His problems were the problems of life as well as the problems of art.
The other great artist of Germany, Hans Holbein the younger, was the son of Hans Holbein the elder, a much esteemed painter in Augsburg.
This town was on the principal trade route between Northern Italy and the North Sea, so that Venetians and Milanese were constantly passing through and bringing to it much wealth and news of the luxury of their own southern life.

As a result the citizens of Augsburg dressed more expensively and decorated their houses more lavishly than did the citizens of any other town in Germany.

After a boyhood and youth spent at Augsburg, Holbein removed to Basle.

He was a designer of wood-engravings and goldsmiths work and of architectural decoration, besides being a painter.

In those days of change in South Germany, artists had to be willing to turn their hands to any kind of work they could get to do.