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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
In the Exhibition of Works of the Old Masters made this year (1873) at Burlington House there have been four pictures attributed to Holbein. Three of the four were from the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, where they have long been well known, and they are particularly described by Mr. Wornum in his Life and Works of Hans Holbein, 1867. But the occasion of their being publicly exhibited to many thousands of intelligent observers is one which must invest them with fresh interest, whilst it has afforded an opportunity for more considerate examination than it is always possible to bestow upon pictures when suspended on the walls of a great house. I therefore think there may be room for a few remarks upon these three pictures, even after the attention they have received from Mr. Wornum; whose general conclusions I do not propose to dispute, but rather to confirm; whilst I would offer some historical illustrations in relation to them, which, though actually not very recondite or far-fetched, do not appear to have been hitherto applied as they might have been.
page 435 note a Of the fourth, which was thus described: “198. Portrait of a Young Man in a green striped dress. Hans Holbein. Panel, 17½ in. by 13 in. Lent by George P. Boyce, Esq.” all that need be said is, that it is a half-length figure of a nobleman wearing the Order of St. Michael, the work perhaps of Francois Janet, called Clouet,—certainly not of Holbein.
page 436 note a “I assume that all the genuine portraits of Erasmus by Holbein were drawn or painted in Basel, between the years 1521 and 1526, that is, when he was still in the prime of his maturity, when about fifty-five years of age [he wasfifty-fivein 1521, but sixty in 1526]; he is grey, not white, and the eye is still brilliant. It would be difficult to determine any number for the genuine portraits; they may be several, but not many. These genuine pictures have again been multiplied by copies.”—, Wornum, Life and Works of Holbein, p. 138Google Scholar.
page 437 note a i. e., the first of Greystoke.
page 439 note a Dr. Waagen reads it ILLE EGO. (Supplement, p. 357.)
page 440 note a Walpole, in his note already mentioned, says that Dr. Mead “had the lines written on the frames.”
page 441 note a This Hampton Court copy, however, has, together with its companion, been considerably altered from the original, being converted from a square to an oblong upright picture, with an additional background. “The original size of these pictures,” observes Mr. Wornum, “was 18½ in. high by 12¼ in. wide; but, for some reason not very evident, unless it were to make them fit two old carved frames, two inches and a half have been added to the top of each, injuring, not improving, the effect of the portraits, and involving the necessity of repainting the backgrounds, which, instead of some simple foil to the heads, as Holbein commonly supplies us, now consist of cold minutely-elaborated Gothic pillars and arches, as if the two friends were in some gloomy church or other dismal Gothic apartment. Steenwyck, the architectural painter, has the credit of having furnished these backgrounds in 1629, possibly when the pictures were in Le Blond's possession. The King's brand [of Charles I.] is on the back of the added pieces.” (Life and Works of Holbein, p. 139.)
page 443 note a Erasmus evidently liked to be drawn writing. It was at once the most characteristic position and one which would not entirely interrupt the progress of his work. It was thus he was represented by Albert Durer in an etching; Holbein also drew him writing, whilst his commentary on St. Matthew was in progress; and the drawing is in the museum at Basel. In the Louvre is a small picture of Erasmus writing, which is attributed to Holbein.
page 443 note b Perhaps intended for the translation by Erasmus, “Ex Plutarcho versa.” (Opera, 1703, tome v. 1-92).
page 444 note a There are memoirs of both in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary.
page 445 note a “In May 1515 More was sent out on an embassy with Bishop Tunstal, Sampson, and others into Flanders. The party were detained in the city of Bruges about four months. In September they moved on to Brussels, and in October to Antwerp; and it was not till towards the end of the year that More, having successfully terminated his part in the negotiations, was able to return home.” The Oxford Reformers of 1498, by Frederic Seebohm, 1867, 8vo. p. 272, where see fuller particulars of the embassy, with authorities for the dates.
page 445 note b —“in tota peregrinatione mea nihil mihi contigit optatius quam Petri Ægidii Antuerpiensis hospitis tui consuetudo, hominis tarn docti, faceti, modesti, ac vere amici, ut peream nisi ejus unius convictum libenter mihi velim bona mearum fortunarum parte redimere. Is ad me misit Apologiam tuam,” [qu. 1515 ?].
page 447 note a The original is appended, and the reader is requested to compare my translation, both of this postscript and of the foregoing passages, with More's phraseology, which is involved, and the construction sometimes embarrassing. Peter Codes, I presume the messenger who had brought the picture, was the same person whom More sent forward to England, designating him to Erasmus as “tuus scriptor.”
