Portrait of Simon George of Cornwall

Holbein painted this in England in the late 1530s, at the height of his second stay, when he was Henry VIII's court painter but also took private work. This sitter is no royal. He is a Cornish gentleman, probably one Simon George, and everything in the picture points to a single occasion: courtship. The clues are held out to you. In his fingers he turns a red carnation, the flower a man gave when he meant marriage. On his velvet cap sits a small gold badge showing Leda and the swan, the god Jupiter disguised as a bird seducing a mortal woman, an ornament of frankly amorous intent. Holbein also picks a pointedly modern shape, the round tondo borrowed from antique coins and medals, and sets the head in strict profile like a portrait struck in gold. The man thought to be Simon George married around 1543, the same year the plague took Holbein in London.