“THE TWO AMBASSADORS,” 1533
Holbein receives the offer of a yearly pension from the Basel Town
Council—“The Two Ambassadors”—The identity of the sitters—History and
description of the picture—Other portraits of Dinteville and the
members of his family—Félix Chrétien—Mr. Dickes’ theory that the
picture represents the Princes Palatine Otto Henry and Philipp—The
“Portrait of a Musician” at Bulstrode Park.
THROUGHOUT the earlier years of Holbein’s second sojourn in England,
though he was busily occupied on work for the German merchants of the
Steelyard, his time was by no means completely taken up with the
commissions they gave him both individually and as a corporate body.
During the same period he painted the portraits of more than one
Englishman and several foreigners of distinction.
[Sidenote: LETTER OF RECALL FROM BASEL]
As already pointed out, he probably returned to England during the first
months of 1532. It is to be presumed that he arrived thus early—or even
in the late autumn of the previous year—or otherwise it is difficult to
account for the letter of recall, dated 2nd September 1532, which was
sent to him in England by the Burgomaster of Basel, Jakob Meyer—not his
old patron, Meyer zum Hasen, but Jakob Meyer zum Hirschen—on behalf of
the Council. Such a letter would hardly have been written if he had been
absent from Basel for only a month or two. It is probable that the best
part of a year would be allowed to elapse before a recall was sent to
him. It runs as follows:
“Master Hans Holbein, the painter, now in England.
“We, Jacob Meiger, Burgomaster, and the Council of the City of Basel,
send greeting to our dear citizen, Hans Holbein, and let you herewith
know that it would please us if you would repair home as soon as
possible. In that case, in order that you may the better stay at home
and support your wife and children, we will furnish you yearly with
thirty pieces of money, until we are able to take care of you better.
We have wished to inform you of this, in order that you may conform to
our desire. Dated Monday, 2nd September 1532.”[73]
Footnote 73:
Woltmann, English translation, p. 336. Original text in Woltmann, i.
363, and Wornum, p. 265.
The offer contained in this letter, which, though its terms were not
lavish, was a proof that his fellow-citizens appreciated his art and
were anxious to induce him to reside permanently in Basel, was not
tempting enough to induce Holbein to leave England. Whatever his answer
may have been—for it is to be presumed that he received the letter,
though there is no actual evidence to show that he did so—the Council’s
request proved ineffectual. He must have felt that it would be folly to
abandon regular and remunerative employment in London for doubtful and
ill-paid municipal commissions in Switzerland, more particularly as he
had so recently formed a new and lucrative connection with the
Steelyard, while memories of the bad times lately encountered in Basel
were still vivid.
As already pointed out, the only three portraits by him bearing the date
1532 are of German merchants. In the following year, however, more than
one fine work affords proof that the Steelyard was by no means his only
source of income. His most important undertaking in 1533 was the large
double portrait generally known as “The Two Ambassadors,” now in the
National Gallery, for which it was purchased, in 1890, with two other
pictures, from the fifth Earl of Radnor, for £55,000, of which £25,000
was contributed by the State, and £30,000 by Messrs. Nathaniel
Rothschild & Sons, Lord Iveagh, and Mr. Charles Cotes. The addition of
this great painting to the national collections, in which, until then,
Holbein had been unrepresented, aroused much curiosity as to the
personality of the two sitters. Many attempts were made to identify
them, and numerous solutions of the riddle were suggested in letters to
the _Times_ and other papers and reviews. Magazine articles were written
about it, and, lastly, two volumes of considerable size were published
with this picture as their sole subject. Probably no other painting in
the world has produced so great a mass of literature.
The two men represented are Frenchmen: Jean de Dinteville, Lord of
Polisy, and Bailly of Troyes, and, at the time the picture was painted,
resident French ambassador in London, and his close friend George de
Selve, afterwards Bishop of Lavaur, who came over to England in the
spring of 1533 on a short visit to the Bailly. The painting (#Pl.
9#),[74] which is on ten vertical panels of oak, is 6 ft. 10 in. high by
6 ft. 10¼ in. wide, and is thus described in the National Gallery
catalogue:
Footnote 74:
Woltmann, 215. Reproduced by Davies, p. 152; Miss Hervey, _Holbein’s
Ambassadors_, frontispiece; Dickes, frontispiece; Ganz, _Holbein_, p.
103; and elsewhere.
[Illustration:
VOL. II., PLATE 9
THE TWO AMBASSADORS
Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve
1533
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON
]
“The scene is a chamber paved with inlaid marbles, and hung with green
damask, which in the upper left-hand corner partly reveals a silver
crucifix attached to the wall behind. In the centre of the composition
is a wooden stand, having an upper and a lower shelf. To the left of
this, leaning his arm upon it, stands Jean de Dinteville, a young man
with dark-brown eyes and beard, in a rich costume of the period of
Henry VIII, wearing a heavy gold chain with the badge of the French
order of Saint-Michel, and, on his right side, depending from his
girdle, a dagger with wrought gold hilt and sheath: on the sheath the
inscription—ÆT. SVÆ 29. in relief. In his black bonnet is a jewel
formed of a silver skull set in gold. To the right, George de Selve,
dark-eyed, with a close beard, also leans upon the stand, or, more
immediately, on a clasped book, the edges of which are inscribed:
ÆTATIS SVÆ 25. He wears a four-cornered black cap, and a loose,
long-sleeved gown of mulberry and black brocade, lined with sable, and
reaching to the ground. Both these persons regard the spectator. The
upper shelf of the stand is covered with a Turkish rug, on which are
several mathematical and astronomical instruments, and, close to the
principal personage, a celestial globe. The lower shelf bears a case
of flutes, a lute, an open music-book containing part of the score and
words of the Lutheran hymn, ‘Komm, heiliger Geist,’ a smaller book, on
arithmetic, kept partly open by a small square, a pair of compasses,
and a terrestrial hand-globe, which is in a direct line below the
other globe. Under the stand lies the lute-case. Conspicuous in the
foreground is the _anamorphosis_, or perspectively distorted image, of
a human skull, which, touching the floor on the left, stretches
obliquely upwards towards the right. In the shadow cast on the floor
by the chief personage is the inscription—‘JOANNES HOLBEIN PINGEBAT
1533’ in sloping Roman letters.” To this it should be added that
Dinteville’s dress consists of a slashed doublet of rose-coloured
satin, and a black surcoat. The latter is lined with ermine, with
which the shoulder-puffs, further adorned with gold tags, are piped. A
large gold and green silk tassel, of very fine execution, hangs, with
the dagger, from his girdle, and he also wears a sword, only the hilt
and sheathed point of which are seen.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE PICTURE]
All that was known about the picture at the time of its purchase for the
National Gallery was that at the end of the eighteenth century it was in
the possession of Jean Batiste Pierre Le Brun, the Parisian
picture-dealer, and husband of the well-known portrait-painter, Madame
Vigée Le Brun. Le Brun issued a very indifferent engraving of it by J.
A. Pierron in Part XII (dated 1790) of his “Galerie des Peintres
Flamands, Hollandais et Allemands.” In the index it was described as
representing “MM. de Selve et d’Avaux; l’un, Ambassadeur à Venise,
l’autre, dans les pays du Nord, avec les attributs des Arts qu’ils
cultivaient; on voit à terre une Tête de Mort en perspective, à prendre
de l’angle gauche, qui de face ressemble à un poisson.” When the
publication was issued in volume form in 1792, with text, Le Brun
slightly amplified this note, and added “J’ai depuis vendu ce tableau
pour l’Angleterre, où il est maintenant; les figures sont de grandeur
naturelle.” He gives no information as to the source from which he
obtained the picture. It is stated in the National Gallery catalogue
that it is probable that it came into the hands of the dealer
Vandergucht, and that from him it was purchased by the second Earl of
Radnor, about 1790 or 1795; but from the account books of Longford
Castle it would appear that it was sold to the Earl by the dealer
Buchanan, who received one thousand guineas for it, the payments being
made in 1808 and 1809.
During the years the picture remained in Longford Castle many guesses
were made as to the identity of the personages. Le Brun’s title, which,
after all, contained half the truth, was not accepted by the leading
critics, largely owing, no doubt, to the fact that the title of Avaux
did not exist until more than a hundred years after the picture was
painted, so that, the one name being impossible, the other was included
in the same category. In the end, a suggestion that the man on the left
of the picture was Sir Thomas Wyat was regarded as a very possible
solution. Mr. Wornum, in his book published in 1867, gave this
attribution a qualified acceptance—“the subject is doubtful, but it is
supposed to represent Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and diplomatist, and
some learned friend”[75]—and Dr. Woltmann followed suit, but went a step
further, suggesting John Leland, the antiquary, as the second
figure.[76] Both identifications, however, were shown to be inaccurate
by Mr. J. Gough Nichols in a paper contributed to _Archæologia_ in
1873;[77] but he could offer no name in substitution, and so the matter
stood until the purchase of the picture for the nation.
Footnote 75:
Wornum, p. 275.
Footnote 76:
Woltmann, i. 374.
Footnote 77:
_Archæologia_, vol. xliv. pt. ii. pp. 450-55.
[Sidenote: THE IDENTITY OF THE SITTERS]
The public exhibition of this splendid example of Holbein’s art produced
a long and interesting correspondence in the _Times_ newspaper. Sir J.
C. Robinson upheld Dr. Woltmann’s belief that the two men were Wyat and
Leland, but Sir Sidney Colvin,[78] by means of convincing proofs, showed
that this attribution was untenable, as also that of Le Brun. He gave,
at the same time, four reasons for supposing that the personage on the
left was really a Frenchman and an ambassador—(1) the traditional title;
(2) its having been sold into this country from France; (3) the wearing
of the French order of Saint-Michel; and (4) the close resemblance in
dress and fashion of the personage in question and the portrait of
another French Ambassador, the “Morette” at Dresden. He proposed, as a
probable solution, the name of Jean de Dinteville—a suggestion which
afterwards proved to be the correct one. When, in August 1891, the
picture was cleaned, and the name of Polisy, Dinteville’s birthplace, an
obscure village in Burgundy, was discovered on the terrestrial globe,
the only other French towns upon it being Paris, Lyon and Bayonne, the
identity of the left-hand figure was placed almost beyond doubt. Sir
Sidney also suggested that the second person might be Nicolas Bourbon,
the French poet.
Footnote 78:
_The Times_, September 1890.
Other attempted identifications included such divers personages as Lord
Rochford, brother of Anne Boleyn; Count Balthazar Castiglione, who came
to England to receive the Order of the Garter for the Duke of Urbino;
and Guillaume and Jean du Bellay. The last-named solution was published
in a pamphlet in 1890 by Mr. Elias Dexter, under the title of _Holbein’s
Ambassadors Identified_. The writer sought to prove that the National
Gallery picture and the one engraved for Le Brun were not the same, and
that there must be two versions of the subject in existence. This
contention he based on a number of slight differences between the
accessories in the picture and in Pierron’s print, but such differences
may be easily explained by the inferiority of the engraver’s work and
the unusual complexity of the many details. To prove the identity of the
two sitters with the brothers Du Bellay, who in 1533 were about 42 and
41 years of age respectively, he was obliged to declare the inscriptions
on the dagger and the book to be forgeries. It is true that Jean du
Bellay was in England in that year for a short time, and this is Mr.
Dexter’s sole evidence, though he professes to see a strong likeness
between the two ambassadors and the portraits of the brothers Du Bellay
engraved on the same plate in the ninth volume of the _Versailles
Gallery_.
