Holbein Part 7

The man in the scholar's cap and gown is George de Selve, privately a.s.sociated with de Dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of 1533. He was born in 1508, nominated Bishop of Lavaur in 1526, and confirmed in that office in 1529, in which year he was French Amba.s.sador at the Court of Charles V. He was twenty-five in 1533, and died in 1541.

For myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital respect--I am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other facts and conclusions to a verdict.

Two portraits in the Hague Gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the wrist, show to how much purpose Holbein had studied these birds in the Steelyard. The one of Robert Cheseman, done in this year, is especially fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the nature of man and bird.

In 1533, also, the Steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration of Anne Boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. And the result was, as Stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parna.s.sus, with the Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope; and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on severell sweet instruments."

But of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil paintings--the Triumph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty--which he executed for the Hall of the Steelyard. In their day they were renowned far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion, perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the Solothurn Madonna.

When the Guild was compelled to abandon the Steelyard, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that when it regained possession, under James I., everything was in a sad state of neglect. And when the a.s.sociation finally dissolved not long after, the Hanseatic League agreed to present these paintings to Henry Prince of Wales, known, like Charles I., to be a lover of Art.

If they pa.s.sed 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.

Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.tons 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.

This is another work which has undergone more than one transformation in the course of its records. As late as 1657 it was correctly ascribed to Holbein in the Modena Collection. But the first syllable of the sitter's name has been its only constant. In time Morett slipped into Moretta, and then--like _Meier_ in the Madonna picture--into Morus. So far it seems to have clung to some English tradition. But when Morus got changed to Moro it was but natural for an Italian to think of Ludovico Sforza, "Il Moro." Long before this Holbein had become Olbeno; and thereafter a puzzle. When the portrait was labelled Sforza, however, who could its obviously great painter be but Leonardo? _Et voila!_ Thus the work pa.s.sed to the Gallery and Catalogue of the Royal Collection at Dresden. And thus it long remained, as if to attest the true level of Holbein's genius.

But when the Gallery also acquired the drawing of the Arundel Collection, labelled "Mr. Morett" in Hollar's engraving from it, the painting was held to be unquestionably identified by it as Hubert Morett, goldsmith to Henry VIII. Nor is there anything incongruous in this belief. Such a master goldsmith was no tradesman, in our sense of the word. He was often much more like one of our merchant princes. The merchants of the Steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other courts. Neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of Henry VIII. were pa.s.sed; while there is much, very much, to suggest an English origin.

On the other hand, M. Larpent has now shown that the Arundel drawing was down in a catalogue of 1746-7 as: "One Holbein, Sieur de Moret, one of the French hostage in England"; and also that a "Chas. sieur de Morette"

is recorded among the four French hostages sent to England in 1519. It would thus appear that the painting is a portrait of Charles de Solier, seigneur de Morette; an eminent soldier and diplomatist of France; born in 1480, Amba.s.sador to England more than once, and finally, in 1534.

Besides all the portraits of Holbein's English period, many of them scattered throughout the collections of all Europe, and many others now lost, it must not be forgotten that he was at the same time pouring forth miniature paintings, designs for engraving, designs for the goldsmith, and conceptions of every sort--from a carved chimney-piece to a woman's jewelled trinket; and all designed with the same exquisite precision and felicity. In the British Museum as on the Continent these drawings are an education in themselves. And besides the portrait studies in the Windsor Collection there is a sketch for a large painting which, if ever executed, is lost: "The Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon."

CHAPTER IV

PAINTER ROYAL

1536-1543

Queen Jane Seymour--Death of Erasmus, and t.i.tle-page portrait--The Whitehall painting of Henry VIII.--Munich drawing of Henry VIII.--Birth of an heir and the "Jane Seymour Cup"--Death of the Queen--Christina, d.u.c.h.ess of Milan--Secret service for the King--Flying visit to Basel and arrangements for a permanent return--Apprentices his son Philip at Paris--Portrait of the Prince of Wales and the King's return gift--Anne of Cleves--Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk--Catherine Howard--Lapse of Holbein's Basel citizenship--Irregularities--Provision for wife and children--Residence in London--Execution of Queen Catherine Howard--Marriage of Catherine Parr--Dr. Chamber--Unfinished work for the Barber-Surgeons' Hall--Death of Holbein--His will--Place of burial--Holbein's genius; its true character and greatness.

