Erasmus of Rotterdam

In 1532 Hans Holbein left Basel to settle in London, and this small panel belongs to that same moment. Erasmus is in his sixties here, in a scholar's black robe lined with fur, his hands resting one over the other between the wide cuffs. Of the several ways Holbein's studio painted him, this half-length pose with the crossed hands proved the one most in demand, and within a few years the workshop of Lucas Cranach in Saxony and the Nuremberg painter Georg Pencz were copying it. The Met's label names Holbein, while its catalogue treats this version as the work of Holbein together with his workshop. By the late 16th century the panel was in England, owned by John, Lord Lumley, a collector whose houses included Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, begun by Henry VIII. In 1943 the banker Robert Lehman bought it from the estate of J. P. Morgan's son.