Holbein's Ambassadors: The Picture and the Men
9781465552464
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Few pictures have attracted more attention than Holbein’s double-portrait of two Ambassadors, since its migration in 1890 from Longford Castle to the National Gallery. The great qualities which distinguish it as a work of art are too well known to need recapitulation here. In conception, scale, and elaboration, in all the elements characteristic of Holbein’s genius, the picture stands in the foremost rank of that painter’s achievement. Moreover, up to 1890, Holbein was unrepresented in the National Gallery, though much of his best work was executed in England, and for English patrons. Besides its great and permanent merits, another cause contributed to draw notice to this work when it first appeared as national property: the identity of the two individuals represented had become lost. Good fortune has since restored to us their forgotten names. It is now possible to affirm, with complete certainty, that in the personage to the left is beheld the image of Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy and Bailly of Troyes: in the robed figure to the right, that of George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. How, step by step, the history of Holbein’s masterpiece has been recovered it will be one of the objects of the following pages to show. But the unusual character of the picture, the curiosity it has aroused, the complex and fascinating setting in which the two friends are placed, seem to call for something more than a mere chronicle of its story. It is impossible to repress the question, what manner of men were these? or to resist the desire to know how far the actual circumstances of their lives explain the choice of the many striking objects with which they are seen surrounded. As a matter of fact, a closer acquaintance with the mental atmosphere they breathed, and with the relations in which they stood to contemporary thought and events, throws a flood of light on many points which, at first sight, appear obscure. In the history of their life and times is to be found the solution of any enigmas suggested by their entourage. Returning to the picture with the insight derived from the study of their circumstances, it becomes clear that the composition is no less logical in thought than symmetrical in design. The varied features presented by it, many of which deserve close inspection on their own merits, assume new meaning and interest, whether taken separately or viewed in certain combinations. Some glimpse is thus obtained, though it may be but an imperfect one, of the intentions with which, more than three centuries and a half ago, artist and owner built up the intricate harmonies of their monumental work. The subject thus falls naturally into four divisions. The first part will be devoted to the history of the picture; the second and third, to the lives of the men it represents; the fourth, to some analysis of its contents.
