!['Sir Thomas More’, after Hans Holbein, c.1600](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02870/Holbein_2870626b.jpg?imwidth=680)
Hans Holbein – His twisted legacy
Does a mysterious set of copies of his famous Tudor portraits finally reveal why Hans Holbein disappeared without a trace, asks Alastair Smart?
!['Sir Thomas More’, after Hans Holbein, c.1600](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02870/Holbein_2870626b.jpg?imwidth=680)
The modest town of Augsburg, in southern Bavaria, is twinned in this country with Inverness. Yet, with respect to the latter’s long line of caber-tossing champs, it’s actually the former that produced the greatest contributor to British culture. For, in Augbsurg, in 1497, Hans Holbein was born.
There he apprenticed with his father, the painter Hans Holbein the Elder – before moving on to ply his trade in the Low Countries, Basel (where he befriended Erasmus) and France (where he saw the portraits of Leonardo). Finally, through an introductory letter by Erasmus to his friend Sir Thomas More, the worldly artist settled in London in 1526.
It’s no exaggeration to say that England then was an artistic backwater, stuck in the Middle Ages; or to say that, with his portraits of Henry VIII’s court, Holbein dragged the nation into the Renaissance single-handed. Boasting a command of perspective, acute eye for detail and countless other gifts, he created works of such staggering verisimilitude one might mistake his 16th-century sitters for 21st-century ones.
The toothless Henry Wyatt, lazy-eyed Robert Cheseman and neck-scarred Richard Southwell are all readily summoned from memory. For the critic Robert Hughes, “no other artist got the knobbly, mild face of English patrician power quite so aptly” as Holbein.
Some say he was a fortunate artist, in the right place at the right time: a first-hand witness, as the most thrilling period in English history unfolded. Yet, I’d counter that one key reason Henry VIII’s reign eclipses all others in historical interest is the enduring image-bank of characters Holbein left us from it.
Either way, the sad truth is that his artistic influence seems to have led nowhere. Holbein kept no studio and, upon his death from the plague in 1543, English art pretty much reverted to its benighted, former self. For evidence, look no further than the stiff, flat portraits of the Elizabethans.
The researchers behind a new display at the National Portrait Gallery, however, suggest things weren’t quite so clear-cut. The NPG has built its collection on the basis of history rather than art – which is to say, on the importance of a work’s sitter not artist. And it’s striking how many portraits of Tudor courtiers it owns (15) which are attributed to painters “closely after Hans Holbein”.
The current display of most of these – all straight copies of Holbeins – makes for an uncanny experience. At first glance, even at second glance, they look just like the originals. In a cute piece of curation, More and Thomas Cromwell are even hung side-by-side, facing off against each other, just as the originals do in the Frick Collection, New York.
Closer scrutiny, though, reveals a thick, pasty application of paint, most unlike the fine blending and subtle handling of Holbein. (Witness the hard edges along Cromwell’s forehead.)
![Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, after Hans Holbein the Younger, early 17th century (detail)](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02872/Cromwell_2872558c.jpg?imwidth=680)
'Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex', after Hans Holbein, early 17th century (detail)
The researchers have also made two interesting discoveries. First, through comparative analysis of the wooden panels they were painted on, that the copies all date from the turn of the 17th century (some 60 years after Holbein’s death); and, second, through X-Ray, that the underdrawings are highly varied, suggesting they were all made in different workshops.
How to explain this concentration of Holbein imitations long after, ostensibly, he’d fallen from fashion? I suppose the works might simply have been a product of historical interest. Around the time in question, there was a fondness among English gentry to hang sets of portraits of old kings, queens and nobles on the walls of their great houses – a reflection of a cultivated interest in the nation’s past.
These images were based on pre-established patterns, and it’s possible that Holbein’s patterns for his paintings ended up circulating between studios and the NPG works were created in such a context.
If so, it was the celebrity of the sitter (not Holbein) that mattered. Especially when a direct connection existed across the decades. Matthew Parker, for instance, much admired the portrait of his predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, hanging in his office – probably a Holbein original (from 1527) but perhaps a later copy. He praised its “resemblance of life”, yet had little knowledge of its painter, erroneously referring to him as “a Flemish artist”.
Just perhaps, though, the copious copies of his portraits reflect an interest in Holbein himself. Florence’s Cosimo de Medici II, no less, stressed he’d “become passionately set upon having a work” by him and duly bought 'The Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell' from Thomas Howard.
The NPG research also alights upon the 1590 inventory of Elizabethan collector Lord Lumley, which originally listed eight Holbeins but was subsequently revised down to three. Might this imply that an appreciation existed between autograph works and reproductions, and that the former were still – in some quarters – highly prized?
In truth, the NPG display raises more questions than it answers. But it still warrants the attention of anyone with even a smidgen of interest in British art. For it pursues the long, hard search to explain how – or, indeed, if – Hans Holbein vanished from consciences just as miraculously as he had arrived.
'Hans Holbein Re-made’, Room 3, National Portrait Gallery, to Aug 31; npg.org.uk