Hans Holbein and the Portrait de Didler Erasme

Hans Holbein was a German artist who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and he made a significant contribution to the history of book design. But he is most famous for his portraits. He was the kings painter to Henry VIII for heaven sakes. If you Google him you will see and recognize many of his paintings. This particular postcard has the Portrait de Didler Erasme on it.

Erasme was a priest, philosopher, Latin writer, humanist, and theologian of the Burgundian Netherlands. He is recognized as one of the greatest humanists of the Renaissance. There are several famous paintings of him, you will, or should recognize them if you look them up. Yeah, I was being a little snarky with the should part of that last sentence. I think we as a society as a whole have traded in our time and energies from reading and learning about history and art to staring at our phones, computers,TV's, and iPads and so on. I am also guilty of this travesty, so I am equally chastising myself as I write this. Yes, I know we can see art and read and learn history on all of these devices, but seriously, aren't we all watching and doing other things 99% of the time?

All right, back to the postcard. It was printed in Paris and was sold at The Louvre. The only date on the postcard is June 17, 1947. Two years after the end of WWII. No stamp, but it is addressed to someone. Perhaps they handed the card over directly instead of mailing it. It's a short message, perhaps just a token to say I was thinking of you during my time in Paris. I do feel a tad guilty when I post things like this, I do the research into the artist and the piece of art and then I only write a little bit about them. I try to not sound like a textbook, and boy it's hard sometimes to not ramble on and on about some of these things. So, I will simply leave you with a promise that if you look up Hans Holbein or Erasme (both?) you will not be disappointed.