If they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged
them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627
Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an
enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague
notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to
Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought
they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and
copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of
Riches is in the Louvre Collection.
That he ever painted Anne Boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful.
The portrait among the Windsor drawings which has been labelled with her
name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. But in
1534 he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--Thomas
Cromwell, then Master of the Jewel House.
And it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some
respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme
works of all portraiture--the oil painting of Morett, or Morette, so
long regarded as a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art. The world knows
it well in the Dresden Gallery (Plate 29).
The figure is life-size. The pose, even the costume in its feasible
essentials, strikingly repeats the Whitehall portrait of Henry VIII., as
copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. The
background is a green curtain.
Illustration: PLATE 29
THE MORETT PORTRAIT
_Oils. Dresden Gallery_
The sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor Order of any
sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with
white, the broad fur collar of sable. In his cap is a cameo brooch. His
buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of
the same metal. His right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the
gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. His auburn hair and
beard is streaked with grey.
No words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such
a painting. Neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green
background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the
satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is
penetrating.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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