In the age of Twitter and Wikipedia, it's easy to forget that debates on artistic matters were often carried out via correspondence, or potentially in broadsheet newspapers such as the Times... It might take some considerable time for correspondents to review their peers comments, collate their thoughts, and respond accordingly. Of course there might often be overlap and confusion... No quick blog or tweet here... One such debate surrounded the identification of the sitters in Holbein's The Ambassadors:
The painting The Ambassadors, by Hans Holbein the Younger, was acquired for the National collection in 1890 from the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, in whose family’s collection it had been since 1808-09[i].
We know it had not been exhibited often, but do know that it was shown in the Royal Academy at Burlington House in 1873[ii]. Its very unusual composition had ensured that it was already quite well known to London society, and its acquisition was greeted with mixed enthusiasm[iii]. At £30,000, it was one of the most expensive acquisitions of the day, but a great deal of that money had come from private funding[iv].
When the painting was put on display in the National Gallery in September of 1890[v], the initial excitement lay in the debate over the identity of the two men in the portrait, and in the meaning of the fish, or anamorphic skull, in the foreground of the panel.
It is now widely believed that the two men are in fact Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve, and although references to the original painting referred to a MM. Selve[vi], the connection to George de Selve had not been made, and the name had been ignored.
The traditional account of identity of the men, asserted by Ralph Wornum[vii] and Alfred Woltman[viii], ventured that they were Sir Thomas Wyatt and his secretary John Leland, the antiquary. In August of 1890 J. C. Robinson had concurred with Alfred Woltman in The Times stating that ‘This attribution is, I think, most likely to be the true one’[ix], given the status of the men and their access to Henry VIII.
The rationale behind the first attempts at naming the sitters rested primarily on the location of Holbein at the time of the portrait, and the fact that he was employed by Henry VIII - the assumption being that the sitters must be at Henry’s court, and therefore English. This was an entirely flawed assumption.
At the point of its acquisition for the nation, various enthusiasts began to look at The Ambassadors in earnest, and to comment on the discrepancies between the original identification and elements of the painting. The person on the left appeared to be wearing the Order of St. Michael, a French honour at that time bestowed upon royalty and a few nobles, and his clothing was not typical of that found in England at the time. The painting also indicated the age of the sitters (on a dagger sheaf and a book), and this did not match that of Wyatt and Leland in 1533.
The first person to correctly deduce that Jean de Dinteville was the ambassador on the left was Sydney Colvin of the British Museum, and he did so in The Times, on the very day that the pictures were first displayed in the National Gallery.
Colvin examined pictures of Wyatt and found them wholly different to the figure on the left of The Ambassadors. He then examined the original provenance of the painting commenting that ‘’Sir J. C. Robinson … supposes (as Woltmann had supposed before him) that it received the name of “The Ambassadors” while at Longford.
It was in point of fact traditionally known by that name in the 18th century, when it formed part of the collection of the French connoisseur J. B. Lebrun.’[x] He asserted correctly that the Order of St. Michael and the clothing being apparently French, the likely candidate would be a French ambassador at court, stating that ‘it so happens that in the several French Envoys who came to the Court of Henry VIII in this eventful year, 1533, the most important was exactly of the age required by the inscription in the picture.
This was the Bailly of Troyes, Jean de Dinteville.’[xi]
In its lead on the unveiling of the paintings that day, The Times concurs saying that ‘On the most interesting and much-discussed question of the identity of the persons represented, we print below a letter from Sidney Colvin which, we venture to think, solves the problem as far as the chief Ambassador is concerned.’
Unfortunately Sidney Colvin dismissed the mention of MM. de Selve in the original Lebrun records, saying that ‘The above conjecture unluckily leaves as unsettled as ever the question of the second personage in the Longford picture. … Special students of the period will doubtless not be backward, when the new possession of the nation is once in its place, with suggestions for solving this second branch also of the problem which it presents.’ And so the search for the identity of the sitters began in earnest.
Within the month Charles Eastlake wrote to The Times disagreeing with Sidney Colvin on the basis that it need not be necessary to look abroad, as ‘Among the numerous envoys which Henry VIII sent to the Court of France, surely one or more may have returned decorated with this Order’.[xii] Eastlake thought it far more likely that the sitter was George Boleyn, Viscount Rocheford, brother to Queen Anne, and ambassador to the court of Francis I. The second sitter he suggested was William Paget, a friend of George Boleyn. However Eastlake’s attempt to put the ages of the sitters correctly against the painting does not succeed, and seems clumsy at best.
