THE AMBASSADORS UNRIDDLED. By W. F. Dickes. London: Cassells. MR. DICKES has been ill-advised to repeat and amplify, as he has done in this volume, a theory concerning Holbein's picture of The Ambassadors of which all competent students recognized the futility when it was first broached in The Magazine of Art a dozen years ago. Since then. the subject and history of the picture have been completely elucidated by Miss Mary Hervey in a book published in 1895. Her work is a model of patient, sagacious and fortunate industry. No links of any consequence are wanting in the chain of evidence, internal and external, by which she has made it certain that the portraits in the picture are those of two leading French diplomatists of the time, the one a man of the sword and the other of the robe, viz. Jean de Dinteville, bailly of Troyes, and his friend, George de Selve, bishop of Lavaur; that the picture was painted by Holbein in London when the two friends were here together in the spring of 1533; and that it is the identical work described in three perfectly authentic documents of the mid-seventeenth century as having been. preserved down to that date at Polisy, the seat of the Dinteville family in Champagne. The traditional name of the picture in the eighteenth century, The Ambassadors, is thus completely justified. Of one ambassador, M. de Selve, tradition had also quite rightly preserved the name ; while of the other, Jean de Dinteville, the name had been lost; and the name D'Avaux, which belonged to a diplomatic family of a later generation, had been substituted mistakenly. It is the pleasure of Mr. Dickes to ignore these proofs, and to assert a rival theory for which there is not a shadow either of antecedent likelihood or of genuine evidence, while it is flatly at variance with tradition. His work, the result of no small industry and application of a blundering kind, is a pathetic example of the fate which awaits an untrained inquirer who has become possessed by an idée fixe and insists on burrowing with obstinate blindness in a hopelessly wrong direction. Kindness would suggest that such a performance should be ignored; but as its illusory air of candour and research has actually misled some unwary critics, let it be dealt with here as briefly and gently as the case admits. ¶ The theory of Mr. Dickes is that the picture represents the two German brothers, Otto

Henry and Philip, counts palatine of the Rhine, who had their residence at Neuburg and were known as dukes of Neuburg, and that it was painted in celebration of a treaty of Nuremberg concluded between the Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany in 1532. The road by which the author has arrived at this conclusion is somewhat as follows: A conspicuous feature in the picture is a lute with a broken string. In Alciati's famous book of Emblems, of which the first extant edition was published at Augsburg in 1531 (though some of the emblems had previously been in circulation, most probably in manuscript), a lute is the symbol of a treaty. Or rather it is the symbol of a particular group of treaties, Foedera Italorum; in all probability the league of Cognac, which in 1626 united the princes of Italy with France and England. against the emperor. A set of Latin verses accompanies the emblem, and declares, among other things, that if a single string should be illstretched or broken, all power of pleasing will depart out of the instrument and its excellent music will become jangled. Obviously, therefore, if the lute with the broken string in Holbein's picture has anything to do with Alciati and his emblems at all, it must signify a treaty broken and not a treaty made and confirmed. Mr. Dickes shuts his eyes to this root fact of the case, and builds all his argument on the patently false supposition that it is the emblem of a treaty signed and valid. Having further, on no reasonable grounds whatever, satisfied himself that the picture represents two brothers of whom one is Catholic and the other Protestant, he hunts up his history of the Reformation, and learns about the treaty of Nuremberg and the concern in it of the two brothers, Counts Otto Henry and Philip. From that moment it becomes a fixed dogma with him that these are the persons represented, and all facts and evidences have to be pulled about like putty in order to prove it. Thus the inscriptions on the picture, which are perfectly genuine, declare that Holbein painted it in 1533, and that at that date the age of the lay personage in short cloak, sword and dagger was twenty-nine, and of the clerical or legal personage in square cap and velvet gown, twenty-five. These indications absolutely fit alike the date of Dinteville's mission, that of Selve's visit, and those of Dinteville's birth and Selve's birth. But they are hopelessly out for

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Counts Otto Henry and Philip. So it costs Burlington Mr. Dickes nothing to declare the inscription with the artist's name and the date a forgery; Magazine, when in fact it has been proved unquestionably Number genuine by the test of the same careful processes which cleared away the dirt and accretions of time from other details in the work. Agreeing that the picture was painted in 1533 (for which there is no evidence at all except this same impeached inscription), Mr. Dickes then assumes the arbitrary date 1532 (that of the signature of his Nuremberg treaty) from which to calculate the ages of the sitters. Even so he cannot get them right, Otto Henry having been born in 1502 and Philip in 1503. The former thus still remains one year and the latter five years too old; so that in the case of Philip the figure 25 has to be declared, again without a shadow of foundation, to have been altered. ¶ Once more, the lay ambassador in the ordinary court. dress of the time, short cloak, sword and dagger and tasselled belt, wears the badge of the French order of St. Michael, thus confirming the tradition and the probability that he was a Frenchman. This would be fatal to Mr. Dickes's theory, so it has to be made out that the badge is not that of the famous order at all. For this Mr. Dickes has no better proof than that it is not identical with the same order as figured about a century later in Favyn's 'Théâtre d'Honneur et de Chevalerie.' But there was no mechanical uniformity in the badge of the order as worn by its members, and still less in its representation by artists supplying their portraits. All students of French sixteenth-century portraiture, whether painted or engraved, can easily recall a dozen or a score of variations in the badge; while no such student could have a moment's doubt that Holbein's sitter, whatever else he was or was not, is declared by this badge to be a knight of the order. This is again one of the cardinal facts by which an inquirer must be guided, and to contradict it as Mr. Dickes does is merely idle.

