Thomas Cromwell

Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell, painted around 1532-1533, depicts the powerful minister who engineered Henry VIII's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries. The portrait shows Cromwell at the height of his influence, before his fall from power and execution in 1540. Holbein renders Cromwell's alert, calculating intelligence with characteristic directness, creating an image that anticipates modern conceptions of political power rather than chivalric nobility.

The plain, dark costume and businesslike setting convey Cromwell's practical, unsentimental character, with Holbein's precise rendering of papers and documents reinforcing the image of an administrator at work.