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V.—Remarks upon Holbein's Portraits of the Royal Family of England, and more particularly upon the several Portraits of the Queens of Henry the Eighth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2012

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Extract

The papers which have been recently published in our Archæologia have established, and in some measure illustrated, the important fact in the history of art, that the great painter Hans Holbein died in the year 1543, eleven years sooner than his biographers had previously supposed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1866

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References

page 71 note a Vol. XXXIX. pp. 3 et seq.

page 72 note a For those of Henry VIII. attributed to him (but incorrectly), see my remarks in Archæologia, Vol. XXXIX. p. 31, corrected by Mr. Scharf's in p. 254; for those of Edward VI. pp. 20 et seq.

page 72 note b There was at Strawberry Hill a miniature assigned to the Duke of Richmond, of which an engraving (by R. Clamp) was published in Harding's Biographical Mirrour, 1794. The extraordinary costume offers no assistance towards its appropriation as a portrait: for the person is represented in a nightgown, open at the breast, and his head bound in a close cap or net-work which conceals his hair. At the sale of 1842 this miniature was sold for seven guineas and a half. It now belongs to C. S. Bale, Esq.

page 72 note c Archæologia, Vol. XXXIX. pp. 20 et seq.

page 72 note d In the elaborate list of Hollar's works, entitled “Wenzel Hollar, Beschreibendes Verzeichness seine Kupferstiche von Gustav Parthey. Berlin, 1853.” 8vo. this is No. 1465.

page 72 note e Ibid. No. 1549.

page 73 note a Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, 8vo. 1831, p. clxxviii.

page 73 note b At Wroxton in Oxfordshire is a portrait described as Mary, when Princess, holding a book, half-length. (Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, p. clxxv.) This picture, I am informed by Mr. Scharf, belongs rather to the following century.

page 74 note a “I have Katharine of Arragon, a miniature, exquisitely finished; a round on a blue ground. It was given to the Duchess of Monmouth by Charles II. I bought it at the sale of the Lady Isabella Scott, daughter of the Duchess of Monmouth.”—Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting. At the sale of 1842 it was sold for £53 8s.

page 74 note b Art Treasures in Great Britain, ii. 449.

page 75 note a Since the text was written I am informed that Sir John Boileau's is not the same as that which belonged to M. Wocher.

page 75 note b Miss Strickland, discussing the period of Anne Boleyne's birth, remarks that the date 1507 is given by Camden, but adds: “Lord Herbert, however, says expressly that Anne Boleyne was twenty years old when she returned from France in 1521, so that she must have been born about 1501.” (Lives of the Queens of England, edit. 1860, ii. 565.) Again, “Anne Boleyne must have been in her thirty-sixth year at the time of her execution, for Cavendish tells us that her brother Lord Rochford was twenty-seven when he was appointed of the King's privy chamber. This was in 1527. The Queen was probably about a year younger, calculating her age to have been fourteen when she went to France as maid of honour to the bride of Louis XI. and thirty-two at the time of her acknowleged marriage with the King.” (Ibid. p. 704.) But the mistress Boleyne who accompanied Queen Mary (Tudor) to France in 1515 is now believed to have been Anne's elder sister.

page 75 note c The Dance of Death, 8vo. 1833.

page 76 note a Photographs from the series in the Palace of Westminster are sold at the South Kensington Museum.

page 76 note b No. 61, page 200, of Albert Kraft's Catalogue de la Galerie au Belvédère à Vienne, 8vo. 1845. “Demi figg. Petite nature, Bois h. 2' 1 1 5½,” no date given. It is also engraved, Plate 16, of Stampart and Prenner's Prodromus, fol. 1735.

page 77 note a It was one of four miniatures, all still preserved in the Royal collection, which were attached to a jewel that is thus described in Vanderdoort's Catalogue:—

42. Item, a 4-fold little round Golden Jewel with a little pendent pearl hanging to it, which Jewel on the outside is enamel'd with the [Battle] of Bosworth fields between King Henry the 7th. and Crook-back Richard, on the other side of the Jewel the Red and White Roses join'd together upon some green ground. Within this Jewel are four Limn'd Pictures: one being King Henry the 7th., another being King Henry the 8th. and his Queen Jane Seymour, and King Henry [this should be Edward] the 6th., all without Christals. Which Jewel was given to the King by the Young Hilliard by the deceas'd Earl of Pembroke's means.—[From p. 112 of the Windsor MS.]

page 77 note b It is mentioned under the same designation in the Catalogue of the Antiquities and Works of Art exhibited at Ironmongers' Hall in 1861, p. 96. It is said to have come from the Seymour family, and to have been given by Charles, Duke of Somerset, to his granddaughter Elizabeth Wyndham, wife of the Right Hon. George Grenville.

page 77 note c Ellis's Original Letters, I.ii. 122.

page 78 note a A head in profile, etched by Hollar (Parthey, No. 1545), is attributed by Granger and others to Anne of Cleves, but probably only on a fanciful conjecture.

page 78 note b Parthey, No. 1546. “Cath. Howard, a miniature, damaged. It was Richardson's, who bought it out of the Arundelian collection. It is engraved among the Illustrious Heads, and by Hollar, who called it Mary Queen of France, wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.” (Walpole, in Anecdotes of Painting.) I do not find that Hollar misnamed it, for no name whatever is attached to his etching. Granger says that “Vertue took this head for that of Mary Queen of France. See Anecd. of Painting, vol. i. p. 95, 2nd. edition.” The modern historian of the Queens has associated it with the younger Mary Tudor; she says, “The portrait engraved by Houbraken with an axe, fasces [really a torch], and a mourning cupid, entitled Queen Katharine Howard, is indubitably the Princess Mary, about the age of 30. It is nearly a fac-simile in features, dress, and attitude, with her portrait in the family group at Hampton Court, only at a more advanced age.” (Lives of the Queens, edit. 1853, iii. 389.) But this is a groundless imagination.

page 79 note a See Mr. Scharf's remarks on this picture hereafter.

page 79 note b Called Jane Seymour by Dr. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, iii. 366. Waagen remarks that “Mary is here represented younger and prettier than Elizabeth.” The truth is merely this, that their names are misplaced as painted on the frame. In the same way Jane the Fool is misnamed “the wife of Will Sommers.” Will Sommers also accompanies Henry the Eighth and his children in a picture belonging to the Earl of Bessborough, engraved by F. Bartolozzi, K.A., 1800; and Henry the Eighth and his daughter Mary, in a picture at Althorpe, engraved by W. Holl in Dibdin's Ædes Althorpianæ, 1821.