These were years of pleasant friendships, too, as well as work and cares. Nicholas Bourbon, scholar and poet, after his sojourn in London, writes back in 1536: "Greet in my name as heartily as you can all with whom you know me to be connected by intercourse and friendship." And after mentioning high dignitaries who had followed the King's example of showing special courtesies to Bourbon, he adds: "Mr. Cornelius Heyss, my host, the King's Goldsmith; Mr. Nicolaus Kratzer, the King's Astronomer, a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and Mr. Hans, the Royal Painter, the Apelles of our time. I wish them from my heart all joy and happiness." This little pen-picture of Holbein's intimate circle is a beautiful break in the mists of centuries--and shows us what manner of men they were among whom he had made for himself an honoured place. We could ill spare it from the few and meagre records of his life. It is also the very earliest doc.u.mentary evidence of his being in the King's immediate service.

It was in this very year, 1536, that he received his commission to paint Anne Boleyn's successor, Jane Seymour, then on the throne the block had left vacant. The Vienna Gallery possesses this painting, of which another version is at Woburn Abbey, and the chalk drawing at Windsor (Plate 30).

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 30 QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR _Oils. Vienna Gallery_

The Queen was noted for her milk-white fairness, and Holbein has borrowed the pearly shadows of the lily in rendering it. The figure is a little under life-size. Her head-dress and robes of silver brocade and royal velvet are studded with splendid rubies and pearls to match the jewels on her neck and breast. The hands are as full of character as of art.

The Queen's portrait may properly be said to belong to the great wall painting which Holbein finished in 1537 for the Royal Palace at Whitehall.

But before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more great wrench. At midnight of July 12th, 1536, Erasmus died in the home that had been his own, except for the Freiburg interval, ever since John Froben's death in 1526; a death that had probably had much to do with Holbein's first departure from Basel. That event had uprooted the scholar from the old house _zum Sessel_, in the Fischmarkt, and transplanted him to the home of Froben's son, Hieronymus. The latter house, then known as _zum Luft_, is now No. 18, Baumleinga.s.se. And it was here that Erasmus pa.s.sed away, his mind keeping to the last its humour and its interests in all around him. But no one, remembering how Fisher and More had died in the preceding year, can doubt but that the good old man was very willing to be gone, away from changed faces and changed ways--though Bonifacius Amerbach and young Froben were as sons to him.

Basel, for all her differences with him, buried Erasmus with great honours. But no tablet could so commemorate him as the n.o.ble monument which Holbein built to him in the t.i.tle-page he designed for Hieronymus Froben's edition of Erasmus's _Works_, published in 1540. It is a woodcut of extraordinary beauty. The full-length figure of the scholar stands in cap and gown, with one hand resting lightly on the bust of the G.o.d Terminus (the G.o.d of immovable boundary lines, significantly conjoined to Erasmus's chosen motto: _Concedo nulli_) and the other calling attention to this significant emblem of fixed convictions. Not even the Louvre oil painting expresses the whole Erasmus quite so completely or so n.o.bly as this little drawing of the man whom Holbein had loved and revered for twenty years; and to whom he owed, in the first place, the splendid opportunities of his career in England.

And as he drew it, what ghosts of his own Past must have cl.u.s.tered around the lean little figure! What echoes and visions! The Rhine, the gardens, the clang of the press, the Fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at Froben's and Meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and perfume of all his dreams in the years--those matchless years of a man's young manhood--when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had seen the Way of the Cross, the Christ in the Grave, and the Risen Lord even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. _Eheu fugaces!_ "G.o.d help thee, Elia, how art thou sophisticated."

Ah, well! Those years, and the darker, sadder years that had led far from them, were now like his oldest friends--dead and buried. The Holbein of 1537 was painting the King of England on the wall of his Privy Chamber. There was a place for honest pride as well as for honest regret in his thoughts.

This painting perished with the palace in the fire of 1698. Charles II., however, had a small copy of it made by Leemput. And a portion of Holbein's original cartoon (Plate 31) in chalk and Indian ink, is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire--the face much washed out by cleaning, and the outline p.r.i.c.ked for transferring to the wall. The figures are life-size, but Walpole has already noticed how the ma.s.sive proportions and solidly-planted pose of the King heighten the illusion of a Colossus. Behind him stands the admirably contrasted figure of Henry VII. The whole composition consisted of four portraits; Queen Jane Seymour opposite her husband, and the King's mother opposite to, and on a level with, Henry VII., who stands on the elevation of the background.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 31 KING HENRY VIII AND HIS FATHER (_Fragment of Cartoon used for the Whitehall Wall-Painting_) _Duke of Devonshire's Collection_

The pose and costume of Henry VIII. in the cartoon were, as Leemput's copy shows, faithfully carried out in the painting; but in the latter the face was afterwards turned to the full front view familiar to us in the many copies of the King's portrait which so long pa.s.sed as works of Holbein, on the strength of reproducing his own painting. There is no evidence that he ever again painted Henry VIII. or that he executed any replica of this portrait. The old copy at Windsor Castle serves, however, to recall its details of costume; such as his brown doublet stiff with gold brocade and scintillating with the gleams of splendid jewels, his coat of royal red embroidered with gold thread and lined with ermine to match the wide collar; his plumed and jewelled cap; as also the huge gems on collar, pendant, rings, and the gold-hilted dagger in its blue velvet sheath.

