Johannes Froben (1460-1527)

Johannes Froben was the Basel printer most closely associated with Erasmus — he published the Praise of Folly and the Novum Testamentum — and Holbein's portrait, dated to around 1522–1523, connects directly to the humanist circle in which the young painter was immersed during his Basel years. Holbein had arrived in Basel by 1515 and quickly became the visual chronicler of the Erasmian intelligentsia: Erasmus himself, his friends, his publishers. The Froben portrait belongs to this period of Holbein's most intense engagement with humanist patronage, before his move to England in 1526.

Holbein renders Froben in the compressed three-quarter format he favoured for male portraits, the sitter's figure brought close to the picture plane and set against a neutral colour field that concentrates attention on face and hands. Characteristically, the facial modelling is precise and psychologically searching, while the costume is treated with less individual detail.