In a list of debts, dated 1536, owing by Queen Anne Boleyn at her death, occurs the name of “Androw, paynter,” for 29s. 4d., which probably refers to Wright;[[548]] and on the 29th September 1539, his name, as the King’s painter, appears in the Great Wardrobe accounts as one of the royal creditors.[[549]] Again, on the 17th July in that year (1539) he is mentioned in Thomas Cromwell’s accounts as Andrew Wryte or Wryght, “for things done at my Lord’s stallation,” as Knight of the Garter, £21, 7s.;[[550]] while in May 1541 he is paid by warrant, out of the King’s household expenses, £39, 6s. 8d. “for the painting of certain coats of arms for the heralds at arms.”[[551]]
Wright died in the same year as Holbein, but a few months earlier, and his will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on the 29th May 1543. “He left estates at Stratford-le-Bow, at ‘the Gleane’ in the parish of St. Olave, Southwark, ‘the Bottle’ in Bermondsey, and at Cowden, in Kent, where he had a manufactory of ‘pynck.’ (Pink was a vegetable pigment, answering to the giallo santo of the Italians, and stil-de-grain of the French.) He desired to be buried, like his predecessor, Browne, in the church of St. Vedast, and requested his friend Garter (Christopher Barker) to be overseer of the will, a circumstance which testifies to his connection in business with the College of Heralds.”[[552]] He left £40 and all his vessels and apparatus for the making of pink to his eldest son, Christopher, and £40 to the younger son, Richard, and £4 a year so long as he lived with his mother.
THE HORNEBOLT FAMILY
John Hethe, or Heath, another member of the Painter-Stainers’ Company, one of the painters to whom John Browne’s house was consigned, was also in the royal employment, and was very probably one of the men engaged at Nonsuch Palace.[[553]] His will is dated 1st August 1552, and in it he leaves to his elder son, Lancelot, “my frames, tentes, stoles, patrons, stones, mullers, with the necessaries belonging or appertaining to Payntour’s crafte,” and to his second son, Lawrence, “all my moldes and molded work that I served the Kinge withal,” while to each of his apprentices he bequeathed 6s. 8d. and a grindingstone, and to his Company 20s., “to make them a recreation or banket ymmediatlye after my decease.”[[554]] Among the list of the things which he wished to be left in his house so long as his wife dwelt there, he mentions “pictures in tables,” which at first sight would seem to indicate that he occasionally painted pictures. It is more likely, however, that these were works by other artists, for, like his brother painter-stainers, he appears to have been chiefly a decorator and a maker of moulded and coloured work for house-fronts and royal residences such as Nonsuch and other more temporary purposes, such as masques and revels, and the ornamentation of buildings erected for particular occasions, which were pulled down when done with, while the moulded work was preserved for future use. The more valuable of these moulds were often kept in leather cases made on purpose for them.
Of far greater importance as artists, and more dangerous rivals to Holbein in his search for work in England, were the numerous Italians and Netherlanders at that time settled here, and, in most instances, attached to the Court. The most important group of painters of the latter nationality were the three members of the Hoorenbault, Hornebolt, or Hornebaud family, Gerard, Lucas, and Susanna. This family belonged to Ghent, and from the first years of the fifteenth century had been painters and masters of the Guild of St. Luke. The exact relationships of the three are not entirely clear. Walpole rolled the two men into one, and called him Gerard Luke Horneband.[[555]] Mr. Nichols[[556]] suggests that Luke was Gerard’s elder brother, and that Susanna was their sister. Mr. Wornum[[557]] regarded Gerard as the father of the other two.
There are several Hoorenbaults named Lucas in the lists of the masters of the Ghent Guild—one in 1512, who was sub-dean in 1525; another who was admitted in 1533, and was sub-dean in 1539; and a third Lucas, the son of Lucas, admitted in 1534.[[558]] The name Gerard does not occur in the lists, but in the communal accounts for 1510-11, there are payments to Gheraerd Hurebaut, scildere, for painting a plan of part of the town of Ghent and its neighbourhood. He painted altar-pieces for the church of St. Bavon, designed vestments, and was employed as an illuminator of books by Margaret of Austria at Antwerp and Mechlin.[[558]] Albrecht Dürer met him at Antwerp in 1521, when on his journey through the Netherlands, and noted in his diary—“Item, Master Gerhart, Illuminator, has a young daughter, about eighteen years of age, her name is Susanna; she has made a coloured drawing of Our Saviour, for which I gave her a florin; it is wonderful that a woman should be able to do such a work.”
THE HORNEBOLT FAMILY
This Gerard was married to Margaret Svanders, of Ghent, daughter of Derich Svanders and widow of Jan van Heerweghe.[[558]] She died at Fulham on 26th November 1529 in the house of her daughter Susanna, who was then the wife of John Parker, the King’s bowman and a yeoman of the robes, as may be gathered from a brass plate with a Latin inscription in Fulham Church, in which her husband is spoken of as Gerard Hornebolt, the most noted painter of Ghent.[[559]] There is no evidence to show that it was this Gerard who came to England, and Mr. Cust’s surmise is probably correct,[[560]] that the Lucas, Gerard, and Susanna who were employed at Henry’s Court, were the children of Gerard and Margaret Hoorenbault. Luke was always in receipt of a higher salary than Gerard from the royal purse, his monthly wages being 55s. 6d., whereas Gerard only received 33s. 4d. This would hardly have been the case had the latter been his father. Luke was probably the elder brother. The elder Gerard was dead in Ghent in 1540-1, when his son Joris was served as his heir. His wife Margaret seems to have been only in England on a visit to her daughter and son-in-law when she died at Fulham in 1529. The three Hornebolts, as their name was anglicised, appear to have arrived in England only a year or two before Holbein. The exact date of their entry into Henry’s service cannot be ascertained, as, unfortunately, none of the royal household accounts prior to October 1528 have been preserved, and in that month both Luke and Gerard are entered as receiving the salaries mentioned above.
Both Vasari and Lodovico Guicciardini (1567) speak of Lucas Hurembout as a well-known illuminator of Ghent, and state that his sister Susanna was so renowned for similar work that she was induced to come to England by Henry VIII, where she was in great favour at the Court, and died here rich and honoured. Immerzeel in his De Levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Kunstschilders (1842) says that she married an English sculptor named Whorstley, and died at Worcester, but upon what authority he based this statement is not known.
Luke Hornebolt received a grant of denization by patent dated 22nd June 1534, in which he is described as a native of Flanders, with licence to keep in his service four journeymen or covenant servants, born out of the King’s dominions, notwithstanding the statute of 14 & 15 Henry VIII to the contrary. By a second patent of the same date he received a “grant of the office of King’s painter, and of a tenement or messuage in the parish of St. Margaret in Westminster, an empty place on the east side of the same tenement, the south of which looks upon the hermitage of St. Katherine, and the north part on a tenement lately built by the Crown.”[[561]] He died in London in May 1544; his will, which is dated 8th December 1543, was proved on 27th May 1544. He received his wages up to April in that year, but in May is entered as “Item, for Lewke Hornebaude, paynter, wages nil quia mortuus.” In his will he calls himself Lucas Hornebolt, “servante and painter unto the Kinges majestie,” and requests to be buried where it shall please his friends in the parish of St. Martins-in-the-Fields beside Charing Cross. He leaves his wife, Margaret, possibly an Englishwoman, and his daughter, Jacomyne, his executrices, with two-thirds of his property to the former and one-third to the latter. Richard Airell was appointed overseer of the will, and William Delahay and Robert Spenser were the witnesses.