XVIII. PORTRAITS OF 1533-1536
Portraits of Robert Cheseman—Thomas Cromwell—Lord Abergavenny—Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette—The Earl of Arundel’s collection of pictures—Roundels of a man and his wife at Vienna—Portraits of members of the Poyntz family—Nicolas Bourbon—His verses in praise of Holbein—Design for the title-page of Coverdale’s Bible—Other woodcut designs produced in England—Hall’s Chronicle—Portraits of Sir Thomas Wyat—Margaret Wyat, Lady Lee—Sir Richard Southwell—Sir Thomas le Strange—Lady Vaux—Sir Nicholas Carew.
THERE is only one portrait by Holbein bearing the date 1533 which can be said with any certainty to represent an Englishman. This is the very beautiful one of Robert Cheseman, now in the Hague Gallery, which has been known for so long under the erroneous title of “Henry VIII’s Falconer” (Pl. 11).[104] It represents a man holding a much higher social position than that of a mere keeper of hawks. Henry’s falconers were paid at a rate which did not permit them to employ the services of the leading artist of the day should they wish—which is not at all probable—to have their portraits painted. Their wages, in fact, ranged between fifty and twenty shillings a month. Cheseman, in common with other gentlemen of that period, chose to be painted with his favourite hawk upon his wrist, for the same reason that the country squires of the eighteenth century were so often depicted with their favourite dogs. Another example of this habit is to be seen in the equally fine portrait by Holbein of an unknown man, also in the Hague Gallery, dated 1542, who is evidently a gentleman, and not a professional falconer.[105]
Footnote 104:
Woltmann, 159. Reproduced by Davies, p. 158; Knackfuss, fig. 122; Ganz, Holbein, p. 102; and elsewhere.
Footnote 105:
See p. 203.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF ROBERT CHESEMAN]
Robert Cheseman, of Dormanswell, near Norwood, in Middlesex, and Northcote, in Essex, was a man of wealth, and one of the leading commoners of the first-named county. He was born in 1485, son and heir of Edward Cheseman, Cofferer and Keeper of the Wardrobe to Henry VII, and succeeded to the family estates in 1517. His father is mentioned in a pardon granted on March 2nd, 1486,[106] “to Edward Cheseman of London, gentleman, of all fines, forfeitures, etc., due to the King or to Richard III, late, in deed and not of right, King of England,” which was granted him as one of the executors of the will of Thomas Windesore, Constable of Windsor Castle. There was also a William Cheseman, probably an uncle of Robert, who in 1485 and 1486 received grants of the offices of bailiff of the rapes of Lewes and of Braneburgh, and of Clerk of the Market of the town of Lewes, “in consideracion of the true and feithfulle service that our welbeloved servaunt and true liegeman William Cheseman hathe doone unto us, as well in the parties of beyonde the see, as at oure late victorious felde within this oure royaume.”[107]
Footnote 106:
Rev. William Campbell, Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, Rolls Publications, 1873, p. 336.
Footnote 107:
Ibid., p. 345.
On August 30th, 1523, Robert Cheseman was appointed Commissioner for Essex to collect the subsidy,[108] and in December 1528 was placed upon the commission of the peace for Middlesex. In 1530 he represented the same county on a commission “to make inquisition in different counties concerning the possessions held by Thomas Cardinal Archbishop of York (Wolsey) on 2 Dec. 15 Hen. VIII, when the Cardinal committed certain offences against the Crown for which he was attainted.”[109] During his life he served on a number of commissions for collecting tithes, subsidies, and the like, including one in 1533, the year in which he sat to Holbein. In 1536 his name appears among a list of people from whom money is due to the King by obligations,[110] while in the same year he supplied thirty men for the army against the Northern rebels, which proves him to have been a man of considerable substance.[111] He served on the Grand Jury at the trials of Sir Geoffrey Pole, Sir Edward Neville, and others, in 1538,[112] and of Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham for treason in connection with the trial of Queen Catherine Howard in 1541.[113] He was among the “squires” selected to welcome Anne of Cleves when she first landed in England, and was, in fact, one of some half-dozen men of position who represented Middlesex on all such public occasions. In 1543 he supplied ten footmen for the army going into Flanders “for the defence of the Emperor’s Low Countries,[114] and in the following year he himself appears to have gone with the English army into France, and it is noted against his name in the muster book that he had “10 footmen already beyond the seas.” He married Alice, daughter of Henry Dacres, of Mayfield, Staffordshire, a merchant-tailor and alderman of Fleet Street, London. She died on July 31st, 1547, and was buried at Norwood. His daughter and heir, Anne Cheseman, married Francis Chamberlayne.
Footnote 108:
C.L.P., vol. iii. pt. ii. 3282.
Footnote 109:
C.L.P., vol. iv. pt. iii. 6516, 6598.
Footnote 110:
C.L.P., vol. x. 1257.
Footnote 111:
C.L.P., vol. xi. 580.
Footnote 112:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. ii. 986.
Footnote 113:
C.L.P., vol. xvi. 1395 (p. 645).
Footnote 114:
C.L.P., vol. xviii. pt. i. 832 (p. 467).
The portrait of Cheseman is a half-length, facing the spectator, the head and eyes turned to the left. He wears a purplish red silk doublet, and a black cloak trimmed with fur, and the customary black cap. On his left hand, which is gloved, he carries a hooded hawk, with a bell on its claw, and with the other hand strokes its feathers. He is clean-shaven, and his long hair, which is beginning to turn grey, covers his ears. Across the plain blue background, which has turned green through the discoloration of the varnish, on either side of the sitter’s head, runs the inscription in Roman lettering:
“ROBERTVS CHESEMAN. ETATES SVÆ XLVIII · ANNO DM. M D XXXIII.”
The painting of the beautiful plumage of the bird is a most masterly piece of work, and the keen, piercing eyes and clean-cut face of its master are rendered with that unerring truth and wonderful insight which give Holbein his foremost place among the supreme painters of portraits.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF ROBERT CHESEMAN]
This picture was seen by Sir Joshua Reynolds during his tour through Flanders and Holland in 1781, and in his diary he describes it as:—“A portrait by Holbein; admirable for its truth and precision and extremely well coloured. The blue flat ground which is behind the head gives a general effect of dryness to the picture: had the ground been varied, and made to harmonize more with the figure, this portrait might have stood in competition with the works of the best portrait painters.”[115] This accusation of a slight “dryness” is to some extent true of certain, though by no means all, of the portraits painted by Holbein in England, when compared with some of his earlier work done in Basel. It has been suggested that this may have been due to a growing habit, caused by the increasing demands made upon his time, of placing greater reliance on his preliminary chalk studies in painting a portrait, and thereby reducing the number of sittings given him by the actual model.[116]
Footnote 115:
A Journey to Flanders and Holland in the year 1781. Works, vol. ii.
Footnote 116:
Wornum, p. 251-2.
An old copy of this portrait was lent to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 173A), by the Rev. Charles Shepherd. The original picture was once in the royal collections of England. It was No. 8 on the list of objects of art which Queen Anne reclaimed from the Dutch States at the death of William III as having formed part of the collection belonging to the English royal house. Her claim was unsuccessful, and the picture remained in Holland. On the back of the panel are the letters W.E.H.P.L.C. and the seal of Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange-Nassau, in whose collection it was, and afterwards in that of William V. The second fine portrait of a man with a hawk in the Hague Gallery,[117] dated 1542, was another of the pictures claimed by Anne, and was No. 21 in her list. A third picture in the Hague, the beautiful portrait of a young woman[118] (No. 275), now considered to represent Holbein’s wife, has been already described. The Cheseman and the 1542 portrait were evidently taken over to Holland, with other paintings, by William III during one of his visits to the Hague.
Footnote 117:
See p. 203.
Footnote 118:
See Vol. i. p. 106.
A small round portrait on wood, in the collection of Frau L. Goldschmidt-Przibram in Brussels,[119] is dated 1533. According to both Woltmann and Zahn it is in a very damaged condition, but is a genuine work of Holbein. It represents a young man at half-length, facing the spectator, but with the head slightly turned to the left. He is clean-shaven, with bushy hair half hiding his ears, and wears the small flat black cap and costume of the German merchants of the Steelyard, and he was probably a member of that body. The right hand only is shown, holding a carnation. Across the plain background, on either side of the head, is inscribed “ANNO 1533.” The face is a very attractive one, and the portrait has for years been regarded as representing the painter himself. Dr. Woltmann so included it in his book, but it bears little resemblance to the genuine portraits of Holbein. It was previously in the Jäger, Gsell, and Fräulein Gabriele Przibram collections in Vienna.
Footnote 119:
Woltmann, 261. Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 104. Exhibition of Miniatures at Brussels, 1912, No. 855_a_.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CROMWELL]
During 1533, or in the first months of 1534, Holbein painted Thomas Cromwell. The future Earl of Essex and “viceregent of the King in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm” was then only at the beginning of his political career, and filled the minor post of Master of the Jewel House. The portrait of him in the possession of the Earl of Caledon,[120] at Tyttenhanger Park, St. Albans, which is evidently the original of several versions still in existence, although it has suffered greatly in the course of time, must be regarded as a genuine work of Holbein’s brush. The face has undergone severe repainting, but in many of the details his hand can be clearly traced. On one of the papers on the table in front of the sitter is the following address: “To our trusty and right wellbiloved Counsailler Thomas Cromwell, Maister of o^r Jewelhouse,” which proves that it cannot have been painted later than the first months of 1534, for early in that year Cromwell was promoted to be First Secretary of State and Master of the Rolls. He must, therefore, have sat to Holbein at some date between the latter half of 1532 and the spring of 1534, having been appointed to the Jewel House on the 12th April 1532 in place of Robert Amadas, the jeweller. If done after his advancement, his higher titles would have been noted in the inscription.
Footnote 120:
Woltmann, 249. Reproduced by Davies, p. 159; Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 180; Cust, Burlington Magazine, vol. xx. p. 7; Ganz, Holbein, p. 106.
It is very possible that Cromwell first made the acquaintance of Holbein through their common friends, the merchants of the Steelyard, with whom the future Lord Privy Seal was closely allied in more than one business transaction, more particularly in connection with the wool trade, of which the Hanse merchants then had a monopoly. He also made constant use of their services later on in his career for the collection of continental news, the forwarding of diets to various English ambassadors abroad, the translating of foreign letters, and so on.
Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish Ambassador in London, in reply to a query from his Imperial master as to the character of Henry’s new minister, sent, in November 1535, a short and amusing biographical sketch of his career, interesting as showing how Cromwell appeared in the eyes of a foreigner.
“The Secretary, Cromwell,” he wrote, “is the son of a poor farrier, who lived in a little village a league and a half from here (London), and is buried in the parish graveyard. His uncle, father of the cousin whom he has already made rich, was cook (cousinier) of the late archbishop of Canterbury. Cromwell was ill-behaved when young, and after an imprisonment was forced to leave the country. He went to Flanders, Rome, and elsewhere in Italy. When he returned he married the daughter of a shearman, and served in his house; he then became a solicitor. The cardinal of York, seeing his vigilance and diligence, his ability and promptitude, both in evil and good, took him into his service, and employed him principally in demolishing five or six good monasteries. At the Cardinal’s fall no one behaved better to him than Cromwell. After the Cardinal’s death Wallop attacked him with insults and threats, and for protection he procured an audience of the King, and promised to make him the richest king that ever was in England. The King immediately retained him on his Council, but told no one for four months. Now he stands above everyone but the Lady (Anne Boleyn), and everyone considers he has more credit with his master than Wolsey had—in whose time there were others who shared his credit, as Maistre Conton (Compton), the duke of Suffolk, and others, but now there is no one else who does anything. The Chancellor is only his minister. Cromwell would not accept the office hitherto, but it is thought that soon he will allow himself to be persuaded to take it. He speaks well in his own language, and tolerably in Latin, French and Italian; is hospitable, liberal both with his property and with gracious words, magnificent in his household and in building.”[121]
Footnote 121:
C.L.P., vol. ix. 862.
This is the man whom Holbein painted when he was merely Master of the Jewel House and Clerk of the Hanaper of Chancery. He is shown, in Lord Caledon’s picture, at half-length, seated in a high-backed wooden seat, his head and body turned to the left, looking towards a window, only a small part of which is seen, with a small table beneath it covered with a Turkish cloth, on which papers are placed. He is dressed in a black surcoat with a deep fur collar, and a black cap. He rests his left elbow on another table in front of him, and holds a paper in his left hand, on the first finger of which is a heavy signet ring. The right hand is not shown. He is clean-shaven, and his bushy hair almost covers his ears and falls on the back of his neck. On the table are pen and ink, a richly-bound book with jewelled clasps, and several papers, on one of which is the inscription already quoted. On a second paper the word “Counseilor” can be deciphered at the head. The face, with its small eyes set closely together, its thin, compressed lips and double chin, and its sinister expression of cold determination, is a far from attractive one, and lays bare that side of Cromwell’s character for which he was so heartily hated by the Catholic party. In it is to be seen little of that other side of him, of which, after his downfall, Cranmer spoke, when writing to Henry on behalf of his old minister. “Cromwell,” he said, “was such a servant in my judgment, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had.” A large scroll stretching across the top of the picture, evidently added after Cromwell’s death, contains a Latin inscription in his praise. The portrait is on panel, 30 in. × 24 in.
[Sidenote: PORTRAITS OF THOMAS CROMWELL]
A smaller portrait of Cromwell, a circular painting with a green background, and enclosed in a painted square stone frame, showing the head only, is described by Wornum and Woltmann.[122] It was at that time in the possession of Captain Ridgway, of Waterloo Place, London.[123] It is 12 in. square, and differs in some details from the Tyttenhanger portrait. Both writers appear to regard it as a genuine work by Holbein. A portrait of Cromwell was one of the few works mentioned by name by Van Mander when describing De Loo’s collection of Holbein’s works:—“the old Lord Crauwl, about a foot and a half high, taken unusually artistically by Holbein.” Although the dimensions do not quite agree, Woltmann suggests that Captain Ridgway’s little picture was the one thus described. According to Mr. Lionel Cust,[124] the few portraits of Cromwell which have any claim to authenticity are all traceable to Holbein, and fall into two groups, or at most three, each group deriving from an original portrait by him. In the first class are the Tyttenhanger picture and others based directly upon it. This portrait, he says, descends direct from Sir Thomas Pope, one of Cromwell’s instruments in the suppression of the monasteries. The second group includes such pictures as the one in the National Portrait Gallery (No. 1683, 16¾ in. × 13 in.),[125] purchased in 1897, of which there are several versions in existence, though there is no portrait of this type so far traced which can be attributed to Holbein himself. The pictures in this group show the head and shoulders only, and differ in minor details from the Tyttenhanger type. The look of craftiness is accentuated, and he is shown with a slight grey whisker, and the pointed arch of the eyebrows is more strongly marked. The third group, which is closely allied to the second, includes the recently-discovered miniature in the late Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s collection,[126] and the medal in the British Museum, of the date 1538, which, according to Mr. Cust, is evidently based on a drawing by Holbein.[127] There was a portrait of Cromwell in the Arundel collection, which is entered in the inventory as “ritratto de Cromwell.” This was evidently the one in the possession of De Loo, which afterwards passed, with other works by Holbein, from that dealer’s collection into that of the Earl. Hollar’s engraving,[128] which is not signed or dated, does not appear to have been taken from the portrait at Tyttenhanger, but was most probably based upon the Arundel picture; but whether that picture was an original by Holbein, now lost, or one of the numerous versions now in existence, it is impossible to say. One of these versions is in the collection of M. Ch. Léon Cardon, Brussels.
Footnote 122:
Woltmann, 212, and i. 376; Wornum, p. 287.
Footnote 123:
Now, according to Dr. Ganz (Holbein, p. 241) in that of M. Kleinberger, Paris.
Footnote 124:
In an interesting paper on “A newly-discovered miniature of Thomas Cromwell,” Burlington Magazine, vol. xx., October 1911, pp. 5-7.
Footnote 125:
Reproduced in Mr. Cust’s illustrated catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery, vol. i. p. 19, and in the Burlington Magazine, vol. xx. p. 7.
Footnote 126:
Described in chapter xxv. See p. 231 and Pl. 31 (6).
Footnote 127:
Reproduced in Burlington Magazine, vol. xx. p. 7.
Footnote 128:
Parthey, 1386.
Several portraits of Cromwell were included in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890, wrongly attributed to Holbein. Among them was a bust portrait, to the right, with a jewel in the cap, and the Garter George suspended from a black ribbon, lent by the Duke of Sutherland (No. 39, 20 in. × 17 in.); a small half-length, to the left, wearing both collar and George of the Garter, from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (No. 160, 22½ in. × 17 in.); and versions of the Tyttenhanger picture lent by Mr. Charles Penruddocke (No. 162, 18 in. × 16 in.), and the Duke of Manchester (No. 163, 14 in. × 11½ in.).[129] In addition to the Hollar print, engravings were made, from one or other of the copies of the original picture, by Houbraken for his Heads of Illustrious Persons, 1745, from a picture in the possession of Mr. Edward Southwell, and by Freeman for Lodge’s Portraits, 1835, the latter from a picture in the possession of Sir Thomas Constable, Bt., at Tixall. Probably both engravings were done from the same painting.
Footnote 129:
A portrait of Cromwell, attributed to Holbein, the property of the late Mr. J. P. Hardy, was sold at Christie’s on 13th December 1912.
There is a magnificent drawing, one of the most powerful studies Holbein ever accomplished, in the collection of the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery at Wilton House,[130] which until recently has been generally regarded as a portrait of the Lord Privy Seal—though it bears little likeness to the Tyttenhanger panel—because the words “Lord Cromwell” and “Holbein” have been inscribed in the bottom corners by a later hand than the painter’s. It is in black and red chalk on paper tinted pink, with slight touches of colour on the fur of the gown and the jewel in the cap. The outlines of the features have been reinforced in ink, but this, in contradistinction to some of the drawings in the Windsor collection, where such retouching is evidently from a later hand, has been carried out with such power combined with delicacy that it seems certain that it was done by Holbein himself. The drawing evidently at one time formed part of the Windsor series, at the date when the latter was given by Charles I to an earlier Earl of Pembroke in exchange for the little “St. George” by Raphael, which is now in the Hermitage. This book of drawings was afterwards given by Pembroke to the Earl of Arundel, and it is most probable that the so-called “Cromwell” drawing remained behind, perhaps by accident. Quite recently it has been definitely identified as the portrait of George Nevill, third Lord Abergavenny, by means of a miniature in the possession of the Duke of Buccleuch, in water-colours, on a playing card, which is based on Holbein’s drawing, and is inscribed “G. Abergaveny.”[131] It bears a very strong likeness to the drawing, and is attributed to Holbein himself. Further proof of identity is obtained from a picture, which agrees with the miniature but does not show the hands, in the collection of the Marquis of Abergavenny at Edridge Castle, Kent. Both the Wilton drawing and the miniature were included in the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909 (No. 70 and Case C. No. 22), and the former was in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 1414).
Footnote 130:
Woltmann, 263. Reproduced by Davies, p. 162; Vasari Society, pt. v. No. 28; Catalogue of Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909, Pl. xxviii.
Footnote 131:
Reproduced in The Connoisseur, vol. xviii. No. 71, July 1907, frontispiece (in colour); and in the Illustrated Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Exhibition, Pl. xxxiii.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF MORETTE]
Singularly few examples remain of work executed by Holbein in 1534 and 1535. There are no dated portraits from his brush of the former year, with the exception of the two small roundels in Vienna, and none of the latter year, for the date on the beautiful miniature of little Henry Brandon at Windsor, usually given as 1535, has been misread.[132] There are one or two portraits which must have been done during this period, among them the Morette, the drawing of Nicolas Bourbon, and a portrait of Nicholas Poyns the younger; but there are so few examples which can be definitely given to these two years that the writer hazards the conjecture that for a part of the time Holbein was out of England. Throughout his too short career the painter seems never to have severed his connection with Basel, nor to have broken the friendly relationships which existed between him and its Council. He remained a citizen of his adopted city, and apparently retained his membership of the Painters’ Guild, until his death. To do so he must have paid some heed to the somewhat strict laws as to the duties of citizenship then in force. The customary leave of absence was about two years, and Holbein may well have returned to Basel more often than is generally supposed. He did not accede to the Council’s request contained in their letter of September 2nd, 1532, but at the end of two years, in the summer of 1534, he may possibly have paid a visit of some duration to Switzerland, returning to England in the summer or autumn of 1535. This is only conjecture, for there is no evidence of his presence in Basel during that period, but it would account for the lack of English portraits of that date, and would also help to explain the fact—in some ways inexplicable—that he did not enter the service of the royal house of England until about 1536. Against this assumption it must be noted that when he paid his well-known visit to Basel in September 1538 he was feasted and fêted by his fellow-citizens in a way which seems to indicate that he had been absent for a longer period than three years. Still, it is not impossible that he was there in 1534-5, and that he even paid a final visit home, about the winter of 1540-41, before his death in 1543, in this way retaining until the end his citizenship and the pension paid by the Basel authorities to his wife.
Footnote 132:
See p. 225.
The wonderful portrait of Morette in the Dresden Gallery (Pl. 12)[133] must certainly have been painted during the period under discussion. Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette, a well-known French diplomatist and fighting man of his day, who had paid more than one earlier visit to England, in each case of short duration, arrived in London as French resident ambassador in place of Castillon, on Good Friday, April 3rd, 1534, and returned to France on July 26th, 1535. This was his last and longest sojourn in this country, and Holbein must have painted him between these two dates. Even though the painter may have paid a visit to Basel as suggested, it would still leave ample time for the portrait to have been taken in the summer of either year. Probably Holbein’s introduction to Morette was brought about through the good offices of Jean de Dinteville. Though the Bailly of Troyes had left England in the previous November, Morette may have seen the “Ambassadors” picture in France in the interval, or have heard of it from Castillon, who succeeded Dinteville in London. In any case, Morette, who was one of the special ambassadors who came over for the signing of the treaty in the spring of 1528, was acquainted with at least one work of Holbein, the “Battle of Spurs,” in the temporary banqueting-hall at Greenwich, to which the King had drawn the particular notice of the envoys.
Footnote 133:
Woltmann, 145. Reproduced by Davies, p. 156; Knackfuss, fig. 128; Ganz, Holbein, p. 116.
