Hello and welcome to Talking Tudors, a fortnightly podcast about the ever-fascinating Tudor dynasty.

My name is Natalie Gruniger and I'll be your host and guide on this journey through 16th century England.

Are you ready to step through the veil of time into the dazzling and dangerous world of the Tudor court?

Without further ado, it's time to talk Tudors.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of Talking Tutors.

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Now, on to today's episode.

I'm thrilled to welcome Dr.

Elizabeth Goldring back to the podcast to chat about her latest book, Holbein Renaissance Master, which will be published in the UK on the 11th of November 2025 and in the USA on the 6th of January 2026.

You can, however, pre-order your copy today.

Elizabeth Goldring is an honorary reader at the University of Warwick and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society.

She's the author of Among Other Works, Nicholas Hilliard, Life of an Artist, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art.

Let's dive straight into our conversation.

Welcome to Talking Tudors, Elizabeth.

How are you?

Very well.

Thank you so much for having me back, Natalie.

Oh, this is so exciting and really exciting because we're going to talk about your wonderful new book.

So absolutely stunning new biography of Hans Holbein.

So I wanted to start by asking you when you first actually became interested in his story, in his life and work.

Well, funnily enough, my very first art history publication was on Holbein.

It was an article on his painting of Christina of Denmark, one of Henry VIII's would-be wives, which, of course, is now in the National Gallery.

And that was a short article that appeared in the Burlington Magazine back in 2002.

And just saying that out loud makes me feel so old.

But I think Holbein has been at the back of my mind ever since.

And it was probably in the mid-2010s when I was working on my book on Nicholas Hilliard that I first started to think seriously about maybe doing a bigger project on Holbein.

So I think we talked about when you interviewed me about my Hilliard book, Hilliard absolutely idolized Holbein and saw Holbein's career as a model for his own.

And so in the course of writing the book on Hilliard, I needed to do a certain amount of research on Holbein and was very surprised to discover that the most recent scholarly biography of Holbein was over 100 years old, A.B.

Chamberlain's amazing, but somewhat dated 1913 biography of Holbein.

So I think that perhaps planted the seed of an idea while I was working on the Hilliard book.

And that book, as you know, came out in 2019.

And I remember having a meeting with my editor a few weeks after it had been published.

And she happened to mention in passing that it had always been her dream to find a Holbein project.

And I suddenly thought, aha, maybe start finding here.

And of course, 2026 marks the 500th anniversary anniversary of Holbein's arrival in England.

So there just seemed to be a lot of reasons for a taking stock and a reassessment of Holbein's life and career.

And so, of course, I think most of our listeners or a lot of our listeners have probably heard about Hans Holbein.

I think if you spend time in the Tudor period, you certainly come across his incredible work.

But perhaps they don't know so much about his early years, his early life and his family.

So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure, absolutely.

But I suppose the first thing I should say is that there is an awful lot we don't know about his early years and his family, and probably a lot that we never can know.

So for example, Holbein's mother is almost a complete mystery.

We don't even know her first name.

Many women of the late medieval and early modern period, she has left virtually no trace in the historical record.

But some things that we do know, Holbein himself was born in about 1497 in Augsburg, which of course is now in Germany, but at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire.

He had an older brother called Ambrosius, born in about 1494, so roughly a three-year age difference between them.

Their father was a leading painter in Augsburg in the 1490s and early 1500s, specializing in sacred painting, but he turned his hand to all sorts of things.

He also provided designs for goldsmiths and for glaziers, things that Holbein himself would also go on to do in later years.

We know from documentary sources that the family, though based in Augsburg, actually traveled quite a lot.

The elder Holbein was in demand.

He and his workshop were in demand for commissions throughout the German-speaking land.

So we know from the documentary record that they would periodically up sticks and go to Frankfurt for a few months or go to Alsace for a few months to enable him and members of his workshop to complete commissions.

So the childhood, though based in Augsburg, would have been in many ways a peripatetic one and in some ways good training for what fate had in store for Holbein.

His father was a leading painter, as I mentioned, in Augsburg in the 1490s and early 1500s, but his fortunes seem to have gone off the boil a bit from 1510 or thereabouts onwards.

So in terms of Holbein's training, this sounds like a very talented family, by the way, because everybody's producing incredible works.

