William (or Guillim) Scrots (active 1537-1553)

• Was a Flemish painter of the Tudor court.
• Scrots is first heard of when appointed a court painter to Mary of Habsburg, Regent of the Netherlands, in 1537.
• In England, he followed Hans Holbein as King's Painter to Henry VIII in 1546, with a substantial annual salary of £62 10s, over twice as much as Holbein's thirty pounds a year.
• He continued in this role during the reign of the boy king Edward VI.
• His salary was stopped on Edward's death in 1553.
• Scrots painted an anamorphic profile of Edward VI, distorted so that it is impossible to view it normally except from a special angle to the side.
• This optical trick is similar to that used by Holbein in his painting The Ambassadors and in contemporary portraits of Francis I and Ferdinand I.
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