Two days later J. C. Robinson reversed his earlier agreement with Wornum and Woltmann, and came out in favour of Sidney Colvin’s hypothesis[xiii]. Given the rapid demise of George Boleyn, he thought it highly unlikely that he might be the sitter, and agreed with Colvin that the Order of St. Michael must have some bearing on the identification of the primary Ambassador.
Sidney Colvin replied to The Times within two weeks dismissing Charles Eastlake’s theory, stating that ‘that supposition is to my mind excluded by their appearance, the details of the dress and ornaments, and the character of the accessories, as well as by the French provenance and traditions of the picture and the absence of any English records concerning it’[xiv]. Colvin’s experience as a scholar of some understanding is here demonstrated by his thorough approach to eliminating any contrivance in suggestions of George Boleyn. However he himself is not above speculation and in the same article suggests that the second sitter, by a process of elimination, must be that of Nicholas Bourbon.
Whilst Colvin is able to demonstrate that the two men were friends, and that Bourbon had a number of characteristics which made him a suitable candidate, he does acknowledge that Bourbon’s age does not match that of the sitter on the right hand of the portrait. He tries to close down the argument, suggesting that ‘very strong arguments … will be need to prevent the picture henceforth taking its place in the National collection … as that of the poet-scholar, Nicholas Bourbon, and his friend the Ambassador, Jean de Dinteville’. Here Colvin allows himself to be persuaded by the same lack of documentary evidence that he criticised in Eastlake’s theory.
Between this proposal in October 1890 and December 1895, no few than three other courtiers are suggested as the ambassador on the left. In 1890 Elias Dexter[xv] proposed that the sitter must be William du Bellay, Lord of Longey (accompanied by his brother John). Dexter’s hypothesis is that because the sitters are apparently at least forty years of age, the inscriptions bearing their name must had been falsified after the painting was completed by Holbein. He also proposed that there must have been two versions of the painting, because the Lebrun engraving had a number of alterations to it in comparison with the original in The National Gallery, and that the likeness of the two brothers in existing works matched that of The Ambassadors. This self-published book is long on speculation, and short on actual corroborative evidence, a common feature of the debate.
In August 1891 Walter Money[xvi] proposed that the sitter was Count Balthazar Castiglione, seemingly based solely on the fact that he had been awarded the Order of the Garter for doing good services for Henry VIII. Little or no real documentary evidence supports his claim.
It is not until the 31st August, 1891 that further evidence is presented to support Sidney Colvin’s claims. On that date Edward Dillon wrote to The Times commenting that the newly cleaned painting now meant that names could be read on the terrestrial globe on the second shelf of the painting. One of the names newly revealed to the viewer was that of Polizy or Policy, the home of the Dinteville family estate. Edward Dillon wrote that ‘I think that the identification of the ambassador in Holbein’s picture with Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polizy, may now be regarded as final. On the terrestrial globe from which its position may be regarded as an attribute of the left-hand figure, the following names of towns occur, and no others: - Paris, Lyons, Nuremburg, Venice, Rome and finally Polizy, all except the last important place’[xvii].
Sidney Colvin responded two days later stating that ‘now that the cleaning of the surface has enabled these names to be clearly read, and that among them the obscure village of Polizy, in Burgundy, where Dinteville was born, is found inserted on equal terms with Paris, Lyons, and Bayonne (the only other French towns given), I venture to think with your correspondent that the correctness of the proposed identification must be regarded as placed beyond further doubt’.[xviii]
However, the portrait was not completely identified as Jean de Dinteville until Mary Hervey’s definite work on the subject was detailed in The Times on the 7th December 1895[xix]. At that point Mary Hervey had tracked down a fragment of a parchment which identified both sitters, explicitly, and which matched the age of the sitters within the portrait. Hervey had come across the manuscript listed in a French bookseller’s catalogue, and recognising the significance of the mention of MM de Selve, a clue which had been completely ignored by all other scholars, had purchased the parchment. Once obtained she was able to completely identify the sitters, confirm that the information within the painting had indeed been put there by Holbein, and go into history as the person who identified the sitters in The Ambassadors.