So what do we know about Holbein's training and where he learned his craft?

Well, again, there is an awful lot that we don't know and that we just have to surmise.

But I think the assumption has to be that both he and his brother Ambrosius would have had their initial training in draftsmanship and in painting from their father and from others in their father's workshop.

I suspect that the assumption from the moment the boys were born, or at least the hope, was that they would grow up to eventually become fully-fledged members of their father's workshop and to work alongside him and in due course to take over the workshop.

But as events transpired, that was not to be.

At some point between about 1512 and 1515, we don't know exactly when.

Both boys leave Augsburg, never to return or certainly never to return for any significant period of time.

And the immediate catalyst for that seems to have been this downturn in their father's fortunes from about 1510 onwards it's possible by looking at the documentary records of the income tax he was assessed to chart a precipitous drop in income from 1510 or so onwards and there's also a great deal of documentary evidence of various members of his workshop leaving to go do other things so it's difficult to know which came first you know Does he experience financial problems because the workshop is disintegrating or does the workshop disintegrate because he can't afford to pay anyone anymore?

But in any case, something seems to go horribly wrong in the Holbein workshop in Augsburg in about 1510.

And presumably his sons saw that the future for them there was not as bright as perhaps it at one point had seemed to be.

And so what does Holbein do after that?

And what are some of his early commissions as well?

Sure.

Well, Holbein first made a name for himself in Basel in Switzerland.

We find him and his brother Ambrosius in Basel by late 1515.

They may have arrived well before then.

We don't know exactly at what point they arrive in Basel.

We don't know if Basel was the intended destination when they left Augsburg or if they stopped in other towns and cities along the way and eventually sort of found themselves in Basel by chance.

We just, again, those are question marks and we may never have definitive answers to those questions.

But Holbein very quickly makes a name for himself as a young man in Basel in 1516, so he's just about 19 at this point and has possibly only been in Basel for a year or so.

We find him designing and signing title pages for Johannes Robin.

He was one of Basel's leading printers.

And of course, Basel itself is a leading center for print north of the Alps.

Also, in 1516, Holbein gets an incredibly high-profile portrait commission to portray Jakob Maier-Sumhausen, the newly elected mayor of Basel, and he commissions Holbein to paint himself and his wife paired portraits that form a marital diptych.

And unusually, Holbein signs both of those paintings with his initials, HH, which, strictly speaking, he shouldn't have done, shouldn't have been allowed to do because he wasn't yet a member of the Basel Painters Guild.

But this is one of many examples of occasions when Holbein seems to have been allowed to break the rules simply because he was A, very talented, and B, had very powerful patrons who could help him to circumvent Kesky rules.

So he very quickly makes a name for himself in Basel and also in this immediately surrounding German-speaking lands.

He spends a very fruitful period in Lucerne between about 1517 and 1519, then comes back to Basel, joins the Basel Painters Guild, gets married, starts putting down more and more roots in Basel and kind of becoming almost an honorary Basler.

And then in 1523, he gets the commission that will really change his life and launch him onto the international stage, give him a pan-European reputation.

And that commission is to portray Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the leading humanists of the day, and certainly the most famous humanist in Basel at that time.

Holbein creates two portrait types or templates for Erasmus, which were then designed for replication so that Erasmus could send copies and variations of these two types to humanist friends all over Europe, and also to powerful people whose patronage he hoped to attract.

So just for convenience, I, in the book, have referred to these two types as the thinking type and the writing type.

There's no evidence that Holbein ever used terminology like that, but I thought it just made it a little easier in the book to distinguish between the two.

So the writing type depicts Erasmus in profile at his writing desk, pen in hand.

The thinking type depicts Erasmus in three-quarter face, gazing contemplatively into the middle distance.

evidence.

And we know that as early as 1524, copies and variations on these two templates were making their way across Europe.

So in 1524, a version of the writing type goes to France, probably to the French king, Francois Premier.

Erasmus was trying desperately at this point to attract Francois's patronage.

He was hoping for some sort of gig at the French court.

And two versions of the thinking type go to England.

one to William Worm, Archbishop of Canterbury.

The other recipient is not explicitly named in the surviving sources.

I speculate in the book that Sir Henry Guilford, another friend of Erasmus's at the English court, might have been the recipient.