But Holbein's own portrait of Henry VIII.--as shown by the original chalk study from life now in the Munich Gallery (Plate 32)--may in all sobriety of speech be called a stupendous work. Looking at this marvellous drawing and picturing to one's self those cheeks informed with pulsing blood, those lips with breath, those eyes with blue gleams,--it is easy to understand that Van Mander was using no hyperbole when he said that the painting on the wall of the Privy Chamber made the stoutest knees to tremble. It was literally, as he said, "a terrible painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the most part travestied Holbein's work give any true conception. Many a man could paint cloth-of-gold and gems; but only once and again in the centuries comes a man who can thus paint, not alone the mane and stride of the lion, but the fires that light his glance, the roar rushing to his lips. To look long into these eyes that Holbein had the genius to read and the firmness to draw, is to feel one's self in the grip of an insatiable, implacable, yet leonine soul; a being who, to borrow the matchless description of Burke's political career, is "parted asunder in his works like some vast continent severed by a convulsion of nature; each portion peopled by its own giant race of opinions, differing altogether in features and language, and committed in eternal hostility with one another." And so long as the great drama of Tudor England enthrals the minds of men, hard by Shakespeare's supreme name must be read the name of the painter in whose pages the actors in that drama have been compelled themselves to declare themselves.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 32 KING HENRY VIII (_Life-study; probably for the Whitehall Painting_) _Chalks. Munich Collection_

To crown the King's pride, and to the no less intense delight of the whole nation which saw in this event the rainbow of every promise, at Hampton Court, on the 12th of October, 1537, Queen Jane Seymour gave birth to the son who was to reign so briefly as Edward VI. And it was doubtless in connection with this happy circ.u.mstance that the King commissioned Holbein's design for a truly royal piece of goldsmith's work. This drawing, generally known as "the Jane Seymour cup," is at Oxford, in the Bodleian Library (Plate 33).

No sketch of the artist's powers would be even barely complete without a realising sense of their versatility. And in this design Holbein has more than equalled the highest achievement of his great contemporary, Benvenuto Cellini, at this time in the service of the French Court. The initials of the King and Queen, H. and J., and the exceedingly judicious motto of the latter--"Bound to obey and to serve"--are recurring devices. But it is in the originality and unflawed beauty of the whole--the springing grace of outline, the taste and cunning with which flowers of gold naturally bloom into gems and pearls, the combination of freest, richest fancy with every restraint of a pure taste--that the perfection of this little masterpiece consists.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 33 DESIGN FOR "THE JANE SEYMOUR CUP"

_Bodleian Library_

In the midst of all the public rejoicings, the Te Deums, feasts, and bonfires, came the thunderclap of the young mother's death. Some negligence had permitted her to take cold, and on the twelfth day after his coveted heir was born, Henry VIII. was once again a widower. The Court went into deepest mourning until the 3rd of February. But Thomas Cromwell was very shortly authorised to take secret steps to ascertain what Princess might most suitably fill the late Queen's vacant place and strengthen the a.s.surance of an unbroken succession.

Choice fell at first on a Roman Catholic--Christina, the sixteen-year-old widow of Francis Sforza Duke of Milan, who had died in the autumn of 1535. The upshot of private inquiries was that Holbein was sent over to Brussels in March, 1538, to bring back a portrait of this daughter of Christian of Denmark and niece of Charles V. And although the painter had but three hours in which to do it, he did make what Hutton described as her "very perffight" image; besides which, said the envoy, the portrait previously despatched, though painted in all her state finery, "was but s...o...b..red."

From this "perffight" painting, which could not have been more than one of his portrait studies, he afterwards completed that full-length oil painting which is worthy to rank with his great Morett portrait. By the kindness of the Duke of Norfolk, who has lent it, this beautiful work is now in the National Gallery (Plate 34). But unhappily for its best appreciation, to my thinking at least, it hangs at one side and in too close proximity to the bold colouring of "The Amba.s.sadors"; so that its own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its l.u.s.ty neighbour. It is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand by itself in the usual inane gallery of women's portraits.

Hutton tells us that the painter who "s...o...b..red" 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 embarra.s.sment, in the first moments when he saw her.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 34 CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, d.u.c.h.eSS 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 n.o.bleman 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."