Dorothy Rowe

TATE Britain Exhibition Holbein in England October 2006

A middle-aged man in a pin-striped suit turned away from the Holbein drawing he had been examining, saying loudly and authoritatively, 'It's very good.' 'No,' I thought, 'It's not merely good. It is absolutely extraordinary.'

There is no doubting Holbein's skill as an artist. We see real people whom we would recognise if they walked into our room in modern garb. What is extraordinary is that he was working in the court of Henry VIII. If he had displeased a powerful courtier or, worse, the king himself, he would have been, at best, banished from England, at worst, killed. Yet he did not seek to protect himself by creating portraits which showed his sitters to be secure and happy. Instead, he showed all the tension, the guardedness, the fear felt by the people whose lives and livelihood depended on the whim of a supreme monarch who was vain, self-centred, wilful and unwise.

In none of the portraits is the sitter smiling. Lady Guildford risked what might be a teasing glance at her husband whose portrait hangs next to her, but the pudgy, dour face of Sir Henry tells us that he would quench any sign of her levity. He may have married her because she supplied the gaiety and charm which he himself lacked, but women who are charming and outgoing are often indiscreet.

Holbein's portraits of Henry show that in Henry's court no one could afford to be indiscreet. Henry may have once been a handsome, approachable young man, but, as his portraits show, in middle age his face and body have thickened. He has a mean little mouth and cold, expressionless eyes. When he stands legs apart, his codpiece curls through a parting in his skirt like a vicious serpent. In the painting Henry VIII and the Barber-Surgeons Henry is seated with his codpiece at the point in the painting close to what is called the golden mean or golden section, thus becoming the cynosure for all eyes. The Worshipful Company of the Barber-Surgeons kneel on either side of the throne, their faces at the level of the cod piece. Power is symbolised by more than the crown.

The Barber-Surgeons were themselves all powerful men, but power and high office did not protect them, or other powerful men, from Henry's displeasure. John Fisher might have become the Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of Cambridge University but when he opposed Henry's divorce he was imprisoned along with Sir Thomas More and beheaded. Holbein's sketch of him, done shortly before his death, shows him pinched and gaunt with eyes full of pain as he contemplated his inevitable end. Sir Henry Wyatt's portrait was painted not long before his death and from it we may guess that his death, natural though it may have been, brought to an end a life full of worry that left its marks on his face. Dr Chambers, a cleric and physician of Henry, lived to eighty, but probably at the expense of his wife and family, as dogmatic and angry men always do. Sir John Godsalve was only in his early twenties when he took up the important post of Clerk to the King's Signet, just before Holbein painted his portrait. Unlike most of the other sitters, Sir John gazes directly at the painter, and at us, with that anxious air of unreality, 'What am I doing here?' He could be a modern day young man who suddenly finds himself promoted to a position for which neither his training nor his experience has fitted him. He spends the rest of his working life waiting to be revealed as the incompetent he is.

The women sitters fare no better than the men. Lady Jane Seymour, painted shortly after she became Queen, has an expression and a little tight mouth that say, 'It's not fair,' and it wasn't. Her family used her as a pawn in their power game, and her prize, Henry, would not have applied his vicious serpent to her with charm and grace. She died in childbirth not long after her portrait was painted. Margaret Bacon, Lady Butts, was the wife of Sir William Butts, the royal physician portrayed in the barber-surgeons portrait. Her portrait gives her age as fifty-seven, and she looks it. Her wrinkles, her unhappy eyes and the set of her mouth tell of constant worry and unhappiness.

One rich and powerful circle of people, separate from the royal court, were the foreign merchants from the Hanseatic League, a league of merchant associations within the cities of northern Germany and the Baltic. The portraits Holbein painted of these merchants are very different from those of the court. There the majority of the court sitters look away from the painter, whereas the merchants , full face on, gaze stare at the painter, and at us, saying in their stance, 'This is me. Take me as I am.' But even here Holbein dares to show a discrepancy between the sitter's idea of himself and what he actually is. Cyriacus Kale stands in front of his personal motto, 'Patient in all things', but patience is not the striking feature of his face. His thick neck supports a large, flat face with the eyes and mouth of a man who tells himself that he is patient until others drive him to explode with wrath. Herman von Wedigh sits at an angle and turns his face to look at us with an expression which says, 'Prove to me that you're honest and reliable.' Derich Born may have been only in his twenties but he had business connections with the royal court. He wanted the royal painter to know that he had judged the king and his circle and found them wanting. Perhaps his contempt was directed at the mismatch between Henry as a person and the pride Henry took in himself. Perhaps it was directed at the meagreness of minds that are dominated by fear.

When we see a group of people staying close together despite the fact that they all suffer in one way or other we ask ourselves, 'Why do they stay? Why don't they just leave?' Why does a wife stay with a cruel husband, and adult child with cold, critical parents? To outsiders there is no prison that keeps the person trapped. But there is, and the prison is in the person's own mind. Henry's courtiers and their families had or could have acquired country homes and residences away from court. However, they told themselves that they were bound to Henry by fealty, and that Henry had been appointed king by God. They saw the court as the centre of their world. Moving away from that would be the end of who they saw themselves as being, a person who was significant, important, virtuous, admired, if not by others, at least by themselves.

Were they afraid that Henry would be angered by portraits that showed his courtiers to be miserable and frightened? No, they weren't, because they knew, though they might not have admitted it even to themselves, that Henry wanted them to be unhappy. Their unhappiness and fear were signs of his power. He could give them treats and let them be happy for a short while, but soon he would need to call them to heel and punish them in order to reassure himself that he was powerful. No doubt Henry would think that, as he wasn't happy, why should they be?

However, these portraits were not painted to be hung at the court. They were hung in important buildings and in the grand mansions owned by the families. Did not the sitters want those who saw the portraits, not just their contemporaries but those in the distant future, to see a painting of someone who had been secure, successful and serene? Indeed no. They wanted their suffering to be seen and remembered because is not suffering in the cause of duty a great virtue which all must admire.

Hans Holbein duly obliged.

Reference

Susan Foister Holbein in England Tate Publishing, London, 2006.

http://tudorhistory.org/henry8/gallery2.html © (copyright) 1995-2006 Lara E. Eakins