Portrait of Henry VIII of England by Hans Holbein the Younger (from 1539 until 1540)

Catalogue identity

The object catalogued here is a painting, Portrait of Henry VIII of England, attributed in the supplied record to Hans Holbein the Younger. The depicted person is identified as Henry VIII of England, whose life dates are given as 1491 to 1547. Within the record's own classification, the work's genre is portrait and its object type is painting, so the entry is framed both by what it depicts and by the kind of thing it is. These are catalogue identifications rather than an independent re-examination of the panel, and the attribution is stated in attributed form: the painting is credited to Holbein the Younger in the record, which is a Wikimedia Commons file rather than the owning museum's catalogue.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Artist field; Summary, Title field; Summary, Depicted people field; Summary, Genre field; Summary, Object type field)

The date assigned to the painting is given as from 1539 until 1540. That span is the date recorded for the work itself, and it should be distinguished from the life dates of the sitter, 1491 to 1547, which describe the king rather than the making of the panel. The date also should not be read as the date of a sitting or of any particular event in Henry's reign. The painting is executed in oil and tempera on panel, and it measures 88.5 centimetres high and 74.5 centimetres wide. The record gives the painting's location as the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, and records accession number 878 for it there. The record further cites the painting in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger, page 117, which anchors the object in a published catalogue of the artist's work.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Date field; Summary, Depicted people field)

The painting is attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The work is titled Portrait of Henry VIII of England.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The depicted person is Henry VIII of England (1491-1547).(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The work is a portrait.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The object type is painting.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The painting's date is given as from 1539 until 1540.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

What the record can and cannot show

Visual observation

The single supplied record for this panel is a Wikimedia Commons file page, and it is explicit about the limits of what it transmits. Its summary identifies the sitter as Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) and the work as a portrait painting, but the excerpt does not describe the composition, colours or depicted objects in any further detail. Everything in this section therefore rests on the identification of the sitter and on structured metadata rather than on a visual description transmitted with the file. That distinction matters for the history of material culture because a file record of this kind functions as a discovery aid pointing to an object, not as a curatorial catalogue entry: it can establish what the object is called, who it is said to depict, why the photograph exists and where the panel now is, but it cannot by itself support claims about gesture, costume, setting or symbolic programme. Where the paragraphs below discuss appearance, they do so only as far as the record's own statements allow, and identifications are reported as the record's.</p>(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary; Summary, Medium field)

The record attributes the painting to Hans Holbein the Younger, titles it Portrait of Henry VIII of England, classifies it as a portrait and as a painting, and dates it to the period from 1539 until 1540. Those four statements together define the object under discussion: a likeness of the English king made within the last years of his reign, by an artist working for the Tudor court. Because the record supplies no description of the panel's surface beyond the sitter's identity, any account of how Holbein modelled the king's face, what he wore, what surrounded him or what inscriptions or devices appeared in the field remains unsupported by the supplied evidence and is not asserted here. The date range of 1539 until 1540 is given as the date of the work; the record does not state when a sitting took place, whether the panel was produced from one or more sittings or from a workshop pattern, or how the chronology of the painting relates to events in Henry's life within those years.</p>(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary; Summary, References)

The photograph as a separate document

Interpretation

The image through which the painting is most widely encountered is itself a documented thing with an author and a date. The uploaded file is a 2017 photograph of the painting taken by Livioandronico2013 and released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. This separates three distinct layers that are often collapsed in discussion: the sixteenth-century panel, the photographic reproduction made in 2017 and the structured data record that carries both. For a research account, the distinction is consequential. Public familiarity with a painting of this kind is frequently familiarity with a particular photograph, and the choices made in that photograph, its lighting, framing, colour rendering and resolution, are not recorded here. The evidence establishes only that a photograph was made in 2017 by a named contributor and licensed for reuse; it does not establish how closely the photograph represents the panel's current surface, and no claim about visual detail in this article is drawn from anything beyond the record's own statements. The inclusion of a licence and a named photographer in a Wikimedia Commons file also means the record belongs to a particular modern mode of art documentation, in which an object's information and its reproduction circulate together as reusable data.</p>(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary)

