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
In the exhibition held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909, Prince
Frederick Duleep Singh lent a portrait (No. 30), also dated 1545, said
to represent Edmund Butts, and attributed by the owner to Bettes. The
armorial bearings on this picture indicate a member of the Butts family,
but the person represented is certainly not the same as in the National
Gallery portrait, nor do the two appear to be the work of the same
painter.
[Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF SIR WILLIAM BUTTS]
Dr. Butts was in receipt of a salary of £100 a year from the King, and
was the favourite physician about the Court. He was a native of Norfolk,
and educated at Cambridge. Many prescriptions in his handwriting are
preserved in the British Museum. He appears as one of the characters in
Shakespeare’s _Henry VIII_ (Act v. sc. 2), and his name occurs in a
number of contemporary letters. Thus, in 1537, the Earl of Shrewsbury
wrote thanking Cromwell “for asking the King to licence Dr. Buttes to
come to him”;[454] and on October 6, 1542, the Earl of Southampton wrote
to Wriothesley from York, when upon the expedition against Scotland:
“Recommend me to Butts, and thank him for his pills. I would not have
foregone them at this time for all the good I have.”[455] In spite of
the pills, however, the Earl died at Newcastle nine days later.
Footnote 454:
_C.L.P._, vol. xii. pt. i. 328.
Footnote 455:
_C.L.P._, vol. xvii. 912.
A small half-length portrait of an Unknown Man in the Basel Collection
(No. 327),[456] belongs to the later period of Holbein’s English
residence. He is turned three-quarters to the left, and wears the
customary dark fur-lined surcoat and black cap, and dark purple sleeves,
and holds his gloves and a paper, upon which the inscription is now
illegible, in his clasped hands. The beard, moustache, and hair are
dark. This picture, which was purchased in Basel in 1862, has been more
than once restored, so that Holbein’s handiwork has suffered
considerably. Another small picture which is also now in a damaged state
is the portrait of a young English lady in the collection of Count
Lanckoronski in Vienna,[457] which was regarded by Woltmann as probably
by Holbein, but when exhibited in the Dresden Exhibition of 1871 was
declared by the critics to be a genuine work. It is similar in style to
the small portrait of a Lady in the Vienna Gallery, and of about the
same date. She is shown at half-length, turned a little to the
spectator’s right, with clasped hands, and wearing a dark dress with red
puffings and gold tags from shoulder to wrist, and a French hood with
bands of gold ornaments and a black fall. Round her neck is a gold chain
with a pendant with seven flat stones, a second gold chain, and a large
brooch fastened at her breast with a cameo of a double head, a young
man’s shown full-face, attached to one of a lady in profile. Across the
plain green background, on either side of her head, is inscribed “ANNO
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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