Note 39 — Chapter XVI · THE MERCHANTS OF THE STEELYARD

Mr. Dickes, who does not hesitate to suggest that a date has been tampered with if it suits his argument to do so, regards this picture as “an unmistakable portrait of the second person” in the “Ambassadors” picture, such person being, in his opinion Philipp, Count Palatine. This picture, he says, “has a damaged date, catalogued as 1533, and a more clear “ætatis 34,” which is no doubt correct, for the moustache shows five years’ more growth” (i.e. than in the “Ambassadors”). “No one who compares the two faces can doubt the identity, or that if of Philipp—born November 12, 1503, as indicated in our picture—its correct date is 1538.” It requires a very vivid imagination to see a likeness between Wedigh and the portrait of the Bishop of Lavaur in the National Gallery group; but Mr. Dickes sees Philipp and Otto Henry in so many portraits scattered about Europe, having but the faintest resemblance to one another, and gives to Holbein so many pictures he never painted, and takes from him at least one of his finest works (the Morette in Dresden, which he calls Otto Henry and attributes to Amberger) that his attribution with regard to the Wedigh portrait is not worth serious consideration. The date upon it is plainly enough 1533. At the time he was writing his book the age of the sitter appeared to be “34,” but recent cleaning shows it to be “39.” (Dickes, Holbein’s “Ambassadors” Unriddled, p. 81.)