[Sidenote: THE ARUNDEL COLLECTION]
The first known reference to the portrait of Morette occurs in the correspondence of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, the great collector of Holbein’s work, who employed friends and agents on the Continent to hunt up and buy everything from his brush that they could discover. He got together a remarkably fine series of pictures and drawings by Holbein, which, on his death at Padua, 1646, came into the possession of his widow, then residing in Holland. Upon her decease in 1654, at Amsterdam, her youngest son, Lord Stafford, who was living with her, propounded a nuncupative will in his own favour, and began as quickly as he could to sell the pictures, which it had been the intention of the Earl should become heirlooms, but the deed had never been executed. The sale, however, was stopped by other representatives of the Arundel family, and a lawsuit resulted. Among the documents in connection with these proceedings was one of very great interest, an inventory of the pictures and objects of art in the possession of the Countess at the time of her death. The original list, which was in Italian, and probably drawn up for the Earl in Padua, has disappeared, but a copy of it has been recently discovered by Miss Mary L. Cox in the Record Office. This valuable document was evidently copied from the original by some clerk in Amsterdam ignorant of the Italian language, for it is full of mistakes. The complete inventory was published by Miss Cox, with an introduction by Mr. Lionel Cust, in the Burlington Magazine.[134] From it we learn that Lord Arundel possessed no less than forty-one works by or attributed to Holbein, in addition to the drawings, which are not included in the inventory. Among the portraits, some of which have been already noted, were those of the Duchess of Milan, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Edward VI, the Duke of Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyat, Cromwell, Erasmus, the Earl of Southampton, Thomas and John Godsalve, Sir Edward Gage, Sir Henry and Lady Guldeford, Archbishop Warham, Dr. John Chamber, Derich Born, and Sir Thomas More and his family, as well as several unnamed portraits, to all of which reference will be found in these pages. Very possibly some few of these pictures, such as the full-length of the Earl of Surrey, were not by Holbein, though given to him in the list. Lord Arundel also possessed several works which so far have not been traced, though the titles may help towards their future rediscovery. Among them is a portrait said to be of Holbein’s wife, which is most probably the picture at the Hague;[135] one of a lady “con gli mani giunti e un agato atacato al beretino”; another of a lady, aged 40, with the inscription, “In all things, Lord, thy wilbe fulfilled”; the portrait of a musician;[136] one of an armed man, which may possibly be the portrait of Sir Nicholas Carew; the portrait of the goldsmith Hans of Zürich; the Death’s-head and bones already referred to in speaking of Ambrosius Holbein; a picture of gamblers or people playing games (“un quadretto con divers figure Jocatori, &c.”); another with the title “Legge Vecchio & Nove” (ancient and modern law); and the Arms of England in water-colours. Before his relations could interfere Lord Stafford had sold a number of pictures to the Spanish Ambassador in London, to Eberhard Jabach, of Cologne, and to the agent of the Archduke Leopold, and this may account for the fact that certain of them remained abroad, such as the Jane Seymour and Dr. Chamber in Vienna, and the Thomas and John Godsalve in Dresden.
Footnote 134:
Vol. xix., August and September 1911, and vol. xx., January 1912, from which the above facts are taken.
Footnote 135:
See Vol. i. p. 106.
Footnote 136:
See above, p. 52.
In a letter from Turin, dated November 26th, 1628, from Sir Isaac Wake to William Boswell, the former states: “The picture after which you do seem to inquire was made by Hans Holbein in the time of Henry VIII, and is of a Count of Moretta. My Lord of Arundel doth desire it, and if I can get it at any reasonable price he must and shall have it.”[137] The picture was evidently then in the market, under the true names of both sitter and painter, but apparently the price was too high, and so Arundel, who possessed the original drawing for it, was not able to secure it. It was eventually bought by the Marquis Massimiliano Montecucculi, ambassador of the house of Este at Parma and Rome, and presented by him to the Duke Francesco d’Este, and so passed into the Modena gallery. According to Venturi, the portrait was at that time attributed by the Marquis Montecucculi to “Gio. Olben.” Some thirty years after the date of Wake’s letter, Scannelli, in his Microcosmo,[138] describes, under the name of “Olbeno,” a picture in the Modena collection which can be no other than the “Morette.” He says: “There was also lately among ultramontane painters a certain Olbeno, a highly qualified master, and in painting individual portraits verily stupendous. It is true in his execution there is something of that native hardness which belongs to his country in other respects; yet through his extreme diligence and truthful fidelity to nature it shows a high degree of perfection. As we see, for example, in the already noticed gallery of H.S.H. the Duke of Modena, where there is a half-length portrait by him which in its exact imitation of nature is quite wonderful.”
Footnote 137:
For this and other letters see Sainsbury, Original Unpublished Papers, &c., 1859, Appendix, Nos. 44, 53, 55, 57. See also Appendix (K).
Footnote 138:
Ed. 1657, Vol. ii. p. 265. See also Vol. i. p. 306.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF MORETTE]
At a later date the true name of the sitter appears to have become lost. It has been suggested[139] that, owing to the similarity of the sound, the name Morette was first changed to Morus, as the name of Sir Thomas More would naturally suggest itself in connection with Holbein. In Italy, Morus, again naturally, would become Moro, and so in course of time the picture was said to represent Lodovico Sforza, familiarly known as Il Moro. There is no need, however, to bring in the name of Sir Thomas More at all. The change must have been directly from Morette to Maurus, which was Sforza’s second name, from which his popular nickname “Il Moro” was taken.[140] Holbein’s name in connection with the picture having been by this time forgotten, the title “Maurus,” combined with the beauty of the work, gave rise to the supposition that it could only be from the hand of Sforza’s great countryman, Leonardo da Vinci; and it was as a portrait of Il Moro by Leonardo that it was purchased by Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, from the Duke Francesco of Este-Modena in 1746. It formed part of a collection of about one hundred pictures, known as the “Modena Gallery,” some of which are now among the chief masterpieces of the Dresden Gallery, which, after long and secret negotiations, the Elector procured for his own collection at the cost of one hundred thousand sequins and very liberal largesse to various agents and go-betweens. For the next hundred years it remained at Dresden as a portrait of Lodovico and a masterpiece by Da Vinci. Then Rumohr, the critic, pointed out that the style and quality of the painting proved it to be an undoubted work by Holbein, while at the same time Von Quandt produced evidence to show that it did not represent Il Moro, but a certain jeweller employed by Henry VIII named Hubert Morett. The paper he contributed to the Kunstblatt in 1846 was accompanied by a reproduction of Hollar’s engraving of the original drawing of the picture, upon which his case was based. This engraving is inscribed “Mr. Morett” and “W. Hollar fecit, ex Collectione Arundeliana. A^o 1647. 31 Decē.” In spite of Rumohr’s criticism, however, the picture continued to be described in the official catalogues as by Leonardo, the authorities, it is said, objecting to the change of name, as in so doing the collection would be robbed of its sole work by Da Vinci; and it was not until the death of King Frederick Augustus that Holbein was allowed to come into his own again. There was considerable opposition, too, to the change from Il Moro to Mr. Morett, the goldsmith, Hollar’s engraving being a poor one, and not very much like the picture. The title was not changed, nor was the final restitution made to Holbein until 1860, in which year Holbein’s original drawing for the portrait made its appearance in London, in the sale of Samuel Woodburne, the art dealer, when it fetched £43, and was purchased immediately afterwards for the Saxon Government by Herr L. Gruner, the director of the Dresden Gallery.[141] For the next twenty-five years the picture was known as “Mr. Hubert Morett, goldsmith to Henry VIII,” who was considered by all writers to be an Englishman, his sumptuous apparel, quite unlike the sober garments worn by jewellers in those days, being explained away by a reference to the tradition that in the sixteenth century all Englishmen, of whatever class of society, had a passion for finery in dress.
Footnote 139:
Wornum, p. 301, and Dresden Catalogue, 1884.
Footnote 140:
See Milan under the Sforza, by C. M. Ady, p. 124.
Footnote 141:
Woltmann, 146. Reproduced by Wornum (photograph), p. 300.
As a matter of fact Hubert Morett was not an Englishman at all, nor could he be rightly described as “goldsmith” to Henry VIII. He was a Frenchman, one of several jewellers of Paris, who paid periodical visits to London for the purpose of selling their wares to the King and Court. Thus, in August 1536, in Gostwick’s accounts, is the entry: “Hubbert Morret, jeweller of Paris, for jewels bought by the King £282, 6_s._ 8_d._,”[142] while in January 1532 he received 242 crowns, or £56, 9_s._ 4_d._, for similar goods.[143] Granger’s statement that Morett “did many curious works after Holbein’s designs” has no foundation in fact. Hollar’s engraving[144] simply calls the subject “Mr. Morett,” though Parthey, in a second edition of his book, cites a second state of the engraving, sold in 1844, with the added words, “Jeweller to Henry VIII”; no one, however, has so far succeeded in discovering a proof of this state, and, in all probability, these words were merely written on this particular proof by someone who had noted the reference to Morett in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII, published by Nicolas in 1827. This, no doubt, was the source of the legend, adopted at Dresden, that the picture represented a court jeweller.
Footnote 142:
C.L.P., vol. xi. 381.
Footnote 143:
C.L.P., vol. v., Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII, under January 1532.
Footnote 144:
Parthey, No. 1470.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF MORETTE]
It remained for a Swedish critic, M. S. Larpent, finally to re-establish the identity of the sitter as that Count of Moretta mentioned in Wake’s letter in the seventeenth century. In a pamphlet published in Christiania in 1881, Sur le Portrait de Morett, he proved conclusively that the Dresden picture represents Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette. M. Larpent drew attention to the fact that the drawing for the head was once in the possession of Richardson, the painter, and that at his sale in 1746 it was included in his catalogue as “One Holbein, sieur de Moret, one of the French hostages in England,” this, no doubt, being the traditional title which had remained with the drawing since it was in the Arundel collection. It has been suggested that Hollar’s engraving was done neither from the Dresden picture nor from the drawing, as it shows considerable differences in the dress and details, and is circular in shape, while the inscription is “Holbein pinxit” not “delineavit,” indicating that it was done from a painting and not a drawing, and thus proving that the Earl of Arundel possessed another portrait of Morette, which has disappeared. In this connection Sir Sidney Colvin draws attention to the print by Hollar of an unknown man after a painting by Holbein formerly in the Earl of Arundel’s collection, which he thinks represents Jean de Dinteville.[145] “Now, this print of Hollar’s,” he says, “is an exact companion to his other print from the ‘Mr. Morett’ in the Arundel collection. Both are small rounds, apparently taken from paintings of almost miniature size, such as Holbein is in several instances known to have made of persons who had also sat to him for full-sized portraits. I conclude that he had painted two such companion miniatures, besides his larger pictures, of the two successive French envoys, Dinteville and Morette, and that both came into the possession of the Earl of Arundel.”[146]
Footnote 145:
This is the print, already mentioned (see p. 44), in connection with the fine Windsor drawing to which Miss Hervey first drew attention as a possible likeness of Dinteville.
Footnote 146:
In a letter to The Times, 11th September 1890.
The identity of the sitter was established beyond all possibility of doubt in 1903 by the late Mr. Max Rosenheim’s discovery of a fine contemporary medallion portrait of the same personage, carved in boxwood, with his name and titles in full, and on the back his device of a seaport, a horse, and a dolphin.[147] Charles de Solier was born in 1480, and was fifty-four years old when resident ambassador in England in 1534, the year in which Holbein painted him. He represented him life-size and half-length, standing facing the spectator, dressed in a doublet of black satin, the sleeves of which, from the elbow downwards, are slashed with white silk. His surcoat is of the same black material, with a heavy collar and lining of fur. Both dress and black cap are decorated with gold tags, and in the latter he wears a circular gold enseigne with a figure of Fortune. Round his neck hangs a gold chain to which is suspended a medallion or watch-case of open-work. In his right hand he holds a glove, and his left, which is gloved, grasps the gilt and elaborately chased sheath of a dagger, suspended from his girdle by a chain with a large tassel, such as the one worn by Dinteville. His long beard of a reddish colour is touched here and there with grey. The background consists of a curtain of green damask. It is about 3 ft. 1 in. high by 2 ft. 6½ in. wide.
Footnote 147:
See Burlington Magazine, vol. ii., August 1903, p. 369. The medallion is in the Salting Collection, and the costume is the same as in the picture. The inscription runs: “CAROLVS · DE · SOLARIO · DNS · MORETY · ANNO · AGENS · L.”
Holbein’s art, both in the subtle insight it displays into character and in its technical achievement, is seen in its highest manifestation in this superb and nobly-dignified portrait, which bears the stamp of truth in every touch. The handling is both brilliant and delicate in all the accessories, in the fine modelling of the flesh, and in the wonderful draughtsmanship of the right hand grasping the glove. As a likeness of a living man and as an expression of the most intimate traits of his character, it holds its own with any piece of portraiture in the world, and is, indeed, complete in every respect, displaying the finest taste in conception combined with consummate skill and unerring accuracy in execution, and most harmonious colour. The original study for it, which, no doubt, once formed a part of the Windsor collection, and now hangs by the side of the picture in Dresden, is unsurpassed for its truth and force, and the subtlety with which the likeness is expressed by the simplest means, eye and hand acting in perfect accord and allowing nothing essential to escape them.
[Sidenote: ROUNDELS OF ENGLISHMAN AND WIFE]
The two small roundels, about six inches in diameter, portraits of a man, probably an Englishman, and his wife, in the Vienna Gallery[148] (Nos. 1482, 1484), formerly in the Schloss Ambras collection, are dated 1534. They are fine works, almost in miniature, though they do not show Holbein at his highest point of achievement. The man, who has a dark-brown beard, wears a black cap and a scarlet surcoat on which the letters H. & R. are embroidered in black and gold, indicating that he was in the service of Henry VIII. Across the background is inscribed: “ETATIS SVÆ 30. ANNO 1534.” The woman, of a very homely type of face, is wearing a dark-brown and black dress, and a white head-dress, which hides her hair and falls on her shoulders in the form of a cape. This head-dress is identical with the one worn by the unknown lady in the Windsor collection (Holmes No. 10), which Sir Richard Holmes thought might be a portrait of “Mother Jack,” nurse to Edward VI. It is inscribed: “ETATIS SVÆ 28. ANNO 1534.” Both portraits have now a very dark blue-green background with a small circular ring of gold round the outer edge. The two are evidently husband and wife, and the latter has more the appearance of a German than an Englishwoman. It may be suggested, therefore, though with diffidence, that it is not impossible that these two small portraits represent Susanna Hornebolt and her husband, John Parker, the King’s bowman and a yeoman of the robes. Dürer speaks of Susanna as being “about eighteen” in 1521, which does not quite tally with the age of the sitter in the Vienna roundel, who was twenty-eight in 1834, but it is again not impossible that Dürer imagined the young lady to be two or three years older than she was in reality. Dr. Ganz draws attention to the close likeness between this portrait and the one of an unknown man, also a small roundel, in the possession of Herr F. Engel-Gros, at Château de Ripaille near Thonon,[149] which he reproduces for the first time. The sitter is clean-shaven, facing three-quarters to the right, with a small flat red cap, elaborate black and white Spanish work on his shirt collar, and a red livery coat, lined with blue, with black bands and the initials “H. R.” embroidered on it. He considers him to be either a Netherlander or a German, and suggests that he was possibly a painter in Henry VIII’s service. It may be permitted to go a step further and to suggest that we have here a portrait of Susanna’s brother, Lucas Hornebolt. It was first exhibited in Basel in 1891, and nothing of its earlier history is known. It bears no signature or date, but is evidently of the same period as the two Vienna roundels. There is an excellent old copy on copper of this roundel in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (No. 537),[150] in which, however, the cap and coat are black, while no trace of the royal initials on the latter can be discerned.
Footnote 148:
Woltmann, 256, 257. Reproduced in Magazine of Art, March 1897, p. 279; Masterpieces of Holbein (Gowan’s Art Books, No. 13), pp. 46, 47; Ganz, Holbein, p. 105.
Footnote 149:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 115. Purchased by the present owner in Paris.
Footnote 150:
Reproduced in F. R. Earp’s Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 1902, and in The Principal Pictures in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Gowans & Gray, Ltd., 1913, p. 86.
Among the Windsor drawings there are three, two of them very fine, which represent members of the Poyns or Poyntz family—John Poyns,[151] of North Wokendon, Essex, a member of the royal household and one of Wyat’s most intimate friends, in which the face is almost in profile to the right, with the eyes turned upwards, and a small round black cap which only covers the hair in part; and two of Nicholas Poyntz, of the Gloucestershire branch of the family.[152] Both are inscribed “N. Poines Knight,” and they are generally regarded as portraits of a father and son, and are described as Sir Nicholas Poyntz the Elder, and Sir Nicholas Poyntz the Younger. In the one he is represented almost full-face, with beard and bare head, a free drawing without the black lines, and somewhat rubbed. The other is a small head in profile to the left, with a short beard and moustache, wearing a round cap with white feather, and a gold chain on his shoulders. There seems to be no great difference between the ages of the two, and as Nicholas Poyntz’s father was named Anthony, probably the inscription on the first-named drawing is incorrect, and the sitter is not a member of this family. There are various portraits based upon the second drawing, all apparently contemporary copies of a lost original.[153] One of them was lent by the Marquis of Bristol to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 79). It is a life-size portrait, half-length, in a black dress, on panel, 24 × 17 in. Another is described by Woltmann, who saw it in the possession of the Marquis de la Rosière in Paris.[154] It was photographed by Braun, but since then has disappeared. It agrees with the drawing and Lord Bristol’s picture. Both are inscribed on the right-hand side of the blue background:—“ETATIS SVÆ 25. ANNO 1535,” and above, a three-lined French motto—“IE OBAIS A QVI IE DOIS. IE SERS A QVI ME PLAIST. ET SVIS A QVI ME MERITE.” Woltmann regarded the Paris example as a fine and genuine work by Holbein,[155] but it is only an old copy. There is another in the possession of Lord Spencer at Althorp. Wornum notes a miniature on vellum, with a plain blue background, then in the possession of Mr. R. S. Holford, of Dorchester House, which corresponds with the Windsor drawing.[156] Sir Nicholas Poyntz was the eldest son of Anthony Poyntz, of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire, and Elizabeth, daughter and heir of William Hudson, of Devonshire. He does not appear to have held any office in connection with the Court. He married Joan, daughter of Thomas, Lord Berkeley, and died in 1557.
Footnote 151:
Woltmann, 301; Wornum, i. 9; Holmes, i. 47. Reproduced by Davies, p. 220; and in Drawings of Hans Holbein (Newnes), Pl. xx. A fine head of “John Poines,” on a reddish ground, was in the recently dispersed collection of Mr. J. P. Heseltine.
Footnote 152:
Woltmann, 299, 300; Wornum, i. 19, 36; Holmes, i. 37, ii. 26; reproduced in Drawings of Hans Holbein, Pl. xxii. xxv.
Footnote 153:
This original is in Lord Harrowby's collection. See Appendix (K).
Footnote 154:
Woltmann, 239. Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 217. There was a portrait of the “Cavaglier Points” in the Arundel Collection.
Footnote 155:
Woltmann, i. pp. 408-9.
Footnote 156:
Wornum, p. 404. It was included in the Exhibition of Miniatures held at South Kensington in 1865, No. 763.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF NICOLAS BOURBON]
Another portrait painted by Holbein in 1535 was that of the French poet, Nicolas Bourbon de Vandœuvre, who was in England during that year. Bourbon was court-poet to Francis I, but eventually fell into disgrace owing to certain passages in his poems. In 1534 he was thrown into prison, from which he was finally released through the intervention of Henry VIII, whose interest in him had been aroused both by Anne Boleyn, who had made his acquaintance during her residence at the French Court in her younger days, and also by Henry’s physician, Dr. Butts. To show his gratitude he came over to England in 1535, and found plenty of employment in court circles as an instructor of youth. He returned to France in 1536, leaving many friends behind him. While in London he appears to have lodged with Cornelis Hayes, one of the chief goldsmiths employed by the King. Among his more intimate friends were Kratzer and Holbein, as may be gathered from a letter which he wrote after his return to France to Thomas Solimar, the King’s secretary, in which he says:—“I have yet to beg you to greet in my name as heartily as you can all with whom you know me connected by intercourse and friendship: Mr. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury ... Mr. Cornelius Heyss, my host, the King’s goldsmith; Mr. Nicolaus Kratzer, the King’s astronomer, a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and Mr. Hans, the royal painter, the Apelles of our time. I wish them from my heart all joy and happiness!”[157]
Footnote 157:
Quoted by Woltmann, i. p. 404.
Bourbon held Holbein’s art in the greatest admiration, and more than one reference to it, couched in terms of high praise, appears in his printed works. The original study for the portrait Holbein painted of him is among the Windsor drawings,[158] but the picture itself has disappeared. In the sketch he is represented turned to the left, with a pen in his hand, as though in the act of composing. He has a small beard, and wears a black cap over his long hair, and looks thoughtfully in front of him, the right arm and hand being only roughly indicated. It is inscribed “Nicholas Borbonius Poeta,” and is a fine drawing, in excellent condition, but some doubts have been expressed as to whether it really represents the poet. Bourbon was delighted with the portrait Holbein painted of him, and sings its praises in an epigram on the “incomparable painter” Hans Holbein, which he published in his Nugae. It runs:
Footnote 158:
Woltmann, 311; Wornum, i. 30; Holmes, i. 54. Reproduced by Knackfuss, fig. 123; Drawings of Hans Holbein, Pl. xxxv.
“Dum divina meos vultus mens exprimit Hansi, Per tabulam docta præcipitante manu, Ipsum et ego interea sic uno carmine pinxi: Hansus me pingens major Apelle fuit.”
(“While the divine genius of Hans immortalises my features, tracing them on the panel with skilful hand, I also have painted him thus in verse; Hans, thus painting me, was greater than Apelles.”)
Holbein made a smaller drawing of the portrait, which was produced as a woodcut for the 1538 edition of Bourbon’s poems, the Nugae. In this also the poet is engaged in writing, but the position is reversed. It is inscribed “Nic. Borbonius Vandop. Anno Aetatis xxxii. 1535.” The portrait is circular, within a square, the corners being filled in with Renaissance ornament, and below two naked boys supporting a shield with Bourbon’s coat of arms, a swan surmounted by a cross. On the last page is printed the following:
“IN IMAGINEM SVI. Corporis effigiem pictor saepe exprimit arte: Forma animi nulla pingier arte potest. Corpora corporeo mortalia lumine cernis, O homo: noto Deus pectora solus habet.”
