Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 1 (of 2) by Arthur B. Chamberlain

public appointment, as king’s bailiff at Sandwich, in 1508, and became Clerk to the Signet in the following year. On more than one of the replicas of the portrait his age is given as fifty-seven. Tuke was a scholar, and one of the More circle, secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, and French secretary to Henry VIII, and as Treasurer of the Household was responsible for the payments to Holbein for his share in the work of the Greenwich Banqueting House, and, later on, of his salary. He was also Clerk of the Parliament and Master of the Posts. He is represented in the Munich version at half-length, three-quarters to the left, with clean-shaven face and long hair, wearing a black cap with ear-pieces, a gown of black silk, lined with brown fur, and a fur collar, over a black doublet also fur-lined and fastened with a gold button, and sleeves of fine chequered black and gold stuff. A gold jewelled cross, on which the pierced hands and feet of Christ are represented in enamel, is suspended round his neck by a gold chain. With the forefinger of his left hand, which holds his gloves, he indicates a paper in front of him, inscribed “NVNQVID NON PAVCITAS DIERVM MEORVM FINIETVR BREVI,” and, in smaller letters, “JOB cap. 10.” An hour-glass rests on the table behind the paper, in front of his right hand. In the background the figure of Death is seen against a green curtain, holding his scythe in his left hand and with the first finger of the right pointing to the hour-glass. It is signed “IO. HOLPAIN” in the old Augsburg orthography. From overcleaning and other causes the hands and face have lost much of the delicacy of their modelling, and the flesh tints remain unpleasantly red, and the face has a hardness and sharpness which, no doubt, it did not originally possess. Mr. Wornum, who, however, only saw the picture when it was hung too high for proper examination, considered it to be “painted in the taste and manner of Von Melem.” “This picture,” he says, “is not a bad one, but the signature is suspicious, as that of our painter; and the style does not proclaim it to be the work of Holbein.”[752] Woltmann, on the other hand, says that it “declares itself as strikingly as possible to be the work of Holbein, and it is one of the two genuine paintings among the eight portraits ascribed to him in the Pinakothek,” and adds that though so greatly damaged, “yet still from its truth and lifelike feeling, as well as from its masterly execution, it is an excellent portrait.” The picture, however, is now regarded merely as a good workshop replica of the original painting, and is so described in the latest edition of the Munich catalogue. It appears to have been in the Wittelsbach Collection in 1597, and in the description of it in the inventory of that date, the figure of Death is not mentioned, and was probably added later.[753] VOL. I., PLATE 87. [Illustration: SIR BRYAN TUKE ALTE PINAKOTHEK, MUNICH ] The best version of this picture is the one which at one time was in the possession of the Methuen family at Corsham Court, Wilts, and afterwards belonged to Mr. R. Sanderson, at whose sale at Christie’s in 1848 it was purchased for the Marquis of Westminster.[754] It was bequeathed by the Marchioness of Westminster to her daughter, Lady Theodora Guest, and now belongs to the latter’s daughter, Miss Guest, of Inwood. It was in the National Portrait Exhibition, 1868 (No. 625), in the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, 1880 (No. 188), and in the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1909 (No. 43), lent by Miss Guest.[755] This version is almost identical with the one in Munich, but the skeleton and hour-glass are missing, and on the green-brown background is inscribed “BRIANVS TVKE, MILES. AN^O ETATIS SVÆ LVII,” with his motto, “Droit et Avant,” below. It is in all ways a finer work than the Munich example, and undoubtedly by Holbein, and, in all probability, the original upon which all the others were based. At least three other versions exist, all without the skeleton. One of them, on canvas, was in the possession of Mr. William M. Tuke, of Saffron Walden, in 1869, who purchased it in Yorkshire in 1845, it having been formerly in the collection of a Mr. Winstanley. Another is, or was, in the possession of Mr. John Leslie Toke of Godington Park, Kent, which is said to have been in expression and features more of the type of Sir Thomas More; while a third belonged, in 1870, to Mr. J. R. Haig.[756] One or other of these versions was owned in the seventeenth century by Lord Lisle, son of the Earl of Leicester, as noted by Evelyn in his _Diary_ under the date 27th August 1678. [Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF RESKIMER] The portrait of the Cornishman, Reskimer,[757] at Hampton Court, has been ascribed by most critics to Holbein’s first English period, and so is included in this chapter, although the exceptionally long beard, which reaches almost to his waist, and the hair, which, though not polled, is short enough to show the ears, would indicate a date after