Holbein died in London about 400 years ago — the precise date is uncertain. The last eleven years of his life were spent in England, and it was during those years that he made most of the remarkable portrait drawings for which he is mainly remembered in England. Basle may think of him as a painter of religious pictures and a designer of stained-glass windows, but to us he is a draughtsman, and the exhibition that opened to-day at the Victoria and Albert Museum stresses that side of his genius.
It is inevitable that it should do so, for the portrait drawings in the royal collection at Windsor have been so well reproduced that they have all the air of originals, whereas the paintings, shown in small-scale photographs, lose both their enamel-like quality and their grave, if unimaginative, colour. The only originals shown are a few exquisite miniatures and a portrait of Sir Thomas Mores second wife, a picture to which time and the restorer’s brush have not been kind. The Court of Henry VIII could not have been better served by any royal portraitist. Goya never troubled to conceal his feelings. Van Dyck was a professional flatterer; Velasquez somehow takes his sitters out of their period and gives them a timeless air. Holbein is scrupulously objective and yet essentially Tudor.
For those who want a footnote to the exhibition in the shape of a full-length Holbein portrait, there is the Duchess of Milan at the National Gallery, opportunely chosen as the picture of the month. Holbein painted her for Henry at a moment when she was under consideration as a possible bride. Looking at the picture one feels sure it was not Holbein’s fault that the marriage never took place.