The Argument:

It has long been known that the floor in the painting is based on the floor in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, but no convincing explanation for the inclusion of this detail has been presented.

• The original inscription included in the Westminster Abbey pavement provides a crucial bit of evidence. Around the central circle originally appeared the inscription: Spericus archetypum, globus hic monstrat macrocosmum.
• Even without the inscription, it is likely that Holbein and his patrons would have understood the pattern as signifying the macrocosm.
  • The pattern can be related to macrocosm diagrams going back to at least the Early Middle Ages.
  • This tradition continued into the Renaissance:
    • Charles de Bovelles and Oronce Finé, French contemporaries of the patrons, included similar diagrams in their texts.
    • A very similar floor can be found in the Sistine Chapel directly beneath the Creation of Adam. This relationship between the floor and the painting articulates the central position of "Man" in Renaissance cosmology.
    • The pattern can also be related to the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura. The opposition of the different elements in the macrocosm can be related to the contrast in disciplines included in the Stanza.
    • The pattern can also be found underlying the plan of Renaissance churches like Bramante's plan for the reconstruction of St. Peter's.

Understanding the floor as signifying the macrocosm establishes a relationship of the men, as the microcosm, to the rest of the painting and to the world as a whole, the macrocosm.

• The microcosm/macrocosm concept established for the Renaissance the central position of man in creation.
• Man has a unique position participating both in the terrestrial and super-terrrestrial worlds.
• Due to his central position in creation, human wisdom is an encyclopedic knowledge of all things. Through senses man apprehends the physical world and through intellect man participates in the realm of pure intelligence. Reason plays a necessary intermediate role between sense and intellect.
• This hierarchy of knowledge beginning with sense followed by reason and completed by intellectual vision provides a conceptual framework for understanding the painting.

The painting itself with all its meticulous attention to detail and careful differentiation between the variety of materials calls to attention sensible knowledge.

Discursive reason plays a central role between sense and intellect.

• Reason enables the application of order and structure to sensible experience. Comparably the painting's balanced structure of the horizontals and verticals bring order to the painting.
  • The two shelves of the table which form the dominant horizontals in the painting serve to contrast the terrestrial realm with the objects on the lower shelf including a terrestrial globe to the celestial realm with the astronomical instruments on the upper shelf including a celestial globe.
  • The two men who form the dominant verticals in the painting link the terrestrial and celestial realms which recalls the unique position of man in Renaissance conceptions of creation.
  • The men also offer a contrast between the active figure of Dinteville who holds his attribute of the dagger on which is inscribed his age to the contemplative figure of de Selve who rests his arm on a book on which is inscribed his age.
• The objects on the lower and upper shelves of the table can be related to the Quadrivium, the four mathematical sciences of the Seven Liberal Arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. But this is not the traditional Quadrivium of the Medieval university, but the Quadrivium of the new learning based on direct experience and with practical applications.
• In using the Quadrivium to study the world, humans show their likeness to God. For in the creation of the world God ordered things in "measure, and number, and weight." Thus in the application of the Quadrivium to the study of the worlds, humans recreate God's creation in human thought. In The Ambassadors, the books and instruments are "the rational entities and artificial forms" of the human conceptual world created in the likeness of the world of "real entities and natural forms" that are the products of God's creation.

The results of human reason, while gaining positive knowledge, are necessarily limited and lack precision since they are based on finite senses and reason.

• The understanding of the essential limitation of human thought helps to explain several details in the painting:
  • The different faces of the polyhedral sundial on the upper shelf are not consistent.
  • The lute on the lower shelf has a broken string.
  • Most significantly the anamorphic skull in the foreground assertively calls to our attention human transience.
    • The anamorphic representation makes explicit the limitation of human vision. We can either see the painting from the front or the skull from the sides but not both at the same time. Divine vision transcends the human limitations of time and place.
    • The encounter with the skull demands a cancellation and transcendence of the normal point of view. The skull is thus encountered, to paraphrase Nicholas of Cusa, unlike any other thing in the painting-- ignorantly, or unintelligibly in a shadow or in darkness or unknowlingly.
    • Holbein's decision to have the skull cover the center of the floor pattern seems intentional. In the syntax of the painting, human mortality obscures a direct vision of God, the absolute center of the world.
• Renaissance political theory asserts that the fundamental purpose of government is to maintain good order, harmony, and peace, the universal patterns that were believed to underly the structure of the macrocosm. Human finiteness makes this an unattainable goal.
  • The broken lute string recalls the same motif in Alciati's Emblematum Liber. There the broken string is likened to the difficulty in achieving true harmony in political alliances.
  • The Lutheran Hymnbook has the obvious reference to the religious discords of the period.
  • The Ambassadors should be seen against the backdrop of the political and religious discords that were dividing Europe during this period.

