Head of a male saint

This small head is one of a pair, a male and a female saint, and both count among the earliest paintings we have from Hans Holbein the Younger. He made them around 1515, not long after he and his older brother Ambrosius left Augsburg, where their father kept a busy workshop, and came south to Basel to look for work as journeyman painters. Holbein was still in his late teens. Neither head was made to stand alone. Each was cut at some point from a larger panel, which is why the saint fills the whole small field with a single face and the curved edge of a halo.