“Sir,—In the course of my constant love and pursuit of works of art, it has been my good fortune to meet with that scarce little work of Hans Holbein neatly engraved on wood, and which he himself had painted as large as life in fresco on the walls of Whitehall. In the copy which I presume to lay before you, as being born in the same palace, I have followed the original as nearly as possible, and considering the partiality which every one has for the place of his birth, a description of what is remarkable and curious therein and now no longer existing on account of its destruction by a fatal fire, must needs prove acceptable, as no other remains whatever have been left of that once so famous court of King Henry VIII. built by Cardinal Wolsey, than your own dwelling.”
He then repeats the story of Philip of Macedon, and the account of the subjects of his etchings.
At the end of this dedication there is a fragment of another, the beginning of which is lost. The following passages only in it are worthy of notice. “The residence of King William.” “I flatter myself with a familiar acquaintance with Death, since I have already lived long enough to seem to be buried alive, &c.” In other respects, the same, in substance, as the preceding.
It is almost needless to advert to M. Nieuhoff Piccard’s mistake in asserting that Holbein made the engravings which he copied; but it would have been of some importance if, instead of his pious ejaculations, he had described all the subjects that Holbein painted on the walls of the galleries at Whitehall. He must have used some edition of the wood-cuts posterior to that of 1545, which did not contain the subjects of the German soldier, the fool, and the blind man, all of which he has introduced. It is possible, however, that he has given us all the subjects that were then remaining, the rest having become decayed or obliterated from dampness and neglect, and even those which then existed would soon afterwards perish when the remains of the old palace were removed. His copies are by no means faithful, and seem to be rather the production of an amateur than of a regular artist. For his greater convenience, he appears to have preferred using the wood engravings instead of the paintings; and it is greatly to be regretted that we have no better or further account of them, especially of the time at which they were executed. The lives of Holbein that we possess are uniformly defective in chronological arrangement. There seems to be a doubt whether the Earl of Arundel recommended him to visit England; but certain it is that in the year 1526 he came to London with a letter of that date addressed by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, accompanied with his portrait, with which More was so well satisfied that he retained him at his house at Chelsea upwards of two years, until Henry VIII. from admiration of his works, appointed him his painter, with apartments at Whitehall. In 1529 he visited Basle, but returned to England in 1530. In 1535 he drew the portrait of his friend Nicholas Bourbon or Borbonius at London, probably the before-mentioned crayon drawing at Buckingham House, or some duplicate of it. In 1538 he painted the portrait of Sir Richard Southwell, a privy counsellor to Henry VIII. which was afterwards in the gallery of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[128] About this time the magistrates of the city of Basle settled an annuity on him, but conditionally that he should return in two years to his native place and family, with which terms he certainly did not comply, preferring to remain in England. In the last-mentioned year he was sent by the king into Burgundy to paint the portrait of the Duchess of Milan, and in 1539 to Germany to paint that of Anne of Cleves. In some household accounts of Henry VIII. there are payments to him in 1538, 1539, 1540, and 1541, on account of his salary, which appears to have been thirty pounds per annum.[129] From this time little more is recorded of him till 1553, when he painted Queen Mary’s portrait, and shortly afterwards died of the plague in London in 1554.
In the absence of positive evidence it may surely be allowed to substitute probable conjecture; and as it cannot be clearly proved that Holbein painted a Dance of Death at Basle, may not the before-mentioned verses of Borbonius refer to his painting at Whitehall, and which the poet must himself have seen? It is no objection that Borbonius remained a year only in England, when his portrait was painted by his friend Holbein in 1535, or that the verses did not make their appearance till 1538, for they seem rather to fix the date of the painting, if really belonging to it, between those years; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Borbonius would hold some intercourse with the painter, even after leaving England, as is indeed apparent from other compliments bestowed on him in his Nugæ, the contents of which are by no means chronologically arranged, and many of the poems known to have been written long before their publication. The lines in question might have been written any where, and at any time, and this may be very safely stated until the real time in which the Whitehall painting was made shall be ascertained.
In one of Vanderdort’s manuscript catalogues of the pictures and rarities transported from St. James’s to Whitehall, and placed there in the newly erected cabinet room of Charles I. and in which several works by Holbein are mentioned, there is the following article: “A little piece where Death with a green garland about his head, stretching both his arms to apprehend a Pilate in the habit of one of the spiritual Prince Electors of Germany. Copied by Isaac Oliver from Holbein.”[130] There cannot be a doubt that this refers to the subject of the Elector, as painted by Holbein in the Dance of Death at Whitehall, proving at the same time the identity of the painting with the wood-cuts, whatever may be the inference.
Sandrart, after noticing a remarkable portrait of Henry VIII. at Whitehall, states, that “there yet remains in that palace another work by Holbein that constitutes him the Apelles of the time.”[131] This is certainly very like an allusion to a Dance of Death.
It is by no means improbable that Mathew Prior may have alluded to Holbein’s painting at Whitehall, as it is not likely that he would be acquainted with any other.
Our term of life depends not on our deed,
Before our birth our funeral was decreed,
Nor aw’d by foresight, nor misled by chance,
Imperious death directs the ebon lance,
Peoples great Henry’s tombs, and leads up Holbein’s Dance.
Ode to the Memory of George Villiers.