A solemn woman wearing a soft cap of dense white fur sits with a red squirrel in her lap and a glossy-feathered starling at her shoulder. Common pets in the fifteenth-century, these animals also have a symbolic meaning and serve as clues to the sitter’s identity. She is thought to be Anne Lovell, whose husband, Sir Francis Lovell, was employed at the court of Henry VIII, King of England.
The starling is probably intended as a rhyming pun of East Harling, where the family had recently inherited a large estate. Squirrels nibbling on nuts feature on the heraldry of the Lovell family: the windows of the church at East Harling include two of the family’s coats of arms in stained glass, each showing six red squirrels. The commission may commemorate the birth of a son to the couple in the spring of 1526, but it also showed off their new status as wealthy landowners.
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. NG 6540 may have remained in the possession of the Lovell family until 1604.
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’). 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. 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)’. 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). 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. 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.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Susan Foister, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The German Paintings before 1800’, London 2024; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
This is a sixteenth-century Flemish box frame, crafted from oak. The back edge features a stepped moulding that transitions into a wide, flat frieze. Wooden pegs, visible at the corners of the frieze, secure the joinery. The sight edge, in baluster shape, subtly guides the viewer’s gaze towards the painting. The frame was acquired in London by 1993.
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