Portrait de Thomas Godsalve et son fils John

Holbein painted this in 1528, in the last months of his first stay in England. He was about to sail home to Basel, where the Reformation had all but ended the commissions for altarpieces and saints that a painter used to live on, and where portraits were what was left. The pair here are Thomas Godsalve, a notary from the city of Norwich, and his son John. The older man holds a sheet of paper, and the writing on it does the job a label would do now, giving his name, his town, his age, 47, and the year. A man of documents identified by a document. The Godsalves knew Thomas Cromwell, the lawyer then rising fast in Henry VIII's service, and it was through that connection that young John later found his place at the English court.