The Ambassadors

The Ambas­sadors by Hans Hol­bein the Younger, is a por­trait of two French­men, one an ambas­sador to the court of King Henry VIII, the other a cleric. They are lean­ing on a cup­board with dis­plays — on the upper shelf objects refer­ring to the heav­ens; on the lower shelf, objects indi­cat­ing their earthly inter­ests. There are many hid­den mes­sages and mean­ings in this work, notes Don­ald Clark, includ­ing the large anamor­phic skull, which he has cho­sen to inter­pret in terms of learn­ing. The paint­ing reveals a 1533 cur­ricu­lum of the emerg­ing split between the voca­tional arts and acad­e­mia, and the retreat­ing role of reli­gion, a cur­ricu­lum whose influ­ence is clearly still felt some 500 years later.