There's a Skull in This Painting You Can Only See From the Side

A skull on the floor that only takes shape from the right-hand edge. Two men, every instrument of their age, and a crucifix pushed almost out of the picture. Hans Holbein the Younger painted The Ambassadors in London in 1533: Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador to Henry VIII, aged 29, and his friend Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, aged 25 (their ages are painted on the dagger and the book). The grey shape on the floor is an anamorphosis, a skull stretched so that it resolves only from the right-hand side at a low angle. The tilted views in this film are our own rendering of the same scan from that viewpoint and are labelled "viewed from the right". The floor is based on the Cosmati pavement before the high altar of Westminster Abbey (resembling, not copying it). The painting stayed at Dinteville's house at Polisy until 1653, was in England by 1792, and was bought by the National Gallery, London, in 1890 (National Gallery catalogue, 2024). The reading of the crucifix as a reference to the resurrection is the National Gallery's. Scan: Wikimedia Commons (Google Art Project capture for the National Gallery), public domain. The markers and labels are our annotations. Narration and music: Lumen & Hush. Chapters: 0:00 The floor 0:47 Two men and a table 1:34 Heaven above, earth below 2:14 What's wrong in the room 2:51 Where they stand 3:30 The answer #Holbein #TheAmbassadors #ArtHistory #NationalGallery #Anamorphosis