In Our Time - Holbein at the Tudor Court

Episode Date: October 15, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) during his two extended stays in England, when he worked at the Tudor Court and became the King's painter. Holbein created some of the most significant portraits of his age, including an image of Henry VIII, looking straight at the viewer, hands on hips, that has dominated perceptions of him since. The original at Whitehall Palace was said to make visitors tremble at its majesty. Holbein was later sent to Europe to paint the women who might be Henry's fourth wife; his depiction of Anne of Cleves was enough to encourage Henry to marry her, a decision Henry quickly regretted and for which Thomas Cromwell, her supporter, was executed. His paintings still shape the way we see those in and around the Tudor Court, including Cromwell, Thomas More, the infant Prince Edward (of which there is a detail, above), The Ambassadors and, of course, Henry the Eighth himself.WithSusan Foister Curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British Painting at the National GalleryJohn Guy A fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeAndMaria Hayward Professor of Early Modern History at the University of SouthamptonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com. uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, Hans Holbein the Younger was born in Bavaria in 1497 and died in London in a plague academic, epidemic, in 1543. While at the court of Henry VIII, he created some of the most significant and celebrated portraits of his or any age. Warn of Henry at Whitehall Palace was said to make visitors tremble at its magic.

Others of Anna Cleaves encouraged Henry to take her as his fourth wife, a decision Henry quickly regretted, and for which her supporter Thomas Cromwell was executed. His paintings still shape the way we see those in and around the Tudor Court, including Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Moore, the infant Prince Edward, the French ambassadors, and of course Henry the Eight himself. With me to discuss Holbein at the Tudor Court are Susan Foister, curator of early Netherlandsish German and British painting at the National Gallery, John Guy, a fellow of Clare College University of Cambridge, and Maria Hayward, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton. John Guy, what was the state of the Tudor Court when Holbein first arrived in England in 1526?

When Holbein arrives in the autumn of 1526, the biggest power broker at Henry's Court is the great Cardinal Woolsey. For the last 12 years, he's been the King's Chief Minister. He works closely with Henry. Henry is in charge, but Woolsey has a great latitude and many things he can do, particularly where domestic policy is concerned entirely on his own. Another important influence is Thomas Moore. He's not yet the Lord Chancellor, that comes later.

But in those earlier years, he has been Henry's secretary. He's been one of the closest people to the king. He knows Henry's mind better than most people. Now, when Holbein arrives, we've reached the moment of the great first revolution at Henry's court because the autumn of 1526 is when he falls in love with Anne Boleyn. That will have cataclysmic consequences,

the divorce from Catherine of Aragon, eventually the fall of Walsy within three years and all that follows. The other big revolution is in foreign affairs and this directly affects Holbein too because Henry for some six years has been allied with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, the ruler of Spain, the ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands. And they have been allied against Francis I of France.

And the idea was that Charles would invade France from the south and Henry from the north. France would be partitioned. Henry would be made king of France, which would mean he would hold northern France, but he would be crowned in Paris. but in the early months in February of 1525, Charles Vresoundingly defeats Francis I at the Battle of Pavia in northern Italy. He won't share his victory with Henry. Henry and Charles fall out. The result is that Henry turns to France, and a diplomacy with France begins,

which, by the time that Holbein arrives, involves the planning of a great conference in the spring of 1527, for which a special banqueting house and theatre are built. And when Holbein arrives, his first job that we have documentary evidence for is to paint scenery for that event. Who were his patron briefly on this first visit? There were two visits. So this is the first visit.

Who are his main patrons? Holbein does not arrive in England, as it were, without a recommendation. He comes with a letter from Thomas More's great friend, Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great Northern European humanist. And more, we still have this letter, Moore writes back to Erasmus and says, My dear Mr. Rasmus, your artist's friend is the most wonderful painter, but I'm afraid that he won't find England a very fertile ground,

although I'll do my very best to make it as little baron as I can. And of course, by this more meant, Moore was a genuine art connoisseur, unlike Henry, who was a consumer of culture. But Moore knew that Holbein had something special, but of course the English then were not into portraiture. They were into tapestries, they were into fine, the gold and silver plate on all of that.

Now, what Holbein finds is that he probably through the Moore connection, possibly through Moore's brother-in-law John Rastell, with whom Holbein works on the scenery painting, Holbein gets this job at Greenwich. Painting the ceiling of the theatre. And painting a plat, as it was called, a battle scene in which Henry had led his troops to victory in a rather minor skirmish outside Terrain in northern France in 1513.

