Portrait of Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More - humanist, author of Utopia, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor - sits in fur and a gold chain of office, a paper in his hand, his gaze direct and unsoftened. Holbein, freshly arrived in England on a letter from More's friend Erasmus (also in this collection), records every texture with merciless exactness and something watchful in the eyes. Within a few years More would refuse to recognize the king as head of the Church and go to the scaffold for it. The collection also holds Holbein's Thomas Cromwell, the minister who helped engineer his fall.