Who was Holbein's Lady with a squirrel and a starling? Ever since it was acquired by the National Gallery, London, in 1992 this celebrated English portrait by Holbein has remained tantalisingly anonymous. A detective trail has led David J King to East Harling in Norfolk, where clues in stained glass and a tomb reveal the sitter's identity

Apollo, May, 2004 by David J. King

The portrait of a Lady with a squirrel and a starling by Hans Holbein the Younger, in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 1), has hitherto defied all attempts at identifying its subject, a demurely but well-dressed young woman sitting against a plain blue background and holding in her lap a pet squirrel on a chain eating a nut. A starling, perhaps also a pet, sits on a fig tree in the background with its beak pointing at her right ear. It has been suggested that the pets may have an heraldic or other significance which could lead to her identity, and that the lady's resemblance to one of the figures in the preparatory drawing for the lost painting of the family of Sir Thomas More points to her having come from More's family or acquaintances, or at least from the influential court circles from whom Holbein drew his clientele at this time. The portrait is dated by general agreement on style to Holbein's first visit to England, in 1526-28. (1)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Recently, the painting was part of the 'Gothic: Art for England' exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Another exhibit was the bronze portrait relief attributed to Torrigiano of Sir Thomas Lovell (Fig. 2), and it was the combination of these two exhibits that suggested to the present writer the solution to the problem of the lady's identity. (2) Sir Thomas Lovell KG served the country under both Henry VII and Henry VIII as Chancellor of the Exchequer, knight of the king's body and Speaker of the House of Commons. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1503, and his portrait relief, surrounded by the Garter, is thought to have been made for the gatehouse of the residence he built at East Harling in Norfolk that survived until the early nineteenth century. (3) The manor of East Harling had previously belonged to Sir Edmund Bedingfield, knight, and before that to the Harling family, who had rebuilt the church in the fifteenth century. (4) The main lights of the cast chancel window of the church there are filled with much fine painted glass of c. 1475-80, most of which was originally made for the east window of the south aisle. Tucked away in the tracery, set in modern foliage, sits a large, finely-painted red squirrel cracking a nut, the badge of the Lovells (Fig. 3), and amongst fragments set in the cast window of the south aisle are two shields of arms of the Lovell family, each depicting six more red squirrels, all in glass of the 1520s, and originally from the east chancel window, where it had been until the 1930s. (5) Many further squirrels appear on the three Lovell tombs in the church. (6) The association of a red squirrel eating a nut with a person with such close connections to royal circles immediately suggested that the portrait's secret might be discoverable, and this was soon confirmed by the realisation that the starling was a pun on 'East Harling'. That made the case even stronger, and it then remained to look into the Lovell family at East Harling at the time of Holbein's first visit to see whether it still had after Sir Thomas' death in 1524 the necessary social connections to have brought it into contact with the court milieu from which Holbein drew his patronage.

[FIGURES 2-3 OMITTED]

The Lovell family

Sir Thomas died without issue and left much of his estate, including various manors in East Harling with the advowson of the church, to his 'cosyn' Francis Lovell, who was one of the executors of his will. (7) The elucidation of the history of the Lovell family before Sir Thomas Lovell KG, is fraught with difficulties and many contradictory accounts have been written; as a result the relationship between Sir Thomas and Francis has never been established beyond doubt. The most likely is that they were uncle and nephew, and that the frequent references by Sir Thomas to his 'cosyn' Francis used the word in its now obsolete sense of 'a collateral relative more distant than a brother or sister ... formerly very frequently applied to a nephew or niece'. (8) According to this account, Francis Lovell was the son of Sir Gregory Lovell of Barton Bendish, elder brother of Sir Thomas Lovell KG and his mother was Margaret Brandon, daughter of Sir Williant Brandon. His paternal grandparents would have been Thomas Lovell of Barton Bendish, who died in 1479, and Anne, daughter of Robert Toppes, alderman of Norwich, who died in 1467. (9) The earliest reference to Francis was his appointment as esquire of the body to Henry VIII in 1516, an office his uncle Sir Thomas had held in 1485 under Henry VII. (10) In the years immediately preceding his uncle's demise, Francis served him at his residences at Halywell in Shoredirch, London, and Elsynges in Enfield, Middlesex, receiving payment as a gentleman waiter and attending his funeral as a mounted mourner in livery. (11) Although Francis would have inherited the manors of East Harling immediately after Sir Thomas's death on 25 May 1524, as an executor to the will he would have been much exercised in administering the distribution of his uncle's vast estate and it would have been some time before he was able to take up residence in Norfolk. Indeed, Sir Thomas made provision in his will for Francis to stay for two years at his manor at Halywell in London, provided that he also allowed access to his other executors 'for such busyness as they shalhave to doo aboute my funeral and for thexecucion and performance of this my Testament and last Wille'. (12)