But he gets paid for doing this. And he makes his mark. But he makes his mark. And this is temporary painting. This is a theatre which is up for the event. And then it's all destroyed afterwards. As eventually scenery is. But of course he makes his mark.

And the master of the revels, the comptroller of the household, Sir Henry Guilford, who is in charge of this work at Greenwich, commissions a portrait. of himself and his wife. More commissions a portrait of himself. He commissions a family group portrait of his family set in their house at Chelsea, and it rolls on from there.

Maria Hayward, what do we know of Holbein's life before his arrival in England in 1526, when he would be about 28, 29? He's born in Augsburg, which is a free imperial city, so part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the virtue of being born in a city like that is that it is wealthy so that there is a good pool of individuals

and communities that would want to commission art from an individual like Holbein. And he was born to a great painter. His father, Holbein, the elder, and his brother, Ambrosius Holbein, the younger's brother, was also a fine paint who died quite young. Can you talk about the atmosphere in which we have,

there's no proof that he's. father taught him. It seems natural that he should be in this studio. There's two brilliant boys and a father, and his father was very, very successful and very productive. So what would he learn? Well, his father was a very talented individual, and he had a variety of skills. I think that's one of the key things that comes out when we look at Holbein's work in England. So his father was a portrait painter, but he also produced religious paintings, but much more interestingly, potentially, he was also a goldsmith. And he produced a portrait painter. He produced a portrait painter. He produced a He produced designs for goldsmiths to work from.

He produced stained glass. And I suppose potentially the most exciting thing at this period, illustrations for printed books. If you're thinking about how important the printing press is already and is going to become during the course of the 16th century, then providing illustrations for text is going to be a very significant way of making your mark on society. So before he's 20 years old,

we can assume with some authority, He had extraordinary detailed grounding in how to do a great number of things. Absolutely. He's a really genuinely sort of renaissance craftsman in that sense. And we see him working as a consequence with a variety of other craftsmen who specialised in other genres when he comes to England too. Now he and his brother moved off to Basel and that maybe went to other plays. Basel, why did they choose Basel? Again, he's quite a young man there. It's another vibrant city and one of the key things that,

would have attracted them is that it was an important centre for the printing trade. So this really makes you realise how important that side of their working lives was. We tend to think of the portraits, but producing material for printers was going to be very significant. So we move there for the work? Yes, I think so. It's both the working opportunities. Also, Basel has a guild of painters. So in that sense, there are other artists that they could become part of a community with.

And it's one of the crossroads of Europe cultural, isn't it? Absolutely. So a lot of people are passing through, scholars or others are there and so on. So he's in a much bigger pool than Augsburg. Absolutely. And both of them are very much focused on the sort of the southern half of Europe. So they're looking down towards Italy. And as you say, that part of Europe. So it's culturally, it's very exciting, intellectually, very exciting place to be. What record do we have of the work he did in Basel? What are the most important things he did while he was in Basel for those few years?

He produces quite a variety of works. and some of the sorts of things that we don't see when he comes to England. So paintings on the outside of properties, so big murals. He produces work for the Chamber of Commerce. And again, very much reflecting their trading interests and aspirations. The mercantile classes were very good patrons right the way through for his father, right? Yes, absolutely. But also a variety of religious paintings, so both private religious commissions,

but also commissions for parish churches, whether those might be altar pieces or stained glass windows. So we can see that also there's the secular side to his work, but also a strong strand of religious commissions. Can you pick out a couple of the most remarkable things he did as a very young man in Basel? Oh, one will do. I think potentially one of the most exciting things

are the set of prints he produces about the dance of death, which in itself was a fairly accepted idea, but it's what he brings to that idea. In particular, you see death escorting individuals from all walks of life and all statuses. That is the skeleton. Absolutely, very much. So taking them to their death.

And so, for instance, with the wealthy man, the merchant, you see death taking him and his money. So there's a slightly satirical edge to these images. But he was painting altarpieces, he was painting great religious icons there, which proved difficult when he went back. later on, but we'll come to that. Susan Foister, how did,

he arrived in England at the Tudor Court, which John's described. He had to adapt his work. Now, John raised the point, which I didn't follow them, because I like to follow it with you. Why were portraits of individuals, as a thing from, as it were, portraits of Christ? Why were they so unfashionable?

Why did people not want them? It's a vain period in our history. Why did they not want portraits? I think we can't be sure that people at the Tudor Court didn't want portraits, they would have seen some great portraits, particularly those who travelled to Europe, but they didn't have any great portraitists available in London at the time that Holbein arrived.

