The very fact that tradition attached the name of an almost unknown artist to this picture of the King, in the days when it was the fashion to regard every portrait of Henry VIII as a work of Holbein’s, is sufficient to suggest that the tradition is in all probability the correct one. “When tradition,” says Mr. Wornum, “notwithstanding the mischievous activity of presumptuous ignorance, has still handed down works with comparatively obscure names attached to them, the fact alone should go a great way towards its confirmation as truth.”[562] Dr. Waagen, however, never hesitated to discard such attributions, and often saw Holbein in pictures which more modern criticism has shown could not have been from his brush. Lucas is said to have given Holbein his first instructions in miniature-painting, and no doubt all three members of the family were miniaturists and illuminators, and were employed in producing the small portraits of the King and the members of his family so often required by Henry for sending abroad as gifts to other reigning monarchs or as presents to subjects whom he wished to honour. Thus, in the summer of 1527, the King sent, through his representative in Paris, portraits of himself and the Princess Mary to Francis I. Whether these were miniatures or not is uncertain, but upon the backs of them were painted various royal devices, which were explained to the French King, who “liked them singularly well, and at the first sight of Henry’s ‘phisonamye’ took off his bonnet, saying he knew well that face, and further, ‘Je prie Dieu que il luy done bone vie et longue.’ He then looked at the Princess’s, standing in contemplation and beholding thereof a great while, and gave much commendation and laud unto the same.”[563] These two portraits may have been painted by one or other of the Hornebolts. [Sidenote: MINIATURES OF THE KING IN DEEDS]