Note 338 — BOOK VIII CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF LORRAINE 1541-1545

The authenticity of this well-known saying has been often disputed, and was certainly never addressed by the Duchess to either of Henry VIII.'s Ambassadors. But Christina's words were recorded by Joachim Sandrart, who wrote in the seventeenth century, as having been spoken by a Princess of Lorraine, whom the English King had wooed in vain, and were afterwards quoted by Horace Walpole "as the witty answer of that Duchess of Milan whose portrait Holbein painted for Henry VIII." (see Wornum's "Life of Holbein," 311; J. Sandrart, "Deutsche Akademie"; and Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting").