The Ambassadors (Holbein) the lower shelf repeats a portion of a cartographically imaginative map created in possibly 1530 and of unknown origin. The map is referred to as the Ambassadors' Globe due to its popularly known appearance in the painting. The work has been described as "one of the most staggeringly impressive portraits in Renaissance art." The most notable and famous of Holbein's symbols in the work, however, is the distorted skull which is placed in the bottom center of the composition. The skull, rendered in anamorphic perspective, another invention of the Early Renaissance, is meant to be a visual puzzle as the
Self-portrait (Hans Holbein the Younger) by Lucas Horenbout, in which the left-handed Holbein is holding a paintbrush. Art historian Stephanie Buck notes that Holbein's direct gaze suggests he was looking into a mirror. Holbein died not long after completing this self-portrait, probably of the plague. The work was acquired in London for Gran Duke Cosimo III de' Medici in 1681. As in other works by Holbein, there is much attention given to details, such as the hair strands, which were painted one-by-one. Self-portrait (Hans Holbein the Younger) The Self-portrait is a small drawing by the German Renaissance artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger, completed