While attending the recent opening of “Holbein: Capturing Character,” the new exhibition dedicated to the German Renaissance master Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497-1543) that just opened at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, I observed a visitor asking the security guards, “Where are the pictures of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell?”

This was a fair question since Holbein, although born in Augsburg and for many years a citizen of Basel, is most famous for the portraits he executed in London, where he eventually became King’s Painter to Henry VIII (1491-1547). If you imagine Tudor England in your mind’s eye, chances are the way you envision its people stems directly from the work of this artist.