The Duisburg merchant Dirck Tybis

In 1533 Hans Holbein was back in London and short of the court work he wanted, so much of his business came from the Steelyard, the walled trading post where German merchants of the Hanseatic League ran their London affairs. Dirck Tybis, from Duisburg, was one of them. Holbein pins down the facts a merchant would want on record. On the table a slip carries Tybis's name, his age of 33 and the year, while he holds a folded letter, sealed, the everyday paper of long-distance trade. It was the year Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn and broke with Rome, but none of that reaches this quiet table. Holbein simply shows a careful man and the tools of his ledger-keeping life.