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
The Ambassadors (Holbein) clues to the figures' explorative associations are a selection of scientific instruments including two globes (one terrestrial and one celestial), a shepherd's dial, a quadrant, a torquetum, and a polyhedral sundial, as well as various textiles including the floor mosaic, based on a design from Westminster Abbey (the Cosmati pavement, before the High Altar), and the carpet on the upper shelf, which is most notably oriental, an example of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting. The choice for the inclusion of the two figures can furthermore be seen as symbolic. The figure on the left is in secular attire while the