Renaissance Art: Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors

Renaissance Scholar Jeremy Brotten on Holbein Painting

Aug 13, 2008

In 1533 artisan Hans Holbein painted The Ambassadors, a portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selves of Henry VIII's court.

Holbein flawlessly executed the commission, creating a timeless masterpiece of symbolism with his The Ambassadors. The painting's meaning, symbolism, and use of anamorphosis have been argued about for centuries.

Scholars largely agree that the objects between the men, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selves, represent the 7 liberal arts popularized during the Renaissance: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. What is more open to interpretation and argument is the overall meaning of the painting, and also just what the heck is up with that gray smear at the bottom of it?

Renaissance scholar Jeremy Brotton is one of many experts to analyze to famous painting. In his essay The Renaissance Bazaar, Brotton states “in The Ambassadors can be seen the detailed, precise reproduction of the world of two Renaissance men.” Brotton goes on to explain the details of the 7 liberal arts represented in the painting.

In a later section called Politics and Empire, Brotten notes the absence of women in the painting. Clearly the respect of women in the Renaissance, though better than Medieval Times, left much to be desired, however it is a stretch to conclude that this painting makes any kind of statement about women without actually uncluding any symbols. Everything Holbein meant to symbolize is present in the picture.

Jeremy Brotten: Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors Symbolizes Religious Conflict

Later Brotton articulates an argument in which Holbein’s main motivation for The Ambassadors was the religious struggle between King Henry VIII and the Catholic Church, one that emerges as a faulty conclusion. There are a few symbols of religious conflict present in the painting:

There are many more objects to make up a greater picture than religious conflict. Brotton's explanation that the painting’s 2 men, the ambassadors, were attempting to reconnect Henry VIII with the catholic to prevent territorial conflict may have been accurate, however, Brotton's interpretation leaves out many of the painting's other notable symbols.

Jeremy Brotten also brings up the anamorphic skull in his interpretation of Holbein’s painting. Brotton concludes that the skull is a “chilling reminder that amidst all this wealth, power, and learning, death comes to us all.” While the skull may have been a mere memento mori, Brotton doesn't attempt to answer why it was skewed in anamorphic pose.

While Brotten provides an interesting take on Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, some find his analysis to be incomplete.

Brotton, Jeremy. 2003. The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo. Oxford University Press.

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