A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling [SEP] creator
Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling
Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling is an oil-on-oak portrait completed in around 1526–1528 by German Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger. The painting shows a demurely dressed young woman sitting against a plain blue background and holding in her lap a squirrel on a chain eating a nut; a starling sits on a fig tree in the background with its beak pointing at her right ear. The subject of this portrait is believed to be Anne Lovell
who owned a Holbein portrait of Erasmus. Holbein also painted the Bavarian astronomer and mathematician Nicholas Kratzer, a tutor of the More family whose notes appear on Holbein's sketch for their group portrait. Although Holbein did not work for the king during this visit, he painted the portraits of courtiers such as Sir Henry Guildford and his wife Lady Mary, and of Anne Lovell, recently identified as the subject of "Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling". In May 1527, "Master Hans" also painted a panorama of