A much more elaborate theory was advanced by Mr. W. F. Dickes in three
articles in the _Magazine of Art_, and in several letters to the _Times_
in answer to critics unfriendly to his attempted solution of the riddle.
His contention is that the picture was painted as a memorial of the
Treaty of Nuremberg between the Catholics and Protestants in 1532, and
that the two persons represented are the brothers Otto Henry and Philipp
of Neuburg, Counts Palatine of the Rhine. This theory he still further
elaborated in a book published in 1903 under the title of _Holbein’s
Ambassadors Unriddled_. His arguments, however, are singularly
unconvincing, and have failed to obtain the support of any serious
student of Holbein. Before dealing with them, however, it will be better
to give a brief account of the discoveries of Miss Mary F. S. Hervey, by
means of which the identity of Holbein’s two sitters was finally set at
rest. Her account of her discovery of a document which provided
conclusive evidence that the two Ambassadors were Jean de Dinteville and
George de Selve was communicated to the _Times_,[79] and this, together
with further corroborative evidence, was embodied in a book, _Holbein’s
Ambassadors: the Picture and the Men_, published in 1900.
Footnote 79:
_The Times_, December 7, 1895.
In 1895 Miss Hervey happened to come across a copy of the _Revue de
Champagne et de Brie_ for 1888, which gave a short notice of a picture
formerly preserved at Polisy, containing the portraits of Jean de
Dinteville and George de Selve. This paragraph was based on a catalogue
published in March 1888 by M. Saffroy, an antiquarian bookseller of
Pré-Saint-Gervais, in which a seventeenth-century parchment, describing
the picture, was offered for sale. Miss Hervey hastened to communicate
with M. Saffroy, and by one of those happy chances which seldom occur,
the document was still in his possession, and proved to contain exactly
the information which had so long been sought in vain. The following is
a translation of its complete text as given by Miss Hervey:—
“[Remarks on the subject of an excellent picture of the Sieurs
d’Inteville Polizy, and George de Selve Bishop of Lavour, showing the
offices they held, and the time of their decease.]
“In this picture is represented, life-size, Messire Jean de DIntevile
chevalier Sieur de Polizy, near Bar-sur-Seyne, Bailly of Troyes, who was
Ambassador in England for King Francis I in the years 1532 [O.S.] and
1533 and since Gouverneur of Monsieur Charles de France, second son
(_sic_) of the said King; the said Charles died at Forest Monstier in
the year 1545, and the said Sr. de DIntvile in the year 1555. Interred
in the Church of the said Polizy. There is also represented in the said
picture Messire George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, a personage of great
learning and virtue, who was Ambassador with the Emperor Charles V; the
said Bishop was the son of Messire Jean de Selve, Premier President of
the Parliament of Paris; the said Bishop died in 1541, having in the
above-mentioned year 1532, or 1533, gone to England by permission of the
King, to visit the said Sieur de DIntevile, his intimate friend, and
also of all his family; and they two having met in England an excellent
Dutch painter, employed him to make this picture, which has been
carefully preserved at the same place, Polizy, up to the year 1653.”
The manuscript consists of an oblong piece of parchment which may have
been cut from an inventory, but it is more probable that it was written
as a descriptive label to be attached to the picture-frame, after the
picture’s removal from Polisy in 1653. The latter supposition would
account for the fact that no mention is made of the place where the
picture then was, which would, of course, be unnecessary. The
authenticity of this document has been pronounced by the British Museum
authorities to be indisputable. The body of it was written just after
the middle of the seventeenth century, while the heading was added at a
slightly later date, at a time, no doubt, when the label had become
separated from the picture.
[Sidenote: THE PICTURE AT POLISY]
In her book Miss Hervey gives a long and interesting account of the
lives of the two men. It is sufficient to state here that Jean de
Dinteville was born in September 1504, and was therefore in his
twenty-ninth year when he came to England as resident French ambassador
in February 1533; and that the name “Polisy” is given a prominent place
on the terrestrial globe placed near him in the picture. The second
sitter, George de Selve, was appointed to the see of Lavaur in 1526,
when he was in his eighteenth year, but was only consecrated in 1534,
when he was in his twenty-sixth year, which exactly agrees with the
inscription on the picture, which states that he was then in his
twenty-fifth year.[80] Further evidence exists in the shape of a grant
from the Pope to De Selve, dated May 1526, permitting him to hold
several benefices “although only seventeen years old.” The fact that he
was not consecrated until the year after the picture was painted,
although appointed to the see of Lavaur in 1526, explains why Holbein
has not represented him in episcopal robes.
Footnote 80:
See _Gallia Christiana_ (Lutetiæ, 1715), vol. xiii. (1722), p. 344.
_Ecclesia Vaurensis_, No. xxi., Georgius de Selve. (Quoted by Miss
Hervey, p. 13.)
This document is confirmed by a further discovery by Miss Hervey of a
_Mémoire_ preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut at Paris, which
gives a summary of three letters concerning the picture. The letters
themselves, which so far, with possibly one exception, have not yet been
discovered, were addressed by Nicolas Camusat, the antiquary, canon of
Troyes, and an intimate friend of the Dinteville family for many years,
to his friends the Godefroy brothers, to whom and to others he
constantly supplied antiquarian and genealogical information. His
letters relating to Polisy extended from 1607 to 1655.
The following is a translation of the memorandum:
“Memoir in explanation of three letters sent by Monsr. Camusat,
Canon of St. Pierre at Troyes, [touching a picture made in
England of George de Selve, Bp. of Lavaur, who had gone thither
to visit the Bailly of Troies, Sr. de Polizi, Jean d’Inteville,
at that time the King’s ambassador].
