Bildnis des Sir Richard Southwell

Holbein painted this in 1536, while he was court painter to Henry VIII and turning out the sharp, unsparing likenesses that still shape how we picture the Tudor court. The sitter, Richard Southwell, was a rising royal official, and just the year before he had given evidence that helped send Thomas More to the scaffold. Holbein records him coolly, with a small scar on his neck and the faint beginnings of a double chin, and adds an inscription giving his age as 33. The panel later left England and reached Florence as a gift, which is why a very English Tudor face now hangs in the Uffizi among the Italian masters.