Note 398 — Chapter XXIV · THE LAST YEARS: 1540-1543

In 1576 Johann Fischart, quoted by Ganz, Holbein, p. xxxviii., in a description of the Palace, speaks of several of the galleries as decorated on both sides with fine emblematic histories, and actions and stories in the style of Michelangelo and Holbein. Henry Peacham, in his Graphicè (1606), and again in The Compleat Gentleman (1634), speaks of works by Holbein in Whitehall. He says: “He painted the Chappell at White-Hall, and S. James, Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus rising from the dead, &c., were his.” (See The Compleat Gentleman, ed. G. S. Gordon, 1906, p. 128. Also Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, i. p. 82.) There is a drawing in the British Museum representing Henry VIII seated at table under a lofty canopy, in a large chamber, with a number of standing courtiers in attendance, which appears to be a sixteenth-century copy of a preliminary study by Holbein for a wall-decoration, possibly for one of the rooms in Whitehall. It is inscribed “Holbein Invent.” Reproduced by Ganz, Holbein, p. 183.