CHAPTER XII

NATIVE AND FOREIGN ARTISTS IN ENGLAND DURING THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII

Henry VIII’s patronage of the fine arts—English painters in his service—John Browne—The Paynter-Stayners’ Company—Andrew Wright—John Hethe—Foreign artists at Henry’s Court—Gerard, Lucas, and Susanna Hornebolt—Katherine Maynors and Henry Maynert—Johannes Corvus—The Italian painters and sculptors—Paganino—Pietro Torrigiano—Vincent Volpe—Alessandro Carmillian—Antonio Toto and Bartolommeo Penni—Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano—Nicolas Bellin of Modena—Girolamo da Treviso.

BEFORE describing the work carried out by Holbein during his first visit to this country, it may be of service to give a short account of the state of art in England at that period, and of the various foreign painters and craftsmen then settled in London, and of the few native artists whose names have survived.

England under Tudor rule offered a far better field for lucrative employment than Basel for a painter of Holbein’s genius. Henry VIII was still at the highest point of his reputation as a monarch, popular with all classes of his subjects, and an ardent patron of literature and the fine arts. He was himself one of the most accomplished men of his time within his own realm. He was proficient in Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian, and assiduous in all affairs of state. He was passionately fond of music, and skilful both in its practice and theory, playing well upon the lute, organ, and harpsichord. He also sang and danced well. “His delight in gorgeous pageantry and splendid ceremonial,” says Dr. Brewer,[530] “if without any studied design, was not without advantage. Cloth of gold and tissue, New Year’s gifts, Christmas masquerades, and May Day mummeries, fell with heavy expense on the nobility, but afforded a cheap and gratuitous amusement to the people. The roughest of the populace were not excluded from their share in the enjoyment. Sometimes, in a boisterous fit of delight, he would allow and even invite the lookers-on to scramble for the rich ornaments of his own dress and those of his courtiers. Unlike his father, he showed himself everywhere. He entered with ease into the sports of others, and allowed them with equal ease to share in his.”

[Sidenote: HENRY VIII AS A PATRON OF ARTS]

Henry’s Court was considered to be the most magnificent of its time. Large sums were spent on luxuries, on dress, and in other directions. Foreign jewellers, and dealers in the fine arts, found in the King a ready purchaser. He was interested in architecture, and gave a close personal attention to the building and decoration of his various palaces. He was a collector of beautiful armour and weapons, and employed many foreign craftsmen in different decorative arts. In painting he took an equal pleasure, and he was the first of the English kings to form an important collection of pictures, which was hung in a gallery in his palace of Whitehall, of which he himself kept the key. He threw out inducements to foreign artists to settle in England and enter his service, and in his patronage of the fine arts displayed a keen but friendly rivalry with Francis I. These foreigners were chiefly Italian, though a certain number of painters and craftsmen had come over from the Netherlands. Among them all, however, there was no one who in any way approached the greatness of Holbein as an artist. Several men of considerable skill and some artistic pretensions remained in England for more or less lengthy periods, but there was no master of the first rank either from Italy or Flanders. Unlike his rival, Francis I, Henry was unable to attract to his Court men of such outstanding powers as Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, or Primaticcio, all of whom entered the service of the French Crown. Holbein, indeed, had nothing to fear from the rivalry of any foreigner at that time settled in London, and still less from the numerous English painters, who were of little importance and of mediocre abilities. Native talent, indeed, was at a very low ebb. The influence of the Italian revival of learning made itself felt in this country at an earlier date than that of the renaissance of the arts. No school of English painting was in existence capable of taking advantage of such influence, and of basing a new native art upon it. The English painters, indeed, were hardly painters at all in the modern sense. Many of them were mere house-painters and decorators; tradesmen occupied in various more or less artistic ways, but rarely, if ever, in the painting of pictures or portraits. They were painters of heraldic devices and shields, of banners and armour, of walls, ceilings, and ships, which can be definitely assigned to any one of them; even such third-rate productions as those preserved at Hampton Court, like “The Battle of Spurs,” or “The Field of the Cloth of Gold,” for generations attributed to Holbein, were probably not from the hand of an Englishman, but the work of foreigners.