Visual observation

Read together, the units establish a portrait of Henry VIII attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, dated 1539 to 1540, painted in oil and tempera on panel, 88.5 by 74.5 centimetres, held at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, accessioned as 878, cited in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger at page 117, and known to most viewers through a 2017 photograph by Livioandronico2013 under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. That is the full extent of what the supplied evidence supports about this object's identity, making and location. The record's own statement that it does not describe composition, colours or depicted objects indicates that the visual-analysis portion of this research account cannot be developed from this source; observation at this level is simply absent rather than uncertain. To say more about how Holbein portrayed the king, what conventions of Tudor royal portraiture the panel follows or departs from, what predecessors or successors it relates to, or what technical imaging has revealed about its making, the owning institution's catalogue or a dedicated curatorial study of this exact panel would be required. The value of the present account lies in stating that boundary precisely, since a portrait of this stature is regularly discussed in terms of symbolism and character that the supplied record does not itself report.</p>(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary; Summary, Medium field; Summary, Dimensions field; Summary, References)

The supplied excerpt does not describe the painting's composition, colours or depicted objects in detail beyond the identification of Henry VIII as the sitter.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The Panel and Its Medium

Visual observation

The painting is executed in oil and tempera on panel, a composite medium description recorded in the supplied Commons summary. That formulation matters for how the object should be described in technical terms. Tempera denotes a paint in which the pigment is bound in a water-based medium, often egg, while oil paint uses a drying oil as its binder; a work described as oil and tempera on panel therefore points to a layered or mixed practice in which both binding systems are present, rather than to a single, uniform paint film. The record states the medium as a settled field rather than as a hypothesis, but it also does not itemise which passages received which medium, nor does it identify pigments, ground, preparation layers or any later intervention. The support is given only as panel, without further characterisation of the wood species, thickness, joinery or cradle. Distinguishing what the record establishes from what it leaves open is important here: the medium and the type of support are documented in the summary, while the internal stratigraphy of the paint and the physical construction of the panel remain unstated in the supplied evidence.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Medium field; Summary)

Scale and Objecthood

The painting measures 88.5 centimetres high and 74.5 centimetres wide, dimensions recorded alongside the medium in the same structured entry. Those figures establish the object as a substantial panel rather than a miniature or a small devotional picture, and they give the portrait a height that exceeds its width by fourteen centimetres. The dimensions are useful precisely because they are quantitative and checkable, in contrast to the excerpt's treatment of appearance. The supplied excerpt does not describe the painting's composition, colours or depicted objects in detail beyond the identification of Henry VIII as the sitter, so the record supplies the physical envelope of the object without describing how the depicted figure fills it. The measured format and the unstated internal composition therefore sit side by side in the evidence: the archive can state the size of the panel with precision while leaving the arrangement of the image, its palette and its depicted objects outside the documented account.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Dimensions field; Summary)

Making, Attribution and the Limits of the Source

The medium, support and dimensions belong to a record that also attributes the painting to Hans Holbein the Younger and dates it from 1539 until 1540, the attribution and dating being the frame within which the material facts are presented. The record identifies the sitter as Henry VIII of England, who lived from 1491 to 1547, so the panel's documented making falls in the final decade of the king's life. It should be kept clear that the source for these material facts is a Wikimedia Commons file record, described in its own annotation as a discovery aid and structured data record rather than an owning museum's technical catalogue; the record is partially consulted and the image file it carries is a 2017 photograph of the painting taken by Livioandronico2013. The material description and the attribution consequently rest on the same discovery-level document, and no pigment analysis, dendrochronology, infrared imaging or conservation report is supplied to corroborate the medium statement or the date independently.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Medium field; Summary, Dimensions field; Summary)

Why These Material Facts Matter

Interpretation

Within a larger history of sixteenth-century panel painting, the conjunction of oil and tempera on a panel of this size places the object in a European workshop tradition in which the two binding systems were used together, and the record's date of 1539 to 1540 places it in the last years of Henry VIII's reign, a period in which the attribution to Holbein and the Tudor court context are the terms the source supplies. The evidentiary weight here lies in what can be documented rather than in what can be inferred from the image: the medium, support, dimensions, attribution, dating, sitter, collection and accession number are given, while the visual description is explicitly absent from the excerpt. This imbalance is itself informative for research on materials and technique, because it shows the object entering the archival record first through structured cataloguing data and a photographic surrogate rather than through a published technical study. The painting is held in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, with accession number 878 recorded there, and the Commons record cites it in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger at page 117; those locators indicate where a fuller technical account might be sought, but the supplied evidence does not itself contain one.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Medium field; Summary, Dimensions field; Summary)

The painting is executed in oil and tempera on panel.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The painting measures 88.5 centimetres high and 74.5 centimetres wide.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The Provenance Record and Its Limits

