Year 1526–28 Artist Hans Holbein the Younger Media Oil paint | Medium Oil on oak Created 1526–1527 Genre Portrait | |
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Dimensions 56 cm × 38.7 cm (22 in × 15.2 in) Location National Portrait Gallery, London Periods Northern Renaissance, Renaissance, German Renaissance Hans Holbein the Younger artwork Portrait of Sir Thomas More, Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Jane Seymour, Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Darmstadt Madonna | ||
A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling is an oil on oak painting undertaken between 1526 and 1528 by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger. Although the sitter was unknown for some time, it is thought to be Anne Lovell, the wife of Francis, a squire to Henry VIII; according to Derek Wilson, Holbein's biographer, "the squirrel was Lovell's heraldic badge and the starling is a pun on 'East Harling'", which was Lovell's ancestral seat. It is unlikely that the sitter posed with the animals, which were likely to have been separate sittings by Holbein.
The painting was probably undertaken during Holbein's first visit to Britain in 1526–28, and it contains azurite, copper resinate, lead white, lamp black, red earth, Cologne earth and vermilion pigments, held in a linseed oil binder.
The painting was acquired in 1992 by the National Gallery in London, which considers it to be "a wonderfully preserved example of Holbein's art at its most evocative".
In 2014 King and McGaw partnered with Art Everywhere, a charitable project putting on the world's largest art exhibition displayed 25 artworks on 30,000 billboards across the UK including A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling. The profits of the campaign went to the Art Fund.