- 7 details (Google Art Project)

Videos from the National Gallery

Here is the list of the main artworks swown in the film

Holbein - Dance of Death Alphabet (circa 1524)

Holbein - Dance of Death (circa 1526)

Dalle Vacche - Choir stail back - Padua (1500-1533) - Louvre Museum

Barthel Bruyn the Eider - Portrait of Jane-Losye Tissier (1524) - Kroller Müller Museum

Ehrard Schön - Anamorphoses - Ferdinand, Charles V, Pope Pauli, Francis 1 (1531-4) - British Museum

Dürer - Crucifixions (151 0)

Mantegna - Crucifixion (1457 -59) - Louvre Museum

Mari nus van Reymerswaele - St Jerome (1550) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

Dürer - St Jerome (1514)

Holbein - Two skulls in a window niche (circa 1520) - Kunstmusum, Basel

Holbein - The artist's wife, Elsbeth Binzenstock (1528-29) - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Lucas Furtenagel - The painter Hans Burgkmair and his wife Anna, nee Aller/ai (1529) - Vien na

Juan Valdès Leal - ln Ictu Oculi (1670-72) - Hospital de la Caridad, Seville

Anon - An Allegory of the Dinteville family (1537) - MET, New York

lnventory fraqment (1653)

Cosmati Pavement © Dean and Chapter of Westminster 0 - London

Peter Apian - Extract of the Astronomicum Caesareum (1540) - Astronomy Library, Vien na

Santi di Tito - Posthumous portrait of Machiavelli (second half of 16th century) - Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Jerome Bosch - Details from Christ Carrying the Cross (151 0-16) - Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

Holbein - Self portrait (1542-43) - Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Van der Weyden - The Descent from the Cross (1435) - El Prado Museum, Madrid

Van Eyck - The Arno/fini Portrait (1434) - National Gallery, London

Holbein - Portrait of George Gisze (1532) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

Holbein - William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury (1527) - Louvre Museum, Paris

Holbein - Charles de $olier, Lord of Morette (1534) - Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Hoblein - Nicolas Kratzer (1528) - Louvre Museum, Paris

Holbein - Portrait of a man with a lute (1533) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

Michael Ostendorfer - The adoration ofthe "SchOne Maria" of Regensburg (1519-20)

Holbein - Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam Writing (1523) - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Holbein - Double Portrait of Sir Thomas Godsalve and His Son John (1528) - Dresden

Holbein - Sir Henry Wyatt Sometimes Ca/led Milord Cromwell or Thomas More (Died in 1537) 0 Louvre Museu

Lucas van Leyden - Triptych on the Adoration of the Golden Calf

Holbein - Lais of Corinth (1526) - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Holbein - Henry VIII, Kinq of Enqland (1540) - National Gallery of Ancient Art, Rome

Holbein - Sir Henry Wyatt Sometimes Called Milord Cromwell or Thomas More (Died in 1537) 0 Louvre Museum

Holbein - The artist's wife, Elsbeth Binzenstock (1528-29) - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Holbein - Thomas More (1527) - Frick Collection, New York

Michael Angelo - David (1501-04) - Galleria deii'Accademia, Florence

Jean Clouet - Francis 1, King of France (circa 1530) - Louvre Museum

Holbein - Charles de Solier, Lord of Morette (1534) - Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Holbein - The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Holbein - The Darmstadt Madonna (1526-28) - Stadel Museum, Frankfurt

Holbein - Dance of Death (circa 1526)

This the text of the voiceover for the introduction and part of the Act I only. Buy the film to get the full content.

Introduction

At the end of this corridor, a tragedy is playing itself out.

Supremely self-assured, two men are leaning on a shelf and looking down at us…

… the picture’s wealth of minute detail accentuates their stature and gives them a commanding air…

The impression they give is one of wealth, power - and arrogance.And yet, something doesn’t fit in.

This pale and threatening shape suspended at the bottom of the picture - what is it?

To answer that question, we must look at it sideways - and, when we do, it seems to unlock the picture’s meaning.

… the image becomes distorted…

… pride vanishes…

… wealth fades away…

… and the great conqueror appears!

Death, which erases all the rest!

But has Holbein really set this splendid scene, simply so that death can tear it down?

Or placed these two men in it, simply so that death can devour them?

The objects on the shelf - the books, the globes, the scientific instruments - all have a solidity which seems to suggest that death may not have the final word.

So what is Holbein really showing us? Are his ambassadors winners or losers in this contest with death?

Act I. The triumph of death? 

Part 1: Death - superstar? 

Which of the two sides in this trial of strength seems likelier to gain the upper hand?

Elaborate and artificial trappings engulf the two human figures,

whose bodies are effectively hidden by their many-layered clothing.

Miscellaneous objects litter the two shelves - some apparently on the point of falling off.

The whole picture is awash with detail:

The veined marble floor with its geometrical patterns....

The sumptuous rug in the centre,

The curtain at the top with its green and yellow highlights.

Holbein makes human life seem artificial, ponderous and complex…

…the only natural, non-fabricated element is the skull.

The skull is the picture’s “guest star”. Special lighting underlines its importance: the rest of the painting is lit from the front, but the skull is bathed in an other-worldly light which comes from the right.

Its vigorous diagonal provides the only contrast…

… to the verticals and horizontals which make the human world seem static.

This mass of bone, with its gaping jaws and saucer-like eye-sockets, may even be laughing.

Death’s victory over man is not a new subject for Holbein…

His Dance of Death Alphabet, produced nine years earlier, already shows death at work, sparing neither great nor humble…

Death himself is a joker and musician [A]

He carries off the Pope [B], and the monk [O].

He seizes the emperor [C] and the simple horseman [V],

He snatches the miser’s possessions [N],

He fondles the maiden [S],

He walks beside the aged hermit [W], and plays with the chuckling baby while its grief-stricken mother looks on [Y]

With their furs and ornamental chains, the distraught nobleman [K] and pleading duke [I] remind us of the figures in The Ambassadors.

[Pause]

Two years later, Holbein returns to this theme in his Great Dance of Death. Again, certain features make us think of  The Ambassadors:…

This richly clothed noble, from whose back death is stripping the armour…

…and this strange composition - two figures flanking a macabre pile of bones and other objects, with death leering at the bottom.

Is The Ambassadors simply a more elaborate, painted version of these woodcuts?

If it is, why all these colours, why this show of opulence? Is death really the hero of the picture?

Part 2:  Putting death in the picture 

Holbein was far from being the first painter to take death as a subject

At the time he painted The Ambassadors, death was already a well-worn motif in religious paintings, portraits and still-lifes.

His real innovation consists in giving death its due prominence in a picture which combines all three genres.First genre: the still-life, in which even humanity’s finest works face extinction.

This Italian marquetry picture features the same jumbled symbols of the arts, the sciences and worldly power:

on the right, a celestial globe, a learned book, a lute and sheet music

and on the left, a skull placed on an hourglass, with a crown overturned beside it.

Meticulously crafted in thin veneer,  this is a masterpiece of human skill and artistry.

It is in fact a “vanitas” - a work designed to remind us that death is ever-present in our daily lives.

Holbein has taken one idea from it - he knows that making the scattered symbols objects of great value. enhances his picture’s emotional impact.

These rich details and gorgeous colours bring the power of death home to us: even the finest products of a civilisation end by succumbing to its power.

Second genre: The portrait, with death as uninvited guest

This painting of a serene 26-year-old woman is a good example.

Once again, the details hint at a deeper meaning:

the cut flower symbolises transience and fragility;

the date and age remind us that the picture itself is subject to the laws of time;

the clinically detailed treatment of the flesh-tones gives them a cold and icy quality which robs them of erotic appeal…

In this way, the front of the painting prepares us subtly for the shock that awaits us on the back.

the still-smoking candle, which has just gone out,

the fly, drawn by the reek of putrefaction,

the rotting teeth,

the dislocated jaw,

the few strands of hair left clinging to the skull,

the gaping eye-sockets

Everything serves to remind us that our bodies, which are vigorous now, are fated to weaken, decline and - finally – to decompose and rot.

This lesson has one drawback - it requires us to look at two pictures. There is no way of producing the desired surprise effect within a single scene.

Holbein solves the problem with the help of another virtuoso technique - anamorphosis, which distorts an image to render it readable from one angle only.

Holbein is the first artist we know to have included an anamorphic element in an otherwise normal portrait.

This increases his picture’s impact, since death’s arrival still surprises us - even though it was there all the time, right in front of us.

In short, Holbein has found a way of showing us life and death together - in a single picture.

Third genre: The religious painting

If death is inevitable, can anything withstand it?

We have already seen that looking along one diagonal from an angle makes the fripperies disappear and brings the skull into view. But there is another diagonal, and the skull itself acquires a new meaning if we follow it...

… to this figure of Christ on the cross, which can barely be seen in the top left-hand corner.

[Nota sur l’inscription]: Iesu Nazarati Rex Iudorum, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”

The juxtaposition of the crucifix and skull is no accident.

In many crucifixion scenes, Adam’s skull appears at the foot of the cross. It symbolizes man in the state of original sin, from which Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has redeemed him.

Saint Jerome - the “intellectual” saint and translator of the Bible - is traditionally shown like this, surrounded by books in his study, and meditating on a skull, with a crucifix nearby.

The meaning is clear: there are two realities here - death’s victory over the world and its vanities, and Christ’s victory over death.

Stripped of his clothing and broken in body, he atones for the sins of the world.

Seen like this, The Ambassadors becomes a “super-vanitas” - a call to forsake worldly possessions and dedicate ourselves to serving God.

Dispersal of possessions, death of the body, redemption through faith - this reading would make these the three acts in the drama which unfolds in Holbein’s picture.

Part 3: A vanitas - or something more?

For the next parts, please watch the full movie.