So there was an opportunity, I think, for him that he seized pretty immediately. And also he'd sent ahead of him a sort of calling card. We've heard that Erasmus was his patron in Basel and had written letters of recommendation to people in England like Thomas Moore and Archbishop William Wareham. So in 1523, Holbein had painted this remarkable portrait of Erasmus as a humanist in his study,

but also full of Renaissance decorative details, sort of thing that people in England got very excited over. What sort of beautiful? 1520s. Well, behind in the background of this portrait is a very elaborate Renaissance pilaster, which is decorated with a rather beautiful woman's head. So it was a detail he'd taken from quite a crude woodcut in an architectural book,

and he had translated it into a most beautiful piece of painting. And that was known as antique work in England in the 1520s, and we've heard about the decorative work that Holbein produced at Greenwich, and that was actually covered in this type of. of antique work. So anyone who'd seen that portrait of Erasmus, and we know that at least one version, was sent to England,

would have got an idea of what Holbein could do and of what Portraiture could do. It's a very, very expressive portrait of this elderly humanist. And I think that would show what Holbein might be able to do. Moore was very active on Holbein's behalf, though, wasn't he? He was worried that Erasmus had said, the arts were freezing in Basel. He was worried how warm and profitable it was going to be for Holbein

when he arrived in England. So one of the things that he could do was to give him commissions himself that showed the range of what Holbein was capable of beyond decorative painting. Because from the beginning he wrote back to Erasmus saying he is a wonderful painter. And something like would he'll find barren soil here in England?

He was worried. It's difficult to interpret that remark, I think. On the one hand, you could say, well, it represents the fact that people in England were not commissioning a lot of work, were not appreciative of what artists like Holbein could do. On the other hand, he may have been talking about the situation at the court where actually Henry VIII was already employing a lot of painters, and Holbein had to work alongside them when he was making his decorative paintings at Greenwich. What were these paintings, scenery as well as in Greenwich's portrait?

They would have been painting the decorative work, gilding the busts of Roman emperors that decorated the theatre at Greenwich. But not many of them could have worked on the scale that Holbein did. They didn't sort of think behold a genius, did they? Artists at that time weren't regarded terribly highly. I think Holbein had to show what he could do. He came to England, almost certainly with the ambition to be a court artist. and he showed what he could do as a decorative artist, but then he had to show what he could do as a portrait painter,

painting this wonderful portrait of Thomas Moore in furs and velvets, and this extraordinary portrait of the whole family of Thomas Moore, a life-size painting that's disappeared now that was painted on canvas and showed the whole family at home in Chelsea. And then he went back to Basel, partly to renew his citizenship.

He had to do that every two years, and partly he was married by then had a child. Presumably I went to see them as well, and see what work there was in Basel. But there was upheaval in Basel, as I understand it, John Guy. The Reformation had 1517, it struck, but the Lutherans were iconoclastic. They were breaking religious images,

and there was a man who made part of his living from making religious images. This was not good news. Yeah, there was a great iconoclasm, really, beginning in 1529. So in 1532, Holbein comes back to England. What's, of course, very interesting, is that by then there's been a complete change in the environment.

The divorce has come to the fore. Woolsey has been removed because he was unable to get Henry's divorce from the Pope. Henry has turned to new council, and those counsel come from inside the Berlin Affinity, the Berlin connection. And there's also a revolution in Henry's thinking about monarchy, and this will also come to very much determine the shape of Holbein's future career, because the new councillors of Henry, people like the man who will become Archbishop Cranmer, Thomas Cranmer from Cambridge,

Edward Fox, provost of kings in Cambridge, they say to Henry, you're going about this divorce, it all the wrong way. You should start from your own imperial power, your own power in church and state. And they came up with a dossier which they showed to Henry, which he thought was absolutely amazing, noting it with approbation in 46 places in his own hand. And the ideas behind this were two. Henry was a sovereign ruler in his kingdom, accountable to no external power. He was, as it were, an emperor, as they said, in his kingdom.

And secondly, right from the beginning in this argument is that he is the head of the church in England. He is Christ's deputy on earth. Can we just make a slightly wrong reference to what is happening in Basel? I mean, this is the smashing of the idol, take the Lutheran extremism taking over, and he could not find enough work. It was as simple as that. So he chanced his arm again back in London, which had not been terribly successful for him,

but he came back because it was better than Basel. I mean, one of the interesting things that Susan or Maria might know better than I do is the extent to which Holbein had actually had, if you like, a financially successful career of Basel. My impression was that he was successful but not successful enough. And his original reasoning actually in coming to England was that he'd had no joy in France. And therefore he really wanted to work at a royal...

