Hans Holbein the Younger 1497/8–1543
NG 6540 
A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?)

Susan Foister, 2024

Extracted from:
Susan Foister; with Rachel Billinge, Marika Spring and Lea Viehweger; and contributions by Lorne Campbell and Allison Goudie, The German Paintings before 1800 (London: National Gallery Global and Yale University Press, 2024).

Oil on wood (probably oak), 56 × 38.8 cm

Provenance

Holbein’s portrait was probably in the collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, by 1621: a drawing by Van Dyck datable to his first visit to England in 1620–1 shows a figure of a woman very similar to the sitter in NG 6540, as well as a sketch evidently of Holbein’s Christina of Denmark (fig. 1).¹ NG 6540 may have remained in the possession of the Lovell family until 1604.²

NG 6540 is first identifiable with certainty as lot 18 in the sale at Amsterdam on 6 April 1702 of Rembrandt’s patron Jan Six (1618–1700), who is known to have acquired unspecified items from Arundel’s collection; it is described as ‘ ’t Vrouwtje met een spreeuw, zynde de Minnemoer van Konink Eduard, van Holbeen’ (‘the young[?] woman with a squirrel, being the nurse of King Edward, by Holbein’).³ The picture was bought by his nephew Pieter Six (1655–1703) and passed to Pieter’s widow, Ammerentia Deymans (1664–1727), and hence to Jan’s brother Willem Six (1662–1733), Burgomaster of Amsterdam. It is recorded in the sale of Willem Six on 12 May 1734, lot 11, and was acquired by Pieter Six (1686–1755), possibly his nephew, son of the Pieter Six and his wife Ammerentia referred to above as previous owners of the picture.⁴ The picture was evidently subsequently acquired by government official and art collector Govaert van Slingelandt (1694–1767): it is recorded as having been in ‘Monsieur Slingeland’s Collection’ at a sale of 1752, according to Prestage and Hobbs; Sir William Hamilton sale, 20 February 1761, lot 75, ‘A Woman with a Squirrel and a Starling, (called Nurse to King Edward VI in Monsieur Slingeland’s Collection)’.⁵ At the sale of Sir William Hamilton (1731–1803), diplomat, archaeologist and collector, the painting was bought for £47 5s. by ‘Ld. Chomley’, George Cholmondeley, 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley (1703–1770).⁶ It remained in the family collections, hanging at Cholmondeley Castle, Malpas, Cheshire, in 1925, when it was identified and published as a work by Holbein.⁷ It later passed to Sybil Sassoon, Marchioness of Cholmondeley (1894–1989), wife of George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley (1883–1968), and hung at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. It was purchased by private treaty sale from the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley in 1992.

Copies and Versions

• (1) A drawing by Van Dyck appears to show this painting (fig. 1; see Provenance).

• (2) A painting owned in the late eighteenth century by a Mrs Hunter may have been a version of this painting or of the drawing known as ‘Mother Iak’.⁸

Exhibitions

RA 1950–1 (32); London 1959 (12); NG 1992b; Tate Gallery 1995–6 (4); NG 1997–8 (63); on loan to Tate Britain 2001–2 ; NG 2002–3 (123); The Hague 2003 (7); V&A 2003–4 (162); Basel 2006 (123); Tate Britain 2006–7 (21); Madrid 2008 (55); NG 2008–9 (24); on loan to Tate Britain 2013–14 ; Norwich 2014; NG 2014b; BM 2014–15; Walsall 2018; Lerwick 2018; Brighton 2018–19; Los Angeles 2021–2 (7); New York 2022 (7); Rome 2022.

Technical Notes

The painting is in good condition. It has suffered a few small losses, mostly from the edges, some scratches, dents and [page 375] [page 376] wearing. The painting was evidently cleaned in 1841 by Samuel Mountjoy Smith according to the records of John Smith & Sons (information kindly communicated by Nicholas Penny); it was then cleaned and restored in 1929, at which time the panel was cradled, and again in 1993, soon after acquisition.

The original panel has been thinned to about 8 mm in thickness. It has been trimmed on all four sides and chamfered on the back, accommodating lapped unpainted additions about 1 cm wide all round, which are attached to a cradle.

The ground consists of a layer of natural chalk in glue medium, coated with a thin unpigmented layer of what appears to be a drying oil, visible in cross‐sections. There is no pigmented layer of priming.

