"THE AMBASSADORS"
_Oils. National Gallery_

As has been noted, the complexion of the man at our right is singularly
pallid; the eyes mournfully listless; the skin of his knuckles drawn
into the wrinkles of wasting tissues. He wears a scholar's cap and gown;
the latter of some chocolate-brown pile, richly patterned, and lined
with brown fur. He holds his gloves in his right hand and leans this
arm on a closed book, on the edges of which is the lettering: AETATIS SVAE
25.

An oriental cover is spread on the table, and upon it are a number of
the scientific instruments common to astrology and to the uses of
astronomers like Kratzer, in whose portrait at the Louvre they are also
to be seen. On the lower shelf are mathematical and musical instruments
and books. The two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously.
Near the man at our left, and kept open by a T-square, is the Arithmetic
which Peter Apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in 1527. It is
opened at a page in Division, with its German text plainly legible and
identical with the actual page, as seen in the British Museum's copy of
this edition.

The book nearest the man at our right, lying beneath the lute, has been
also identified as Luther's Psalm-book with music,--in which the German
text is by himself and the music by Johann Walther--first published in
1524. Mr. Barclay Squire has shown that the two hymns could not, however,
have faced each other in reality, as they do in the painting, without
the intervening leaves having been purposely suppressed to gain this
end. These hymns are "Come Holy Ghost" (_Kom Heiliger Geyst Herregott_)
and "Mortal, wouldst thou live blessedly?" (_Mensch wiltu leben
seliglich_). In each case the entire verse is given.

The background is a green-diapered damask curtain most significantly
drawn aside to show a silver crucifix high up in the left-hand corner,
above the man with the dagger and sword. On the beautiful mosaic
pavement is an ugly object that looks like some dried fish. But
experiments have shown that the French Sale-Catalogues in which this
work first appears in the eighteenth century--first, that is, so far as
we can trace it by any records now known--were right in calling this a
"skull in perspective"; _i.e._ a skull painted as seen distorted in a
convex mirror. Some hint of its true character can be gathered, though
not much, by looking at this object from the lower left-hand corner of
the painti