A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling

The squirrel is busy with its nut. The starling points its beak towards the woman’s head. She looks beyond both of them, past the right edge of the picture, with an expression that gives very little away. Three living creatures share a narrow space, yet each seems occupied with something different. The woman’s hands, gathered at the lower corner, hold the scene together.

Hans Holbein the Younger painted A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling probably in 1527–8. It belongs to the National Gallery in London. The sitter may be Anne Lovell, although her identity remains uncertain. The question mark attached to her name matters: the painting supplies compelling clues without quite supplying an answer. ^{[1] [2]}

Those clues reward attention, but so does everything around them. The soft white cap has weight and thickness; the shawl opens into broad, angular folds; a fine line crosses the throat. Holbein makes these different surfaces immediately distinguishable. The portrait can hold our attention before we know a name, a family history or an explanation for either animal.

A Face Framed in White

The first great shape in the portrait is the white cap. It rises almost to the top edge, then descends beside the cheeks, bringing the face into a pale enclosure. Its pointed upper silhouette and rounded lower edges work together: the head seems firmly placed, while the softness around it remains palpable.

Within that enclosure, the face is built from much smaller differences. A shadow gathers beside the nose. The lower eyelids have enough definition to make the gaze feel attentive. The mouth is closed, with a fine dark interval between the lips. Her eyes turn in the same general direction as her head, carrying our attention towards a space the painting leaves unseen.

It is tempting to read this reserve as sadness, patience or disapproval. None of those feelings is securely recoverable from a mouth held still for a portrait. Looking longer makes the expression more particular without making it easier to name. The small asymmetries around the lips and eyes preserve the sense of an individual whose thoughts remain her own.

The starling’s beak stops short of the cap. That narrow separation is worth noticing. The bird seems almost able to interrupt her, yet no encounter takes place. The gap between them keeps the face undisturbed, even as the pointed beak introduces a small, insistent movement from the left.

Cloth, Fur and the Weight of the Hands

White occupies much of the picture, but it never becomes one uniform surface. The cap looks thick and yielding. The shawl spreads more sharply over the shoulders and hangs in broad planes. Across the upper chest, a much finer fabric allows the warmth of the skin to remain visible. Against these pale areas, the black dress provides a deep, continuous field.

The folds at the shawl’s lower left edge are especially satisfying to follow. A narrow dark line turns back on itself, allowing a few bends to suggest layers of material. The eye reads an edge, an underside and a change of direction almost at once. Holbein gives the fabric enough structure to appear folded without filling the white expanse with unnecessary marks.

Foister’s 2024 catalogue leaves the precise white fur uncertain. ^[2] Whatever the precise fur, the painted effect is clear. Bands of slightly darker colour suggest changes across the surface, while the shaded side presses backwards into space.

At the bottom, the hands introduce warmer colour and firmer contours. They are gathered rather than displayed. One reaches across the other, and the squirrel’s chain catches the light as it crosses the wrist and passes towards the fingers. The little white cuff makes a fine dividing edge between sleeve and skin.

This arrangement gives the lower part of the portrait a different tempo from the head. Above, there is the long, uninterrupted turn of the cheek. Below, fingers, chain, claws and the nut create a concentration of small shapes. Our attention moves between the broad presence of the woman and the intricate activity she supports.

Two Animals, Two Different Presences

The squirrel sits on the forearm, its hind foot braced and its front paws brought together. Its tail rises against the chest, making a dark plume that interrupts the pale opening of the shawl. The glossy eye, pointed ear and tiny claws bring the animal into unusually close view.

Its scale is crucial. Small enough to perch comfortably, it is large enough to occupy a substantial portion of the sitter’s body. Remove it mentally and the black dress opens into a much quieter area. With it present, the centre of the painting acquires a rounded, active form whose outline keeps changing as we follow back, head, paws and tail.

The chain gives the animal a physical connection with the woman. It also qualifies the apparent ease of the scene: this is a creature being kept and restrained. That visible restraint makes a pet a plausible reading, without establishing that the sitter herself owned this particular squirrel. The National Gallery places the animal within a historical tradition of keeping squirrels as pets. ^[1]

The starling works differently. Its body extends from the left edge, balanced on a branch behind the shoulder. Pale marks interrupt the dark plumage, while the straight beak gives it a more pointed silhouette than the squirrel’s. The bird looks towards the sitter; the squirrel bends down towards its food. Between them, they send attention in opposing directions.

There is no reciprocal gesture from the woman. Her hands accommodate the squirrel, but her eyes remain elsewhere. This gives the picture an engaging independence of parts. We can look at the animals as animals, observing how they perch and feed, before asking whether they also identify the person who holds them.

How Strong Is the Anne Lovell Identification?

The proposed name brings the portrait into the world of a Norfolk family. David King identified the sitter as Anne Ashby, wife of Sir Francis Lovell, through the squirrel’s resemblance to the Lovell family badge. He also proposed that the starling alludes to East Harling, where the couple lived, through a play on the sound of the place name. Foister treats the identification as plausible while noting the unusual character of such a place-name rebus. ^[2]

A rebus expresses a name or phrase through pictures or sounds. Here the two creatures would perform different tasks: the squirrel would connect the woman with a family, and the bird with a place. Read together, they offer a more particular explanation than a general statement that animals represent good character or affection.

The distinction between those two kinds of clue is useful. A repeated family badge can be compared with a surviving emblem. A pun depends on hearing a resemblance and accepting that someone intended it. The proposed solution therefore brings together evidence of different strengths.

If the name is correct, the squirrel becomes doubly engaging. It can be a convincing little body, absorbed in eating, and a sign through which a family recognises itself. Nothing in its painted behaviour announces that second role. The emblem has been given fur, weight and an appetite.

A Composition Changed During Painting

The settled arrangement conceals decisions made as Holbein worked. Examination published by Susan Foister, Martin Wyld and Ashok Roy in 1994 established changes to the arms and hairline, with the squirrel introduced after an earlier arrangement of the figure. Their study also identified linseed oil as the paint medium. ^[9] The 2024 catalogue records that the right arm had been lower and that a painted belt is now concealed. ^[2]

These findings change the way we understand the animal’s apparently comfortable place. The forearm that supports it belongs to a developed solution. What now looks like a single, inevitable pose emerged through adjustment.

We cannot turn that sequence into a conversation between painter and patron. It does not tell us who requested the squirrel, whether its significance had already been discussed, or why Holbein altered the figure. Physical evidence can establish a changed arrangement while leaving the reason for the change unanswered.

No surviving preparatory drawing has been securely connected with the painting. Victoria Button discusses this absence when comparing Holbein’s economical handling of drawing and painting materials in her study of his portrait drawings. ^[10] It leaves a gap between the living sitter and the painted surface we can examine.

The Royal Collection’s conservators explain that Holbein’s portrait studies were made rapidly before sitters, while paintings could be developed over many hours. ^[11] That distinction helps here without reconstructing a lost sheet. The face could preserve close observation, while the relationship between arms, dress and animal continued to be worked out in paint. We need not imagine every element fixed during one uninterrupted sitting.

Blue, Branches and a Narrow Space

The background seems simple at first: an expanse of blue crossed by leaves and stems. Look again and it becomes a carefully varied framework. Broad leaves sit near the shoulders, while slender tendrils curve into the open area beside the head. Their thin dark lines give the emptiness a small amount of movement.

The branches do not establish a readily measurable garden. We cannot follow a path behind the woman or place her against a distant horizon. They occupy a shallow space that lets the bird perch while keeping the head strongly outlined. The blue remains visible between separate leaves, preventing the foliage from becoming a continuous wall.

The colour also changes how the whites behave. Against blue, the cap and shawl seem luminous; against the black dress, their lower edges become crisp. The squirrel’s warm brown body forms a bridge between the pale skin and the dark clothing. These relationships allow a restricted set of colours to produce a richly varied picture.

It is possible to become so occupied with decoding the animals that the branches disappear from attention. Yet they help make the portrait’s encounters possible. A branch supports the bird; a tendril curves through otherwise empty space; a leaf interrupts a stretch of blue. Their contribution can be appreciated through those visible relationships without assigning a separate symbolic message to each one.

Holbein’s First English Stay

This portrait belongs to Holbein’s first period in England, from 1526 to 1528. He arrived from Basel and found patrons through the circle of Sir Thomas More . Sir Henry Guildford was another early supporter. Holbein returned to Basel in 1528 and came back to England in 1532; his salaried royal appointment belongs to the later period. ^[12]

That chronology gives the painting a useful place beside the imposing images of royalty for which Holbein is now so familiar. Here the encounter has an intimate scale. The panel asks the viewer to approach a face, a pair of hands and two small creatures. It makes its impression through the concentrated arrangement of these elements.

The sitter’s uncertain name also reminds us that an arresting likeness and a recoverable biography are different things. We have the turn of her head, the shape of her nose, the texture of her cap and the position of her hands. Identifying the historical person requires another kind of evidence. The precision of the painted likeness makes that distance between seeing and knowing particularly vivid.

From Private Collection to the National Gallery

The documented ownership history becomes secure in the Amsterdam sale of Jan Six’s collection in 1702. By 1761 the painting was in Sir William Hamilton’s sale, where it was bought by George Cholmondeley. It remained with the Cholmondeley family until the National Gallery acquired it in 1992. ^[1]

The sitter was once called Edward VI’s nurse through confusion with a different Holbein portrait, as Foister explains. ^[2] The changing name is a reminder that a collection label can preserve a misunderstanding as readily as a memory.

Returning from that history to the painting, the woman has lost none of her particularity. The white edge still follows her cheek, the squirrel still grips its nut, and the starling still occupies its branch behind her shoulder. A historical name would deepen our knowledge of the portrait. The act of looking already brings us close to a person whose exact place in that history remains partly beyond reach.