Royal Court because that is where he thought. I mean, eventually Leonardo da Vinci works for Francis the first. Who keeps the Mona Lisa in his bathroom? And who keeps the Mona Lisa in his bathroom? And this was the sort of and Leonardo was provided with a house and in a, if you like, money. This was this was the

life that a talented artist, you know, superlative artists really, really wanted to lead. Maria Hayward, what do we know of Holbein's work for Anne Boleyn and how did he get that work? Because he's going his great patron moor has gone. So he's had to build up a series of patrons.

Thomas Cromwellyn, he becomes very sympathetic. Guilford is still round, as I understand. He's still around to him. And he's opening doors all over the place. So he's got a collection of them. And as I understand it, when he's painting, and people are encouraged to come and watch him painting and see how good he is,

and at the end of it, say, can I have a smaller, cheaper one? And on he goes. So can you tell us about his work for Anne Boleyn? Well, on one level it's quite difficult to chart and patronage because we don't have any chamber counts. We don't have a privy purse book. So in terms of we don't have the evidence of actual expenditure. But we can look at it from the other way around

in terms of things that are produced that have a direct link to her. So for instance, we have designs of pieces of plate that are associated with her, which are very important. So these huge sculptural pieces of gold and silver gilt tableware. There are designs for the pageants, for her coronation. Now whether she commissioned them or they were commissioned potentially by the city of London, that's quite usually the

element, but obviously from their point of view they're wanting to produce something that is going to show their support for the new royal marriage. We can equally see him producing there's been much debate about one particular drawing that is described as being of Anne and it's a very informal drawing and in one level you might think this isn't the sort of in which you depict a queen. She's got her coiff on and a nightgown

which is a sort of very sumptuous but informal garment of the sort similar to the sort you see Christina Duchess of Mal I'm wearing. And there's this whole debate as to whether this is how a woman of Anne's status would have been portrayed. On the one hand, it's been suggested that you could see this as evidence of the slightly lax morals that she was accused of having

within her bedchamber if she's going to be painted by this or drawn like this. But on the other hand, of course. If she's queen, she can be drawn however she wants. And it stresses the importance of the bedchamber and the informality that would have been seen there. So it suggests that he's very quite quickly inside the court in the chambers. One doesn't suggest anything other than painting in the bed chamber.

He's in there. Susan Poister, we told that his great work, which is lost. There was a fire in Whitehall in 1698. but he painted the great Whitehall Palace mural. So can you tell us something about that and what we miss? Well, this was an enormous painting with four life-size figures in it in the Privy Chamber in Whitehall Palace, and we know that it terrified people who saw it.

Why did it terrify them? It was the image of Henry in particular that seemed to overwhelm them and terrify them, because it was a life-sized representation of the king almost as wide as he was tall and particularly, I think, because he's actually facing the front and looking out directly at those who dare to gaze on him. And that was something that was quite unusual

and unusual in the representation of a king. And there's Jane Seymour there who bore him his first male, his male heir and then died in childhood, and his father, Henry the 7th, and his mother Elizabeth. So it's the four of them there. It's the painting of a whole dynasty. It's the Tudor dynasty, father and son, and both of their wives. And Jane Seymour is obviously particularly significant in the year 1537

when we think this was painted, because of course that's the year in which he gives birth to Prince Edward who becomes the longed-for heir and then dies. Is it in this painting or because of this painting that Henry makes him the royal portrait painter or that Henry sees the advantage of being painted so magnificently by this artist? Does he say, yes, this is how I want to look and be because he dresses magnificently and so on? Well, we know that Holbein had already been referred to as the King's painter, as the royal painter before, but this was perhaps the opportunity for him to show that he could represent the king in this really compelling way.

And we know that Henry needed to send portraits of himself abroad to exchange them with other kings. And so he would have wanted, I think, a really powerful and compelling image of himself to send, as well as this wall painting, which not so many people would actually have seen and had access to. it was only going to be available to a few. But it's important to know that alongside those portraits, there's an inscription which also refers to Henry's power and his victory over the Pope, over the altars. John. I was going to say that the inscription and the monument,

it's often misleading to describe as an altar, it's a monument. And the significance of that goes back to the time of Appellis, the painter to Philip of Macedon, of course, the father of Alexander the greatest, how do you best perpetuate your reputation by a painting or by a monument in stone? And Henry says, I want both. And the inscription on the monument essentially says of Henry. On the wall. No, the inscription on the monument in the, in the, in this life-sized, almost three-dimensional, as it were, effect painting, says essentially of Henry that he's the Cassius Clay of kings.

