Hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" Christina's portrait had painted her in full dress. But Holbein's eye was quick to recognise the values of her everyday dress--the widow's costume of Italy--in enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her figure. And so he drew her as she stood, with a hint of bending forward, her gloves being restlessly fingered in a shy yet proud embarrassment, in the first moments when he saw her. Illustration: PLATE 34 CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN _Oils. National Gallery_ [_Lent by the Duke of Norfolk_] The portrait is nearly life-size. Over a plain black satin dress she wears a gown of the same material, lined with yellow sable. Her hair is entirely concealed by a black hood. At her throat and wrists are plain cambric frills. The ranging scale of tawny tones--in the floor, the gloves, the fur, the golden glint in her brown eyes--and the one ruby, on her hand, are the only colours, except those of her fresh young lips and skin and the black and white of her costume. "She is not so white as the late Queen," wrote Hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance, and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her excellently well." It is easy to believe that they did, but her dimples did not chance for Henry VIII. Whether she really sent him, along with her picture, the witty refusal credited to her--that she had but one head; had she two, one should be at His Majesty's service--or whether it was the Emperor's doing entirely that his niece married the Duke of Lorraine instead of the man whose first wife had been Charles V.'s aunt, there is, at all events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would. Van Mander heard from Holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry is inclined to flout. This is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the painter punished for an affront, the King hotly exclaimed:--"Understand, my lord, that I can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but out of seven earls I could not make one such painter as this Holbein." An eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. And certain it is that the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched on some special private mission for the King in the summer of 1538, of which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of payment for it has ever transpired.