Hans Holbein the Younger – The Ambassadors Part 3 National Gallery UK
Part 3 National Gallery UK – Hans Holbein the Younger - The Ambassadors
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Holbein was one of the greatest German painters who created his own style of painting, preferring portraits and genre scenes. His "Ambassadors" is a painting showing two people huddled around a table piled with trifles. There is a lute, an open book, a book laid with a cloth bookmark, a globe, scrolls, and a candle. - The complete set of interests inherent in people who are educated and well-rounded. The ambassadors look into the frame, one of them dressed in a semblance of a black robe, with a square black cap on his head.
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Description of Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors
Holbein was one of the greatest German painters who created his own style of painting, preferring portraits and genre scenes. His "Ambassadors" is a painting showing two people huddled around a table piled with trifles. There is a lute, an open book, a book laid with a cloth bookmark, a globe, scrolls, and a candle. - The complete set of interests inherent in people who are educated and well-rounded.
The ambassadors look into the frame, one of them dressed in a semblance of a black robe, with a square black cap on his head. He holds a compasses wheel in his hand and looks at the viewer calmly, as if inviting him to participate in some kind of scholarly debate. The second is dressed richer and more opulent, but he wears the same cap - these people are intellectuals of their time, bringing enlightenment and life. They pose without tension, as if they are written every day for posterity, and they are completely satisfied with their lives, considering themselves sensible, reasonable and positive people.
However, one object is quite out of place in the overall composition of the picture. If you look at it straight ahead, it appears as a vague and garish spot, put in the picture for God knows why. But if you bend your head a little and look closely, you can see that it is a human skull, grinning the eternal bone grin of death.
"Memento mori," the artist seems to say to anyone who looks at the painting. Remember death, remember that it is always there. Man does not think about it, perceives it as something foreign to life, superfluous, garish, placed in earthly existence as a joke, something to be ignored. But death is always there. You only have to bow your head, think about it, and then it becomes clear how close it is at every moment.
No matter how enlightened you are, no matter how intelligent you think you are, death is always waiting for you and is always glad to see you.
And she always laughs last.
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The picture has something of this: people, man, group, woman, two, wear, costume, candle, portrait, priest, lid, cape, veil, banquet.
Perhaps it’s a painting of a man with a sword standing next to a man in a fur coat.