Holbein's Sir Thomas More

Hilary Mantel is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction. She has twice been awarded the Booker Prize, the first for the 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second for the 2012 novel Bring Up the Bodies, the second installment of the Cromwell trilogy. Mantel was the first woman to receive the award twice. The third instalment to the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is in progress. Xavier F. Salomon is Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of The Frick Collection. Previously, he was curator in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, before that, the Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Salomon received his Ph.D. on the patronage of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Tasty Twosomes. The Frick Collection in association with the publishing house D Giles Ltd will be launching a series of books in April 2018 called Frick Diptychs. Each book will be a 56-page paperback that presents a single work from the collection accompanied by an essay by its curator and a reflection by a well-known contemporary writer. The first volume will present Hans Holbein's portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527), with an essay by Xavier Salomon, the Frick's chief curator, and an article by Hilary Mantel, the novelist whose books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, won the Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012 respectively. Future titles will include Johannes Vermeer's Mistress and Maid (1666-67) by the Frick's associate research curator Peggy Iacono in conjunction with James Ivory, the film director, writer and producer. Another will be a pair of porcelain and gilt-bronze candlesticks (1782) by Pierre de Gouthiere discussed by Charlotte Vignon, the museum's decorative arts curator, and Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road. Donald Lee, The Art Newspaper

• Director's Foreword; Acknowledgments; A Letter to Thomas More, Knight by Hilary Mantel; Holbein's Sir Thomas More by Xavier F. Salomon; Bibliography; Index