Double Portrait of Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and Dorothea Kannengießer

Hans Holbein was about 18 when he painted this pair of panels, his earliest portraits that survive. He had reached Basel only the year before, an unknown young painter from Augsburg looking for work, and his sitters were among the most powerful people in the city. On June 14, 1516, Jakob Meyer zum Hasen was elected mayor of Basel, and this commission may mark exactly that moment. Meyer faces his second wife, Dorothea Kannengiesser, across the two panels, each figure framed by a painted arch wound with gilded vines and grapes. Years later the same man would give Holbein one of his greatest commissions, the large altarpiece now known as the Darmstadt Madonna.