facing the past
over chalk, has additional inscriptions and motifs in brown ink that document the changes More wished Holbein to incorporate. They show for example that Sir Thomas preferred for Alice, on the far right of the group, to sit reading a book rather than kneeling in prayer, with her pet monkey scrabbling at her skirt.5 Given that our portrait is painted over an unfinished Erasmus, and from a pattern type that is dateable to c.1530 and since it is painted on a linden panel (a distinctive European native hardwood), rather than on Baltic oak which was predominantly used in England, it seems certain that our portrait was painted in Basel, with Holbein’s return to London in 1532 giving us a terminus ante quem for the portrait. It is also worth noting the double layer of azurite, the highly expensive blue pigment used for the background. Often found in Holbein’s portraits and those of his contemporaries, its cost meant that it was only used for significant commissions whereas in copies or lesser works, it invariably was replaced with cheaper, less stable alternatives.
5. Susan Foister has commented that Holbein’s compositional arrangement of the figures mirrors traditional groupings of the Holy Family (S. Foister, ibid., p.34). 6. Harpsfield, pp.93-94 (R. Norrington, ibid., p.45). 7. Allen IV, no.999 (R. Norrington, ibid., p.37). 8. Letters and Papers. Henry VIII, 2. Part I, no.2726 (R. Norrington, ibid., p.31). 9. Retha M. Warnicke, ‘More, Alice, Lady More (b. in or after 1474, d. in or before 1551)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
10
Alice More (née Harpur) was the wealthy widow of a prominent Mercer, John Middleton, at the time of her marriage to Sir Thomas More in the summer of 1511. Sir Thomas’s first Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1530 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8 –1543) wife, Jane Colt, had been dead and buried Oil on panel: 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.5 cm.) but three weeks. There is no explanation for Galleria Nazionale, Parma, Italy the speed with which they married, but this © Mondadori Electa / The Bridgeman Art Library did not compromise what proved to be a very successful union that lasted nearly twenty-five years until More’s execution in 1535. Alice became surrogate mother to More’s four children (as well as her own by her first marriage), mistress of the house, and his most faithful companion. Erasmus noted Sir Thomas’s devotion to her, describing how ‘He lives on such sweet and pleasant terms with her, as if she was as young and lovely as anyone can desire, and scarcely anyone obtains from his wife by masterfulness and severity, what More does from his blandishments and jests’.6 For her part, her determination to please her husband and win his respect is revealed in another observation by Erasmus, who was impressed that More convinced Alice to take up music despite her middle age, ‘It was a striking achievment...to persuade a woman, middle-aged and set in her ways, and much occupied with her home, to learn and sing to the cithern and lute, the monochord, or the recorder, and to do a daily exercise set by her husband’.7 It can be no coincidence that it was during their marriage that Sir Thomas More achieved greatness, and within a few years of it he wrote his theological masterpiece, Utopia (1516). In his own words and personal utopia – ‘I come home, and commune with my wife, chat with my children and talk with my servants. All these things I reckon and account as business, for as much as they must be done, and done must they need be, unless a man will be a stranger in his own house. And every man must do his utmost to be civil and obliging to those whom nature had provided to be companions of his life, or chance, or choice...’8 As his career advanced, More frequently left Alice alone to supervise the household; his only extant letter to her concerns their barn that burned down in 1529. Around the end of 1534, although she did not understand the reasons for his imprisonment, she petitioned the government for his release. After his execution the crown voided the trust he had belatedly established for her but granted her an annuity of £20 in 1537. She became entangled in lawsuits, one of them initiated by William Roper, her stepson-in-law, who depicted her as an interfering busybody in his account of Thomas’s life. She died on or before 25 April 1551 and was probably buried at Chelsea.9
Infrared reflectograms revealing the portrait of Erasmus beneath that of Alice