Fil:John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, by Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg

English: Portrait of Bishop John Fisher. Coloured chalks, watercolour, brush, pen and ink on pink primed paper, 35.3 × 23.4 cm, The Royal Library, Windsor.

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.

The dating of Holbein's 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 drawing, which has been reinforced and washed in ink by other hands, was used as the pattern for a number of copies (for an example, see File:John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, after Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg). (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.)