Category: Art News

With the Tate exhibition opening tomorrow, there has been another burst of articles about Holbein and his art. Here’s a round-up!

Holbein’s pen and ink portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family will be on display in the exhibition:

BBC: Tate displays rare More portrait

The Guardian: Renaissance man comes home: Intimate portrait of Sir Thomas More and family returns after nearly 500 years

Times Online: Holbein’s pen-and-ink drawing returns Thomas More to London

Additional articles:

Guardian: Face to face with death: Many of Holbein’s subjects were executed by Henry VIII; his portraits of them are elegiac, yet hypnotically full of life. [Slideshow with this article]

Telegraph: An eye into the soul: As Tate Britain’s outstanding new show demonstrates, Holbein’s portraits of even the plainest sitter shimmer irresistibly with an emotional truth. [Slideshow with this article]

Bloomberg: Overweight Henry VIII Stars in Holbein Exhibit at Tate Britain

Channel 4: Henry’s family portraits on show [Video report]

Guardian: Holbein’s lady sheds light on court life

Times Online: The man who invented portraits

Just a follow-up on a post from a few month ago:

Holbein’s 1542 medallion-style “Portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger,” son of Henry VIII’s treasurer, was offered by London dealer Christopher Gibbs for as much as 3 million pounds. It drew no bids.

Full article

(original links have expired and have been removed)

From The Times Online:

An image of Elizabeth I as a teenager

I have been getting news alerts on this story for a few days, but I was waiting for one of the stories to actually run a picture of the portrait before I posted it. Thankfully the BBC finally came through! The portrait is a large version of a relatively well-known miniature of Thomas Wyatt the Younger, which you can see here.

From the BBC article:

A recently rediscovered painting by Hans Holbein is expected to fetch between

From the BBC:

Portraits of Henry VIII, his third wife Jane Seymour and their son Edward are to be hung together for the first time since Henry himself owned them.
…
The works by 16th Century court painter Hans Holbein the Younger will go on display in an exhibition at the Tate Britain in London in September.
…
It will feature 30 portrait drawings, six paintings and several miniatures from the Royal Collection, along with some of Holbein’s jewellery designs.

Full article

Update 1: more links

Another article from the Independent

And from the Guardian

And from The Times

Update 2: one more…

From the Telegraph

Update 3:
I completely forgot to add a link to the Tate and their own page for the exhibition (including ticket information). Here it is – Holbein in England: 28 September 2006

A portrait that had been hanging in a house in south-west London for the past 100 years may turn out to be the only authenticated portrait of Lady Jane.

Article from The Telegraph
Article from the Guardian
Report from Channel 4

Thank you to all the folks who pointed out these articles and reports!

Update: Here is a BBC article. They have an “enlarge image” view which shows a little more of the portrait, although not in any great detail.

(some original links have expired and have been removed)

The above link goes to an article at The Scotsman. One of the treasures that will be on display in this collection is a tiny pair of miniatures in lockets painted by Nicholas Hilliard of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley.

(original links have expired and have been removed)

Here is a link to the National Galleries of Scotland. If you are unable to make it to the exhibit (like me!), there is a catalog of the miniatures available from the SNPG shop for £9.95.

Rolf leads giant portrait project

The link goes to the BBC article on the painting. Be sure to click on the “enlarge picture” for the full view.

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Sotheby’s London will be auctioning off a portrait of Henry VIII. For just a paltry $150,000/£80,000 (more or less, depending on the bidding) it can be yours!

(original links have expired and have been removed)

Recent news out of the Victoria & Albert Museum courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph:

Art cleaners uncover a Holbein the V & A never knew it had.

The article includes a picture of the miniature that was recently cleaned and revealed to be a Holbein.

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Mystery Lady May Be Queen
© Herald Sun
October 22, 1998

DNA tests by Melbourne scientists on a tiny tuft of red hair could unlock the secret of a 450 year old painting believed to be of Queen Elizabeth I, when she was nine. Geneticists at Monash University are analysing the hair, plucked from the original frame of the historic 1542 painting ‘Portrait of a Lady’, by renowned 16th century artist Hans Holbein. If the tests prove the hair is from a woman it could help confirm the identity of the woman in the picture as the young Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and future Queen of England.

The news coincides with the release of a major film on the life of the Tudor monarch, Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett.

It was Melbourne art historian and researcher Graeme Cameron who found the tiny strand of hair wedged in a crack in the painting’s elaborate original frame. “I went to brush it off but something made me stop and look at it a bit more closely” he said.

Mr Cameron was struck by the hairs age and the fact it was red – the colour of the then Princess Elizabeth’s hair. He said it was possible the hair could have come form either King Henry VIII himself or the artist Holbein, both of whom had red hair. “The hairs are quite ancient and shrivelled” he said. “Whoever it came from, it’s just amazing to think that it could have been there for that long”.

Mr Cameron who has been researching the painting for 20 years said the portrait had immense historical significance. “The Holbein portrait is an historical icon in its own right and represents the earliest image of Elizabeth I in existence” he said.

“It was potentially going to play a vital role in the politics of the day as a marriage portrait to secure an alliance between the English House of Tudor and the Scottish throne”.

Mr Cameron believes the artist painted the young Elizabeth to look much more mature and wiser than her years to increase her attractiveness to her potential suitor. The painting was sent to Scotland with Sir Lionel Duckett, one of the King’s advisers, but failed to win an alliance. It remained in the Duckett family for 300 years, largely forgotten until it was found in a private collection in 1952. The portrait is now owned by a private trust on the Isle of Man and is being restored.

Mr Cameron said the DNA test is just one of a battery of scientific tests being used to add further proof of the painting’s identity. If the DNA analysis reveals the hair to be female, he hopes to compare the genetic code with DNA samples from descendants of the Tudors.

Thanks to Jodie for snail-mailing this to me from down under!