Shop art print and framed art The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger

The Ambassadors is a 1533 painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. Also known as Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, after the two people it portrays, it was created in the Tudor period, in the same year Elizabeth I was born. Franny Moyle speculates that Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, then Queen of England, might have commissioned the painting as a gift for Jean de Dinteville, the ambassador portrayed on the left in the painting. As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. It also incorporates one of the best-known examples of anamorphosis in painting. The Ambassadors has been part of London's National Gallery collection since its purchase in 1890. Although a German-born artist who spent much of his time in England, Holbein here displays the influence of Early Netherlandish painting. He used oils which for panel paintings had been developed a century before in Early Netherlandish painting, and just as Jan van Eyck and the Master of Flémalle used extensive imagery to link their subjects to religious concepts, Holbein used symbolic objects around the figures to suggest mostly secular ideas and interests. Among the clues to the figures' associations are a selection of scientific instruments including two globes (one terrestrial and one celestial), a shepherd's dial, a quadrant, a torquetum, and a polyhedral sundial, as well as various textiles including the [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« The Ambassadors » is kept at National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

 

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