- Museum number
- 1895,0915.990
- Description
-
Portrait of Katharine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, after Holbein the Younger; head and shoulders of a woman to left, wearing a head-dress and high patterned collar
Brush and pen in black ink, over an underdrawing in black ink, with yellow and brown wash, touched with red chalk, on pink prepared paper
- Production date
- 16thC (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 292 millimetres
-
Width: 207 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Summary of J.Rowlands 'Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German- speaking regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Dawings at the British Museum: the Fifteenth Century,and the Sixteenth Century by Artists born before 1530', London, BM Press, 1993, no.389:
'Both Zahn and Woltmann considered this drawing to be a forgery; but Parker correctly described it as a 'somewhat coarsened and damaged copy' of the original sheet in Windsor (Parker, p. 51, no. 56, repr.). Ganz at first thought that the present drawing was an original drawing by Holbein, but later considered it to be one of a group of copies done for the second Earl of Arundel (1586-1646) of originals that he was unable to acquire. Parker has, however, proved conclusively that the Earl possessed 'the Greate Booke' in which all the portrait drawings, now at Windsor Castle, and those since detached and dispersed, were kept. According to the early inscription on the drawing at Windsor, the sitter was the fourth wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Katharine (22 March 1519/20-9 April 1582), and in her own right, Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, daughter and heir to William, Lord Willoughby de Eresby. She married the Duke when aged fourteen, probably on 7 September 1534. The sitter is also depicted in a miniature in the possession of the family (Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire) and shows the Duchess looking somewhat older: it is in a fine hand from the generation succeeding Holbein.'
Lit. from Rowlands 1993: 'A. von Zahn, Zahn's Jahrbücher f. Kunstwiss., v, 1873, p. 208, no. 261; Woltmann, ii, p. 139, under no. 210; JCR, pp. 178-9, no. 534; LB, ii, p. 329, no. 10; Chamberlain, ii, pp. 226, 254; Ganz, p. 79, no. C.3, repr.; Parker, p. 51, under no. 56'
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.990