Although decidedly superior to another version of the same picture
at Lambeth Palace, the _Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of
Canterbury_ (No. 2714), which bears the inscription,
ANNO. Dm. MDXXVII. ETATIS. SVE, LXX.,
cannot without hesitation be accepted as an original work. It lacks,
at any rate, the _finesse_ of the beautiful drawing at Windsor Castle,
upon which it is evidently based.
To the same year belongs the _Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell_ (No.
2719), to whose treacherous accusation was due the execution of Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey. But this picture, again, is only a replica, by
an inferior hand, of the magnificent portrait in the Uffizi Gallery
(No. 765). An inscription in the background, at both sides of the head,
reads:
on the left: X.^O IVLII. ANNO. and on the right: ETATIS SVÆ
H. VIII. XXVIII. ANNO XXXIII.
It would thus appear that the picture was painted in 1537, the
twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII.’s reign. The _Portrait of a Man
holding a Carnation and a Rosary_ (No. 2720) is a picture of poor
quality and has no connection whatever with Holbein.