Things I saw in Rome
June 3 2014
Pictures: BG
I think I mentioned that I went to Rome recently - anyway, here are a couple of things I saw, and meant to post something about, but forgot.
The first is Holbein's famous portrait of Henry VIII. I say famous, because it's such a well-known image - the formidable, face-on portrait of Henry in all his miserable glory known through hundreds of copies - but it's long been thought that we don't actually have a surviving original by Holbein. The portrait in the Thyssen collection in Madrid pre-dates the face-on type, and shows Henry turned to the right, as does the cartoon drawing in the NPG London. The 1536 Whitehall mural, for which Holbein solved the problem of Henry's bulk by turning his face towards the viewer, was destroyed by fire in 1698.
However, I had a close look at the version in the National Gallery in Rome. I'm sure it's by Holbein, and is by far the best version I've seen. It has some condition issues, which make it hard to assess many of the details, especially from photographs. But there's no real reason not to believe its traditional attribution. If I recall correctly, a row about its attribution resulted in it not being loaned to the Tate's 2006 Holbein exhibition. It was downgraded in John Rowlands' 1985 catalogue raisonne. I saw the image pasted onto various walls as part of a protest against pollution (above).
I also came across another English king in a curious place; George IV in a full-length attributed to Sir Thomas Lawrence. It suddenly appears (below) at the end of the art gallery in the Vatican museums, after swathes of Raphaels and Caravaggios, and all manner of religious pictures, as if they had nowhere else to put it. Most curious. I say 'attributed to', by the way, because it felt a bit studio-ish to me.
