Holbein came to England in the year 1526, and Sir Thomas More wrote to Erasmus that he would take care of him. Sir Thomas received him into his own house at Chelsea, and there Henry VIII. saw him one day, when paying a visit to the former. He took him instantly into his service, gave him apartments in the royal palace, and a salary of 30_l_. a-year. Holbein's long residence in the house of Sir Thomas More had a good effect upon him; for although Erasmus describes the women of England as "nymphae divinis vultibus, blandae, faciles," yet Holbein seems to have resisted those temptations in London, which rendered his conduct at Basel so reprehensible. Holbein twice revisited Switzerland, once in 1526, the second and last time in 1538: the zealots had just destroyed all the images; and even some painters, infected with the spirit of the age, had declared they would rather starve, than break the second commandment. In England the same work of devastation took place; but Henry VIII., notwithstanding, gave Holbein abundance of work, as he had to paint all his royal consorts in succession, besides a number of portraits for English noblemen.
His sketches of heads, now existing at Kensington, of various people who lived at the court of Henry VIII., and among them one of that monarch, are exquisite productions. Imitations of the original drawings have been published by J. Chamberlaine, fol. Lond. 1792. One picture of Holbein is supposed to be in Surgeons' Hall. Some wood-cuts to Cranmer's Catechism (1548) were made by Holbein. Our biographer, who had never seen the work himself, was led by Walpole [_Anecdotes of Painting_] to believe, that all the wood-cuts were from Holbein.
With respect to the famous "Dance of Death," the biographer tells us, what we have already stated, that the painting on the wall of the church-yard at Basel is not the work of Holbein; the costumes are of a time anterior to Holbein. There was also a "Dance of Death" painted on the wall of a convent at Bern by Manuel, who lived a little before Holbein. Only on the supposition that the "Dance of Death" at Basel was Holbein's work, could that of Bern be said to be the first of its kind. But, on comparing the costumes, it appears again, that the "Dance of Death" at Bern must have been painted subsequently to that at Basel. No "Dance of Death" of an earlier date was known, until another was discovered on the wall of a convent of nuns at Klingenthal, on the right bank of the Rhine, at Basel. This bears the date of 1312, and is therefore a whole century prior to the other, which cannot have been painted before the year 1439. It has been supposed, that the idea of the "Dance of Death" was taken from certain processions very much in vogue during the middle ages; and it is singular enough, that up to this day, in funeral processions in Italy, long white robes are used, which wholly cover the head, with only two holes for the eyes. But the coincidence of another plague at Basel, which, about the year 1312, destroyed above 11,000 people, renders it more than probable that the artist availed himself of the impression which such a dreadful mortality must have made on the minds of all the surviving, to represent how inexorable death drags to the grave, in terrible sport, rich and poor, high and low, clergymen and laity.