A certain amount of underdrawing in a fluid medium, probably executed with a brush, is evident in infrared reflectograms (fig. 3). This consists of simple outlines of the type seen when some form of mechanical transfer such as a cartoon or tracing has been used. The figure and the details of the costume were all underdrawn but it is not clear whether any underdrawing is present for the starling or the squirrel. A line bisects the top of the cap, perhaps representing a depression not followed through in painting. The underdrawing for the shawl consists of strong, confident outlines but also some more hesitant drawing to indicate folds. These lines are not always followed exactly in the painting, for example in the triple contours of the bottom edges. A number of other modifications were made by Holbein during the course of painting, which are described and discussed below.

The background is painted with two similar layers of coarse‐ground natural azurite mixed with lead white. The green vine leaves are painted directly over the background with green paint containing various mixtures of verdigris and lead‐tin yellow, as well as black for the darkest tones. A final application of more translucent paint consisting mainly of verdigris, applied more thickly or thinly as required, provides the final modelling and deep rich green colour.

The sitter’s dress consists of a single layer of very fine brownish‐black pigment, microscopically of the character of lamp black. Lead white and some red earth have been added to the greyer areas, and some copper was detected by EDX analysis, probably some green pigment included as a drier. The warm grey shadows of the shawl contain a translucent brown pigment and a little black mixed with white. This brown is also used in the shadows of the flesh, as in the woman’s hand, where a brownish‐red lake, red ochre and traces of vermilion and black are also present together with lead white. The stronger shadow in her chin includes some azurite in addition. The paler flesh tones contain lead white very sparsely tinted with vermilion, Cologne earth and a little cool blue‐black.

The medium of three paint samples, from the blue background, the transparent green glaze of a leaf and the grey shadow of the shawl, was in each case identified as linseed oil by GC–MS analysis. Some pine resin was also detected in the sample from the shawl.⁹

The Portrait: The Sitter, the Squirrel and the Starling

The woman wears a pure white fur cap: the white fur may be costly ermine, perhaps white Russian ermine, or else lettice, the fur of the snow weasel, or winter stoat, or possibly the cheaper substitute pured miniver (the white belly fur of the Baltic squirrel); the wearing of ermine or lettice was restricted in sumptuary laws to those bearing arms.¹⁰ The horizontal joins between the small pelts are clearly indicated by Holbein (fig. 4). The woman’s black dress (probably made of silk or else of wool) has cuffs of black velvet and there is black velvet edging along the top of the bodice and down the centre front where the two sides of the opening in the garment meet. Her breast is covered by a white, semi‐transparent chemise with a white binding around the neck and the front edges; it is fastened at the neck by a small pearl button but is otherwise open, exposing a small area of flesh that is overlapped by the tail of the squirrel (fig. 6). Over her shoulders she wears a folded white linen shawl: the dark edges of the shawl are clearly visible and were created by dragging brown paint through the wet white paint along the bottom edges of the shawl to indicate the multiple layers of fabric (fig. 2).¹¹ Under the cuffs the white frill of a chemise is visible, the concertina effect of the folds created by drawing a blunt implement through the white paint, perhaps the handle of a brush. Her hair is brown and her eyes are light brown. Holbein adjusted the contour of the ermine cap at the right during painting, covering the edge with the blue paint of the background to reduce its width by half on this side. The hairline was first painted with a higher peak and with hair lower on the temple; Holbein then repainted the flesh to hide the hair on the temple and lowered the hairline in the centre of the forehead. The sitter’s left shoulder was also originally slightly higher.¹²

On the sitter’s arm perches a bright‐eyed red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) cracking a nut (fig. 5). A triangle of the white fur of its underbelly, painted wet‐in‐wet, is visible above its clawed foot (figs 7, 8). A silver‐grey metal chain, presumably attached to a collar around its neck, indicates that [page 377] [page [378]] [page 379] it is a pet. Squirrels were kept as pets in England from as early as the fourteenth century: one is shown in an illustration to the Luttrell Psalter (fig. 18).¹³ A starling (Sturnus vulgaris) perches on the left (fig. 12). This was painted directly over the blue background, the effect of its iridescent plumage created by allowing some of the background to show through and further dabs of blue paint added over the brown feathers (figs 9, 10, 13). The starling might also be a pet: caged birds were commonly kept in the medieval and early modern periods; Charles II is known to have kept a pet starling.¹⁴

The X‐radiograph and infrared reflectogram (fig. 3) show that the squirrel was a somewhat later addition to the composition, which necessitated significant changes to the sitter’s pose: her right arm was originally 3 cm lower than at present, lying along the lower edge of the painting, slightly below the level of her waist; her left hand has also been altered. A belt, now concealed – a thin strip of fabric attached to a round or oval ring – was painted around her waist (fig. 11).

