It is not surprising that art made little progress whilst it was mainly directed to the painting and gilding of timber angels and of solid devils for a hell of iron and wood-work. Things were not much better in the reign of Henry VIII. His love of ostentation made him fond of pageants, and the instructions which he left for his own monument are curious. "The King shall appear on horseback, of the stature of a goodly man while over him shall appear the image of God the Father holding the King's soul in his left hand, and his right hand extended in the act of benediction." This work was to have been executed in bronze, but was never finished. Elizabeth stopped the necessary payments, and the uncompleted figure was sold by an unsentimental and Puritan Parliament for £600. The influence of the Reformation was decidedly antagonistic to art in England and elsewhere. In attempting to reform, the leaders tolerated destruction, and whilst pretending to purify the church they carried away not only the "idols," but much that was beautiful. They literally "broke down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers." Pictures and altar-pieces were ruthlessly destroyed. Fortunately a considerable number of old paintings still exist in our churches. A little work on "Wall Paintings in England," recently published by the Science and Art Department, mentions five hundred and sixty-eight churches and other public buildings in England in which wall paintings and other decorations have been found, all dating from an earlier period than the Reformation, and there are doubtless many not noticed. The branch of art which suffered least from the iconoclastic Reformers was that of portrait-painting, and this received a great impetus in England by the opportune arrival of—
HANS HOLBEIN, the younger, of Augsburg (1497—1543), who came, in 1526, with a recommendation from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, by whom he was welcomed and entertained at Chelsea. Unlike Albrecht Dürer, the other great German painter of the Reformation epoch, Holbein was a literal painter of men, not a dreamer haunted by visions of saints and angels. His ideas of heaven were probably modelled far more on the plan of the Bristol pageant, than on that of the Italian masters. Such an artist came exactly at the right moment to England, where Protestantism was becoming popular. Holbein's wonderful power as a colourist and the fidelity of his likenesses exercised a lasting effect on English art. He founded no school, however, though he had many imitators among the foreign artists whom Henry had invited.[C]
In 1532 Holbein was made Painter to the King, with a salary of £34 a year, in addition to the payment given for his works. The chief pictures painted by Holbein in England are portraits; and tradition says that Henry specially employed him to delineate the features of any fair lady on whom he had cast a favourable eye. Among the portraits we may mention those of Nicolas Kratzer, Erasmus, Anne of Cleves, and Sir Richard Southwel (in the Louvre); Archbishop Warham (Lambeth Palace); Sir Henry Guildford, a Merchant of the Steelyard, and Lady Rich (Windsor); Lady Vaux and John Reskimer (Hampton Court); Henry VIII.; the Duchess of Milan[D] (Arundel Castle); Sir William and Lady Butts (Mr. W. H. Pole Carew); The Ambassadors, a most important work, and Erasmus (Lord Radnor, Longford Castle). There is at Windsor a series of eighty portraits of the English nobility, drawn by Holbein in black and red chalks, which are of infinite value as works of art; and at Windsor likewise, and in other galleries, are many carefully painted miniatures ascribed to him, of the greatest artistic and historic value.
Hans Holbein, like most artists of his age, could do more than paint portraits. At Basle are noble subject pictures by him. He was an architect, a modeller, and a carver. He was specially gifted in designing wood-blocks for illustrating books, and in the ornamentation of sword-hilts, plate, and the like. A book of designs for jewels, by Holbein, once the property of Sir Hans Sloane, is now in the British Museum. Holbein died of the plague, in London, between October 7th and November 29th, 1543.
Another painter in the service of King Henry VIII. at this time was the above-named GIROLAMO PENNACCHI, who was born at Treviso, in 1497. He was an imitator of Raphael, and painted portraits—chiefly at Genoa, Faenza, Bologna, and Venice, and in 1542 came to England. He was killed by a cannon-ball while acting as a military engineer in the King's service near Boulogne, in 1544. There is an altar-piece by him, signed IERONIMVS TREVISIVS P (No. 623 in the National Gallery.) In the "Old Masters" Exhibition of 1880, was a portrait of Sir T. Gresham (No. 165), a fine whole-length, standing, life-size picture of the famous merchant, with a skull on the pavement at our left. This work is dated 1544, the year of Sir Thomas's marriage, in his twenty-sixth year, and, as we have seen above, of Treviso's death. It is the property of the Gresham Committee of London, and every expert has accepted it as a work of the Italian painter, engineer, and architect, who was important enough to be honoured with a separate biography by Vasari in his "Lives of the Painters." Girolamo's salary from the English King was 400 scudi per annum. Much likeness exists between the art of Gresham's portrait and that of the masterly life-size, whole-length picture of the Earl of Surrey, with his motto, Sat super est, which is one of the chief ornaments of Knole, and almost worthy of Velasquez himself. This picture (which is dated 1546) is attributed to the undermentioned GWILLIM STRETES (or STREET). It is much more like an Italian production than a Dutch one, and so fine that Da Treviso might have painted it at his best time. It is not like the beautiful portraits of Edward VI. at Windsor and Petworth, which are exactly such as we attribute to a man in Stretes's position, and which, while differing from the productions of Holbein, are, technically speaking, by no means unworthy of him. The charming Windsor portrait of Edward VI. was No. 172 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866. In the same collection were more works of the same period, including the portrait of Henry VIII., No. 124, lent by the Queen.
The following are among the painters who flourished at this time of whom records exist and are more or less confused, yet are so valuable that they deserve to be sifted in comparison with the large numbers of pictures. The artists' names are important because they prove how many of the owners were Englishmen. These persons were all employed by Henry VIII. They were JOHN BROWN, who received a pension of £10 a year; Andrew Wright, died 1543; VINCENT VOLPE, who translated his name into "Fox" and died 1529. He, c. 1529, was paid at the rate of £20 a year, a great sum in those days, when Holbein himself had but £30 a year. ANTONIO TOTO succeeded Wright as Sergeant-Painter to the King, a dignity which afterwards fell to Sir James Thornhill and Hogarth successively. Gerrard Lucas Horebout, or HORNEBOLT (1475—1558), and LUCAS HOREBOUT (died 1544), his son, Flemings, were painters of distinction here and abroad, whose works have been added to those of Holbein. Their wages were more than £30 per annum each. SUSANNA HOREBOUT was a painter of miniatures, much employed by the King and his courtiers. A picture of Henry VIII. at Warwick Castle has for centuries borne the name of Lucas of this family. It is doubtless rightly named, and may some day furnish a key to the style of the distinguished owner himself. It was No. 99 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, and No. 471 of the Manchester Art Treasures of 1857. A somewhat similar picture is now in the National Portrait Gallery. We may, in future, recognise in some of the beautiful miniatures of this period, which are now ascribed to Holbein, the much-praised works of Susanna Horebout. Doubtless some of the works of Lucas have been bestowed on Lucas de Heere, who is mentioned below. BARTHOLOMEW PENNI, and ALICE CARMILLION succeeded in honour. Lavinia Terling (born Benich), "paintrix," as they called her, had for quarterly wages £10, and was mentioned by Vasari as of Bruges.