I found some very interesting documentary evidence in the form of an overlooked inventory of Guilford's goods that would certainly support the idea that he was the recipient of this version of the thinking portrait that went to England in 1524.

And so suddenly, with these portraits of Erasmus making their way across the continent.

Holbein goes from having a reputation that is very specifically rooted to Basel, Lucerne and the surrounding German-speaking lands to having an international reputation.

And so, Elizabeth, in 1526, we actually find Holbein in London, and it really is the beginning of a sort of new chapter for him.

So tell us a little bit about his time there, and I know this is his first trip, so what happens?

Who does he go and see?

Where does he stay?

What do we know?

Absolutely.

So in the summer of 1526, in August 1526, Holbein leaves his wife, his young family, his workshop, his guild behind in Basel and sets off to England equipped with some letters of recommendation from Erasmus who I should perhaps mention had lived in England for a number of years in his youth and still maintained very close ties with a number of very powerful, high-ranking figures at the Tudor court.

Now, we don't know how long Holbein was intending to be gone when he set off.

In the end, he would be gone for about two years, which was the maximum amount of time that the Guild permitted a leave of absence.

But that may not have been his intention when he set off.

We just don't know.

It is clear, however, that the chief motivation was financial.

One of Erasmus' letters of recommendation for Holbein makes reference to the fact that he's going to England in the hope of finding angels, which is a pun on the English coin of that name.

So Holbein, we know, reaches England in late 1526, probably late November, early December.

He makes a beeline for Chelsea for Sir Thomas More's house.

Sir Thomas More was an old friend of Erasmus's and probably his closest, dearest friend at the English court.

And conveniently, at this point in time, More was very, very close to the king and had a great deal of political patronage and artistic patronage to dispense.

So Holbein pitches up in Chelsea at Moore's house bearing a letter of introduction from Erasmus and probably also a portrait of Erasmus that he himself has painted.

It's probably a version of the thinking type devised a few years earlier.

Moore takes Holbein under his wing, promising in a letter to Erasmus to do his best to find work for Holbein.

And so he ends up commissioning portraits of himself and his family from Holbein and introducing Holbein to others in Erasmus' circle at the English court and others of importance, the court more generally.

And I think it would not be an overstatement to say that virtually all of the work Holbein gets during this first visit to England stems either directly or indirectly from Moore's patronage and introductions facilitated by Moore.

So is it during this first day that he comes to the attention of Henry VIII?

Yes.

Holbein seems to come to Henry's attention in the spring of 1527, so just a few months after his arrival in England.

And this is in the context of the Greenwich Rebels, which, as I'm sure many listeners will know, were a series of festivities staged at Greenwich Palace in May 1527 in front of a visiting delegation of French ambassadors.

And in the run-up to these festivities.

Holbein was one of many artists and craftsmen who were hired to produce ephemeral art and architecture for the festivities.

Holbein actually got two of the plum commissions for, The first was to devise and paint a celestial ceiling, which he collaborated on with Nicholas Kratzer, the king's astronomer and a good friend of Moore's.

And this painted celestial ceiling was designed to form the roof to a temporary theater in which various masks and plays were going to be performed for the king and visiting French ambassadors.

And the second commission that Holbein gets for the Greenwich festivities is to paint a large panoramic view of the Battle of the Spurs, which was, of course, a famous, relatively recent English military victory over the French.

And it seems pretty clear from the surviving documentary records that Henry was absolutely delighted with both of these.

We know that about six weeks before the revels were due to take place, Henry paid a visit to Greenwich Palace to see the celestial ceiling hoisted into place and to make sure he was happy with it.

So far as we can tell, he didn't request any changes or alterations.

Holbein must have been present on that occasion in case there were corrections to take note of.

Similarly, the Battle of the Spurs painting was deployed on the night of the festivities by the king as a prop in a piece of political theater.

So during a very lavish banquet in a specially built banqueting house, the painting was positioned such that those dining could not see it.

But when Henry led his guests out of the Banqueting Hall in the direction of the theater.

Once they had left the Banqueting Hall, he asked everyone to turn around and directed his French visitors' eyes to Holbein's painting, which was now visible affixed to the back of a triumphal arch, and thought it was absolutely hilarious to watch the faces of the hall when they see what is being depicted.

And so Henry, of course, is throwing down the cultural gauntlet here, saying, you know, look at what a talented painter I have at my disposal.

So Holbein clearly was on, or certainly Holbein's work, was on the king's radar from early on in his time in England.

And whether Henry caught what Holbein's name was or who Holbein was, we don't know.

But certainly the work that he created for the Greenwich Rebels seems to have caught the king's eye and everyone's eye.

All the eyewitness written accounts of these festivities make much of both the Celestial Ceiling and the Battle of the Spurs.

These were clearly the standout visual elements of the festivities.

Oh, how I would have loved to have seen that ceiling.

It sounds absolutely stunning.

I know.

That's one of the frustrating things with court festivals.

They were so important and so much time and money was lavished on them and the best artists of the day worked on them, but it was all designed to be ephemeral and to be thrown away like a stage crop.

So yes, we just have to use our imagination.

I know, I know.

And Greenwich Palace as well.

My goodness, what a loss.

And so presumably there are other artists, of course, at the Tudor court working there for Henry.

So do we know anything about how Holbein is actually getting on with some of these other artists?

We don't really know how he's getting on.

I suspect there may have been some tensions at times between Holbein as a foreign-born artist who's just passing through and some of the native-born artists.

So, for example, the most prestigious commissions for the Granite Troubles went to foreigners, Holbein and a Tuscan-born painter and sculptor called Giovanni Damagiano, who had come to England in the early 1520s at Cardinal Woolsey's invitation to do some work at Hampton Court and was still around in 1527.

So it was Giovanni de Maiano who got the commission to create a couple of triumphal arches and Holbein who gets the aforementioned painting commissions.

These two were paid vastly more than the native-born painters and stainers who helped them with the sort of dog's body work.

And so one can only imagine there may have been some tensions at times.

Of course, the evil May Day riots of 1517 were only a decade earlier.

They must have been a memory for some of those still working on the granite travels.

I mean, some of those who were assigned to help Holbein may have been amongst the rioters in 1517.

I should perhaps pause just to remind everyone that the evil May Day riots were an occasion when native-born craftsmen took to the streets of London to protest the influx of foreign-born craftsmen and artisans who, as they saw it, were stealing their jobs and their work.

And so, Elizabeth, you talked about the fact earlier that the guild that Holbein belonged to usually only allowed artists to be away for sort of two years or members to be away for a couple of years.

Is this why he decides to go back to the continent in 1528, or are there other reasons?

I suspect that's the main reason.

I mean, it's very striking from the documentary evidence that we know Holbein leaves Basel in late August 1526.

And the first evidence of him being back in Basel is late August 1528.

And it does really seem as though he cut it quite fine and tried to stay in England as long as he possibly could.

I suspect he may have been hoping that some sort of royal appointment might be offered to him.

I can imagine that after the success of his contributions to the 1527 Greenwich Rebels.

That he might have thought that some sort of royal invitation would be forthcoming.

It wasn't, at least not yet.

But one can imagine that he may have been holding on to the hope until the last possible moment that some sort of lucrative appointment at the Tudor court would be coming his way.

Yeah, I know.

It's strange that it didn't, isn't it?

There must have been, I don't know, a lot of competition perhaps at court for Henry's patronage or the work.

I'm curious.

I mean, I think, however, and this was something that I hadn't really taken on board until I was researching and writing this book.

I think that Henry, at this stage, isn't hugely interested in painting.

I think that that comes later in the mid to late 1530s.

But I think in the 1520s.

In terms of artistic patronage, he's interested in architecture.

He's interested in metalwork, plate and jewelry commissions.

He's interested in court festivals.

And of course, painting is a part of that.

But I don't think he's hugely interested in painting per se.

It's very interesting.

In about 1527, the Republic of Florence wanted to curry favor with both François Premier and Henry VIII.

and they sent paintings to the French king, and they sent manuscripts containing madrigals and motets to Henry VIII.

And I think that is an interesting index of how the two monarchs were perceived, or what their interests were perceived to be.

And I just think painting wasn't something at this point in time that Henry VIII was hugely interested in.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

And so I know that you have made some very exciting discoveries while researching and writing your book.

And of course, I recommend everyone buy it to read about all of that in detail.

But can you give us maybe a little peek into some of those interesting things you uncovered while working on this?