Although the presence of the squirrel and the starling is unique among Holbein’s portraits, animals and birds are included in a small number of his other individual painted portraits. Robert Cheseman in the portrait of 1533 (The Hague, Mauritshuis) holds a falcon, and an unidentified man dated 1542 holds a hawk (The Hague, Mauritshuis); the presence of these birds may refer to the interests of the sitters, to their occupations, to their status or to all or some of these.¹⁵ In Holbein’s preparatory drawing for the lost family portrait of Sir Thomas More (Basel, Kunstmuseum) a chained monkey is shown next to Lady More, and in another drawing (also Basel, Kunstmuseum) a boy holds a marmoset.¹⁶ These last two were probably domestic pets, like squirrels and starlings.

The sitter in NG 6540 is placed before a blue background with branches and foliage on either side of her. The background plant has leaves resembling those of the fig tree (Ficus carica) and tendrils characteristic of a vine, as well as what have been described as ‘fig‐like protuberances’; these may be intended [page 380] to indicate the vine’s own fruit (fig. 14).¹⁷ Similar though not identical background foliage appears in several other portraits by Holbein, and also appears to combine the characteristics of the fig and vine.¹⁸ The motif appears in Holbein’s so‐called Meyer Madonna (Würth Foundation) of 1526–9; in a religious work, the Last Supper (Basel, Kunstmuseum), perhaps a work of an associate from the same period;¹⁹ and in a number of Holbein’s English portraits from the period 1526–8 and 1533 onwards (see Attribution and Date). The vine was included in Christian religious subjects owing to the equivalence between wine and Christ’s blood as exemplified in the Mass, while the fig features in biblical references; it has also been suggested that the presence of the vine in Holbein’s portraits (were the plant to be identified as such) might be associated with protection against disease.²⁰ However, the function of such foliage in Holbein’s portraits may be purely decorative and he may have deliberately mingled the characteristics of fig and vine.²¹

The Identity of the Sitter

In the earliest certain reference to the painting in 1702 in the sale of Jan Six, the sitter is identified as the nurse of the future King Edward VI (see Provenance). This identification must derive from the similarity of the figure in the painting to that in a drawing by Holbein in the Royal Collection of a woman in profile wearing a fur cap (fig. 15), which was then believed to represent Edward’s nurse. This drawing, which evidently portrays Sir Thomas More’s foster daughter Margaret Giggs (1508–1570), as indicated by copies of Holbein’s lost group painting of the More family, was erroneously inscribed with the identification ‘Mother Iak’; although the present inscription probably dates from the eighteenth century, it was probably drawn from identifications of the sitters made at a much earlier date.²² ‘Mother Iak’, or Sybil Jackson, was nurse to the future King Edward VI.²³ The drawing formed part of the book of Holbein portrait drawings acquired by the Earl of Arundel between 1627 and 1630 and listed in his inventory of 1655.²⁴ It was etched by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1648 (fig. 16), along with a number of other works owned by Arundel, including some by Holbein.²⁵ As Arundel evidently also owned the painting (see Provenance), it is easily understandable that the erroneous identification of the drawing was also applied to the painting and that it was perpetuated after it left his collection.

The women shown in both painting and drawing wear the same type of fur cap but their features, especially their noses, as well as their costumes and poses, are quite distinct. They cannot be the same woman and the drawing is clearly not a study for NG 6540. Although it would have been Holbein’s normal practice to have made one or more preparatory drawings for such a portrait, there are no surviving drawings that appear to be connected with it.²⁶

The Lovell Family

A squirrel crouched eating a nut in a manner very similar to the squirrel depicted in NG 6540 was the badge of the Lovell family (fig. 17), in whose coat of arms it also appears as ‘three squirrels sejant gules’. For this reason David King very plausibly identified the sitter in the portrait as Anne Ashby (died 1539), daughter of George Ashby, clerk to the signet (died 1515) and wife of Sir Francis Lovell [page 381] [page 382] (died 1552).²⁷ The Lovell arms as shown on the tomb of Sir Francis Lovell are impaled by the Ashby arms.²⁸ King further suggested that the presence of the starling may be explained as a pun on East Harling, commonly spelt ‘Estharlying’, the place in Norfolk where Anne Ashby and Sir Francis Lovell lived, although such a reference to a place name (rather than a personal name) would apparently be unusual in a medieval heraldic rebus.²⁹ Sir Francis Lovell’s personal interest in birds may be indicated by a reference to him in William Turner’s book on ornithology published in 1544 as the originator of the English name of the shrike.³⁰ There are no other portraits by Holbein in which the identity of the sitter appears to be referenced in a similar fashion. Nor do there appear to be any examples of English sixteenth‐century coats of arms in which both squirrels and starlings appear together, which might offer an alternative identification based solely on heraldry.

