"was so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in its presence"
It is not known when the mural was commissioned, but it is thought to have been during Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour and completed after her death in 1537. The Palace of Whitehall burned down in the January of 1698 and Holbein’s mural burned along with it.
Thirty-one years before the fire, Charles II commissioned Remigius van Leemput to copy of the mural, and thank goodness he did.