Well, I had a lot of fun looking at inventories and other documents illustrative of the ways in which English domestic interiors were kitted out at this stage.

And what became apparent the more and more I delved into these types of documents is that it really is through Holbein and early patrons like Moore that the English love of displaying painted portraits in their long galleries is born and takes off.

I mean, we think of this now as such a quintessentially English thing, but when Holbein arrived in England in the 1520s, it wasn't a thing yet.

And you can watch and chart through the documentary sources over the course of Holbein's time in England, this vogue becomes embedded.

And one of the most exciting discoveries was realizing that.

Through documents preserved at Hatfield in the archives there, it was possible to reconstruct the layout of Thomas Moore's no longer extant house in Chelsea, including the position of the long gallery and the probable display positions within it for various works by Holbein, most notably his now lost large group portrait of the Moore family.

And that was just so much fun.

Dr.

Simon Thurley, the great architectural historian, helped me with that, and it was just really thrilling.

And.

Because the architectural plans that we were looking at had a key from which you could calculate the dimensions of each room and how much space there is between windows and fireplaces, etc., it was possible by process of elimination in the Long Gallery to figure out where the Moore Group portrait had to go because there were a limited number of places on the walls where something so large would have been able to fit.

So that was really lovely.

I felt that that, for me, helped to bring to life Moore's Picture Gallery, which in some ways was kind of, you know, the first place that people in England would have encountered Holbein's paintings and almost probably from Holbein's point of view, a sort of showroom, because guests at Moore would see Holbein's pictures on Moore's walls and then perhaps go away and decide to commission something from Holbein themselves.

So that was really great fun and very, very satisfying.

Oh, I love that.

I think it's those details that really do bring the story and the people absolutely to life.

And I have to say, Elizabeth, I love inventories.

Any inventories or accounts?

You know, I'm a huge fan of those.

I think they offer some really important insights, as you've just demonstrated there.

I love them, too.

I'm delighted to hear that you're a kindred spirit.

Because, yes, sometimes I'm slightly embarrassed to admit just how much I love inventories and accounts, but they tell you so much.

I find them absolutely invaluable.

And so, of course, when Holbein leaves England in sort of August, I think you said 1528, you know, the king's great matter is in full swing, but he returns to a very different court in 1532.

It's a changed landscape, isn't it, politically, religiously?

So how does he navigate that changed landscape when he returns and what sort of commissions does he work on?

Well, absolutely.

Holbein returns, we don't know exactly when he arrives in England, but it's sometime in the spring of 1532.

So pretty much around the time that Moore falls from royal favor and resigns his offices.

So if Holbein was hoping in returning to England to pick up where he'd left off with Moore in 1528, he would very quickly have realized that that was not going to be an option.

Moore no longer had the funds or the political power to dispense patronage on the scale that he once had.

And of course, association with Moore probably would have been pretty toxic for Holbein at this stage.

But the incredible thing about Holbein on this occasion and on numerous other occasions, both in England and earlier in Basel, is his ability to land on his feet.

I think he was someone who, perhaps because he had experienced the birth pangs, as it were, of the Reformation in Basel and so much upheaval there, he seems to have learned to bend with the winds of religious and political change.

He seems to have been very pragmatic about severing ties with patrons who sort of outlived their usefulness to him and just moving on.

He doesn't seem to have been a particularly sentimental person.

So very quickly upon his return to England, he is taking on portrait and other commissions from Thomas Cromwell, who, of course, is the courtier who derives the greatest benefit from Mooresfall.

He is taking on numerous commissions from the Steelyard merchants, a group who he seems to have avoided on his earlier visit to England because Moore viewed them as dangerous heretics.

But now Holbein, no longer Moore's man, is clearly not bothered about that.

He also counts Anne Boleyn and others in her inner circle as patrons.

Again, Anne, of course, at the heart of the rift between Moor and the king.

But again, Holbein not bothered about that because he's no longer Moor's man.

And after Anne's fall, amazingly enough, Holbein again lands on his feet.

He is in no way tarred by association with his previous close connections to Anne.

And he goes on almost immediately after Anne's execution to be commissioned to portray Henry and Jane, the Whitehall mural, he becomes King's painter.

I mean, he just seems to be a real survivor and someone who just always manages to land on his feet.