To transcend the limitations of human reason, one needs to aspire to visio intellectualis , or intellectual vision. As stated by Nicholas of Cusa, "[T]his unintelligible reality is encountered by the loftiest intellect --freed from all images-- when all things have been transcended."

• Nicholas of Cusa's central concept of the coincidence of opposites, that in God all oppositions are reconciled, is very useful in viewing The Ambassadors. The paintings balanced oppositions of active/contemplative and celestial/terrestrial are the results of the application of discursive reason to the world. In God all these oppositions are reconciled.
• Contemplating the skull brings us self-knowledge of our own limitations. Significantly Dinteville has a brooch with a representation of a skull on his cap.
• Visio intellectualis is unattainable through human effort. It is a gift given through faith in Jesus and Christ's Passion.
  • This idea is suggested in the painting by several details:
  • Most directly in the half-hidden crucifix in the upper-left corner of the painting. The choice of the half-hidden representation suggests the unique nature of Christ in his two natures. In George de Selve's own words Christ in His humanity is "visible, passible, [et] mortel," while in his divinity he is "invisible, impassible, immortel, et egal a Dieu son pere."
  • Christ's Redemption of humankind through His Passion is also alluded to by the cylindrical sundial that is significantly set for April 11 which was Good Friday in 1533.
  • The appearance of both a skull and a crucifix in The Ambassadors recalls images of St. Jerome in His Study. Jerome was a clear model for the Christian humanist in the tradition of Erasmus.
  • Another allusion can be seen in the Lutheran Hymnbook on the lower shelf. The two texts shown in the painting are probably a reference to the Lutheran theme of the contrast between the Law and the Gospel or Grace.
    • This theme gained wide popularity in a visual form through the works of Lucas Cranach. The theme appears at least twice in other works by Holbein: Edinburgh panel and the Coverdale Bible frontispiece. It was also used in the frontispiece to Lefèvre d'Etaples' translation of the New Testament in 1530.
    • The theme of Law and the Gospel can be connected to the central Lutheran doctrine of the Justification by Faith. Humans can only be justfied by the free gift of grace by God through Christ's passion and not by works.
    • The theme of Justification by Faith has important parallels in the writings of Lefèvre d'Etaples, the moderate French reformer.
    • The writings of George de Selve also discuss the question of Justification by Faith.
• Divine Wisdom, true peace, and Justification are only possible through Christ. This a central theme in the writings of George de Selve:
  • In an oration apparently prepared for the Diet of Speyer in 1529, de Selve called for the opposing factions in the conflict between the Catholic Chruch and the Reformers to "vanquish themselves in the mirror of Jesus Christ" and come together in the mystical body of Christ.
  • In a discourse addressed to the Emperor and the French King de Selve called for a spiritual peace where all are reunited in the body of Christ.
  • In another text, he warned the courtier not to simply serve the master's appetites but to understand that true peace and security can only be gained by serving the true master, Jesus Christ.
  • The unity of the world in belief in Jesus Christ is echoed in the excerpt from the hymn Veni sancte Spiritus included in the Lutheran Hymnbook.

Conclusion: For all its attention to materiality and rational structure, the true subject matter of The Ambassadors is what is unrepresentable and unknowable --God. What is represented is a network of signs that leads us to this true reality hidden in the world of appearances.

• The Ambassadors can be likened to the Silenus of Alcibiades in Erasmus' Adages:
  • "What is most excellent in any way is always the least showy...."
  • "...under these veils, great heaven what wonderful wisdom lies hidden."
  • "If you crack the nut, you find inside that profound wisdom, truly divine, a touch of something which is clearly like Christ Himself."
  • In his The Praise of Folly, Erasmus writes: "...what at first sight seems to be death, if you view it narrowly may prove to be life; and so the contrary."
• The painting asks us to see invisibly the invisible truth which is hidden behind the surface of appearances.