page_title: Portrait of Thomas Cromwell
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Portrait of Thomas Cromwell / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: This portrait miniature depicts Thomas Cromwell (c.&#160;1485–1540), Henry VIII's chief minister in the 1530s.
context_page_description: Portrait of Thomas Cromwell is a small oil painting by the German and Swiss artist Hans Holbein the Younger, usually dated to between 1532 and 1534, when Cromwell, an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540, was around 48 years old. It is one of two portraits Holbein painted of him; the other is a tondo from a series of medallions of Tudor courtiers.
  The original panel is lost, and today known from three copies: in the Frick Collection in New York; in the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Chichester Constable collection in Yorkshire. The Frick panel is considered superior in quality.
context_section_description: The portrait dates from Holbein's second visit to England, when Cromwell was acting on behalf of Henry VIII and commissioned a series of propagandistic images of favoured courtiers at a time when Cromwell's reputation was at its highest. He had emerged as the "Protestant counterweight to Thomas More in the Privy council", sealed Boleyn's position in bitter circumstance, and became one of the most influential and powerful men in England. At the same time he was cultured and instrumental in promoting Holbein's career. Perhaps because of this, and given the portrait's genesis is steeped in the high and bloody politics of the time, with an unsteady king, we know nothing of Holbein's thoughts on the depiction.
  Cromwell is given due respect, but is presented as sour and somewhat stiff. The eyes are narrowly set, he tightly grips the seal. His reputation was poor until revision in the 1960s; today he is seen as a reformer and a highly capable, supreme political operator. Reflecting earlier opinion, it was noted that "of all the portraits that Holbein did at the English court, the portrait of Cromwell has always seemed the least flattering to its subject, the most viciously mocking." Mindful of the protracted, fatal relationship between Cromwell and More, and their placing at the Frick, Henry Clay romantically asked that we "imagine Thomas More, the beautiful saint, and Cromwell, the monster, united in art and history, now facing each other, [through] Holbein and time and chance."
  Compared to Holbein's other portraits of Tudor politicians, Cromwell seems reduced; he is placed low in the frame, deep in the pictorial space, placing a distance and diminishing him from the viewer. The table reaches into the immediate foreground as if reaching into the viewer's personal space. Holbein presents Cromwell as somewhat sour, cold and grim, yet the portrait has been described as "a softened version of the subject". Historian R. B. Merriman described Cromwell as "a short, stoutly built man, with a large face, smooth shaven, with close-cropped hair, and a heavy double chin, with a small and cruel mouth, an extraordinary long upper lip, and a pair of gray eyes set closely together, and moving restlessly under his light eyebrows."
  The inscription on the border reads "To our trusty and right well, beloved Councillor, Thomas Cromwell, Master of our Jewel House". Cromwell sits on a bench before a table holding a legal document. His left hand has a patterned gold ring with a large green gemstone.  He is dressed in sober colours, comprising a black fur lined overcoat, a black hat and a "severe expression". The table is covered with a green cloth. Some of his effects are placed on it, including a quill, a devotional book, scissors and a leather bag. The version held by the Frick Collection in New York, is in oil on oak panel and measures 781 by 641 millimetres (30.7 in × 25.2 in).
caption: This portrait miniature of Cromwell is derived from the 1532 portrait but shows him more tired and older. A similar miniature, without the Garter collar, survives and is attributed to Holbein by the National Portrait Gallery, but most scholars do not consider it an original Holbein
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