mph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty--which he
executed for the Hall of the Steelyard. In their day they were renowned
far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion,
perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the Solothurn
Madonna.

When the Guild was compelled to abandon the Steelyard, in Queen
Elizabeth's reign, the Hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that
when it regained possession, under James I., everything was in a sad
state of neglect. And when the association finally dissolved not long
after, the Hanseatic League agreed to present these paintings to Henry
Prince of Wales, known, like Charles I., to be a lover of Art.

If they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged
them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627
Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an
enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague
notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to
Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought
they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and
copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of
Riches is in the Louvre Collection.

That he ever painted Anne Boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful.
The portrait among the Windsor drawings which has been labelled with her
name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. But in
1534 he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--Thomas
Cromwell, then Master of the Jewel House.

And it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some
respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme
works of all portraiture--the oil painting of Morett, or Morette, so
long regarded as a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art. The world knows
it well in the Dresden Gallery (Plate 29).

The figure is life-size. The pose, even the costume in its feasible
essentials, strikingly repeats the Whitehall portrait of Henry VIII., as
copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. The
background is a green curtain.

Illustration: PLATE 29
THE MORETT PORTRAIT
_Oils. Dresden Gallery_

The sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor Order of any
sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with
white, the broad fur collar of sable. In his cap is a cameo brooch. His
buttons are