Among the numerous portraits of Henry VIII to be met with in so many of the great houses of this country and in several European museums, which, in almost all cases, are attributed by their owners to Holbein, only three[203] can be ascribed to him with any certainty. These are the large cartoon for the left-hand half of the Whitehall wall-painting, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire; the beautiful little panel portrait in Earl Spencer’s collection at Althorp; and the crayon study in the Munich Gallery. The greater number of the remaining portraits of him, most of them based on the Whitehall likeness, are merely inferior copies, and copies of copies, “shop” pieces supplied to order by Henry’s painters for presentation to foreign potentates and ambassadors, and to his own statesmen and courtiers as a reward for faithful service. Less frequently one is met with which is a good and original work by some painter of lower rank than Holbein, and such portraits, in their turn, have been multiplied by assistants in order to meet the constant demand for the King’s likeness. Footnote 203: A fourth work, the portrait in the National Gallery, Rome, is, however, considered by Dr. Ganz and other critics to be an original work by Holbein. The great Whitehall fresco was painted in 1537, and was the first work of importance which Holbein undertook for the Crown. It achieved immense popularity, and for one hundred and fifty years or so every foreign visitor of distinction was taken to see it, while all artists who had an opportunity of examining it spoke loudly in its praises. It covered one of the walls in the Privy Chamber at Whitehall, and was painted on either side and over the top of a window, or, more probably, the fireplace, and consisted of four great figures, Henry VIII and his father, Henry VII, on one side, and his mother, Elizabeth of York, and his third wife, Jane Seymour, on the other, arranged within an elaborately designed architectural setting. This great work, which added so much to Holbein’s fame among his contemporaries, was destroyed in the fire at Whitehall in January 1698; but happily, owing to the foresight of Charles II, we still possess, in the small copy of it by the Flemish artist Remigius van Leemput, in Hampton Court[204] (No. 601 (308)), a very valuable record of the composition of the work. The copy is evidently a very faithful one, and though, of course, it lacks all the greatness of style, the vividness of character, and the beauty of colour of the original—for Remée was a poor artist—it reproduces the composition with some exactitude, and so is invaluable to students of the master. This copy was made by Van Leemput in 1667, the probable reason being that the fresco was then beginning to show signs of decay, and that Charles was anxious to retain an accurate record of it before it was ruined. Patin, who visited England about 1670, and saw both the painting and the copy, said that the latter was ordered by the King