Holbein’s Humans

On February 7, 1497, the citizens of Florence witnessed, and participated in, an abominable event that was, ever after, regretted. At the instigation of the firebrand monk Savonarola, a huge mound of priceless books and manuscripts was assembled in the Piazza della Signoria, the municipal square, and thereupon set ablaze. The victims of this vandalism were the perceived “vanities” that had corrupted the purity of Christian faith: the texts of pagan antiquity to the poems of Petrarch, the sonnets of Boccaccio to the essays of Pico della Mirandola—in short, those ideas and concepts that had initiated the blossoming of Renaissance humanism. The artist Hans Holbein the Younger was born that same year—1497—in Augsburg. Here is the kind of paradox that history provides so generously: one of the era’s greatest humanist spirits was born just as humanism was being castigated in Florence. It was a tipping point as the new century was about to begin, ushering in events that transformed Europe forever. By far the most important of these occurred in 1517 when the former Augustinian friar Martin Luther sallied forth clutching hammer and nails to post his Ninety-five Thesesto the doors of Wittenberg’s All Saints’ Church. Whereas the proto-reformer Savonarola perished at the stake for his sermons, Luther went on to fulfill the epic religious and social transformation for which his predecessor had preached and died in Florence.