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). He is seen at his best as a portrait painter in the _Duchess of Milan_ (_see illustration, and p. 54_); _Count Morette_; Jacob Meyer and his family in the Madonna picture at Darmstadt (_see illustration, and p. 44_); _Erasmus_ at Longford Castle (_see illustration, and p. 50_) and in the Louvre; _Georg Gisze_ (_see illustration, and p. 51_); the portrait of an unknown man with a long beard, formerly belonging to Sir J. E. Millais, at Berlin; the portraits of three unknown young men, all dated 1541, at Vienna, the Hague, and Berlin; _The Ambassadors_; _The Two Godsalves_ at Dresden; his own wife and children at Basle; and the _Anne of Cleves_, _Robert Cheseman_ (_see illustration, and p. 56_), and _Richard Southwell_ already mentioned; while among his earliest portraits those of _Bonifacius Amerbach_, and _Jacob Meyer and His Wife_ on one panel, both in Basle, should be carefully studied. A number of others might be mentioned, but these are sufficient to establish his right to the title of a great master.