Holbein the Younger The Ambassadors analysis and resumé

Hans Holbein the Younger, Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, also known as ’The Ambassadors’,1533.

Green damask curtain Two-tiered table Silver crucifix in top Celestial globe by Johannes A celestial globe and skull are left corner Schöner (note 1), mounted in a together in Holbein’s marginal (note 10) brass armillary stand, with ram’s drawing in Erasmus, Praise of heads as supports for the ring Folly and in an anonymous (note 2); a Cylindrical shepherd’s woodcut from 1525. dial, its shadow showing 11 April, 1533 (Good Friday)(note 3); a compound Solar Instrument to tell the time (note 4); a white Quadrant used to tell the hour of the day; a Small pillar dial, a portable Polyhedral Sundial, and a Torquetum (note 5).

Anatolean wool Rug with Armenian Christian decoration Jean de Dinteville, aged 29 (died George de Selve, Bishop of aged 52), French Ambassador to Lavaur, Ambassador to the England in 1532-33, wearing Emperor, the Venetian Republic medallion of French order of St. and the Holy See. He wears a Michael over a slashed pink satin long purplish brown double- shirt over a fine white undershirt; breasted robe of brocaded velvet, the latter is pulled through the lined, probably, with sable. His slashings to produce the blistered shoes are of a more restrained effect. He wears a knee-length design than Dinteville’s. He has a doublet and has a rich black neck-cloth and he carries gloves. velvet skirt. Over that he wears a The gloves were the prerogative jerkin of black satin trimmed with of dignitary in the church; they velvet and lynx fur. The shoulders would be worn at a mass. He are padded and broad. The open wears a square black clerical cap. part of the doublet once showed a He leans on a book which gives codpiece which has been lost in Terrestrial globe made by Martin his age as 25 (aged 25 (he died the damage to the painting. Benhaim, with map showing in aged 32). He wears a sash instead of a belt, centre Polisy, France, the location which holds his sword and its of Dinteville’s chateau (note 6); guard. His stockings are silk, with Book of Arithmetic published by garters. His shoes are bun-toed. Peter Apian (note 7); held open by He wears a French hat with a a Surveying set-square; skull badge. He carries an ornate Steel Dividers (note 8); dagger and case, with gold wired a Lutheran hymnal-book (note 9); tassel. Decoration on the dagger a Case of musical flutes (which hilt gives his age. some consider to be instruments in a battle); and an eleven-string Holbein’s signature in Latin and Lute with one string broken. with the date of painting at the left on the floor,’Ioannes Holbein pingebat’ 1533. Lute case on floor under the lower shelf. An overlay of an Amamorphic skull. Odericus Roman style floor of inlaid pink and dark green marble, similar to Westminster Abbey (1268) in the fashion of Cosmati work. The design in Westminster is said to symbolise the cosmos (note 11). allenfi[email protected] 1 Holbein the Younger The Ambassadors analysis and resumé

1. A celestial globe needs to be set in its stand with its axis at an angle that is appropriate to the place at which it is meant to be used, or for which a calculation is being performed. The meridian ring and pole are accurately drawn for a London latitude. there are three bright stars in key positions. Mankar in Pegasus and Cepheus, north of meridian ring; Cygnus just above horizon, indicative of 11 April 1533. 2. The Ram (Aries) standing for the constellation Aries (rather than the astrological sign). The right hand ram’s head is in the position of the Sun on the globe and conceals it. 3. Henry VIII had married Anne Boleyn in secret on 25th January 1533, that is before his marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been annulled. The new marriage was declared valid by Cranmer, Archbishop Canterbury. Anne Boleyn was then made Queen. She was subsequently crowned with royal honours in Westminster Abbey on 1st June 1533. The procession in this ceremony was led by Dinteville and twelve servants. Anne gave birth to a daughter on 7th September 1533, who became Elizabeth I. 4. This is conceivably the instrument that Kratzer wrote to Dürer about in 1524 and the reply was that its owner, Willibald Pirkheimer, has promised to have it copied and despatched to England. It also provides a vertical division down its plumbline through to the corner of the set square beneath 5. This instrument as a whole has been so positioned that the zodiacal place of the Sun on Good Friday 1533 is at the nearest point of the appropriate (ecliptic) disc to the viewer. 6. Africa is upside down, Europe and Brazil the right way up. Brazil has a line through it which divides land granted to Portugal from that granted to Spain in the 1494 Tordesillas agreement. 7. Eyn Newe unnd wohlgegründte Underweysung aller Kauffmans Rechnung (A new and reliable instruction book of calculation for merchants), 1527. Reckoning profit and loss and maps recoding routes and rights. The book is open at a page that begins with the word Dividirt (Divide). 8. Holbein had designed a medallion for King Francis I in 1533, which included a pair of dividers with serpents, dolphins and cornucopia, with the text ‘Prvdentement et par compas incontinent tu viendas' (‘You will come immediately in a prudent and measured way’). The dividers are also said to be another indication of discord. Some commentators (Foister and North) link these dividers to Dinteville’s melancholy and thus also to Dürer’s Melancholia I. 9. Johann Walther’s Wittenburg edition of Lutheran hymns, Geistlich Gesangbuchli, 1524. It reads from two pages, both tenor parts. On the left ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ number II in the book, reads, ‘Kom Heiliger Geyst (‘Come Holy Ghost’) and on the right ‘Man wilt thous love blessedly’ from the ‘Ten Commandments’ which is number XIX in the book. 10. There is an align from the left eye of Christ in the crucifix to the left eye of Dinteville, the star Vega, the star Deneb, the north point of the horizon and the Sun on the globe (under one of the ram’s heads), through the centre of the solar instrument, the point on the quadrant, indicated by the tip of the pin on the solar instrument, to the gnomon (the part that casts the shadow) of the polyhedral sun dial. 11. There is an elaborate description by John North (2002) of the floor and its geometric and patterned links to Holbein’s painting. This involves the complexity of the central six-pointed star and the circles on the floor and their relation to the star and circle shapes imposed on the upper part of The Ambassadors. In North’s description the centre of the circle is at the point where the alignment from the left eye of Christ to the sun dial (described in note 10) crosses over the plumbline of the Solar Instrument.

