Paintings in the Collection of Henry Clay Frick, 1915 [page 107]

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HANS HOLBEIN The Younger (1497-1543) PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS CROMWELL Panel 24 1/2 inches by 30 inches

HALF-LENGTH, seated to the left in a high-backed wooden seat, three-quarter face, looking toward a window, with a small table beneath it covered with a Turkish cloth, on which papers are placed. He is dressed in black surcoat with deep fur collar; black cap on bushy hair which almost covers his ears and falls on the back of his neck. Clean-shaven face; holds a paper in his left hand, on the first finger of which is a heavy signet ring. On the table are pen and ink, a richly-bound book with jeweled clasps, and several papers, on one of which is inscribed: "To our trusty and right well-beloued Thomas Cromwell Maister of our Jewel-house." On a second paper the word "Counseilor" can be deciphered. A Latin eulogy on a scroll was added after Cromwell's death, but later removed.

Henry VIII. sent his councillors to the block with the same indifference as he beheaded his wives; and Cromwell, the plebeian antithesis of the aristocratic More, came to the same fateful end at the Tower of London. Shakespeare makes Cardinal Wolsey charge Cromwell "to fling away ambition; by this fell the angels." And by this fell Thomas Cromwell, who began life as the son of a farrier and died as Earl of Essex. While Sir Thomas More lost his head because he opposed the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Cromwell met the same fate through his encouragement of Henry's love for the new queen and the resentment of the Catholic nobles which this and cognate acts engendered.

This historic portrait descends from Sir Thomas Pope, one of Cromwell's instruments in the suppression of the monasteries; thence through the collection of Lord Douglas, the Countess of Caledon, and the Earl of Caledon.

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