FoMRHI Comm. 1962 John Downing
Comm 1956and the 'Ambassadors'Lute – some Observations and Comment.
Tim Watson's use of computer graphics software as a tool for rendering the geometry of lutes represented in the iconography is to be welcomed (Note 1)
Few can disagree with his conclusions about not putting too much trust in paintings – after all, artists being artists, 'trompe l'oeil' is all part of their bag of tricks and Hans Holbein may be no exception.
If it is true that Holbein painted images with photographic fidelity and perfect vanishing point perspective - as is often claimed - one might reasonably expect that the lute in the 'Ambassadors' painting accurately represented the instrumentas viewed by Holbein.
Mahmoud Korek, using commercial 3D modelling and 'raytracing' rendering computer software, recently developed a full face view of the lute as reported in Comm.1864 (See Fig 3). The results indicate that if Holbein was correctly using the vanishing point perspective convention of his time then the profile of the lute would have been close to that of the Arnault de Zwolle geometry but with a neck length that is too short for a lute with eight frets and a pegbox that is too short to comfortably accommodate 11 pegs. Indeed, the neck length is more appropriate for a 4 or 5 course oud of the 14th C or earlier. Judging from a highlight around the perimeter of the sound hole it would also seem that the rose was not 'cut in' like that of a lute but was separate and glued underneath the sound hole like that of a modern day oud.
So did Holbein use an antiqueshort necked oud as his model, as wasinitially proposed in Comm. 1864,and, if so, why?Is it of significancein this respect that there are other objects in the painting of Middle Eastern origin like the Turkish rug and the scientific instruments and that the polyhedral sundialis said to be set to indicate a position on the North African Barbary coast rather than London?Did either of the two French ambassadors also have Middle Eastern connections at that time? Hard to say but Catholic king Francis I of France three years later, in 1536, entered into an 'unholy' alliance with the Ottoman Turks that was to endure until Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the late 18th C. The alliancegranted the French lucrative trading privileges in the Mediterranean and supported Francis in his ambition to replace Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor through military invasion by the Turks of Hungary (1526) and Austria in 1529.
Alongside the lute in the painting is a case of flutes and, strangely - given the presence of the two Catholic ambassadors - a Lutheran hymnal. Both lute and flute were instruments regularly played by Martin Luther so may also allude to the Reformer.Luther was less critical of the Turks than he was of the Pope and the Jews although as the threat of invasion by the Turks loomed he did modify his stance somewhat in his pamphlet 'On War against the Turk' encouraging the German people to resist any invasion attempt. The Turks for their part openly expressed support forthe Lutheran movement in Europe. Wheels within wheels!
Regardless of the above,a closer examination of the 'Ambassadors' painting indicates that the lute is not drawn in correct perspective – half of the frets do not appear to converge to a single vanishing point, the pegbox seems oddly twisted, the strings are not straight but bent in three places and the bridge appears to be viewed 'face on'.
The proportions of the lute case almost hidden in the back ground suggests that it was made for a much larger lute with a proportionally longer neck than the one on the shelf (See Fig.1 and
Fig 2 – same scale images)
The handle of the terrestrial globe next to the lute appears to be oddly mis-shapen - even amateurish in its execution. Besides, the other objects on the same shelf have different vanishing points leading artist David Hockney to conclude that Holbein assembled these components of the painting – separately painted using optical aids – as a collage put together without particular concern for the rules of perspective (See Comm 1863).
Hockney’s theories about use of optical aids by Holbein have since been challenged by the art historians (Note 2) and it has been suggested that Holbein's approach to perspective representation was purely intuitive (so not necessarily correct). This would seem to the case evident not only in the 'Ambassadors' painting but also in other contemporary examples of Holbein's work (Note 3). After about 1536, while in the service of king Henry VIII in London, Holbein no longer included still life 'props' in his masterful portraits – perhaps because he felt he could not represent their perspective views to perfection?
So was Holbein's lute actually an old oud of Turkish origin or just an improperly drawn six course lute? Impossible to say for sure but most likely the latter because ifHolbein was not a complete master of perspective drawing, as would seem to be the case, no amount of sophisticated computer analysis of the image in his 'Ambassadors' painting can ever reveal its true geometry.
Garbage in garbage out!
Fig 1
Fig 2
Fig 3
Notes
1. Commercially available computer aided 2D design and 3D modelling and rendering software is costly but there are a number of open source (free) programs – such as Blender 3D and YafaRay that are powerful and comprehensive in their scope. Although intended for production of photo realistic computer generated still and moving images they might also be a usefultool for analysis of the iconography?
2. See "Art and Optics - towards an evaluation of David Hockney's new theories regarding opticality in Western painting of the past 600 years" and the paper presented by Christopher W, Tyler, 'Hockney Symposium 2001', New York Institute for the Humanities at:
3. For example the portrait of Georg Gisze painted in 1532 – a German merchant in Londonsurrounded by the tools of his trade (including a Turkish carpet). Perspective representation of some articles is obviously faulty. A high resolution image of the painting is available at: