The late Mr. F. G. Stephens examined the picture very carefully in 1880, and embodied the result of his study in one of his series of articles on “The Private Collections of England,” published in the _Athenæum._[665] He came to the conclusion that certain portions were undoubtedly from the brush of Holbein, but that upon the greater part of the canvas he had merely sketched or pounced in the design, which had then been finished by some other painter not skilled enough to follow up with any success the lines laid down by the greater master, who for some unknown reason had abandoned the completion of the work. At the same time he was of opinion that even the parts which he attributed to Holbein by no means remained in the state in which he left them. His final conclusion was that Holbein left the canvas with only one head, that of Sir Thomas More, nearly finished; certain other heads—of Judge More, and the group of three on the right, Margaret Roper, Cecilia Heron, and Lady More—far advanced in execution, and one or two others in the background carried only a little further than the designing stage. Beyond this Holbein did not go; the remainder was left in outline, subject to correction to be made as the work proceeded. The man engaged to complete the picture covered the canvas as well as he could, but failed to retain any of the beauty of Holbein’s original design, or to introduce the generalising and systematic light and shade with which Holbein would have brought each part into harmony, or even to transfer to the canvas the animated portraiture and other high qualities of the cartoons which were available for that purpose. Most of the figures are of extreme disproportion, heads being too large for the bodies, and bodies too large for the legs, while the actions are awkward, and many of the faces lack animation and intelligence. The dogs are so bad that Mr. Stephens was of opinion that they were added even later by a third and still less skilful painter. On the other hand, he regarded the head of More as “a marvellous rendering of insight into human character, reproducing with extreme subtlety the utmost energy of thoughtfulness as marked on a visage where a far-seeing, vigorous soul has, so to say, written itself in every line and feature, and manifested itself in those penetrative yet meditating eyes, those fine thin lips, and affected the fine reserve of every lineament.” [Sidenote: THE PICTURE LEFT INCOMPLETE]