You can find A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling outside Breaker’s Café on Garden Street
Bought with contributions from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund and Mr J. Paul Getty Jnr (through the American Friends of the National Gallery, London), 1992
A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, 1526
Hans Holbein the Younger
Oil on oak 56 × 38.8 cm
A solemn woman wearing a soft cap of dense white fur sits with a red squirrel in her lap and a glossy-feathered starling at her shoulder. Common pets in the fifteenth-century, these animals also have a symbolic meaning and serve as clues to the sitter’s identity. She is thought to be Anne Lovell, whose husband, Sir Francis Lovell, was employed at the court of Henry VIII, King of England.
Read more at NationalGallery.org.uk
Hans Holbein the Younger
Holbein was one of the most accomplished portraitists of the 16th century. He spent two periods of his life in England (1526-8 and 1532-43), portraying the nobility of the Tudor court. Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry VIII (London, National Portrait Gallery) dates from the second of these periods. ‘The Ambassadors’, also from this period, depicts two visitors to the court of Henry VIII. ‘Christina of Denmark’ is a portrait of a potential wife for the king.