A diplomat and scholar, William Warham (1450?–1532) was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior churchman in England, in 1503. He was also Lord Chancellor between 1504 and 1515. Warham was a patron of the philosopher Erasmus and in 1527 commissioned a portrait from Holbein to send to his friend. This drawing is a study for the painting now in the Louvre and shows the elderly bishop, then in his late seventies, in calm contemplation.