Take a look at this picture. What do you see? A couple of stately gentlemen, probably fifteenth or early sixteenth century continental European, some instruments, globes, a gigantic four foot long skull, some books, a lute.
Wait, a gigantic skull?!
Look closely at the painting again, maybe you didn’t see it the first time. Did you catch that? Be honest. Don’t worry if you didn’t. Although you may think a humongous skull would be conspicuous, in this case the artist has shown it anamorphically. That’s right, he used anamorphic perspective, a perspective technique requiring the viewer to either use special instruments to see the object correctly, or in this case one must approach the canvas from the left to be able to see the perfect rendering of a large human skull.
Yesterday we saw some Trompe l’oeil examples and how paintings can fool the eye into believing what is seen is real. The term comes from Baroque times, but the use of perspective tricks is known since ancient times. With the advances of the Renaissance came better understandings of perspective, which brought back techniques such as Trompe l’oeil.
This particular painting is called The Ambassadors, and is by Hans Holbein the Younger, the same German artist who gave us the most famous Henry VIII portrait. It is a very interesting painting and has been studied intensely for its meanings. The sitters have been identified as Jean de Dinteville, French Ambassador to England on the left, and Georges de Selve, Bishop of Levaur, on the right. But recently de Selve seems out of the picture, and his elder brother Francois is thought to be the subject. This is still up for debate. What we do know is the inscription on the book by the subject on the right reads, “His age is 25,” while the inscription on the dagger of the subject on the left reads, “His age is 29.”
The painting is loaded with still life. They include items that reference the “Age of Exploration”- two globes (one the world and one the stars), astronomical tools, and a sundial. The symbolism and the whole composition with a secular man and a religious man can possibly mean a unification of capitalism and the Church.
Then there’s that skull. Let’s see it undistorted:
Including a skull in a painting is a Northern European style called vanitas, or “emptiness” meant to symbolize the transient nature of vanity- no matter who you are you will eventually become a pile of bones. Some believe this painting shows the three stages of existence- the heavens (astrolabe and celestial globe), the living world (books, musical instruments), and death (the creepy skewed skull).
While the exact meaning of Holbein’s work The Ambassadors leaves speculation, no one is unsure that this is the finest example of anamorphic perspective.
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