Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 2 (of 2)Chamberlain, Arthur B. (Arthur Bensley)
History
Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 2 (of 2)
Chamberlain, Arthur B. (Arthur Bensley)
Holbein, Hans, 1497-1543 -- Criticism and interpretation; Painters -- Germany -- Biography
Walpole speaks of the portrait done by Holbein in Düren as a miniature.
He was inclined to believe that the beautiful miniature of Anne, now in
the Salting Collection at South Kensington, which in his days belonged
to the Barretts of Lee Priory, was the very miniature painted by Holbein
on this occasion. “This very picture,” he says, “as is supposed, was in
the possession of Mr. Barrett, of Kent.... The print among the
illustrious heads is taken from it: and so far justifies the king, that
he certainly was not nice, if from that picture he concluded her
handsome enough. It has so little beauty, that I should doubt of its
being the very portrait in question—it rather seems to have been drawn
after Holbein saw a little with the king’s eyes. I have seen that
picture in the cabinet of the present Mr. Barrett, of Lee, and think it
the most exquisitely perfect of all Holbein’s works as well as in the
highest preservation. The print gives a very inadequate idea of it, and
none of her Flemish fairness. It is preserved in the ivory box in which
it came over, and which represents a rose, so delicately carved as to be
worthy of the jewel it contains.”[389]
Footnote 389:
Walpole, _Anecdotes_, ed. Wornum, i. p. 72, note.
It is not known in what way this miniature,[390] together with the
companion portrait of Henry VIII,[391] in a similar ivory box, in the
late Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s collection, came into the possession of the
Barrett family. They were offered for sale by auction in 1757, but
bought in; and subsequently sold by Mr. T. B. Barrett in 1826 to a
dealer named Tuck, who resold them for fifty guineas to Francis Douce,
by whom they were bequeathed, in 1834, to Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, of
Goodrich Court. At a later date the miniature of Anne of Cleves was
bequeathed by General Meyrick to Miss Davies, from whom it was acquired
by the late Mr. George Salting. This miniature follows very closely the
portrait in the Louvre, though there are slight differences in the
details and colour of the dress. The background is blue, without
inscription. It is in water-colours, and is 1¾ in. in diameter. It was
from this miniature, which is regarded as an undoubted work by Holbein,
that Houbraken engraved, in 1739, the portrait of Anne for his
“Illustrious Heads.”
Footnote 390:
Woltmann, 158. Reproduced by Ganz, _Holbein_, p. 148 (2); and in
_Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogue_, Pl. xxxii.
Footnote 391:
Woltmann, 157. See p. 235.
When the Louvre picture was in the Arundel Collection it was etched by
Hollar, but reversed. This print is 9¼ in. by 7 in., and is dated 1648
and inscribed—“Anna Clivensis, Henrici VIII Regis Angliæ Uxor IIIIta. H
Holbein pinxit. Wenceslaus Hollar fecit aqua forti, ex Collectione
Arundeliana, A. 1648.”[392]
Footnote 392:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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