The Ambassadors Jehan de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, 1533 Oil on Canvas, 1533,  (image courtesy of Wikipedia) Hans Holbein the Younger, Swiss (c.1497-1543) Jehan de Dinteville, French Ambassador to London entertained his friend Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavour in the spring of 1533, shortly after the secret marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, and Henry's subsequent excommunication by the Medici Pope Clement VII.  The title, "The Ambassadors" is slightly inaccurate, for although de Selve later became the French ambassador to Venice, he was not in diplomatic service at the time the picture was painted.  Neither, in fact was the artist, Hans Holbein the Younger, yet in the service of Henry VIII, the English monarch whose image he was  subsequently to record on numerous occasions, and whose famous portraits became perhaps the most recognizable images of any King of England.  Holbein was, at the time The Ambassadors was painted, a moderately successful emigre artist working primarily for the close-knit German merchant community in London.  In addition to being an artist of uncommon skill, Holbein was also an intellectual, with deep emotional ties to the reformed (Lutheran) church, the professed faith of many of his patrons.  De Dinteville spoke German, was an accomplished musician and was friendly with certain members of London's German expatriate circle.  He was, in addition, known to have been sympathetic to religious reform, and it is for this reason that his German friends likely commissioned the strange allegorical portrait which - in due course, brought the artist to the king's attention, and to that of his reform-minded paramour and secret bride, Anne Boleyn. James Middleton