The King's Image Problem

Royal portraiture faced a basic contradiction: the monarch's actual appearance was often unimpressive, but the portrait had to project superhuman authority. The answer was a shared visual vocabulary — crowns, scepters, ermine, and set poses — that turned ordinary bodies into images of divine power.

Holbein's Henry helped fix the power stance later rulers borrowed: legs planted wide, shoulders squared, the figure filling the frame. Spread your legs, square your shoulders, and you were channeling Holbein's visual rhetoric — and converting mere bulk into dominance.