Madonna enthroned with child and two figures

Holbein's Madonna Enthroned with Child and Two Figures (1522) at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn is one of his few surviving altarpiece commissions, demonstrating his command of the Italian altarpiece tradition he had absorbed through prints, drawings, and possible travel to Lombardy. The enthroned Madonna flanked by two saints follows the sacra conversazione format that Bellini and Raphael had established, adapted to the Swiss humanist context in which Holbein was then working. The work's quality of devotional seriousness and its careful figure organization reflect both the Italian influence and the specifically northern European religious sensibility that would eventually align Holbein with Protestant rather than Catholic visual culture.

The monumental Virgin figure shows Holbein's study of Italian models, while the precise rendering of textures and the donors' realistic portraits maintain the Northern tradition of meticulous observation.