Jane Seymour

Holbein painted this in 1536, and the timing is everything. Jane Seymour had just become Henry VIII's third queen, married within days of Anne Boleyn's execution, having served both Catherine of Aragon and Anne as a lady-in-waiting before she took Anne's place. Holbein renders her without warmth or motion, still as a carved figure, in a stiff red velvet gown loaded with gold thread, jewels, and a gabled English hood. Every pearl and stitch is set down with his cool precision. Jane gave Henry the male heir he had broken with the church of Rome to get, the future Edward VI, and she died days after the birth in 1537. This is one of the few likenesses of her taken from life, worked up from a drawing Holbein made in front of her.