Ambrosius Holbein was a German and Swiss artist in painting, drawing and printmaking.
Background
Like his younger brother, he was born in Augsburg (which today is in Bavaria, but then was a free imperial city), a center of art, culture and trade at that time. His father Hans Holbein the Elder was a pioneer and leader in the transformation of German art from the Gothic to the Renaissance style.
Career
He was the elder brother, by about three years, of Hans Holbein the Younger, but he appears to have died in his mid twenties leaving behind only a small body of work. In 1515 Ambrosius lived in the Swiss town of Stein am Rhein, where he helped a Schaffhausen painter named Thomas Schmid with the murals in the main hall of the Street George monastery. In 1517 he was enrolled in a register of the Basel painters" guild and in 1518 he was naturalized as a citizen there.
However he disappears from records soon after, and is assumed to have died around 1519.
Both are now in the Basel Kunstmuseum. Ambrosius Holbein ranks among the most important of Basel"s illustrators and prominent "small format" artists.