First visit to England--Sir Thomas More; his home and portraits--The Windsor drawings--Bishop Fisher--Archbishop Warham--Bishop Stokesley--Sir Henry Guildford and his portrait--Nicholas Kratzer--Sir Bryan Tuke--Holbein's return to Basel--Portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--Holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--Iconoclastic fury--Ruined arts--Death of Meyer zum Hasen--Another Meyer commissions the last paintings for Basel--Return to England--Description of the Steelyard--Portraits of its members--George Gysze--Basel Council summons Holbein home--"The Ambassadors" at the National Gallery; accepted identification--Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn--Lost paintings for the Guildhall of the Steelyard; the Triumphs of Riches and Poverty--The great Morett portrait; identifications--Holbein's industry and fertility--Designs for metal-work and other drawings--Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Two years earlier Erasmus had evidently thought that London was the true stage for such a genius as Holbein's, and More had written that he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if he should decide to visit England. More himself called Holbein "a marvellous artist" for his portrait of Erasmus, and could not but be delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened Froben's edition of his own _Utopia_.
This illustration represents More and his only son seated with Ægidius, or Peter Gillis, in the latter's own garden at Antwerp, listening to the tale of _Utopia_ from the ancient comrade of Amerigo Vespucci. And very likely Holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of 1526, when he was passing through Antwerp to England. He had a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Ægidius, as also to the host who was expecting him in England--Sir Thomas More.
Van Mander says that long before this the Earl of Arundel, when pausing at Basel, had been so much pleased with Holbein's works in that city that he had urged the painter to forsake it for London. But it would pretty surely have been the promise of More's influence which actually induced him to try his fortune so far afield. And by the autumn of 1526 he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of More drew around him in his new home in "Chelsea Village," where Beaufort Row now has its north end. Here the master's love of every art, and aptitude in affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous strenuousness. Here he was the idol of his family, as well as the King's friend. Henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above London Bridge and flung at last from it into the Thames only a few years hence. Now it turned to his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around More's shoulders while they wandered between the garden beds of Chelsea.