Hermann von Wedigh III (died 1560)

Holbein painted this in 1532, just back in London for a second stay, and the England he returned to had changed under him. The Reformation was pulling apart the humanist circle around Thomas More that had first welcomed him, so he found new clients among the German merchants of the Steelyard, the walled Hanseatic trading post beside the Thames. This sitter is one of them, a Cologne dealer of about 29 named Hermann von Wedigh, his family arms on his ring. Tucked into the pages of the book before him is a slip of paper carrying a line from a Roman comedy: truth breeds hatred. Holbein gives him a plain green ground and nothing to hold but the book, so the whole portrait comes down to a steady face and two careful hands.