This is perhaps most noticeable when Cromwell falls in 1540 in the wake of the disastrous marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves, marriage in which Holbein, of course, played apart, producing Orchard's Avan.

But Cromwell, of course, ends up having his head chopped off, but Holbein somehow emerges unscathed again.

So it's a real gift he has for landing on his feet.

Also, I suspect the fact that he was just supremely talented and there was no one else in England who could do what he could do, perhaps provided him with a measure of protection and insulation that others did not have.

But clearly, he must have been quite canny and a pretty shrewd operator.

Yeah, he certainly sounds like that.

And he certainly turned his hand to a lot of different things, didn't he, Elizabeth?

He's not just doing, obviously, paintings.

Does a lot, doesn't he?

And by now, he's doing miniatures as well, isn't he?

Yes.

So he's painting, well, as you say, large-scale paintings in oils, also miniatures.

So small works in watercolor on vellum, and then these sort of not quite miniatures that are smallish, but oils on wood.

He's doing wall paintings.

He probably is doing a fair amount of, or maybe doing a fair amount of sacred painting at various points, but it's hard to assess that because later waves of iconoclasm, I think we have to assume, will have destroyed the visual evidence for that.

But certainly, I think during his first visit to England, we have to assume he probably did some sacred painting.

He's a prolific divisor of designs for goldsmiths, both in terms of jewelry and plates.

He devises designs for glaziers.

I mean, he does everything.

He must have been, to put it in modern terms, an absolute workaholic.

He must also have had a pretty sizable workshop.

The details, firm details of the workshop and its composition remain elusive.

What a pity.

I know it is a real pity, but I think we have to assume that he had many, many helpers, however much of a workaholic he was.

I just don't think there's any way that one person could have produced in so many different media.

And we also know from a lot of recent technical and scientific analysis of the paintings, there is often evidence of multiple hands and there are clearly.

Versions of paintings that are workshopped that are, you know, not quite good enough to be Holbein himself.

So there clearly was a big team, but unfortunately, we don't have very many names that we can put to those members of the team.

Oh, it's such a pity, isn't it?

Wouldn't it be amazing to know where his workshop was, what it looked like, an inventory of Holbein's workshop?

Yes, that would be the dream, wouldn't it?

That would be the dream, absolutely.

So tell us a little bit about his sort of later years and his death as well.

Sure.

So Holbein dies in London in the autumn of 1543.

We don't know for certain what the cause of death was, but I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that it was plague.

Certainly there was.

Plague epidemic in London that autumn, whatever it was that killed Holbein, it seems to have been quite sudden.

His will is very badly drafted and seems to have been composed on his deathbed at great haste, doesn't really seem to have had time to put his affairs in order.

It is often said that the last few years of Holbein's life, so the period basically from the summer of 1540 when Cromwell is executed until the autumn of 1543 when he dies, that it's just decline and fall, basically.

But one of the things that I found so interesting when I was writing the book and working on that particular chapter about the final years was that I just didn't think the evidence bore that out.

In fact, I thought it was remarkable how well he did after Cromwell's fall.

Yes, Holbein had some financial problems in the early 1540s, but he had always had financial problems.

And if anything, his cash flow seemed slightly better to me in the early 1540s.

So, for example, in the early 1540s, he asks on a couple of occasions for a six-month advance on his annuity from the crown as king's painter.

But in the late 1530s, he was regularly asking for a one-year advance.

So, I mean, I think like a lot of painters in this period, he possibly wasn't great at money management.

He also had two families, a family behind in Basel and a new family he'd started in England.

So, I mean, I think just a lot of bills to pay.

Whatever else you might say about him as a husband and father, he does seem to have tried to be a good provider to both families.

So I think actually, so far as I can tell, he worked very consistently right up to the end with very high-profile commissions.

He retains his position as king's painter.

He, in that capacity, devises new portrait templates both for Henry VIII and for the future Edward VI.

He's a painter.

He continues to undertake work for private clients, and it continues to be clearly the in thing for new men arriving at the Tudor court to mark the moment of their ascent by sitting to Holbein, something that goes right back to Holbein's first visit to England and was then continued in the second visit when Cromwell kind of marks the moment of his ascent over Moore by sitting to Holbein.

The people who pick up where Cromwell left off, who are, you know, granted the offices formerly held by Cromwell, seem to mark that moment by sitting to Holbein.

So I think that this narrative of decline is not quite accurate.

I think one of the reasons that that has kind of become the received wisdom is that the surviving images from these last few years are not great.

And that's just a fluke of what has and has not survived.

So, for example, we know, as I mentioned, that Holbein, as King's painter, devised new portrait templates for both Henry VIII and the future Edward VI in the early 1540s.

But the examples that survive are not by Holbein's own hand, so we have to kind of use our imaginations to figure out what the now-lost Holbein originals might have looked like.

Holbein had an incredibly prestigious commission from the Barber Surgeon's Company to portray Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons.

The painting survives, but is much damaged.

It was damaged by the Great Fire of London and has never really been the same since.

So again, I think the fact that the painting survives in a less than perfect state has had an impact on how people have perceived the final years of Holbein's life and career.

But I think all the evidence really suggests that it was just, you know, once again, him landing on his feet and carrying on.

And the fact that he retains his position as king's painter and his head, I think, is remarkable.

And again, the idea of him is this consummate survivor who just somehow keeps going.

There's a wonderful story that Carol Van Mander tells, which may be, you know, something we should take with a pinch of salt.

But he recounts a story in which Holbein, hard at work in his workshop, was interrupted by an earl who barged in, demanding that Holbein stop what he was doing and paint the earl's portrait right then.

And Holbein didn't want to do that.

And an altercation ensued and Holbein shoved the earl down a flight of steps, went to the king and complained.

And Henry allegedly said, don't be ridiculous.

I could raise any man to an earldom.

It's only one.

So if there's even a pinch of salt or a pinch of truth in that story, I think, that perhaps gives some insight into why Holbein always seemed to land on his feet at the Tudor Court.

I mean, I think Henry, though initially in the 1520s, not that interested in painting and portraiture, at a certain point in the mid-1530s seems to wake up to the idea that this is a powerful propaganda tool, a powerful means of shaping his own image, which frankly from the mid-1530s onwards was in need of some rehabilitation.

And I think from that moment on, Holbein, he is granted a certain protection, as it were, because there's no one else who can do what he does.

Yeah, yeah, absolute genius, wasn't he?

I know.

And I remember when we talked about Hilliard as well, there was the financial issue.

So it must be something with artists and finances.

Yes, I think so.

There's a Holbein credit.

He never experienced the terrible financial was that his own father did.

I mean, his own father was forever being sued over unpaid bills and Holbein was never anywhere near that bad for him, but he clearly did have the odd cash flow issue.

And, you know, tricky question, but do you have a favorite Holbein portrait, Elizabeth?

Oh, my goodness.

I do love Christina of Denmark, not just because it was the first painting I ever wrote about in an academic journal.

I just think it's an extraordinary painting.

And it was fun to find some new bits of correspondence that I hope help to flesh out our understanding of its commissioning and its creation.

So that was fun.

That's one of those paintings that you sort of think we know everything there is to know about it.

And yet, fun to discover that there are still in the archival sources out there that can sort of flesh out our picture of it.

So yes, I think I would have to pick Christina of Denmark.

Yeah, I just saw her recently.

Well, not Christina of Denmark, but I saw the painting in its new position at the gallery and it looks stunning.

Absolutely beautiful.

Absolutely does.

And I love the way if you stand just so, you can see in the distance, a couple of rooms away, the ambassadors.

And there's this amazing exposition.

So, yes, I think the rehang is very, very clever.

And the way they've hung Christina, it really emphasizes the ability.

The size of the painting and her height, which was one of the interesting things that I found when I was writing the book, how many people who were involved in the marriage negotiations commented on her height somewhat nervously in some cases, because I think some were worried that Henry would think she was too tall, though in fact he had said he wanted a big woman.

So in any case, I think Holbein very cleverly emphasizes her height and the verticality with the relatively narrow size of the boards and there's this sort of vertical cast shadow.

So everything is kind of emphasizing the height.

So I think Holbein wanted to make sure that Henry was getting an accurate image of just how tall this woman was.

Yeah, exactly.

It doesn't want Henry coming back and saying, why didn't you tell me she was so tall?

Exactly.

And so Elizabeth, just to sort of start bringing our conversation to a close, what overall impact, if you had to sort of sum it up, overall impact do you think Holbein had on British art and culture?

Well, I suppose the most important thing is probably the way in which he definitively shaped perceptions of Henry VIII in his court for, well, in the eyes of contemporaries, but also posterity.

Thanks to Holbein, Henry VIII must be one of the most instantly recognizable figures in all of history.

I mean, people may not know that the image that they're looking at is derived from Holbein in some way.

But when you see, you know, someone adopting that whole frontal sort of confrontational pose, you know, it's Henry VIII.

And that's in terms of branding.

And I mean, it's just extraordinary 500 years on.

And I was really struck when I was writing the epilogue to the book, which kind of traces the afterlife and various ways in which Holbein has had an influence in all sorts of ways.

I mean, I was struck by the number of later artists of the first rank who copied paintings by Holbein or in some way riffed on paintings by Holbein.

Also struck by the number of writers who were profoundly influenced by Holbein, Dostoevsky, Henry James, Edith Wharton.

And it's really, really interesting, the breadth of Holbein's reach.

And I think as well, you can see in the reception of his art, the beginnings of collecting and connoisseurship in their modern senses.

I mean, if you look at the Lumley inventory, which you, of course, will know is being a fellow inventory geek.

It's a document from about 1590, compiled by Lord Lumley's steward, John Lampton, listing Lumley's paintings and other objects.

And there are a lot of strikethroughs with the Holbein entries.

Lampton, presumably with Lord Lumley, consultation with Lord Lumley, returns to the inventory at some point after the initial compilation to rethink some of the Holbein attributions.

And I think that's very interesting.

You see the beginnings of this sense of collecting and connoisseurship, you know, the desire for accuracy, the beginnings of art history as the modern discipline, we now know it.

Interesting, too, I think, the way in which for so many of the great collectors through the centuries, owning Holbein's has been of paramount importance, whether it's Lumley in the late 16th century, the Earl of Arundel in the 17th century, Henry Clay Frick and Isabella Stewart Gardner in the early 20th century.

It's remarkably consistent how desirable Holbein's works have been for collectors of the first rank.

And obtaining Holbein's is, for many of these collectors, what makes them feel that they have now arrived as collectors.

So really just an extraordinarily varied range of impacts and influences.

And just remarkable, I think, 500 years on, how relevant Holbein's still is.

So true so true and i really do think we have holbein to thank for the the popularity of the tudor period i really do think this is the yeah yeah i think it's the first time really if we think that we can see these people and connect with them and it's not just you know it's more realistic isn't it i i do feel that's played a big part i think that's right and you know i love the way in six the musical i mean oh yes so i yes i absolutely agree i mean i think holbein created the tutors as the modern global phenomenon they now are yeah absolutely and very last question is the tutor takeaway so i do ask all my guests for a takeaway so this is just something for our listeners to go off and explore after the episode yes so sorry i've got my cheat sheet here so i I can remember it's a website.

Oh, lovely.

So it's actually a section of the British Museum website.

So it's britishmuseum.org forward slash Tudor hyphen heart hyphen appeal.

And if you click on that, you will get to read about an amazing, amazing piece of jewelry, which was discovered by chance by a metal detectorist in a muddy field in Warwickshire a few years ago.

So it's an extraordinary gold locket, which is enameled with Tudor roses and pomegranates and the initials H and K, obviously for Henry and Catherine of Aragon.

We think it was a gift from Henry to Catherine around 1518.

The British Museum is currently hoping to acquire it so that it can be shown to the public for many years to come.

Anyway, if you click on the website, you can read all about the discovery.

There are high-res images you can zoom in.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

And there's also a link to click on if you want to donate to the appeal.

But it's just an exquisite, exquisite object.

and so extraordinary to think that objects like this are lurking in fields in work.

I mean, just really incredible.

Yeah, absolutely incredible.

I know exactly the piece of jewelry you're talking about and it is absolutely beautiful.

Absolutely encourage everyone to have a look and I'll put the link in our show notes so that you can go and explore that wonderful, wonderful link.

I would love to see that in person, so I do hope they're successful in their bid.

And if anyone can help, you know, please do.

It's beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for taking the time to come back onto the podcast and, you know, discuss Holborn with us.

It's been absolutely wonderful.

Oh, thank you, Natalie.

I had a great time.

Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Talking Tutors.

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