You know, I am the greatest. You know, my father established the dinners. and peace after the wars of the roses, the son born to greater things, has subdued evil counsellors, reduced the Pope to his proper position, and brought true religion into the country. So the ideas that have fed into Henry's new view of monarchy, not just that he's an imperial king,

but also that he's Christ's deputy on earth, feed, if you like, subliminally, into this monument. Is this where we see most openly the way that flattery plays its part in portraiture? Well, the really interesting thing about Holbein and if you've seen or are going to see the Goya exhibition what immediately strikes me is that Holbein like Goya

had this talent for showing his antipathy to some of his patrons without the patrons ever ever noticing and of course the panel of the classic panel portrait of Henry the small view now in Madrid the most famous portrait of him wearing the cloth of gold and cloth of silver doublet with the cat with the feather in. It shows a brooding, threatening man

whose piggy eyes loud with suspicion, but Henry thought this was, you know, top stuff. Henry is depicted in the mural. So in other hand, can I just pause for a second, John? Because it's a good... Did Holbein know that Henry would think this was, to use your phrase, top stuff and play to that in Henry? I think he knew.

But the patron has great control. We know the left-hand side of the cartoon for the mural still survives. And we know that in the cartoon, Holbein had originally shown Henry in the three-quarter face. But in the mural, he's face on because Henry wanted, he's looking straight at the viewer, because Henry wanted to show that he had no physical defects whatsoever.

His, you know, the proportions of his body, he has an enormous codpiece because there lies the progeny of England. This is designed to perpetuate. It's designed to rebrand the monarchy in line with the new thinking of Henry's monarchy. archical imperial power and also the divine right of his kingship. How did he fare in the rumblings that were going on,

more than rumblings, disputes and anxieties and angst even that was going on about the reformation? Can you bring that to bear on the illustration for the front of the Coverdale Bible? Well, it was a Coverdale bit of a lot of Tyndall, we know all that. The Coverdale Bible. Absolutely. Because in parallel, of course. In English, you were. In parallel, in England.

since 1534 by Act of Parliament has been the Supreme Head of the Church. And really since 1531 he's seen himself as Christ's deputy on earth. But if he's Christ deputy on earth, he has to have a religion, he has to have a theology, and we need to know what it is. Beyond that, Henry's megalomania is such that he also sees himself as potentially intervening to end the Reformation divide. So he's looking for a middle way between Catholicism and Lutheranism. And for that reason, and this directly relates to Coverdale,

who of course is a Lutheran. Henry opens up negotiations in 1535 with the German Lutheran princes who are banned together as a unit called the League of Schmalcalden, the Schmalcaldic League. And this is where Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell, steps most firmly into the picture,

of course, because he is connected to Coverdale and effectively a secret patron of Coverdale. Holbein's painted Cromwell as early as 1530. and he comes back from Basel. What Cromwell, who Henry appoints as his so-called vicegerent in spirituals, which means he's deputy supreme head of the church under Henry's authority, Cromwell exploits the opportunity with these negotiations with the Lutherans to bring out a complete English

Bible, which is a completely new thing in England. There has never been a complete English Bible. It's been considered to be heretical. He first imports 1500 copies of Coverdale's Bible from almost certainly Cologne. Then he gets one of his sidekicks to print an English edition and he gets Holbein to do the title page. Now that title page tells everything we need to know about Henry's view of his kingship. Henry sits immediately under the name of God in Hebrew letters at the top in majesty, doling out the Bible to the bishops and to the nobles with Cromwell standing behind the bishops to give them a shove. And in the panels, in the boxes at the side, you have illustrations from the Old and New

Testament showing how the Word of God is, as it were, a super sacrament embracing everything else. And this is the essence of Henry's religion that the Word of God was a super sacrament and he gave it out to his people. Yes, we haven't time to go into whether it was Coverdale's Bible or a lift from Tyndall. We'll do that. It is lifted. It is lifted. It is lifted. Straight lift from candle. Yes. And that is why. We'll have much to move on. It's another programme. I agree. It's a bit of an obsession

with me, but still. Maria Heard, he's the King's painter in in fact, he's got his name, and he's really at the middle of everything. Now, we've talked about the painting in the bedcham, we've talked about the Thomas Cromwell and the first Bible, official Bible, in the English

language, and so on. So there's the reformation, there's the relationship with the court, and so on. What does that tell us about? But him, Holbein, is he tells us he doesn't seem to get burnt at all, does he? He isn't fired. He isn't executed. He keeps his head when all about her losing theirs, isn't he? Yes, he's remarkably adaptable in that sense. I think maybe the lessons he learned in Basel have served him in good stead in terms of how to balance the path between different religious views, different political views. And he's a man of great talent. And I think Henry, Henry sees that and knows that he wants to exploit that.

