Capsule Portrait of Hieronymus Froben

This is a small thing, a portrait set inside a lidded capsule you could hold in one hand and carry about, closer to a keepsake than a picture for a wall. The face belongs to Hieronymus Froben, who ran the most famous printing house in Basel. His father Johann had made the family press into a magnet for scholars, and its greatest friend, the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, lived and died under the Frobens' roof, in 1536. By the time this likeness was made, around 1557, Hieronymus had spent decades turning out carefully edited Greek and Latin books that traveled across Europe. The little capsule format suits a printer. He dealt in objects meant to be handled, opened, and passed from one reader to the next. A second capsule was painted as its pendant, made to be opened and seen beside this one.