Portrait of Sir Thomas More

When Hans Holbein painted this in 1527, Thomas More was near the top of the English world. Holbein had arrived from Switzerland only a year earlier, carrying a letter of introduction from the scholar Erasmus, and he was soon living close to More in Chelsea. More sits in heavy fur and dark satin, a gold chain across his chest, his gaze turned slightly away, a man of weight and certainty. Two years later he became Lord Chancellor, the king's chief minister. Then Henry the Eighth set out to divorce Catherine of Aragon and break with Rome. More would not sign. He resigned, refused the oath making the king head of the Church of England, and in 1535 he was beheaded. Nothing of that shadow is in the face here. Henry Clay Frick later hung this portrait across the fireplace from Holbein's Thomas Cromwell, the rival who helped bring More down.