At the time of Holbein’s arrival in London, in the winter of 1526-1527, the leading English artist was John Browne, who was serjeant-painter to the King, an office he held for more than twenty years. He was appointed to the post on the 20th December 1511, in the third year of Henry’s reign, with an allowance of twopence a day out of the issues of the lordship of Whitley, in Surrey, and four ells of cloth at Christmas, annually, of the value of 6_s._ 8_d._ an ell, from the keeper of the great wardrobe, for his livery.[531]

[Sidenote: JOHN BROWNE, SERJEANT-PAINTER]

On the 24th September 1511 he received the balance of his bill for painting the streamers, banners, flags, and staves belonging to the King’s ship, _The Mary and John_, amounting to £16, 14_s._ 8_d._, and on the 17th December in the same year, £142, 4_s._ 6_d._ for painting and staining banners for _The Mary Rose_ and _The Peter Pounde Garnarde_ (Pomegranate).[532] Browne occasionally employed the services of Vincent Volpe, an Italian, for this banner-painting, and also from time to time supplied the materials for the royal revels. Thus, for the jousts on the 1st June 1512, “2,100 of party gold” for surcoats was bought from him for £2, 6_s._, and in the following year he received 10_d._ for the hire of sails “to shadow the percloos for the pageant.”[533] In June 1513 he received £4, 8_s._ 8_d._ from the royal purse for painting “divers of the Pope’s arms in divers colours,” and on the 10th April in the following year he rendered an account for work done on the King’s royal ship, the _Great Harry_ or _Henry Grace à Dieu_, which included the supply of flags, banners, and streamers, two of them with crosses of St. George, and painting sixty staves in the King’s colours in oil at 6_d._ apiece.[534]

Browne was among those employed upon the temporary buildings at Guisnes, which included a banqueting house and a chapel, and lodgings for Henry and his Queen and the members of the English and French Courts, erected for the purpose of Henry’s state visit to France, and his meeting with Francis, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir Nicholas Vaux wrote to Wolsey that they would be able to finish the square court by the last day of May, provided John Rastell, Clement Urmeston, and John Browne, the King’s painter, “do make and garnish all the roses—a marvellous great charge, for the roses be large and stately.”[535] Later on complaint is made from the same correspondent, that Browne, who has to gild the roofs, has not yet reached Calais.[536] For this work he received two payments of £66, 13_s._ 4_d._, and £333, 6_s._ 8_d._ For the masking at New Hall on the 19th February 1520, he was paid £19, 13_s._ 4_d._ for the beating and putting on the scales of gold and silver on the garments and bonnets of seven children, one in red, powdered with gold suns and clouds; the second in yellow, powdered with moons and clouds; the third in blue, powdered with drops of silver; the fourth powdered with gold primroses; the fifth with silver honeysuckles; the sixth with gold stars, and the seventh with silver snowflakes.[537]

By right of his office of serjeant-painter he had the provision of coats for the heralds. Thus, in 1520 he received 40_s._ for a tabard of sarcenet painted for Nottingham pursuivant.[538] In 1523 he rendered an account of “parcellis of stuff” made for the “high and myghty prynce Charlis duke of Suffolke, then beyng a poynttyd to be lyffetenant generall of Kyngis royall armye in to the partyes of France.” The items included a standard wrought with fine gold and silver on double sarcenet fringed with silk (£3), banners with the Duke’s arms, a coat of arms wrought with fine gold and silks and in oil on double sarcenet for his herald, and escutcheons in metal on paper royal, and others in colour, and on buckram, each with his arms, and so on, the total bill amounting to £26, 3_s._[539] In 1524, for the revels at Greenwich, in which a castle was assaulted in the tilt-yard, he provided the painted cloths of which the sham buildings were made—“iiij pessys of clothe payntyng of Antuyke, wherewith the Kastell was envenyd,” and for various banners and coats of arms, £4, 10_s._[540] For revels held on the 10th November 1527, Browne supplied all the materials, including paints, glue, scissors, gold-foil, &c., to the amount of £21, 6_s._ 0½_d._, which were used for making trees, bushes, branches, roses, rosemary, hawthorn, mulberries, panes of gold, “flosynge of stars,” &c., for a “place of plesyer” erected under the superintendence of Richard Gibson at Greenwich. The masque was a theological one, in which Luther and his wife appeared, as well as the Apostles, Religion, Heresy, and similar characters.[541] These various details, which could be multiplied, are sufficient to indicate the kind of work upon which the King’s serjeant-painter was usually engaged; and all the other English painters were men of a similar stamp—decorators, scene-painters of a kind, but rarely, if ever, painters of a panel picture.

