Painted in oil on panel.
1 ft. 4¾ in. × 1 ft. 0¾ in. (0·42 × 0·32.)
Although decidedly superior to another version of the same picture at Lambeth Palace, the Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury (No. 2714), which bears the inscription,
ANNO. Dm. MDXXVII. ETATIS. SVE, LXX.,
cannot without hesitation be accepted as an original work. It lacks, at any rate, the finesse of the beautiful drawing at Windsor Castle, upon which it is evidently based.
To the same year belongs the Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell (No. 2719), to whose treacherous accusation was due the execution of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. But this picture, again, is only a replica, by an inferior hand, of the magnificent portrait in the Uffizi Gallery (No. 765). An inscription in the background, at both sides of the head, reads:
on the left: x.o ivlii. anno.
h. viii. xxviii.
and on the right: etatis svæ
anno xxxiii.
It would thus appear that the picture was painted in 1537, the twenty-eighth year of Henry viii.’s reign. The Portrait of a Man holding a Carnation and a Rosary (No. 2720) is a picture of poor quality and has no connection whatever with Holbein.