The critics are by no means agreed as to the merits of this picture. Dr. Waagen came to the conclusion that it was nothing more than an old copy, yet he dated it as about 1530 on technical grounds, due to the redness of the flesh tints, which he regarded as a characteristic of Holbein’s painting at that period—a strange conclusion to reach after giving it as his opinion that it was only a copy. Passavant, Vertue, and Walpole considered that it was made up by some inferior painter from Holbein’s separate studies of the heads. “As the portraits of the family,” says Walpole, “in separate pieces,[661] were already drawn by Holbein, the injudicious journeyman stuck them in as he found them, and never varied the lights, which were disposed, as it was indifferent in single heads, some from the right, some from the left, but which make a ridiculous contradiction when transported into one piece.”[662] Wornum’s opinion was that “the picture is without question unequal in its parts, some portions certainly being unworthy of Holbein; others, though much better, still bear no trace of the great master’s hand; the want of finish, too, is in parts apparent. The dogs are very bad, especially the foremost one; notwithstanding all this, however, there may be a genuine Holbein groundwork beneath.”[663] Woltmann, who saw it when it was in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, agreed with Waagen that it was only a good old copy. “Still this large picture is in a high degree interesting. Though the hand that copied it betrays, indeed, an able but in nowise clever painter, though the coldness of the execution is apparent in the unattractive accessories, still it shows us, to a certain extent, with what careful and delicate study the original picture had been executed.”[664]