“There are two relating to the Bishop of Lavaur, George de
Selve, son of Mr. le Premier President de Selve, which Bishop
had been invited by Mr. de Polizy, bailly of Troyes, ambassador
in England in the years 1532 [O.S.] and 1533, to visit him in
England, which he did, having first taken leave of the King. And
being in England, they had made the excellent picture by a Dutch
painter, Holben, which picture was preserved in the House of
Polizy, distant but one league from Bar-sur-Seine, a hundred and
forty [_sic_] years and more, as belonging to the Seigneur of
the place, Sr. de Sessac, until the year 1653, when he had it
removed to Paris, to his house near the parish of St. Sulpice;
the said picture representing the said Sr. de Polizy, Jean de
d’Inteville, and the said Sr. Bishop of Lavaur, who was
afterwards ambassador with Charles V; and the said Bishop died
in 1541. The said picture is considered the finest piece of
painting in France in the opinion of the best painters. M. le
Mareschal du Plessis-Praslain not long since bought the estate
of Polisy for three hundred thousand livres from the said Sr. de
Sessac.
“Mr. de Vic, garde des sceaux, formerly said that it was the
most beautiful piece of painting in France.
“Mr. George de Selve, and his brothers, worthily served France
in various embassies and legations.”
In this document the name of the painter, “Holben,” is given; it is
inserted between the lines, but is in the same hand and of the same date
as the writing which surrounds it. The portion at the head of the
memorandum between brackets is by another hand. It is interesting to
note that not only is the name of the painter given but that in the
seventeenth century Holbein’s work was considered, both by painters and
amateurs, to be the finest picture then in France. There is in the
Godefroy collection a second paper, a copy, dated 1654, of a memorandum
drawn up by Camusat, in which there is further reference to the picture.
It need not be quoted here, but it speaks of the figures as life-size,
and concludes by saying that “the piece is esteemed the richest and best
wrought that is to be found in France.”[81]
Footnote 81:
See Miss Hervey, _Holbein’s Ambassadors_, p. 18 _et seq._, where both
documents are reproduced in facsimile.
Thus the identity of Holbein’s sitters is irrefutably established, and
the picture’s history can now be traced almost without a break.
Dinteville, who had already been in England on a short mission in 1531,
reached London at the beginning of February 1533, and was lodged in the
royal palace of Bridewell, by the Thames. The exact date of George de
Selve’s visit to him is not known, but it was between February and
Easter in that year; he was back in France before the end of May. There
appears to have been some secrecy in connection with the latter’s
journey to England, for though he had the permission of Francis I, for
some reason Montmorency, the Grand Master, was, if possible, to be kept
in ignorance of it. In a letter, dated 23rd May, to his brother, the
Bishop of Auxerre, Dinteville says: “Monsr. de Lavor m’a fait cest
honneur que de me venir veoir, qui ne m’a esté petit plaisir. Il n’est
point de besoing que Mr. le grant maistre en entende rien.”[82]
Footnote 82:
From a letter in the Dupuy Collection, Paris, Bibl. Nat., vol. 726, f.
46, quoted by Miss Hervey, p. 80.
[Sidenote: JEAN DE DINTEVILLE AND HOLBEIN]
It is impossible to say in what way Dinteville became acquainted with
Holbein, or to whose offices the introduction between ambassador and
painter was due. Dinteville counted among his friends more than one of
Holbein’s sitters, while he was, no doubt, well acquainted with Niklaus
Kratzer through his keen interest in mechanics and the various
astronomical and mathematical sciences. He had thus more than one
opportunity of seeing examples of Holbein’s skill in portraiture, and it
is to be gathered that he conceived a great admiration for it, for
otherwise he would not have ordered so large and important a portrait
group of himself and his friend. With the exception of the “Duchess of
Milan,” the More family group, and the now lost “Fitzwilliam, Earl of
Southampton,” of which there is a good copy in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, the “Ambassadors” is the only portrait-panel painted by
Holbein in England of which there is any record in which the figures are
shown both life-size and at full-length. As there is no reference in the
State papers of England or France to the semi-secret business which
brought George de Selve over to London, the suggestion may be hazarded
that he came for the express purpose of having his portrait painted,
Dinteville urging him to do so on account of the excellent painter he
had discovered. The picture, crowded as it is with intricate
accessories, must have taken a considerable time to complete. It was, no
doubt, painted in the Ambassador’s own room in Bridewell Palace, and the
sitter and the painter must have spent long hours in planning out and
arranging the many mathematical and scientific instruments which form so
important a feature of the panel, some of which may have been lent by or
purchased from Kratzer. The visit of the future Bishop of Lavaur was so
short that he can hardly have seen more than the beginning of the work
and the finishing of his own head and hands. No doubt Holbein followed
his usual practice and made preliminary studies of the two heads, but
these drawings have not been traced, although there is a very fine
unnamed study in the Windsor collection (Pl. 36 (1))[83] which is
supposed to represent Jean de Dinteville, the features showing
sufficient resemblance to those of the Bailly of Troyes to induce the
suggestion that it represents him at a later date. Both Sir Sidney
Colvin and Miss Hervey hold this opinion, as did the late Sir Frederick
Burton; but it must be confessed that the resemblance is not very
striking.[84] The Windsor drawing is of a man considerably older than
the Dinteville of the picture; but the Bailly, after his residence in
this country throughout the greater part of 1533, paid only three short
visits to London between the years 1535 and 1537. Even if the drawing
had been made by Holbein in the last-named year he would only have been
in his thirty-third year. A miniature or portrait, painted by Holbein
from this drawing, was in the Arundel Collection, and was engraved by
Hollar. It is highly improbable, too, that after he had been so
elaborately painted Dinteville would have sat again for his portrait a
few years later, so that, all things considered, this attribution can
only be accepted with caution. There is, however, an undoubted portrait
of Dinteville at Chantilly, forming part of the collection of drawings
of the ladies and gentlemen of the Court of Francis I, by Jean Clouet
and his school, which was formerly at Castle Howard. This portrait was
identified by Miss Hervey in 1904.[85] The likeness is very marked,
though the drawing lacks the strength and fine draughtsmanship to be
found in similar portrait-studies by Holbein, and it appears to have
been done within a few years of the picture itself.