Notes
Because of the frequency with which some authors are noted here, and given the variety of their work, I have maintained the full publication details in each instance to avoid confusion.
[i] For one account of the history of the painting between 1533 and 1900, please refer to Hervey, Mary F. S., Holbein’s ‘Ambassadors’: The Picture and the Men (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1900), pp. 5-31.
[ii] See 'The Longford Pictures at the National Gallery', The Times [London], 11 September 1890, 6.
[iii] ‘A work of such calibre, this thirty thousand pounder, will certainly appeal to a considerable section of the British public, from whom we may expect very mixed opinions as to the value and merits of this newly-acquired treasure’, see Robinson, J. C., 'The Longford Castle Holbein', The Times [London], 19 August 1890, 10.
[iv] The painting was bought as part of a set of three, which cost a total of £55,000. ‘Messrs. N. Rothschild & Sons, Lord Iveach, and Mr. Charles Cotes’ contributed £30,000 to the purchase. See Dickes, William F., Holbein’s Celebrated Picture, Now Called ‘The Ambassadors’, Shown to be a Memorial of the Treaty of Nuremburg, 1532, and the Portray Those Princely Brothers, Counts of Palatine of the Rhine, Otto Henry … and Philippe (etc.) (London: Cassell & Co., 1903), pp. 8.
The Times stated that ‘The price that has been paid - £55,000 - is high, but perhaps not too high; and as the country has to pay less than half of it – the rest having being privately subscribed by generous donors – even the most severe of economists may look upon the purchase with satisfaction’. See 'The Longford Pictures at the National Gallery', The Times [London], 11 September 1890, 6.
[v] The Times informed their readers that the three pictures would be displayed in the Umbrian room of the National Gallery, until a suitable home could be found for them. See 'The Longford Pictures at the National Gallery', The Times [London], 11 September 1890, 6.
[vi] The caption recorded with an engraving made by Lebrun of The Ambassadors read ‘Celui dont on voit l’estampe offer les portraits de MM. de Selve et D’Avaux; l’un fut Ambassadeur a Venise, l’autre le fut dans le nord : ils sone accompagnes des attributes des arts qu’ils cultiaient. J’ai despuis vendu ce tableau pour l’Angleterre, ou il est maintenant; les figures sont de grandeur naturelle’. Not only did it name de Selve, but it correctly asserted that he had been an Ambassador to Venice, although this occurred after the painting was made. It also asserted that the painting had been sold into England, where it now was. See Hervey, Mary F. S., Holbein’s ‘Ambassadors’: The Picture and the Men (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1900), pp. 5-6.
[vii] See Wornum, Ralph N., Some account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein (London: 1867), pp. 275.
[viii] See Woltmann, Alfred, Holbein and His Time (London, 1872), pp. 360-361.
[ix] See Robinson, J. C., 'The Longford Castle Holbein', The Times [London], 19 August 1890, 10.
[x] See Colvin, Sydney, 'The Longford Pictures at the National Gallery', The Times [London], 11 September 1890, 6.
[xi] See Colvin, Sydney, 'The Longford Pictures at the National Gallery', The Times [London], 11 September 1890, 6.
[xii] Eastlake, Charles, 'The Longford Castle Holbein', The Times [London], 7 October 1890, 7.
[xiii] See Robinson, J. C., 'The Longford Castle Holbein', The Times [London], 9 October 1890, 9.
[xiv] See Colvin, Sydney, 'The Longford Castle Holbein', The Times [London], 20 October 1890, 3.
[xv] See Dexter, Elias, 'Holbein’s "Ambassadors" Identified, and other Interesting Matters Relating to the Picture Lately Added to the National Gallery', (London: Published by the author, 1890).
[xvi] See Money, Walter, 'The Longford Holbein', The Times [London], 22 August 1891, 11.
[xvii] Dillon, Edward, 'The Longford Holbein', The Times [London], 31 August 1891, 10.
[xviii] Colvin, Sydney, 'The Longford Holbein', The Times [London], 1 September 1891, 5.
[xix] Hervey, Mary F. S., 'Holbein's "Ambassadors" - The Solution', The Times [London], 7 December 1895, 13.
Bibliography
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