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Ambassadors
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by Jennifer Margrave
It was as the jigsaw pieces slowly came together, forming a famous picture, that the men spoke to me: tell our story they said. You are the one we have waited for. Nearly five hundred years we have waited, but now you are here.
Christmas is nothing without jigsaw puzzles and the 1000-piecer forming Holbein's Ambassadors was a gift eagerly opened and started.
Framework first; not easy with all that green curtain at the top. The floor was easier with geometric shapes; the patterning gave me clues. Except for that great diagonal slice of a twisted greyness cutting across the patterns. It was unidentiable in this flat reproduction but I knew that, in the original, it would evolve into a skull if you stood in the right position; a reminder of mortality. The two men seemed not to notice, confident in their roles on either side, neither foot touching the horrific caricature of death.
I continued with the pieces, some formed into such shapes that it was easy to place them; others were obvious because of the parts of the picture they represented; a piece of hand; an eye, a strange shape of finely grained wood, colours, of bright fuchsia, ochre, and tassels of gold. It all added up to a rich, positive scene. After that, the bits of sextant, wobbly globe, musical instruments with string pinging broken - all easily recreated.
Then the two men's faces are fully formed. They stare out at me: both of them. We know who we are, two of the highest in the land, of France, one of us in the Church, the other a diplomat. We are friends, we want the world to see us together. We are rich, and wish to show our positions in the world.
But I knew differently. This painting, so rich, so large, was not displayed in its day; never mentioned in despatches. I knew Holbein's painting to be the strangest of his work; the largest, the only one he signed, the only one that he dated: 1533. It was lost to the world until found by a Victorian art historian in an obscure French chateau called Polisy. Even stranger is, if you look carefully at the globe lying askew on the bottom shelf Polisy is shown as the centre of the world, at a time when Jerusalem was usually shown as the centre.
There are no records of the painting in Holbein's extensive notes of his work, as there are of other of his famous paintings, of how he came to record colours, lines, the profiles of his sitters.
No-one knows why it ended up in Polisy, except that was one of the family chateaux belonging to De Dinteville; the man who stands with the sword, with the richer clothes, the ambassador.
Even stranger is that at the time of the painting, there is great turmoil in England where it was executed; no-one should have had leisure to sit for such a work. Henry VIII has just married Anne Boleyn, she is expecting her first child, an eagerly awaited son and heir to the throne. Everyone is gossiping, rumours fly.
Even across the Channel this is so. Francis 1, hemmed in between the Great Emperor Charles V, and Henry VIII, is keeping his options open; should he follow Henry's lead and make himself head of the church in France as Henry has done in England, or should he condemn Henry? He sends spies, to watch the Court of England but also to spy on each other. De Dinteville can be trusted; or can he? So he sends the Bishop of Lavour, one George de Selve, the other man in the painting, to keep an eye as well. These two should not meet or be friends; they are supposed to be watching each other.
But they do meet secretly; so it is recorded. But would you then commission a great painting, more than life size, from the up and coming Court painter, Holbein?
There is a nonsense here; and the two men know it. Look at the picture; they are surrounded by broken instruments, everyone a symbol, well-known to their Tudor contemporaries but only guessed at now, emerging as I fix more pieces; I have quickly compiled a great swatch of Dinteville's chest, with its gold chain, the Order of the Fleece. Their faces are now shown and they both stare out; as if they are waiting for someone, as they lean nonchalantly against the shelving between them.
Like my jigsaw there are too many uneven pieces, too many dark areas, other areas of their lives, where the picture is confusing until all the parts are fitted together. I look at the completed jigsaw puzzle; I need to investigate further. Surely I am imagining too much.
Trafalgar Square, 2003:The National Gallery.
I visit the National Gallery, walk through the main entrance, up the stairs, turn left, push through heavy fire doors; through one gallery, then left again; and there it is - the actual painting in a gilt frame more than life-size, of two men, leaning lazily on the shelves between them. Holbein's Ambassadors. A giant jigsaw puzzle; this large it has so many facets it seems that, if it was cut into pieces, it would be impossible to view.
Now I can see it in their eyes, which glint as I move in front of the painting. Yes, they are talking to me, pleading with me. Despite being stowed away for more than four hundred years after it was painted , it is bright, the colours resplendent, much more so than my jigsaw puzzle. It stops gazers in their tracks; all admire it but no-one understands its true significance
The gap between the two men is immense as if there should be another person in the frame.
Now, staring, knowing it so well from my jigsaw, I start to ask those questions again: Why did Holbein paint the picture? Was it commissioned, like most of his works? Surely a jobbing painter wouldn't work such a large canvas for his own pleasure? Someone must have paid for it.
Why are they painted together?
And why was it never shown, not known until several hundred years later?
Only recently has the painting received its name: The Ambassadors.
Dinteville, the one on the left, hand on dagger, confident and richly adorned, wrote from the English Court to his brother in France, at the time the picture was painted: 'Tell no-one, but I met with our friend de Selve today.' So, a secret meeting between those who influence the doings of the great courts of early sixteenth century Europe - France and England - not so secret if a more than life-size picture is to be seen by others.
I stare at the picture, I am sitting now, really concentrating - de Selve looks at me with a diffident smile as if, if I wait long enough, he would explain - or confess, for he is used to so doing, being a Catholic Bishop. Dinteville may not tell though - he is more aristocratic, more reserved. He is trained in diplomatic ways; he is never going to tell. His feet are firmly planted in the mosaic that represents the world, or so it seems to me as I look. The painting is not so much dominated but disfigured by the peculiar shape slashed across the floor between the men's feet; move to the right and it transforms into a huge skull. Representation of death. I wonder; is someone missing from this large painting? Having thought that, I become convinced. The more I stare, the more I believe it is uneven; there should be a third person in this design.
I am staring too much; the picture seems to judder, the men are smiling at me, direct. They move, step over the magic skull before them and walk back into their childhoods where their story began...
Copyright © Jennifer Margrave
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Holbein's Ambassadors (jm_ambassadors) updated 23:20 Jan 7 2010 (text.pl 11.2.43/c utility 1.1.20/c)