File:Holbein-ambassadors.jpg

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Summary

Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors

Artist



Alternative names	Hans Holbein der Jüngere, Hans Holbein
Description	-German painter and drawer
Date of birth/death	1497 or 1498 date QS:P,+1497-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1497-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1498-00-00T00:00:00Z/9	between 7 October 1543 and 29 November 1543 date QS:P,+1543-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1319,+1543-10-07T00:00:00Z/11,P1326,+1543-11-29T00:00:00Z/11
Location of birth/death	Augsburg	London
Work location	Basel (1515-1526), Lucerne (1515-1526), Venice (1515), Bologna (1515), Florence (1515), Rome (1515), Venice (1517-1518), Bologna (1517-1518), Florence (1517-1518), Rome (1517-1518), London (1526-1528), Basel (1528-1532), London (1532-1543)
Authority file	: Q48319 VIAF: 4945401 ISNI: 0000000120987816 ULAN: 500005259 LCCN: n81117179 NLA: 36275979 WorldCat

Title

Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve.

Alternative title(s):

The Ambassadors.

Object type

painting

Genre

portrait

Description

Holbein painted this work in the early part of his second stay in England, which began in 1532. At this time he was prolific, painting Hanseatic merchants, courtiers, landowners, and visitors. The Ambassadors is his most famous and perhaps greatest painting of this period. The life-sized panel portrays Jean de Dinteville, an ambassador of Francis I of France in 1533, and Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, who visited London the same year.

Until the publication of Mary F. S. Hervey's Holbein's Ambassadors: The Picture and the Men in 1900, the identity of the two figures in the picture had been a matter of intense debate. In 1890, Sidney Colvin was the first to propose the figure on the left as Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy (1504–1555), French ambassador to the court of Henry VIII for most of 1533. Shortly afterwards, the cleaning of the picture revealed his seat of Polisy as one of only four places marked on the globe. Hervey identified the man on the right as Georges de Selve (1508/09–1541), Bishop of Lavaur, after tracing the painting's history back to a 17th-century manuscript. Hervey's identification of the sitters has remained the standard one, affirmed in several extended studies of the painting. However, rival speculation is not entirely dead. Opposition to the identification of de Selve has been based on an inventory of 1589, discovered by Riccardo Famiglietti, which names the man on the right as de Dinteville's brother François. Leading scholars of the painting argue that this identification of 1589 was incorrect.

Depicted people

Jean de Dinteville
Georges de Selve

Date

1533

Medium

oil and tempera on oak wood

Dimensions

height: 207 cm (81.4 in); width: 209 cm (82.2 in)

Collection

National Gallery

	Native name	National Gallery
	Parent institution	Board of Trustees of the National Gallery
	Location	London
	Coordinates	51° 30′ 32″ N, 0° 07′ 42″ W
	Established	1824
	Website	nationalgallery.org.uk
	Authority file	: Q180788 VIAF: 144868906 ISNI: 0000000123422001 ULAN: 500125190 LCCN: n80081622 NLA: 35311349 WorldCat

Accession number

NG1314

Place of creation

London

Object history

1890: purchased by the National Gallery, London

Inscriptions

ÆTATIS SUAE 25

Kom heiliger geyst herregot/erfüll mit deiner gnaden gut/deiner gleubgen hertz, mut und sin/ dein brünstig lib entzünd in ihn/ O herr durch deines liechtes glast/zu dem glauben versamlet hast/ das volck aller welt zungen/des sey dir Her zu lob gesungen.

References

Foister, Susan; Ashok Roy; & Martyn Wyld, Making & Meaning: Holbein's Ambassadors, London: National Gallery Publications, 1997, ISBN 1857091736.
North, John, The Ambassadors' Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance, London: Phoenix, 2004, ISBN 184212661X.
Rowlands, John, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, Boston: David R. Godine, 1985, ISBN 0879235780, 139–41.

Further reading

Hervey, Mary F.S., Holbein's "Ambassadors": The Picture and the Men. An Historical Study, London, George Bell & Sons, 1900, OCLC 8256471.

Authority file

: Q1212937
VIAF: 184003340
J9U: 987007318928005171

Source/Photographer

Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork

Other versions

Remastered color


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Licensing

This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:

The author died in 1543, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain".
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Annotations

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File history

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	Date/Time	Dimensions	User	Comment
current	04:05, 16 February 2011	1,084 × 1,069 (182 KB)	Dcoetzee	Reverted to version as of 23:13, 3 December 2004; do not overwrite images with different images, I'll use CommonsDelinker to change the links
	03:29, 23 August 2010	4,215 × 4,226 (2.73 MB)	Helms	Higher quality update for most used file
	23:13, 3 December 2004	1,084 × 1,069 (182 KB)	Stw	The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger. {{PD-Art}}

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JPEG file comment

HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger

(b. 1497, Augsburg, d. 1543, London)

Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (`The Ambassadors') 1533 Oil on oak, 207 x 209 cm National Gallery, London

This huge panel is one of the earliest portraits combining two full-length figures on the scale of life. A paean to two scholar-diplomats and to the artist's virtuosity, it is on closer examination a reminder also of the brevity of life and of the vanity of human accomplishments. While life is short, Holbein seems to say, art is long-lasting - but eternity endures for ever.

On our left stands Jean de Dinteville, a French nobleman posted to London as ambassador. The globe on the bottom shelf shows Polisy, where he had his château; the ornate sheath of the dagger in his right hand gives his age as 29. To his left stands his friend and fellow-countryman, Georges de Selve, whose visit to London in 1533 is commemorated here. A brilliant classical scholar, he had some years earlier been created Bishop of Lavaur. He leans his elbow on a book inscribed with his age: 25. In their attire, their poses and their bearing the two friends exemplify, respectively, the active and the contemplative life, which, together, complement each other.

On the what-not between them Holbein has depicted the wide range of their interests - a compendium of the culture of the age. On the top shelf, the minutely rendered `Turkey' carpet bears a celestial globe and an array of astronomical and navigational instruments. The cylindrical dial gives the date as 11 April; the polyhedral dial on the right indicates two different times of day. In front of the terrestrial globe on the lower shelf lies a German text-book of Arithmetic for Merchants, propped open with a T-square. A lute and a case of recorders or flutes demonstrate both Holbein's mastery of foreshortening and the sitters' musical interests. But a string of the lute has snapped, a traditional emblem of fragility. Just visible in the top left corner, at the edge of the magnificently patterned green hanging, is a crucifix. The hymnal in front of the lute is open at Martin Luther's hymn,'Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire'. Christian faith offers hope of eternal life when dust returns to dust.

Across the mosaic floor - derived from the medieval pavement in Westminster Abbey - there spreads a curious shape between the two friends. It is a skull, skilfully distorted so that its true form can only be perceived from the correct viewpoint at the edges of the panel. The painting may have been intended to hang over a staircase so that viewers might see it when ascending or descending. Possibly referring to a personal device of Jean de Dinteville, whose cap medallion bears a skull, it is also the quintessential memento mori, reminder of mortality. In Holbein's meticulously real-seeming picture, the distortion also functions as a signal that reality, as perceived by the senses, must be viewed `correctly' to reveal its full meaning. A frontal nod of recognition at the worldly semblance of things is not enough.

--- Keywords: --------------

Author: HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger Title: Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (`The Ambassadors') Time-line: 1501-1550 School: German Form: painting

Type: portrait

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File:Holbein-ambassadors.jpg

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The Ambassadors

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