About the year 1536 the great painter Hans Holbein, who had come to England several years previously, entered into the service of Henry VIII, and it was between that date and his death in 1543 that he executed those masterpieces of design for jewellery which will ever stand as a landmark in the history of the subject. There is no evidence to show that Holbein himself worked in the precious metals. But brought up under similar influences as had moulded the great Italian artists of the Renaissance, Ghiberti, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Francia, and Ghirlandaio, who combined the arts of painting, architecture, and sculpture with the jeweller's craft, he had been well grounded in the limitations of his materials, and knew how far the draughtsman could display his skill in this direction.
The most important of Holbein's designs for jewellery are preserved in the British Museum, to which they were bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane in 1753. The collection, originally mounted in a quarto volume, termed Holbein's London Sketch-book, is now remounted and systematically arranged. The designs, comprising 179 separate items, are for the most part drawn with a pen with black ink, and then some slight touches of brown put in for the shadows. Several of the designs have the ground blackened, the ornaments being left in white. Some of the jewels, entirely coloured and often touched up with gold, are designed for enamelling in high relief; some are perhaps designed for execution in niello, though it is not improbable that these were intended to be ornamented with black champlevé enamel. The most attractive are the patterns for jewels enriched with precious stones and enamels, the majority of which were for neck pendants intended to hang from a chain, ribbon, or silken cord, itself sometimes shown in the drawing ([Pl. XXVI]).
The design of a few of these pendants is based upon the prevailing custom of wearing initials of the name either in embroidery or in pure gold attached to the garments. Some curious instances of this fashion are recorded by Hall, particularly in his graphic account of what took place at a masque given by Henry VIII at his palace at Westminster. Upon the King's invitation to divide the rich garments of the maskers sewn with letters of "fine and massy gold in bullyon as thicke as they might be," which generally went as largess to the ladies, a rabble of citizens, who were allowed to look on, broke in, and "ranne to the Kyng and stripped hym into his hosen and dublet, and all his compaignions in like wyse. Syr Thomas Knevet stode on a stage, and for all his defence he lost his apparell. The ladies like wyse were spoyled, wherfore the Kynges garde came sodenly, and put the people backe, or els it was supposed more inconvenience had ensued." So pure was the gold of which these letters were composed that it is recorded subsequently that a "shipeman of London who caught certayn letters sould them to a goldsmyth for £3. 14. 8"—quite a considerable sum in those days.
In the same way jewelled initials were also frequently worn in the form of pendants and a jewelled B can be seen hanging from the neck of Anne Boleyn in her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Holbein's drawings contain several beautiful instances of this type of design, generally completed with three pendent pearls. One of them has a monogram of the initials R and E in chased and engraved gold set at the four corners with two rubies, an emerald, and a diamond. Another has the letters H and I (probably for Henry and Jane Seymour) with an emerald in the centre; and a somewhat similar jewel, formed of the sacred monogram, is worn by Jane Seymour in her portrait by Holbein at Vienna.
The designs for the larger pendants, mostly circular or lozenge-shaped, are set with sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and terminate with large pear-shaped pearls. The spaces between the stones are filled with chased or enamelled arrangements of scroll or leaf work.
The smaller jewels, which might also have been worn as enseignes or badges on the hat, or as brooches, are of open goldwork with leaf or ribbon ornament set with stones and pearls. They include a very beautiful design of a half-length figure of a lady in the costume of the period holding between her hands a large stone, upon which is the inscription well laydi well ([Pl. XXVI, 9]). The fifteenth-century traditions seem to have influenced Holbein in the design of this jewel, which at once calls to mind the Flemish-Burgundian brooches (an example of which, in the British Museum, has already been mentioned) ornamented with similar figures, full-faced, and holding a large stone before them.
The jewels actually executed from these designs were probably the work of Hans of Antwerp, known as John Anwarpe.[136] He was a friend of Holbein, and one of the witnesses of his will; and his portrait, painted by Holbein, is now at Windsor. Hans of Antwerp appears to have settled in London about 1514, having perhaps been induced to do so by Thomas Cromwell, who in early life resided for a time in Antwerp as secretary to the English merchants there. It was presumably Cromwell who, as "Master of the King's Jewel House," was instrumental in procuring for him the post of the King's goldsmith. His name occurs several times in Cromwell's accounts, and it was in accordance with the latter's "ryght hartye commendations" that he obtained the freedom of the Goldsmiths' Company of London. The chief duty of the King's goldsmith was to supply the New Year's gifts (estrennes), so popular at that time. These usually took the form of personal ornaments, and it seems likely that Holbein's famous sketches were specially designed for this purpose.
ELIZABETH—MARY STUART
However remarkable the Court of Henry VIII was for its profusion of jewellery, that of Queen Elizabeth, who inherited the Tudor love for display, was still more extravagant. Throughout her reign—a period marked also upon the Continent for its prolific production of jewellery—the fashion set by the jewel-loving Queen for a superabundance of finery maintained its sway. The country suddenly becoming wealthy, was tempted, like one not born to riches, to use the whole in outward show, and this display was rendered comparatively easy by the influx of gold and precious stones after the Spanish conquests in America.
Numerous portraits of courtiers and court ladies afford ample evidence of the prevailing fashions in jewellery, while the portraits of the Queen herself, all overburdened with ornaments, are too well known to need detailed description.[137] "There is not a single portrait of her," says Walpole, "that one can call beautiful. The profusion of ornaments with which they are loaded are marks of her continual fondness for dress, while they entirely exclude all grace, and leave no more room for a painter's genius than if he had been employed to copy an Indian idol, totally composed of hands and necklaces. A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff, a vaster fardingale, a bushel of pearls, are features by which every body knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth."