The celebrated portraitist of the court of Henry VIII, Hans Holbein the Younger was born in Augsburg, a major commercial city in the south of Germany. His father, Hans Holbein the Elder (1460/65–1524), was a respected painter of both religious works and portraits, and it is assumed that he trained his sons, Ambrosius and Hans, from an early age.¹ Both of the brothers made their way to Basel, Switzerland, where at the end of 1515 they collaborated in the marginal illustrations for the great humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly.² Hans established himself as an outstanding portraitist with the images of the mayor of Basel, Jakob Meyer, and his wife, Dorothea Kannengiesser, of 1516 (Basel, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung). He became a member of the painters’ guild in 1519 and a citizen of Basel the following year. His brother seems to have died around that time, as no mention is made of him after 1519.³ Of great importance for Hans’s future career was a series of portraits of Erasmus (National Gallery, London, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, and Musée du Louvre, Paris), painted in 1523, whose international connections opened doors for him in France and England.

After a failed attempt to gain the patronage of François I in 1524, Holbein left Basel again two years later for England, where he no doubt hoped for commissions from the members of Henry VIII’s lavish court. Erasmus had supplied him with an introductory letter to his friend Thomas More, who wrote back to him, “Your painter, dear Erasmus, is a wonderful artist, but I’m afraid he won’t find England as fruitful and lucrative as he hoped. But I will do my best to ensure that is not a complete waste of time.”⁴ More actively supported Holbein by commissioning his own portrait (1527; Frick Collection, New York) as well as a large group portrait of his entire family, which sadly is lost, but whose preparatory drawing has survived.⁵ His example quickly bore fruit, and Holbein soon received other commissions from important court officials.

The powerful Sir Henry Guildford, who had been appointed Comptroller of the Household by Henry VIII in 1525, was one of Holbein’s earliest English patrons. He commissioned portraits of himself (fig. 30.1) and his wife, Mary Wotton, Lady Guildford, in 1527 (Saint Louis Art Museum). Sir Henry is depicted in all the splendor of his office, wearing a brocade jerkin, a coat richly trimmed in fur, and the chain of the Order of the Garter, which the king had bestowed on him in 1526. In his right hand he holds a white staff, the symbol of his high office. In preparation for this painting, Holbein made a detailed chalk study of the head and bust, which he followed closely in the painting (fig. 30.2), yet with significant differences in the sitter’s face. Sir Henry’s fleshy features are slimmed down considerably in the painting, and his eyes, mouth, and nose are spaced further apart.⁶ Even more significant changes can be noted in the pendant portrait of Lady Guildford, but, as pointed out by Peter van der Ploeg, the infrared reflectography of both paintings shows no corrections in the ink underdrawings of the panels, indicating that the changes must have been made by Holbein before transferring the drawings to the panels, possibly at the demand of the sitters.⁷

The notable differences between the preparatory drawing and the finished oil painting of Sir Guildford are significant for the roundel in the Straus Collection. Here, the fuller face of the preparatory drawing is combined with all the intricate and colorful details of costume found only in the painting. In the drawing, which shows only the bust without arms or hands, the costume is sketched in very roughly. A noteworthy detail is the length of Sir Henry’s staff of office. Since the drawing was cut down—Susan Foister assumes that it was originally the same size as that of its pendant—the staff of office is only indicated in the lower right.⁸ In the painting it extends a few inches from his hand, but it is much longer in the roundel, reaching to the center of his chest. This deviation is found on Wenceslas Hollar’s print after the roundel, also in the Straus Collection (see cat. 31; 44.606). In fact, all four works—the preparatory drawing, the large oil painting, the roundel, and the print by Hollar—were part of the Earl of Arundel’s collection⁹, whence the oil painting and its preparatory drawing entered the Royal Collection. This stellar provenance and the expertise by Max Friedländer, solicited by R. Langton Douglas, the dealer who offered the roundel to Percy S. Straus, convinced Straus of the work’s authenticity. Today, however, the roundel is considered to have been painted by an unidentified artist in Holbein’s circle, who must have had access to both the drawing and the oil painting, but whose identity has remained a mystery.¹⁰ The costume is painted with exquisite detail, each joint of the elaborate chain as well as the pattern of the gold jerkin closely followed by the copyist. However, the sitter’s face lacks the sharp focus and freshness characteristic of Holbein’s portraits. Instead, the sallow features are more broadly rendered, the modeling is less distinct, and the shading of the left side of the face is somewhat murky.

According to Foister, repetitions of numerous portraits by Holbein were made both during and after his lifetime, generally with the aid of patterns taken from the original drawing.¹¹ That method would, of course, not have been applicable for copies on a much smaller scale, as in the case of the Guildford portraits. Although there are a number of roundel portraits of similar dimensions that had been attributed to Holbein, only nine, including that of Erasmus (1532; Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum, Basel) are considered autograph.¹² Of these, the roundels of Erasmus, those of a man known as “Hans of Antwerp” (formerly the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Schloss Blankenburg, present whereabouts unknown, and a second version at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and of Derich Born (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) are repetitions of the larger versions, but only the roundel of Erasmus is an exact copy similar to the Guildford roundel. Numerous other roundel portraits painted by followers of Holbein are known, including a second version of Sir Henry Guildford (sixteenth century, Detroit Institute of Arts). It is a rather stiff repetition of the Straus roundel and certainly from another hand.¹³

In the absence of chemical analyses of the pigments or dendrochronological testing, the date of the Straus portrait of Sir Henry Guildford has been determined by its relationship to the preparatory drawing and the large portrait. The dates of these two works, in turn, are determined by the inclusion of the chain of the Order of the Garter, which he received in 1526, setting a date after which the work must have been painted. His office as the comptroller of  Henry VIII’s court is referred to in the inscription on the frame of the roundel which reads: “IMAGO HENRICI GUILDFORDE CONTROROTATORIS HOSPICII REGIS H.8.” The frame is original to the painting, in fact, it is carved out of the same piece of wood. It has been speculated that the roundel was made as a top or bottom cover for a small box, the other side to have been decorated with the pendant portrait of Lady Guildford. Indeed, Hollar made a print after her portrait as well, and it too was part of the Earl of Arundel’s collection.¹⁴ Unfortunately, no roundel in oil of her image seems to have survived. These memento boxes were popular at the time as a way to remember distinguished family members.

—Helga Kessler Aurisch