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
After the Deluge (painting) the unworthy from the world. The painting takes the form of a stylised seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds. Although this was a theme Watts had depicted previously in "The Genius of Greek Poetry" in 1878, "After the Deluge" took a radically different approach. With this painting he intended to evoke a monotheistic God in the act of creation, but avoid depicting the Creator directly. The unfinished painting was exhibited in Whitechapel in 1886, under the intentionally simplified title of The Sun. Watts worked on the painting for a further five years, and the completed version was