There is not an iota of historical or other evidence for that "Flanders mare" anecdote, which seems to have had a gratuitous as well as spontaneous origin in Bishop Burnet's seventeenth-century brain, to the effect that the King was the victim of a flattering portrait by Holbein, and cruelly undeceived by the actual looks of his bride. In the first place his agents wrote to him frankly that the Princess was of no great beauty, though not uncomely, and "never from the ellebowe of the Ladye Duchesse her Mother," who was said to be most unwilling to part with her (as a mother might well be, for the husband in question). The King was also told that she was quite unskilled in languages or music, and held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse that great Ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of musike." And in the next place even a superficial knowledge of Holbein would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost brutally truthful brush. It was hardly likely that the painter who would not stoop to flatter Bishop Stokesley, or Henry VIII. himself, would be swerved from his good faith by Anne of Cleves. Illustration: PLATE 35 ANNE OF CLEVES _Oils. The Louvre_ On the contrary, the painting, in oils on vellum and mounted on a panel, now in the Louvre (Plate 35), is the very embodiment of contemporary accounts of this Princess. Her fair-skinned, commonplace, yet "not uncomely" face looks out placidly at you from the quaint Flemish head-dress of fine gauze and jewelled cloth-of-gold. Her inert hands (Holbein's hands belong to his truth-telling revelations), jewelled even on the thumb, are listlessly clasped upon each other; her crimson-velvet dress is heavily banded with gold and pearl embroidery. No Venus certainly, and perhaps somewhat heavily handicapped by the maternal "elbowe." But still perfectly in keeping with her descriptions and making no denial to the French Ambassador's statement that she was "the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an English eye-witness who writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so fayre a Ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and in especial of so good qualities."