The Work
Hans Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors, painted in 1533 and now in the National Gallery, London, is one of the most intellectually rich and formally dazzling paintings in the history of European portraiture. The double portrait shows two Frenchmen -- Jean de Dinteville, French ambassador to Henry VIII's court in England, and his visiting friend Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur -- standing on either side of a two-tiered shelf covered with scientific instruments, musical objects, and navigational tools. Every object is rendered with Holbein's extraordinary trompe l'oeil precision. Yet the painting's most famous and disturbing feature is stretched across the lower foreground: a dramatically anamorphic skull that appears as a grotesque smear when viewed straight on, but resolves into a perfectly modeled human skull when the viewer crouches to the extreme right and looks back at an acute angle. The memento mori is literally embedded in the painting's viewing experience, refusing to let the splendor of the portrait be its final word.
Biblical Source
The anamorphic skull is a visual meditation on Psalm 90:12 -- 'Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom' -- and on the vanitas tradition rooted in Ecclesiastes 1:2: 'Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.' The broken string on the lute signals discord and the fragility of harmony; the Lutheran hymn book lying open on the lower shelf -- identifiable as a book of Lutheran chorales -- acknowledges the religious fractures of 1533 Europe; the instruments of navigation and cosmology address the outer reaches of humanist learning. All this accumulated achievement is subjected to the judgment of 1 Corinthians 7:31: 'this world in its present form is passing away.' A small silver crucifix is half-concealed behind the green damask curtain in the upper left corner -- the answer quietly placed above the question that the skull poses.
The Artist
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) came to England from Basel on the recommendation of Erasmus and eventually became court painter to Henry VIII, producing the canonical portraits of the Tudor court. He was the supreme portraitist of the Northern Renaissance, unrivalled in his ability to render fabric, flesh, and individual character with objective, photographic precision. The Ambassadors was painted during his second English stay, when the religious and political turmoil of the English Reformation -- Henry's break with Rome, the execution of Thomas More -- provided a constant context of crisis against which the painting's memento mori reads all the more powerfully.
Iconography
Every object on the shelves has been interpreted symbolically in a vast scholarly literature. The celestial globe represents the heavens; the terrestrial globe bears Europe. The lute's broken string signals the discord of the Reformation schism. The Lutheran hymn book's presence in a portrait of a French Catholic diplomat reflects the complexity of religious politics in 1533 Europe. The arithmetical school text is the world of practical learning. The anamorphic skull overrides all this learning and achievement with the one fact that counts above all others: mortality. The hidden crucifix suggests that the answer to the skull's question is available but requires moving to a different vantage point -- the condition of faith.
Significance
The Ambassadors is the most sophisticated exercise in theological iconography in Northern Renaissance painting and the supreme statement of the vanitas tradition in the history of portrait art. Its influence on the subsequent development of memento mori imagery -- especially in Dutch seventeenth-century still life -- was enormous. The painting's conceptual boldness, hiding a theological argument in a visual illusion that must be physically performed by the viewer, makes it one of the most discussed works in the Western canon. The Reformation context gives the painting a specific historical urgency: this is not abstract philosophy but engaged theological argument at a moment when the Christian world was fracturing.
The political context of the painting's creation -- England in 1533, with Henry VIII's breach with Rome imminent and the executions of Thomas More and John Fisher in the near future -- gives the theological argument an immediate urgency. The two ambassadors whom Holbein depicts are representatives of a France attempting to broker peace between England and the Holy See, and their presence in Henry's court at this precise moment of maximum tension between royal power and papal authority makes the painting's memento mori all the more pointed: these are men at the center of a world that is tearing itself apart over questions of religious authority, and the skull reminds both them and us that the time available for resolution is limited.
Visiting Info
The Ambassadors hangs in Room 4 of the National Gallery, London, in the section dedicated to Northern European painting of the early sixteenth century. The National Gallery is free of charge and open daily (closed Christmas Day and New Year's Day), located on Trafalgar Square in central London. Visitors are strongly encouraged to experience the anamorphic skull by crouching to the extreme right of the canvas and looking back -- the effect is best from near floor level and is one of the most extraordinary visual experiences in any museum. The National Gallery provides interpretive material about the painting in its gallery notes and digital guide.