But we're at this stage, and Donna's told us very graphically, where he seems to be making his own reputation inside the court and outside the court on a much bigger scale. I mean, let's say it's his stride, he's making money properly, which it wasn't before, the key is giving him an annual wage of 30 pounds, but other people are coming in and so on and so. Can you flesh that out a bit more than I've done?

In terms of his career? Yeah. Yes, we see a wonderful, combination of portraits for key individuals. He's sent on various ambassadorial trips in relation to Henry's quest for a fourth wife. And of course, that's where his language skills are going to be incredibly useful in terms of speaking. Various forms of German are going to be useful. I think one of the things that's particularly exciting about his work is also the things that he produces for the king in terms of jewellery designs. We see designs combining the king and Anne Boleyn's initials, for example.

So when that marriage is and that sort of relationship is at its absolute height, we can see it embedded into the work that Holbein produces. So yes, he can cover a huge variety. And I think that's what makes him so attractive to the king. To take that first part of what Maria said there, Susan a bit further, Henry wanted a new wife and you didn't know what these people looked like. So he sent Holbein to bring him paintings back to say what they looked like. Can you give us some idea? I think there were four people he painted, four women he painted. Yes.

But two important, Christina and Anne of Cleve. So to bring back a portrait, the king was to look at them and he'll say, I'll try that one. Yeah, so in 1538 and 1539, Holbein went on many missions to France, in particular, to Duren where Anne of Cleves and her sister Amelia were living. but the trip about which we know most and from which one of these portraits survives is in March 1538 when he sent to Brussels to take the portrait of the 16-year-old widow Duchess of Milan, Christina of Denmark. And this is one of the times in Holbein's life,

which is actually quite well documented, so people write home telling us exactly what he did and how he went about taking this portrait. So we know that at one o'clock he was given a sitting with Christina of Denmark and he was there for three hours. Now this is actually quite unusual because in London he would have been easily able to have access to Henry and courtiers. In Brussels he was going to have one opportunity to take this portrait.

So he probably made a series of drawings and then brought them back and worked up a portrait. But we know whatever he came to. back with, Henry was thrilled because he set musicians to play all day long. So even if it was only a drawing of her... Because of the portrait of Christina. Whatever he brought back. A drawing of her face, maybe a drawing of her hands, which was supposed to be beautiful. All of this was then incorporated into a full-length, life-size portrait that must have thrilled Henry again because he kept it in his collection even after the marriage negotiations broke down. But the 16-year-old would have turned him

down and we'd come to Anne of Cleves again painted by Holbein again brought back and looking very when you look at the pen he's looking very handsome at the very least and so on and that was she was taken up as it were taken on by Henry and

then as soon as you saw her he didn't like her he didn't fancy her but there's more to this than meets the eye no one thought that Holbein had misrepresented Anne of Cleves and many people said that she was actually quite beautiful, perhaps not exceptionally, but quite beautiful. And of course,

he did two portraits of her, a larger one on parchment, and then a smaller one, which is a miniature, which was probably for Henry's eyes only. But there were no repercussions against Holbein for the way that he had, if you like, represented Anne.

The repercussions were against Cromwell. And this was because Cromwell, Henry believed, had misrepresented, and Manned marital status, that is whether or not she had been betrothed to the Duke of Lorraine's son and that was an issue.

But when Anne arrived, Henry just didn't like her and then on the wedding night he said basically he felt her belly and breasts when decided that she was no maid and that basically made him temporarily impotent. I've asked a really, really trivial question.

