Hans Holbein the Younger and the Politics of Art
Just two years into the reign of James I, a Dutch painter and poet named Karel van Mander toured Whitehall Palace and came upon something that astounded him: a large mural of two generations of Tudors. Dominating the nine foot by twelve foot painting on the wall was the long-dead Henry VIII. At his side was his third wife, Jane Seymour; above the couple were his parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
Van Mander, stunned, wrote that Henry VIII “stood there, majestic in his splendor…so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence.”
Lifelike. This was the supreme achievement of the mural’s creator, Hans Holbein. then and now. Peter Ackroyd has written, “He illustrates his sitters in the light of some sudden but characteristic emotion, as if he had caught their thought on the wing.”
It is in part because of Holbein that we feel we know the Tudor personalities, from Henry VIII and Jane Seymour to Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell to a baby Prince Edward. But do we really know Holbein?
It seems to us now as if Hans Holbein the Younger was always there, the favorite, the prize artist of the king. But in fact his artistic reign was fairly brief. He did not become “court painter” until shortly before painting that famous mural. It had taken years to win the trust of Henry VIII and secure royal…
