XXVIII. THE BARBER-SURGEONS PICTURE AND THE PAINTER’S DEATH…

XXVIII. THE BARBER-SURGEONS PICTURE AND THE PAINTER’S DEATH

Holbein’s last important work, the Barber-Surgeons picture, left unfinished by him—Description of it—Copy of it made for James I—Pepys’ attempt to purchase the original—Holbein’s death from the plague in the autumn of 1543—Discovery of his will—His executor, John of Antwerp, and his witnesses, Anthony Snecher, Olryck Obinger, and Harry Maynert—Old mistake in the date of his death—History of Holbein’s family—Englishmen named Holbein—His imitators—Painters who were working in England at the time of his death and shortly afterwards—Johannes Corvus and Gerlach Fliccius—Guillim Stretes—Hans Eworthe—Thomas and John Bettes—Nicholas Lyzarde—Amberger—Copies of Holbein’s pictures in English collections.

The last important work upon which Holbein was engaged, a work left unfinished owing to his sudden death, was the large picture still hanging in the old hall of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company in Monkwell Street, London (Pl. 54).[701] It was painted to commemorate the unification of the Company of Barbers and the Guild of Surgeons by Act of Parliament in the thirty-second year of Henry’s reign (1540-41), and must have been begun shortly after the passing of the Act. At an earlier period the barbers and the surgeons of London had formed a single company, but in course of time had become separated; and upon their second coming together Holbein was called in to furnish a permanent record of the event. During the progress of the work he painted separate portraits of at least two of the sitters in the big picture—Dr. John Chamber and Sir William Butts—just as he had painted individual likenesses of Sir Thomas and Lady More when engaged upon the big group of the Chancellor’s family.

Footnote 701:

Woltmann, 202. Reproduced by A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 270; Ganz, Holbein, p. 130.

The truth of Van Mander’s statement that Holbein left this large picture unfinished is apparent after even a cursory examination of it. That writer, who regarded it as an “unusually splendid work,” says:

“According to the feeling of some, Holbein is said not to have completed the piece himself, but that the deficient parts were painted by some one else. Nevertheless, if this be the truth, it must lead to the conclusion that the completer of the work must have understood how to follow Holbein’s manner so judiciously that no painter or artist can from good reasons decide that various hands have been engaged in it.”[702]

Footnote 702:

Quoted by Woltmann, i. p. 474. Eng. trans., p. 444.

The latter part of Van Mander’s statement, however, is far from correct, for the hand of a very inferior craftsman is plainly enough to be discerned over a greater part of the picture. The general arrangement of the kneeling figures in the front rank, and the position assigned to the King, were evidently Holbein’s, who had probably finished the heads, and even the robes, of several of the leading members of the Guild, while the heads of others had possibly been traced on the panel from his own preliminary studies before death cut short his labours. For the rest, the picture appears to have suffered from more than one later attempt to finish it.

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURE]

The composition consists of nineteen figures. Henry VIII is shown full-length on his throne, which is not placed in the centre of the picture, but somewhat to the spectator’s left. He is crowned and dressed in his full robes of state, holding the sword in his right and the charter in his left hand. He is represented as far larger in size than the other figures kneeling in front of him, something in the manner of earlier days, when the importance of the principal person in a painting was brought home to the spectator by the simple plan of depicting him much bigger than those who surrounded him. This is a trick to which such a master as Holbein would never have descended; indeed, the figure of the King, who stares straight out of the picture with a dull, wooden countenance, without evincing the slightest interest in the ceremony in which he is the chief performer, cannot even have been sketched in by Holbein, and is a stiff and clumsy performance at the best. The head has evidently been copied from one of the numerous likenesses of Henry of the type of the Warwick portrait, without any attempt to alter the position of the face or to connect it with the presentation which is taking place. The position of the head may have been indicated by Holbein on the panel, and Woltmann is probably right in his conjecture that it was his intention to represent him standing on the steps of the throne, and not seated, which would account for the height of the face as it now is above the surrounding figures.[703] On the King’s right hand only three members of the Guild are kneeling—Chamber in the front, with Butts next, and T. Alsop behind him. The three may have been thus placed in the position of honour as the King’s personal physicians. All three wear a furred gown and a doctor’s cap. The head of Chamber is excellent, and appears to be wholly Holbein’s work, with little or no retouching; that of Butts has suffered more severely from incompetent hands, while the Alsop is much weaker. It is in this part of the picture, and in one or two of the heads on the opposite side, that Holbein carried his work almost entirely to completion. Eight men kneel in the front row on the King’s left, headed by T. Vicary, who receives the charter from the royal hand, five of them with beards, and some of them with skull-caps, and wearing more elaborate costumes and gowns than those opposite to them. The second figure, T. Aylif, the Warden, is one of the most effective, the head, though here again retouching is very evident, being perhaps the best of all. The heads of Harman and Monforde are noteworthy among the remainder of the figures, the greater number of which have been so badly repainted that no touch of Holbein’s hand is now visible; though it is possible that in some cases he was responsible for the outline. According to Dr. Woltmann, traces of the pinholes by means of which the transference of Holbein’s original sketches of the heads to the panel was made, can still be seen in several instances. Behind the eight kneeling members of the Company on the spectator’s right there appears an upper row of seven figures, which must have been added at a considerably later date than that of the finishing process given to the picture at some time shortly after Holbein’s death. These later figures are so badly placed that they entirely spoil the composition, and are quite devoid of artistic merit, being the work of a still weaker hand than that of the unknown “finisher.” They evidently formed no part of the original arrangement, but represent later members of the company who wished their portraits to be included. The panel is further marred by the fact that over each sitter, with the exception of five in the last-named row, his name is inscribed in large letters. Another late addition, which also helps to spoil the general effect, is a large white tablet on the wall on the right, which contains a long Latin inscription in prose and verse in praise of the King. Originally this space was occupied by a window, through which could be seen the old tower of the church of St. Bride’s, showing that the ceremony was represented as taking place in the palace of Bridewell. Behind the King hangs a large gold-embroidered curtain, and on either side of it the space is roughly filled in with flowers and fruit representing tapestry. According to Dr. Ganz,[704] it is the same chamber, with the same hangings, probably the throne-room in Whitehall, as in the large picture of the family of Henry VIII at Hampton Court (No. 340 (510)),[705] which has been attributed by some writers to Guillim Stretes; and again, in a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the possession of the Earl of Buckinghamshire. It is possible that the King may have sat for the picture at Whitehall, and that Holbein made use of the surroundings at his hand, but the view from the window in the copy of the Barber-Surgeons painting, mentioned below, seems to indicate that the room represented was in Bridewell. There is no resemblance between the patterns of the carpets in the two pictures. It is painted on a panel made up of a number of thick, vertical oak boards, and is 10 ft. 3 in. wide by 6 ft. high. In Woltmann’s opinion, “the picture is nothing but a ruin, in which we have to search with difficulty for the traces of Holbein.”[706]

Footnote 703:

Woltmann, i. p. 475.

Footnote 704:

See Holbein, p. 243.

Footnote 705:

The central part of this picture, showing Henry VIII enthroned, with Edward VI and Queen Catherine Parr on either side of him, is reproduced by Mr. Ernest Law in The Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, p. 130.

Footnote 706:

Woltmann, Eng. trans., p. 446.

This opinion, and an almost similar one given by Wornum, were regarded by the late Sir Charles Robinson as far too scathing.[707] He considered that Holbein’s hand had worked more or less over every part of the great panel—very elaborately and minutely in some parts and very slightly in others; but that nowhere had the finishing touches and work required to give final truth and perfection of representation been bestowed. He thought that an interval of some twenty or thirty years must have elapsed before the Barber-Surgeons, in an inauspicious moment, determined on the completion of their picture, the superadded work seeming to be that of a somewhat advanced Elizabethan period. It must always be a matter of deep regret that they did not leave it in the state in which it came to them from Holbein’s studio, for it would have been of infinitely greater value than it is now. Finished by him it could not have been less than a masterpiece; but even in its incomplete state it would have been of equal interest as forming an invaluable example of his technique and methods of working.

Footnote 707:

In a letter to The Times, 28th August 1895.