Sir Francis Lovell was the second son of Sir Gregory Lovell, cousin of Sir Thomas Lovell KG (about 1449–1524), administrator and speaker of the House of Commons and himself esquire of the body to Henry VIII; Sir Francis inherited the bulk of Sir Thomas Lovell’s substantial estates.³¹ He was knighted between 1528 and 1530.³² In 1526–7 Sir Francis was a sheriff for the county of Norfolk, in 1531 commissioner of the peace in Norfolk, and in 1533 he attended Anne Boleyn at her coronation; in 1534 he was named in the commission of sewers in Norfolk.³³

Anne Lovell’s existence is not well documented.³⁴ Sir Francis had made a second marriage to Elizabeth by 1545, as a licence for a grant in June that year shows; his will of 1551 records his wife as ‘Dame Elizabeth my wellbeloved wife’.³⁵ A ‘Dame Anne’ is mentioned in an undated legal document as the deceased wife of Sir Francis Lovell and mother of Thomas Lovell, while old county sources gave Sir Francis’s wife as Anne Ashfield, correctly Anne Ashby, of Haresfield.³⁶ Members of the Ashby family of Haresfield had held the post of clerk to the signet at court over a long period, beginning in the reign of Henry VI. Anne Lovell’s father, George, was clerk to the signet under Henry VII in 1500 and a squire for the body during the reign of Henry VIII; he was dead by 19 April 1515.³⁷ In his will he bequeathed to his daughter Anne the sum of £50 towards her marriage and a gilt cup bearing the letter ‘A’ on the cover and another parcel gilt cup with an ‘A’ on the bottom of it.³⁸

In a letter dated 14 September 1534 to Lord Lisle (died 1542), the illegitimate son of Edward IV and recently appointed Lord Deputy of Calais, Sir Francis refers to his own wife and son: ‘my wife and I send regards to you and my lady’ and, discussing an ambitious marriage settlement between his son and Lord Lisle’s daughter, proposed: ‘my son and heir will marry your second daughter Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet’.³⁹ Anne Ashby must have given birth to a son, Thomas, before 9 April 1526, as can be deduced from the inquisitio post mortem held at Norwich Castle on 9 April 1552, after his father’s death on 21 January that year, when Thomas’s age is recorded as [page 383] ‘26 et ultra’.⁴⁰ The date of Anne’s marriage to Francis Lovell is unknown but it was presumably after he had inherited Sir Thomas Lovell’s property following his death on 25 May 1524; Sir Thomas had made provision in his will for Francis to stay for two years at his residence at Halywell or Holywell Priory in Shoreditch in 1524.⁴¹ Anne was in Norfolk in June 1526, when Francis Lovell, with his wife and other members of their family, are recorded as visiting Sir Thomas Lestrange (died 1545) at Hunstanton in Norfolk.⁴²

As the Lovells and Ashbys had prominent court contacts, it is highly likely that they would have had the opportunity to commission a portrait from Holbein in London. It is notable that Holbein also had connections with patrons from Norfolk, including Sir Thomas Godsalve (about 1481–1545) and his son John (about 1505–1556), whom he portrayed in 1528 (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), and Sir Thomas Lestrange. Lestrange, whom the Lovells are documented as visiting (as mentioned above), had contacts with a number of courtiers who were also to become patrons of Holbein; he was himself later portrayed by Holbein in a portrait for which a drawing survives in the Royal Collection.⁴³

Since a number of Holbein’s portraits of women seem to have been painted as part of a pair of husband and wife, it is conceivable that the portrait of Anne Lovell was also intended to be paired with a portrait of her husband. Women are more usually placed to the right in such portrait pairs, facing left, whereas Anne Lovell faces to the right; however, in Holbein’s portrait drawings of Sir Thomas and Lady Elyot, Lady Elyot does face right.⁴⁴ There are also a number of surviving portrait drawings by Holbein in which the female sitter faces right, but which are not known to have formed part of a pair, which raises the possibility that these were conceived as independent portraits. One such commission, that of the portrait of Elizabeth, Lady Audley (died 1564), known from a drawing and a portrait miniature (both Royal Collection), was possibly connected with a prospective marriage.⁴⁵ But in the present case the sitter must be shown as a married woman, since Anne Ashby’s son Thomas was born several months before Holbein’s arrival in England in autumn 1526. There is no known portrait of Sir Francis Lovell.

