The spectacular 2021 Holbein portraiture exhibition, organized by Anne Woollett for the J. Paul Getty Museum and shown also at the Morgan Library & Museum (to be reviewed), might seem as if there was no gap to be filled about that great portraitist. However, while a number of portraits and their preparatory drawings did come from the Royal Collections, the fullest display of Tudor court works by the artist occurs at this new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, which chiefly draws – so to speak – on the trove of Holbein portrait studies from Windsor Castle. Of course, this is not the first time these precious drawings have formed the basis of just such an exhibition, also at the Queen’s Gallery: in 1978 Windsor Castle staged Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII, which traveled in reduced form to the Getty, but with a smaller catalogue, and in 1993 a similar exhibition was mounted by curator Jane Roberts.
For all these works in the current exhibition, the fundamental resource remains the scholarly catalogue by K.T. Parker, The Drawings of Hans Holbein in the Collection of H. M. the King at Windsor Castle (London, 1945; reprinted 1983). Since then, after Roy Strong’s Holbein and Henry VIII (London, 1968), Susan Foister produced a full-length book study, Holbein & England (New Haven, 2004), still the fullest account, though not exclusively focused on the Tudor court.
This time around, then, more material is available, and the current catalogue illustrates every drawing in color, with numerous comparative images of the dispersed completed painted portraits. Two instances in the exhibition pair the drawing together with its final painting: William Reskimer, Page of the Chamber (pp. 106-109) and Sir Henry Guildford (pp. 52-55); additionally, a third drawing joins its portrait miniature of Elizabeth, Lady Audley (pp. 118-119). In this respect, it builds on the Getty/Morgan catalogue but with new completeness, unavailable in Parker’s systematic catalogue. This is important, because Holbein employed colored chalks in addition to ink and some watercolor when taking a likeness in his meticulous fashion. Occasionally, the paper has a light pink tint, prepared to provide a middle tone. The large reproductions also make his alterations all the more evident and show the evidence of pricking for transfer or other forms of tracing.
The Queen’s Gallery exhibition features the preliminary drawings primarily, but also includes portrait miniatures, panel likenesses, and even the remarkable miniature on vellum of King Henry VIII as Solomon with the Queen of Sheba (ca. 1535; pp. 68-69). Kate Heard’s informative introductory essay provides the career background, from Holbein’s frustrations in Reformation Basel to his lack of reception at the court of France, which turned forcefully toward Renaissance Italy. But in France, the artist encountered drawing in colored chalks (probably via Jean Clouet, though the technique was occasionally practiced in Augsburg by such artists as Hans Burgkmair; for Holbein’s origins, now see the current exhibition, Holbein and the Renaissance in the North, in Frankfurt and Vienna, to be reviewed here by Ashley West). Heard also tracks the artist’s initial arrival in England, where Thomas More was his contact, via Erasmus, and he managed to produce some decorations for a Greenwich entertainment as well as several early court portraits around 1527. These included the great Frick Thomas More (Fig. 35) and the lost More Family, whose group drawing survives in Basel (pp. 36-47; Figs. 33-34), alongside the drawing studies of the father, Sir John More, and other family members. His Noli me tangere (Royal Collections; Fig. 12) was also probably painted in this first English period, before a return to Basel for four final years.
Upon his return to England in 1532, early Holbein portraits featured the Hanseatic merchants of the London Steelyard, who also donated an arch to the 1533 entry pageant of Anne Boleyn. This, too, was the moment of his largest portrait, the double image of the French Ambassadors (London, National Gallery; Fig. 17). Holbein also possibly painted then his undated Thomas Cromwell in the Frick Collection, here dated 1532-1534 (fig. 15). Only in the mid-1530s did his systematic drawing studies get preserved.
Holbein’s sitters were part of a close network, and they originated from both sides of the factions around the issue of Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. A number of other sitters remain to be identified, though Heard also notes a plurality of portraits of East Anglia elites. Hierarchies of presentation prevail: only royals and their envoys are depicted at full-length (including prospective royal brides), while senior courtiers pose at three-quarters, and most others are bust-length or close-up in presentation. Backgrounds vary, but each individual likeness remains distinctive.
Clouet also painted portrait miniatures in France, but Holbein’s technique of body color and use of vellum supports seem to have originated with transplanted Flemish artist Lucas Horenbout, in England by 1525. This art form facilitated one aspect of portraiture, its function as gifts to close associates, something often mentioned by Erasmus in his letters, such as his 1524 missive to William of Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. Reproductions and copies sometimes complicate attributions.
Holbein also designed woodcuts, such as the title page of the Coverdale Bible’s English translation (1535; Fig. 27), featuring an enthroned Henry as head of the Church of England. His Law and Grace (Edinburgh, Fig. 28; here dated “mid 1530s”) may also have arisen from some similar Reform religious context, still undefined.
Heard concludes by discussing the known provenance of these drawings. Upon Holbein’s death three albums of his work were recorded: designs for jewelry (British Museum); designs for weapons and cups (lost; formerly Arundel collection, some of them etched by Wenceslaus Hollar); and portrait drawings, possibly retained for eventual copies of prominent sitters. The latter also passed to Arundel before entering the royal collections of Charles II, to form the basis of the works exhibited today.
The catalogue proper starts with the More family and Sir Thomas. Its chronological organization mixes objects in all media by date. Each sitter is identified and described, when known, and every extant later portrait, usually in oil on panel, is illustrated. Some unknown figures still posed for extant paintings, such as the man (pp. 78-79) painted in a small oil roundel (ca. 1535, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Fig. 43).[i] Many drawings were annotated in a later hand, usually reliable but not always verifiable concerning identity (for example, Anne Boleyn, pp. 64-67).
Because of its large color illustrations, this well-researched catalogue now supersedes previous discussions of these individual works. As Kate Heard declares at the outset of her essay, “Hans Holbein’s portraits are arrestingly beautiful.” This exhibition, which connects to surviving painted portraits, reveals how his drawing process provides their very foundation.
Larry Silver
University of Pennsylvania
[i] Maryan Ainsworth and Joshua Waterman, German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1350-1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 146-147, no. 34, there tentatively identified as Sir Ralph Sadler, administrator and diplomat. The numerous paintings by Holbein and his workshop in the Met, pp. 129- 166, nos. 29-39, show the range of attributions, including workshop origins and outright copies.