Holbein's The Ambassadors: the skull and the symbols

The Ambassadors is a double portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger of 1533, in the National Gallery in London. It shows two French diplomats amid scientific instruments, books and a lute. The elongated shape on the floor is a skull painted in anamorphosis: seen at an angle from the right, it becomes correct. It is a reminder of death in the midst of all learning and wealth.

Facts

Two men in London, 1533

The man on the left in pink satin and a fur-lined coat is Jean de Dinteville, France's envoy to the court of Henry VIII. On the sheath of his dagger is his age, 29. On the right stands his friend Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, in a long dark robe; his elbow rests on a book where the age 25 is inscribed. Selve was himself a diplomat and visited London that spring.

The year was dramatic. Henry VIII broke with the pope in order to marry Anne Boleyn, who was crowned in June 1533, and Dinteville was to look after France's interests in the middle of the crisis. In Germany the Reformation was splitting the church. Hans Holbein, born in Augsburg and active in Basel, had returned to London in 1532 after an earlier stay there, and later became Henry VIII's court painter.

The shelves: heaven and earth

Between the men stands a piece of furniture on two levels. On the upper shelf, on an oriental carpet, stand a celestial globe, several sundials and an instrument for measuring the positions of the heavenly bodies. These are tools for understanding the heavens and time. One of the sundials has been interpreted as showing a date in April 1533, and some scholars have linked it to Good Friday of that year; the interpretation is disputed.

The lower shelf is about the earth. There lie a terrestrial globe on which Dinteville's château Polisy is marked, a merchants' arithmetic book open at a chapter on division and a lute with a broken string. Beside them lies an open hymn book with Luther's translations of two hymns and a case of flutes. The broken string has been interpreted as an image of discord, perhaps in the church; that the hymn book is Lutheran, while Selve was a Catholic bishop, strengthens the reading.

The skull on the floor

Straight in front of the men a long, pale shape floats obliquely across the mosaic floor. Seen from straight on, it cannot be deciphered. If you stand near the right-hand edge of the picture and look obliquely along the surface, the shape contracts into a skull. The technique is called anamorphosis and was a way for artists to show their mastery of perspective.

The skull is a memento mori, a reminder of death. Everything the men have, rank, learning, music, wealth, cannot save them. In this the picture belongs with the vanitas paintings; see the guide to still life and vanitas and the theme of death. It has been suggested that the skull is also a pun on the artist's name: hohl Bein means hollow bone in German. In the app's diagram you can straighten out the skull with a button.

The crucifix and the floor

At the top of the left-hand corner a small crucifix can be glimpsed behind the green curtain. It is easy to miss, but it stands against the skull below: death is everywhere, but the hope of resurrection is there too, half hidden.

The mosaic floor imitates the so-called Cosmati pavement in front of the high altar in Westminster Abbey, where Anne Boleyn was crowned that same summer. The badge on Dinteville's chest is the French Order of Saint Michael, a sign of the king's favour. Every object can be read, and many scholars have done so in different ways. What is certain is that the picture is a portrait of two educated men and at the same time an image of a divided age.

How anamorphosis works

An anamorphosis is an image drawn in a very oblique perspective. The artist imagines the image projected on a surface lying almost parallel to the line of sight, so that it is drawn out in length. Only from a single point, where the eye lies at the same oblique angle, do the proportions become correct again. Leonardo da Vinci made early sketches in the technique, and in the 16th century anamorphoses became a popular demonstration of artists' learning in perspective.

Holbein laid the skull across a picture otherwise painted in ordinary, straight perspective. The viewer can therefore never see both the two men and the skull correctly at the same time. When you stand in front of the portrait, life is visible; when you walk past and look back from the side, death is visible. It is one of the most carefully thought-out images in art history about seeing: the perspective itself carries the message. Read more about the rules of perspective in the guide to central perspective.

Seeing it yourself

The Ambassadors is almost square and just over two metres high, and the figures are life-size. In the National Gallery you can walk along the wall and see the skull emerge. The technique is oil painting on oak, with a precision in fabric, fur and metal that Holbein learnt from the Netherlandish masters; compare with the Arnolfini Wedding, which hangs in the same museum.

In the diagram below you can point to the figures and objects. The picture is also in Looking at art, and on the work's page. The symbols are explained in the guide to iconography and attributes, and the period under the Tudor period in British art history and the age of Dürer in German.

What to look for

Exercise

How do you see the skull in The Ambassadors as it really looks?