Portrait of Robert Cheseman (1485-1547)

The gold letters on either side of his head give his name, Robert Cheseman, and his age, 48, in the year 1533. Holbein had only recently settled in London for good, and a Middlesex landowner who served as a justice of the peace was exactly the kind of sitter he was painting now. Cheseman is often called Henry VIII's chief falconer, as the Mauritshuis does. The History of Parliament, the reference work on England's MPs, found no record of such a post and suggests he may simply have loved the sport. The bird is a gyrfalcon, the largest of the hunting falcons, hooded, with a small bell on its leg to help find it after a kill. The leash is wound around his gloved fingers while his bare right hand strokes its speckled breast.