Portrait of Johann von Schwarzwaldt



Portrait of Johann von Schwarzwaldt is a tempera on parchment portrait completed in 1543 by German artist and printmaker, Hans Holbein the Younger. The painting shows a young man against a blue background, turned three-quarters to the viewer's right. The sitter is wearing a deep black velvet cap and a black silk gown, a shade lighter, with a finely embroidered white shirt showing at the neck and wrist. The eyes are lowered, half covered by the lids, the arms folded. He has two rings on his left hand and is holding leather gloves. There is a flanking inscription at head height —· ANNO · ETATIS // SVÆ · 24 · 1543· — indicating that he was born about 1519. The subject of this portrait was identified as a Danzig merchant, Hans (Johann) von Schwarzwald (1513 − 1575), but his age does not match the inscription. It has been suggested that the young man might be Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, the son of Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex.

Identification
In 1903 Sir Richard Holmes identified a portrait of a young man, one of a number of portrait miniatures of English origin in the possession of the Queen of the Netherlands, as the work of Hans Holbein the Younger. He suggested that the unidentified youth "apparently of fifteen or sixteen years of age" might possibly be one of the family of a Hanseatic merchant of the Steelyard in London "like the admirable head of Derek Born". Art historian Roy Strong has dated the portrait to c. 1535–1540.

The sitter has hooded eyes and his hair is close cropped as seen in Portrait of a man, probably Sir George Carew (c. 1540), Portrait of an Unknown Man, possibly identifiable as Thomas Seymour (c. 1535–1540) and Portrait of William Parr, Marquess of Northampton (c. 1538–1542). The sitter's clothing is distinctly English and George Williamson noted that "as it finds its place in a collection which includes many miniatures by English masters, such as Cooper, Oliver, and Hoskins, it may be thought possible that the picture was painted in England, and represents perhaps some young Englishman of notable position". Arthur Chamberlain observed that his features "appear more English than German, and that it most probably represents the son of some personage about Henry's court."

The young man's features "have a distinct resemblance" to those of his father and he has the "same characteristic Cromwell upturned nose." The "Z or N detail on the signet ring" in the 1543 portrait can be accounted for by Gregory Cromwell's coat of arms, "if it is seen as a zig-zag, or in heraldic terms, a fess indented." Two portrait miniatures of Gregory's brother-in-law, Thomas Seymour, from the 1540s are extant:Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley (c. 1545–1547) at the National Maritime Museum, London and Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, (c. 1540), attributed to Lucas Horenbout in the Royal Collections, The Hague.

Provenance
Probably the merchant and collector, Heinrich IV Schwarzwald (1619–1672); by descent to his nephew, Heinrich V Schwarzwald (1642–1705); with a library and coin collection, part of a legacy left to the Lutheran Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Danzig by the Schwarzwald family in 1708; Danzig Stadtmuseum by 1902; looted from the Danzig Stadtmuseum by the German occupation forces in 1943; claimed by the Soviet Union's Red Army as spoils of war and taken to Moscow in 1945; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.