Footnote 83:
Woltmann, 345; Wornum, i. 12; Holmes, i. 52; engraved by Hollar, 1649
(Parthey, 1547). Reproduced by Miss Hervey, p. 110; Ganz, _Hdz. von H.
H. dem Jüng._, No. 33; Mantz, p. 177. Hollar’s engraving reproduced by
Ganz, _Holbein_, p. 199 (i.).
Footnote 84:
The drawing was conjectured at one time to represent Charles Brandon,
Duke of Suffolk, and it has also been suggested that it is a likeness
of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. It is described on p. 257.
Footnote 85:
_Burlington Magazine_, vol. v. No. xvi. (July 1904), where the drawing
is reproduced.
[Sidenote: “THE COURT OF FRANCIS II”]
The picture was taken back to France by Dinteville, and remained at
Polisy until the middle of the seventeenth century. By the marriage, in
1562, of Dinteville’s niece, Claude, with François de Cazillac, Baron de
Cessac, the family estates, and with them the picture, passed into the
possession of the latter house, a distinguished family in the south of
France. In 1654 a later François de Cazillac sold Polisy, and
permanently removed to the Château of Milhars in Languedoc, his chief
residence. From the second document quoted above we learn that De Cessac
removed the picture to his town house in Paris in 1653. This house was
in the Rue du Four, St. Germain des Prez, behind the house known as
Chapeaufort, in the parish of St. Sulpice.[86] From 1653 onwards there
is no actual evidence as to the whereabouts of the picture until it
turned up one hundred and twenty years later in the Beaujon sale in
Paris in 1787. During his researches into its past history Mr. W. F.
Dickes discovered this sale-catalogue in the Cabinet des Estampes in
Paris.[87] Nicolas Beaujon, a rich financier and collector of pictures
and objects of art, died without heirs in 1786, leaving all his money to
charities. His pictures were sold in the following spring, and among
them were two attributed to Holbein. These two works were not,
apparently, part of Beaujon’s collection, but were put into the sale by
some other person.[88] The first, which, according to the
sale-catalogue, represented the Court of Francis II, has recently come
to light again;[89] the second was the “Ambassadors” picture. The two
were sold together in one lot for the insignificant sum of 602 francs,
and the purchaser was evidently Le Brun. The description of the picture
in the sale-catalogue tallies almost exactly with Le Brun’s description
which accompanied Pierron’s engraving. From the sale-catalogue he
obtained the supposed names of the sitters, “MM. de Selve et d’Avaux,”
and he evidently endorsed, without troubling to make a careful
examination of his own, the further statement of the catalogue that
there was no date upon it. Probably the picture was in need of cleaning,
so that both signature and date were obscured. Mr. Wornum discovered
them in 1865, and they had been noted by others before that date. When
the picture was acquired for the National Gallery, however, the
signature had again become obscured by dirt, after the passage of some
thirty years, and was only deciphered after re-cleaning.
Footnote 86:
See Miss Hervey, _Holbein’s Ambassadors_, pt. i. chap. ii. p. 21.
Footnote 87:
Dickes, p. 9.
Footnote 88:
See below, p. 46.
Footnote 89:
This picture, which is the subject of a very interesting article by
Miss Mary F. S. Hervey and Mr. R. Martin-Holland in the _Burlington
Magazine_ for April 1911 (vol. xviii. No. xcvii. pp. 48-55), where it
is reproduced, together with other works of its author, a forgotten
French painter named Félix Chrétien, was described in the Beaujon
catalogue as “The Court of Francis II and the principal nobles of that
time, with the attributes of Moses and Aaron, who present themselves
before the King of Egypt, who is Francis II himself; their names are
written on the different contours of their robes,” &c. It further
stated that it was “by the famous Holbein, towards 1552.” From the
time of the Beaujon sale in 1787 all traces of this large panel
painting—5 ft. 9 in. high by 6 ft. 2 in. wide—were lost, until it
suddenly reappeared in Messrs. Christie’s saleroom on February 26,
1910, in company with the big group of Sir Thomas More and Family. In
the catalogue it was given to Holbein, and was described as “Moses and
Aaron before Pharaoh” (“a group of figures, said to represent King
Henry VIII as Pharaoh,” &c.), and as formerly in the collection of the
Prince de Cerny. The mystery of the picture’s meaning was cleared up,
and the name of its painter discovered, by Miss Hervey and Mr.
Martin-Holland, and will be found in their paper. It contains
portraits of a number of the members of the Dinteville family,
including the Bailly of Troyes, who appears as Moses, and his brother,
François II, Bishop of Auxerre, as Aaron. The Pharaoh is evidently
Francis I, though the likeness is by no means a good one. The names of
most of the figures are given on the hems of their robes. The picture
affords valuable additional proof of the identity of the personage on
the spectator’s left in the “Ambassadors” with Jean de Dinteville, for
the likeness is striking. The picture was painted in 1537, and
remained in the possession of the Dinteville family, together with the
greater work by Holbein, for exactly two hundred and fifty years. The
identity of the picture with the one in the Beaujon sale was first
pointed out by Mr. P. G. Konody (_Burlington Magazine_, vol. xix. No.
xcviii., May 1911, p. 106). Félix Chrétien, the painter of it, was a
chorister, and afterwards a canon of Auxerre, of which town he was
probably a native. He was a protégé of the Bishop’s, and no doubt owed
his training in art to him. Several of his pictures, considerably
damaged, remain in the immediate district of Auxerre.
