AFTER HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER (1497/8-1543)
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
c. 1520-40RCIN 403036
The scholar Erasmus had lived with Froben in Basel. This portrait is probably a copy of Holbein’s original of 1523. Charles I ordered both portraits to be enlarged, and commissioned Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger to add perspectival backgrounds to both. Previous conservation removed the Steenwyck background from the Froben portrait but the overpainted alterations remain here.