Painter Altoon Sultan blogs her thoughts a wide range of portraits seen on her recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning with Fayum funerary portraits and ending with Degas' Portrait of the Artist Tissot. Musing on "Netherlandish" portrait painters she writes: "[they] have magic in their art. How they are able to paint with such precision and so much realism every fold of skin and cloth, and still have an essence of living being emerge is a mystery…"