Both his friendship for Holbein and his admiration for his art find expression in a further poem or epigram printed in the Nugae, headed “In picturam Hansi regii apud Britannos pictoris et amici.” The verses describe a miniature painting by Holbein:
“Sopitum in tabula puerum meus Hansus eburna Pinxerat, et specie qua requiescit Amor: Ut vidi, obstupui, Chaerintumque esse putavi, Quo mihi res non est pectore chara magis Accessi propius, mox saevis ignibus arsi; Osculaque ut coepi figere, nemo fuit.”
(My Hans has painted on an ivory panel a slumbering boy, looking like a reposing Cupid; I see him, I am astonished, I regard him as Charintus, whom my heart loves most warmly; I approach burning with passion, yet as I kiss him, it is only a semblance.)
All traces of this miniature, which Bourbon extols so highly, have disappeared. Two other laudatory references to Holbein occur in the Nugae. In the 1538 edition, which was published in Lyon in the same year as the “Dance of Death” cuts and the Old Testament illustrations, the following lines have reference to the former designs:
“De morte picta a Hanso pictore nobili. Dum mortis Hansus pictor imaginem exprimit, Tanta arte mortem retulit, ut mors vivere Videatur ipsa: et ipse se immortalibus Parem Diis fecerit operis huius gloria.”
(On the picture of Death by the noble painter Hans.
Painter Hans has expressed the image of Death with so much art, that Death himself now seems a living being, and he by the glory of his work has made himself the compeer of the immortal gods.)
[Sidenote: NICOLAS BOURBON AND HOLBEIN]
These verses read as though they were written to accompany the first edition of the “Dance of Death” woodcuts, but for some reason were never used. They are interesting, too, as containing the only contemporary reference to Holbein as the actual designer of the series. In the same edition occur the following lines:
“Videre qui vult Parrhasium cum Zeuxide, Accersat a Britannia Hansum Ulbium et Georgium Reperdium Lugduno ab urbe Galliae.”
which may be paraphrased as—“Whoever wishes to see the painter equal to Parrhasius or Zeuxis must call Hans Holbein from England and Georgius Reperdius from the French town of Lyon.” Reperdius was the Italian engraver Reverdino, about whom little is known, except that much of his engraved work was after Primaticcio. The latter was working at Fontainebleau at this period, and, if Bourbon is to be believed, Reperdius was settled in Lyon, where the poet probably met him when visiting that town for the purpose of making arrangements for the republishing of his Nugae.
For the second edition of the “Old Testament” illustrations, published in 1539, Bourbon furnished, as already noted,[159] a Latin poem in which Holbein, as the designer of the woodcuts, is compared with and placed above the greatest painters of antiquity. It describes a scene in Elysium, in which the three great Greek painters, Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius appear:
Footnote 159:
See Vol. i. p. 227.
“Nuper in Elysio cum forte erraret Apelles Una aderat Zeuxis, Parrhasiusque comes.”
Apelles breaks forth into a lament over the eclipse of their fame brought about by Holbein, and exclaims:
“Holbius est homini nomen, qui nomina nostra Obscura ex claris ac prope nulla facit.”
The verses are too long for quotation. Bourbon has added to them a Greek distich, with its translation into Latin:
“Cernere vis, hospes, simulacra simillima vivis? Hoc opus Holbinae nobile cerne manus.”
No other portrait by Holbein can be definitely attributed to the year 1535. It was in this year that he lost two of his first English patrons, and both on the scaffold—Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, and his distress must have been keen, more particularly over the death of the former, who had done so much for him when he first arrived in London, a practically unknown foreign painter, with no knowledge of the English language. One other work of his, however, the design for the title-page of Coverdale’s Bible, in the publication of which Thomas Cromwell was greatly interested, was issued in this year, and possibly it was he who placed the commission in Holbein’s hands. It is interesting to note that Holbein, who illustrated the first translations of the Bible into German in Switzerland, also supplied a design for its first complete rendering into English, which was published under the title of “Biblia. The Bible, that is, the holy Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and truly translated out of Douche and Latyn in to Englishe, M.D.XXV.” This fine folio was printed in Zürich by Froschover, and no doubt Holbein’s title-page[160] (Pl. 13) was also cut abroad, for there was no one in England at that time capable of producing so excellent an engraving. The design is divided into six little pictures which surround the title. The one across the top contains the Fall and the Redemption; on the left Adam and Eve stand under the Tree, and on the right Christ rises from the tomb, triumphant over Death and Hell. On the left-hand side of the page Moses is shown on Mount Sinai receiving the Tables of the Law, and beneath him is a representation of Ezra reading the Old Law to the Jews on their return from the Captivity. On the opposite side, in the upper picture, Christ is sending forth His disciples into the world to preach the gospel, and in the lower Paul is seen preaching. In the panel across the bottom of the page Henry VIII is seated on his throne under a canopy, with a sword of state in one hand and a Bible in the other, which he presents to the high dignitaries of the Church and the nobles of his Court, who kneel below him. On either side within arched niches are the figures of King David playing the harp, and the Apostle Paul. The King is represented with a beard, which became the fashion in the year Coverdale’s Bible was published, but in facial likeness there is little resemblance to Henry, due, possibly, to the fact that the block was cut in Switzerland. The design, as a whole, is a particularly fine and effective one, and has not suffered to any great extent from the cutting, which is good, though not the handiwork of a Lützelburger. Certain of the figures are of great beauty, in particular those of the risen Christ, the Adam and Eve, and the Paul. The resemblance, in facial type and movements, between the figure of the Saviour sending forth His disciples to preach and the Christ in the “Noli me Tangere” picture at Hampton Court, has been already noted.[161]
Footnote 160:
Woltmann, 237. Reproduced by Woltmann, i. dedication; Davies, p. 192.
Footnote 161:
See Vol. i. p. 97.
The few designs which Holbein made for woodcuts while in England appear to have been all done at about this time, when the abuses of the Church were being attacked most severely and the monasteries were being swept away; though some of them were not actually published until some years later. In them Holbein, just as he had done in his woodcuts produced in Basel, in no way attempts to disguise his adherence to the reformed religion. This feeling was shown very strongly in a series of twenty-two small satirical drawings of the Passion which appear to have been preserved in a little book, now unfortunately lost. At one time it was in the possession of the Earl of Arundel, and was shown by him to Sandrart as a work of Holbein’s. The latter mentions it in his Teutsche Akademie, stating that each sheet was full of little figures of every kind, that of the Redeemer always appearing under the form of a monk attired in black. Sixteen of these designs were engraved in the seventeenth century, no doubt while in the Arundel collection, and most probably by Hollar, though they are unsigned and have not the customary “Ex Collec. Arundell:” beneath them. In them “the enemies of Christ are represented in the dress of monks and friars, and instead of weapons they bear croziers, large candlesticks, and other church ornaments; Judas appears as a capucin, Annas as a cardinal, and Caiaphas as a bishop. In the subject of Christ’s Descent to Hades the gates are hung with papal bulls and dispensations; above them are the Pope’s arms, and the devil as keeper of the gate wears a triple crown.”[162]
Footnote 162:
Chatto, Treatise on Wood Engraving, p. 378, note. Described more fully by Woltmann, i. 395-7. See also Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 98.
Woltmann describes a second title-page, very finely cut, which he considers to have been produced during Holbein’s sojourn in England. So far it has not been discovered in any published book, but there is a fine proof of it in the Munich Print Room. On either side stand St. Peter and St. Paul, the latter pointing upwards, two tall slender figures. They appear as pillars of the church, and are represented as supporting the blank title itself, which is in the form of a paper scroll. In an arch above is Christ risen from the Tomb, trampling upon Death and Satan, and below are the arms of Henry VIII supported by two heraldic beasts.[163]
Footnote 163:
Woltmann, 238.
Something of the same satirical feeling shown in the lost drawings of the Passion is to be seen in two or three small woodcuts of this period, which, from the inferiority of the cutting, were very probably produced in England. Two of them appeared among the twenty-six little cuts in Cranmer’s Catechism, a small octavo volume published in 1548, the full title being, “Catechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into Christian religion for the singular commoditie and profyte of childrē and yong people. Set forth by the mooste reverende father in God, Thomas Archbyshop of Canterbury, primate of all Englande and Metropolitane.—Gualterus Lynne excudebat, 1548.” The first of Holbein’s two small pictures (folio CL) represents the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican,[164] the scene taking place in a church, with the Pharisee as a monk, kneeling at an altar, whom Christ points out to His disciples, while the Publican stands with head bent in front of them. On the edge of a book on the altar steps are the initials “H. H.” The subject of the second cut (folio CCI) is Christ casting out the Devil from the possessed man,[165] which, in spite of the unsatisfactory cutting, is very dramatic and retains much of the beauty and individuality of Holbein’s design. The Pharisees and others who stand behind are represented as bishops, monks and priests. It is signed in full “HANS HOLBEN.” A third woodcut, very similar to these, but still more feeble in execution, represents Christ as the Good Shepherd,[166] surrounded by His disciples, and pointing to the “hired servant,” here again dressed as a monk, who is flying before the wolf which scatters his frightened flock. This also is signed in full “HANS HOLBEIN.” It appears in a small English pamphlet, “A lytle treatise after the manner of an Epystle, wryten by the famous clerk Doctor Vrbanus Regius,” which was also published by Walter Lynne, in the same year, 1548, as the Catechism.
Footnote 164:
Woltmann, 198. Reproduced by Chatto, p. 380; and in Hans Holbein (Great Engravers Series), ed. A. M. Hind.
Footnote 165:
Woltmann, 199. Reproduced by Woltmann, i. p. 391; Chatto, p. 381; Wornum, p. 191; and in Hans Holbein (Great Engravers Series), ed. A. M. Hind.
Footnote 166:
Woltmann, 200. Reproduced by Woltmann, i. p. 399.
A third, and more important, publication of 1548, Hall’s Chronicle, contains a large folio woodcut representing King Henry VIII in Council,[167] which Woltmann regarded as undoubtedly of Holbein’s design. The scene takes place in a magnificent chamber hung with tapestries, with the King, his legs apart in his characteristic attitude, seated on a throne beneath a baldachin bearing his arms. He is surrounded by his councillors, twenty-seven in number, some listening, others lost in thought, and others again whispering among themselves. The cutting is excellent, and was probably done in Switzerland. The socle with the framework enclosing the inscription “King Henry the eyght,” and the two supporting sirens, are almost identical with the socle and supports in the beautiful woodcut of Erasmus with the figure of Terminus already described. These, with the small portraits of Wyat and Bourbon, and the “Charitas” device for Reinhold Wolfe, constitute almost the whole of Holbein’s work as a book-illustrator while in England.
Footnote 167:
Woltmann, 210. Reproduced by Dibdin, Typographical Antiquities, vol. iii. It bears the engraver’s initials, “I. F.,” possibly Faber.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS WYAT]
There are several undated portraits and studies for portraits which must have been produced between the years 1535 and 1537, among them the likeness of Sir Thomas Wyat, the famous poet and courtier, whose father, Sir Henry Wyat, had been painted by Holbein during his first English visit. Wyat was about the Court during the period under discussion; a few years later he was often absent from England on foreign embassies. There is a study for his portrait among the Windsor drawings (Pl. 14)[168] which is one of the finest in the collection, though considerably rubbed and stained, and also a good, possibly contemporary, copy.[169] He is represented nearly full-face, wearing a cap, and with a long flowing beard, both hair and beard being modelled with the brush. The portrait which must have been painted from this singularly attractive study is not now known to exist; a small painting in oils corresponding to the drawing, but not by Holbein, was exhibited by Mr. Bruce at the National Portrait Exhibition in 1866. A second portrait of Sir Thomas was drawn by Holbein at a somewhat later date, which was reproduced as a woodcut, shortly after the poet’s death, in the little book entitled Næniæ in Mortem Thomæ Viati Equitis Incomparabilis, written by John Leland, the antiquary, in honour of his memory, and published in 1542. The portrait,[170] which is a small roundel in the style of the circular portraits in wax or boxwood which were at that time much in vogue, may have been drawn by Holbein himself on the block. The engraving itself is somewhat crudely done, but was, no doubt, the best that could be procured at that time in London; yet in spite of its roughness the little portrait is a true likeness, full of character, such as no one in England but Holbein could have produced. Wyat is represented almost in profile to the right, with a long beard and a high bare forehead, bearing out Leland’s description in his panegyric that “nature had given the youth dark auburn hair, but this gradually disappeared and left him bald, but the thick forest of his flowing beard increased more and more.” The neck is bare, and bounded by a slight drapery in the classical manner, giving it the appearance of a medallion. Underneath the woodcut, which is printed on the reverse of the title, are the following lines in praise of both painter and poet:
Footnote 168:
Woltmann, 289; Wornum, i. 18; Holmes, i. 32. Reproduced by Knackfuss fig. 139, and elsewhere.
Footnote 169:
Woltmann, 290; Wornum, i. 40; Holmes, not numbered.
Footnote 170:
Woltmann, 209; reproduced by him, i. 364.
“In Effigiem Thomæ Viati. “Holbenus nitida pingendi Maximus arte Effigiem expressit graphice; sed nullus Apelles Exprimet ingenium felix animumque Viati.”
(Holbein, the greatest in the magnificent art of painting, has sketched this portrait, yet no Apelles can express in painting Wyat’s mind and happy genius.)
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS WYAT]
The drawing, no doubt, was made by Holbein on purpose for the book, but whether it was an original study from memory, or was based on a portrait of Wyat he had painted some little time previously, is uncertain. Several circular oil paintings exist which are either founded upon the Næniæ woodcut, or are contemporary copies of a portrait by Holbein which cannot now be traced. The latter is the more probable supposition, as in all the paintings the head is turned to the left, whereas in the woodcut it faces to the right, not having been reversed when drawn on the block. One of these versions, formerly in the collection of the Marquis of Hastings, who lent it to the National Portrait Exhibition, 1866, is now in the National Portrait Gallery (No. 1035);[171] a second, apparently a copy from the former, is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. This latter was in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 169), the Oxford Exhibition of Historical Portraits, 1904 (No. 24), and the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909 (No. 50). It is a bust, three-quarters to left, with dark hair, beard, and moustache, and bald forehead, red drapery round the shoulders, and a plain brown background; and is inscribed “SYR·THOMAS·WYAT.” A smaller circular portrait, also on an oak panel, belonging to the Countess of Romney, showing Wyat in the same position, but dressed in the costume of his day, with a black coat lined with white fur, is attributed to Lucas Cornelisz.[172] It is inscribed, “Sir Thomas Wiat. B.1503. D.1541. Lucas Cornelii,” but this is of a later period than the painting, and the date of Wyat’s death is given wrongly. The head is in the same position as in the Næniæ woodcut. On the back of this portrait was at one time another panel, which now hangs by it in Lady Romney’s collection, representing Wyat’s “Maze,” and painted as a record of an amusing incident in his diplomatic mission to Italy in 1527. In the centre of the maze is shown a falling centaur with the Pope’s triple crown on his head. There was a portrait of a Wyat in the Arundel collection (il ritratto del Cavaglier Wyat), but whether this was one of Sir Thomas, or the one of his father, now in the Louvre, is uncertain.
Footnote 171:
Reproduced in Mr. Cust’s illustrated catalogue of National Portrait Gallery, vol. i. p. 20.
Footnote 172:
Reproduced in Burlington Magazine, vol. xvi., December 1909, p. 155.
There are two very similar circular portraits in existence of Wyat’s son, Sir Thomas Wyat, the younger, which bear so strong a likeness to the portraits of his father that at first sight they appear to have been painted from the same original. One of them was lent to the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1909 (No. 48), by the Rt. Hon. Lewis Fry, and the other belongs to Lady Romney.[173] He is shown in profile, to the left, looking upwards, the neck cut off at the beginning of the shoulders, as in the portraits of his father, and wearing a slight, light brown moustache, pointed beard, and short hair. Lady Romney’s version is of the same size as the Cornelisz portrait, while Mr. Fry’s more nearly approaches that of the National Portrait Gallery and Oxford portraits of his father. Mr. Fry’s panel was once in the collection of Charles I, having his brand on the back, and it is possibly the portrait which was in the possession of John, Lord Lumley, in 1590. The “classical” treatment followed in the cutting short of the bare neck has led to the erroneous supposition that the portrait has reference to Wyat’s decapitation in 1554 for rebellion against Queen Mary. It is possible that these portraits of the younger Wyat are based on a lost original by Holbein. He was born in 1521, so that he would have been twenty-two at the time of Holbein’s death. Mr. Roger E. Fry sees in Mr. Lewis Fry’s version a predominant Flemish influence. “It remains,” he says, “one of the most inscrutable riddles of the exhibition. It is a work of such great technical excellence that its authorship ought to be discoverable. It seems probable that it was painted in England and from life.”[174]
Footnote 173:
Both reproduced in Burlington Magazine, vol. xvi., December 1909, p. 158; and the former in the illustrated edition of the Exhibition Catalogue, Pl. xvi.
Footnote 174:
Burlington Magazine, vol. xv., May 1909, p. 75.
The very interesting and beautiful portrait of a lady lent by Major Charles Palmer to the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, 1907 (No. 13), and to the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1909 (No. 64) (Pl. 15),[175] is now identified, with some degree of certainty, as a portrait of Sir Thomas Wyat the elder’s sister, Margaret Wyat, Lady Lee. This identification is based upon an enlarged version of the portrait in the possession of Viscount Dillon at Ditchley, Oxfordshire, which, according to family tradition, is said to represent that lady, who was the wife of Sir Anthony Lee, and the mother of Sir Henry Lee, K.G. She is shown at three-quarters length, three-quarters to the left. Her hair, of reddish gold, is almost hidden by her black and white French hood decorated with a band of pearls arranged in groups of four, alternating with small panels of gold filigree work. Her dress is of dark-brown damask, puffed at the shoulders, and ornamented with numerous gold tags or points, and a rose-coloured petticoat. Her hands are clasped in front of her, and she holds by a short ribbon a circular gold medallion on which is a figure of Lucrece above a dark oblong stone. On her right hand are two signet rings, one with a red and one with a dark stone. The dress, open at the neck, shows a white collar or lining, and white ruffles cover her wrists. A rose in red enamel is at her breast, and a gold chain round her neck. Across the plain dark green background is inscribed, “ETATIS·SVÆ·34.” It is on panel, 16½ in. × 12½ in. Her long, very sharp nose resembles that of her brother, and her complexion is of a somewhat unpleasant reddish tone. The drawing of the face, and particularly of the hands, is very delicate. It is now in the Collection of Mr. Benjamin Altman, New York.
Footnote 175:
Reproduced in Burlington Magazine, vol. xv., June 1909, frontispiece; illustrated catalogue of Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Pl. xxii.; and Ganz, Holbein, p. 143.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF MARGARET WYAT, LADY LEE]
Opinion, so far, is divided as to whether this fine work is by Holbein or not. The first impression received is that it is certainly not by him, from the flatness of the modelling of the face, a certain hardness in the execution, and the rather unpleasant red tone of the complexion; but further examination considerably modifies this opinion. It is difficult, if the attribution to Holbein is rejected, to suggest the name of any other artist then practising in England, who possessed the ability to produce a portrait as fine and as remarkable as this one is. To Sir Martin Conway “it appears to be obviously and all over Holbein.”[176] Mr. Roger E. Fry says that “opinion is so divided that it would be rash to dogmatize. The picture is in wonderful condition and is entirely in Holbein’s manner. Indeed, it must in any case be derived directly from a drawing by Holbein. The only question to be settled is whether the master himself ever became so entirely the craftsman absorbed in the technical perfection of his work to the exclusion of the larger issues of expression; whether he could have ever so far lost his sense of relief, treated line so entirely as a matter of edge with so little sense of the mass it should define. Such questions can only be decided by a gradual consensus of opinion. My own belief is that it will be decided ultimately against Holbein’s having actually executed the painting, though I am bound to admit no other known imitator comes as near to Holbein himself as does the author of this.”[177] Dr. Ganz regards it as a genuine work by Holbein, and dates it 1540, drawing attention to the similarity of the enamelled rose fastened to her dress to the one worn by Lady Butts, who was painted by Holbein at about that date.[178] It will be seen that the critics are divided; and it is certainly by no means easy to arrive at a definite conclusion. It is interesting to note, as a minor point, that the gold tags with which Lady Lee’s dress is decorated are very similar to those on the surcoat of Sir Thomas Wyat in the Lucas Cornelisz portrait, and are arranged in much the same manner.
Footnote 176:
Burlington Magazine, vol. xvi., December 1909, p. 159.
Footnote 177:
Ibid., vol. xv., May 1909, pp. 74-5.
Footnote 178:
See Ganz, Holbein, p. 245.
The dated portraits of the year 1536 are only three, one of which, the Steelyard merchant, Derich Berck, has been already described.[179] The second is the portrait of Sir Richard Southwell in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence (Pl. 16),[180] of which there is an excellent replica in the Louvre. It was finished on the 10th July 1536, when Southwell was thirty-three years old. It is a small half-length figure, the face three-quarters to the right, wearing a black dress, open at the neck, with black satin sleeves, and a black cap with a circular gold medallion with a negro’s head carved in cornelian. His hands are folded, and he is wearing a gold ring with a green stone, and a gold chain round his neck. He is closely shaven, and his black hair, which partly covers his ears, is cut straight across the forehead. Across the plain dark green background is inscribed on either side of the head in gold lettering:
Footnote 179:
See pp. 22-23.
Footnote 180:
Woltmann, 149. Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 108.
“· X^O · IVLII · ANNO ETATIS · SVÆ · H · VIII · XXVIII ANNO XXXIII.”
It is on an oak panel about 19 in. high × 14 in. wide. This is one of Holbein’s finest portraits of his second English period, and displays a very subtle insight into what must have been an unattractive and in many ways despicable nature. The small brown eyes have a look of cunning, and the face with its smooth fat cheeks has few pretensions to comeliness. Southwell was heir to great wealth, and was brought up with Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and was intimate with the family of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1531 he was obliged to pay a fine of £1000 before he could obtain pardon for being concerned in a murder, yet three years later he was Sheriff of Norfolk. From 1535 onwards he took an active share in the dissolution of the monasteries, and was in all ways a willing and able tool of his royal master. His treachery helped to bring Sir Thomas More to the scaffold, and, later on, he played an even more treacherous part at the trial of his early companion, the Earl of Surrey. He was knighted in 1542, and appointed one of the King’s executors, and under Queen Elizabeth he became Master of Ordnance. Something of his unsavoury character is suggested by Holbein in his portrait, which is distinguished by its remarkable individuality and its fine technical qualities both in the flesh painting, more particularly in the hands and the eyes, and in all the details of the costume. Nothing is known of the history of the picture except that it belonged to the Earl of Arundel, who presented it to Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1620,[181] as one of the best Holbeins in his collection. It is still in its seventeenth-century frame, with a silver tablet engraved with the arms of England and the Medici, and an inscription, “Effigies domini Ricardi Southwelli Equitis aurati, consiliarii privati Henrici VIII, Regis Angliae.—Opus celeberrimi artificis Johannis Holbieni pictoris Regis Henrici VIII.”
