Ambrosius Holbein

Ambrosius Holbein has an almost famous name. He was the elder brother of Hans Holbein the Younger, the painter who would later portray the court of Henry VIII of England, and the two learned their trade together in the workshop of their father, Hans Holbein the Elder, in Augsburg in southern Germany.

Around 1515 both brothers moved to Basel, a Swiss city then booming with book printing, hoping for work illustrating the new presses. Ambrosius found it, designing woodcuts and title pages and painting a handful of fine portraits. Then he disappears from the record around 1519, apparently dead in his mid-twenties. Among the little that survives are the woodcuts he cut for the Basel printers, including the illustrations for a 1518 edition of Thomas More's Utopia, the book that gave the word its meaning.