When Anne Boleyn had suffered the fullest possible penalty for marrying
Henry VIII., Holbein painted her successor. He prepared a chalk drawing
of the unfortunate Jane Seymour and painted two portraits from it,
one being in Vienna and the other at Woburn Abbey; and he painted Henry
himself for the Privy Chamber, which was burnt out in the closing years
of the seventeenth century. The usual study in chalks was made for this
picture, and is now in Munich. In the Bodleian Library there is a drawing
by Holbein of his exquisite design for the gold cup that was made when
Edward VI. was born; and as soon as Jane Seymour was dead the painter
went to Milan to paint his striking portrait of the young Christina
of Denmark, who was Duchess of Milan, and a widow at the early age of
sixteen. She it is who is said to have declined the offer of King Henry's
hand, on the ground that she had but one head and wished to keep it on
her shoulders. So she became the Duchess of Lorraine instead--small blame
to her. We have referred already to the portrait of Anne of Cleves, now
in the Louvre; before that was painted Holbein had given the world what
is often regarded as his greatest effort in portraiture, the portrait
of the goldsmith Hubert Morett, now to be seen in the Dresden Gallery.
For many years this picture was supposed to be the work of Leonardo da
Vinci. It is one of the special functions of art criticism to give the
credit of unknown pictures to Da Vinci or Giorgione--apparently to allow
the next generation of criticism to take that credit away again. One may
remark in passing that Leonardo da Vinci has fared very badly of late,
but doubtless he will soon be restored to critical favour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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