Footnote 181:
See Rivista d’Arte, vi. 5, 6, 1909.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD SOUTHWELL]
The replica in the Louvre (No. 2719)[182] corresponds in all its details with the Florence picture, and appears to be only a good old copy. It has on the back the seal of the Newton family, and was brought by Napoleon from Germany in 1806. Another copy was lent to the National Portrait Exhibition at South Kensington, 1866, by Mr. H. E. Chetwynd Stapylton. A portrait of Southwell, apparently based on Holbein’s picture, was lent to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 217), by Mr. W. H. Romaine Walker. In this version Southwell’s coat of arms and the inscription “Copley Stili” are on the right-hand side of the background, and on the left “Richd. Southwell of Horsham St. Faith’s in Norfolk ÆT.95.” The age in this inscription is altogether wrong, for Southwell was fifty-seven at his death in 1561.
Footnote 182:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 218.
Holbein’s study for the portrait is one of the most remarkable among the Windsor drawings.[183] The head and shoulders only are shown, but otherwise it is almost identical with the Uffizi panel; even the four black buttons which stand out against the white shirt are indicated in the same position as in the finished work. It is inscribed “[A]NNO ETTATIS SVÆ 33,” and bears the note in Holbein’s own handwriting, “die augen ein wenig gelbass” (the eyes a little yellowish). This study, which is about 16 in. × 11 in., is in excellent condition.
Footnote 183:
Woltmann, 304; Wornum, i. 20; Holmes, i. 34. Reproduced by Davies, p. 180; Ganz, Hdz. von H. H. dem Jüng., Pl. 37; Drawings of Hans Holbein, Pl. xlvi; and elsewhere.
The third portrait of 1536 represents Sir Thomas le Strange. It is on panel, 15¼ × 10½ in., and was exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 113), and at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909 (No. 41), lent by Mr. Hamon le Strange.[184] It is a bust portrait, three-quarters to the left. The sitter has greyish hair cut straight across the forehead, and a short brown beard and moustache. His black cap has a number of gold tags and a medallion, and he wears a gown with a brown fur collar over a black dress, a pleated white collar from which long tags hang down, and a long gold chain over his shoulders. Across the top, on the green-blue background, is the repainted inscription “ANNO D^E 1536 ÆTATIS SVÆ 43.” It has suffered considerable repainting about the face, but it is a picture of much interest, and since it was last exhibited has been acknowledged by most of the leading critics to be a genuine work by Holbein. The original drawing for this picture, which shows some slight differences, is in the Windsor collection.[185] Sir Thomas Strange or le Strange, of Hunstanton, Norfolk, was born in 1493, and entered the service of Henry VIII as esquire of the body, was knighted, and accompanied the king to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1532, and died in 1545.
Footnote 184:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 109, and in the illustrated catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Pl. xii.
Footnote 185:
Woltmann, 294; Wornum, i. 32; Holmes, ii. 6.
A small, undated bust portrait of Lady Vaux, wife of Thomas, second Lord Vaux, of Harrowden, the poet, has every appearance of belonging to this period. There are two versions of it, one in the Prague Gallery (No. 608),[186] and one at Hampton Court (No. 591 (337)).[187] Dr. Ganz regards both as old copies, but Sir Claude Phillips considers the former to be the original work by Holbein, and A. von Zahn says that it is indubitably original, but has suffered so severely and has been so heavily over-painted that little of Holbein’s handiwork is left. The Hampton Court version is the better of the two, and is apparently an excellent copy, though in technique of a somewhat later date.[188] It has been held, nevertheless, by most English writers to be a genuine but badly-damaged work of Holbein. The head has been repainted, which gives it that faded appearance noted by Mr. Wornum[189] and Dr. Waagen,[190] though the latter attributed it to “the attempt to give the refinements of the modelling in grey half-tones,” in doing which Holbein “sacrificed the warm local colours observable in his earlier pictures.” On the other hand, many of the accessories, such as the gold-and-enamel medallion, the chain round her neck, the ring, and the cuffs, display a delicacy of execution not easily attributable to anyone but Holbein. She is represented to the waist, almost full-face, the body turned slightly to the spectator’s left, and is dressed in black, with ermine upon the sleeves, and the customary diamond-shaped hood, edged with pearls, and with a black fall. She wears a thin black chain round her neck, and at her breast a circular brooch with a figure of the Virgin enthroned. Her hands rest in her lap, and in her right she holds a pink. It is on panel, 1 ft. 3 in. high by 11¼ in. wide. Mr. Law suggests that it is identical with “The picture of Madame de Vaux, by Holbein,” which was among the Duke of Buckingham’s pictures sent to be sold at Antwerp, whence it presumably returned with the “Dutch Gift,” and may, perhaps, be identified with No. 410 in James I’s catalogue, described as “One of King Henry VIII’s Queens, holding a gillyflower.”[191] There is a study for the head among the Windsor drawings,[192] in which the strengthening lines are exceptionally hard and pronounced, and mar an otherwise fine drawing. Holbein also painted her husband, though the picture has been lost, but the very beautiful drawing for it, described in a later chapter,[193] remains at Windsor. There is a second study of Lord Vaux by Holbein in the same collection.
Footnote 186:
Woltmann, 243. Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 220.
Footnote 187:
Woltmann, 163. Reproduced by Law, Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, p. 212; Ganz, Holbein, p. 221.
Footnote 188:
See Ganz, Holbein, p. 252.
Footnote 189:
Wornum, p. 411.
Footnote 190:
Treasures of Art in Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 361.
Footnote 191:
Law, Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, p. 213.
Footnote 192:
Woltmann, 321; Wornum, ii. 30; Holmes, i. 24. Reproduced by Davies, p. 218; Ganz, Holbein, p. xxxvii.; and elsewhere.
Footnote 193:
See p. 257. See also pp. 52-53 with reference to the “Portrait of a Musician” at one time considered to represent Lord Vaux.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF SIR NICHOLAS CAREW]
The portrait of Sir Nicholas Carew, Henry’s Master of the Horse, was probably painted during the earlier years of Holbein’s second residence in London. It could not have been done later than 1537, for in 1538 Carew was thrown into prison for supposed connection with the conspiracy of Cardinal Pole and the Marquis of Exeter, and was beheaded on March 3rd, 1539. There is a brilliant study for this portrait in the Basel Gallery (Pl. 17), a drawing in black and coloured chalks.[194] He is wearing body armour, and has a short beard and moustache; his hair is concealed by a close-fitting coif, and there are an octagonal medallion and a white feather in his black cap. It is one of the most masterly drawings Holbein ever made, searching in its truth, and of exact and delicate draughtsmanship.[195] As it was included among the collection of works by Holbein formed by his friend and admirer, Bonifacius Amerbach, it may have been presented to the latter by the artist himself when he was in Basel in 1538.
Footnote 194:
Woltmann, 31. Reproduced by Davies, p. 212; Ganz, Hdz. Schwz. Mstr., iii. 40, and Holbein, p. xxxiii. Dr. Ganz is of the opinion that this drawing is of Holbein’s first English period, and that the finished portrait was painted in 1527 or 1528. See Holbein, p. 238.
Footnote 195:
It has been suggested that the fine drawing of an English lady in the same collection is a portrait of Lady Carew, but it more probably represents Lady Guldeford. See Vol. i. p. 321.
The oil painting done from this study is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.G.,[196] and was last publicly exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909 (No. 45). It is a three-quarters length, turned to the left as in the drawing. The beard is brown, and the coif below the black hat is of cloth of gold. The octagonal gold badge represents a tree stem raguly and a banderole inscribed “SOLA.” He is wearing full plate-armour, and brown trunks slashed with cloth of gold. With his right hand he holds a white truncheon against his hip, and with the other grasps his sword by the scabbard. The background is a green damask curtain, and on a small cartellino in the left-hand bottom corner is inscribed in a cursive hand “SR NICHOLAS CAREWE, MASTER OF THE HORSE TO KING HENRY YE 8.” It is on a panel of unusual shape, being 36 in. high by 40 in. wide. This picture, as a whole, is a fine and interesting example of Tudor portraiture, but parts of it are certainly not by Holbein. The head is good, but the armour and many of the details are by some other, and possibly a later, hand. The probabilities are that it was begun by Holbein and finished by someone else; perhaps the arrest of Carew may have brought the completion of the work to an abrupt conclusion as far as Holbein was concerned. The fact that his name is given on the cartellino suggests that the portrait may be a posthumous one. It was not the usual custom at that time to place more than the date and the age of the person depicted upon the panel. Except in the form of a superscription to a letter held by the sitter, as in the Kratzer, Cromwell, and some of the Steelyard portraits, Holbein was not in the habit of adding the name to the pictures he painted in England. The “Duchess of Milan” is an exception,[197] but even here there is every probability that the cartellino was painted in at a later date. It is difficult to decide whether the Carew portrait was begun by Holbein and finished by some other hand, or whether it is an almost contemporary copy from some lost original. The head follows the Basel drawing closely, but as the latter was owned by Amerbach it is improbable that a copyist could have made use of it; so that, taking all things into consideration, it is safer to assume that Holbein himself had a share in its painting.[198] This portrait was in the possession of John, Lord Lumley, in 1590, and was sold from Lumley Castle in 1785 for ten guineas. In the inventory of 1590 it is described as “Of S^r Nichls Carewe M^r of the horse to K:H:8”; and it is interesting to note that the words “drawne by Haunce Holbyn” are not added, as they are after several other works by the master which Lord Lumley possessed. It has been suggested that this portrait is the “Ritratto d’homo armato” of the Arundel inventory of 1655, but if the picture remained in the possession of the Lumley family until 1785 this supposition cannot be correct. Symonds, in his Note-Books, has an entry of “A Ritratto of an English knight by Holbein who sits in a chayre and a table by him,” in the collection of the Earl of Northumberland in Suffolk House, which seems to refer to this picture.[199]
Footnote 196:
Woltmann, 142. Reproduced in illustrated catalogue of Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909, Pl. xv.; Ganz, Holbein, p. 77.
Footnote 197:
Also the Cheseman portrait.
Footnote 198:
Dr. Ganz, as already noted, considers it to be a genuine work of 1527-8.
Footnote 199:
Quoted by Mr. C. H. Collins Baker in Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, Vol. ii. p. 184.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIX. “SERVANT OF THE KING’S MAJESTY”
Holbein’s entry into Henry VIII’s service—Painting of “Adam and Eve”—Portraits of Henry VIII—The Whitehall fresco—Van Leemput’s copies of it—The life-size cartoon of Henry VII and Henry VIII—Drawing at Munich—Portraits of the King at Belvoir Castle, Petworth, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Chatsworth, Warwick Castle, Hampton Court, Windsor, Rome, and elsewhere—The portrait at Althorp—Portraits and miniatures of Jane Seymour.
THE exact date of Holbein’s entry into the royal service is unknown. Three records of the household expenditure of the King are in existence: the Accounts of Bryan Tuke, Treasurer of the Chamber, which extend from 1st October, 20th Hen. VIII (1528) to May, 23rd Hen. VIII (1531), during which period Holbein was out of England; the Privy Purse Expenses of the King, from November 1529 to December 1532; and further Accounts of Tuke, as Treasurer, from Lady Day, 29th Hen. VIII (1538) to Midsummer, 33rd Hen. VIII (1541). Although Holbein was in England during the latter half of 1532, his name does not occur in the Privy Purse expenses, as it certainly would have done had he then been in the King’s employment. Unfortunately, no accounts have been preserved for the period between 1533 and 1537, and so it is not until 1538 that we have definite proof that the painter was in receipt of a regular salary from the royal purse. The first entry referring to him is at Lady Day, 1538, when the following occurs: “Item, for Hans Holben, paynter, vii_li._ x_s._” As his salary of £30 a year, paid quarterly, was not as a rule paid in advance, he must have already been in the royal service at least three months earlier, that is in December 1537.
[Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S ENTRY INTO ROYAL SERVICE]
The first actual reference to him as painter to the King is contained in the letter of Nicolas Bourbon, already quoted, written early in 1536, in which he speaks of him as the “royal painter,” and it is to be inferred from it that Holbein already held that position in 1535, when the poet was in England and made his acquaintance. The circular miniature of Jane Seymour by Hilliard in the Windsor Collection, apparently copied from an original by Holbein, is inscribed “ANŌ DNĪ 1536 ÆTATIS SVÆ 27”; and the great painting of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth of York, and Jane Seymour, with which Holbein covered one of the walls of the Privy Chamber at Whitehall, was done in 1537. None of the earlier portraits of Henry or of his two first queens, usually ascribed to Holbein, are authentic works of his, which affords some proof that he did not enter the royal service until after Jane Seymour had been crowned Queen in 1536, or, if Bourbon is to be believed, that at least he did not do so until towards the end of Anne Boleyn’s life. The small portrait of Henry VIII on the frontispiece of Coverdale’s Bible, printed in 1535, bears little real likeness to the King, and may well have been designed by Holbein without any sitting from him; though, on the other hand, it may also be taken as some indication that he was already the King’s servant in that year. It is safer, however, to assume, as the evidence for an earlier year is so scant, that he received his first pay from the royal purse in the autumn of 1536.
It is extraordinary, and indeed almost inexplicable, that Holbein was at work for so long a time in England before he received royal recognition. That this did not happen during his first sojourn in London is surprising enough, but that on his return he should remain for three or four years busily employed in painting portraits of people about Henry’s court, some of which the King must have seen, is still more difficult of explanation. Henry entered into keen but friendly rivalry with Francis I in his patronage of art, and was anxious at all times to induce good foreign artists to settle in England; and yet here was a painter of gifts which placed him high above his fellows, who, apparently, went quite unrecognised. This is the more remarkable when it is remembered that the King was well acquainted with, and had expressed his delight in, at least one work of Holbein done during his first English visit—“The Battle of Spurs,” which decorated the back of the arch of the temporary Banquet Hall at Greenwich. It is hardly possible that it was owing to any disinclination on Holbein’s own part, however anxious he may have been to retain his rights as a citizen of Basel. He could have entered Henry’s service for a year or two without renouncing his burghership, or becoming a naturalised English subject, and that he did obtain the post in the end seems to indicate that the obstacle, whatever it may have been, was not one of his own making. It was, on the other hand, an honour to which he would aspire, and the possibility of holding some such position must have been one of the reasons which induced him to visit this country, as it was with all the foreign artists and craftsmen who made London their temporary home. A satisfactory explanation of this mystery is hard to find, and unless further evidence is discovered, it must remain unsolved.
That there is some possibility that Holbein was indirectly employed by the Crown even earlier than 1535 is suggested by an interesting memorandum dealing with goldsmiths’ work published in the Calendars of Letters and Papers. The paper is undated, but is placed by the editor under the year 1534. It is an account rendered to the King’s Secretary, Thomas Cromwell, by the Dutchman Cornelis Hayes, one of the leading foreign goldsmiths in London during Henry’s reign, who was constantly employed by the King and the court. The articles supplied were apparently for the royal service, the chief among them being an elaborately decorated silver cradle, which may possibly have been for the use of the Princess Elizabeth, who was born on the 7th September 1533. The document runs as follows:
“Parcels delivered to Mr. Secretary by me, Cornelys Hayes, goldsmith. A silver cradle, price 16_li._ For making a silver plate, altering the images, making the roses underneath the cradle, the roses about the pillars, and new burnishing, 13_s._ 4_d._ For the stones that were set in gold in the cradle, 15_s._; for fringes, the gold about the cushions, tassels, white satin, cloth of gold, lining, sypars, and swadyl-bands, 13_s._ 6_d._ Total, 18_li._ 1_s._ 10_d._ The silver that went to the dressing of the Adam and Eve, the making of all the apples, the gilding of the foot and setting of the currall (coral), 33_s._ 4_d._ To Hance, painter, for painting the same Adam and Eve, 20_s._”[200] Other items are included in the account which need not be quoted.
Footnote 200:
C.L.P., vol. vii. 1668.
The “Hance, painter,” who supplied this picture of “Adam and Eve,” was undoubtedly Holbein, who was acquainted with Hayes, as we learn from Bourbon’s letter, and for whom he almost certainly provided designs for jewellery.[201] The document is not very clear, and on a first reading it would appear that the “Adam and Eve” formed part of the decoration of the cradle; but it is more probable that it had nothing to do with it, but was a separate piece of work, either a picture or a carving in wood, honestone, or alabaster, which Holbein was employed to colour; possibly the latter, as the fee paid, twenty shillings, was a small one for an original painting from his brush. Whether picture or carving, it was evidently set in a very elaborate silver frame, decorated with silver apples in relief, as appropriate to the subject it contained, and with coral inset. No trace of this work remains, but the possibility that Holbein’s share in it was a small picture recalls that earlier “Adam and Eve” of the first Basel years, which, as already noted,[202] bears a considerable resemblance to the heads in the picture of the same subject by Mabuse in Hampton Court.
Footnote 201:
The same paper contains an item for “the garnishing of two books with silver-gilt, 66 oz. at 6_s._,” which recalls Holbein’s designs in the British Museum for work of a similar kind. The velvet for covering them was supplied by William Lock, the leading London mercer, at a cost of 43_s._ 9_d._
Footnote 202:
See Vol. i. p. 56.
[Sidenote: PORTRAITS OF HENRY VIII]
Among the numerous portraits of Henry VIII to be met with in so many of the great houses of this country and in several European museums, which, in almost all cases, are attributed by their owners to Holbein, only three[203] can be ascribed to him with any certainty. These are the large cartoon for the left-hand half of the Whitehall wall-painting, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire; the beautiful little panel portrait in Earl Spencer’s collection at Althorp; and the crayon study in the Munich Gallery. The greater number of the remaining portraits of him, most of them based on the Whitehall likeness, are merely inferior copies, and copies of copies, “shop” pieces supplied to order by Henry’s painters for presentation to foreign potentates and ambassadors, and to his own statesmen and courtiers as a reward for faithful service. Less frequently one is met with which is a good and original work by some painter of lower rank than Holbein, and such portraits, in their turn, have been multiplied by assistants in order to meet the constant demand for the King’s likeness.
Footnote 203:
A fourth work, the portrait in the National Gallery, Rome, is, however, considered by Dr. Ganz and other critics to be an original work by Holbein.
The great Whitehall fresco was painted in 1537, and was the first work of importance which Holbein undertook for the Crown. It achieved immense popularity, and for one hundred and fifty years or so every foreign visitor of distinction was taken to see it, while all artists who had an opportunity of examining it spoke loudly in its praises. It covered one of the walls in the Privy Chamber at Whitehall, and was painted on either side and over the top of a window, or, more probably, the fireplace, and consisted of four great figures, Henry VIII and his father, Henry VII, on one side, and his mother, Elizabeth of York, and his third wife, Jane Seymour, on the other, arranged within an elaborately designed architectural setting. This great work, which added so much to Holbein’s fame among his contemporaries, was destroyed in the fire at Whitehall in January 1698; but happily, owing to the foresight of Charles II, we still possess, in the small copy of it by the Flemish artist Remigius van Leemput, in Hampton Court[204] (No. 601 (308)), a very valuable record of the composition of the work. The copy is evidently a very faithful one, and though, of course, it lacks all the greatness of style, the vividness of character, and the beauty of colour of the original—for Remée was a poor artist—it reproduces the composition with some exactitude, and so is invaluable to students of the master. This copy was made by Van Leemput in 1667, the probable reason being that the fresco was then beginning to show signs of decay, and that Charles was anxious to retain an accurate record of it before it was ruined. Patin, who visited England about 1670, and saw both the painting and the copy, said that the latter was ordered by the King “pour en estendre la posterité s’il faut ainsi dire, et n’abandonner pas une si belle chose à la fortune des temps.”[205] Walpole says that Remée, as he was familiarly called here, received £150 for his work,[206] which was a very large fee for those days, and shows how highly the King valued the original.
Footnote 204:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 179, from Vertue’s engraving.
Footnote 205:
Patin, Relations historiques, Basel, 1673, p. 211 et seq.
Footnote 206:
Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, 1888, i. p. 82.
Footnote 207:
“Zo wel getroffen, dat het den beschouwer met verbaastheid aandoet.”
[Sidenote: THE WHITEHALL WALL-PAINTING]
The wall-painting itself was still in perfect condition when Van Mander saw it in 1604. He was deeply impressed by this “over-heerlijk Portret” of Henry, which, he wrote, was so true to life that it filled the spectator with dismay.[207] “The King, as he stood there, majestic in his splendour, was so life-like, that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated, in his presence.” Earlier travellers who saw it and praised it were Johann Fischart, in 1576,[208] and Hentzner, who visited England in 1598; while Duke Johann Ernst of Saxony, who was here in 1613, was also taken to see it; it is noted in the records of his journey, “upon this his Royal Highness was conducted into the King’s apartment; it was small but hung with beautiful tapestries on all sides. In this room were the full-length portraits of Henrici VIII, and his father, Henrici VII. They were regarded as special works of art, and similar works are said not to be seen throughout England.” Both Pepys and Evelyn mention it in their diaries. The latter, under the date 11th February 1656, says he was glad to find, on revisiting Whitehall for the first time for many years, that “they had not much defac’d that rare piece of Hen. VII, &c., don on the walles of the King’s privy chamber.” This entry proves that ten or eleven years before Charles II ordered the copy to be made the fresco was beginning to show signs of decay. It narrowly escaped destruction in the earlier fire at Whitehall in 1691, but the conflagration of 1698 was a much more serious one. It burnt down the entire Palace, with the exception of the Banqueting House and a few buildings adjoining it. More than a thousand apartments perished in the flames, and a number of pictures in the Matted Gallery and elsewhere, mentioned by Evelyn, were destroyed. “This terrible conflagration, which broke out about four in the afternoon and lasted upwards of seventeen hours, originated through the neglect and carelessness of a laundress, a Dutch woman, who had left some linen to dry in front of a fire, in the lodging of a certain Colonel Stanley. She and twelve other persons, so it is reported, perished in the flames.”[209]
Footnote 208:
Quoted by Ganz, Holbein, p. xxxviii.
Footnote 209:
Dr. Sheppard, The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall, 1901, pp. 385-6. According to Scharf, Old London, p. 322, the fresco was destroyed in the fire of 1691.
By the aid of the large cartoon and Van Leemput’s copy a very good idea of the general effect and composition of the picture can be obtained. It is divided into two stages. On the spectator’s left hand stands Henry VIII, turned fully to the front, with arms akimbo, and legs stretched widely apart, and opposite him, on the other side of the picture, is Jane Seymour. Behind and above the King, and to the right of him, on a raised step or low platform, stands his father, Henry VII, and in a corresponding position on the other side, his mother, Elizabeth of York. Henry was very proud of his legs, and Holbein has depicted him in his favourite attitude. He holds a glove in his right hand, and with the left the cord of his dagger, gold hilted, with a gold and blue velvet sheath. His gold-brown doublet is richly jewelled, and his red surcoat is trimmed with fur and elaborately brocaded with gold thread; a heavy jewelled chain crosses his shoulders, and from another hangs a pendant. His flat black bonnet is ornamented with pearls, devices in gold, and white feathers. The figure is rather larger than life-size, but looks colossal. His shoulders appear enormous, partly owing to the dress, and partly, no doubt, through some exaggeration on the artist’s part to flatter the vanity of his royal sitter. Henry VII is shown in simpler costume; with his right hand he holds together the folds of his long ermine-trimmed gown, his left elbow resting on the marble pedestal which Van Leemput has placed in the centre in lieu of the window or chimney-piece which occupied the same position in the wall itself. He holds his gloves in his left hand, and has the Garter collar across his breast. Unlike his son, he is beardless, and his long hair falls to his shoulders. Jane Seymour is wearing a dress of tawny gold, full ermine sleeves, and several necklaces of pearls. Her hands are clasped in front of her, and a small white dog is lying on the long skirt of her gown. Behind her, Elizabeth of York stands with her arms crossed, and holding up her dress with her right hand. The floor is covered with a Turkey carpet, and the background consists of richly-decorated pilasters and capitals, niches, and a frieze, in various coloured marbles, in the Renaissance style of which Holbein made such brilliant use. In the frieze on either side are figures supporting a shield. The shield shown in the cartoon bears the initials H and J; the other, no doubt, gave the date. In Van Leemput’s copy the initials have been changed to “AN^o. Dō.” with “1537” in the corresponding panel, while the centre of the picture is filled with a high marble pedestal, with two cushions on the top, and on the front of it a long Latin inscription in praise of the two monarchs. Below this is inscribed: “Prototypvm Magnitvdinis Ipso Opere Tectorio Fecit Holbenivs Ivbente Henrico VIII,” and a little below, on a plinth: “Ectypvm A Remigio Van Leempvt Breviora Tabella Describi Volvit Carolus II. M.B.F.E.H.R. A°. DNI. M.DCLXVII.”
[Sidenote: CARTOON OF HENRY VII & HENRY VIII]
Van Leemput’s inferiority as an artist is shown most clearly in his rendering of the faces. In that of Henry VIII, in particular, the drawing is weak and lacking in character, and as a likeness it bears no close resemblance to the many portraits still existing which were copied or adapted from the fresco. It must be regarded, therefore, as a not very reliable record of the facial appearance of the four sitters as Holbein painted them.
The pedestal was, no doubt, Van Leemput’s own invention, and the Latin verses must have been specially written for the purpose of his copy. As already pointed out, the wall on which the fresco was painted contained either a window or a fireplace. Charles Patin describes it as “sur le pignon de la croisée”; but it has been suggested that “croisée” is a typographical error for “cheminée.” Patin, however, was not a very careful observer, for he speaks of the subject as “de la main d’Holbein, le portrait d’Henry huit et des Princes ses enfants.”[210] In this, nevertheless, he may not be so completely wrong as at first sight appears. In 1897 Mr. Ernest Law, the historian of Hampton Court Palace, discovered another copy of the great wall-painting, also by Van Leemput, and of the same size and scale as the Hampton Court example, but with one important difference. In the middle foreground the copyist has placed a standing figure of Edward VI. This interesting little picture belongs to Lord Leconfield, and is in one of the private bedrooms at Petworth, Sussex. Patin may have seen this copy, and afterwards may have confused it with the wall-painting; or again, he may have confused the fresco with the picture of Henry VIII and his family, by an unknown artist of the school of Holbein, now in Hampton Court, No. 340 (510), but probably in Patin’s day hanging in Whitehall.[211]
Footnote 210:
Patin, Relations historiques, Basel, 1673, p. 211 et seq.
Footnote 211:
It is hardly possible that the figure of Edward VI was added to the wall-painting itself after the death of Holbein, or otherwise it would appear in both Van Leemput’s copies. It was, no doubt, taken from some independent portrait of the young king then hanging in Whitehall.
The life-size cartoon of Henry VIII and his father, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, until recently at Hardwick Hall (Pl. 18),[212] is, though only a working drawing, a superb example of Holbein’s mastery of composition on a monumental scale. It is the original design for the left-hand part of the Whitehall fresco, and along its outlines the prickings are still visible by means of which the design was pounced on the wall. It provides evidence that Van Leemput’s copy was a faithful one, for, with one important exception, the two agree in all points. The exception is in the position of the King’s head. In the cartoon it is about three-quarters to the right, but in the copy it has been turned so that the monarch is looking directly at the spectator. Woltmann is, no doubt, right when he suggests that the change was made by the express wish of Henry himself while the wall-painting was in progress.[213] He desired to be shown full-fronted to the world, for he was proud of his appearance, more particularly of his calves, as more than one contemporary anecdote shows. In his younger days, at the beginning of his reign, he was the most commanding figure at the English court, praised by all for his good looks, and celebrated for his great bodily strength and for his proficiency in all manly sports and exercises. He is thus described by the Venetian ambassador Pasqualigo in 1515; “His Majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion; and a round face so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick.”[214]
Footnote 212:
Now (1913) at Chatsworth. Woltmann, 167. Reproduced by Davies, p. 168; Ganz Holbein, p. 180; Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909, Catalogue, Pl. i.
Footnote 213:
Woltmann, i. 421.
Footnote 214:
C.L.P., vol. ii. pt. i. 411.
When Holbein painted him he was forty-six years old, and his face had coarsened and had lost all its youthful freshness and good looks, but his figure was still erect and kingly, and retained much of its earlier vigour. In the cartoon he stands boldly and firmly on his legs, active and alert, though massive in build, and made still broader in appearance by his rich apparel, heavily padded about the shoulders. It is in the face that his age and the habits of his life are beginning to leave ugly indications, though this is not to be gathered from the cartoon, in which his features, badly rubbed, are now barely discernible. This, however, may not be entirely due to the accidents of time, for as the cartoon was made for the purpose of transferring the leading lines of the composition to the wall, Holbein possibly only indicated the main outlines, leaving the more careful modelling to be done on the wall itself. Sadly damaged as the cartoon is, a mere fragment of the first conception of a great masterpiece, it nevertheless remains a remarkable and precious work of art, doubly valuable in that it not only shows us Holbein’s methods of work, but is also the only record from his own hand we possess to-day in this country of the most important and celebrated painting he produced while in England. The whole composition is drawn in with the point of the brush, in the manner, as Mr. S. Arthur Strong points out, at once broad and minute, of which Holbein seems to have been the solitary master. In this crowd of particulars almost everyone else would have lost sight of the whole, and given us a map instead of a view.[215] Mr. Roger E. Fry speaks of it as one of Holbein’s greatest creations. “It has all the grandeur of style, the lucidity and ease of arrangement of the greatest monumental design of Italy, together with a particularity and minuteness which would seem incompatible with those greater qualities of style had they not been thus wonderfully united. In all the decorative details, too, this great work gives us a measure of Holbein’s impeccable taste at a time when taste was by no means as universal as it had been in earlier centuries.”[216]
Footnote 215:
S. Arthur Strong, Reproductions of Drawings by the Old Masters at Chatsworth, 1902; republished in Critical Studies and Fragments, 1905, p. 132.
Footnote 216:
Burlington Magazine, vol. xv., May 1909, p. 74.
[Sidenote: DRAWING OF THE KING AT MUNICH]
This cartoon was in 1590 in the possession of John, Lord Lumley, at Lumley Castle, and is entered in the inventory of the pictures as “The Statuary of King Henry the Eight and his father Kinge Henry the Seventh Joyned together, doone in white and black by Haunce Holbyn.” It passed subsequently into the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been preserved ever since at Hardwick Hall.[217]
Footnote 217:
See p. 97, note 3.
When it was decided to change the position of the face, it became necessary for the King to give the painter another sitting, and the full-face drawing now in the Munich Gallery[218] is, no doubt, the very study Holbein made for the purpose. This is not only evident from its agreement with Van Leemput’s copy, but also from its dimensions. It is life-size, and thus considerably bigger than any other preliminary portrait-study by Holbein which has survived. It is in black and red chalks, on paper prepared with body-colour in the manner practised by the painter at that period. The study is of the face alone, part of the hat, the collar, and a small portion of fur on the shoulders being roughly indicated. The short, scanty beard and the still scantier whiskers do not conceal the shape of the massive, almost square face, with its thin eyebrows, fat, heavy cheeks, which from their size make the mouth look small. He gazes in front of him, his eyes unconscious of the spectator, as though the thoughts of the sitter were entirely given to himself. The modelling is masterly, and is obtained by the simplest means; but the sketch, simple as it appears to be, produces a wonderful effect of perfect truth to life. Here is the King exactly as he was, as none other but Holbein could have drawn him. He has given not only an absolutely faithful rendering of the face itself, but has laid bare much of the complex character which lurked behind it, and the drawing must always remain both one of the artist’s very finest portrait-studies and also a living document of the utmost value in the history of Tudor England. How this drawing came to be in Munich is not known. It was discovered among a number of other drawings, put aside as of no particular value, by Herr J. H. von Hefner-Alteneck when he was keeper of the Print Room. It does not appear to have ever formed a part of the Windsor series of drawings.
Footnote 218:
Woltmann, 221. Reproduced by Davies, p. 166; Knackfuss, fig. 125; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 220.
The Whitehall painting became the prototype of nine-tenths of the very numerous portraits of Henry which were produced during his reign and for some little time afterwards. With one possible exception, these works are not from Holbein’s own hand; they were all the work of the less important artists attached to the English court. These, again, are of very varying degrees of skill, some being but coarse and common productions, while others have considerable artistic merits. There is great probability that some of the best of them were from the workshop of Gerard and Lucas Hornebolt, more particularly those half-lengths of which the portrait in Warwick Castle is perhaps the finest example. All, however, had their real origin in the Whitehall painting; in every one of them the King is shown full-face, and in the same characteristic attitude.
[Sidenote: OTHER PORTRAITS OF THE KING]
Interesting as the subject is, the scope of this book does not permit any attempt to describe, or even to compile a list of, all the portraits of Henry VIII still remaining in England. A few of the principal ones may be mentioned briefly. Several of them are full-lengths. Among these one of the most interesting is in Belvoir Castle.[219] It was purchased by the fourth Duke of Rutland at Lord Torrington’s sale in 1787 for £211. Except in some minor details of the dress, it follows the Whitehall painting very closely. The King is wearing “white hose, with the Garter on his left leg; a gold chain round his neck with the letter H, with a pendant circular gold case without any device; another gold chain or collar across the shoulder over the surcoat is mounted in jewels set in gold-and-enamel. The whole of the dress and ornaments is most elaborately painted and gilded, and in excellent effect of light and colour, being in an absolutely perfect state of preservation.”[220] The copyist has made the face younger and more handsome, and much more lacking in expression than the Munich sketch. The background is a curtain with an elaborate design in panels, each one surmounted by a crown. Dr. Waagen thought it to be a genuine work by Holbein. “Although painted on canvas,” he says, “the picture is of such truth, delicacy, and transparency, that I consider it an original.” A similar whole-length on wood, belonging to the Seymour family, is described by Dr. Woltmann, who regarded it as an excellently painted contemporary copy, which very possibly came into the possession of that family through their connection with Jane Seymour.[221] There is a far finer example at Petworth, much more transparent and delicate in its tones, which Wornum describes as “really magnificent.”[222] This work is by no means an exact copy; it differs in various details, more particularly in the dress, which is of silver brocade with a blue mantle lined with ermine. It is possibly the work of a Fleming. The background is architectural. There is another full-length version at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, with a further variation of the background and the floor. Other repetitions are at Chatsworth,[223] Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the possession of Viscount Dillon at Ditchley, Enstone.[224]
Footnote 219:
Reproduced in The Connoisseur, vol. vi. No. 22, June 1903, frontispiece.
Footnote 220:
The Connoisseur, vol. vi. No. 22, June 1903, p. 68 (quotation from Radford’s catalogue of the collection).
Footnote 221:
Woltmann, ii. 20.
Footnote 222:
Wornum, p. 308.
Footnote 223:
Described by Mr. S. Arthur Strong as “one of the best of the royal effigies that are all probably based in common upon the Hardwick cartoon. The artist, whoever he was, had a manner of his own, and was more than a mere copyist. The cold grey scheme of colour is a contrast to the depth and richness at which Holbein aimed, and is more akin to what we afterwards appreciate as characteristic in Honthorst and Mytens.”—Critical Studies and Fragments, p. 91. The figure is evidently copied directly from the wall-painting. The position and the details of the dress agree exactly with the Hardwick cartoon. It is reproduced by Dr. Ganz, Holbein, p. 181.
Footnote 224:
Reproduced by A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 150.
The half-length and three-quarter-length versions, of which the portraits at Rome and in Warwick Castle are, perhaps, the most important, are still more numerous. In these the King is shown in the same position, and apparently several years older, the cheeks fatter and more shapeless, and with greyer beard, while in a number of them, instead of holding his dagger, he has a stick in his left hand. The Warwick picture, which is life-size, to the knees, and full-front, was considered by Dr. Waagen to be a genuine work by Holbein of about the date 1530, but more recent criticism has shown him to be wrong in both these assertions. “The square face is so fat,” he says, “that the several parts are quite indistinct. There is in these features a brutal egotism, an obstinacy, and a harshness of feeling, such as I have never yet seen in any human countenance. In the eyes, too, there is the suspicious watchfulness of a wild beast, so that I became quite uncomfortable from looking at it a long time; for the picture, a masterpiece of Holbein, is as true in the smallest details as if the king himself stood before you. In the very splendid dress much gold is employed. The under-sleeves are of gold, with brown shadows; the hands most strikingly true to nature; in the left he has a cane, and in the right a pair of gloves; on his head a small cap. The background is bright green. The want of simplicity of the forms, the little rounding of the whole, notwithstanding the wonderful modelling of all the details, the brownish red local tone of the flesh, the grey of the shadows, and the very light general effect, show this picture to be a transition from the second to the third manner of Holbein, and that it may have been painted about 1530.”[225]
Footnote 225:
Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, iii. p. 215.
It is, however, impossible that the portrait can have been painted in that year, when Henry was not forty. He appears to be at least fifteen years older than this. The head and hands are good, but the style of painting has little in common with that of Holbein, while the details of the dress lack the beauty, delicacy, and truth of draughtsmanship which are to be found in his work. There is a portrait in the collection of the Marquis of Bute, which, according to Dr. Waagen, is “exactly like the picture by Holbein at Warwick Castle, only less finished.”[226] When he saw it, as far back as 1854, it was ascribed to “Gerard Horebout,” and there is every probability that this attribution is the correct one, for it is not to be expected that the almost forgotten name of Hornebolt would have been substituted for the much better known one of Holbein, and the fact that the former name has clung to the picture for so long is strong evidence in favour of the contention that Hornebolt was the painter of it. For this reason the Warwick portrait, and others like it, are now tentatively attributed by most modern writers to the workshop of Gerard and Luke Hornebolt.
Footnote 226:
Ibid., vol. iii. p. 482.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF HENRY VIII AT ROME]
The portrait in the National Gallery, Rome (Pl. 19),[227] which was formerly in the Corsini Collection, is a three-quarter length, and is inscribed across the plain background, on either side of the head, “ANNO · ÆTATIS · SVÆ · XLIX,” and was, therefore, painted in 1539 or 1540. In dress and position it closely follows Van Leemput’s copy, and the Windsor and other versions, in which the left hand holds the dagger-cord. With the exception of the substitution of brown fur for ermine, and different embroidery on the upper sleeves, the Rome and the Windsor portraits are in exact agreement as to the costume. The face in the Rome portrait is decidedly younger than in the Warwick and Windsor versions, as the date would indicate, so that it is possibly one of the earliest of the contemporary copies, taken directly from the wall-painting under Holbein’s own supervision. It is undoubtedly the best of the later portraits of the King, the face being full of character finely rendered, and it is regarded by a number of modern critics, including Dr. Ganz, as a work from Holbein’s own brush.
Footnote 227:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 125.
An important example of this type of the portraits of Henry VIII is the three-quarter length belonging to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, which was last exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909 (No. 23). The dress is very similar to the Warwick portrait. The King is grasping in his left hand a black staff mounted in gold. The background is dark, and on it is inscribed: “ANNO [~D][~N]I 1544. ÆTATIS SVÆ 55,” which is incorrect, as Henry did not enter his fifty-fifth year until 1545.[228] The portrait in Windsor Castle,[229] which, as Mr. Ernest Law points out, is the only contemporary likeness of Henry in the whole of the royal collections which has anything of an Holbeinesque character, was evidently copied from the Whitehall fresco. In the attitude and in the details of the dress it follows the original with considerable closeness, though slight differences are to be noted, as in the position of the right hand, which is here placed over the sword-belt, instead of below it as in Van Leemput’s copy. Its agreement with the Rome portrait has been already pointed out. The face, however, more closely resembles the Warwick portrait. Mr. Ernest Law suggests that it was executed several years later than the Holbein prototype, by some pupil or imitator, such as Guillim Stretes, after the master’s death,[230] the general attitude, pose, dress, and accessories of the original being carefully adhered to, but the features modified, and the beard shown as thinner and turning grey, to suit his added years, though in outline they still closely resemble Holbein’s drawing at Munich. The size of the panel is 3 ft. 3¾ in. high × 2 ft. 5½ in. wide. It may be the picture which was No. 866 in James II’s catalogue: “King Henry VIII at half-length, with gloves in his right hand”; though this description suits equally well the smaller portrait (18 in. × 16 in.) at Hampton Court, No. 606.
Footnote 228:
There is another version of this portrait with the black staff in the left hand at Chatsworth, in which, Mr. S. Arthur Strong says, “the drawing of the features is masterly, and the detail is minute and searching without being petty; but here again the effect is flat, and we feel that Holbein himself would have better conveyed the sense of roundness and depth.... On the whole, there is a French rather than a German look about this picture, which suggests the possibility that it may have been painted at the time of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.”—Critical Studies and Fragments, p. 91, and Pl. ix. i.
Footnote 229:
Reproduced by Law, Holbein’s Pictures, &c., Pl. v.; Davies, p. 165; Knackfuss, fig. 126; Pollard, Henry VIII, frontispiece (in colour); Cust, Royal Collection of Paintings, Windsor Castle, Pl. 49; Ganz, Holbein, p. 222.
Footnote 230:
Holbein’s Pictures, &c., p. 13.
Another good version of this portrait, with the left hand on the dagger-cord, is the half-length belonging to the Earl of Yarborough, while an excellent example of the Warwick Castle type, with a cane substituted for the dagger, was lent by Lord Sackville to the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909 (No. 21).
There is also an excellent portrait of the Warwick type in the collection of the Duke of Manchester at Kimbolton Castle.[231] It is on panel, 35 in. × 25 in., and closely resembles the picture in the National Portrait Gallery (No. 496) (35⅛ in. × 26¼ in.), which is attributed to Luke Hornebolt.[232] The latter had at one time a coat of arms on the frame indicating that it belonged at some period to the Nassau family. It may have been taken over to Holland at the time of the marriage of Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I, to William of Orange, in 1641. There are three other portraits of the King in the National Portrait Gallery, while other versions or old copies exist at Castle Howard, and at Serlby, the seat of Viscount Galway. The latter (35 in. × 27 in.) has an inscription on the background giving the King’s titles and the date 1547, the year of his death. Another (36 in. × 30 in.), at one time in the collection of Mr. Henry Willett, and now in the Brighton Art Gallery, is said to have been taken from a wainscot in King’s Walden House, Herts, formerly the residence of Anne Boleyn.
Footnote 231:
Tudor Exhibition, 1890, No. 97, and reproduced in the Catalogue, p. 48.
Footnote 232:
Reproduced in Mr. Cust’s illustrated Catalogue of National Portrait Gallery, vol. i. p. 23.
[Sidenote: “HENRY VIII WITH A SCROLL”]
All these portraits, whether by the Hornebolts or less important copyists attached to Henry’s court, are based on Holbein’s Whitehall painting. There is, however, one other representation of Henry VIII, of about the date of Holbein’s first entry into the royal service, which is of a very different character, and was not painted under the influence of the great German. This is the fine picture at Hampton Court (No. 563 (313)), generally known as “King Henry VIII with a Scroll.”[233] He is seen at half-length, with head turned slightly to the right, but eyes to the front. He has reddish hair, and a small thin beard and moustache, and his eyes are dark grey. He wears a doublet of cloth of gold, cut square across the chest, covered with strings of pearls, and slashed with rows of white puffs, above which his white frilled shirt is seen. Over this is a sable-furred cloak. His black cap has a medallion, with figures of the Virgin and Infant Christ in enamel, and a white jewelled feather. In front of him is a table or ledge with a crimson cushion, on which his right hand is placed, and a scroll of white paper, one end of which he holds between the thumb and forefinger of his left. On it is inscribed a sentence from the Gospel of St. Mark in Roman lettering: “Marci—16. Ite in Mũdvm Vniversṽ et predicate Evangelivm omni creatvræ.” The background is a rich green. It is on panel, 2 ft. 4 in. high × 1 ft. 10 in. wide.
Footnote 233:
Reproduced by Law, Royal Gallery at Hampton Court, p. 204.
The probable authorship of this painting has given rise to much discussion and difference of opinion. It has been attributed at different times to Holbein, Janet, Joos van Cleve, and Girolamo da Treviso, and even to Toto or Penni. Dr. Woltmann considered it to be the work of a Frenchman, whereas Mr. Wornum was inclined to attribute it to an Italian hand, possibly Da Treviso. The one thing certain about it is that it is not by Holbein. There is an equal difference of opinion as to the date. The King has so youthful a look, as compared with the Hardwick cartoon and the Munich drawing, that some writers hold that he cannot have been more than thirty-eight—certainly not more than forty—when it was painted. This would make the date about 1529, in which year Holbein was in Switzerland. On the other hand, there are two facts which point to a later date—the arrangement of the hair and beard, and the text on the scroll, which, taken together, make it highly probable that the portrait was painted in 1536. It was on the 8th of May 1535 that Henry, in imitation of Francis I, ordered all about his court to cut their hair short and to grow their beards—“the King commanded all about his court to poll their heads; and to give them example he caused his own head to be polled, and from thenceforth his beard to be knotted and no more shaven.”[234] In the picture both hair and beard are treated in the new fashion. Again, on October 4th of the same year the printing of Coverdale’s English version of the whole Bible, for which Holbein designed the title-page, was finished, and in 1536 Henry ordered a copy of it to be laid in the choir of every church, “for every man that will to look and read therein; and shall discourage no man from reading any part of the Bible, but rather comfort, exhort, and admonish every man to read the same.” To this the text on the scroll which Henry holds in the portrait clearly refers; and further evidence is supplied by the Bible frontispiece, in which the King is shown under a canopy, with a sword in his right hand, and a clasped Bible in his left, which he is handing to his kneeling bishops. One of the little pictures which form the border of the title-page, in which our Saviour is exhorting His disciples to preach the Word throughout the world, has the same text (Mark xvi. 15) inscribed below it. The evidence, therefore, is very strongly in favour of the assumption that the portrait was painted to commemorate Henry’s share in the publication of Coverdale’s English version of the Bible. Against these two arguments in favour of the date 1536, the compilers of the catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition point out that the King does not look more than thirty, which would place the portrait at about the date of the meeting with Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. “The portrait of Eleonora of Spain, wife of Francis I, also at Hampton Court,” they say, “is evidently by the same hand; and the smaller portrait of Francis I, also at Hampton Court, is either by, or a copy after, the same painter. These circumstances would point to a possible French origin, and lend some colour to the ascription of the portrait either to “Sotto” Cleef, who worked in France before coming to England, or to Jean Clouet—more probably the latter, who may very well have been in attendance on Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.”[235] It is difficult, however, to follow these writers in their conclusion that the portrait of Eleonora, almost certainly by the elder Clouet, and the portrait of Henry VIII are by the same hand, while the fact that in all the earlier portraits of the King he is shown with long hair, cut straight across the forehead, and no beard, makes it still more difficult to accept the date as that of the meeting of the two monarchs in France, unless much stronger evidence as to its French origin be forthcoming. It is not safe to go farther than to ascribe it to a Franco-Flemish origin. It should be noted in passing that a small point in favour of those who see in it a work by an Italian hand lies in the scroll or cartellino, a feature not often met with in French or English portraits of that time.
Footnote 234:
Stow’s Annales.
Footnote 235:
Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogue, p.bv 81.
[Sidenote: “HENRY VIII WITH A SCROLL”]
On the back of the panel is branded Charles I’s cypher, and there is also a slip of paper on which is inscribed in contemporary handwriting, “Changed with my Lord Arundel, 1624.” In Charles’ catalogue, compiled in 1639, it is entered as “King Henry VIII when he was young, with a white scroll of parchment in his hand; the picture being to the shoulders; half a figure so big as the life, in a carved gilded frame. Length 4 ft. 0. A Whitehall piece, said to be done by Jennet or Sotto Cleve.” It is possibly the picture in the Commonwealth inventory—“King Henry y^e 8^{th} by Gennett,” which was “sold to M^{r.} Baggeley y^e 23^{rd} Oct. 1651 for £25.” It may also be the “Table with the picture of King Henry VIII, then being young,” in Edward VI’s catalogue. An early and interesting copy of this picture, on canvas, 28¾ in. × 22¼ in., is in the possession of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, which was in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 120), and the Burlington Club Exhibition, 1909 (No. 24). In the catalogue of the former exhibition it was attributed to Paris Bordone. It was presented to the Company in 1616 by Mr. John Vernon. There is a third version of the picture in the Marquis of Exeter’s collection at Burleigh House, in which the same Latin verse is inscribed on the scroll. Dr. Waagen says that “it is very carefully painted in a brownish tone.”[236]
Footnote 236:
Waagen, Treasures of Art, &c., iii. p. 407.
In addition to the Hardwick cartoon and the Munich drawing there is a third portrait of Henry existing which can be attributed almost certainly to Holbein’s hand. This is the beautiful little panel in Lord Spencer’s collection at Althorp (frontispiece),[237] which measures only 10½ in. × 7½ in. It is a half-length, three-quarters to the right. No hair is visible under the cap or beside the ears; the hairs of the close-cropped fair beard and moustache are drawn with minute care. The eyes are clear blue-grey. He wears a black cap trimmed with jewels and loops of pearls and a white feather falling to the left. His gown of cloth of gold is lined with brown fur, over a light grey doublet cut low at the neck, embroidered with an elaborate pattern in black, trimmed with jewels and slashed and puffed with white. The white shirt has a high collar fitting close round the neck, embroidered with a rich design in gold, and with a very small frill. On his breast is a round jewel suspended by a chain of spiral black and gold beads and H’s. The hands are shown in part, the left at his side, and the right holding a glove. The background is a plain bright blue.
Footnote 237:
Woltmann, 1. Reproduced (in colour) by the Medici Society; Masterpieces of Holbein (Gowan’s Art Books, No. 13), p. 7; Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogue, Pl. x.; Ganz, Holbein, p. 120.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF HENRY VIII AT ALTHORP]
It is a miniature painting of unusual size, and is drawn with extraordinary delicacy and truth, and there is an exquisite finish in all the details of the dress and ornaments, and a harmony in the colour, which no other painter then practising at the English court but Holbein was capable of producing. The first impression it gives is that, in spite of its beauty and brilliance, it yet displays certain differences from Holbein’s usual style which renders its attribution to him not absolutely certain; but repeated examination modifies this first impression, and it becomes impossible not to agree with such critics as Dr. Woltmann, Mr. Lionel Cust, and Dr. Ganz, who are emphatically of opinion that Holbein was the author of it. It is impossible, again, to find any other painter who could have produced so vivid and striking a portrait of the King, and so accomplished a work of art. Mr. Roger E. Fry describes it as one of Holbein’s most miraculous pieces of craftsmanship. “It is little more in scale than a large miniature, and Holbein has treated it with all the skill in minute delineation which he alone possessed, and that without losing for a moment unity of tone and breadth of feeling; but, wonderful as it is, it gives one scarcely any idea of an actual character. Holbein seems never to have read anything behind the expansive mask of his royal patron; whether he abstained out of discretion or failed from want of interest one can but guess.”[238] After examining the Munich head, however, it is difficult to agree with Mr. Fry’s opinion that Holbein saw nothing of Henry’s real character. The Althorp panel is almost identical in position and dress with the original cartoon for the Whitehall wall-painting, and it is probable that Holbein intended to use it as his model for the latter. It must have been painted in 1537, before the wall-painting itself was begun, or at least before the change in the position of the King’s head was decided upon. It may be the portrait which in the inventory of Henry VIII’s pictures, made at his death, was joined to that of Queen Jane Seymour in a diptych—“Item, a table like a booke, with the picture of Kynge Henry theight and Quene Jane”; though, if so, the corresponding portrait of Jane Seymour is lost, for the one of that queen in the Vienna Gallery is much larger than Lord Spencer’s portrait. The latter was at South Kensington in 1862 (No. 2651), and again in 1865 (No. 2028), and at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1909 (No. 38).
Footnote 238:
Burlington Magazine, vol. xv., May 1909, p. 74.
There is an excellent contemporary copy of it in the National Portrait Gallery (No. 157),[239] 10¾ in. × 7½ in., on copper, which was purchased in 1863, and was formerly in the collection of Mr. Barrett, of Lee Priory, Kent. When in his possession it was engraved in line for Singer’s edition of Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey, 1825. The background is now very dark, but in the engraving it is shown to be a curtain. This is the chief point of difference between it and Lord Spencer’s panel. There is also a somewhat weak copy of it among the miniatures in the Duke of Buccleuch’s collection, which, like the original, has no inscription. It has suffered extensive repairs at some time or other, and the eyes are now a bright chestnut colour, evidently due to the ignorance of the restorer. Other miniatures of Henry VIII, attributed to Holbein, are dealt with in a succeeding chapter.[240]
Footnote 239:
Reproduced in the illustrated Catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, vol. i. p. 23.
Footnote 240:
See pp. 233-236.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR]
Jane Seymour was the first of Henry’s queens to be painted by Holbein. The various portraits of Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn still existing are not by him, and it is evident that the artist did not enter the royal service until after Anne’s execution on 19th May 1536, and Henry’s very precipitate marriage with Jane Seymour on the following day. Portraits of both these ladies are usually ascribed to Holbein by their owners, according to the prevailing fashion of earlier days, when everything dating from Tudor times was unhesitatingly given to him. Shortly before Holbein’s return to England in 1532, Katherine of Aragon had permanently retired from court, and in the seclusion of The Moor, deserted by the King, her thoughts fully occupied with her impending divorce, it is not likely that she would have any desire to sit for her portrait, or to command Holbein to visit her for that purpose. There is more probability that Anne Boleyn may have been painted by him, but as no such portrait has been discovered, it must be taken for granted that he did not. The head among the Windsor drawings, inscribed “Anna Bollein Queen,”[241] has been wrongly named, and bears no likeness to the few portraits which may be said with some degree of certainty to represent her. Much information respecting the portraits of these two queens will be found in the papers read by Mr. John Gough Nichols and Sir George Scharf before the Society of Antiquaries in 1863 and published in Archæologia.[242]
Footnote 241:
Woltmann, 323; Wornum, ii. 18; Holmes, i. 25. Reproduced by Davies, p. 214, and elsewhere.
Footnote 242:
Vol. xl. pt. i. pp. 71-88.
There is no evidence to show that Holbein painted either Katherine’s daughter, Mary, or Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, though here again portraits of them exist which in less critical days were said to be by him. The drawing in the Windsor Collection inscribed “The Lady Mary after Queen,”[243] has no claim to represent Queen Mary, nor is there any known portrait of her which bears any likeness to Holbein’s style of painting. The Princess Elizabeth was ten years old at the time of the painter’s death, whereas the youngest portrait of her extant is the very interesting one at the age of about fifteen or sixteen in the Royal Collection,[244] which was included in Charles I’s catalogue as “A Whitehall piece of Holben,” and said to represent “Queen Elizabeth when she was young, to the waist.” This is probably a work of Franco-Flemish origin, and has nothing to do with Holbein, who, if he had painted her, must have shown her as a little girl. Mr. Nichols, in his paper mentioned above, states that “there can be little doubt that Holbein drew the King’s natural son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Suffolk, who lived until the 22nd July 1536,” but no such portrait or drawing of him can be discovered. There is, however, among the Windsor heads, a drawing of his wife, Mary,[245] daughter of Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, and sister of Henry, Earl of Surrey, both of whom sat to Holbein. It is a fine drawing, but very badly rubbed. She is represented full-face, with the eyes cast down, and wearing a close-fitting white cap or hood, and a large flat black hat with a big ostrich feather. The dress is powdered with the letter R, which in some cases seems to be formed of pearls, while the letter M also occurs twice. This fashion of wearing an initial letter, usually as a pendant ornament, was by no means unusual at that period, and occurs in more than one of Holbein’s portraits. The drawing of the Duchess is inscribed “The Lady of Richmond.”
Footnote 243:
Woltmann, 331; Wornum, ii. 39; Holmes, ii. 15. Reproduced by Davies, p. 216.
Footnote 244:
Reproduced by Cust, Royal Collection of Paintings, Windsor Castle, Pl. 48.
Footnote 245:
Woltmann, 324; Wornum, ii. 17; Holmes, ii. 23.
It is not until we come to the portrait of Queen Jane Seymour in the Imperial Gallery, Vienna (No. 1481) (Pl. 20),[246] that we are on certain ground. This is a genuine work of Holbein of very fine quality. She is shown almost to the knees, the body and head turned slightly to the left, and her hands clasped in front of her. She is dressed in red velvet, with hanging sleeves covered with gold embroidery, and under-sleeves of lilac-grey watered silk with an elaborate pattern, worked with seed pearls, and slashed and puffed with white. The cuffs have a deep border of wonderfully painted black Spanish work. She wears two heavy necklaces, of jewels and pearls, and a band of similar ornament along the edge of her square-cut bodice, and an ornament at the breast composed of the initials I.H.S. and three pendant pearls. Her head-dress is of the angular English pattern. The inner cap, which completely hides her hair, is of brown silk with a black stripe, and the jewelled band or framework is of the same pattern as the border of the dress. The body of the head-dress is cloth of gold, with the customary black fall. The background is of dark grey-blue without inscription. The colour scheme is rich and harmonious, but delicate and pearly in tone, and a considerable amount of gold has been used in the painting of the jewels, and the gold tissue and embroidery of the cap. Once again the extraordinarily fine painting of the hands has to be recorded; they are full of expression and character. There is less expression in the face. She has no great pretensions to beauty, and her complexion is pale, thus agreeing with all contemporary accounts of her appearance. In a singularly frank letter from Chapuys to Antoine Perrenot, dated London, 18th May 1536, which was intended for the Emperor’s ears, the Spanish ambassador says: “She is sister to one Edward Semel, of middle stature, and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise.... The said Semel is not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding. It is said she inclines to be proud and haughty. She bears great love and reverence to the Princess (i.e. Mary). I know not if honors will make her change hereafter.”[247] He then proceeds to throw doubts upon the lady’s virtue, and to speak in coarse innuendo of Henry’s matrimonial ventures. The panel, which is probably the one which was in the Arundel Collection, measures 65 cm. by 48 cm., and is of the same size as the portrait of Dr. John Chamber; they are the largest of Holbein’s works in the Vienna Gallery. This portrait was evidently the one seen by Van Mander in Amsterdam in 1604. He says: “There was, at Amsterdam, in the Warmoesstraat, a portrait of a Queen of England, admirably executed, and very pretty and nice; she was attired in silver brocade, which appears to be genuine silver with some admixture, and it was depicted so transparently, curiously, and exquisitely, that a white foil seemed to lie beneath.”[248]
Footnote 246:
Woltmann, 252. Reproduced by Davies, p. 170; Knackfuss, fig. 127; Vienna Catalogue, p. 345; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 232; Ganz, Holbein, p. 119.
Footnote 247:
C.L.P., vol. x. 901.
Footnote 248:
Quoted by Woltmann, Eng. trans., p. 398.
[Sidenote: PORTRAITS OF QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR]
The original study for this portrait is in the Windsor Collection.[249] It is a fine drawing of very delicate draughtsmanship, and shows more of the figure than most of the sketches in the series, the folded hands being included. Several replicas of the picture still remain in England, the two best of which, excellent contemporary copies, are in the Duke of Bedford’s collection at Woburn Abbey, and in that of Lord Sackville at Knole. The latter was in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 44), and the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1909 (No. 46). Another version is in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland. Hollar made an admirable engraving from the Arundel version, a small circle dated 1648 (Parthey 1427); and there is at Windsor, as already noted, a miniature painted from it by Nicholas Hilliard, which is inscribed “ANŌ DNĪ 1536 ÆTATIS SVÆ 27.”[250] Hilliard, no doubt, found this inscription on the original from which he worked, but nothing of the kind is now discernible either on the picture in Vienna or Lord Sackville’s version. It may, however, have been taken from one of the numerous miniatures of this Queen, dealt with in a later chapter.[251] This inscription is valuable as giving the probable date at which Holbein painted the Queen, and proves that he was in the royal service as early as in the summer of 1536. Very probably the portrait was afterwards used by him as the basis for the head and position of Jane in the Whitehall wall-painting. There is an excellent old copy of the portrait in the Hague Gallery (No. 278) which shows slight differences.[252]
Footnote 249:
Woltmann, 325; Wornum, ii. 22; Holmes, i. 1. Reproduced by Davies, p. 170, and elsewhere.
Footnote 250:
See p. 91. Reproduced in Burlington Magazine, vol. viii., Jan. 1906, Pl. ii. (9), in an article on “Nicholas Hilliard” by Sir Richard Holmes.
Footnote 251:
See pp. 237-238.
Footnote 252:
Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 195.
In addition to this portrait, Holbein prepared a design for a large gold cup, bearing the initials of Henry and Jane, and the latter’s motto, evidently intended as a present from the King to his consort. The finished drawing is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and there is another version of it in the British Museum. It is the most important of Holbein’s designs for goldsmith’s work which has been preserved, and is described in a later chapter.[253] Henry VIII appears to have been genuinely devoted to his third wife, but his happiness was short-lived, for she died on October 24, 1537, twelve days after the birth of her son, Edward VI, her death being due to carelessness on the part of her attendants.
Footnote 253:
See pp. 274-275.
Not a single dated portrait of the year 1537 remains, nor is there one which can be ascribed with any certainty to this year. Possibly the great Whitehall wall-painting and other works for the King occupied much of Holbein’s time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XX. THE DUCHESS OF MILAN
Search for a queen to succeed Jane Seymour—Negotiations in France and Brussels—The Duchess of Milan—Hutton’s description of her—Her portrait by some unknown Netherland painter—Philip Hoby sent over with Holbein to obtain her portrait—Cromwell’s instructions to them—Hutton’s letter describing their visit—The small oil painting at Windsor—Description of the picture in the National Gallery—Continuation and final failure of the marriage negotiations—History of the picture—Purchased for the English nation by the National Art-Collections Fund for £72,000—Portrait of the Duchess as a child by Mabuse.
ON the very day of Jane Seymour’s death, the King and his Council began, with almost indecent haste, their search throughout the Courts of Europe for a new queen to fill her place. Henry’s ambassadors and agents were instructed to make discreet inquiries as to suitable candidates, and before the close of the year a number of names had been submitted to him for his consideration. In spite of this unseemly expedition, however, nearly two years were to elapse before the final choice was made, for it was not until the very end of 1539 that Anne of Cleves came to England as Henry’s fourth queen. Throughout the whole of 1538 marriage negotiations, which in the end proved fruitless, were carried on simultaneously with Francis I and the Emperor Charles V. Though Henry was anxious to marry again, in order that the succession, which rested on the precarious life of one infant Prince, might be made more assured, yet his search for a bride both in France and in Imperial circles at one and the same time was undertaken quite as much for political as for matrimonial reasons. It was his main object at that time to prevent any close understanding between his two rivals. With Charles and Francis united, and Europe at peace, there was nothing to prevent a coalition against England and an enforcement of the papal excommunication of Henry by force of arms. By playing off one monarch against the other with the bait of a proffered matrimonial alliance he hoped to keep the two apart, and by such means ensure the security of his throne, and be at liberty to continue the severe methods by which he sought to maintain his supremacy as self-appointed head of the English Church.
[Sidenote: SEARCH FOR A FOURTH QUEEN]
In the course of these negotiations quite a number of ladies were suggested, and in most, if not in all, cases, portraits of them were procured for Henry’s inspection. In some instances he sent his own painter for the purpose; in others, what may be termed “official” portraits, painted by foreigners, were forwarded to England by his ambassadors abroad. Of these portraits, two—those of the Duchess of Milan and of the Princess Anne of Cleves—were painted by Holbein, who was despatched to Brussels and to Düren in order to take their likenesses; but the authorship of the others is less certain, and as the portraits themselves cannot now be traced, it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any final conclusion respecting them. There is much probability, however, amounting in two instances almost to certainty, that Holbein made other special journeys, in addition to the two just mentioned, for the purpose of painting ladies who had been reported to the King as beautiful or desirable. These journeys were to France, and solve, in the writer’s opinion, the mysterious journey to Upper Burgundy; but as the negotiations for a French marriage were running concurrently with those for the hand of the Duchess of Milan, it will be better, in order to avoid confusion, to deal separately with each of these proposed alliances, and the various portraits to which they gave rise. For this reason the present chapter is concerned with Holbein’s painting of the Duchess, while in the following one evidence is brought forward which indicates that he also received orders from the King to take the likenesses of several high-born ladies of France.
Shortly after the imposing funeral ceremonies of Queen Jane Seymour, Cromwell wrote to John Hutton, the English agent in Brussels at the court of the Regent of the Netherlands, Queen Mary of Hungary, the Emperor’s sister, to ask him to make secret inquiries as to suitable brides for the King, and in Hutton’s reply, dated December 4, 1537, occurs the first mention of the Duchess of Milan as a possible Queen of England. Hutton wrote:
“Uppon the recept of your letters addressid unto me by this berrar, I have made as myche secret sherche as the tyme wold permyt. The which, albeit had byn of lengar contenewance, I cold not perceve that anny sherche cold have found wone soo notable a personage as were meit to be lykynd to that noble Raynge. In the Court ther is wayttyng uppon the Queyn a lady of thage of 14 yerres, daughtar unto the Lord of Breidrood, of a goodly statwre. She is noted varteos, sadde, and womanly; hir beautie is competent, hir mother is departid this world, who was daughter to the Cardynall of Luikes sister. It is thought that the said Cardinall wold give a good dote to have hir bestoid after his mynd. Ther is a widdowe, the wiche also repayrithe offten to the Court, beyng of goodly personage. She was the wyffe of the late Yerle of Egmond, and, as I ame inffarmyd, she parsithe fortie yeres of age, the wich dothe not apeire in my judgement by hir face. Ther is the Duches of Myllayn, whom I have not seyn, but as it is reportid to be a goodly personage and of excellent beawtie. The Dewke of Clevis hathe a daughter, but I here no great preas neyther of hir personage nor beawtie. I have not myche exsperiens emonges ladies, and therfore this commission is to me very hard; soo that, yf in anny thyng I offend, I beseche your Lordshipe to be my mean for pardon. I have wryttyn the treuthe, as nighe as I canne possible lerne, levyng the further judgment to other, that are better skillid in such matters.”[254]
Footnote 254:
C.L.P., vol. xii. pt. ii. 1172. St. P., viii. 5.
