Ruskin has described this portrait for us in words so eloquent and so glowing (_Cornhill Magazine_, March, 1860) that no excuse is needed for quoting a sentence or two here: “Every accessory is perfect with a fine perfection: the carnations in the glass vase by his side; the ball of gold, chased with blue enamel, suspended on the wall; the books, the steelyard, the papers on the table, the seal-ring with its quartered bearings--all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed, every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, beneath that errorless hand. The man himself what he was--not more; but to all conceivable proof of sight, in all aspect of life or thought--not less. He sits alone in his accustomed room, his common work laid out before him; he is conscious of no presence, assumes no dignity, bears no sudden or superficial look of care or interest, lives only as he lived--but for ever. It is inexhaustible. Every detail of it wins, retains, rewards the attention with a continually increasing sense of wonderfulness. It is also wholly true. So far as it reaches, it contains the absolute facts of colour, form, and character, rendered with an unaccusable faithfulness.”
According to Dr. Woltmann, Gisze belonged to a family residing in the neighbourhood of Basle, and even to-day, in the small adjacent town of Liestall, the name, in the form of Gysin, is to be seen over many houses. Even on the picture it is spelt in more ways than one. Miss Hervey considers it to be a variation of the surname Gueiss, one of the most distinguished in the annals of the Steelyard, and well known in Cologne. Georg Gisze was deputy Alderman of the Steelyard in 1533.
Shortly after the death of Queen Jane Seymour, in October, 1537, the Privy Council began to urge the King to marry again. The lady chosen was Christina, niece of the Emperor Charles V., daughter of the King of Denmark, and the young widow of Francesco Maria Sforza, last Duke of Milan, whom she married in 1534, when she was only eleven. He died in the following year, and in 1538 she was residing in Brussels at the Court of her aunt, the Regent of the Netherlands. Holbein, as “a man very excellent in taking phisanymies,” was sent over to paint her portrait, and arrived there on March 10, accompanied by Sir Philip Hobby. A long letter to Cromwell from John Hutton, English Envoy to Flanders, gives us full details of this expedition. The lady’s portrait had just been painted by some local artist, and despatched to Cromwell, on the eve of Holbein’s arrival. When Hutton, however, saw the likeness which the latter produced in the space of three hours, which he considered “very perffight,” he sent a messenger in haste to stay the delivery of the other, telling Cromwell that it was but “sloberid” in comparison. Holbein probably made one of his usual black-and-white crayon studies touched with colour, and from this, after his return to London, painted the full-length portrait belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, which he has lent so generously for a number of years to the National Gallery.