Meanings Associated with Squirrels

Squirrels appear on the Lovell coat of arms, and the chained squirrel in the portrait of Anne Lovell would readily have been understood as a household pet. Squirrels are also found in a number of sixteenth‐century portraits by other artists (as well as in some religious works), in some of which they may also be included as pets.⁴⁶ The squirrel was engraved in the sixteenth century by Heinrich Aldegrever (died about 1558–61) as an exemplum of diligence, and was included in emblem books of the seventeenth century as an emblem of patience, diligence and perseverance.⁴⁷ By contrast, the creature had also carried a sexual meaning since medieval times: in the fourteenth‐century Ormesby Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Library), for example, a man wearing a prominent sword is shown offering a ring to a woman holding a squirrel.⁴⁸

A fifteenth‐century gold love ring in the British Museum is engraved on the inside with an image of a woman set against leaves and flowers, holding a large squirrel on a lead.⁴⁹ Squirrels also appear as sexual symbols in Italian and French portraits from the sixteenth century on.⁵⁰ It is notable that the courtier and antiquary John Leland (about 1506–1552), who celebrated a number of works by Holbein and others in his Latin verses, wrote a poem in the genre of the Roman poet Catullus’ poem on Lesbia and her pet sparrow on the subject of a lady and a captured pet squirrel, which she holds close to her breast and feeds on nuts.⁵¹ It is perhaps conceivable that these verses might have been inspired by Holbein’s portrait or the heraldry of the Lovell family.

David King has suggested that the squirrel, a symbol of the Lovell coat of arms, perched on Anne Lovell’s arm but occupying the position close to her breast in which a young child might be shown, might have been understood as a reference to the Lovell’s son, Thomas, to whom she had given birth in 1526, and on whom family hopes were fastened. Since Sir Francis Lovell had become the heir of the childless [page 384] Sir Thomas Lovell, the young Thomas was in line to inherit substantial property.⁵² The proposed marriage alliance with the Lisles of royal descent is clearly indicative of the family’s extraordinary ambition for their son.

The calm and detached manner in which Holbein presents his sitter, her gaze looking steadily beyond the picture rather than turned to the lively animal that perches on her arm, may result at least in part from the sequential manner in which the painting was apparently planned, with the squirrel a somewhat later addition (see above). Yet this slight disjunction also serves to draw attention to the way in which the young woman and the animal apparently inhabit separate worlds, ironically one in which the heraldic symbolic appears notionally more lively than the subject of the portrait.

Attribution and Date

The portrait was first identified as a work by Holbein by Paul Ganz in an article of 1925 and the attribution has been accepted subsequently by all Holbein scholars.⁵³ A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling is an outstanding example of Holbein’s skills as a painter of portraits, full of exceptionally beautiful details, from the depiction of the animated, gleaming eye of the squirrel to the exquisite control shown in the undulating lines indicating the edges of the sitter’s shawl. Its arresting design, with the sitter shown against a background of leaves and branches scrolling across intense blue is particularly accomplished and gives little indication of the number of changes made to the composition.

Many of the effects were made by Holbein working quickly with the paint still wet: he drew wet white paint quickly across the brown of the squirrel’s fur to create the softness of its belly (fig. 7), while he evoked the joins between the small fur pelts of the hat as well as its texture by controlling strokes of intermingling lighter and darker greyish‐brown paint.

The portraits in which Holbein used the half‐length formula showing the sitter against a blue background with leaves and branches all represent subjects known to have been painted in England, but not all of these date from the artist’s visit to England in 1526–8. The portraits include those of Sir Henry Guildford (1489–1532; Royal Collection) and his wife, Mary (about 1490–about 1527; St Louis Art Museum) dated 1527; of Derich Born (about 1510–1549), a London Hanseatic merchant (Royal Collection), dated 1533; and of William Reskimer (died 1552; Royal Collection), usually dated to about the same time. The Meyer Madonna, which is known to have been painted between 1526 and 1529, also uses the motif of leaves and branches.⁵⁴ It is therefore likely that NG 6540 was also painted during Holbein’s first visit to England in 1526–8, and may well have been intended as a celebration of the birth of the Lovell heir in 1526. NG 6540 would presumably have been based on a drawing made by Holbein in London, either soon after his arrival in autumn 1526 or perhaps the following autumn/winter of 1527–8, if it is correctly assumed that the fur hat was usually worn in colder months. Since Holbein’s immediate patron on his arrival in England was Sir Thomas More, and since he was occupied in creating paintings for the royal revels at Greenwich in the earlier part of 1527, it is perhaps more plausible that NG 6540 was painted in autumn or winter 1527–8.

Select Bibliography

Ganz 1925; Rowlands 1985, no. 28, p. 134; Grossmann 1951, p. 112; Foister, Wyld and Roy 1994; King 2004.

Notes