Do you think he would have liked her if she had taken a hat off and hadn't dressed like that. I mean, she was very heavily accused as being terribly badly, uglyly dressed and I've got a waver from my left, Susan. Well, we know that the English ambassadors did not like the way she dress, particularly they didn't like her headdress. They didn't like these German-style headdresses. So I think you can see what Holbein did with the headdress and the clothing, particularly in the little miniature, which, as John says, was probably for Henry's eyes only in this little ivory

Tudor Rose case, that he diminishes the headdress, and he makes us see her face, and it's a frontal portrait as with the portrait of Christina, so Henry could see all possible defects, and the headdress was actually minimised. So eventually, by, Thomas Cromwell got the blame for this, Holbeye, wasn't blamed for perhaps misrepresenting her, which, so Cromwell went the way of all flush. Can you just briefly, Maria, tell us about Henry the painting that he did, so meticulous, so extraordinary of the clothes.

Henry wanted to be the best dressed prince, king at his court, actually the best dressed king in the world. He spent, he spent a king's ransom on clothes. And Holbein painted them meticulously. So we know about this gold threaded with gold

and the lapis of Zuli and all that sort of stuff. Yes, Henry very much believed in the concept of royal magnificence. which meant you wore cloth of gold, you wore purple silk, you wore sable, and Holbein is... And you were materials that no other person was allowed to wear. Yes, yes, they were exclusively the preserve of the king

and his immediate family. But the king could allow those around him to wear them if he'd so chose. So, for instance, in that portrait of Sir Henry Guilford, he's wearing cloth of gold in his doublet because he is the king's personal friend, so he's allowed to with permission. But that of permission, of course, could be taken

away. And that's what's so wonderful about the paintings that we get a sense of the layers that a man wore at this point. So Henry is a big man, but some of that is his clothing. We get a sense of the opulence. When Susan mentioned the use of antique work, we can see lots of metal thread embroidery applied to the clothes in those antique styles. And a huge shoulders of Joan Collins' shoulders. Absolutely huge shoulders. So we really do get a sense of the sort of the sumptuous wealth of his clothing. One of the difficulties, though, with Holbein's paintings is that the clothes often actually get repeated,

so they just give us a sense of the same set of clothes from the small portrait that's in the Tieson collection, then in the Whitehall mural, and then in the later full-length versions. So that is the one difficulty. He paints them incredibly well, but he just gives us the one set over and over again. Susan Poitza, one of the pains of his,

I mean, Henry the Aiton, but one of the places, is that is astonishing, is the ambassadors, these two ambassadors. And this brings to his brilliance with objects, apart from his trump doy of the skull, which streaks across the floor. If you stand to the right, you see it as a skull, it looks like almost a sword going across the floor. Can you talk about that a little? Because he did that very often, didn't he?

He would contextualize his subjects by objects from the work they did. Yes, I mean he would often show his subjects with books perhaps or with particular types of jewellery, devotional crosses in some cases. But there's no portrait in which there are quite so many objects, as in the ambassadors' two shelffuls of objects, globes, astronomical instruments, musical instruments and books. And the question, of course, is why so many objects in that particular, painting. There may be particular meanings associated with the two subjects. On the left, the French

ambassador Jean de Dantfield, because the globe has, the earthly globe, has been customized to show his French chateau policy, so that clearly had a significance for him. And then on the other side, on the right, is Georges de Selle, the young unconsecrated bishop who came, it seems on a seat, mission to Henry's court. And he's shown next to a Lutheran hymn book. And the interesting thing about that is that it looks completely convincing as a book and you can compare it to the originals. But when you do that comparison, the two pages that Holbein shows next to each other are not next to each other in the original. So they must have been deliberately selected to be in that painting. And briefly, what made him put the trumped-dye skull on the

floor? What made him do that? What do you mean do that? There are many portraits of this period in which people want to signify their own mortality and there's a crucifix signifying salvation in the future and hidden, semi-hidden and top left-hand corner. I think Holbein is just going one better than anyone else that he's concealing an image of the skull on the front in order to show off his cleverness as an artist, but also to give his patrons and their guests a sense of joining in a game, a theatrical sense of illusion. Unfortunately, we're coming towards the end,

and I want to ask a couple of broad questions for all of you. I think with you, John. How was his reputation at the time, and what is his reputation now? His reputation at the time, by the time of his death was really very high, didn't translate into the sort of income that he might like to have earned. He was earning, say, four times what Henry's Taylor was earning. We know that for a fact.

