Holbein's The Ambassadors

Timeline

1. 1533London · LondonDinteville, French ambassador at the court of Henry VIII, commissioned Holbein to record his meeting with his friend Selve. The globe marks his family castle of Polisy; the broken lute string, the open Lutheran hymnal, and the half-hidden crucifix echo the religious tensions of England's split from Rome in 1533. The elongated skull in the foreground reduces diplomatic glory to a memento mori.
2. 1533–1701Château de Polisy · PolisyThe work returned with Dinteville to Champagne and was long preserved as a family memorial portrait. Seventeenth-century documents already recorded the names of both sitters, and around 1900 Mary Hervey confirmed their identities on this basis. The hypothesis that the skull was designed to be viewed from the side shows that the painting was conceived from the outset as a visual device in space, not merely a static double portrait on a wall.
3. 1890National Gallery, London · LondonAfter the National Gallery acquired the painting in 1890, it became a core exhibit for interpreting Northern Renaissance portraiture, perspectival experiments, and Reformation visual culture. The museum's catalogues have continuously revised the inventory of objects, the sitters' correspondence, and the optical modes of viewing, making the research history of The Ambassadors itself part of the work's public life.