Portrait of Erasmus (1467-1536) writing

In the 1520s the most famous mind in Europe was Erasmus of Rotterdam, and he was living in Basel, the Swiss city that had become a capital of humanist printing, where his books poured off the presses. Holbein was in the same town, still a young painter, and he made several portraits of the scholar. Erasmus used them the way a modern figure might use a photograph: as gifts, sent across Europe to friends and patrons who would never meet him in person. One such Holbein portrait travelled to England and helped open the door there for the painter, who soon left to build his career at the court of Henry the Eighth. Here Erasmus is shown from the side, absorbed, a reed pen moving steadily across the page. The Louvre still keeps Holbein's separate chalk studies for those careful hands.