The following is an excerpt from "Hans Holbein" by Arthur B. Chamberlain, Deputy Keeper of the Birmingham Art Gallery, published in 1902:

The picture popularly known as The Ambassadors, formerly in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, was purchased for the nation in 1890. Until that year the left-hand figure was always supposed to represent Sir Thomas Wyatt, poet and diplomatist, and his companion some unknown friend and fellow Ambassador, who, Dr. Woltmann suggested, was John Leland. When the picture was first exhibited in the National Gallery many suggestions were made as to their real identity, the most important being that of Mr. W. F. Dickes, who wrote several long articles to prove that they were the German Counts Palatine Otto Henry and his brother Philip, and that the picture represented “The Nuremberg Treaty of Religious Freedom between the Catholics and Protestants.” Happily, the matter was settled in 1895 by Miss Mary F. S. Hervey, who discovered documentary evidence of so exact a kind that no doubt remains that the portraits are those of Jean de Dinteville, seigneur de Polizy, bailly de Troyes, and a knight of the French Order of St. Michael, and his friend, George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. Mr. Dickes, however, has recently returned to the charge (1901), doubts the evidence, and still pins his faith to his Counts Palatine.

Dinteville came here as French Ambassador more than once, and was in London in that capacity from February to November, 1533, the year in which the picture was painted, and during that time De Selve paid him a visit. George de Selve was appointed to the see of Lavaur in 1526, when only eighteen, but was not consecrated Bishop until 1534, and so in the picture is not shown in episcopal dress. He was one of six brothers, nearly all of whom gained distinction as Ambassadors. He himself served as Ambassador on a number of occasions, and his piety, his profound learning, and his keen interest in all intellectual pursuits, as Miss Hervey tells us in her exhaustive study of these two men and their picture, made him one of the most remarkable men of his day.

The two men stand on each side of a high, two-shelved table. Dinteville, on the left, is gorgeously dressed in a doublet of rose satin, with a black jacket and surcoat lined with ermine. His dark hair is cut straight across his forehead. De Selve, on the right, is clad in a long brocaded gown of chocolate colour, lined with brown fur. His hair and beard are also dark. Both shelves of the table are covered with a number of books, mathematical, musical, and other instruments, including a celestial and a terrestrial globe, sundial, lute, flutes, and other emblems of the pursuits in which they were interested. The curious object in the foreground is merely a distorted skull, which, when looked at from the side, assumes its proper proportions—a kind of optical puzzle, which had some vogue in the sixteenth century. The pattern of the pavement of coloured marbles was copied by the artist from the one in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.

The many details of the picture have been painted with Holbein’s usual accuracy and perfection. The faces of the two men are finely and delicately modelled, though their character is not quite so subtly expressed as in such a portrait as the Duchess of Milan. The dark, penetrating eyes and well-chiselled mouth of Dinteville give vitality to his intellectual face. De Selve is grave in contrast, with dark eyebrows and a more pallid complexion, and his countenance has less expression than is to be found in the other. The nobility of type of these two well-born, intellectual men is, however, admirably depicted by Holbein in a picture which is splendid both in colour and in treatment.