Northern Renaissance · 1533
Hans Holbein the Younger c. 1497–1543
National Gallery · London
Two worldly Frenchmen pose amid the instruments of learning — and a smear across the floor resolves, at an angle, into a skull.
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Chapter 1 of 7
You are standing before one of the most intricately loaded paintings in the National Gallery. London, fifteen thirty-three. Hans Holbein the Younger — German, thirty-five, already Henry VIII's most trusted portraitist — fills a single canvas with two French diplomats and enough scientific objects to stock a Renaissance library.
Nothing here is accidental. Every detail was placed with intent.
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