite well in it. I never looked at a painting again in the same way.
That story was utterly fascinating. As always, the script, the shooting, the editing and the opportunities to see these works in their museum settings on a real trip there with the host! Wow, just wow!
This documentary is nothing short of spectacular. To have art and history combined in such an engaging way is seldom found. I loved every minute. Thank you so much!
9:06 on the one hand, the young man distracted by a fashionable beauty and stepping into a basket of a poor market peddler's eggs is directly comical on the face of it, like a stunt from the Three Stooges. But it's so worth knowing that in the rich visual symbolism of the Northern Renaissance, accidentally broken eggs often represent unchaste behavior and especially an inappropriate loss of virginity.
Only recently got into this kind of subject and I am truly amazed at how a historian can bring, in such vivid detail, life, politics and imagery from 500 years ago. I recently watched Simon Schama's history of britain and I actually cried at the episode with Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. This documentary was truly exceptional. Bravo!
This was so wonderful. Thank you! I found it fascinating how the triptych alterpiece painted by Hans the Elder shows the father with his hand on Hans the Younger's head and his other hand is pointing to Hans the Younger. His father must have realized very early on that his younger son had an extraordinary gift.
This amazing art historian makes it totally "real" and leaves out much of the pomposity of the art world per-se. I know, I studied art history for three years at Uni and it definitely wasn't taught this way. Great stuff and for everyone to enjoy and understand.
I'm so in love with Holbein. That first portrait of Henry VIII shows the street thug he really was. Later, he became THE KING. Because of Holbein. Thank you for this!
He seemed to capture their emotion and show us who he thought they were. In a time when they couldn't speak freely, he spoke through his art using symbolism (genius).
@DS40764: As I said in a prior comment, all that symbolism craptrap doled out by the presenter was exactly that. Historians have had over 300 years to study and publish their pet theories to the world and others mounted that dead horse and rode it a few more miles. If he was including symbolic messages, they were much too subtle for his contemporaries, not to say obscure. Anybody can say what they want now; he never could. We know because he was never executed.
Januszczak's art documentaries are briliant. He weaves the history, personal stories and the technical art information into stories that are educational, humorous and illuminating.
Our entire household loves Waldemar Januszczak. He is a wonderful, wonderful teacher. We've seen every one of his "Perspective" pieces and we wish there were many more! Thank you.
A Genious. He was lucky that he survived at court :) Especially when Anna von Kleve (born in Düsseldorf) was not the One, the King hoped for. But Holbein painted her so beautiful. Tough times.
Anne of Cleves was an unbelievably intelligent woman....she pretty much orchestrated the "annulment" and afterwards she and Henry were the best of friends, honestly delighting in each others company. Henry gifted her property and wealth, and often referred to her as his "beloved sister". Anne realized that to be wealthy and alive was so much better that "queen for a day" and DEAD! lol.
Your work and the series are superb. I have studied Art History for almost 40 years, but I must say that I am learning new things from you. I knew about the Ambassadors, but not to that extent you analyzed it. You forgot to mention the beautiful rug. I think it is Persian. The design is still in use there. What a marvelous and an engaging way you present your videos. I usually get tired of watching similar documentaries since I have studied the subjects before, but you present new things and new insight into them. Thanks so much.
Thank you for such a thorough and entertaining lesson on Holbein. He has long been one of my Top 10 favorite artists of all time. His drawings and paintings are just exquisite. And now I also know he led an equally fascinating life, albeit a far too short life. I am grateful for this history of this talented painter.
I’ve never seen any of these pieces of art in person. I had no idea - especially the portrait of Thomas Moore - was so astoundingly detailed! It blows my mind, it’s gorgeous!
What a joy it is to accompany Januszczak on his eccentric, illuminating and wonderfully entertaining journeys through the history of art. One learns so much, without having to endure dull, dry lectures: He has such an original imagination and vivid, lively means of expression, based on profound scholarship. Our attention is held, spellbound, throughout. Bravo! Encore!
Beautiful video; thank you! I was fortunate enough to see a wonderful Holbein exhibition at the Tate, about 20 years ago, that had some superb portraits. It was a collection of works not often on public view, and really showed the width and depth of his genius.
@@AlisonWonderland999 Anne and Christina were different people. You will notice that Holbein's portraits show each differently: while Anne was painted in a lovely/flashy dress Christine was clad only in black and the focus was on her face. Henry fell for the fancy portrait.
Hans Holbein the Younger, one of the greatest painters in a fascinating lecture that reveals a lot more than just showing his best pictures. Thorougly enjoyed it thanks to Waldemar Januszczak's presentation. 🙏👋
Excellent documentary and I certainly have an even greater appreciation of Holbein's artistic skills.. I lived In Reigate for many years and my children attended the Reigate Priory School which has an amazing Holbein Fireplace. The children who have attended that school and those who have worked there over many years are certainly blessed to experience such a beautiful piece of art on a daily basis.
WOW! I never thought, Henry 8th looked like that i "real life". Holbein was a snapshot photogapher! His portraits are unbelievable! His precision is impeccable
@@Pete-z6e the list of things which to others are essentials of culture, yet which you have never seen or heard of yourself, could not be read aloud in full in your lifetime, so why don’t you reflect on what a complete ass you’ve been
He was handsome and athletic when young, tall... he was a typical Plantagenet in physicality as well as a Tudor, his mom Elizabeth of york and paternal grandmother Margaret Beaufort, were both Plantagenet. Both Margaret and maternal grandmother Elizabeth Woodville were beauties in their day as well as exceptionally crafty, resourceful, and tenacious. Henry 8th, even if many dont like him, had a strong background. It is not surprising that Henry s daughter was Elizabeth I the Great
Incredible artist! Thank G-d for artists like this. We learn so much about history with these works of art. I am truly grateful for these artists. Thank you for this!
I still think of Waldemar as "Waldemar Thing" as Private Eye used to call him. His talks on Art - especially Art history are always fascinating and well-informed. His explanation of the Arnolfini painting re-opened my eyes to a work I thought I already knew well.
The shcolar has a very impressive presence and he knows how to guide the viewer through the meanders of Art history. I have seen several of this documentaries and I always enjoy them.
Excellent love the way Januszczak presents us with the history , he makes it so watchable , I wish he had been my history teacher , will definitely watch other documentaries, thank you
Amazing, I love that painting with the glass reflection, so much detail in the little things. Really gobsmackingly good. BTW Anne Boleyn wasn't accused of Witchcraft in her trial.
A trinity of informatives that keeps the listener spellbound. Plus, I love Waldemar's ability to connect what at first appears "mysterious" about paintings and painters.
This was fascinating, I've learned a great deal about the context surrounding Holbein's wonderful works. In addition to the content itself (the info presented), I found the host so engaging and entertaining; he adds so much value. I really enjoyed him and his conversational and very animated communication style. Reminds me of every favorite professor I've had ❤
I’ve seen the Thomas More portrait dozens of times at the Frick, including now in the Breuer building, plus other royal portraits from the two years I lived in London. But this really helps put them all in historical context and that of his own career. Thanks for posting these here where a global audience can learn from them.
