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This painting is a later sixteenth century replica of Hans Holbein’s celebrated portrait of Henry VIII. It derives from Holbein’s 1537 Whitehall mural, in which Henry VIII was grouped together with his father Henry VIII, his mother Elizabeth of York, and his third wife, Jane Seymour. The mural was destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, but the image of Henry it presented had quickly become the standard image of the King by the late 1530s. A number of high quality replicas, some of which were almost certainly painted in Holbein’s studio, are known from the late 1530s onwards. In fact, so prevalent did Holbein’s full-frontal portrait of Henry become that a number of earlier likenesses of Henry, in which he was presented in the more conventional three-quarter profile, were later painted over with Holbein’s design.
Holbein’s use of the face-on composition for Henry’s portrait marked an important break with convention. His first portrayal of the King in oil showed Henry looking to the side, as seen in the Thyssen portrait of the mid 1530s, a picture which demonstrates the challenges Holbein faced when painting the king, for Henry by then had become a formidably unattractive man. He had always been well built — it was said in the 1520s that ‘when he moves the ground shakes beneath him’ — but in the latter half of his reign his girth grew greatly. Holbein’s full-length cartoon for the Whitehall mural [National Portrait Gallery, London] shows Henry looking to the side, as in the Thyssen picture; but at such a large scale we se just how unflattering the pose is, not least in showing Henry’s hooked nose and large double chin. Holbein somehow had to transform Henry’s irascible bulk into an identity fit for royal stately power.
His answer was to use the frontal pose repeated in the present picture. The format was unconventional in sixteenth century portraiture, since it was considered to be impolite and ‘graceless’. But Holbein, as so often, clearly liked breaking convention. The frontal pose was used regularly throughout his career. It appears in a number of drawings, and in the portraits of Christina of Denmark Anne of Cleves, and, most notably, the portrait of Charles de Solier [Dresden Gemaldegalerie], in which the pose is almost identical to that used in the final version of the Whitehall mural. Solier’s portrait was painted during his spell as French ambassador to London in 1534. It is possible that Henry VIII saw this and approved. Thus Holbein’s portrayal of Henry evolved as Henry grew ever larger, and all subsequent portraits of the King show him in this manner. Holbein’s ingenious trick was to accentuate Henry’s bulk, rather than reduce it. By placing his hands on his hips to make the stance more confrontational, and by incorporating the head and neck square-on, Holbein created a human fortress of imperial strength.
The present portrait was painted by an unknown follower of Holbein. The initial design was most likely taken from a template, or ‘mask’, which would have been used for any number of portraits of Henry. The panel would perhaps have been intended to be displayed as a means of the owner displaying his loyalty to the Tudor regime, and may have been hung as part of a set of ‘corridor portraits’, with other Tudor monarchs alongside it.