* * * * *
The Duchess reached Brussels shortly after this letter was despatched, and Hutton wrote again to Cromwell on the 9th of December, after a personal inspection of the lady, whom he thought to be very like Mrs. Shelton, one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies, as follows:
[Sidenote: HUTTON’S LETTERS ABOUT THE DUCHESS]
“The Duches of Myllan ... arived here as ystarday, very honorably acompenyd as well of hyr owen treyn as withe suche that departed from hence to meit hyr. I ame inffurmyd she is of the age of 16 yeres, very high of stature for that age. She is highar then the Regent, a goodly personage of boddy, and compytent off beawtie, of favor excellent, sofft of speche, and very gentill in countenance. She werythe moornyng aparell aftre the maner of Ytalie.... She resemblythe myche wone Mystris Shelton, that somtyme watid in Court uppon Queyn Anne. She ussithe most to spek Frenche, albeit that as it is reportid she can [speak] Ytalian and Highe Almeyn. I knowlige my self of judgment herein very yngnorant, albeit I have inployd my wittes to sartiffie your Lordshipe off the trewthe.”[255]
Footnote 255:
C.L.P., vol. xii. pt. ii. 1187. St. P., viii. 6.
In a transcript of the same letter, addressed to Thomas Wriothesley, one of Cromwell’s secretaries, and despatched to England on the same date, Hutton added:
“Ther is non in theis parties off parsonage, beawtie, and byrthe, lyke unto the Duches off Myllayn. She is not soo pewre whyt, as was the late Qweyn, whois soal God pardon; but she hathe a syngular good countenaunce, and when she chancesithe to smyl, ther aperithe two pittes in hir cheikes, and wone in hyr chyne, the wiche becommythe hyr right excellently well.”[256]
Footnote 256:
C.L.P., vol. xii. pt. ii. 1188. St. P., viii. 7.
* * * * *
He wrote still further in her praise in a third letter to Cromwell, dated December 21:
“Synns my letter of the 4th sent unto your Lordshipe by Fraunces the corror, I wrot your Lordshipe wone other of the 9th, wherin I sartified the arivall of the Duches of Myllan, withe my judgement of hir personage and beawtie. Synns wiche tyme I have dayly notid hir gestur and countenance, the wiche presentithe a great majestie with myche sobrenes, soo that in the furtherance of that matter I thynke your Lordshipe shuld doo highe sarvis to the Kynges Highness, and to the whole commune welthe of his Realme like proffit.”[257]
Footnote 257:
C.L.P., vol. xii. pt. ii. 1243. St. P., viii. 8.
* * * * *
These descriptions were considered to be so satisfactory that Hutton’s other suggestions were discarded, and the young Duchess selected as a possible wife for Henry, if good terms could be arranged. Christina of Denmark, youngest daughter of King Christian II of Denmark and Isabella of Hungary, sister of Charles V, was born in 1523, and had been married, in 1534, when only eleven years of age, to Francesco Maria Sforza, the last Duke of Milan, who died in the following year, October 24, 1535. She was now in her sixteenth year, and as the niece of the Emperor, a marriage with her, so Henry and his Council considered, would be of great political advantage, as it would give the world a proof that his quarrel with Charles over the divorce of Katherine of Aragon was at an end. Henry, therefore, wrote on January 22, 1538, to Sir Thomas Wyat, his ambassador in Spain, ordering him to suggest the marriage to the Emperor, who in his reply, sent through his representative in London, Eustace Chapuys, declared that he would be glad to treat of it. Henry, who naturally wished to see the lady, if possible, before committing himself too far, began to throw out suggestions that she should be brought to Calais, in order that he might make her acquaintance, but this proposal was displeasing to the other parties concerned; and so, as the next best thing, it was determined to obtain her portrait. Hutton was instructed to procure one if he possibly could, and he wrote to Cromwell on February 21, describing a dinner-party he had attended given by the “Ladie Marqueis of Barrough,” at which she promised to show him, when finished, a portrait for which the Duchess of Milan was sitting, and for the purpose of which she had put off her mourning dress. This picture, apparently, was to be given to the Lady Marquis. He told Cromwell:
“The Lady Marqueis demaundid of me, yff the letters, wiche I had delyverid the Queyn, cam from the Kynges Highnes my master. Unto wiche I made answar that the cam frome the Empror. Then she said that when she sawe me delyver them, hir hart rejoissid, thynkyng ther had byne some good newis consarnyng the Duches of Myllain, of whom she made great preis, as well for hir beawtie, favor, wisdom, as for hir myche gentilnes. All wiche saynges I affirmyd. Withe that she said, yf I had seyn hir owt of hir mornyng aparell, so gorgeosly as she had seyn hir the day beffore, I wold have marveillid, for she said, to tell me in secret, she cawssid hir pikture to be made, wiche beyng fenisshed, the Duches had promissid to give it unto hir, soo that she of hir owen motion said, assone as it cam to hir handes I shuld have a sight therof.”[258]
Footnote 258:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 326. St. P., viii. 14.
He goes on to describe an interview with the Duchess on the following day, in which she complained of the rain, telling Hutton, “This wether likythe not the Queyn, for She is therby pynnyd upp, that She cannot ride abrode to hunt. Then I demandid if Hir Grace did not love huntyng. She answered, ‘Non better,’ and soo pawssid.
“She spekithe French, and semythe to be of fewe wordes. In hir spekyng she lispithe, wiche dothe nothyng mysbecom hir. I canot in anny thyng perceve, but she shuldbe off myche sobreness, and very wisse and no les gentill. It may pleis your Lordship to consedar that my poore knowlege is not to give anny judgement in suche matters, but only to showe my openyon. And for that it wilbe yet theis 8th dais, beffore I can com by hir pikture, I thought it my duetie to sartiffie your Lordshipe the premissis; and incontinent the said pikture shall com to my handes, it shalbe sent your Lordshipe with spedy deligence. Advertissyng the Lady Marques that I did send it unto Barough, for that my wiffe had myche dessire to se the Duches.”[259]
Footnote 259:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 326. St. P., viii. 14.
[Sidenote: HOBY AND HOLBEIN GO TO BRUSSELS]
Matters seemed now to be progressing so favourably that it was decided to send over Philip Hoby to Brussels, with some show of secrecy, for the purpose of a personal interview with the young lady, and, as Henry was very anxious to obtain an accurate likeness of her, it was also arranged that Holbein should go with him, without waiting for the portrait which Hutton hoped to secure.
Philip Hoby, who was born in 1505, was the son of William Hoby, of Leominster. His zeal for the Reformation commended him to Henry VIII and Cromwell, by whom he was constantly employed from 1538 onwards in diplomatic services at the courts of Spain and Portugal, and on special missions elsewhere. He was one of the gentlemen ushers of the King’s Privy Chamber, and took part in the siege of Boulogne, being rewarded with knighthood immediately after the conquest of that town in the autumn of 1544. He was made Master of the Ordnance and admitted to the Privy Council in 1552, and died in 1558. From his correspondence he appears to have been a man of culture and refinement. Holbein made two, if not three, journeys abroad in his company, and painted his portrait, though its whereabouts is not now known, but the drawing for it, in which he is shown with a scanty beard and long thin moustache, is in the Windsor Collection.[260]
Footnote 260:
Woltmann, 302; Wornum, ii. 7; Holmes, i. 40.
Cromwell’s instructions to Hoby were as follows:
“Instructions given by the L. Cromwell to Philip Hoby sent over by him to the duchess of Lorraine then [to the] duchess of Milan.
“To repair to Mr. Hutton and tarry secretly at his lodging until he shall have been with the Regent. Then upon Hutton’s advertisement to go to the Duchess, present Cromwell’s commendations and say that no doubt she had heard from the Lady Regent and by the relation of the King’s ambassador there, the cause of his coming and Cromwell’s inclination to the advancement of the same as is declared ‘in the letter.’ He shall then beg her to take the pain to sit that a servant of the King, who is come thither for that purpose, may take her physiognomy; and shall ask when Mr. Hanns shall come to her to do so. The said Philip shall as of himself express a wish that both for my Lord’s reports of her virtues and for his own view of them, it might please the King, being now without a wife, to advance her to the honour of a queen of England. ‘And he shall well note her answers, her gesture and countenance with her inclination, that he may at his return declare the same to the King’s Majesty.’ Her picture taken, he and Hanns shall return immediately.”[261] Hoby was also supplied with a second document, in which all that he was to say to the Duchess was carefully drawn up for his guidance.
Footnote 261:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 380(2).
In the heading to these instructions, which is written in a later hand than the body of the document, the words “to the” in square brackets have been inserted by the editor of the Calendars of Letters and Papers, &c. In doing this he has been misled by a very similar set of instructions issued to Hoby on the eve of a mission to Lorraine in August of the same year, which is dealt with in the next chapter. He thus reads the heading as indicating that Hoby was to go first of all to the Duchess of Lorraine and afterwards to the Duchess of Milan, and that the one set of instructions was to serve for the two visits. The inserted words, “to the,” however, are not needed. Christina, a few years after Holbein painted her, married, in 1540, François, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, and the writer who added the heading to the copy of Hoby’s instructions quite correctly describes her as the Duchess of Lorraine, “then (or “at that time,” i.e. at the time of Hoby’s journey to Brussels) Duchess of Milan.” This is a small point, but it is necessary to draw attention to it, as it has to do with Holbein’s subsequent journey to Upper Burgundy.
[Sidenote: HOBY AND HOLBEIN IN BRUSSELS]
The two travellers left London on the 2nd or 3rd of March, and reached Brussels on the evening of the 10th. The next day was spent in preliminary interviews, Hutton having audience with the Lady Regent and the Duchess in the morning, and Hoby delivering his message to the latter in the afternoon. All going smoothly, Holbein was fetched to the court at one o’clock on the 12th, and accomplished all that he had to do within three hours, to the great admiration of Hutton, who considered that he showed himself to be a master, and that the likeness was very perfect. The English agent, the day before their arrival, had already despatched a portrait of the lady to London—in all probability the one promised him by the Lady Marquis—but after seeing Holbein’s beautiful drawing, he sent a messenger post haste to stop the bearer of the first picture, which he now regarded as but “slobbered” in comparison with the other. Hoby and Holbein, who started upon their homeward journey on the evening of the 12th, appear to have taken this inferior picture with them, so that Cromwell might compare the two. There is no evidence to indicate by whom it was painted, but as the lady was represented in gay apparel, it must have been in marked contrast to Holbein’s study and the full-length portrait he afterwards painted, representing her in her Italian widow’s weeds. It is possible that this picture is still in existence in England, and its discovery would be most interesting.
Hutton’s letter to Cromwell, describing all that took place on the occasion, is a long one, but as it is one of the few important documents still existing in which Holbein is mentioned by name, it cannot well be omitted here. It is dated March 14, 1538, and runs as follows:
“My moste bounden duetie remembered unto Your good Lordshipe. Pleasithe the same to be advertissid, that the 10th of this present monethe in the evenyng arivid here your Lordshipis sarvand Phillip Hobbie, acompenied with a sarvand of the Kynges Majesties namyd Mr Haunce, by wiche Phillip I recevyd your Lordshippis letter, beryng date at Saynct Jamys the second day of this present. Theffect wherof apercevyd, havyng the day beffore sent wone of my sarvandes towardes youre Lordshipe withe a picture of the Duches of Myllain, I thought it very nessisarie to stey the same, for that in my openion it was not soo perffight as the cawsse requyrid, neyther as the said Mr Haunce coold make it. Uppon wiche determination I dispached another of my sarvandes, in post, to returne the same, wiche your Lordshipe shall receve by this berrar. The next mornyng aftre the arivall of your Lordshippis said sarvand, I did adresse my selff unto the Lady Regent, declaryng unto Hir that the night past ther arivid at my lodgyng a sarvand of your Lordshippis, withe wone other of the Kynges Majesties; by wiche your Lordshippis sarvand I had recevyd commiscion to sartiffie Hir Grace that thEmprors Ambassadors, resident with the Kynges Majestie my master, had made ernyst overture unto your Lordshipe for a marriage to be treatid betwixt the Majestie of my said master, and the Duches Grace of Millain. To the wiche albeit your Lordshipe was of no les good inclination for the furtherance of the same, then the said Ambassadors were, yet your Lordshipe thought it not exspedient to be broken unto the Kynges Highnes, withowt havyng some further occation mynistrid for the openyng of the same. And for as myche as your Lordshipe had hard great commendation of the furme, beawtie, wisdom, and other verteos qualiteis, the wiche God had indewid the said Duches with, you cold perceve no mean more meit for the advauncement of the same, than to procure her perffight pictur; for wiche your Lordshipe had sent, in compeny of your said sarvand, a man very excellent in makyng off phisanymies; soo that your Lordshippis desire was that your said sarvand myght in moste humbleist wisse salute the Duches Grace, requyryng that hir pleisur might be to apoynt the tyme and place, wher the said paynter might acomplische his charge. The Regent, when I began to declare this forsaid purpos, stud uppon hir feit; but, aftre She had a littill ynclyng to what effect the same wold com, She did sit dowen, not movyng, till I had fenisshid all that I had to say, and then answered as foloythe: ‘I thanke yow for your good newis. This is not the first report that I have had of the good inclination that the Lord Crumwell hathe to thEmprores afferris, for recompence wheroff I trust he shall not fynd Us ingrat. And as to his desire in this behalff, it shall gladly be accomplisshid.’ Then I said, ‘Madam, I have yet further commiscion, wiche is to sartiffie the same unto the Duches Grace.’ Hir answar was, that She wold goo to Councell, and when the Duches cam to hir oratorie, I myght [have] very good oportunitie to talke withe hir. Withe that the Regent departid towardes the Councell Chamber, and I taried the Duches commyng; who beying com to hir oratorie, wher as remenyd no moo but two of hir ladeis, I sartiffied Hir Grace the woll effect of your Lordshippis commission consarnyng Phelipe Hobbie, whom, when Hir Grace wold give awdiens, wold more ample sartiffie your Lordshippis pleisur. She made answar that, if ever it shuld ly in hir powar, the good will of your Lordshipe shoid towardes hir, wiche she in no part had desarvid, shuld not remeyn unrecompencesid; and that as to your said request it was not to be denyed, albeit that she, beying ther withe the Queyn hir awnt, thought it not meit to make anny graunt therunto withowt hir consent, wiche she wold move to obteyn at the first convenient leisar, that she myght have with the Queyn consarnyng the same. Commandyng to be called unto hir wone, naymd the Lord Benedike Court, who next unto Monsur de Correra is cheiff about hir; whoo beyng com, she said unto hym, ‘Goo withe thAmbassadour and entarteyn a gentilman that is at his lodgyng, and knowe wher you shall fynd hym at suche tyme as I shall send yow for hym.’ This done, wee tooke ower leve of Hir Grace, and cam to my lodgyng, wher the said Lord salutid Phillip Hobbie, communyng together in the Italian tunge a sarten space, and then tooke his leve to repaire agayn to the Court; wiche I percevyng, requyrid hym to take the portion withe us at dynnar, wiche he promissid to doo; but aftre beyng otherweis myndid, he sent us woord that he cold not com, but wold see us aftre dynnar; wiche apoyntment he kept. For at two of the cloke in the aftrenoon he cam for Phillipe to com speke withe the Duches his mystres: who can make relation to your Lordshipe more at large what passid at the tyme. The next day foloyng, at wone of the cloke in the aftrenoon, the said Lord Benedike cam for Mr. Haunce; who havyng but thre owers space hathe shoid hym self to be master of that siens, for it is very perffight; the other is but sloberid in comparison to it, as by the sight of bothe your Lordshipe shall well aperceve. The same night Phillipe tooke his leve of the Duches. I inffurmyd the Lady Regent that the said Phillipe wold gladly, accordyng to your Lordshippis commandment, have com to have done his duetie unto Hir, to have knowen what further sarvis Hir Grace wold commaund hym; but dowttyng he should be notid, wherby myght be discoverid that wiche till then was kept secret as coldbe. She answarid that it shuld not neid, reqwiring me, that I wold make hir most effectios commendations, by my letters, unto your Lordshipe, and that yow shuld here frome Hir more at large by thEmprors Ambassadour resident with the Kynges Majestie. To sartiffie your Lordship of hir sobreness, wisdom, and other varteos qualities shulde be but superfluitie, for this berrar can sartiffie your Lordshipe therof at length.”[262]
Footnote 262:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 507. St. P., viii. 17.
[Sidenote: HUTTON’S ACCOUNT OF HOLBEIN’S VISIT]
The Queen Regent wrote to Eustace Chapuys in London, directly after Hoby’s departure, saying that: “I deem it opportune to acquaint you with a fact, of which you are not perhaps aware, namely, that Sieur Cromwell has sent here expressly a man, besides a message by ambassador Hauton, to the effect that the Emperor had proposed to the King, his master, the marriage of my niece, the dowager duchess of Milan, with honourable and advantageous conditions; that he (the Emperor) offers to help efficiently towards it, and wishes it to take place before King Francis becomes aware of it. Cromwell asks that the man be allowed to see and talk with my said niece, and take her portrait in order to show it to the King and give him greater desire to see her. This I have allowed, and the man has actually returned to England with the portrait, well satisfied with the personal appearance and manners of my said niece, who has not failed on the occasion to thank Cromwell for his offers and show of affection.”[263]
Footnote 263:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 419. Spanish Calendar, vol. v. pt. ii. 217.
From Chapuys’ reply to her, dated March 23, we learn that Hoby and Holbein reached London on March 18, and that the King was delighted with the latter’s handiwork. He tells her:
“On the very same day, the 18th, the painter sent by this King to Flanders came back with the Duchess’ likeness, which, I am told, has singularly pleased the King, so much so, that since he saw it he has been in much better humor than he ever was, making musicians play on their instruments all day long. Two days after he went to dine at a splendid house of his, where he had collected all his musicians, and, after giving orders for the erection of certain sumptuous buildings therein, returned home by water, surrounded by musicians, and went straight to visit the duchess of Suffocq, the mother-in-law of the duke of Norfolk, and the wife of his brother, and ever since cannot be one single moment without masks, which is a sign he purposes to marry again, unless he does all that by way of dissimulation whilst the bishop of Tarbes is here still.”[264]
Footnote 264:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 583. Spanish Calendar, vol. v. pt. ii. 220.
* * * * *
For the cost of this journey Hoby received £23, 6_s._ 8_d._ from the royal purse, which is noted in the book of the King’s household expenses for March 1538. “Item paid to Philip Hoby by the kinges commandment certifyed by my lord privy seal lettre for his coste and expences sent in all possible diligence for the kinge affaires in the parties of beyonde the See. xxiij li. vj_s._ viij_d._”[265]
Footnote 265:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. ii. 1280 (f. 6).
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS AT WINDSOR]
No doubt the portrait which so delighted the King was one of those masterly studies in black chalk touched with colour, such as the “John Godsalve” among the Windsor drawings, from which Holbein afterwards painted the magnificent full-length now in the National Gallery. He could not have done much more than this in the three hours which was the whole time allowed him for the sitting. Sir Claude Phillips, however, is of opinion that it must have been something more than a drawing, however consummate—perhaps a finished sketch of the head only in oils. “It is difficult to believe,” he says, “that a layman would express so enthusiastic an approval of a drawing of modest dimensions, and (if it followed the usual Windsor type) of modest aspect. Neither sketch, however, nor drawing is known to exist.”[266]
Footnote 266:
Daily Telegraph, May 8, 1909.
It was suggested by the late Sir George Scharf, F.S.A., that the small oil panel, showing the Duchess to the waist, which is practically a replica of the upper half of the National Gallery picture, is the original study made by Holbein in Brussels. This portrait, then unnamed, he discovered in 1863, in a small apartment in Windsor Castle, and it was described by him in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries, and published in Archæologia, with a good lithograph of the picture by T. H. Maguire.[267] It is on wood, 17 in. high by 13 in. wide.
Footnote 267:
“Remarks on a Portrait of the Duchess of Milan, recently discovered at Windsor Castle, probably painted by Holbein at Brussels in the year 1538,” Archæologia, 1866, vol. xl. p. 106.
“The picture by Holbein,” says Sir George, “could only have been a drawing or a painting on rather a small scale, inasmuch as it had at once to be conveyed by a messenger to England, and one of the objects of Hutton’s letter was to show the diligence with which the King’s commands were executed and to announce the coming of the picture. The scale and workmanship of the picture before us are exactly such as might have been expected from a first-rate painter and tactician under such circumstances. All essential points are observed with scrupulous fidelity, and, certainly, as far as internal evidence extends, without flattery. It is not to be supposed that Holbein did nothing to the picture beyond the term of the three hours’ sitting afforded by the Duchess. Having secured all the essential points of likeness, and given the general colouring, he doubtless spent some time in further finishings from memory. But time must have been given for the picture to dry.”
Wornum, however, refuses to accept Sir George’s ascription. “The head is vigorously painted,” he says, “and very natural; it shows, however, no complete finish, which, if the picture referred to, is exactly what one would expect; but it lacks also the mastery one would expect to find in a free sketch by Holbein. The hands are inferior, but they appear to have been partly repainted; the background has also been entirely repainted.... In its present state, it looks much more like a clever study from the Arundel picture, than its pattern; anyhow the distance between them is immense, but this does not prove much, for a very inferior master to Holbein could elaborate a magical effect from a mere rough sketch, provided this possessed the real germs of truth in it.”[268]
Footnote 268:
Wornum, p. 313.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS AT WINDSOR]
Woltmann, too, was of opinion that this small panel was not an original work by Holbein. “We cannot find in the picture at Windsor,” he says “that freedom and bold masterly style which absolutely belong to a sketch from life, and which alone could have excited such lively admiration in John Hutton. The picture at Windsor is very pretty and graceful, but has something almost sober in its treatment. It can indeed be just as little a copy from the large painting. It exhibits some differences in the costume, for instance, a somewhat larger fur collar, and another position of the fingers, although the characteristic attitude of the hands is essentially the same. Christina also wears three rings instead of a single one; namely, a black widow’s ring on the little finger of the right hand, and on the next finger a gold hoop with a square black stone. We might, therefore, believe that this is a copy by another hand of the sketch Holbein painted from life. In favour of this opinion, we find the head, which the sketch naturally gave most distinctly, by far the best part of the painting, while the rest, which was only indicated in the sketch, appears far weaker.”[269]
Footnote 269:
Woltmann, 1st ed., English translation, pp. 426-7.