The single supplied evidence unit for the provenance of this panel is a record-level fact rather than a chain of ownership documents. It states that the uploaded image file is a 2017 photograph of the painting, taken by Livioandronico2013 and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The same Wikimedia Commons record carries the structured data that this section has to work with: the painting is attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, titled Portrait of Henry VIII of England, dated from 1539 until 1540, executed in oil and tempera on panel, measured at 88.5 centimetres high and 74.5 centimetres wide, and held in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, with accession number 878 recorded there. In provenance terms these are coordinates rather than a history. They identify the object, its material form, its dimensions and its current institutional location, and they identify the date and authorship of the photograph through which the object is being consulted, but they do not record a sequence of owners, a sale, a gift, a bequest, a transfer between collections, or the dates of any such event.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Licensing and Source/Photographer fields; Summary, References)

Because only one primary evidence unit is supplied here, the distinction between an unrecorded interval and a proven change of ownership has to be stated rather than resolved. The evidence establishes one documented location and one documented identifier: the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, accession number 878. It establishes the existence of a 2017 photographic record made by Livioandronico2013 under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Anything before the object entered that Roman collection, and anything about how or when it entered, is simply not in the evidence. That silence is not evidence of loss, dispersal, earlier private ownership or a specific route into the Barberini collection, and it should not be filled by inference. The gaps are gaps in the supplied record, not findings about the object's past.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Licensing and Source/Photographer fields)

A separate limit on the provenance account concerns the type of source. The record consulted is a Wikimedia Commons file, a discovery aid and structured data record rather than the owning museum's own catalogue entry for this exact panel. The same record cites the painting in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger at page 117, which is a published reference to the work rather than an ownership document. A museum catalogue or an archival file from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica would be the kind of source that could carry acquisition dates and earlier transfers, and the supplied evidence does not include one. Consequently, the provenance of this object as presented here consists of a current collection and accession number, plus the documentation of a modern photograph, and nothing further that can honestly be asserted as a documented transfer.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Licensing and Source/Photographer fields; Summary, References)

The uploaded image file is a 2017 photograph of the painting taken by Livioandronico2013, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

Documented Stages of Reception

Reception of the object in the supplied record is documented through a single, precise form: citation. The Commons record cites the painting in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger, page 117. Because the only supplied source is a Wikimedia Commons file rather than the owning museum's catalogue, this citation is the strongest piece of bibliographic reception evidence the account can carry; the surviving transcript correctly notes that the record offers no curatorial essay, no detailed visual analysis, and no explanation of the painting's symbolism or the king's expression. The record is a discovery aid and structured data record rather than a critical study, so what it establishes about how the painting has been written about is narrower than the painting's later fame might suggest.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, References)

Interpretation

That citation is itself a stage of reception: the painting is absorbed into the reference literature of Holbein's complete works, where it appears as an item to be catalogued and numbered rather than as a monument to be described. The supplied evidence does not establish when the work entered the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, how it travelled there, or how earlier generations valued it, so the history of admiration, imitation, historical biography, literary reading or public event cannot be reconstructed here. What is supported is narrower and should not be inflated: the painting's place in a twentieth-century complete-works survey of Holbein, and its present position in a Roman national collection under an accession number. Anything more about the painting's movement through taste and display would need evidence the supplied unit does not contain.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, References)

Reproduction, Display and Digital Circulation

Taken together, the supplied units support a reception history that is cumulative in a modest and specific way. The painting is attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, depicts Henry VIII of England (1491-1547), is dated from 1539 until 1540, is executed in oil and tempera on panel, measures 88.5 by 74.5 centimetres, is held at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, under accession number 878, is cited in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger, page 117, and is reproduced in a 2017 photograph by Livioandronico2013 under CC BY-SA 4.0. Each of these is a stage at which the object has been carried forward: into a complete-works corpus, into a national collection's numbering, and into a licensed digital image. The original function, production and sixteenth-century court context remain separate from these later cultural roles; the scholarly account of how Holbein portrayed the king's power or character is not contained in the supplied evidence and should not be substituted for it. Reception of the object, insofar as the supplied record establishes it, is the history of its cataloguing, collection and reproduction.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, References; Summary; Licensing and Source/Photographer fields)

The Commons record cites the painting in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger, page 117.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

Collection and display

The painting identified in the supplied record as Portrait of Henry VIII of England is held in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, where the accession number recorded for it is 878. These two facts are the object's documented present-day institutional coordinates: a named collection, a named building, and a specific registration number. The record indicates that the Rome picture is the current location of this exact panel, and it pairs that location with the accession number 878 rather than with any earlier owner, dealer or transfer history. No earlier provenance, no previous collection, and no route by which the panel reached Palazzo Barberini are stated in the evidence, so the chain of ownership before the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica remains undocumented here.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Collection and Current location fields; Summary, Accession number field)

