Two young French diplomats stand confidently on either side of a shelf crowded with scientific instruments. Yet a strange grey shape slants across the floor; only when viewed from the side does it resolve into a skull. Beneath this display of power and learning, Holbein planted a reminder of death.
Key facts
- Artist
- Hans Holbein the Younger1497–1543 · German
- Date
- 1533
- Period
- Northern Renaissance1430–1580
- Medium
- Oil on oak panel
- Dimensions
- 207 × 209.5 cm
- Location
- The National Gallery London, United Kingdom
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#292813#433E24#0A0705#7F7060#BCAF9EBackground
On the left is Jean de Dinteville, French ambassador to England, aged twenty-nine; on the right his friend Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, aged twenty-five. In 1533 de Selve visited Dinteville in London, and Dinteville commissioned the court painter Holbein to paint this life-size double portrait.
1533 was a turning point in English history: to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII broke with Rome, and the Church of England left the Catholic fold. Dinteville's mission in England was to manage precisely this diplomatic crisis.
The painting went back to Dinteville's château in France, came to England in the nineteenth century and was bought by the National Gallery in 1890.
Technique & composition
Holbein's realism is breathtaking: the sheen of silk, the softness of fur, the constellations on , the pattern of the carpet. The floor copies the medieval Cosmati pavement before the high altar of Westminster Abbey.
The picture's great puzzle is in the foreground. Painted in , it looks like a stretched grey smear from the front; seen at a sharp angle from the right, close to the surface, it resolves into a skull. The painting may once have hung beside a staircase so that passers-by would suddenly notice it.
The two men and the shelf form a stable, symmetrical structure against a green damask curtain, which makes the figures and objects stand out vividly.
Details
Symbolism
Knowledge of heaven and earth
The upper shelf holds a celestial globe, sundials and astronomical instruments, representing the study of the heavens; the lower shelf holds , an arithmetic book and musical instruments, representing earthly knowledge. The two young men embody the Renaissance ideal of the learned all-rounder.
The lute with a broken string
has a broken string, and beside it lies an open Lutheran hymnbook. These are read as signs of the discord brought by the Reformation: Christendom has lost its harmony.
Death and salvation
The distorted skull is a symbol: however great one's power and learning, death will come. Yet in the top left corner, half hidden by the curtain, a appears, suggesting that faith is the only salvation.
Stories
- Did you know?
Dinteville's hat badge also bears a tiny skull, suggesting that “remember death” was his personal motto.
- Did you know?
Researchers who studied the cylindrical sundial on the shelf suggest it may indicate 11 or 15 April 1533, close to Good Friday that year.
- Did you know?
At the National Gallery visitors often walk to the right of the painting and crouch sideways, hunting for the angle at which the skull appears.
Legacy
The Ambassadors is the most famous example of anamorphosis and one of the most brilliant fusions of portrait and allegory. It shows that a portrait can also be a philosophical essay on knowledge, religion and death.
It inspired later artists' explorations of optical illusion, from Baroque ceiling painting to Dalí; films and video games still pay homage with hidden skulls.
