Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette

Charles de Solier, lord of Morette, arrived in London on 3 April 1534 as the French king's ambassador to Henry VIII and stayed until late July 1535. Holbein painted him within those months, dressed almost entirely in black against crumpled dark-green silk, the light kept for his face, his white cuffs, the fur collar and scattered points of gold.

Then the name began to slip. In 1657 a writer in Modena, where the panel belonged to the Este dukes, still called it the work of an excellent northern painter, "a certain Olbeno". Later Morette shrank to Moro, the sitter became Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan known as il Moro, and the painter became Leonardo. It reached Dresden in 1746, one of 100 pictures bought from Modena, still as a Leonardo. The German art historian Carl Friedrich von Rumohr gave it back to Holbein. An etching made in 1647 by Wenceslaus Hollar after Holbein's drawing of the same head was captioned "Mr. Morett", and through the 19th century the man was taken for Hubert Morett, Henry VIII's jeweller. In 1881 the scholar Sophus Larpent identified the French ambassador, and a small boxwood model for a medal, carved by Christoph Weiditz, names him in Latin, Carolus de Solario, lord of Morette.