Lady Margaret (Bacon) Butts

Lady Margaret (Bacon) Butts, painted in 1543 as pendant to her husband William Butts's portrait, belongs to Holbein's final English production before his death from plague in the same year. Margaret Bacon had married into one of the most intellectually and politically engaged families of the Tudor court — her husband was the king's physician and a Protestant sympathizer, and the Butts circle overlapped with the humanist networks through which Holbein had always worked. The pendant female portrait presented its subject within the conventions of Tudor aristocratic femininity — the headdress, the jewelry, the composed expression — while Holbein's observation of her specific face lifts the portrait beyond convention into individual characterization.

Oil on canvas, the portrait demonstrates Hans Holbein the Younger's command of meticulous realism and luminous color. The careful modeling of the face reveals close study of the sitter's physiognomy, while the treatment of costume and setting projects appropriate social standing.