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
The dated portraits of the year 1536 are only three, one of which, the
Steelyard merchant, Derich Berck, has been already described.[179] The
second is the portrait of Sir Richard Southwell in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence (Pl. 16),[180] of which there is an excellent replica in the
Louvre. It was finished on the 10th July 1536, when Southwell was
thirty-three years old. It is a small half-length figure, the face
three-quarters to the right, wearing a black dress, open at the neck,
with black satin sleeves, and a black cap with a circular gold medallion
with a negro’s head carved in cornelian. His hands are folded, and he is
wearing a gold ring with a green stone, and a gold chain round his neck.
He is closely shaven, and his black hair, which partly covers his ears,
is cut straight across the forehead. Across the plain dark green
background is inscribed on either side of the head in gold lettering:
Footnote 179:
See pp. 22-23.
Footnote 180:
Woltmann, 149. Reproduced by Ganz, _Holbein_, p. 108.
“· X^O · IVLII · ANNO ETATIS · SVÆ
· H · VIII · XXVIII ANNO XXXIII.”
It is on an oak panel about 19 in. high × 14 in. wide. This is one of
Holbein’s finest portraits of his second English period, and displays a
very subtle insight into what must have been an unattractive and in many
ways despicable nature. The small brown eyes have a look of cunning, and
the face with its smooth fat cheeks has few pretensions to comeliness.
Southwell was heir to great wealth, and was brought up with Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey, and was intimate with the family of the Duke of
Norfolk. In 1531 he was obliged to pay a fine of £1000 before he could
obtain pardon for being concerned in a murder, yet three years later he
was Sheriff of Norfolk. From 1535 onwards he took an active share in the
dissolution of the monasteries, and was in all ways a willing and able
tool of his royal master. His treachery helped to bring Sir Thomas More
to the scaffold, and, later on, he played an even more treacherous part
at the trial of his early companion, the Earl of Surrey. He was knighted
in 1542, and appointed one of the King’s executors, and under Queen
Elizabeth he became Master of Ordnance. Something of his unsavoury
character is suggested by Holbein in his portrait, which is
distinguished by its remarkable individuality and its fine technical
qualities both in the flesh painting, more particularly in the hands and
the eyes, and in all the details of the costume. Nothing is known of the
history of the picture except that it belonged to the Earl of Arundel,
who presented it to Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1620,[181] as
one of the best Holbeins in his collection. It is still in its
seventeenth-century frame, with a silver tablet engraved with the arms
of England and the Medici, and an inscription, “Effigies domini Ricardi
Southwelli Equitis aurati, consiliarii privati Henrici VIII, Regis
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