Horace Walpole, speaking of the rise of Renaissance architecture in England—“Grecian art plaistered on Gothic,” he calls it—says that “the beginning of reformation in building seems owing to Holbein. His porch at Wilton, though purer than the works of his successors, is of this bastard sort; but the ornaments and proportions are graceful and well chosen. I have seen drawings of his, too, in the same kind. Where he acquired this taste is difficult to say; probably it was adopted from his acquaintance with his fellow-labourers at court.”[614] Though there is no doubt that Holbein would have been a fine architect had his inclination led him to practise that branch of art—the backgrounds of his designs for painted glass afford ample proof of his aptitude for design in the new architectural manner of the Italian Renaissance—Walpole’s assertion cannot be accepted as the truth. Henry VIII had at least two good Italian architects in his employment—first, Girolamo da Treviso, and afterwards John of Padua, as well as sculptors and modellers of architectural detail such as Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano, and it is the influence of such Italians as these that is to be most clearly discerned in the buildings which were erected in England at this period. Holbein produced a few designs of an architectural nature, but no building exists of which it can be said that he was the architect. Footnote 614: Walpole, _Anecdotes_, ed. Wornum, i. 128. [Sidenote: “HOLBEIN’S GATE” AT WHITEHALL] The gateway which, according to tradition, he designed, and hence known as “Holbein’s Gate,” was one of Henry VIII’s additions to Whitehall, and connected the tennis court, the cock-pit, and the bowling-green with the palace, besides providing the King with a gallery into the park, from which he could witness the sports which took place there on special occasions. It was built, according to Walcott, of stone mixed with small squares of flint, and tesselated, and was “very neatly set.” J. T. Smith, in his _Antiquities of Westminster_, describes it as being in the Tudor style of architecture, with battlements and four lofty towers, the whole enriched with _bustos_ on the north and south sides. Pennant, who had himself seen the gate, says: “To Holbein was owing the most beautiful gate at Whitehall, built with bricks of two colours, glazed and disposed in a tesselated fashion. The top, as well as an elegant tower on each side, were embattled. On each front were four busts, in baked clay, which resisted to the last every attack of the weather.” An excellent idea of its appearance is to be obtained from the engraving by G. Vertue (1725) in the “Vetusta Monumenta.”