[Sidenote: COPY MADE FOR JAMES I]

On the 13th of January 1618 James I wrote from Newmarket to the Company asking that the picture should be lent to him, as he was anxious to have a copy made of it, and promising that this should be done expeditiously, and the original redelivered safely. “We are informed,” he said, “there is a table of Painting in your Hall whereon is the Picture of our Predecessor of famous memorie K. Henry the 8th., together w^h diverse of y^r Companie, w^h being both like him and well done Wee are desirous to have copyd.”[708] Holbein’s name is not mentioned in this letter. The copy then made is in all probability the one now in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons,[709] which is smaller than the original, and an indifferent version of it, on paper attached to canvas. The figure of Alsop, on the extreme right of the King, is omitted, and in place of the tablet with the inscription, the window with a view of the church tower is shown, proving that even if it is not the copy ordered by James I, it is at least a very early version of the original. It was at one time in the collection of Desenfans, and at his sale in 1786 was purchased by the Surgeons’ Company for fifty guineas. It has been incorrectly described as the original cartoon for the picture, and it has also been said, but this again is wrong, that it belonged at one time to the Barber-Surgeons’ Company, and that when the two branches of the Guild were finally separated in 1745, the College retained the copy or cartoon and the Company kept the picture.[710]

Footnote 708:

The original letter is in the possession of the Company.

Footnote 709:

The College also possesses a second copy of the picture.

Footnote 710:

In 1789 this copy was cleaned and put in order by a man named Lloyd, who asked £400 for his labours, but eventually took fifty guineas.

The next reference to the picture occurs in Pepys’ Diary, under the date August 29, 1668. The entry runs: “At noon, comes by appointment Harris to dine with me; and after dinner, he and I to Chirurgeons’ Hall, where they are building it new, very fine; and there to see their theatre, which stood all the fire, and, which was our business, their great picture of Holbein’s, thinking to have bought it, by the help of Mr. Pierce, for a little money. I did think to give 200_l._ for it, it being said to be worth 1000_l._; but it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and is not a pleasant though a good picture.” The fire of which Pepys speaks was the great fire of 1666, and the damage to which he refers may have been caused to some extent by the smoke, though it is more probable that the injury he noted was merely that caused by time and restoration. Wornum suggests that it underwent restoration shortly after the Great Fire, and that the tablet with the inscription was then introduced in place of the original window.[711] The entry in the Diary further shows how high a value the Company placed on the picture even in those days, and also that they were prepared to sell it at their own price.[712]

Footnote 711:

Wornum, p. 352, who quotes the whole of the Latin inscription.

Footnote 712:

See Appendix (M).

In 1734 the Company commissioned Bernard Baron to engrave the picture for the sum of 150 guineas. The plate, which is a large one, and a fairly accurate transcript of the original, except that it is reversed, was published in 1736. It was dedicated to the Earl of Burlington, with a Latin inscription. In 1856 it was engraved on wood for the Illustrated London News by Henry Linton.[713] In 1895 the Company were again anxious to sell it, and an effort was made to purchase it for the nation, but unfortunately the scheme fell through, possibly because the extravagant price of £15,000 was asked for it.

Footnote 713:

Reproduced in Mantz, p. 172.

While still engaged upon this important work, Holbein’s life was cut short by the plague, which raged so severely in London in the summer and autumn of 1543 that hundreds of people died each week from it. According to Hall, “Thys yeare was in London a great death of the Pestilence, and therefore Mighelmas Tearme was adjourned to Saynt Albons”; and Stow repeats this statement almost word for word.[714] Holbein succumbed to it on some date between the 7th of October and 29th of November. This was proved by the discovery of his will in February 1861, by Mr. W. H. Black, F.S.A., who found it in one of the Registers of the Commissary of London, at that time preserved in the Record Room at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is included in the book called “Beverly,” on folios 116 and 121, that volume covering the period from 1539 to 1548. It runs as follows:

Footnote 714:

Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Families of Lancastre and Yorke, 1548, p. 257. Stow, The Annales, &c., 1615, p. 585.

[Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S WILL]

“Holbeine.—In the name of God the father, sonne, and holy gohooste, I, Johñ Holbeine, servaunte to the Kynges Magestye, make this my Testamente and last will, to wyt, that all my goodes shalbe sold and also my horse, and I will that my debtes be payd, to wete, fyrst to Mr. Anthony, the Kynges servaunte, of Grenwiche, y^e of [sic] summe of ten poundes thurtene shyllynges and sewyne pence sterlinge. And more over I will that he shalbe contented for all other thynges betwene hym and me. Item, I do owe unto Mr. John of Anwarpe, goldsmythe, sexe poundes sterling, wiche I will also shalbe payd unto hym with the fyrste. Item, I bequeythe for the kynpyng [keeping] of my two Chylder wich be at nurse, for every monethe sewyn shyllynges and sex pence sterlynge. In wytnes, I have sealed and sealed [sic] this my testament the vijth day of Octaber, in the yere of o^r Lorde God M^lvCxliij. Wytnes, Anthoney Snecher, armerer, Mr. Johñ of Anwarpe, goldsmythe before said, Olrycke Obynger, merchaunte, and Harry Maynert, paynter.”

To this the following official act was appended on the 29th November:

“XXIX^o die mensis Novembris anno Domini predict. Johannes Anwarpe executor nominat, in testamento sive ultima voluntate Johannis alias Hans Holbein nuper parochie sancti Andree Vndershafte defuncti comparuit coram Magistro Johanne Croke, &c., Commissario generali, ac renunciavit omni executioni hujus modi testamenti, quam renunciationem dominus admisit, deinde commisit administracionem bonorum dicti defuncti prenominato Johanni Anwarpe in forma juris jurato et per ipsum admissa pariter et acceptata. Salvo jure cujuscumque. Dat. etc.”

[On the 29th November in the aforesaid year of our Lord, John Anwarpe, appointed executor in the testament or last will of John alias Hans Holbein, recently deceased in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, appeared before Master John Croke, Commissary-General, and renounced the execution of the said will, which renunciation was allowed, and the administration of the property left was consigned to the before-mentioned John Anwarpe as sworn in, which was admitted and accepted by him. The right of each intact.

This is followed on folio 121 of the book by the entry:

“Holbene.—XXIX^{no} die mensis predicti commissa fuit administracio bonorum Johannis alias Hans Holbeñ parochie sancti Andrei Undershaft nuper abintestato defuncti Johanni Anwarpe in forma juris jurato, ac per ipsum admissa pariter et acceptata. Salvo jure cujuscumque. Dicto die, mens, &c.”

[Holbene.—The 29th of the aforesaid month the administration of the property of John alias Hans Holben, recently deceased ab intestato in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, was consigned to John Anwarpe as sworn in, and was admitted and accepted by him. The right of each intact. Said day of month, &c.][715]

Footnote 715:

See Sir A. W. Franks, Archæologia, vol. xxxix., p. 2, and W. H. Black, same vol., p. 275.

According to these entries, John of Antwerp was Holbein’s executor, although he is not so mentioned in the will, and on the 29th November he renounced all execution of it, and took out letters of administration only. The will itself appears to have been drawn up carelessly and in haste; probably Holbein was already sickening when he made it, so that it had to be done in a hurry, or he may have been merely alarmed, owing to the number of people daily dying around him, including, as Mr. Lionel Cust points out,[716] some members of John of Antwerp’s own household, in whose dwelling, he suggests, Holbein may himself have contracted the disease. The meaning of the two official acts is not easy to follow, but the explanation given by Sir Augustus W. Franks, F.S.A., procured from a legal source, is no doubt the correct one. “Though the two official acts which follow the copy of the Will may at first appear inconsistent both with the Will and also with each other; yet, if we suppose that John Anwarpe was considered to have been appointed executor by implication (which the law allowed), much of the seeming inconsistency will disappear. The object of the renunciation may have been either to obviate some doubt which existed as to whether John Anwarpe was so made executor (for the language is hardly strong enough), or to avoid certain liabilities that would have affected him as executor, but not as administrator. Formerly a person was said to have died intestate, not only when he left no Will, but also when he left a Will and appointed no executor, or appointed executors and they all renounced. In this administration act the testator is accordingly said to have died intestate. The great difficulty in these official acts is how John Anwarpe could have been executor and Mr. Anthony not. The second of the two is almost a repetition of the first, and both are dated on the same day.”[717]

Footnote 716:

Burlington Magazine, vol. viii., February 1906, p. 360. See also p. 13.

Footnote 717:

Archæologia, vol. xxxix. p. 15.

[Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S WILL]

The will is of great interest, not only as proving the date of Holbein’s death within a week or two, but also as affording some information as to his worldly position and his personal friends. Although his practice in London was a large one, he died somewhat heavily in debt, and the inference is that he had not saved money. What his personal possessions consisted of, the document, so hastily drawn, does not say, but, unlike a number of his fellow-artists, he does not seem to have owned any property in London. It does not necessarily follow, however, that he was extravagant in his habits, though he kept a horse and owed money. It has been assumed that the frequent payment of his salary in advance was due to improvidence; but there is nothing beyond the terms of his will to support this, or to show that he spent all his income on himself, and that he failed to send money regularly to Basel in support of his wife and family. The reference to his two children at nurse indicates some irregular connection in England, which may have been one of the reasons which made him disinclined to return permanently to Basel in accordance with the wish of his fellow-townsmen. Considering the laxity of morals at that period, the fact that he had a second family in London is not very surprising. It has been suggested that the mother of these children died of the plague shortly before the artist, and that his will was made through anxiety to provide for them should he in turn be taken with the rapid and usually fatal disease, to which most victims succumbed within three days. The amount bequeathed for these children’s maintenance, about three half-pence a day each, does not seem much, but when the relative value of money at that time is taken into consideration, it was no doubt enough for their simple needs. What eventually became of them is not known.

With regard to the four witnesses to the will, all of whom were, no doubt, personal friends of the painter, nothing is known with any certainty except as regards John of Antwerp. The Mr. Anthony of Greenwich, one of the King’s servants, to whom Holbein owed the considerable amount of £10, 13_s._ 7_d._, is evidently the same individual who witnessed the will as Anthony Snecher, armourer, although the words “before said” do not occur against his name as witness as they do in the case of John of Antwerp. Both Mr. Black and Sir A. Franks, however, appear to have regarded them as two distinct persons.[718] The former suggested that “Mr. Anthony” was Anthony Anthony, one of the officers of the Ordnance Department, who had some skill as an illuminator, if the embellishments of certain rolls dealing with the navy and signed by him were from his hand, as is probable. The latter thought that Anthony Snecher was possibly one of the body of German armourers in the regular employment of the King at Greenwich, of whom Erasmus Kirkheimer was the chief, and that Holbein may have supplied him with designs for the ornamentation of weapons. Mr. J. Gough Nichols suggested that Mr. Anthony may have been Anthony Toto, the painter, with whom Holbein must have been acquainted, and with whom he may have worked in conjunction with other foreign artists upon the decoration of Nonsuch Palace.

Footnote 718:

See Archæologia, vol. xxxix. pp. 13-14, and 274.

Of Olryck Obinger, the merchant, nothing is known, but from his name he must have been a Swiss or German, possibly a merchant of the Steelyard, though there is no reference to him in the State Papers, which contain the names of a large number of the members of that body. From his name, too, Harry Maynert, the painter, also appears to have been a German or a Fleming. He remains an indefinite figure at present.[719] Mr. Black suggested that he might be a relation of the John Maynard who was one of the painters employed on the tomb of Henry VII. A relationship is also possible with the Katherine Maynors, of Antwerp, a painter, who obtained letters of denization in England in 1540, at which time she was a widow.

Footnote 719:

The fine miniature by Holbein at Munich, bearing the initials H. M., which Dr. Ganz suggests may be a portrait of Harry Maynert, is described on pp. 241-2.

[Sidenote: THE PLACE OF HIS BURIAL]

The discovery of the will put an end to the tradition which had existed from the beginning of the seventeenth century that Holbein died in 1554. This mistake is to be traced back to the publication of Carel van Mander’s Het Schilder Boeck, published in 1604, two years before the writer’s death. In his account of Holbein he concludes by saying: “Soo is Holbeen in groote benoutheydt te Londen ghestorven van de Pest A^o 1554, oudt 56 Jaren.” [Thus did Holbein die in London, of the plague, in great distress, in the year 1554, fifty-six years old. Succeeding writers copied from Van Mander. Joachim von Sandrart repeated the statement in his Teutsche Akademie—“Wurde er 1554 im 56 Jahre seines Alters von der damals in Londen wütenden Pest hingerafft”—and later biographers continued the error, which led to great confusion, as it added eleven years to the painter’s life, and caused almost all Tudor portraits bearing dates between 1544 and 1554 to be attributed to him. Wornum suggests that the letter from the Burgomaster of Basel to Jacob David, the Parisian goldsmith, with reference to Philip Holbein, which is dated 1545 and speaks of Holbein, the father, as then deceased, may have been shown to Van Mander or copied for him, and that in transcribing it, or even in the printing of his book, the last two figures of the date were accidentally transferred, so that 45 was turned into 54.[720] Such mistakes are not of uncommon occurrence, and this solution may be the true one. There was no plague raging in London in 1554, while in 1543 there was an unusually severe visitation. Otherwise Van Mander’s account of the painter’s death is substantially correct. The place of his burial remains uncertain, but according to tradition, as voiced by Strype, he was interred in the church of St. Catherine Cree. Strype, in his additions to Stow’s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster,[721] says: I have been told that Hans Holben, the great and inimitable painter in King Henry VIII’s Time, was buried in this Church; and that the Earl of Arundel, the great Patron of Learning and Arts, would have set up a Monument to his Memory here, had he but known whereabouts the Corps lay.”

Footnote 720:

Wornum, p. 23.

Footnote 721:

1720, Book II. p. 64.

The same story was told by Sandrart, without mentioning the church. He supposed that the Earl’s difficulty arose from the fact that so many people were dying daily, and had to be buried in such haste, that Holbein probably shared a common grave with others, and that no record would be kept. There can be little doubt that he would be buried in or near the parish in which he was residing. The church of St. Catherine Cree, though in the next parish, is not many hundred yards distant from the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft, and it is probable that Holbein was interred in one or the other of them, possibly the latter, confusion as to the exact locality having arisen at a later date owing to the close proximity of the two churches. Unfortunately no registers of the time are available. St. Andrew Undershaft escaped the Great Fire, but its register from 1538 to 1579 has disappeared, while that of St. Catherine Cree begins only in 1663.

Holbein’s wife and family are not mentioned in his will, and what little is known of their further history is largely due to the researches of Dr. His-Heusler in the Basel archives. His wife survived him for six years, dying early in 1549, after a somewhat lengthy illness, as on the 9th of July in the preceding year she appointed, for this reason, a deputy to manage her affairs. It is to be gathered that she was left by Holbein in a fairly comfortable position, what with the annual pension allowed her by the civic authorities, the two houses which her husband had purchased fifteen years earlier, and the legacy from his uncle Sigmund, which the painter does not appear to have touched. Nor does it follow, because she was not mentioned in the will, that he had failed to send to her at least a part of his English earnings. An inventory taken on the 8th of March 1549, shortly after her death, shows that she was fairly well provided with worldly goods. In addition to furniture, an ample supply of linen, and the more ordinary household utensils, she possessed two silver-gilt covered cups, six silver goblets, a dozen silver-plated spoons, and a valise with a portion of her deceased husband’s wardrobe, including a black cap, a Spanish cape trimmed with velvet, a doublet of smoke-coloured Florentine taffeta, and others of black satin, crimson silk, and black damask. These garments must have been left behind by Holbein when he visited Basel in 1538, rather than forwarded after his death by his executor, who, according to the terms of the will, was obliged to sell everything. His stepson, Franz Schmid, who carried on his father’s tanning business, died before his mother, leaving two children.

[Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S DESCENDANTS]

Some years after 1545, Holbein’s eldest son, Philip, having completed his apprenticeship to Jacob David in Paris, from whose service he only obtained release after the Basel Town Council had come to his assistance, worked for a time as a goldsmith in Lisbon, and finally settled in Augsburg, where he founded a diamond-cutting business. He in turn had a son named Philip, who, in 1611, petitioned the Emperor Matthias for a confirmation and augmentation of “his old and noble coat of arms.” In this document, in which he describes himself as Imperial court jeweller and a citizen of Augsburg, he speaks of his grandfather Johann, as “the painter at that time celebrated throughout Europe,” and asserts that the Holbeins were descended from a noble family of the “city of Uri.” This last statement, however, was largely imaginary, and had its sole foundation in the fact that the Holbein arms[722] were the same as those of the canton of Uri, with the exception that the latter lacked the star between the bull’s horns. This Philip Holbein, who, according to Von Mechel, had been living in Vienna since 1600, had his petition granted on the 1st October in the following year, 1612. In 1756 one of his descendants, Johann Georg Holbein, who was connected with the Court of Chancery, obtained a confirmation of the noble rank granted to his family in 1612, with the surname of Holbeinsberg, and in 1787 was raised to the rank of a Knight of the Empire, with the title of a noble of Holbeinsberg.

