Picture Quiz 6 answers

How many of you spotted Cardinal Wolsey’s travelling sundial this week?

Cardinal Wolsey’s travelling sundial
Museum of the History of Science


This delightful object was created by the German mathematician Nicolaus Kratzer in 1522. He came to England in about 1518 and was astronomer to King Henry VIII. The base has Wolsey’s coat of arms on one side, the arms of York Minster – he was it’s archbishop form 1514 onwards- on the other and on the two smaller sides there’s a cardinal’s hat.

The sundial is polyhedral – basically it tells the time in a number of different ways depending on which side you’re using. And yes it is completely covered in gold. Aside from being a very busy man who needed to get to his meetings on time Wolsey was also demonstrating that he was a cultured and learned chap. Or put another way he liked beautiful and complicated things and if you were really lucky you might be invited to take a closer look if you visited him – so a conversation piece as well.

Holbein depicted Kratzer holding a sundial and there’s a polyhedral sundial in his picture of the Ambassadors which can be seen in the National Gallery.

Nicholas Kratzer, Hans Holbein Held by the Louvre

For a happy half hour finding out more about the importance of mathematical objects including sundials visit the National Gallery page below to explore the Ambassadors by Hans Holbein.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors

Nicholas Kratzer

NPG 5245; Nicholas Kratzer after Hans Holbein the Younger

after Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel, late 16th century (1528) – click on picture to open a new window in the NPG catalogue.

Nicholas Kratzer, born in Munich in 1487, was a friend of Hans Holbein. In fact, Kratzer’s was one of the first portraits that Holbein painted when he came first to England. But who was Kratzer?

 

He was a mathematician and astronomer  who invented the polyhedral sundial. He arrived in England in 1516 from Cologne to teach mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was about thirty at the time. He went on to be employed by Henry VIII as Court Astronomer in 1520 to make clocks and sundials. The clock at Hampton Court is is work. Wolsey also gave commissions to Kratzer for similar items. Both men were demonstrating that they were renaissance men. It wasn’t enough to know languages (both ancient and modern) it was also essential to be seen as a man of science. Inevitably Henry’s courtiers also sought out Kratzer to demonstrate their own learning and to keep up with the Tudors and their cronies. One of Kratzer’s sundials was uncovered at Iron Acton Court near Bristol which is now in the hands of English Heritage but once belonged to Nicholas Poyntz – demonstrating that the trend for horology spread far beyond the court setting.

 

Kratzer moved in the England’s leading intellectual circles. He tutored Sir Thomas More’s children and this was where Holbein seems to have first met him. More writes of Kratzer in a letter to his family:

 

But I think you have no longer any need of Master Nicholas [Kratzer], since you have learned whatever he had to teach you about astronomy. I hear you are so far advanced in that science that you can not only point out the polar star or the dog star, or any of the ordinary stars, but are able also…to distinguish the sun from the moon! Onward then in that new and admirable science by which you ascend to the stars!

 

Holbein’s original portrait of Sir Thomas More’s family no longer survives but the original sketch which was presented to Erasmus as a gift by More is still in existence. Each member of the family is carefully annotated in a hand that is not Holbein’s – it is Kratzer who not only knew More, Erasmus and Holbein but also Durer who wrote that Kratzer has provided invaluable assistance in technical matters. Kratzer also knew Thomas Cromwell who was an astute man of business with many German links.

 

Kratzer provided Holbein with technical information. Experts believe that the mathematical instruments and dials depicted in Holbein’s The Ambassadors were provided by Kratzer. The men worked together for the décor of the Banqueting House at Greenwich in 1527. It was a temporary building designed to allow the king to show off his wealth, splendor and just how learned he was – iconography was incredibly important in the sixteenth century so Kratzer’s advice was essential.  They collaborated in the making of maps.

It is interesting to note that his death is written as circa 1550 and even his birth is based on guesswork derived from how old he looks in Holbein’s portrait which was painted in 1528. The painting in the National Portrait Gallery is not Holbein’s original, that hangs in The Louvre.