
Where are the bones of Hans Holbein? - prismatic
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/16/bones-hans-holbein-lockdown-arts-grisliest-mystery-plague-london-renaissance
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delsarto
If looking for some isolation entertainment there was what I thought an
excellent series "The Tudors"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors))
which is a fictionalised, but still fairly accurate in the big picture,
retelling of Henry VIII's life, probably available on streaming services (Stan
in Australia). I watched it in parallel with looking up most people who
appeared on my phone to get more, and more accurate, details and found it all
fascinating.

Hans Holbein plays a part as Henry's favourite painter and this is how I
learnt about him.

~~~
hinkley
I've been watching a BBC series that does historical re-enactments, and in
particular the series on building a castle, and the one on monastic farming in
the early days of the Tudor Kings:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96)

The historian keeps mentioning in a very jovial way that at the beginning of
the Tudor era The Church was the second biggest land owner in England. That
doesn't sound jovial to me. Further, the burgeoning middle class was
developing in part as sharecroppers on church land, half of England's exports
were sheep wool, the Church is responsible for a large fraction of the social
safety net, owned many of the mills (and enforced a monopoly with the
sharecroppers) and was selling booze at festivals.

It paints for me a much more complex picture of Henry VIII's motivations for
breaking with the Church. There's this sort of notion that it was a frivolous
thing for him to do and now I'm examining that assertion a bit more
skeptically, as spin. There were so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in
which it objectively represented a threat to sovereignty, one that was growing
larger by the decade.

I'd nearly convinced myself to watch The Tudors and now I think I probably
will.

~~~
gilleain
His break with The Church is usually considered frivolous because the focus is
often put on his desire to divorce.

The real goal was to have _legitimate_ male heirs. It was never much of a
problem for kings to have affairs, even out of wedlock children. For example,
Henry FitzRoy - a son from an affair.

However, as you mention, the church had a lot of wealth including land.
Conveniently, once Henry was 'pope' of his own religion he could go about
stripping the monasteries of their wealth.

Actually I don't know what was done with that money. Presumably it was part of
the motivation, but who knows.

~~~
hinkley
Someone, it seems, has spent quite a lot of time and effort on a wiki page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries)

~~~
gilleain
Yeah, I started to try and skim that, then realised I was not going to do it
justice to summarise it!

For example, discussion of 'spiritual income streams' and advowsons, and other
obscure topics. I wonder how many people have knowledge in medieval
ecclesiastical accounting...

~~~
hinkley
I still haven't gotten through it all. There's enough stuff here to fill a
college mid-term exam.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
TLDR: Likely in a common burial pit for Plague victims as has been thought for
a long time.

> I had not found the remains of Holbein, but it did feel like a message from
> him.

This article is more about the author contemplating death and Holbein than
about solving a mystery.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Reading the article from the top, at the title, down to the last paragraph,
felt a lot like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. 18 paragraphs of
meandering prose just to end with, "Welp, who knows?"

~~~
ojnabieoot
I mean... this piece is literary nonfiction, largely about the legacy of
Holbein, and only incidentally about the actual mystery. It's a good piece!
It's not a news article or a Wikipedia entry and not intended to distribute
facts as effciently as possible.

If you don't like literary nonfiction that is your prerogative (and I actually
have a lot of sympathy). But I feel like you're being uncharitable and holding
this author to the wrong standard. It's like reviewing a sonnet by saying "the
rhyming is distracting."

~~~
thaumaturgy
That wasn't it at all and I appreciate literary nonfiction just fine. The
author promised something at the very beginning that they didn't deliver by
the end. Had the article instead started with, "I spent some covid time
learning about Hans Holbein and his death", that would have been fine and I
probably still would have read it, had it been posted here.

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erikig
Speaking of Holbein and bones, that anamorphic skull in his famous painting
"The Ambassadors" has always made me feel simultaneously puzzled, annoyed,
curious and amazed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_\(Holbein\))

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TedDoesntTalk
> maybe Holbein let himself be thrown in a common grave

No one gets to choose where they are buried. You may put your desires in a
will or even purchase a grave site, but the choice is ultimately not yours.

