<i>Portrait of Nicolas Bourbon.</i> Black and coloured chalks, pen and ink on pink-primed paper, <span style="white-space:nowrap">38.4 × 28.3 cm</span>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Collection" class="extiw" title="w:Royal Collection">Royal Collection</a>, Windsor Castle.
The French poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbon" class="extiw" title="w:Nicolas Bourbon">Nicolas Bourbon</a> (1503–after 1550) met Holbein when the former came to England in 1535 after being imprisoned in France for supporting religious reform. He was welcomed and helped in England by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn" class="extiw" title="w:Anne Boleyn">Anne Boleyn</a>, a reformist and a patron of Holbein. This is a preparatory drawing for a painting, now lost. Of the painting, Bourbon wrote: "Hans in painting me was greater than Apelles", referring to the famous painter of Greek antiquity (Susan Foister, <i>Holbein in England</i>, London: Tate, 2006, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1854376454" title="Special:BookSources/1854376454">ISBN 1854376454</a>. p. 53).
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Hans_Holbein_the_Younger" class="extiw" title="w:en:Hans Holbein the Younger"><span title="German artist and printmaker (1497-1543)">Hans Holbein the Younger</span></a>
</bdi>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/maker.asp?maker=12102">Royal Collection</a>