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The Ambassadors
Two young Frenchmen at the court of Henry VIII, between them a table of globes and instruments, and a skull across the floor.
Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador in London, and his friend Georges de Selve, a bishop, stand either side of a shelf of things for measuring the heavens and the earth: globes, sundials, a quadrant, a lute with a broken string.
The grey smear across the floor is a skull, painted in steep perspective: it only takes its shape when you look from close to the frame on the right. Death waits behind all that learning. The National Gallery bought it in 1890. Stand before it in 3D ›
More in The National Gallery
SunflowersVincent van Gogh, 1888
The Hay WainJohn Constable, 1821
The Arnolfini PortraitJan van Eyck, 1434
The Fighting TemeraireJ. M. W. Turner, 1839
The Rokeby VenusDiego Velázquez, 1647–1651
WhistlejacketGeorge Stubbs, c. 1762
Bathers at AsnièresGeorges Seurat, 1884
The Water-Lily PondClaude Monet, 1899
