Rowland Lockey painted this portrait of Thomas More and his family between 1593 and 1594. It is partly a copy of a painting by Hans Holbein completed in the 1520s, which no longer survives. A sketch for this painting survives.

If you compare the sketch with the painting you will see that Lockey added four extra people who are not in the Holbein sketch. These are the descendants of Sir Thomas More. The painting was probably commissioned by Sir Thomas More's grandson, Thomas More II, as a sort of visual family tree, showing five generations of the same family.

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