Although Holbein could do and did do anything that was demanded of him, what he liked best was to paint portraits.

Romantic subjects such as the fight of St.
George and the dragon, or an idyll of the Golden Age, little suited the artistic leanings of a German.

To a German or a Fleming the world of facts meant more than the world of imagination; the painting of men and women as they looked in everyday life was more congenial to them than the painting of saints and imaginary princesses.
But how unimportant seems all talk of contrasting imagination and reality when we see them fused together in this charming portrait of Edward, the child Prince of Wales.

It belongs to the end of the year 1538, when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of Holbein equipped him with the orb of sovereignty in the guise of a baby's rattle.

It is in the coupling of distant kingship and present babyhood that the painter works his magic and reveals his charm.
[Illustration: EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, AFTERWARDS EDWARD VI.
From the picture by Holbein, in the Collection of the Earl of Yarborough, London] If you recall for a moment what you know of Henry VIII., his masterful pride, his magnificence, his determination to do and have exactly what he wanted, you will understand that his demands upon his court painter for a portrait of his only son and heir must have been high.