One of the greatest artistic treasures in this country is the series of drawings of heads at Windsor Castle, the preliminary studies Holbein made before painting his portraits, and, slight as many of them are, themselves most vivid portraits, in which, with wonderful swiftness yet sureness of touch, he has given us not only an accurate likeness, but also the character which lies behind the face-mask, allowing us to look into the inmost thoughts of each sitter, and so to fathom the invisible by the aid of his acute penetration, which is of far higher value than mere accurate delineation of features, and is the crowning quality of all really great portraiture.
In all his completed portraits he spared no pains over the painting of accessories and details, and in some of them he carried this to as fine a finish as any Dutchman or Fleming ever accomplished. What could be finer than the various objects scattered about the office of the Steelyard merchant, _Georg Gisze_ (Berlin), or the ornaments and embroideries, silks, satins, and furs of the dresses in such portraits as those of _Archbishop Wareham_ (Louvre), _Jane Seymour_ (Vienna), _Anne of Cleves_ (Louvre), _Charles de Solier, Comte de Morette_ (Dresden), _The Ambassadors_ (National Gallery), or the _Duke of Norfolk_ (Windsor)? Yet the fine execution of all this elaborate detail is soon overlooked, and attention is fixed solely upon the portrait itself, in which, without any apparent effort on the part of the artist, the very man stands out before us exactly as he looked when in the flesh, with no flattering or softening of harsh features, and with his character, and the thoughts which he imagined were hidden from the painter, laid bare for our inspection.
Holbein produces this effect of truth and this revelation of character by what appear to be the simplest methods, which yet are in reality most subtle and most profound. He puts but little of himself into his portraits, and almost everything of his sitter. No great subtleties of light and shade are brought in to aid the artistic result; and even colour, delightful and harmonious in a high degree as Holbein’s colour always is, is not allowed to usurp the attention from the purpose of the work, the complete realization of both the outward and inner man. What at the first glance seems almost an unnatural flatness in his painting of a face displays upon examination the most delicate and accurate modelling of form. His keenness of observation was extraordinary. He constantly noted the slight difference in the shape of two sides of a face, and that a man’s eyes were not always of the same size, characteristics which even the best artists have sometimes failed to see. His painting of hair and of beards displays a marvellous fidelity to nature, and his drawing of hands, and the expression he puts into them, is extraordinary. In the painting of eyes, too, and mouth he is most expressive. The hands of _Erasmus_ in the Louvre and at Longford Castle, of _Wareham_ and _Anne of Cleves_ in the Louvre, are instances of this; and the eyes of _Southwell_ (Uffizi), and of _Cheseman_ (Hague), and both eyes, hands, and mouth of the _Duchess of Milan_ (National Gallery).