Footnote 722:

See Vol. i. p. 83.

Holbein’s elder daughter, Katherine, married in 1545 a butcher named Jacob Gyssler, a widower with a grown-up daughter. Among the papers of Ludwig Iselin there is a list of all the deaths which occurred in Basel between 1588 and 1612, from which we learn that she died on February 8, 1590. She is described as Katharina Holbeinin, daughter of the deceased Hans Holbein, the distinguished painter, wife of a butcher. The second daughter, Küngolt, or Kunigunde, after the death of her mother, married a miller named Andreas Syff. They had a numerous family, and one of their granddaughters married Friedrich Merian, brother of the well-known engraver, Matthaüs Merian. Küngolt, according to Iselin’s list, died seven months after her sister, on September 15, 1590. She is described in the same terms, as the daughter of the celebrated artist. In this list there also occurs the name of a third lady of the Holbein family, who died on the 17th September 1594, but she is merely described as “Felicitas Holbein, wife of Conrad Volmar, died of the plague,” and it is not certain that she was one of the painter’s daughters. Nothing is known of the younger son, Jacob Holbein, except that he also became a goldsmith, and that he came to England and died in London in the summer of 1552. In 1549, at the time of his mother’s death, he was still a minor, and the document in the Basel archives dealing with the division of his property after his death is dated June 27, 1552. No other record of his presence in London has been so far traced.

The name occurs in England both before and after Hans Holbein’s residence here, but in every case the bearers of it were almost certainly Englishmen. Walpole mentions a Holbein, on the authority of an entry in a register at Wells,[723] as living in the reign of Henry VII, and conjectures him to have been a foreigner, and even a relation of Hans, and the possible author of some early paintings, including a portrait of Henry VII. In this, however, he was wrong. His Holbein was evidently an English country gentleman, and probably some relative of a certain Johannes Holbyn of North Stoke, close to Bath, who died in 1548, and left a sum of money to the Cathedral of Wells. The wills of two other well-to-do persons of this name occur in the registry of the Archidiaconal Court of Canterbury—that of John Holbein of Folkestone, dated August 21, 1534, who bequeathed forty-six shillings and eightpence for a new covered font for the parish church, and of his widow, who died shortly after him, which is dated November 25, 1534, and was proved in the following January. These people were all English, and had no connection with the painter.[724]

Footnote 723:

Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 49.

Footnote 724:

See Sir A. W. Franks, Archæologia, vol. xxxix. p. 16; W. H. Hart, Proceedings Soc. of Antiq., 16th April 1863; and Wornum, p. 372.

Holbein founded no school of painting either in England or Switzerland, and there is no evidence to show that he had any pupils. It is probable that he employed assistants when engaged upon such wall-paintings as those he carried out in Whitehall, but whoever they may have been, their engagement was only a temporary one. As already noted, there is no record, as there is in the case of several other foreign artists then resident in this country, of a royal warrant according him the privilege of employing in regular service a number of alien assistants or servants in spite of the Act which made such a proceeding illegal. No pupil of his is mentioned by any of his early biographers, and it seems almost certain that no one directly studied under him. If there had been such a painter, some record of him is almost certain to have survived. There are a number of portraits, as a rule of no very great artistic merit, in various private collections in England, which were evidently painted indirectly under his influence. Such examples are to be expected, for it was impossible for so great a master to be at work in London for so many years without a certain number of imitators springing up, who attempted to work in his methods and to copy his style. It is hardly possible now that even the names of these third-rate imitators and ineffectual rivals will be unearthed.

[Sidenote: GUILLIM STRETES]

As already stated, prior to the discovery of his will almost all paintings bearing dates between 1543 and 1554 were ascribed to him; even to-day, in some instances, the owners, in spite of the impossibility, still adhere to the great name, as the catalogues of most of the exhibitions held within recent years dealing with the Tudor period afford proof. The authorship of these pictures must be sought for elsewhere, though in many cases the task is one of extreme difficulty. Several painters of considerable talent were at work at the English court during the years immediately following Holbein’s death, and in some instances signed and authenticated works by them exist which enable comparisons to be made and certain unsigned works from their hands to be identified with some confidence. Such men as these were Johannes Corvus and Gerlach Fliccius; but in other cases, such as that of Guillim Stretes, only the names and a few scanty records remain, and it is impossible to point to any picture which can be said with absolute certainty to have been produced by them. Lucas Hornebolt died in 1544, about six months later than Holbein, and in the same year Girolamo da Treviso was killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Boulogne. Several of the leading Italian artists, however, continued to serve the court during the remainder of Henry VIII’s life and throughout the succeeding reign, such as Antonio Toto, the sergeant-painter, his colleague, Bartolommeo Penni, and Nicolas Bellin of Modena, though no signed or authenticated picture by any one of them has survived.

One of the most important of Holbein’s immediate successors was the Dutch painter, Guillim or Gillam Stretes, though so far no mention of him has been found prior to the accession of Edward VI. Strype’s extract from the records of the Privy Council, having reference to a payment of fifty marks made to him for two pictures of the young King and one of the Earl of Surrey, has been already quoted,[725] as well as the fact that in 1553 he was receiving, as King’s painter, an annuity of £62, 10_s._, more than double Holbein’s salary, showing that he was a person of importance among the painters of Edward’s reign. Reference has also been made to the attribution to Stretes of the full-length portrait of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle,[726] and of the duplicate version, without the painted framework, at Knole.[727] The attribution of these two works to Stretes is based entirely on the Privy Council order. Dr. Waagen[728] stated that the Arundel Castle portrait was inscribed “William Strote,” but no one else has succeeded in discovering this signature, and very possibly the name he quotes was seen by him on some old label then attached to the frame and since removed. These two portraits, as already noted, have been grouped with several other full-lengths, including the young man in red at Hampton Court Palace (No. 345 (315)), wrongly described as a portrait of the Earl of Surrey,[729] that of Sir Thomas Gresham, dated 1544, in Mercers’ Hall, the beautiful portrait of William West, Lord Delawarr,[730] belonging to Lieut.-Col. G. L. Holford, C.I.E., C.V.O., and the one of the Earl of Southampton, 1542, in the Fitzwilliam Museum.[731] These portraits display somewhat close affinities, though it is not possible to allow that all are by the same hand. The portrait of William West is a work of great power and character, and has been attributed to Holbein himself, but the style of the painting does not accord with his. All these works are of considerably earlier date than that of the Privy Council order, which is the earliest reference so far discovered touching this painter, and it is extremely doubtful whether he had anything to do with them. One is on safer ground in attributing to him some of the portraits of King Edward, which exist in considerable numbers, two of which he certainly painted, and very possibly others. These portraits of the young King, and Stretes’ probable connection with them, have been dealt with in an earlier chapter.[732] One other picture Stretes is known to have painted, for it is recorded that on New Year’s Day, 1556, he presented Queen Mary with “a table of her Majesty’s Marriage.”[733] This picture, which must have been one of particular interest, has completely disappeared. Dr. Williamson records a signed miniature by him of Edward VI, almost full-face, wearing a jewelled cap, in Earl Beauchamp’s collection at Madresfield Court,[734] and he also attributes to the same painter a second miniature of the young King, as a little boy, in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam.[735]

Footnote 725:

See pp. 168-170.

Footnote 726:

Exhib. Burl. Fine Arts Club, 1909, No. 54. Reproduced Arundel Club, 1907, No. 3; Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 284.

Footnote 727:

See p. 201.

Footnote 728:

Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 30.

Footnote 729:

Reproduced by Law, Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, p. 136.

Footnote 730:

Exhibited Royal Academy Winter Exhibitions, 1870, No. 23; 1880, No. 167; 1908, No. 2; Burl. Fine Arts Club, 1909, No. 51. Reproduced Arundel Club, 1908, No. 10; and Burl. Fine Arts Club Catalogue, Pl. xvii.

Footnote 731:

See pp. 204-205.

Footnote 732:

See pp. 168-170.

Footnote 733:

Queen Elizabeth’s Progresses, vol. i. p. xxxv., and Nichols’ Illustrations of Ancient Times, p. 14.

Footnote 734:

Williamson, History of Portrait Miniatures, 1904, vol. i. p. 12. Reproduced, Pl. v. fig. 3.

Footnote 735:

Ibid., Pl. xlvii. fig. 6.