Sir George Scharf describes with care the many small differences between the two works. In addition to the three rings instead of one, mentioned by Woltmann, the fur of the dress in the smaller picture is much deeper and has every appearance of being a wide fur collar separate from and placed over the black dress. In the larger portrait the fur is much narrower, and evidently forms the lining and collar of the outer robe, a narrow edging of it being shown down the front. In the National Gallery picture, too, this outer robe is open several inches in front, showing the under-dress of black and the knotted ribbon at the waist, all of which are missing in the Windsor panel. Again, though the hands holding the gloves have the same general position in both, the position of the fingers shows considerable variation. In the smaller portrait the two last fingers of the right hand and the two middle ones of the left are bent inwards; in the larger, the only bent fingers are the two last of the left hand. There are some other minor differences which need not be specified.
Both pictures at one time belonged to Henry VIII, and are included in the inventory of that King’s “money, jewels, plate, utensils, apparel, wardrobe stuffs, goods and chattels, consigned to the care of Sir Anthony Denny at Westminster.” The volume, now in the Record Office, is dated April 24, 1542. They appear again in a similar inventory, made after Henry’s death, taken “by vertue of a Commission under the greate seale of England, bearing date at Westminster the viij day of September, in the first year of our Sovereyne Lord Edwarde the Sixte” (1547). In these, the smaller panel is described as “Item, a Table with a Picture of the Duchesse of Myllayne.”
Woltmann’s conjecture that it is a contemporary copy made from Holbein’s original sketch appears to be the true one, though for whom made it is now impossible to say. There seems to be no reason why Henry, having the full-length panel in his possession, should have commissioned this smaller and inferior one. If ordered by Thomas Cromwell, which is not very likely, it may have reached the King in the form of plunder after the former’s execution; if done in order to be sent to the Duchess herself, it is strange that it should have remained in England. In any case, it cannot have been the “slobbered” work which Hutton, in his eagerness to serve his royal master, had hurriedly despatched on its way to London on the eve of Holbein’s arrival in Brussels. All the evidence points to the latter as being the portrait of the Duchess “out of her mourning apparel” which was to be given to the Lady Marquess, who had promised to show it to Hutton when finished, as his letter tells us. Hutton, pleading urgency, and knowing that the latter lady was in favour of the match, in all probability borrowed it, or begged it as a gift.
This portrait of the Duchess of Milan,[270] 70 in. by 32 in. (Pl. 21), is incomparably the greatest work from Holbein’s brush now remaining in England; it is, indeed, in many respects his masterpiece. It is of additional interest and value, too, as being the only full-length, life-size portrait of a lady painted by him. She is represented standing, facing and looking towards the spectator, her hands in front of her holding her gloves. She is dressed in mourning apparel as the widow of Sforza, a gown of plain black satin tied round the waist with a black cord, and a long black cloak reaching to her feet, lined with yellow sable, with a collar of the same fur, open in the front sufficiently to allow a part of her dress to be seen. At her neck and wrists are white frills with a narrow black edging, and on her head a closely-fitting black cap, which covers all her hair, and a part of her forehead. The gloves are pale buff, and her only ornament is a gold ring with a red stone, probably a cornelian, on the third finger of her left hand. The floor on which she stands is of pale yellow-brown colour, though no floor-boards are indicated, and the background is a plain one of deep blue, now almost black, only broken by the white cartellino over the sitter’s left shoulder, which is affixed to the wall with four dabs of red sealing-wax.
Footnote 270:
Woltmann, 2. Reproduced by Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 250; Davies, p. 172; Ganz, Holbein, p. 121; and elsewhere.
Holbein made the choice of a true artist in thus depicting her in her widow’s weeds instead of in all the bravery of the court dress which she was again beginning to assume. The effect of fine rich colour produced by this wonderful rendering of a plain black costume is masterly, but in no way detracts the attention of the spectator from the grace of the slender form and the vitality and subtle expression of the face, as more elaborate accessories might have done. The whole panel is painted with the utmost simplicity and directness, and yet is stamped with real grandeur of style in every delicate stroke of the brush. The modelling of the flesh is rendered with extraordinary delicacy, while the tints are unusually transparent, and a faint rosy glow of health just flushes her cheeks. Her dark-brown eyes, from under fair eyebrows, look out upon the world with an intensity of expression which is surpassed in few, if any, portraits by the greatest masters; the red lips are full of character, but not more so than the hands, which are exquisitely painted. In the painting of hands Holbein was always a master, but he never accomplished anything finer in this direction than those of the young Duchess. The portrait, indeed, bears the stamp of truth in every line. The painter, who never exaggerated, has made no attempt to add to the lady’s beauty; such as she was he painted her. The draperies are admirably arranged, and the painting of fur and satin as good as anything Holbein ever did, even in such portraits as that of Gisze. The restrained but stately attitude of the young girl, still only on the threshold of womanhood, the refined, reserved, and dignified character in the fresh young face, which, though gentle, is in no way lacking in strength, and the sense of humour lurking in the lips, combine to produce an effect which is fascinating in the highest degree; indeed, in the simplicity of its methods, the strength, refinement, and elegance of its conception, and in its extraordinary vitality, it must always remain not only Holbein’s masterpiece in the portraiture of women, but one of the greatest portraits in the world.
[Sidenote: NATIONAL GALLERY PORTRAIT]
There is no doubt that Holbein painted the portrait immediately after his return from Brussels, although some writers have suggested that it is a year or so later in date than 1538. This conclusion is based largely on the supposition that Holbein’s visit to High Burgundy later in the same year was for the purpose of obtaining further sittings from the Duchess; but this is an error, as will be shown in the next chapter. The portrait was painted for Henry, and would naturally be done at once, before the negotiations for the marriage were broken off, and it remained in his collection throughout his life. Holbein was out of England more often and for a longer period in 1538 than has been generally supposed. In addition to at least one other continental journey on the King’s service, he was absent from about the middle of August until nearly Christmas, and thus everything indicates that this important panel was painted in April or May.
Another argument, advanced by Sir George Scharf in favour of the contention that it was painted some time after 1538, is that the name and titles of the lady written on the fictitious piece of paper attached to the dark background near to her left shoulder, by four dabs of sealing-wax, designate her “Duchess of Lorraine.” This inscription Sir George reads as: “Christine, Daughter to Christierne K. of Deñarke, and Dutchess of Lotragne and heretofore (?) Dutches of Milan.” The writing, however, is much rubbed, and is by no means easy to decipher; thus the word which Sir George read as “heretofore,” Mr. Wornum considered to be “hered” (hereditary). “This,” Sir George goes on to say, “would, if the writing be contemporary with the picture, bring the date to 1541, the year of her second marriage to Francis, Duke of Lorraine and Barr. The style of writing on the paper may perhaps raise some question, and may possibly be found to belong to the period of James I, when through his Queen and the occasional presence of Christian IV in England, a considerable interest was felt in matters connected with Denmark.”[271]
Footnote 271:
Archæologia, xl. p. 109. The date of her marriage to Lorraine appears to have been 1540.
The inscription as it now is was probably painted over an earlier one from Holbein’s brush, for it is too badly done to be original; but there is no need to place it as late as Sir George suggests, for the Lumley inventory speaks of her as the Duchess of Lorraine, so that the alteration may have been due to Lord Lumley or his father-in-law. It is even possible that Holbein may have placed no title of any kind on the picture, but that the whole label was added by some other painter employed for the purpose by the owner of Nonsuch.
In spite of Henry’s admiration for the picture, the proposed match came to nothing, though for some time Hutton continued to write letters in her praises. Thus, on the 1st April 1538, he wrote to the King:
[Sidenote: FAILURE OF MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS]
“Pleasithe Your Majestie to be advertissid that synns the departyng frome hence of Phillipe Hobbie, I have for the most part byne dayly in the Queyns chambre, by cawse I myght withe the more commoditie aperceve, whether the great modestiosnes, that is in the Duches of Myllayn, proceid of a symple yngnorance, or of a naturall inclination acompenid withe wisdom; to that intent I myght the better sartiffie Your Highnes of the same. Wherunto I have inployid my selff withe all celeritie, havyng bothe seyn and hard hir, aswell in matters off weight, as playing at the cardes and other pastymys, not apercevyng in hir anny liklihod that ther is want off wit, but rather to be estemyd, emonge the nombre of wise, the wissist. Hir sobre and gentill demenewre is myche lawdid by all them that knowe hir. Soo that I take it to be above the compas off a womans wit to dissemble longe withe that is graven in the hart to the contrary, but I noot that in all hir acttes she uttrithe such a myldnes, the wiche maniffestithe to be wroght in hir by nature, and presarvid withe grace and wisdom.”[272]
Footnote 272:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 656. St. P., viii. 21.
In the following month (May 17) he informed Wriothesley that “the Lady Regent, acompenyd with the Duches Grace of Myllayn have byne dayly a huntyng, wiche is the exarsis, that the bothe moste desyre, and have greatest delit in; and by cawsse I have thought it my bounden duetie to repayre wher the Duches Grace was, procuryng occation many tymis to talke withe Hyr Grace, whom I fynd of myche wisdom, and of as great modestiosnes, as ever I knewe anny woman. Sithe the tyme that Phelip Hobbie departid frome theis parteis, Hir Grace hathe, bothe by woordes and countenance, ussid towardes me myche benyngnitie.”[273]
Footnote 273:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. i. 1018. St. P., viii. 29.
He added that he had presented the Regent with four couple of young hounds and an ambling gelding, and had promised the same to the Duchess, “wiche offre she gently acceptyd.”
Early in June an obstacle to the match was suggested which proved that the Emperor and his sister were only using the Duchess as a pawn on the political chess-board, and that there was no real intention of giving her to Henry. This obstacle was the fact that the Duchess was a near kinswoman of the late Queen Katherine, Henry’s first wife, and that the Pope’s dispensation was therefore necessary. The negotiations dragged on throughout the year, Hutton suddenly dying in the middle of them, on September 5, just when the King his master was sending over two commissioners, Thomas Wriothesley, one of his secretaries, and Stephen Vaughan, to treat personally with the Regent. There is no need to record their adventures, or the manner in which that lady continually put them off with plausible excuses. They followed her about the country on her journey to Compiègne to meet the King and Queen of France. On neither side was there any real sincerity, but the Englishmen, although Dr. Edward Carne[274] was sent over to help them, could not score a point in the game. They had several personal interviews with the Duchess, after one of which they reported that “she is a godly personage, of stature hiegher thenne eyther of us, a very good womans face, and competently faire, but very wel favored, a lytle browne.”[275]
Footnote 274:
Knighted by the Emperor some years later.
Footnote 275:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. ii. 550. St. P., viii. p. 59.
After another interview Wriothesley wrote to the King, on February 1, 1539:
“A blinde man shuld judge no colours, but surely, Sir, after my poure entendement, for that lyttel experyence that I have, she is mervelous wise, very gentel, and as shamfast as ever I sawe soo wittye a woman. I thinke her wisdome no lesse thenne the Quenes, which in my pouer opinion is notable for a woman. Her gentlenes excedeth. Asferre as I canne judge or here for this lytel tyme that I have been here, I am deceyved, if she prove not a good wief, if God send her a wise husbande; and sumwhat the better I lyke her, for that I have been enformed that of all the hole stock of them, her mother (Isabella, sister of Charles V) was of best opinion in religion, and shewed it soo farre, that bothe thEmperour and al the pack of them were sore greved with Her, and seamed in thende to have Her in contempte. I wolde hope no lesse of the doughter, if she might be so happye as to nestle in Englande. Very pure, faire of colour she is not, but a mervelous good brownishe face she bathe, with faire redd lippes, and ruddy chekes; and oneles I be deceyved in my judgement, which in all thinges, but specially in this kynde of judgement, is very basse, she was yet never soo wel paynted, but her lyvely visage dothe muche excel her poincture.”
* * * * *
Later on in the same interview Wriothesley pressed her as to her own desire in the matter, and sang his master’s praises:
“At this she blusshed excedingly, and said: ‘Asfor myn inclination,’ quod she, ‘what shuld I saye? You knowe that I am at thEmperrurs commaundement,’ and again, ‘You knowe I am thEmperours poore servaunt, and must followe his pleasour.’ Your Majesties wisedom shall easly judge uppon this, of what inclination the women be, and specially the Duchesse, whose honest countenaunce, with the fewe woordes that she wisely spake, together with that which I knowe by the meane of her most secrete chamberers and servauntes, maketh me to thinke there canne be no doubt in her.”[276]
Footnote 276:
C.L.P., vol. xiv. pt. i. 194. St. P., viii. 137.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE PICTURE]
This letter seems to indicate that there is no truth in the well-known story told by Sandrart, and repeated by Walpole, that the Duchess herself was not anxious to become Queen of England, telling Henry’s ambassadors that “she had but one head; if she had two, one of them should be at his Majesty’s service.” On the contrary, Carne and his fellow-commissioners frequently mentioned that she seemed bent on the alliance, and could not bear to hear of any other marriage proposals. Among the frequenters of the English court it was common gossip that she was very likely to be the next queen. Thus, Robert Warner, of the Earl of Sussex’s household, writing to Lord Fitzwater on November 21, 1538, tells him that “there is small speaking of any queen; merely a report that it should be the duchess of Milan. In any case it will be an outlandish woman and will not happen till the spring.”[277] There was also a report that the King had sent her a diamond worth 16,000 ducats.
Footnote 277:
C.L.P., vol. xiii. pt. ii. 884. Ellis, 1st series, ii. 96.
Early in 1539 Francis and Charles V were in full accord, and Henry was making every possible preparation for war. The Regent and the Emperor no longer attempted to keep up the farce of a possible matrimonial alliance with England, though even then Wriothesley was writing for Henry’s “phisnamy,” which he thought would make the Duchess leave Emperor and all rather than be frustrated of so great a match. In the end the three ambassadors departed for home on March 19, though not without some trouble, as war appeared imminent; and thus Holbein’s famous portrait remained as the only record in Henry’s possession of these long and futile negotiations.
The picture has never left England since the day it was painted. It was in the possession of Henry VIII at the time of his death, and is described in the inventory already mentioned, in which it is the twelfth entry, as—“Item, a greate table with the picture of the Duchyes of Myllayne, beinge her whole stature.” According to Mr. Lionel Cust,[278] it passed from King Henry’s collection to that of the King’s cousin, Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, after whose death it belonged to his son-in-law, John, Lord Lumley, husband of the Earl’s eldest daughter and co-heiress, Lady Joan Fitz-Alan. It is included in the manuscript inventory of pictures and other objects of art belonging to Lord Lumley in the reign of Queen Elizabeth already mentioned more than once. This inventory is entitled “A Certyficate from Mr. John Lampton, Stewarde of Howseholde to John, Lord Lumley, of all his Lo: Monumentes of Marbles, Pictures and tables in Paynture, with other his Lordshippes Howseholde stuffe, and Regester of Bookes. Anno 1590.” The picture is described as “The statuary of the Duchess of Myllayne, afterwards Duches of Lorreyn daughter to Christierne King of Denmarke doone by Haunce Holbyn,” the word “statuary” being used for a standing whole-length figure.
Footnote 278:
Letter to The Times, May 5, 1909.
Against the contention that the picture passed directly from Henry’s collection into the possession of the Earl of Arundel must be placed Carel van Mander’s statement that in 1574 Zuccaro saw it in the Earl of Pembroke’s house in London. “The said Zucchero,” he says, “was also delighted with the portrait of a certain Countess, dressed in black satin, life-size, a full-length figure, unusually pretty and well painted by Holbein, and kept in Lord Pembroke’s house, where he saw it in company with some painters and lovers of art, and took such great delight in it, that he declared he had not seen its like in art and delicacy even in Rome; therefore went away filled with admiration.”[279]
Footnote 279:
See Woltmann, English translation, p. 426.
Van Mander’s book was not published until 1604, thirty years later than this incident, and it is, of course, quite possible that either he or Zuccaro made a mistake as to the ownership of the picture and the place where it had been seen; but the statement is very definite, and must be taken into consideration in tracing the portrait’s history. In any case, there is no doubt that Lord Lumley owned it in 1590, and that he was a lover of Holbein’s works, of which he possessed a considerable number, most of which have been referred to individually in preceding pages, among them the great cartoon of Henry VII and Henry VIII belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and portraits of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and Sir Henry and Lady Guideford, and the book of the Windsor drawings, all of which are entered in the inventory as “drawne” or “doone” by “Haunce Holbyn.” In Lord Lumley’s collection were also portraits of Sir Nicholas Carew, Sir Thomas Lovell, the elder and the younger Sir Thomas Wyat, and Sir Thomas Hennege, some of which also may well have been by Holbein, though no artist’s name is placed against them in the list.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE PICTURE]
For many years Lord Lumley resided at Nonsuch. The erection of this palace was begun by Henry VIII in the year in which the Duchess was painted. The house, of which Toto was probably the chief architect or decorator,[280] was unfinished at the King’s death, and remained so during the reign of Edward VI; but in that of Mary it was completed by the Earl of Arundel, who had become possessed of it, “after the first intent and meaning of the said King his old maister.” Here Lord Lumley resided with his wife and father-in-law until the Earl’s death in 1580, when he became its owner. He added the front quadrangle, and entertained Queen Elizabeth there on more than one occasion. From his hands it reverted to the Crown in 1591 in exchange for other property. No doubt Lord Lumley’s collection of pictures remained at Nonsuch until that year, and very possibly the inventory, dated 1590, was drawn up in preparation for the removal of the works of art when this transfer of estates took place.[281]
Footnote 280:
See Vol. i. pp. 276-7.
Footnote 281:
See Cust, Burlington Magazine, vol. xiv., March 1909, pp. 366-8, and The Times, May 5, 1909; A. W. Franks, Archæologia, vol. xxxix. p. 35.
Upon the death of Lord Lumley without issue, it is evident that the picture passed, with other portraits of the Fitz-Alan family, into the possession of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, son of Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Lady Mary Fitz-Alan, younger daughter and co-heiress of Henry, Earl of Arundel. Philip Howard was father of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, probably the greatest art-collector the world has ever known. When in the latter’s possession it was seen by Sandrart, in 1627, who mentions it as the portrait of the King’s “incomparable beloved one, a princess of Lorraine” (unvergleichlicher Liebstin, einer Prinzessin von Lothringen). It was entered in the Arundel inventory of 1655 as “Duchessa de Lorena grande del naturale.”
From that time until 1909 it remained in the possession of the Howard family. Walpole adds to his Anecdotes a note to the effect that “Vertue saw a whole length of this princess at Mr. Howard’s, in Soho Square.”[282] It was afterwards at Worksop Manor, then belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, and later on was removed to Arundel Castle, where it was described in the catalogue as “a very curious portrait of a Duchess of Milan.” It was included in the exhibition of Old Masters at Burlington House in 1880, and the Duke of Norfolk then lent it to the National Gallery, where it remained on loan for nearly thirty years. About 1908 the Duke informed the Trustees that he was receiving large offers for the picture, which he felt bound to consider, but that he was most anxious that, if possible, it should be secured for the nation; and he, therefore, gave an undertaking that before closing with any purchaser he would first offer it to the Gallery at the same price.
Footnote 282:
Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, p. 72.
On April 22, 1909, his Grace told the authorities that he had been offered a sum of £61,000, which he had accepted, subject to the option granted to the National Gallery of purchasing at the same price, and that the purchasers had consented to wait until May 1 for the completion of the transaction. As the Trustees were unable to find so great a sum in so short a time, the Duke sold the picture to Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. for £61,000 on the latter date. The purchasers then in turn offered it first of all to the nation, at the enhanced price of £72,000, giving the Trustees a month in which to raise the necessary fund. A determined effort to secure the picture was then made by the chairman, Lord Balcarres, and committee of the National Art-Collections Fund, but in spite of strenuous endeavours, the amount subscribed up to within a few days of the expiration of the time-limit fell far short of the great sum required. Most happily, however, at the last moment a munificent anonymous donor came forward with a gift of £40,000, which, with £10,000 from the Government, and other subscriptions, including one from the vendors, enabled the Fund to complete the purchase, and thus this great picture, undoubtedly the finest portrait Holbein ever painted, for which more than one millionaire collector was prepared to give an even greater price for its possession, was saved for the English nation, and has at last found a permanent home in the National Gallery.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS AS A CHILD]
It is interesting to note that this Duchess of Milan is identical with the little dark-eyed girl wearing a peculiar hood in the well-known picture of the three children of the King of Denmark by Mabuse, in the English Royal Collection, now in Hampton Court. This picture was engraved by Vertue in 1748, and was removed at that date from Kensington Palace to Windsor. It was thought at that time—possibly the mistake was Vertue’s—to represent the three children of Henry VII, Prince Arthur, Prince Henry, and Princess Margaret, though in Henry VIII’s catalogue they were correctly named as the “three children of the Kynge of Denmarke.” The whole matter was cleared up by Sir George Scharf in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1860, and printed in Archæologia.[283] The original picture appears to have been painted in the spring of 1526 at Malines, where Mabuse was then engaged, amid other work, in restoring pictures for the Lady Regent. From a letter from Sir Robert Wingfield to Wolsey, written from that city on the 14th March 1526, we learn that the young Prince of Denmark and his two sisters were then on a visit to their aunt, “which be right goodly and fair children, specially the daughters.”[284] A letter from the Emperor to the Archduke Ferdinand, of about the same date, also mentions this visit. “I am sorry to hear of the death of the Queen of Denmark. Her children are with my aunt in Flanders.”[285]
Footnote 283:
Vol. xxxix. p. 245.
Footnote 284:
C.L.P., vol. iv. pt. i. 2025.
Footnote 285:
C.L.P., vol. iv. pt. i. No. 2051.
In Charles I’s catalogue this picture was attributed to Janet (“a Whitehall piece thought to be of Jennet”); and the earliest instance of its rightful ascription to Mabuse is in the Commonwealth inventory, among the pictures at St. James’s, where it is entered as: “Three children in one piece by Mabuse, sold to Mr. Grinder for £10, 23rd Oct. 1651.”
Sir George Scharf, comparing this juvenile likeness with the one painted by Holbein some thirteen years later, says: “The same features and expression of countenance, notwithstanding the difference of years, may be traced in both. The look of the eyes is quite the same, and I would also invite attention to the form of the upper eyelids which, especially in the Arundel picture, become remarkably broad on the side away from the nose.”[286] There are five or six replicas of the Mabuse picture in this country, at Wilton, Sudeley Castle, Longford Castle, Corsham House, and elsewhere. Other likenesses of the Duchess are to be found on existing medals both of Sforza and Lorraine, and in the fine engraving or etching of her by Agostino Carracci, published in Campo’s History of Cremona.
Footnote 286:
Archæologia, vol. xl. p. 140.
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