Portrait of Sir Thomas More (Holbein)
Portrait of Sir Thomas More is an oak panel painting commissioned in 1527 of Thomas More by the German artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger, now in the Frick Collection in New York.
| Portrait of Sir Thomas More | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Hans Holbein the Younger |
| Year | 1527 |
| Type | Oil on oak |
| Dimensions | 74.2 cm × 59 cm (29.2 in × 23 in) |
| Location | Frick Collection, New York |
The work was created during the period from 1526 when Holbein lived in London. He gained the friendship of the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who recommended that he befriend More, then a powerful, knighted speaker at the English Parliament.[1]
A closely related, though probably not directly preparatory, drawing with bodycolour is in the Royal Collection,[2] and there is a copy in the National Portrait Gallery, probably "painted in Italy or Austria in the early seventeenth century".[3] Possibly this is the version catalogued in the Leuchtenberg Gallery in 1852.
Another Holbein portrait of More, part of a large group portrait of his family, is now lost, but several drawings (also mostly in the Royal Collection) and copies survive.[4]
Gallery
Detail of Tudor rose on the Collar of Esses Livery chain
Notes
| External video | |
|---|---|
 Hans Holbein, the Younger, Sir Thomas More, Frick Collection[5] |
- Batschmann & Griener, 158
- Hans Holbein the Younger. "Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)". Royal Collection Trust. Inventory no. 912268.
- National Portrait Gallery
- Thomas More & Family - the painting Archived 27 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine by Rowland Lockey in Nostell Priory
- "Hans Holbein, the Younger, Sir Thomas More". Frick Collection. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
Sources
- Bätschmann, Oskar & Griener, Pascal. Hans Holbein. Reaktion Books, 1999. ISBN 1-86189-040-0
- Frick Collection, The Frick Collection:an Illustrated Catalogue,vol.1 (Paintings), Princeton University Press, Princeton:NJ, 1968, 228–233.