[Sidenote: GERLACH FLICCIUS]

Of Johannes Corvus, the Fleming, and his portraits of Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, and of Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, the one undated, and the other of the year 1532, some account has been already given.[736] Little is known of this painter, or of Gerlach Fliccius or Flicke, who, like Holbein, was German, and appears to have settled in London towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign, where he died in 1558. Recent researches by Miss Mary Hervey[737] have, however, added considerably to our knowledge of this painter and his work. His will, recently discovered, which is dated 24th January 1558, and was proved by his widow on the 11th February following, shows that he was living in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate, and that he possessed lands and goods in Osnabrüch, of which place he was no doubt a native. In this document he calls himself “Drawer,” and gives his name as Garlick Flicke, and it was under the name of Garlick that he was generally known in this country. The Lumley inventory includes three portraits by him—a full-length, described as “The Statuary of Thomas first Lo: Darcy of Chiche, created by King Edw. 6. L^d Chamberlayne to the said K. Edw.: drawn by Garlicke,” and two small ones of “Queen Marye, drawne by Garlicke,” and “Thomas, the third Duke of Northfolke, drawne by Garlicke.” Unfortunately these three portraits have disappeared—the full-length of Lord Darcy in quite modern times. Until 1854 it was hanging in Irnham Hall, Lincolnshire, but in that year the house and its contents were sold, and the present whereabouts of the picture has so far not been traced. Miss Hervey gives a list of eight portraits which can be attributed with more or less certainty to Fliccius. In addition to the three from the Lumley Collection, there are three others in the collection of the Marquis of Lothian at Newbattle Abbey, Dalkeith, the portrait of Archbishop Cranmer in the National Portrait Gallery, and the small double portrait of the painter himself and his friend, Richard Strangeways. The three at Newbattle Abbey[738] are of great interest, though it is impossible to describe them in detail here. The finest, which is dated 1547, and is signed “Gerlacius Fliccūs Germanūs faciebat,” represents an unknown man of the age of forty, whom Miss Hervey tentatively suggests to be William, Lord Grey of Wilton, clad in a slit buff jerkin and a black velvet surcoat trimmed with fur. It is a portrait of considerable power, and though it has suffered from repainting still appears to have been the work of a man of more than ordinary artistic talents. The second portrait at Newbattle—of Sir Peter Carew—has many points in common with it, and was probably painted at about the same time. The portrait of Archbishop Cranmer in the National Portrait Gallery is stiffer in style than these, and suggests a more obvious attempt to follow the manner of Holbein, but though very carefully painted and with every appearance of truth of portraiture, lacks the vitality which stamps everything from the hand of the master. It is signed “Gerbicus Flicciis Germanus faciebat,” and though undated was, according to the sitter’s age, painted in 1545. The curious double portrait, on a small oak panel, of Flicke and his friend Strangeways or Strangwish, the gentleman privateer, known as the “Red Rover,” was painted in prison in 1554. The artist seems to have been mixed up in Wyat’s rebellion, and as a result he and his friend were imprisoned, but afterwards released. Over each head is painted a verse, that above Flicke’s in Latin, which, translated, runs: “Such in appearance was Gerlach Fliccius, what time he was a painter in the City of London. This portrait he painted from a mirror for his dear friends, that they might be able to remember him after his death.” The lines over Strangeways are in English:

“Strangwish thus strangely depicted is, One prisoner for thother hath done this; Gerlin hath garnisht for his delight, This woorck whiche you se before youre sight.”

Footnote 736:

See Vol. i. p. 269.

Footnote 737:

See Burlington Magazine, vol. xvii., May 1910, pp. 71-9, and June 1910, pp. 147-8, from which most of the following facts have been taken; and J. G. Nichols, Archæologia, xxxix. pp. 40-41.

Footnote 738:

All reproduced by Miss Hervey in Burlington Magazine, as quoted.

The background is blue. The present ownership of this picture is unknown. The remaining picture, at Newbattle Abbey, is a small portrait of Jacques de Savoie, duc de Nemours, showing the head and shoulders only of a young man with fair hair and a very slight beard and moustache, in French dress, and wearing the Order of St. Michael. It betrays the influence of the French school, and is in style of marked difference to his other known works. It was identified in 1909 by M. Dimier, who discovered three crayon drawings taken from it, all of them bearing the title given above. The original picture is signed “G. Fliccus ft.,” and on the back is an old label with “Origl. Fliccus ft.” Miss Hervey suggests that it was painted on the Continent about 1555.[739]

Footnote 739:

Reproduced by Miss Hervey, Burlington Magazine, vol. xvii., June 1910, p. 148, together with one of the French drawings.

[Sidenote: HANS EWORTHE OR EEUWOUTS]

Recent researches on the part of Mr. Lionel Cust have established the identity of another foreign painter of considerable skill, who was at work in England some years after Holbein’s death, but who hitherto has been known only under the initials H. E.[740] This monogram occurs on a number of pictures of important personages bearing dates from 1550 to 1568, the earliest of them being on a portrait at Longford Castle, formerly known as Sir Anthony Denny, but now recognised as Sir Thomas Wyndham. These portraits have usually been given to Lucas d’Heere,[741] of Ghent, although all that is known of that painter’s life, including the fact that he did not come to England before 1568, made the attribution of any one of them to him one of great difficulty. Mr. Cust, by means of certain entries in the Lumley inventory, has proved that the real author of them was a certain Jan Eeuwouts, of Antwerp, whose name became anglicised into Haunce or Hans Eworthe. Three of the Lumley portraits are described as the work of Eworthe—“Mr. Edw. Shelley slayne at Mustleborough fielde, drawen by Haunce Eworthe”; “Haward a Dutch Juello^r, drawne for a Maisters prize by his brother, Haunce Eworthe”; and “Mary Duches of Northfolke, daughter to the last Earle of Arundell Fitzallan, doone by Haunce Eworthe,” the last one being in all probability the portrait now at Arundel Castle, which is signed H. E. in monogram. Several other portraits in the Lumley inventory, though no painter’s name is given, still exist, and bear this monogram, such as the small double portrait of Lord Darnley and his brother, Charles Stewart, at Windsor Castle; Lord Maltravers at Arundel Castle; Sir John Lutterel, dated 1550, at Dunster Castle; and Sir Thomas Wyndham, also dated 1550, at Longford Castle.[742] These portraits prove that Eworthe was much employed by Lord Lumley or his father-in-law, the last Earl of Arundel, at Nonsuch Palace. Mr. Cust has traced him as a resident alien in London in 1552 in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. He is described in the return as “John Ewottes, paynter,” and assessed at the high rate of eight guineas, and he employed a servant named John Mychell, who was assessed at eightpence. As “Jan Eeuwouts, schilder,” he was admitted a free master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1540. It is thus possible that he was a native of that city.[743]

Footnote 740:

See Burlington Magazine, vol. xiv., pp. 366-8.

Footnote 741:

For an account of d’Heere’s work in England, see Lionel Cust in Dict. of National Biography, 1888, vol. xiv., in the Magazine of Art, 1891, and in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, vol. vii. No. 1, 1903.

Footnote 742:

Reproduced in the Catalogue of the Earl of Radnor’s Pictures, 1909, No. 165.

Footnote 743:

For further details concerning Hans Eworthe, see Mr. Cust’s paper, already quoted, in the Burlington Magazine, and Mr. W. Barclay Squire’s notes to the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyndham in the Earl of Radnor’s Catalogue. The latter describes all the portraits which so far can be attributed to Eworthe with any degree of certainty.

The present writer ventures to suggest that Eworthe was also the author of a picture included in the inventory of the Duke of Buckingham’s pictures at York House in 1635. The entry is as follows: “Hans Evolls—A little head of Queen Mary.”[744] The spelling of most of the names in this inventory is largely phonetic, and evidently the work of some person with little knowledge of such matters, so that he may easily have turned Eworthe into Evolls.[745] The following statement of Walpole’s also suggests a possible connection with Eworthe: “Another picture of Edward VI was in the collection of Charles I, painted by Hans Hueet, of whom nothing else is known. It was sold for 20_l._ in the civil war.”[746]

Footnote 744:

See Burlington Magazine, vol. x., March 1907, p. 382.

Footnote 745:

Or the double l may be merely a mistake of the compiler of the catalogue for a double t.

Footnote 746:

Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 136.

