Portrait of Thomas Cromwell
Hans Holbein The Younger
HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER, c.1532. OIL ON PANEL.
Thomas Cromwell was a layman, the son of brewer, who worked his way up English society to be the right- hand man of King Henry VIII and one of the architects of the Reformation. His power would not last and he was ultimately executed by the King after an ill-fated plan of marriage lost the monarch popularity. But at the height of his powers, Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein, the irregular court painter of Henry VIII, to paint this portrait of himself. Some 5 years earlier, Holbein had painted a remarkably similar portrait of Thomas More, Cromwell’s counterpart on the other side of the reformation and his sworn enemy. Yet in the years since More’s portrait was painted, Cromwell had helped engineer his downfall and when he came to commission his own, it is hard not to read it as a snub against his conquered enemy.