Although no actual proofs can be produced as to the whereabouts of the
picture between 1653 and 1787, Miss Hervey, in the course of her
researches into the history of the De Cessac family, discovered
sufficient evidence to point to the probability that M. de Cessac took
it with him to Milhars when he finally settled there a few years later,
and that it remained there until shortly before the Beaujon sale. The
Milhars estate descended from heir to heir of the house of Dinteville
until 1765, when it was sold by the Marquis de Basville, who then
represented the family. He was the intimate friend of Beaujon, who made
him his executor, in which capacity he drew up the inventory of all the
banker’s pictures and art objects. In this inventory, however, there is
no trace of Holbein’s “Ambassadors” to be found, and the inference is
that as it was included in the Beaujon sale three months later it was
put into that sale by the executor himself. It seems certain, therefore,
that from the time when the picture was taken from England by Dinteville
in 1533 until it was sent back again by Le Brun more than two hundred
and fifty years later it never once left France, but remained as a
treasured possession in the family for whose ancestor it was
painted.[90]
Footnote 90:
See Miss Hervey, pt. i. chap. ii.
[Sidenote: THE THEORIES OF MR. DICKES]
In spite of the conclusive proof brought forward by Miss Hervey, Mr. W.
F. Dickes, in his book devoted to the unriddling of the “Ambassadors,”
refused to abandon his theory of the Nuremberg Treaty, and still pinned
his faith to his Princes Palatine Otto Henry and Philipp. It is
essential to his theory that Holbein should be proved to have been
absent from England in 1533, and he, therefore, gives it as his opinion
that the Steelyard portraits of that year, and the Cheseman
portrait,[91] were most probably painted abroad. He cites, as actual
proof that Holbein was in Basel in 1533, in addition to the extract from
the “Banner Book” referred to in the preceding chapter,[92] the “Wheel
of Fortune” picture in distemper at Chatsworth, which is dated 1533,
with the arms of Basel on the post supporting the wheel. “No one can
doubt,” he says, “that it was painted by Holbein at Basel in 1533;”[93]
but, as a matter of fact, it is not by Holbein at all, being far too
poor a work to be from his hand, but by Hans Schaeufelin, and the
initials “H. H.” on it are of later date. The monogram and the
well-known mark, in the form of a shovel, of the latter painter, which
have been tampered with, are still clearly discernible beneath the
letters.[94]
Footnote 91:
See pp. 54-56.
Footnote 92:
Page 32. See also pp. 157-178.
Footnote 93:
Dickes, p. 6.
Footnote 94:
As pointed out by Mr. S. Arthur Strong in his preface to _The
Masterpieces of the Duke of Devonshire’s Collection of Pictures_,
1901, and republished in _Critical Studies and Fragments_, 1905, p.
92, and Pl. viii. 1.
In his book Mr. Dickes abandons, or at least does not reprint, some of
the more fantastic theories he advanced in his magazine articles; but in
all that he has published on the subject his method of procedure is the
simple one of denying the authenticity of all evidence which is
destructive of his theory. Thus, he does not hesitate to declare the
first document discovered by Miss Hervey to be an eighteenth-century
forgery, and the two confirmatory papers amongst the Godefroy
correspondence he places in the same category. With regard to the date
and Holbein’s signature, he accepts as a fact the “staggering statement”
of the Beaujon sale-catalogue that in 1787 the picture was unsigned and
undated; and he infers that the inscription was added by Le Brun, and
that the three documents discovered by Miss Hervey were all forgeries
due to the same unscrupulous dealer. Why such an elaborate falsification
should be thought necessary, and what purpose it served, unless merely
to display the genealogical learning of the forger, Mr. Dickes fails to
explain. When Le Brun issued his engraving in 1792, with a descriptive
note lifted bodily from the Beaujon catalogue, and retaining the same
title, “MM. de Selve et d’Avaux,” he had already sold the picture into
England, so that to elaborate a series of forgeries in connection with
it, and then scatter them about France and get them inserted among the
papers of learned antiquaries, after the picture had left the country,
would seem to be a very futile proceeding; and if he had added the date
1533 and a false signature to it before selling it he would surely have
refrained from stating in his printed description of it that it was
painted in “la manière dont il a marqué ses ouvrages HB. BH. 1515.” The
whole theory, in fact, is absurd, as is Mr. Dickes’ further declaration
that the name “Policy” on the globe is also a forgery due to Le Brun.
The inscription on the book giving the age of George de Selve, “ætatis
suæ 25,” is also a forgery according to the same authority, or rather,
he holds that the last figure was originally an 8, but that it became
damaged, and that when repaired it was altered to a 5 through the
ignorance of the restorer. The alteration of the age from 25 to 28, it
should be noted, is vital to Mr. Dickes’ argument, for otherwise the
second figure cannot represent Count Philipp. Even this change, however,
is not sufficient to put matters right, and so he assumes arbitrarily
that although the picture was painted in 1533 (in spite of its forged
date!) the ages of the sitters inscribed on the dagger and the book were
purposely calculated from the previous year, in order to indicate that
the painting was a memorial of the Nuremberg Treaty of 1532. Mr. Dickes
professes to find further proofs of the ages of the sitters from the
numerous accessories on the table. The cylindrical sundial is so
arranged that it informs us that the sitter against whom it is placed
was born on April 10th, about 10.30 P. M., in the latitude of Neuburg,
which exactly agrees with the birth of Otto Henry, and this information
is confirmed by the decagonal sundial further along the table. With
respect to the second figure, the instruments are still more explicit,
for the date, November 12th, is repeated no less than four times on
Apian’s Torquetum, the astrolabe, and the quadrant, with the additional
information that the hour of birth was between five and six, which
exactly agrees with the day of the month and the hour of the birth of
Philipp.[95]
Footnote 95:
The present writer, although he has made a careful study of Mr.
