A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

195. A MEDICAL PROFESSOR.

Unknown (German School).

The interest of this picture lies in the history of its purchase. It was bought by the trustees in 1845, on the advice of the then Keeper, as a Holbein. "The veriest tyro might well have been ashamed of such a purchase" (Arrows of the Chace, i. 65); and very much ashamed the trustees were, when immediately after the purchase the hoax was discovered. There and then they subscribed £100 between them, which they offered to M. Rochard, the dealer, "to induce him to annul the bargain, but he declined, and there was an end of it."[108]