Retrato de Enrique VIII de Inglaterra

Holbein served Henry VIII for years and shaped how the king still looks to us: square, frontal, immovable, filling the whole frame. This version carries the date 1540 and gives Henry's age as 49. That year went badly for him. He married Anne of Cleves in January, found he could not abide her, had the marriage annulled by summer, and let his chief minister Thomas Cromwell, who had arranged the match, go to the block. Scholars have long argued over this particular panel, whether Holbein painted it himself or a workshop hand followed his design. The grand full-length pattern behind it came from a wall painting at Whitehall Palace in London that burned in 1698, so every surviving image of Henry in this pose descends from a lost original.