This portrait may have been the one in the possession of John, Lord Lumley, son-in-law of Henry Fitzalan, twelfth and last Earl of Arundel of that creation. In the Lumley inventory of 1590 it is described as “Of Erasmus of Roterdame, drawne by Haunce Holbyn.” Among his other portraits by Holbein, Lord Lumley also possessed the full-length of the Duchess of Milan, and it is most probable that the label with the inscription was added to both portraits when in his collection. The “Erasmus” was afterwards in the famous collection of Thomas Howard, the great Earl of Arundel, from which it passed by bequest of Alathea, Countess of Arundel, to her grandson, Charles Howard, into that of the Greystoke branch of the Howard family, where it remained, at their seat in Cumberland, until its recent purchase by Mr. Morgan. The Earl of Arundel possessed two portraits of Erasmus by Holbein,[[408]] the second being the Longford Castle picture. While in this collection the Greystoke version was engraved by Lucas Vorsterman, a very excellent print, undated, in which the figure is in reverse of the picture.[[409]] It was engraved again, when in the same collection, by Andreas Stock, the plate being dated from the Hague, 1628. In this engraving the position is the same as in the portrait, which suggests that Stock merely copied from Vorsterman, and not from the picture itself. In the inscription at the foot of Stock’s engraving it is stated that the portrait from which it was taken was the one which Erasmus himself told Sir Thomas More he very greatly preferred to the one of him by Albrecht Dürer; but the statement appears to have no real foundation in fact. Whether the portrait was sent to England by Erasmus in charge of Holbein when he returned to England in 1532, as a present to some friend or admirer, or whether the artist brought it over in the ordinary way of his business, it is now impossible to say. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
PARMA PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS
The Greystoke portrait closely resembles the Parma picture, which is regarded by most critics as an original work, though to the present writer it appears to be no more than a fine contemporary copy or adaptation of Mr. Morgan’s picture or the Basel roundel. The Parma example,[[410]] in which Erasmus is shown with his hands holding open one of his own books, has the date 1530 on the plain background, two figures on either side of the head.[[411]] Documentary evidence[[412]] exists, showing that Holbein had painted one or more portraits of Erasmus at this period. One of them was in the possession of Goelenius, professor at Louvain, and in 1531 Johannes Dantiscus, Bishop of Kulm, and afterwards of Ermeland, was anxious to obtain a copy of it, and wrote asking to have this done for him by a painter of Malines. Goelenius, in reply, sent to his friend the original portrait as a gift. The Bishop, however, not to be outdone in generosity, returned the present, at the same time saying that the portrait was an earlier one than he had supposed, and that he wanted one of a more recent date. In answer to this Goelenius wrote that fortunately he was on terms of such close friendship with Holbein that he could get him to do anything he wished, and would procure from him a portrait of Erasmus which he had quite recently painted. Some portrait, whether an original or only a copy, was eventually sent, and it has been suggested that it was the portrait now in the Parma Gallery. When Dantiscus became Bishop of Ermeland, he would, in all probability, take the portrait with him; and this district was afterwards devastated by the Swedes during the Thirty Years’ War, and many of the art treasures of the province carried to Sweden. Some of these spoils of war became the property of Queen Christina, who took them with her to Italy, where she lived in later life, and among the works so taken, it is conjectured, may well have been the Erasmus portrait now at Parma.
Vol. I., Plate 58.
1. ERASMUS
Roundel
Basel Gallery
2. PHILIP MELANCHTHON
Roundel
Provinzial Museum, Hanover
The little roundel in the Basel Gallery (No. 324) (Pl. [58] (1)),[[413]] which is about four inches in diameter, forms part of the Amerbach Collection, and, no doubt, came into the possession of Bonifacius on the death of Erasmus. It agrees in all respects with the Greystoke portrait, though only the head and shoulders are shown, and it is not quite so masterly in its execution. It is very possibly the original study made by Holbein in Freiburg, upon which the Greystoke and other portraits were based. It has a plain blue-green background, and is perhaps not quite in its original state. There is a third “Erasmus” at Basel, the small panel in the Faesch Collection (No. 356),[[414]] a good old copy of the roundel in the Amerbach Collection. All three are mentioned by Patin. It would serve no useful purpose to enumerate and describe the many other versions of the roundel, the Greystoke, and the Longford portraits, which exist in various European collections at St. Petersburg,[[415]] Cassel, Karlsruhe, Vienna, Turin,[[416]] Rotterdam, Lausanne,[[417]] and elsewhere. As already stated, they were in great demand among the admirers of Erasmus, so that numerous copies must have been made. In the lifetime of Amerbach’s son Basilius there were no less than five in Basel, and when Richard Strein of Vienna wrote to him asking him to procure him a portrait of the great humanist, Amerbach, in reply, wanted to know which of the five he would like copied. The copy by Pencz, already described, may have been taken from one of these later portraits rather than from the Longford portrait of 1523. The copy at Rotterdam is said to have been presented by the Basel Council to the Rotterdam Council in 1532.
WOODCUTS PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS