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
Hans Holbein the Younger it was destroyed by fire in 1698. It is known from engravings and from a 1667 copy by Remigius van Leemput. An earlier half-length portrait shows Henry in a similar pose, but all the full-length portraits of him are copies based on the Whitehall pattern. The figure of Jane Seymour in the mural is related to Holbein's sketch and painting of her. Jane died in October 1537, shortly after bearing Henry's only son Edward VI, and Holbein painted a portrait of the infant prince about two years later, clutching a sceptre-like gold rattle. Holbein's final portrait of Henry dates from