[Sidenote: ANDREW WRIGHT, SERJEANT-PAINTER]

Browne prospered in his calling, and on May 7, 1522, was elected an Alderman of London for the Ward of Farringdon Without. At first he was unwilling to accept office, and was committed to ward for refusal, but afterwards complied, and was appointed one of the Aldermen to the Haberdashers’ Company. In the following year, on July 25th, he was translated to the Ward of Farringdon Within. His service, however, always appears to have been an unwilling one, and in 1525, before he had served the office of Sheriff or Mayor, he was on his own request discharged from the office of Alderman, for which he gave to the Chamber of London two great standing salts of silver-gilt. “He made his will on the 17th September 1532, and on the 21st of the same month he conveyed to his brethren of the Paynter-Stayners a house in Trinity Lane, which he had purchased nearly thirty years before, and which has from that time continued to be the Painters’ Hall. Dying soon after, he was buried in the church of St. Vedast, at the west end of Chepe; and his will was proved on the 2nd December following.”[542]

This will, and the documents in connection with the transference of the house to the Paynter-Stayners, make us acquainted with the names of many of the English painters at work in London at that period. He left all his books of arms and badges and books of tricks of arms to his apprentice, Rychard Bygnalle, as well as painting materials and other materials at cost price to a second apprentice or “servaunte,” John Childe. To Richard Calard and John Howell, both brother painters, he left his best “prymmer” and a doublet respectively. Among other English painters mentioned in the deed of September 21st, 1532, were Andrew Wright, who succeeded him as serjeant-painter, Christopher Wright, Richard Rypyngale, Richard Laine, Thomas Alexander, John Hethe, Richard Gates, Thomas Crystyne, William Lucas, Richard Hauntlowe, and Robert Cope. A later conveyance (of 1549) adds the names of several members of the Wysdom family, and David Playne, Thomas Ballard, Thomas Uncle, Thomas Cob, Thomas Spenser, John Feltes, William Wagynton, William Cudnor, Richard Flint, Richard Wright (probably a son of Andrew), and Melchior Engleberd, a foreigner who had become naturalised.[543]

Walpole[544] mentions John Browne’s portrait as still preserved in Painter-Stainers’ Hall, but it is not a contemporary work. It represents him attired in the gown and gold chain of an alderman, and was probably painted some time after the Great Fire of 1666, to take the place of an earlier one that had been destroyed.

Andrew Wright succeeded John Browne. On June 19, 1532, he received a grant of the “reversion of the office of the King’s serjeant-painter, with an annuity of £10 out of the small custom and subsidy of tonnage and poundage in the port of London, as the said office was granted by patent 12th March, 18 Hen. VIII, to John Browne.”[545] In the King’s accounts for February 1532 he appears, in the phonetic spelling of the day, as “Andrewe Oret,” receiving on the 20th of that month £30 for “painting of the King’s barge, and the covering of the same.”[546] During 1532 he was at work in Westminster Palace. Thirty-one painters were occupied there upon a large wall-painting of the Coronation of Henry VIII, “made and set out in the Low Gallery by the orchard, as also upon the outsides of the walls of the New Gallery.” Both Englishmen and foreigners were engaged. Isaac Lebrune, who appears to have been the foreman painter, received a shilling a day; John Augustyne and Nic. Lasora, tenpence; William Plasyngton, sevenpence; and Robert Short, sixpence. Andrew Wright’s share was the gilding of the gallery roof, including the painting and gilding of four “cases of iron for clockis,”[547] the latter being very similar to at least one piece of work undertaken by Holbein in Basel shortly after his return from his first visit to England.

In a list of debts, dated 1536, owing by Queen Anne Boleyn at her death, occurs the name of “Androw, paynter,” for 29_s._ 4_d._, which probably refers to Wright;[548] and on the 29th September 1539, his name, as the King’s painter, appears in the Great Wardrobe accounts as one of the royal creditors.[549] Again, on the 17th July in that year (1539) he is mentioned in Thomas Cromwell’s accounts as Andrew Wryte or Wryght, “for things done at my Lord’s stallation,” as Knight of the Garter, £21, 7_s._;[550] while in May 1541 he is paid by warrant, out of the King’s household expenses, £39, 6_s._ 8_d._ “for the painting of certain coats of arms for the heralds at arms.”[551]

Wright died in the same year as Holbein, but a few months earlier, and his will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on the 29th May 1543. “He left estates at Stratford-le-Bow, at ‘the Gleane’ in the parish of St. Olave, Southwark, ‘the Bottle’ in Bermondsey, and at Cowden, in Kent, where he had a manufactory of ‘pynck.’ (Pink was a vegetable pigment, answering to the _giallo santo_ of the Italians, and _stil-de-grain_ of the French.) He desired to be buried, like his predecessor, Browne, in the church of St. Vedast, and requested his friend Garter (Christopher Barker) to be overseer of the will, a circumstance which testifies to his connection in business with the College of Heralds.”[552] He left £40 and all his vessels and apparatus for the making of pink to his eldest son, Christopher, and £40 to the younger son, Richard, and £4 a year so long as he lived with his mother.

