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
Reproduced by Ganz, _Holbein_, p. 197 (i.). Parthey, No. 1411.
One other portrait of a German merchant by Holbein was painted in the
year 1532.[36] It is in the collection of Count von Schönborn in Vienna,
and is one of a pair of portraits of brothers or near relations, members
of the Wedigh family of Cologne.[37] They hung together until 1865, in
which year the finer one of the two, dated 1533, was acquired by Herr B.
Suermondt, of Aix-la-Chapelle, and is now in the Berlin Gallery, having
been purchased in 1874, together with another fine portrait by Holbein
of an unknown young man, from the Suermondt collection. The close
relationship of the two sitters is proved by the exactly similar coat of
arms on the enamelled ring each one is wearing. In the first edition of
his book Woltmann gave it as his opinion that they were Englishmen, but
afterwards came to the conclusion that both portraits represented German
Steelyard merchants. The belief that they were Englishmen was afterwards
strengthened by a communication to the Berlin authorities from Privy
Councillor Dielitz, who, from the coat of arms on the rings, held that
the pictures represented two members of the English family of Trelawney.
This ascription, however, has been proved to be wrong, and it may be
pointed out that the motto inscribed on the paper projecting from the
book in the Vienna portrait,—“Veritas odium parit” (“Truth brings
hatred”), is not the present motto of the Trelawney family. On the side
of the same book, painted on the edges of the leaves, are the letters “H
E R. W I D.,” and more recent research has established the fact that the
two men were members of the Wedigh family. Members of this patrician
family of Cologne had been connected with the London Steelyard since
1480. In this connection it is interesting to note that the seal in the
so-called “Hans of Antwerp” picture is engraved with the letter “W,”
which suggests some possibility that he, too, may have been a Wedigh.
Footnote 36:
Woltmann, 262. Reproduced by Knackfuss, fig. 118; Ganz, _Holbein_, p.
97.
Footnote 37:
Both portraits are mentioned in an inventory of 1746.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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