Conservation Work on a 16th-Century Portrait Reveals Hans Holbein’s Cheek-Chiseling Procedure

Hans Holbein, *Portrait of Derich Born* (1533). Photo by Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

Hans Holbein, Portrait of Derich Born. Photo by Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. — Hans Holbein, *Portrait of Derich Born* (1533). Photo by Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

People pay good money for the kind of cheek surgery Hans Holbein performed his 1533 portrait of merchant Derich Born.

Conservation work has revealed a jaw-slimming procedure done over the course of several layers of oil paint by the German-Swiss artist. Born’s face was made progressively more defined, leaving him with razor-edged cheekbones.

The portrait, along with 50 others, is on display at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace as part of the “Holbein at the Tudor Court” exhibition running through April 14, 2024. Other portraits included in the exhibition include Henry VIII—for whom Holbein was official court artist—his wives Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, his daughter Queen Mary I, and the former Lord High Chancellor Sir Thomas More. The painting of Born was once owned by King Charles I.

Several years ago, conservation work was undertaken on the portrait of Born, with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and infra-red scans revealing the facial edits. The high-resolution technical imaging was conducted by the Getty Conservation Institute when they loaned the artwork for its 2021 exhibition
Holbein: Capturing Character in the Renaissance” at the Getty Center.

The Royal Collection Trust’s head of paintings conservation, Nicola Christie, said that by allowing experts to “study Holbein’s underdrawing in closer detail than ever before” we can now see how “the slightly chubby youth in the X-ray image emerges as the chisel-jawed young man in the painting.” Conservation also revealed a preserved thumb print—assumed to be Holbein’s—on the left edge of the panel.

Radiograph. Photo by Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

There is no evidence as to whether Born requested the jawline changes or whether Holbein elected to make them himself. However, the artist could be complimentary to a fault when it came to his sitters. In 1539, Holbein’s portrait of Anne of Cleves convinced Henry VIII to marry her. However, the king felt misled by the portrait, saying that “she is nothing so fair as she hath been reported” and maintaining that her unpleasant appearance prevented him from consummating their marriage.

Holbein, though, was clearly pleased with the final likeness of Born, writing in its inscription: “If you added a voice, this would be Derich (Born) his very self. You would be in doubt whether the painter or his father made him.”

Born was came from Cologne and worked as a steelyard merchant in London. He supplied Henry VIII’s armourer, and was 23 when he commissioned this portrait. He and his brother were expelled from the London Steelyard in the 1540s following a disagreement with a powerful member of court. Holbein painted several portraits—seven of which survive—of German merchants during the early 1530s.

“Holbein at the Tudor Court” is on view at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, through April 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.

Installation view of “Holbein at the Tudor Court” at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Photo by Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.