In 1533, also, the Steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration of Anne Boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. And the result was, as Stowe tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parnassus, with the Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope; and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on severell sweet instruments."

But of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil paintings—the Triumph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty—which he executed for the Hall of the Steelyard. In their day they were renowned far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion, perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the Solothurn Madonna.

When the Guild was compelled to abandon the Steelyard, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that when it regained possession, under James I., everything was in a sad state of neglect. And when the association finally dissolved not long after, the Hanseatic League agreed to present these paintings to Henry Prince of Wales, known, like Charles I., to be a lover of Art.

If they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627 Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of Riches is in the Louvre Collection.

That he ever painted Anne Boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful. The portrait among the Windsor drawings which has been labelled with her name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. But in 1534 he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers—Thomas Cromwell, then Master of the Jewel House.

And it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some respects the greatest of all his portraits—one of the galaxy of supreme works of all portraiture—the oil painting of Morett, or Morette, so long regarded as a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art. The world knows it well in the Dresden Gallery ([Plate 29]).

The figure is life-size. The pose, even the costume in its feasible essentials, strikingly repeats the Whitehall portrait of Henry VIII., as copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. The background is a green curtain.

PLATE 29.
THE MORETT PORTRAIT
Oils. Dresden Gallery
Click to [ENLARGE]

The sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor Order of any sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with white, the broad fur collar of sable. In his cap is a cameo brooch. His buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of the same metal. His right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. His auburn hair and beard is streaked with grey.

No words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such a painting. Neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is penetrating.