[Sidenote: THE HORNEBOLT FAMILY]

John Hethe, or Heath, another member of the Painter-Stainers’ Company, one of the painters to whom John Browne’s house was consigned, was also in the royal employment, and was very probably one of the men engaged at Nonsuch Palace.[553] His will is dated 1st August 1552, and in it he leaves to his elder son, Lancelot, “my frames, tentes, stoles, patrons, stones, mullers, with the necessaries belonging or appertaining to Payntour’s crafte,” and to his second son, Lawrence, “all my moldes and molded work that I served the Kinge withal,” while to each of his apprentices he bequeathed 6_s._ 8_d._ and a grindingstone, and to his Company 20_s._, “to make them a recreation or banket ymmediatlye after my decease.”[554] Among the list of the things which he wished to be left in his house so long as his wife dwelt there, he mentions “pictures in tables,” which at first sight would seem to indicate that he occasionally painted pictures. It is more likely, however, that these were works by other artists, for, like his brother painter-stainers, he appears to have been chiefly a decorator and a maker of moulded and coloured work for house-fronts and royal residences such as Nonsuch and other more temporary purposes, such as masques and revels, and the ornamentation of buildings erected for particular occasions, which were pulled down when done with, while the moulded work was preserved for future use. The more valuable of these moulds were often kept in leather cases made on purpose for them.

Of far greater importance as artists, and more dangerous rivals to Holbein in his search for work in England, were the numerous Italians and Netherlanders at that time settled here, and, in most instances, attached to the Court. The most important group of painters of the latter nationality were the three members of the Hoorenbault, Hornebolt, or Hornebaud family, Gerard, Lucas, and Susanna. This family belonged to Ghent, and from the first years of the fifteenth century had been painters and masters of the Guild of St. Luke. The exact relationships of the three are not entirely clear. Walpole rolled the two men into one, and called him Gerard Luke Horneband.[555] Mr. Nichols[556] suggests that Luke was Gerard’s elder brother, and that Susanna was their sister. Mr. Wornum[557] regarded Gerard as the father of the other two.

There are several Hoorenbaults named Lucas in the lists of the masters of the Ghent Guild—one in 1512, who was sub-dean in 1525; another who was admitted in 1533, and was sub-dean in 1539; and a third Lucas, the son of Lucas, admitted in 1534.[558] The name Gerard does not occur in the lists, but in the communal accounts for 1510-11, there are payments to Gheraerd Hurebaut, scildere, for painting a plan of part of the town of Ghent and its neighbourhood. He painted altar-pieces for the church of St. Bavon, designed vestments, and was employed as an illuminator of books by Margaret of Austria at Antwerp and Mechlin.[558] Albrecht Dürer met him at Antwerp in 1521, when on his journey through the Netherlands, and noted in his diary—“Item, Master Gerhart, Illuminator, has a young daughter, about eighteen years of age, her name is Susanna; she has made a coloured drawing of Our Saviour, for which I gave her a florin; it is wonderful that a woman should be able to do such a work.”

[Sidenote: THE HORNEBOLT FAMILY]

This Gerard was married to Margaret Svanders, of Ghent, daughter of Derich Svanders and widow of Jan van Heerweghe.[558] She died at Fulham on 26th November 1529 in the house of her daughter Susanna, who was then the wife of John Parker, the King’s bowman and a yeoman of the robes, as may be gathered from a brass plate with a Latin inscription in Fulham Church, in which her husband is spoken of as Gerard Hornebolt, the most noted painter of Ghent.[559] There is no evidence to show that it was this Gerard who came to England, and Mr. Cust’s surmise is probably correct,[560] that the Lucas, Gerard, and Susanna who were employed at Henry’s Court, were the children of Gerard and Margaret Hoorenbault. Luke was always in receipt of a higher salary than Gerard from the royal purse, his monthly wages being 55_s._ 6_d._, whereas Gerard only received 33_s._ 4_d._ This would hardly have been the case had the latter been his father. Luke was probably the elder brother. The elder Gerard was dead in Ghent in 1540-1, when his son Joris was served as his heir. His wife Margaret seems to have been only in England on a visit to her daughter and son-in-law when she died at Fulham in 1529. The three Hornebolts, as their name was anglicised, appear to have arrived in England only a year or two before Holbein. The exact date of their entry into Henry’s service cannot be ascertained, as, unfortunately, none of the royal household accounts prior to October 1528 have been preserved, and in that month both Luke and Gerard are entered as receiving the salaries mentioned above.

Both Vasari and Lodovico Guicciardini (1567) speak of Lucas Hurembout as a well-known illuminator of Ghent, and state that his sister Susanna was so renowned for similar work that she was induced to come to England by Henry VIII, where she was in great favour at the Court, and died here rich and honoured. Immerzeel in his _De Levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Kunstschilders_ (1842) says that she married an English sculptor named Whorstley, and died at Worcester, but upon what authority he based this statement is not known.

Luke Hornebolt received a grant of denization by patent dated 22nd June 1534, in which he is described as a native of Flanders, with licence to keep in his service four journeymen or covenant servants, born out of the King’s dominions, notwithstanding the statute of 14 & 15 Henry VIII to the contrary. By a second patent of the same date he received a “grant of the office of King’s painter, and of a tenement or messuage in the parish of St. Margaret in Westminster, an empty place on the east side of the same tenement, the south of which looks upon the hermitage of St. Katherine, and the north part on a tenement lately built by the Crown.”[561] He died in London in May 1544; his will, which is dated 8th December 1543, was proved on 27th May 1544. He received his wages up to April in that year, but in May is entered as “Item, for Lewke Hornebaude, paynter, wages nil quia mortuus.” In his will he calls himself Lucas Hornebolt, “servante and painter unto the Kinges majestie,” and requests to be buried where it shall please his friends in the parish of St. Martins-in-the-Fields beside Charing Cross. He leaves his wife, Margaret, possibly an Englishwoman, and his daughter, Jacomyne, his executrices, with two-thirds of his property to the former and one-third to the latter. Richard Airell was appointed overseer of the will, and William Delahay and Robert Spenser were the witnesses.

Nothing is definitely known as to the paintings produced by these three artists in England, though it is very possible that certain of the numerous portraits of Henry VIII still in existence were painted by Luke and Gerard, and that some of the miniatures of him were from the brush of Susanna, all such paintings, in earlier days, being attributed to Holbein. The portrait of Henry VIII in Warwick Castle, and similar versions in Kimbolton Castle, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and elsewhere, are now generally ascribed to one or other of the Hornebolts. The last-named version is dated 1544, so that Holbein could not have painted it. Another version, belonging to the Marquis of Bute, was said by Dr. Waagen, who saw it at Luton House, to be “exactly like the picture by Holbein at Warwick Castle, only less finished. If by Gerard Horebout, as stated here, it is a copy from Holbein.”

The very fact that tradition attached the name of an almost unknown artist to this picture of the King, in the days when it was the fashion to regard every portrait of Henry VIII as a work of Holbein’s, is sufficient to suggest that the tradition is in all probability the correct one. “When tradition,” says Mr. Wornum, “notwithstanding the mischievous activity of presumptuous ignorance, has still handed down works with comparatively obscure names attached to them, the fact alone should go a great way towards its confirmation as truth.”[562] Dr. Waagen, however, never hesitated to discard such attributions, and often saw Holbein in pictures which more modern criticism has shown could not have been from his brush.

Lucas is said to have given Holbein his first instructions in miniature-painting, and no doubt all three members of the family were miniaturists and illuminators, and were employed in producing the small portraits of the King and the members of his family so often required by Henry for sending abroad as gifts to other reigning monarchs or as presents to subjects whom he wished to honour. Thus, in the summer of 1527, the King sent, through his representative in Paris, portraits of himself and the Princess Mary to Francis I. Whether these were miniatures or not is uncertain, but upon the backs of them were painted various royal devices, which were explained to the French King, who “liked them singularly well, and at the first sight of Henry’s ‘phisonamye’ took off his bonnet, saying he knew well that face, and further, ‘Je prie Dieu que il luy done bone vie et longue.’ He then looked at the Princess’s, standing in contemplation and beholding thereof a great while, and gave much commendation and laud unto the same.”[563] These two portraits may have been painted by one or other of the Hornebolts.

[Sidenote: MINIATURES OF THE KING IN DEEDS]

More than one deed of the period, preserved in the Record Office, is ornamented with an initial letter containing a portrait of Henry VIII. Thus, on one confirming to Wolsey’s College at Oxford all the possessions granted to them by the King, dated 5th May 1526, there is a fine miniature of Henry in the initial letter done by an artist of considerable ability.[564] Other deeds having reference to the Cardinal’s College at Ipswich have the royal miniature and arms, as well as Wolsey’s arms and insignia, beautifully tricked by some foreigner; and another, dealing with the same college, with a miniature of the King, the royal supporters, &c. &c., with an architectural column by the side of the initial letter, and an angel bearing the letters “H.R.”[565] These are all of the year 1528, while another, dated 1st January 1529, is illuminated in the same way, and is equally well done.[566] In an account of Wolsey’s for preparing these deeds for the college there is an item: “For vellum and making great letters for my Lord his patents, 13_s._” Also “To Hert, for vellum, parchment and drawing of great letters, 39_s._ 2_d._” The writing appears to have been chiefly done by Stephen Vaughan, for which he received £6, 17_s._ 9_d._, and among the payments made to several people “for writing,” there is mention of one “Gerarde,” who was very possibly Gerard Hornebolt.[567] It is, therefore, not unlikely that Lucas and Gerard were responsible for the miniatures at the head of such deeds. Who “Hert” or Hart, was, who drew the “great letters,” there is so far no evidence to show, but he was probably an Englishman.

The work of Lucas Hornebolt as a painter of portrait-miniatures, and his almost certain identity with the “Master Lukas” who first instructed Holbein in this branch of art, is dealt with in a later chapter. In April 1532 he received the grant of a royal licence to export 400 quarters of barley, in which he is called “Luke Hornebolt, a native of Flanders;”[568] and in 1536-7 (28 Hen. VIII), in connection with some revels and masques at Hampton Court, occurs the item, “To Lucas Horneholte, painter, for painting with black upon paper, of 3 bulls and 3 small rolls, 5_s._”[569] Among the presents received by the King on New Year’s Day, 1539, was a fire-screen from Lucas Hornebolt, which is entered in the royal accounts thus: “By Lewcas paynter a skrene to set afore the fyre, standing uppon a fote of woode, and the skrene blewe worsted.”[570] He was given in return a gilt cruse weighing 10½ oz., and his servant who delivered it 6_s._ 8_d._, Holbein and Antonio Toto receiving similar presents at the same time.

Gerard Hornebolt’s service in the royal household was of shorter duration than Luke’s. Up to May 1531 his name always occurs in the treasurer’s accounts in conjunction with his brother, but there is a break in the records from that date until Lady Day 1538, the household books for that period having disappeared, and from October 1538 Luke’s name alone appears. His death is not recorded, as it was the custom to do when salaries were concerned, by some such entry as “wages nihil quia mortuus,” as was done in the case of his brother Luke in 1544; so that it is probable that he returned to Ghent at some date between 1531 and 1538, leaving his brother and sister permanently settled in England. In this connection it is interesting to note that in a list of payments made by Sir Richard Wingfield in Calais between the 8th January 1513 and the 21st November 1514, there is an entry of £33, 6_s._ 8_d._ paid to “the glazier of Antwerp (possibly Galyon Hone) for glazing the great east window in St. Nicholas’ Church, Calais, by the King’s command,” and that 25_s._ was paid “to a painter of Gaunt for taking the portraiture of the King’s visage to be set in the said window.”[571] The name of the elder Gerard may be suggested as the artist employed for this purpose, as one of the leading painters of Ghent. It does not follow from the entry that the drawing was supplied by some painter then settled in England, while the small fee paid almost precludes the possibility that an artist was sent over specially from Calais to London to sketch the King; but Gerard Hoorenbault appears to have been resident in Antwerp at about that time (1513), and the commission may have been given him by the Antwerp glazier who was carrying out the work.

In addition to Susanna Hornebolt, two other skilled Netherlandish miniaturists of her sex came over to England during the later years of Henry VIII’s reign. What little is known of Livina Teerlinc, or Terling, as she was called in this country, is given in a later chapter.[572] Nothing is known about the second miniaturist, Katherine Maynor or Maynors, except that she received a patent of denization in November 1540, in which she is described as a “widow, painter, born at Antwerp in Brabant.”[573] She may, perhaps, have been some relation of Henry Maynert, painter, one of the witnesses to Holbein’s will; or even the widow of the John Maynard who, with John Bell, was employed upon the painting of Henry VII’s tomb.

[Sidenote: JOHANNES CORVUS]

Another notable painter from the Low Countries who was a contemporary of Holbein’s in England, was Johannes Corvus, of Flanders, whose style of painting can be judged by two well-authenticated portraits—that of Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, of which college he was the founder; and that of Princess Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII and widow of Louis XII, painted in 1532, when she was the wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, which was lent to the Exhibition of Early English Portraiture at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909 by Mr. H. Dent-Brocklehurst (No. 28). A similar manner of painting is to be found in a series of portraits of Princess Mary Tudor, afterwards Queen, including the one in the National Portrait Gallery, dated 1544, which is attributed to Corvus in the catalogue. This picture has much resemblance to a portrait of a Tudor princess, possibly Queen Elizabeth, belonging to Mrs. Booth, of Glendon Hall,[574] which has always borne the traditional name of Katherine Parr. To this group may be added the portrait of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, in the National Portrait Gallery.[575] If the portraits of Queen Mary are by Corvus, he may be identified with some certainty as the “one John that drue her Grace in a table,” for which he received £5 in 1544, as noted in the Princess Mary’s Privy Purse Expenses.

“Corvus,” says Mr. Cust, “may be safely identified with one Jan Raf, or Rave, who was admitted to the Guild of Painters at Bruges in 1512, and with the “Jehan Raf, painctre de Flandres,” who in 1532 painted for Francis I “une carte ou est figuré les villes et pays d’Angleterre,” and in 1534, “ung pourtraict de la ville de Londres dont il a ci-devant fait présent au dict Seigneur.” These entries show that Jehan Raf was sent to England from France, possibly more than once. The fact that no portraits are attributed to him in England between 1532 and 1544 may be accounted for by his return to France during the supremacy of Holbein, after whose death he found an opportunity of establishing himself at the English Court.”[576]

With regard to Guillim Stretes, the Dutchman, Gerlach Fliccius, or Garlicke, as he is termed in the inventory of the pictures in Lumley Castle made in 1590, and the clever painter who used the monogram H.E., whose true identity as one Hans Eworthe or Eewouts has been recently discovered by Mr. Lionel Cust by means of the same inventory,[577] as no works of theirs have been so far discovered in this country having a date prior to that of Holbein’s death in 1543, consideration of them is reserved until a later chapter dealing with Holbein’s successors.

Among the foreign painters and sculptors who found employment in England under Henry VIII, the Italians were by far the most numerous, though the inducements offered were not sufficiently alluring to artists of the highest rank, such as were to be found from time to time at the French Court. Many of them, no doubt, were brought over by the various merchant representatives of the leading Italian business houses, such as the Bardi, the Cavalcanti, the Corsi, the Frescobaldi, and others. Italian workmen were frequently employed upon buildings, more particularly in the south-east of England, where Italian handiwork and influences can be easily observed, as at Hampton Court, Sutton Place, Layer Marney, East Bursham, and elsewhere, both in the use of terra-cotta, plaster-work in ceilings and friezes, arabesque work in mullions and mouldings, and in other directions. On more than one house the stone figures and carvings were the work of master workmen brought over from Italy, while the few good Tuscan sculptors employed by Henry VIII exercised considerable influence upon the English craftsmen with whom they worked—an influence which did not immediately die away upon their departure.

The first Italians to come over were chiefly sculptors and makers of ornaments, workers in marble and alabaster and plaster. The few painters who accompanied them were of much the same type as their English contemporaries, decorators of houses, and makers of heraldic designs, colourers of sculpture and painters of banners and badges, though probably more skilful than the English, and capable on occasion of painting a picture.

The first of the sculptors employed was Guido Mazzoni, or Paganino, of Modena, known here as Master Pageny, who was entrusted with the task of designing and erecting the tomb of Henry VII and his wife, for which that monarch had left very elaborate instructions. Paganino was chosen, no doubt, on account of the fame of his tomb of Charles VIII at St. Denis.[578] His design, however, was not to Henry VIII’s liking, so that the commission was taken from him and given to Pietro Torrigiano of Florence. In an estimate for the making of this tomb drawn up in 1509, the names of the several artificers it was proposed to employ are given.[579] Among them were Humphrey Walker, the founder, Nicholas Ewen, the coppersmith and gilder, John Bell and John Maynard, the painters, and Robert Vertue, Robert Jenyns, and John Lobons, the King’s three master masons. In it Paganino is termed “Master Pageny.” Several of these men were employed on the tomb later on under Torrigiano’s directions.

[Sidenote: PAGANINO AND PIETRO TORRIGIANO]

Pietro Torrigiano, born in Florence in 1472, studied as a young man in the academy founded by the elder Lorenzo de’ Medici, under Bertholdo, where he broke Michelangelo’s nose in a quarrel, and was forced to fly to Rome. There he was employed by Pope Alexander VI on stucco-work in the Vatican. After an interlude spent in soldiering he returned to art, and occupied himself in making small figures in bronze and marble, which, together with numerous drawings and designs, he sold to Florentine merchants, who probably sent some of them over to their representatives in London. In a cause tried before the Council at the Palace of Greenwich in 1518 between Pietro di Bardi and Bernardo Cavalcanti, Torrigiano appeared as a witness, which shows that he was closely connected with them, and it was, no doubt, upon their recommendations that he was persuaded to come to England, possibly for the very purpose of designing Henry VII’s tomb.[580] Vasari says that in England “did Torrigiano receive so many rewards, and was so largely remunerated that, had he not been a most violent, reckless, and ill-conducted person, he might there have lived a life of ease, and brought his days to a quiet close.”

The work on the tomb was begun in 1512, the date of the indenture between Torrigiano and the King being 26th October of that year. He appears to have been resident in the precinct of St. Peter’s, Westminster, for some time before that date, making preparations and engaging workmen, and also working on the beautiful monument to the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, who was buried in the Abbey on the 30th June 1509. Other works of his in England include the fine monument to Dr. John Younge, Master of the Rolls, in the Rolls Chapel, erected about 1516-7, and perhaps the monument to Sir Thomas Lovell in the priory of Holywell in Shoreditch. In such works as these Torrigiano reached a very high pitch of excellence.

The tomb of Henry VII was finished in 1518, and so delighted Henry VIII, that he at once commissioned the Italian to design one for himself and Queen Katherine, of white marble and black touchstone, which was to be one-fourth larger than the one just finished, and not to cost more than £2000. It was to be placed in a separate chapel, adorned with frescoes, and Torrigiano returned to Italy to engage competent workmen and artists to assist him. “Benvenuto Cellini narrates that when he was about eighteen years old, there came to Florence a sculptor named Piero Torrigiani, who arrived from England, where he had resided many years. Happening to see Cellini’s drawings, Torrigiano told him that he had come to Florence to enlist as many young men as he could, for he had undertaken a great work for the King, and wanted some of his own Florentines to help him. As the work included a great piece of bronze, he thought that Cellini would be useful for that purpose. Cellini, who did not accept the offer, remarks on Torrigiano’s splendid person and most arrogant spirit, and how he talked every day about his gallant feats among those beasts of Englishmen.”[581]

Torrigiano returned to England in 1519 or 1520, bringing several Italian artists with him, but for some reason—possibly a dispute—his contract for Henry VIII’s tomb was never carried out. He thereupon left England for Spain, where he is said to have gained a great reputation, but, quarrelling with the Duke d’Arcos, to whom he had sold a statue of the Virgin, he broke it to pieces with a hammer. This brought him within the clutches of the Inquisition, and he is said, according to legend, to have starved himself to death in prison in Seville in 1522, through rage and grief. This story, however, appears to be largely imaginary.

[Sidenote: ANTONIO TOTO AND VINCENT VOLPE]

For the work on Henry VIII’s tomb in England he had enlisted the services of a young painter called Antonio Toto del Nunziata, of Florence, who, together with one Antonio di Piergiovanni di Lorenzo, sculptor, of Settignano, made a contract with Torrigiano in September 1519, to work with him for four and a half years in France, Italy, Flanders, England, Germany, or any other part of the world.[582] Toto either stayed behind in London when his master went to Spain, or returned to England from that country on Torrigiano’s death, and remained in the King’s service for many years; but there is no record to show what became of Antonio di Lorenzo. Before giving a short account of Toto, a few words must be said of the Neapolitan, Vincent Volpe, who appears to have been the first of the Italian painters regularly employed by Henry VIII. Much of the work he undertook was of a decorative character, of the same nature as that carried out by John Browne, Andrew Wright, and other members of the Painter-Stainers’ Company.

Volpe was often engaged upon work for the royal navy. The first reference to him in the State Papers occurs in the year 1512, in an account for the painting of ships’ banners. Among the payments made was one “to Mr. Domynyke Cyny, clerk, in reward for the use of Vincence of Naples and Alexe of Myllen, painters, £6, 13_s._ 4_d._”[583] In April 1514 he was at work with John Browne and others on the royal ship _Henry Grace à Dieu_, for which “Vincent Vulp, painter, by the King’s command,” painted and made various streamers and banners, one with a dragon, one with a lion, one with a greyhound, and so on.[584] In June of the previous year he received £30 for similar work for seven ships, his name being entered in the King’s Book of Payments as Vincent Woulpe.[585]

In June 1516, as Vincent Volpe, he appears to be definitely in the King’s service, with a salary of £20 a year, paid quarterly.[586] Early in 1518, his name occurs in some accounts as Vincent, the King’s painter. He was sent to Antwerp apparently in connection with glass designs for windows for the church or some building in Calais.[587] In 1520 he was employed at Guisnes with John Browne and others in the decoration of the temporary buildings erected for the Field of the Cloth of Gold.[588] He received £40 for work done or purchases made in Antwerp, and twenty crowns (£4, 6_s._ 2_d._) for his costs in going there. There is some uncertainty, however, about the date of these two last accounts, and both may refer to the same journey. In May 1524 he was employed in connection with the funeral of Sir Thomas Lovell, K.G., to make twenty-four small escutcheons in metal, “with my master’s arms in the garter, to be set on the altars at the interment,” for which he received 15_s._ For the same funeral, one John Wolffe, painter, was employed for providing stuff, £33, 3_s._[589] The name Wolffe occurs more than once in connection with painting ships. Very possibly Vincent Volpe is intended, or this John may have been a relation.

[Sidenote: ALESSANDRO CARMILLIAN]

Volpe was also one of the many artists engaged in the decoration of the Banqueting House at Greenwich for the reception of the French envoys in 1527, dealt with in