[Sidenote: THOMAS AND JOHN BETTES]

It is impossible to mention more than the names of certain better-known foreigners who practised in England under Mary and Elizabeth, such as Mor, who came over in 1553, Joos van Cleve, who did so in 1554, and Lucas d’Heere. Of the few known native painters working in London in the years immediately following Holbein’s death the records are so scanty that little remains but their names, but, taking them as a body, they must have been men of very modest talent, and in portraiture, when they essayed it, merely feeble imitators either of Holbein or one of the other leading foreigners at Henry’s court. Among them were John Shute, painter and architect, and John Bettes, both of whom are described as miniature painters by Richard Haydock in his translation of Lomazzo on Painting (1598), and, apparently, as contemporaries of Nicholas Hilliard. “Limnings,” he says, “much used in former times in church-books, as also in drawing by the life in small models, of late years by some of our countrymen, as Shoote, Betts, &c., but brought to the rare perfection we now see by the most ingenious, painful, and skilful master, Nicholas Hilliard.”[747] Meres, in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, the second part of his Wits Commonwealth, also published in 1598, in giving a list of the leading painters in England at that time, mentions “Thomas and John Bettes.” From these two entries it seems clear that Bettes was an Elizabethan miniature painter, and Vertue, who was of opinion that he learned from Hilliard, mentions a miniature by him of Holbein’s sitter, Sir John Godsalve, in which he was represented with his spear and shield, with the inscription “Captum in castris ad Boloniam 1540.”[748] There is, however, in the National Gallery a small portrait of Edmund Butts (No. 1496), a son of Sir William Butts, another of Holbein’s sitters, to which reference has been already made,[749] which is attributed to John Bettes, and bears the date 1545. If this attribution, based on a French inscription on the back of the panel, be correct, the date indicates that the painter was at work at a considerably earlier period than is to be inferred from the only two almost contemporary references to him, quoted above, which have been so far discovered, and that he may even have been personally acquainted with Holbein. The portrait in the National Gallery is a work of considerable merit, and possesses certain Holbeinesque characteristics. In any case, the date upon it makes it impossible, if painted by Bettes, that he could have been Hilliard’s pupil, as Vertue asserted. Little or nothing is known of his work, though, according to Dr. Williamson, there is a fine miniature of an unknown man by him in the Montagu House Collection, signed “J. B. 1580”;[750] and a second, of a somewhat earlier date, a portrait of Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, apparently unsigned, in Lord Beauchamp’s possession at Madresfield Court.[751] Dr. Williamson also notes a quaint miniature of Edward VI as a baby in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, which in an old inventory of the Dutch royal possessions is attributed to Bettes.[752] Fox, in his Ecclesiastical History, states that John Bettes drew the vignettes for Hall’s Chronicle. Still less is known of Thomas Bettes, but there was a miniature in the Propert Collection of John Digby, Earl of Bristol, which was given to him.

Footnote 747:

Quoted by Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 172.

Footnote 748:

Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 138.

Footnote 749:

See p. 210.

Footnote 750:

Williamson, History of Portrait Miniatures, 1904, vol. i. p. 13; reproduced Pl. iv. fig. 2.

Footnote 751:

Ibid., Pl. iv. fig. 1.

Footnote 752:

Ibid., Pl. xlvii. fig. 4.

Another painter, of whom little is known but his name, was Nicholas Lyzarde, who is generally considered to have been an Englishman, though Mr. Digby Wyatt speaks of him as Nicolo Lizardi.[753] He was employed about the Court during the last years of Henry VIII’s reign. Thus, in 1543-4 he was at the head of a band of painters engaged on work in connection with some revels at Hampton Court, for which he received higher wages than the others—“Wages to painters: Nich^s Lezard 18_^d_ per diem”; and in 1544-5 he supplied various materials and properties for some other masque—“Paste work and painting, Nicholas Lizarde, painter, for gyldinge under garments for women, of white and blue sarcenet, with party gold and silver, 4 li.; 8 pastes for women, 20_d._; 8 long heads for women, made of past gilded, with party gold and silver, 43_s._ 4_d._” &c. He was afterwards in the regular employment of the Court throughout the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, being serjeant-painter to the last-named Queen, with a pension or salary of £10 a year. Nothing of his work remains that can be identified, but that he painted “subject” pictures is to be gathered from a New Year’s gift he presented to Queen Mary in 1556 of a “table painted with the Maundy,” while in 1558 his gift to Queen Elizabeth was “a table painted of the history of Assuerus,” for which he received a gilt cruse of some 8 oz. in weight. He died in April 1571, and at the time was living in the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and left a family of five sons and four daughters.[754]

Footnote 753:

“Foreign Artists in England,” &c., Transactions Royal Inst. Brit. Architects, 1868, pp. 218 and 235. It may be suggested that this painter was the “Master Nycolas” or “Nicholas Florentine” who worked with Holbein on the decorations of the Greenwich Banqueting Hall in 1527; while a possible, though not very probable, connection between Nicholas Lyzarde and Nicholas Lasora, who was engaged upon similar work at Westminster Palace in 1532, has been already pointed out. Lasora, however, in spite of his Italian-sounding name, appears to have been a Teuton, for he may be identified with some probability as the “Nic. Leysure, a German,” mentioned more than once in the royal accounts. See vol. i. p. 314 and note.

Footnote 754:

J. G. Nichols, Archæologia, vol. xxxix. p. 45. That he was not English seems probable from the fact that he was assessed and taxed at the customary rate for foreigners. See pp. 188-9.

[Sidenote: HIS IMITATORS AND COPYISTS]

In the wider field of European art, also, it is impossible to point to any painter who was a pupil, or even a direct follower, of the master. Sandrart says that Christopher Amberger “followed the famous artist Holbein in his manner of painting, and especially in portraiture,” but modern criticism does not endorse this statement. In any case, his opportunities of studying Holbein’s works must have been few, though Woltmann considered that he certainly did so, and regarded him, if not as an actual pupil, yet as a real follower of the master.[755] It is not to be expected, indeed, that Holbein should have formed any definite school, though he must have influenced painting in Basel during his first and longest residence in that city; but, except for that period, his life was more or less a wandering one, and he never, during his short career, settled for a long enough time in any one place to have allowed him to gather any considerable body of pupils around him.[756]

Footnote 755:

Woltmann, i. p. 488.

Footnote 756:

On this point, however, see Elsa Frölicher, Die Porträtkunst Hans Holbeins des Jüngeren und ihr Einfluss auf die schweizerische Bildnismalerei im XVI Jahrhundert, 1909, in which she traces the influence of Holbein’s art on a number of contemporary Swiss painters and others practising in the latter half of the sixteenth century, such as Hans Asper, Tobias Stimmer, Kluber, Clauser, and Hans Bock the Elder.

The work of his imitators and copyists, such as they were, is to be found in the portraits scattered about the older country houses and mansions of England, where they are usually attributed to Holbein himself, often when the date upon them makes it impossible that he could have painted them. Among them are numerous old copies of still-existing portraits by him, which indicate the estimation in which his work was held for years after his death. For instance, in the fire which burnt down Knepp Castle, Sussex, in January 1904, a number of pictures were destroyed, including no less than eight attributed to Holbein. The titles of nearly all of them were familiar enough—Sir Henry and Lady Guldeford, Anne of Cleves, Thomas Cromwell, Sir Richard Rich, and Ægidius—indicating that they were most probably merely replicas or copies. It is true that Holbein occasionally painted a replica, but this was very rarely, and in most cases the portraits in question were the work of far less skilful men, and owed their existence to the desire of the descendants of Holbein’s original sitters to possess copies of the older family portraits.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXIX. CONCLUSION

Holbein’s many-sided art—The destruction of all his larger decorative works—The fertility of his invention and his power of dramatic composition—The influence of the Italian Renaissance upon his art, both in his mural and historical paintings and in his designs for jewellery and the decorative arts—His sacred paintings—His genius in portraiture and his perfection as a draughtsman—A comparison between the art of Dürer and Holbein.

HOLBEIN’S art was many-sided, but, through the cruel caprice of Fate, he is known to-day to most people merely as a great portrait-painter, and, in a lesser degree, as a designer of woodcut illustrations of remarkable power and imagination. It is true, of course, that during the latter part of his life, after he had settled more or less permanently in England, his time was almost entirely occupied with portraiture, and that, beyond portraits, little or nothing of his work remains in this country upon which to form a judgment of the versatility of his genius; and it is true also that his stupendous gifts in this field of art were bound to find free expression. That portrait-painting, however, became in the end his chief occupation was due much more to his environment than to his own personal choice. There was little demand in this country for any other form of art, and the painter, as was only natural, supplied what his patrons asked of him. It is not to be supposed that the master who was capable of producing such great works as the “Meyer Madonna,” or the various altar-pieces and glass designs illustrating the “Passion,” would have abandoned painting such compositions had he received any encouragement to continue; but such encouragement came to a more or less abrupt conclusion during the stormy days of the Reformation in Basel, and for the remainder of his life Holbein produced little or nothing in the field of sacred art. The few examples of this nature from his brush which remain place him in the front rank of sixteenth-century painters, and had his birthplace been south instead of north of the Alps, and his life spent amid surroundings more sympathetic to this side of his genius, there can be little doubt that he would have given to the world a series of sacred works as fine as those of any of the great Italians of the Renaissance.

[Sidenote: DISAPPEARANCE OF DECORATIVE WORKS]

It is with respect to those larger decorative works, however, upon which he was engaged from time to time throughout his life, both in Switzerland and England—works for which in his own day he was so justly celebrated—that Fate has treated him most unkindly. The total disappearance of his great wall-paintings and monumental decorations is not only an immense loss to art, but has rendered it difficult for all but close students of his work to appreciate to the fullest extent the wide range of his artistic powers. Not a single example of his skill as a mural decorator remains. The passage of time, the carelessness of those whose duty it was to preserve them, and the ravages of fire and of the weather, gradually obliterated these paintings, while such of their faded glories as endured until more modern days were finally swept away by the clumsy hand of the restorer or the building schemes of private owners and civic authorities. Just as it seems practically certain that some at least of his sacred pictures were destroyed by the fury of the rioters in the religious disturbances which finally drove Holbein to Henry’s court, so the mural paintings and pictured stories with which he covered the outer and inner walls of a number of houses in Basel and Lucerne have vanished through causes which, though different, have been equally effective in their powers of destruction. Damp, dirt, and neglect brought about the gradual fading away of his great series of wall-paintings in the Council Chamber of the Basel Town Hall; while similar works of his English period, the wonderful “Triumphs” painted for the banquet-hall of the German Steelyard, and the great fresco of Henry VIII with his parents and Jane Seymour in Whitehall, have disappeared, the former on the final breaking up of the German trade monopoly in this country, and the dispersal of the contents of the Steelyard buildings, and the latter in the fire of 1698. Gone, too, is the large canvas of “The Battle of Spurs,” painted for the festivities at Greenwich in 1527, one of the first of Holbein’s important undertakings in England. No trace of this painting now remains, and a similar fate has befallen the great picture of Sir Thomas More and his family, though in this case it is not absolutely certain that Holbein himself ever completed it. Finally, death cut him down as he was engaged upon the most elaborate portrait group he ever undertook, which was not half finished when he fell a victim to the plague. This list of lost or ruined masterpieces is a long one. Unfortunately, the tale is by no means uncommon in the history of art, but Holbein has suffered in this way more severely than most. Of their beauty and their imaginative power it is now only possible to judge from a few fragments of some of the original frescoes, some inferior copies of certain of them, and a number of masterly sketches and preliminary studies from Holbein’s own hand preserved in the Basel Gallery, the British Museum, the Louvre, and elsewhere. These latter, scanty as they are, remain priceless treasures, for only by means of them is it possible to gain some idea, though it is a pale reflection at the best, of the greatness of Holbein’s achievement in the higher branches of art, the loftiness of his ideals in his monumental paintings, and the wide range of his genius.

In all these large decorative works Holbein displayed the greatest fertility of invention, and a power of dramatic composition of a very high order. The extraordinary energy of conception, the sense of life and movement in all his figures, the truth and expressiveness of their gestures, are all alike admirable. This dramatic power is at its finest in his wall-paintings for the Basel Town Hall—the “Rehoboam” and the “Samuel and Saul”; while in dignity and grandeur of composition, and the noble rhythm of its stately movement, the “Triumph of Riches” panel for the Steelyard is unsurpassed. The extraordinary fertility and exuberance of his imagination is to be seen in the architectural details and decorative settings in which these mural paintings and designs were placed. These settings show how quickly and completely he made the new ideas and decorative motives of the Renaissance his own, while the pictures themselves, for which they formed the background and the frame, breathe the lofty spirit of Raphael and Mantegna. Though there is no slavish copying of the art and architecture of Northern Italy, their influence is to be seen so plainly in the work of his younger days that, as pointed out in earlier chapters, at least a short visit to Lombardy on his part seems to have been absolutely certain.

[Sidenote: HIS FERTILE IMAGINATION]

The same qualities and the same influences are to be discerned in his designs for painted windows and the decoration of books; though smaller in scale, they are conceived with an equal grandeur and dramatic intensity. Indeed, in his “Dance of Death” woodcuts and illustrations to the Old Testament his imaginative and dramatic powers reached their highest manifestation. Minute as they are in execution, they produce the same effects of largeness and dignity of composition as his great wall-paintings must have done. In the “Dance of Death” in particular the wideness of Holbein’s range of vision, the greatness of his style in design, and the intense vitality of his art are seen to the best advantage. These little pictures, a few inches square, express within their borders almost the whole range of the emotions, from the tender sympathy of the lovely “Death and the Ploughman,” and the poignant grief of “Death and the Little Child,” down to the terror, horror, and violence which is encountered in others of the series in which Death suits his coming to the character of his victims. Such works as these show the greatness of Holbein as an imaginative artist. Another side of his nature and his art appears in such a design as his “Peasants’ Dance” on the façade of the Haus zum Tanz in Basel, in which the Teutonic element in his character finds full play. The boisterous, even brutal, merriment of these fellow-countrymen of his, as they fling themselves into the pleasures of the dance with the utmost abandon, made an undoubted appeal to him, and in depicting them he expressed the joy of living which animates every movement with the utmost frankness and realism.

In this wide field of mural decoration and historical painting Holbein was the first and the greatest of those painters north of the Alps who came under the influence of the Italian revival of art. In him the Renaissance found very complete expression. This is also to be seen in his innumerable designs for jewellery and the smaller decorative arts, of which, happily, there still remain many examples. Both in book ornamentations and illustrations, in work for the goldsmith and silversmith, the jeweller, and the maker of stained and coloured glass, he showed himself to be in closest sympathy with the new movement. In his earlier works the effect of this influence appears in the exuberant use he made of the models which he had recently studied, some of the glass designs being overloaded with fantastic reminiscences of the details of Lombardic architecture. Later on, when he had completely grasped the full beauty of the Renaissance forms, his taste became purer, and he adapted them to his uses with the happiest results. In his drawings for personal ornaments and jewellery, most of the best of which were done in London, the earlier exuberance is restrained, and the design is of the purest Renaissance taste, in the practice of which he became an absolute master. These working drawings show infinite invention kept within the true limitations of the materials to be used, frequently combined with very skilful adaptation of the human figure to decorative purposes. It would be difficult to find a more beautiful design in the Renaissance style than the one of the so-called Jane Seymour Cup, in which Holbein more than holds his own with the best Italian workers in this field.

[Sidenote: BRILLIANCE OF HIS DRAUGHTSMANSHIP]

His sacred paintings, in so far as can be judged from those which remain, most, if not all, of which were done before he had reached the age of thirty, possess similar qualities to those of his mural and historical works, and had he but received some little encouragement from the English court, he was capable of producing even finer masterpieces than the “Meyer Madonna” during the seventeen or eighteen remaining years of his life. In his “Passion” and kindred pictures the composition is usually admirable, and the subject treated with that strong dramatic sense which has been noted already as one of the chief characteristics of his frescoes, while in depth and earnestness of feeling they fall but little short of the work of the greatest of the Italians. In the Meyer and the Solothurn Madonnas there is an air of divine tranquillity, and a loftiness and purity in the expression of spiritual beauty, which are combined in the happiest and most exquisite way with remarkable truth to nature, and vividness of accurate and sympathetic portraiture in the figures both of the Virgin and the Divine Child, and those, in the one case, of the kneeling donor and his family, and, in the other, of the attendant saints. Added to these qualities, the rich, subdued, and harmonious colour gives a still greater truth and beauty to the whole. In the panel at Darmstadt, indeed, the painter has reached the full perfection of his art, and that he painted nothing more of this nature must always be a source of deep regret to all who admire him.

