He painted the stuff and the necklace, the globe and the feather, with the finish of an artist who was before all things a good workman.

Observe how delicately the chubby little fingers are drawn.
Holbein's detailed treatment of the accessories of a portrait is only less than the care expended in depicting the face.

He studied faces, and his portraits, one may almost say, are at once images of and commentaries on the people they depict.

Thus his gallery of pictures of Henry and his contemporaries show us at once the reflexion of them as in a mirror, and the vision of them as beheld by a singularly discerning and experienced eye that not only saw but comprehended.
This is the more remarkable because Holbein was not always able to paint and finish his portraits in the presence of the living model, as painters insist on doing nowadays.

His sitters were generally busy men who granted him but one sitting, so that his method was to make a drawing of the head in red chalk and to write upon the margin notes of anything he particularly wanted to remember.