Desiderius Erasmus was originally a Dutch and people used to call him Rotterdam’s Heras Erasmus. Because he liked Basel as an international cultural city, he decided to settle there. He was fluent in Greek and Latin, and had a profound knowledge. He had the strong anti-church and anti-feudal ideological tendency. Hans Holbein had long heard of his performance and admired him very much and painted his portrait before meeting him. Later Holbein saw Desiderius Erasmus that he admired long in a friend’s place and Holbein immediately drew Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, which was one of the most Europe’s outstanding portraits.

The artist depicted the figure sitting and writing with his eyes looking down. This momentum was very difficult to draw, because it needed to rely on the half of the face to portray the spirit. As the soul of the window gazing down on the eyes, undoubtedly it was very difficult to portray the characters. But as the master, Holbein broke the conventional portraiture, and focused on the depicting the scholar’s writing swiftly and tried to portray the high nose, focused eyesight and firm lips. These details were very personal, showing the courageous, brave, brilliant, stable and reserved inner world. With the eyes of the figure painting, people gradually focused on the writing posture. As the second face, the hand expressions were particularly rich: skilled, free posture and the noble left hand pressed on the paper to form the second visual center in order to attract the viewers and cause people’s unlimited imagination.

The painting’s image was very succinct and the composition was very simple with changes. The painter used three levels to treat the color tone. The face and the hands were treated as the light part and the contrast was more prominent against the thick fur coat and hat. The simple background had a few changes to set off the scholar’s quiet, deep and intelligent face. This was a portrait with the unique composition. Desiderius Erasmus spoke highly of this painting and he thought this was quite similar and more importantly, it showed the essence of character’s personality.