“pour en estendre la posterité s’il faut ainsi dire, et n’abandonner pas une si belle chose à la fortune des temps.”[205] Walpole says that Remée, as he was familiarly called here, received £150 for his work,[206] which was a very large fee for those days, and shows how highly the King valued the original. Footnote 204: Reproduced by Ganz, _Holbein_, p. 179, from Vertue’s engraving. Footnote 205: Patin, _Relations historiques_, Basel, 1673, p. 211 _et seq._ Footnote 206: Walpole, _Anecdotes_, ed. Wornum, 1888, i. p. 82. Footnote 207: “Zo wel getroffen, dat het den beschouwer met verbaastheid aandoet.” [Sidenote: THE WHITEHALL WALL-PAINTING] The wall-painting itself was still in perfect condition when Van Mander saw it in 1604. He was deeply impressed by this “over-heerlijk Portret” of Henry, which, he wrote, was so true to life that it filled the spectator with dismay.[207] “The King, as he stood there, majestic in his splendour, was so life-like, that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated, in his presence.” Earlier travellers who saw it and praised it were Johann Fischart, in 1576,[208] and Hentzner, who visited England in 1598; while Duke Johann Ernst of Saxony, who was here in 1613, was also taken to see it; it is noted in the records of his journey, “upon this his Royal Highness was conducted into the King’s apartment; it was small but hung with beautiful tapestries on all sides. In this room were the full-length portraits of Henrici VIII, and his father, Henrici VII. They were regarded as special works of art, and similar works are said not to be seen throughout England.” Both Pepys and Evelyn mention it in their diaries. The latter, under the date 11th February 1656, says he was glad to find, on revisiting Whitehall for the first time for many years, that “they had not much defac’d that rare piece of Hen. VII, &c., don on the walles of the King’s privy chamber.” This entry proves that ten or eleven years before Charles II ordered the copy to be made the fresco was beginning to show signs of decay. It narrowly escaped destruction in the earlier fire at Whitehall in 1691, but the conflagration of 1698 was a much more serious one. It burnt down the entire Palace, with the exception of the Banqueting House and a few buildings adjoining it. More than a thousand apartments perished in the flames, and a number of pictures in the Matted Gallery and elsewhere, mentioned by Evelyn, were destroyed. “This terrible conflagration, which broke out about four in the afternoon and lasted upwards of seventeen hours, originated through the neglect and carelessness of a laundress, a Dutch woman, who had left some linen to dry in front of a fire, in the lodging of a certain Colonel Stanley. She and twelve other persons, so it is reported, perished in the flames.”[209] Footnote 208: Quoted by Ganz, _Holbein_, p. xxxviii. Footnote 209: