File:John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, after Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg

English: Portrait of Bishop John Fisher. Oil on paper, silhouetted, 21 × 19.1 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

John Fisher (c.1469–1535) became Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1507. In April 1534, he was confined in the Tower of London, along with Sir Thomas More, for refusing to swear the oath attached to the Act of Succession, which effectively rejected papal authority in legal matters and recognised Anne Boleyn as queen. The following year, Fisher was beheaded, along with More, not long after the pope had made him a cardinal.

This drawing is one of a small number of 16th-century workshop patterns dating from the reign of Elizabeth I and the only one depicting a subject from an earlier reign. Such head patterns were used for the production of portraits by artists' workshops, though no painting after this pattern has survived. The source for the Holbein pattern was a drawing (right) probably made by Holbein in the early 1530s, possibly when Fisher was in the tower. The dating of Holbein's original drawing has proved problematic. During his first visit to England between 1526 and 1528, Holbein was close to the humanist circle of Thomas More; and some scholars, among them Paul Ganz and Roy Strong, have assumed that the drawing was done at that time. However, Holbein did not draw on pink-primed paper during his first visit. It is therefore also possible that Holbein drew the portrait during his second stay in England, from 1532. The drawback with this view is that Holbein avoided More's circle at this time and worked for those who favoured the royal marriage and the king's supremacy in religion, including Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. Holbein's biographer Derek Wilson has argued, however, that Holbein may have drawn Fisher while he was imprisoned in the tower. The original drawing, which has been reinforced in ink and wash by other hands, was used as the pattern for a number of copies, including the present example, which Susan Foister believes might date from the 1570s. Pounce marks on the outlines reveal that this copy was traced not from the original but from another copy. It was previously mounted on thin paper, which was cut out and stuck onto thicker paper. A three-inch tear runs down the right cheek, and there is a small hole on the chin. (References: Foister, p. 20; K. T. Parker, The Drawings of Hans Holbein at Windsor Castle, Oxford: Phaidon, 1945, pp. 39–40; Roy Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, London: HMSO, 1969, pp. 119–121; Derek Wilson, Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man, London: Pimlico, 2006, ISBN 1844139182, pp. 224–25.)