On a recent visit to London’s National Portrait Gallery, I was struck by the Tudor room. There’s a palpable tension with family members glaring at each other across the space. Different generations take in the features of their unseen ancestors and size up their eager successors. Irony lies thick as Henry VIII commissions a desperate portrait of each new wife.
Hans Holbein (1497-1543) was a German artist who witnessed the birth of the English Reformation. When he moved to England in 1526, Holbein brought the European Renaissance with him and nine years later, he became King’s Painter to Henry VIII.
The portrait of Anne Boleyn in the Tudor room is accredited to Holbein – whether he truly was the artist remains uncertain, as after Boleyn’s death, Henry is thought to have destroyed all depictions of her. Most images of the queen are posthumous representations where artists have reattached her head to her shoulders and filled in the blanks. Her sharp black eyes however have survived, still piercing viewers today.
Holbein certainly painted Henry’s next wife, Jane Seymour, in 1536. In a show of modesty, her green eyes avoid direct contact with the viewer. She wears a traditional gable hood, contrasting the French hood favoured by the Boleyns. Powerfully, Seymour is as far distanced as possible from the woman who knelt, blindfolded, on the scaffold.
Henry’s next marital prospect rested precariously heavily on a portrait. In 1539, Holbein painted Anne of Cleves so the obese, ulcerated king could analyse his fourth wife’s appearance. (Is this where the origins of Hinge are to be found?) Although pleased with the portrait, Henry was disappointed by their first awkward meeting and their unconsummated marriage was annulled after six months. How far Holbein intentionally deceived Henry is debated but certainly, he places more focus on geometric form and rich decoration than Anne of Cleves’ individual features. Yet, with other sources attesting to her beauty, criticism can be turned to the King who most likely blamed Anne for his own impotence and humiliation. Regardless, this dried up Holbein’s commissions and he died of plague four years later, buried in an unmarked grave.
Holbein’s portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell too interested me on my visit. Hung side by side, their bodies face one another. Whilst More is testing and watchful, Cromwell seems to have a more insistent gaze, his stature appearing more solid. Their antagonism, what can be fittingly called a “face off” in this context, places viewers in the midst of the politics of 1535. Cromwell is attempting to persuade More into taking the Oath of Succession, thereby claiming the Church of England as the country’s religion. But More refuses and steps up to the block, and five years later, Cromwell also falls.
That this portrait-pair demonstrates the particular historical moment and points prophetically towards the shared fate of the figures reflects the room as whole. Time feels eschewed and persistent – a strange experience that can be felt only in the space itself.
“Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein” by lisby1 is marked with Public domain mark 1.0.