Melanie Taylor was one of our distinguished panel members at our Wolf Hall Weekend in June 2024 at Cadhay House, East Devon. Her research into the life and work of Hans Hobein the younger is hugely interesting and we promised we would reveal her latest findings when they became available, and we’re pleased to link to her recent article HERE.
Melanie has also agreed for us to publish an abstract of her findings::
“A novel should be a book about questions, not a book of answers” so said Hilary Mantel in 2013. The same applies to portraits and none more so than that of Hans Holbein’s Thomas Cromwell as Master of the Jewel House (1532).
Holbein features in all the books of Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy with the focus on the personal relationship between the artist and Cromwell, culminating in the 1532 visual celebration of Cromwell’s appointment to Master of the Jewel House.
When Holbein left Basle in the 1520s his preferred destination was Paris. The French royal court was one of sophistication with many works of art by Italian masters. In addition, Paris was the european centre for publishing religious and secular texts and Holbein’s experience with working with the Basle printer and publisher Johannes Froben would, in normal circumstances, have found him employment.
Unfortunately between 1519 and 1525 the ambitions of Francis I of France to become the next Holy Roman Emperor, the jamboree at the Field of the Cloth of gold in 1520, and his Italian campaign against Emperor Charles V in northern Italy had crashed the French economy. Hence why Holbein arrived in England in the autumn of 1526 clutching letters of introduction and portrait of Erasmus he presented himself to the Dutch scholar’s friend and Henry VIII’s Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Sir Thomas More.
Examination of the visual nuances Holbein included in four portraits shows how the artist provides details of the interests and lives of Erasmus, Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham, Sir Thomas More and Sir Henry Guildford, the latter three being key members of the Henrician court.
The Basle authorities permitted Holbein to travel provided he returned after five years and he did so in 1529, but returned to a very changed England three years later. Having failed to secure Henry VIII’s divorce from Queen Katharine of Aragon, Thomas Cromwell’s superior, Cardinal Wolsey, was dead. Cromwell survived Wolsey’s fall from grace and was rising in Henry VIII’s administration. In 1532 he received the first of relatively minor appointments, but ones that gave him control of the private royal coffers and direct to the King’s ear.
Of all of Holbein’s portraits that of Thomas Cromwell is the most puzzling. The composition is odd and raises many questions.
Why is Cromwell sitting on a bench behind a table covered with a green cloth on which lie various documents and a book?
Why is he staring at a vertical piece of wood? What is this and why is his expression one of irritation?
Where is this room?
Who is expected and will they be invited to sit next to Cromwell or stand with us, the viewer, on the other side of the table?
The presence of what is now known to be the printed book of hours donated to the Wren Library, Cambridge by Anne Sadlier, daughter in law of Cromwell’s close associate, Sir Ralph Sadler, lies on the table and we have to ask how did the book come into Cromwell’s possession prior to 1532?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Wolf Hall Weekend to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.