In portraiture Holbein’s genius reached its highest manifestations. This gift was largely inherited from his father, but was carried to a much greater pitch of excellence by the son. His technical methods, too, were those of his father, and here again were developed by him to a far greater refinement of touch and skill in modelling; and to these methods he remained constant throughout his life. There is a striking contrast between the rapidity and brilliance of the draughtsmanship of the preliminary studies for his portraits and the patient, concentrated, minute, and delicate brush-work of the finished portraits themselves. In all his completed work he spared himself no pains in the painting of the accessories and details, though in none of it, brilliant and absolutely truthful as it is, is there any sense of mere display, any boastful attempt to show the world how clever he was. He painted all such details with a loving care and an evident delight in their beauty, and wrought them with a perfection and fidelity which has rarely if ever been surpassed. This finish is carried in some of his pictures to a point beyond which no Dutchman or Fleming of his own or succeeding generations ever reached. Yet the elaboration of subordinate things is never overdone; his portraits are never overcrowded with details of this nature in a way to draw the spectator’s attention from the main purpose of the work. This manipulative skill delights and attracts, but is forgotten when the portrait itself is examined. Without any apparent effort on the part of the painter, the sitter looks out from the panel just as he did in life, set down without flattery, with no harsh features softened, and with his character, seized with such penetrative and imaginative power by Holbein, fixed for ever with unerring truth and errorless draughtsmanship for succeeding generations to see and to admire. This effect of absolute truth of portraiture and revelation of character, the one due to the wonderful delicacy, subtlety, and expressiveness of his line, and the other to his sympathetic insight, is obtained by what appear to be the simplest and most straightforward methods. There is a dignity and reticence about the portraits which is admirable. Without thought of self, he occupies himself entirely with the truth as he sees it, and with his desire to realise it as completely as possible; no brilliance of technical skill mars the self-restraint with which he approaches his sitter. He puts little of himself into his portraits, and leaves out little that is worth knowing about the subjects of them. No great subtleties of light and shade are attempted, and his colour, beautiful and true as it is, helps but does not overpower his chief purpose—the complete realisation of the man both in body and soul. Holbein was a painter whose keenness of observation was extraordinary; he missed little or nothing, and saw much that lesser painters would have ignored. With his smooth, fusing methods of painting he reached to most marvellously delicate and accurate modelling of form, which in its expressiveness is beyond all words.[757]

Footnote 757:

The writer finds it impossible to agree with a recent critic, M. de Wyzewa, who, in a review of Dr. Ganz’s Holbein, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January 15, 1912, speaks of the “half-confidences” of Holbein’s portraiture, and holds that although the painter himself sees clearly the inmost depths of his sitters’ characters, he yet refrains from revealing them to us. When the moment comes for laying bare their deepest feelings “the prudent Swabian workman, through his instinctive reserve, holds back.” In this respect, therefore, he compares him unfavourably with such masters as Dürer, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, “who abandon themselves to their genius for psychological divination,” whereas Holbein refuses us access to the souls of his sitters, though at the same time indicating that he himself has penetrated to the mysterious depths. He speaks of this as his “professional hypocrisy,” and says that he cannot be excused for thus concealing the exact truth of the characters of the great personages who sat to him. He sees similar traits in Holbein’s sacred paintings, and this insensibility he regards as not real, but feigned, springing from the intelligence rather than from the heart. Lovers of Holbein’s art, however, will find it difficult to follow him in his contention.

As a draughtsman pure and simple he stands among the very highest; in some of the qualities of his line he has never been surpassed or even equalled. In the Windsor and kindred drawings, preliminary studies for his portraits, his genius finds its most perfect expression, and these are, in many ways, the greatest of his works. Slight as most of them are, they contain all the elements of great art. Every fine quality, except colour, that is to be found in his finished portraiture is to be found here also, and more plainly to be seen, and produced without apparent effort or hesitation. The swiftness yet sureness of his touch, the wonderful delicacy yet strength of his supple, forceful line, its subtlety and flexibility, the penetrative insight, the freedom from all traces of mannerism, and the perfect unity of brain, eye, and hand shown in these drawings, combine to produce the most vivid effect of truthful, living portraiture. His complete mastership is revealed in every touch.

[Sidenote: HOLBEIN AND DÜRER]

In the German school of painting Dürer was the last and the greatest of the mediævalists; Holbein was the first and the greatest of those who came completely under the sway of the new influences in art and life which reached Germany from beyond the Alps. The art of these two great masters is, in consequence, in many ways so divergent that it is difficult to make any comparison between them. Holbein was the first of the painters of northern Europe who was modern in the sense of the term as we understand it to-day. Dürer was steeped in the spirit of the older schools, both of thought and of art, a dreamer of dreams, a weaver of fantasies, and much of his work had a spiritual passion which Holbein’s lacked, while his art was imbued through and through with the feeling of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, one of the characteristic features of Holbein’s work was its serenity and saneness. As already pointed out, he had great imaginative power, which he could use at times with dramatic intensity. Realism in his painting reached a very high and at the same time a very noble development. His delight in nature is evident in all that he did; he observed her minutely, and took the utmost pleasure in reproducing her manifold beauties down to the smallest details, while his work was filled with a frank delight in life and close sympathy with all things, animate and inanimate, in the world around him. Philosophical thought or theological subtleties left him untroubled. That he was on the side of the Reformation is made clear by more than one of his woodcut designs, but his share in the controversy was after all a minor one, and marked by little or none of that passion which swayed the more eager partisans on either side.

True child of the Renaissance as Holbein was, he was yet one of the most original of artists. His strong individuality stamped everything that he touched; for though the influences under which he was trained can be traced throughout his career, they in no way dominated his genius, which found its own true expression. Circumstances combined to give this originality the fullest play. Both in Basel and in London there was no school of painting worthy of the name, and the artists who worked there had little or nothing to teach him. In both these cities it was he who was the master who towered head and shoulders above his fellow-painters. In this way his art developed upon personal and original lines until it attained that greatness of style which is so marked a feature of everything that he touched.

The art and character of these two great masters of the German school is very happily contrasted by the late Lord Leighton in one of his published addresses to the students of the Royal Academy. “Albert Dürer,” he says, “may be regarded as par excellence the typical German artist—far more so than his great contemporary, Holbein. He was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if I may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and, as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the Renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of Science. His work was in his own image; it was, like nearly all German Art, primarily ethic in its complexion; like all German Art it bore traces of foreign influence—drawn, in his case, first from Flanders and later from Italy. In his work, as in all German Art, the national character asserted itself above every trammel of external influence. Superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity—never broadly serene. In his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring as to his harmonies, not alluring in his execution—withal a giant.... In Holbein we have a complete contrast to the great Franconian of whom I have just spoken; a man not prone to theorise, not steeped in speculation, a dreamer of no dreams; without passion, but full of joyous fancies, he looked out with serene eyes upon the world around him; accepting Nature without preoccupation or afterthought, but with a keen sense of all her subtle beauties, loving her simply and for herself. As a draughtsman he displayed a flow, a fullness of form, and an almost classic restraint which are wanting in the work of Dürer, and are, indeed, not found elsewhere in German Art. As a colourist, he had a keen sense of the values of tone relations, a sense in which Dürer again was lacking; not so Teutonic in every way as the Nuremberg master, he formed a link between the Italian and the German races. A less powerful personality than Dürer, he was a far superior painter. Proud may that country be indeed that counts two names so great in art.”[758]

Footnote 758:

Leighton, Addresses delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, 2nd edition, 1897, pp. 305-6. (Dec. 9, 1893.)

[Sidenote: RUSKIN ON HOLBEIN]

It is quite true that he was a better painter than Dürer, for his mastery of the technical side of his art was complete, while his artistic temperament found expression in many different branches of the decorative arts and crafts. He was thus much more than a great painter: he was a great artist and a great craftsman as well, for though he did not actually cut the wood blocks he designed, or fashion the actual cups of gold and silver for which he made the working drawings, he had so perfect a knowledge of the practical side of the crafts, and of the artistic capabilities and the limitations of the mediums in which his designs were to be carried out, that he was indeed the “notable workman” which Erasmus called him. In all that he did, the greatness and the individuality of his style, his power of dramatic composition, the versatility of his imagination and his restraint in the use of it, his serene outlook upon life, and the perfect and unerring unison of his eye and hand, combine with his insight into character and technical skill of the rarest quality to make him one of the few great masters of the world.

Ruskin’s judgment of him, when comparing him with Sir Joshua Reynolds, is so true and so just, that, although so well-known, a sentence from it may be quoted here in conclusion. “The work of Holbein,” he says, “is true and thorough, accomplished in the highest, as the most literal sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution which sacrifices nothing, forgets nothing, and fears nothing. Holbein is complete; what he sees, he sees with his whole soul; what he paints, he paints with his whole might.”[759]

Footnote 759:

Ruskin, “Sir Joshua and Holbein,” in Cornhill Magazine, March 1860.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us