THE KING’S PAINTER

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANS HOLBEIN

Hans Holbein created our image of Henry VIII: the ruthless, swaggering, cod-piece-thrusting symbol of kingly authority. But, despite his gloriously vivid portraits of the Tudor court, very little is known about the artist himself. In the Times, Laura Freeman was delighted by the sheer gorgeousness of Franny Moyle’s new biography of Holbein: ‘I take my feathered cap off to Moyle and her publishers. It is an expensive and difficult business getting permissions for reproductions. There is hardly a painting mentioned in the text that isn’t printed in colour and across a whole page. You can count the hairs on Holbein’s beard, peer at every pearl. This is a triumph of bookmaking as well as biography.’

In the Sunday Times, Michael Prodger also praised a ‘vivid, judicious and lavishly illustrated account’. It was a challenge, observed Prodger, for archives are scant and little is known of the greatest of Tudor portraitists: ‘So Moyle builds him up from his context, and what is clear is that Holbein was above all a pragmatist. He worked for the staunchly Catholic More and the reforming Cromwell, as well as Cromwell’s nemesis Thomas Howard; he painted orthodox Catholic altarpieces and frontispieces for Protestant tracts; he would draw the hairs sprouting from a mole on the chin of Lady Rich but omit them from the final portrait; he designed luxury goods for Anne Boleyn and painted the Seymour family, who helped to topple her.’

In the Spectator, Mark Bostridge noted that Moyle ‘cheerfully admits’ to occasionally relying on ‘speculation’ but he concluded that ‘a bold outline of the man still makes its impression. Moyle’s Holbein has a certain swagger, appropriate for an artist regarded by himself and countless others as a modern Apelles, the renowned painter of ancient Greece.’