Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam writing

In 1523 Basel was one of the busiest printing towns in Europe, and Erasmus, the most famous scholar alive, was living there among its presses. Holbein painted him that year at his writing desk, seen from the side, pen in hand and mid-sentence, wrapped against the cold in a heavy coat and cap. The subject of the picture is really the work itself, the hands and the paper and the concentration of a man whose whole fame rested on what he wrote. Erasmus had several such portraits made around this time and sent them to friends and patrons abroad as gifts, which carried the sitter's image and the young painter's name across Europe together. This version stayed in Basel, the city where the scholar did much of his work, a short walk from the presses that sent his books out into the world.