But he was actually paid three pounds less than Lucas Horanbault, his rival at Henry's Court, who was a famous miniaturist. But by Holbein's death, he is known throughout, if you like, the world of the court, and that, of course, includes people from the country who come into court. The court is much wider than a narrow group of people. It's up to sort of 1,500 people. Of course within 30, 50 years He is celebrated and people are starting to collect him

He has no rival before Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver And probably as a court artist Who make doing larger canvases not before Van Dyke But of course at the time artists were still valued relatively lowly in esteem They were better than artisans But they were not They didn't have the Damien Hearst superstar status

that artists have today. Murray Hayward, what is his status today, Holbein? He is seen as an exceptional portrait painter. I think that's the thing that really reflects, it sort of really dominates our perception of him. And of course he gives us the chance to look at Henry's court. Henry, his family, the court, and then the wider network into London,

both the Hanseatic merchants and the merchants. So we can actually see this group of 16th century individuals as well as read their words and look at where they live. Is there a sense, as David Hockley once said, that the portrait of Henry VIII made the Tudors in the sense. We look at the Tudors through that portrait. That's our first interest. I think that's absolutely right.

I think that shows the power of that image. And it's an image of a man without a crown and without robes. And it's an image of tremendous power that endures today. Well, thank you very much. This is Susan Foister, John Guy, and Maria Hayward. Next week we'll be talking about Simone de Beauvoir. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now

with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what did we miss out that was significant? We probably missed out the Solomon and Sheba miniature. And I mean Susan's out... Where he is Solomon. Where he is Solomon. That's, although it's small, it's what, 23 by 18 centimetres. It's absolutely exquisite.

We now know, I think, Susan will know better than I do, that the blue background is lapis laduli, it's ultramarine and not simply as you're right, which means it was a very expensive piece. It shows Henry as Solomon receiving the homage of the Queen of Sheba, and the Queen of Sheba was an analogue for the church. If you said you were Christ deputy on earth, you needed a model. If you said you were an imperial king who acknowledged no superior outside the realm,

you needed a model. The model for sovereignty is Constantine and Justinian, the late Roman emperors who also had authority over the church and could summon church councils. The model for Henry as Christ's deputy on earth are David and Solomon, who are not just rulers. They are also quasi-priest kings. They are rulers in a covenant with God. And Henry saw himself that way. Is there any sense that Shiba might be unballoon? I don't think that we've really got enough evidence to...

justify that, but it's certainly really beautiful, precious object. And I suppose that brings us out into the broader question of Holbein's miniatures as a cluster in that we've got. Henry had a miniaturist or the family of the Horamboot, but then Holbein moves into this area and he paints a broader social group.

Yes, I think that's probably something that we didn't have time to talk about, the wide range of people he painted people obviously who were very powerful but people who came from the country to the court or merchants, English merchants and German merchants as well and the great range in the types of portraits that he produced for them one of the portraits that I feel particularly enthusiastic about

is one in the National Gallery. The Lady with the Squirrel, as it's known, Anne Lovell as we think she is somebody with powerful courtier friends He took a trip out of London, was it, to Norfolk? What was the attraction there? She wouldn't come to him? Well, the family were based in Norfolk, so we don't know for certain where that portrait was painted. But what I think is so interesting about it is the way that he encapsulates something for the family in terms of heraldry,

but something about the personality of the woman. So she's holding a pet squirrel, but we know that squirrels featured on. on the coat of arms of the Lovell family. And the Starling may be a reference to East Harling, which was there. Yes. Can I just ask you want to for our listeners before we're interrupted with an offer of tea

that nobody would be able to resist? How highly is he thought of in one of your briefs? You said he's now regarded as the best celebrated as the best portrait painter that there is. I mean, he's put on a very high pedestal. Do you hold to that? Absolutely. I think it's the characterisation of

of people that he does that travels beyond the confines of his time. We didn't get on the most looking at concede to men's souls, which he said, didn't they? Blast, we didn't get into that. Yeah, I think women's as well, and I think that's one of the things that's interesting about him, that portraits of women normally tend to conform more to the ideals of the time, I think with Holbein much less. And you see it in the extraordinary drawings, which we didn't have time to talk about, as well as the painted portraits.

The little details you can pick up on. So going back to the Anne Lovell painting, she's wearing that amazing little lettuce cap, so the little white fur cap that fits around her hood, sorry, around her head. And it was, we know from the Lyle letters that this was one of the desirable female accessories at the time in London.

And Honolyle is in Calais. She wants one. She's been told that the women at court are wearing them. Clearly they're wearing them in Norfolk as well. And so here we have, you know, again, it's that sense of you can explore them on all of these different levels. And the drawing went for next to nothing, didn't they? They did, yeah.

They did. Yeah. They're making a new resistible offer. Here we are. There's Simon for the tea offer. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.uk slash radio 4.