Holbein Paints the Ambassadors

1533

Hans Holbein the Younger completed a double portrait of two French diplomats at Henry VIII's court, crammed with scientific instruments, globes, and an oblique anamorphic skull that only resolved when viewed from the side. The painting was a brooding meditation on learning, diplomacy, and the brevity of human ambition. The anamorphic skull, resolving only from a sharp angle, is art history's most famous optical trick and a meditation on mortality.