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Holbein produced a drawing of Sir Thomas More and his Family which was a preparatory sketch for a larger painting. The painting was acquired by Karl von Liechtenstein-Kastelkron (1623–95), Archbishop of Olomouc, Moravia, and was last recorded in 1691 as being kept in the episcopal residence in Olomouc; it is generally assumed that the painting was lost in the 1752 fire at the Archbishop's château in Kroměřiž. There are, however, five extant versions of the Family Group. The three main versions are the full-sized oil on canvas, The Family of Sir Thomas More (1592), now at Nostell Priory, and two paintings of Sir Thomas More, his Household, and Descendants: one kept at the National Portrait Gallery, the other at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. There has been much discussion about the transformation from a family at prayer—as portrayed in the original drawing—to a conversation on Seneca. Based on editions of Oedipus prior to the Nostell painting, the history of More's descendants, and a cameo that belonged to More's family, this paper argues that the Elizabethan transformation is a story of conformity and non-conformity.

Since the discovery in 1868 of the memoranda written by Thomas More’s father, most scholars have held that More was born on 7 February 1478. Some, however, have considered the evidence to be problematic and argued for 7 February 1477 or 6 February 1478 instead. The present article reviews the arguments and offers reasons for accepting as trustworthy the date of 7 February 1478 given in the family memoranda, based mainly on the relevance of the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a suitable landmark and on the internal evidence of the full text of the family record.

Frank Mitjans is an architect who has worked in London since 1976. He was introduced to the significance of the figure of St. Thomas More by Andrés Vázquez de Prada (1923-2005), author of the biography, Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra (Madrid, 1962). In 1977 Vázquez de Prada invited Mitjans to visit with him the Thomas More Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which stimulated his interest in representations of More, his family and his friends. Since August 2002 he has given many presentations and talks on the topography of More’s London to groups of students and other interested people in Britain, Ireland, and Sweden. Frank Mitjans, architecte qui travaille à Londres depuis 1976, fut initié au personnage de Saint Thomas More par Andrés Vázquez de Prada (1923-2003), auteur de la biographie Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra (Madrid, 1962). En 1977 Vázquez de Prada l’invita à l’accompagner dans sa visite de l’exposition Thomas More à la National Portrait Gallery, évènement qui aiguisa son intérêt pour les représentations de More, de sa famille et de ses amis. Depuis août 2002 il a régulièrement fait des présentations et des exposés à des groupes d’étudiants et d’autres en Grande-Bretagne, Irlande et Suède au sujet de la topographie du Londres de Thomas More. The recent exhibitions of the works of Holbein in London and Basel (2006-2007), and scholarly publications such as Holbein and England (2004), have rekindled interest in the Portrait of Thomas More and his Family, and in the late sixteenth-century versions of Holbein’s presumed lost original. The present paper analyses the differences between the sixteenth-century versions and Holbein’s 1527 composition sketch, and concludes that the sketch is a more reliable witness to Holbein’s lost painting than the later versions, as well as the only authentic witness to More’s intentions; though anything we learn from the drawing must be checked against what we know from More’s letters and writings and other biographical data. From the later versions, however, and in particular from the references to Seneca on them, we can learn about those who commissioned them and England’s peculiar historical circumstances.