We both really enjoyed this.Holbein's portraits are amazing, his other stuff - notably one appalling religious allegory - less so. It's his ability to see every single detail in a human face that blows your mind away - how do you train yourself to look so analytically at every square centimetre of someone's skin and clothing and then transfer that to canvas?
The other thing that hits you is the feeling that you're looking at the equivalent of photographs of people who lived 500 years ago. Holbein's sketches and notes, which hang alongside the paintings, show how precise he was - on one occasion noting meticulously the position of each of the tuberculosis scars on a merchant's neck and chin.
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