Kratzer and Holbein appear to have become close acquaintances, as was only natural with two men of the same nationality in a foreign country. One of the few contemporary letters in which the painter is mentioned by name is one from Kratzer to Thomas Cromwell, referred to more particularly in a later chapter,[[746]] in which the astronomer announces that he has sent the Lord Privy Seal by Holbein’s hands a book just received from Germany. Like the Steelyard merchants, Kratzer was in the habit of serving the King as a forwarder and translator of letters and papers from abroad, and was sent on occasional journeys to the Continent on royal service. On one of these occasions, in October 1520, Tunstall, who was in the Netherlands for political purposes, wrote to Henry VIII saying that in Antwerp he had met “Nicholas Craczer, an Almayn, deviser of the King’s horologes, who said the King had given him leave to be absent for a time.” Tunstall asked him to stay till he had ascertained if the King would allow him to remain until the coronation and the assembly of the Electors were over. “Being born in High Almayn, and having acquaintance of many of the princes, he might be able to find out the mind of the Electors touching the affairs of the Empire.”[[747]] Like Holbein and some of the other foreigners in England, Kratzer was not averse from an occasional commercial speculation. Thus, in October 1527, he received licence to import from Bordeaux and other parts of France and Brittany 300 tons of Toulouse woad and Gascon wine.[[748]] His name, spelt in a variety of fashions, frequently appears in the royal accounts, but as a rule only in connection with the payment of his quarter’s salary. On April 29, 1531, however, there is an entry: “To Nicholas the Astronomer for mending of a clock, 6s.”[[749]] Some of the mathematical and astronomical instruments in the “Ambassadors” picture may possibly have been of Kratzer’s making.
Several undated portraits may be ascribed to this period with some certainty; and some others with perhaps less confidence. As a general rule, though it is not without exceptions, Holbein’s portraits of his first English period may be distinguished from those of his second by the fashion in which the sitters wear their hair. In 1526-8 the prevailing custom in England was to wear it cropped straight across the forehead, while it was allowed to hang down lower than the ears all round the rest of the head, the face being clean shaven. A very distinct change of fashion took place in the spring of 1535, when Henry VIII began to grow a beard, and ordered his own household to cut their hair. Stow, in his Annales,[[750]] says: “The 8th of May the King commanded all about his court to poll their heads, and to give them example, he caused his own head to bee polled, and from thenceforth his beard to bee notted and no more shaven.” This marked change in the dressing of the hair was, of course, not followed by everyone, but it became so general that it is of great assistance in helping to give approximate dates to a number of pictures and drawings. Of the two, the cut of the hair is a better indication of date than the beard or moustache, which were worn more at pleasure. Occasionally long hair is found in conjunction with the beard, and in other cases some men remained faithful to the earlier fashion. Thus Sir Richard Southwell (1536) and the Duke of Norfolk (1540) are examples of long hair and a shaven face after 1535. Some of the German merchants resident in London conformed to the English fashion, but certain of them will be found with beards before 1535, while others again, painted several years later, are clean shaven. It must not be forgotten, however, that Holbein had returned to England nearly three years before the King’s edict of 1535, so that certain portraits which have been usually ascribed to his first English period on account of the cut of the sitter’s hair, may very possibly have been painted five or six years later.
PORTRAIT OF SIR BRYAN TUKE
The portrait of Sir Bryan Tuke, of which several versions exist, the best known being the one in the Munich Gallery (Pl. [87]),[[751]] is ascribed by some writers to Holbein’s later English period, though the shaven face and the way in which the hair is worn indicate the earlier date of the first London visit. This test is not, of course, infallible, but it seems probable, nevertheless, that Tuke was painted in 1527 or 1528. The date of his birth is not known, but he received his first 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.
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. ano 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.
PORTRAIT OF RESKIMER