David Starkey on the inventor of the portrait

On 12 November 1549, the 12-year-old Edward VI, newly liberated from the tutelage of his overweening uncle, Lord Protector Somerset, was at last able to enter his father Henry VIII’s private apartments in the Palace of Whitehall. From the extraordinary mixture of treasures and bric-à-brac he found there, he chose one thing: ‘a book of patterns of physiognomies’ by his father’s court painter, Hans Holbein, who had died in 1543.

Edward was already familiar with his fellow European rulers from their portraits in the long gallery at St James’s, which seem to have been labelled and arranged as a teaching tool for the boy. Now, on the threshold of power, he wanted to familiarise himself with the establishment of Tudor England.

The word ‘portrait’ was unknown in the early 16th century. It entered the language thanks to Holbein

But there was a problem. It’s familiar to anyone who has opened a box of family photos and looked in bewilderment at the jumble of unknown faces: the drawings were unnamed.