Dickes’ readings of the instruments, has not sufficient scientific
knowledge to speak with authority as to the correctness or otherwise
of the results he obtains, which, if true, provide by far the most
ingenious and, indeed, the only plausible evidence he has brought
forward in favour of his theory. This evidence, however, is not always
as convincing as he would have us to believe. Thus, the decagonal
sundial, which on two of its sides gives the time as 10.30 (the hour
of Otto Henry’s birth), very clearly indicates 9.30 on its third and
most prominent side, while it almost touches the elbow of the second
figure, and so should refer, if to any one, to Philipp. Mr. Dickes
gets over this difficulty by the statement that the sundial,
“presenting three circles to be read, naturally devotes the two chief
dials to the principal person. These are—the dial with the wire stile,
in front, and the dial beneath the magnet on the top;” but he offers
no suggestion as to whose birth the third and most prominent dial
refers.
[Sidenote: THE ACCESSORIES OF THE PICTURE]
Space does not permit even a brief reference to further erroneous
inferences which Mr. Dickes draws from other parts of the picture, all
of which were fully and finally dealt with by Sir Sidney Colvin in a
review of the book.[96] Mr. Dickes by no means strengthens his case by
reproducing a number of portraits, selected from various European
galleries, in which he sees likenesses to his two heroes, though they
bear but the faintest resemblance either to genuine portraits of the
Counts Palatine or to the sitters in the “Ambassadors” picture.[97]
Footnote 96:
_Burlington Magazine_, August 1903, pp. 367-69.
Footnote 97:
The two most glaring examples of this, which show to what lengths a
fixed idea can carry one, are the splendid portrait by Holbein of the
Sieur de Morette, which he declares to be painted by Amberger, and to
represent Otto Henry at some date after 1556, when he was Elector
Palatine; and the beautiful little portrait of Hermann Wedigh, of the
Steelyard, dated 1533, which, as already noted, he holds to be an
unmistakable portrait of Philipp.
The book, in spite of the false theory on which it is based, displays
much careful if misplaced research, and as, for this reason, it is apt
to mislead those who have made no serious study of Holbein’s work, its
arguments have been briefly dealt with here. Mr. Dickes, however, is not
alone in refusing to accept Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve as
the two ambassadors. Mrs. G. Fortescue, in her book on the painter,[98]
holds that both Miss Hervey and Mr. Dickes are wrong; but she brings
forward no names to take the place of those she condemns, and merely
suggests, somewhat mysteriously, that later on she will produce facts
which will provide the correct solution.
Footnote 98:
_Holbein_ (“Little Books on Art”), 1904, p. 149.
Turning again to the picture itself, it is evident that the accessories,
with which the table is crowded, both from their unusual number and
character, were not collected at haphazard merely to afford an
opportunity for displaying Holbein’s skill in depicting minutiæ, but
that they represent the tastes and learned pursuits of the two sitters,
and were selected and arranged by Dinteville himself. The prevailing
love of allegory and symbolism, of the emblem or “devise,” which was a
marked characteristic of that age, is apparent in many of the picture’s
details, in some of them to be read plainly, in others so obscurely that
it is now impossible to explain them satisfactorily. Miss Hervey has
described them with care, and has elucidated much of their meaning and
purpose. The appearance of the Death’s-head twice over in the picture—in
the hat-medal worn by Dinteville and in the distorted skull in the
foreground—seems to indicate that the ambassador had adopted it as his
personal badge or _devise_. The picture, indeed, in its general
arrangement bears considerable likeness to the woodcut in the “Dance of
Death” series known as “The Arms of Death” (“Die Wappen des Todes”), as
was first pointed out by Mr. Wornum.[99] This suggests the possibility
that Dinteville had been shown, perhaps by Holbein himself, a proof set
of the “Dance of Death” woodcuts, and that he had been greatly impressed
by them. He suffered much from ill-health while in England, which may
have had something to do with his choice of a device of so gloomy a
nature.
Footnote 99:
Wornum, p. 181.
Certain of the instruments depicted are apparently set to indicate
various dates, such as the birthdays of the sitters or important events
in their lives, as pointed out by Mr. Dickes. The same instruments,
together with the other objects, also represent certain of the Seven
Liberal Arts—Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy. The terrestrial
globe is copied from Johann Schöner’s globe of 1523, to which about
twenty names of towns have been added by Holbein, chiefly in France and
Spain, selected by Dinteville as an epitome of the foreign relations of
France in shaping which he had taken some share, the most important of
these additions, as elucidating the identity of the chief sitter, being,
of course, Polisy. The Lutheran hymn-book and the crucifix may be taken
as symbolical of France’s religious diplomacy and the opinions of the
two friends. The hope of religious union between the Roman Catholic and
the Reformed Churches played a large part in the life of the Bishop of
Lavaur. “To find means to promote that end was the object of his most
earnest thought; to see it accomplished, the dearest wish of his
heart.”[100] Dinteville, too, belonged to the liberal Catholic party in
France, and shared the Bishop’s views. Mr. Barclay Squire first pointed
out that the hymn-book in the picture was painted from a copy of Johann
Walther’s _Geystliche Gesangbüchlein_, published at Wittemberg in 1524.
The German arithmetic book was copied from a manual, _The Merchant’s
Arithmetic Book_, by Peter Apian, published at Ingoldstadt in 1527. The
badge of the order of St. Michael is worn by Dinteville without the
collar of scallop-shells, and merely suspended from his neck by a gold
chain. This was in accordance with the rules of the Order, which
permitted it to be so worn when under arms, or when travelling, hunting,
or when at home in private, or in other places where there was no
company. Other details of the picture are equally interesting, more
particularly the elaborate mosaic pavement, which Miss Hervey discovered
to be an accurate copy of the well-known paved floor in the Sanctuary of
Westminster Abbey, for the construction of which marbles and workmen
were brought from Italy by Abbot Richard Ware in the reign of Henry III.
This interesting discovery affords additional proof that the
“Ambassadors” was painted in England.
Footnote 100:
Miss Hervey, p. 221.