The same record cites the painting in The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger, page 117. That citation matters for how the object is known: the panel is not only a work held in a Roman collection but also a work listed in a published catalogue of Holbein's complete paintings. The citation is a pointer within a larger reference apparatus rather than a curatorial essay, and the supplied evidence does not reproduce what the catalogue entry says at that page. What it establishes is that the Rome painting has a place in the literature on Holbein's painted corpus, while the location and accession number above establish where the panel itself now sits.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Collection and Current location fields; Summary, Accession number field)

The source behind both of these facts is a Wikimedia Commons file record. It is a discovery aid and structured data record rather than the owning museum's catalogue, and it carries, among its structured fields, the collection, current location and accession number for the painting. The Commons record also cites The Complete Paintings of Holbein the Younger at page 117. Because the supplying record is a Commons file page and not an institutional catalogue entry, the collection data it gives should be understood as a secondary compilation of the painting's whereabouts, useful for locating the object and for identifying its accession number, but not itself a curatorial publication of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica. The distinction between the panel as a physical object in Rome and the Commons file as a data record about that object runs through every statement about collection and display made here.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Collection and Current location fields; Summary, Accession number field)

The uploaded image file attached to that Commons record is a 2017 photograph of the painting taken by Livioandronico2013, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The photograph is therefore not the painting and not a museum-supplied installation view; it is a separate, dated, attributed and licensed document whose subject is the panel. The record lists Livioandronico2013 among its authors and gives 2017 as its publication year. This means the visual material through which the painting circulates online has its own author, date and licence, and the photograph's status should not be conflated with the status of the panel in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica. Neither the accession number nor the page 117 citation belongs to the photograph; they belong to the painting it depicts.(Livioandronico2013, 2017, Summary, Collection and Current location fields; Summary, Accession number field)

The painting is held in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, in Palazzo Barberini, Rome.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The accession number recorded for the painting at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica is 878.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

Valuation as a recorded working estimate

Interpretation

A separate working document supplies a calculated insurance estimate for the object: a broad range of US$80M to US$250M, recorded as a working calculation generated 2026-10-16. The methodology states that the range is derived only from the confirmed artwork context and the Commons record: the attribution to Hans Holbein the Younger, the date of 1539 to 1540, the oil and tempera on panel, the dimensions of 88.5 by 74.5 cm, and the holding at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, accession number 878. On that basis the notional insurance replacement exposure is placed in a high eight-figure to low nine-figure USD range, on the reasoning that this is an institutionally held Northern Renaissance portrait by a major artist with a secure traditional attribution and a royal Tudor subject. The document explicitly states that no comparable sales, private insurance schedules or museum valuations were consulted or invented, and that the range is intentionally wide to reflect uncertainty in attribution, condition, and the absence of a direct institutional catalogue record in the supplied sources. It is qualified as a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only, not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result or sale price, and it notes that actual insurance values for museum-held artworks are normally determined by qualified appraisers using condition reports, provenance and institutional documentation.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

The two evidence streams answer different questions and should not be merged into one. The Commons record establishes what the object is and where it is held; the insurance calculation establishes a notional figure, but it does so by reasoning from that same record and explicitly without market or appraisal data. The qualification matters because the dollar range is not evidence of the painting's market or insured worth: no sale, appraisal or institutional valuation is cited, and the range is intentionally wide because attribution, condition and the absence of a direct institutional catalogue record remain unresolved in the supplied material. The stated reasoning, that the combination of institutional custody, major artist, a secure traditional attribution, and a royal Tudor subject places replacement exposure in a high range, is an inference from the object's context rather than a documented transaction. Anyone using this section should treat the range as a working prompt for qualified appraisal, not as a recorded value of the object itself.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$80M to US$250M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: This broad working range is derived from the confirmed artwork context and the Commons record only. The painting is attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, dated 1539 to 1540, executed in oil and tempera on panel, and measures 88.5 by 74.5 cm. The Commons record identifies it as held at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, with accession number 878. Because it is an institutionally held Northern Renaissance portrait by a major artist with a secure traditional attribution and royal Tudor subject, the notional insurance replacement exposure is placed in a high eight-figure to low nine-figure USD range. No comparable sales, private insurance schedules, or museum valuations were consulted or invented. The range is intentionally wide to reflect uncertainty in attribution, condition, and the absence of a direct institutional catalogue record in the supplied sources. Qualification: This is a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It does not rely on private insurance records or comparable sales. Actual insurance values for museum-held artworks are normally determined by qualified appraisers using condition reports, provenance, and institutional documentation.(Livioandronico2013, 2017)