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Patterns of connectedness: an initial resumé.

The Ambassadors is a painting about marriage and division. It was commissioned by Jean de Dinteville to provide a statement about the condition of his world and his place in it. This statement is supported by the previous initial analysis and following resumé.

The crucifix aligns through Dinteville’s St. Michael The top shelf demonstrates a cosmology, the relationship medallion, bisects the terrestrial globe and its handle and between mathematics and theology. The globe and the lower shelf of divisions and discord. The crucifix also instruments provide calculations that indicate a time and aligns through Dinteville’s left eye, the intersection of the a newly agreed date for ‘the crowning’ of Anne Boleyn, horizontal bar and the meridian bar of the stand for the that is ratification of the marriage of Henry VIII and celestial globe, to the gnomon on the Sun dial. These Anne Boleyn by Archbishop Cranmer, before her alignments provide a pattern of connectedness to both coronation in June 1533. the discord and division in the church, the disruption of the agreement regarding some elements of global The rug has Armenian symbols ’S’ and ‘E’ bisected by properties and the timing for Archbishop Cranmer’s the vertical plumbline refer to God and Christ. agreement to the ratification of the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. In addition the crucifix encourages a pattern of connectedness with the emblematised anamorphic skull, where the skull becomes like a shadow cast by the distant crucifixion, indicating the link between inevitable death and potential salvation.

The costumes of the two dignified figures in the painting evidently provide proof of wealth and status. These matters are emphasised by Dinteville’s expensive and fashionable clothing and De Selve’s sumptuous costume. The power of their status has emblematised, in Dinteville, by his decorative dagger, giving his age, and in De Selve by the symbolism of power conveyed by his gloves. Further more, De Selve, the book he leans on notes, has come of age to be a ratified as a Bishop.

(It might be that the later portrait of Dinteville by The spatial explorations on the lower shelf signal discord, Francesco Primaticcio, has been misnamed ‘St. George’, the divisions of property and the divisions in the Church. by the Barbara Piassecka Johnson Collection Foundation. The former is exemplified by the divisions of land in In view of the St. Michael medallion in The Ambassadors, Brazil between Portugal and Spain where the 1494 perhaps the portrait should be renamed Jean de Dinteville as agreement between them was currently in a state ruin and St. Michael.) the battles had recommenced. The latter divisions between the proposals of Luther and the Catholic church were in disarray. De Selve had tried to reconcile the differences in a tract calling for reconciliation between Protestant reform and the Catholic status quo, but in the context of the agreement to Henry’s proposals this division was now inevitable. This had been elaborated by the knowledge of Boleyn’s pregnancy and the agreement of the King Francis I of France to act as the godfather. The dividers on the bottom shelf, with their emblematic potential for melancholia, and exemplary of Dinteville’s condition, are also signifiers for God’s creation and thus (The dilemma of the figure with the dividers in Dürer’s his division of the heavens from the Earth, the waters Melancholia I can be understood in terms of an attempt to from the land and so forth. They re-emphasise the subject produce a Platonic solid. The figure is in the process of of the painting and the commission. the God-like act of creating the beautiful and is failing in the attempt.) allenfi[email protected] 3 Holbein the Younger The Ambassadors analysis and resumé

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