page 447 note b See a paper On the year of Holbein's Birth, by Dr Woltman, Alfred, of , Berlin, in the Fine Arts Quarterly Review, 1864, vol. iii. pp. 112–117Google Scholar; and another paper, by Professor Kinkel of Zurich, in the same periodical, 1867, vol. ii. pp. 223-250, reviewing the two large works upon Holbein recently produced by Woltmann 1866, and Wornum 1867. It is shown that Holbein was born at Augsburg in 1494 or 1495, and removed to Basel in 1515 or 1516 (pp. 231, 233).
page 447 note a “Erasmus made a present of his picture to Sir Thomas More, and sent it over by Holbein (see the Life of Holbein, by Patin, prefixed to the Encomium Morias, t. iv. c. 390), who had drawn it. It is now n i the possession of Dr. Mead, the date (1523) agreeing with the time it was finished at Basel. More, in return to Erasmus for his present, had a picture copied by Holbein of himself and his whole family, from an original that Holbein had just before finished, and sent it to Erasmus by this painter. Erasmus expressed great satisfaction at the present in an epistle to Margaret Eoper, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas. The original of this picture was lately in the family of the Eopers at Eltham in Kent; the copy is in the town-hall at Basel, where it is preserved with great care.” (Jortin's Life of Erasmus, 1726.)
page 447 note b Art Treasures of Great Britain, iii. 139.
page 447 note c Mr. Wornum, inadvertently perhaps, preserves the old story. His chapter xi. is headed, “The Painter leaves Basel, and comes to England in the autumn of 1526, carrying a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More in London.” And Wornum says, (p. 19) “He brought with him a letter of introduction from his old friend Erasmus, together with a painted portrait of the great scholar, which he was by Erasmus himself justified in saying was much more like him than the portrait painted by Albert Durer.” And again, (p. 207) “Such was the land of promise (England) to which the humble painter of Basel hastened, with the letter of Erasmus in his pocket, as the key or talisman by which its treasures were to be made accessible to him.” (Wornum, p. 207.) There is, however, no existing trace of such letter.
page 447 note d By Walpole this is translated: “Erasmus tells Ægidius that Holbein was very desirous of seeing the works of Quintin Matsis.”
page 449 note a Epistola, ccoxxxiv. edit. 1703. It is there dated 1525, which must be in error. Were it written n i 1525, it would only be understood as prospective of Holbein's coming, and that his proposed coming had been announced to More in 1525, of which there is no evidence. It seems more probable that the letter is misdated, and that several others of the series are edited under the same disadvantage.
page 449 note a P. 275.
page 452 note a Mr. Wornum says (p. 277) “Holbein was distinguished for a portrait of Sir Thomas Wyat, probably the above-described picture; for in some tuneral lines on the poet, who died in 1541, by Leland, Holbein is spoken of as the greatest in his art, for some such work.” The lines are those under the medallion profile of Wyat printed from a woodcut in the Nœniæ in mortem Thomas Viati 1542.
In effigiem Thomce Viati.
Holbenus nitida pingendi Maximus arte
Effigiem expressit graphicé; sed Nullus Apelles
Exprimet ingenium felix animumque Viati.
If, however, there is any particular meaning in these lines beyond the ordinary strain of the commendatory verses which it was then usual to place under portraits, it must apply to the portrait, the profile portrait, under which the verses are placed. That profile was very probably drawn by Holbein, and the wood-block may even have been engraved by him. (It is copied in the reprint of the Nœniœ appended by Hearne to Leland's Itinerary and also in Woltmann). Mr. Wornum (p. 404) mentions a profile portrait of Sir Thomas Wyat in the possession of Lord Eomney.
page 454 note a The biography of Dr. Barnes in which this occurs is that introduced by Foxe into his Actes and Monuments. The passage is this: “In the same season Dr. Barnes was made strong in Christ, and got favour both with the learned in Christ and with foreign princes in Germany, and was great with Luther, Melanchthon, Pomeran, Justus Jonas, Hegendorphinus, and iEpinus, and with the Duke of Saxony, and with the King of Denmark; which King of Denmark, in the time of More and Stokesley, sent him, with the Lubecks, as an ambassador to King Henry VIII. He lay with the Lubecks chancellor at the Stillyard. Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, would fain have entrapped him, but the King would not let him, for Cromwell was his great friend. And ere he went the Lubecks and he disputed with the Bishops of this realm in defence of the Truth; and so he departed again, without restraint, with, the Lubecks.”
page 454 note b Celui dont on voit l'estampe offre les portraits de MM. de Selve et d'Avaux; l'un fut Ambassadeur a, Venise, l'autre le fut dans le nord; ils sont accompagnes des attributs des arts qu'ils cultivaient. J'ai depuis vendu ce tableau pour l'Angleterre, où il est maintenant; les figures sont de grandeur naturelle.”