[Sidenote: THE ACCESSORIES OF THE PICTURE]
The picture, which in point of size and in the elaboration of its many
details is the most important work by Holbein remaining in England, is a
brilliant example of the painter’s technical abilities, though as a
composition it is less successful than certain other less ambitious
portraits from his brush. The accessories, on account of their number,
variety, and brilliance of execution, and the central position given to
them—so that the two figures have something of the appearance of the
supporters to a coat of arms, as in some of Holbein’s designs for
glass—to some extent distract the attention from the ambassadors
themselves. Dinteville appears to have selected them with great care,
and evidently attached great importance to them and the meanings they
were intended to convey; while the painter carried out his wishes so
admirably that they remain to-day almost as important a part of the
picture as they did in the opinion of the man for whom the work was
painted. The distorted skull, in particular, which at once catches the
eye, however entertaining or clever a rebus or emblematic puzzle the
Bailly may have thought it, holds far too prominent a position in the
composition for the painting to be regarded as a picture in the highest
sense of the word. It is, nevertheless, a work possessing very great
qualities, and, in many respects, must be placed in the forefront of
Holbein’s achievement. The faces of the two men are finely and
delicately modelled, though their character is not quite so subtly
expressed as in such a portrait as that of the “Duchess of Milan.” The
dark, penetrating eyes and well-chiselled mouth of Dinteville give
vitality to his intellectual face, in which can be traced some
indications of the delicate constitution which was so ill suited to the
climate of England. De Selve is grave in contrast, with dark eyebrows
and a more pallid complexion, and his countenance has less expression
and vitality than is to be found in that of his companion. It has been
suggested that this contrast between the two figures is so great that it
indicates the fact proved by Dinteville’s letter, that the future
Bishop’s stay in this country was of limited duration, and that his
portrait was probably not completed from life.
[Illustration:
VOL. II., PLATE 10
PORTRAIT OF A MUSICIAN
SIR JOHN RAMSDEN, BULSTRODE PARK
]
[Sidenote: “PORTRAIT OF A MUSICIAN”]
In concluding this account of Dinteville’s connection with Holbein
reference must be made to a portrait in the possession of Sir John
Ramsden, Bt., of Bulstrode Park, Buckingham, recently published and
described for the first time by Dr. Ganz in the _Burlington
Magazine_,[101] which represents a man with a book of music and a lute
(Pl. 10). This “Portrait of a Musician” he regards as an undoubted
likeness of the Bailly of Troyes from Holbein’s brush. He describes it
as follows: “The man is sitting behind a table, and holds in his right
hand a roll of paper, in the left a guitar. Two books in red bindings
with green ribbons are placed, one open, one closed, on the red
tablecloth, and this group of colours forms the contrast to the green
curtain of the background. The cap and the black coat with large facings
and white shirt-ruffles hanging down are decorated with golden buttags
of a longish form, after the French fashion of the time. The blue eyes,
looking with a sharp and cold glance, give the impression of a man of
great reflection and prudence; and the beautiful, carefully tended hands
belong to a gentleman of the Court.... Round the neck he wears a small
golden chain and a black silk ribbon, to which is attached an object of
a very singular form, executed in gold and embellished with precious
stones. This cannot be a simple jewel, intended merely to hang on the
gold chain, but it seems to be a kind of whistle used in place of a
tuning-fork.”[102] This portrait is said to represent Lord Vaux of
Harrowden, from its supposed resemblance to the two drawings by Holbein
of that personage at Windsor, but Dr. Ganz holds that it bears a much
closer resemblance to Dinteville as he is shown in the “Ambassadors,”
and still more so to the drawing found by Miss Hervey at Chantilly. He
considers that the longer beard indicates that it was painted two years
later than the National Gallery picture. “The technical execution,” he
says, “confirms a later date of origin; the blending of the colours and
the brilliancy are in the well-preserved parts like the finest enamel.
The right hand, which has a smooth appearance, is retouched; but the
extraordinary quality of Holbein’s art in modelling the flesh without
any contrast is to be found in the face and in the execution of the left
hand. His attention was not limited to creating a portrait with the
exactness of a looking-glass; he tried to give the man in his intimacy
by obtaining a spacious effect. He placed the figure between two objects
and painted the shadows in their real values.” While admitting that the
likeness between this Musician and Dinteville is a strong one, the
present writer is of opinion that the picture at Bulstrode Park does not
represent the French ambassador. As already pointed out,[103]
Dinteville’s subsequent visits to England were all short ones, of only a
few weeks’ duration, during which time there would be little opportunity
for sitting for his portrait, nor is it very probable that he would want
a second likeness of himself so shortly after the big work was finished.
Little is known of the history of Sir John Ramsden’s picture, but it is
probably the _ritratto d’un Musico_ of the Arundel inventory. It is said
to have been purchased in 1860 from a sale in Scotland. Either this
picture, or a replica of it, was in the Ralph Bernal sale, 1855, when it
was sold to Mr. Morant for one hundred guineas. It was described in the
sale catalogue as: “Portrait of Nicholas, Lord Vaux, the poet and
musician, in a black dress and cap, seated at a table, an open book
before him, he holds a viol de gambe in his left hand, green drapery
behind, 17½ × 17, a most beautiful portrait of the highest interest.”
Footnote 101:
Vol. xx., October 1911, pp. 31-2. Also reproduced in _Holbein_, p.
137.
Footnote 102:
This object is in reality “a penknife containing also tooth-picks and
ear-spoons or other little instruments such as tweezers or awls.” See
letter from Mr. Sydney J. A. Churchill in _Burlington Magazine_, vol.
xx., January 1912, p. 239, who calls attention to a similar penknife
in the Figdor Collection, and to an engraving by Aldegrever of a like
object dated 1539.
Footnote 103:
See above, p. 44.
------------------------------------------------------------------------