Again, Miss Hervey discovered in a Paris curiosity shop in 1895, and presented to the National gallery, a docketed seventeenth-century document on parchment fully describing the picture and its contents. Mr. Dickes at the time attacked the authenticity of this document in detail, on grounds which to any trained paleographer are ridiculous. In his book he does not reprint his arguments, but in an innocently impertinent dedication to the trustees of the National gallery coolly puts it aside as 'suppositi

tious.' In point of fact it has no flaw whatever except that it is destructive of his theory. But worse: Miss Hervey, whose methods are as sound and scrupulous as those of Mr. Dickes are the reverse, also found in the library of the French Institute two other documents of the seventeenth century minutely confirming the contents of the first: these are papers of the Godefroy family relating to a correspondence between themselves and Nicholas Camusat, the wellknown antiquary of Troyes, who had made it his business to collect historical and archaeological traditions concerning his native town and its distinguished families, including that of Dinteville. These documents are too irrefutable to be contested: Mr. Dickes therefore placidly ignores them. In like manner, in trying to show, what his theory requires, that the picture was painted not in London but in Germany, he ignores Miss Hervey's proof that the pavement is copied strictly from one still extant in Westminster abbey. As a point on his side, he quotes as having been painted by Holbein at Basle in 1533 a picture of a Wheel of Fortune 'in the collection of the duke of Westminster.' The picture he means belongs in fact to the duke of Devonshire, and was painted by Hans Schaufelein; whose monogram and mark of a shovel have been tampered with but are still clearly discernible, and whose style is quite unlike that of Holbein. One more instance may suffice for the illustration of this gentleman's incredible method of dealing with the evidences which substantiate the real meaning and contents of the picture. Among the instruments on the table symbolical of the arts to which these two cultivated and liberal young diplomatists were devoted, is a small hand globe, which has been identified as copied, with the addition of a certain number of place-names, from that published by Schöner at Nuremberg in 1523. On this globe the name of Nuremberg appears conspicuously, as of course is natural, since that was its place of publication. Mr. Dickes at once reads this as an evidence for his theory that the picture is meant to celebrate the peace of Nuremberg. Among the place-names added by the painter to those which were inserted by the cartographer are three of German provinces, four of Spanish provinces, five of French provinces, and three of French towns, Paris, Lyons and Bayonne, besides one which is that of Dinteville's own village and fief in Champagne, Polisy (the s a little broken by a crack in the panel). These additions are exactly

what might have been expected to be dictated. by a French diplomatist engaged in the combinations of his country at the time with Spain and Italy, while the insertion of Polisy is of course a final link in the proof that the lay ambassador is no other than Dinteville. This insertion is promptly and without a shadow of reason declared by Mr. Dickes an eighteenth-century for¶ Now for an instance of the kind of evigery. dence with which this critic tries to support his own theory. Dinteville in the picture wears a girdle with a rich tassel hanging at the front. So do a number of great gentlemen in portraits of this time; as for instance the well-known Earl of Surrey at Hampton Court, and the sitter in the famous portrait of Morett in the gallery at Dresden. But Mr. Dickes thinks it a great point for his argument that a tassel (though one, as he does not mention, of other colours) was among the quarterings in the arms of his counts palatine. So he not only ignores its habitual use in the fashions of the day; he maintains that the Dresden picture, in which the sitter also wears the tassel, is another and later portrait of the same Count Otto Henry, and that it was painted not by Holbein but long after Holbein's death by Christoph Amberger. The suggestion is merely preposterous: the Dresden picture is not only by Holbein, but one of the very finest and the most central of his works, of far finer artistic quality, indeed, than our National gallery picture ; and the features have no resemblance to those of Dinteville (Mr. Dickes's Otto Henry) in the London picture except in the mere fashion of the hair and beard. Moreover, the identity of the sitter in the Dresden picture as another French ambassador to England, Charles de Soliers, sieur de Morette, has lately been put out of the possibility of doubt by the discovery of a fine contemporary medallion portrait of the same sitter, in boxwood, with his name and titles in full and on the back his device of a seaport, a horse, and a dolphin. But why pursue the ungrateful subject farther? Mr. Dickes's book bristles on every page with similar absurdities of statement and of inference. Fortunately, for any qualified and careful reader, he sometimes provides an antidote against his own theories by himself furnishing the obvious means of their refutation. Nothing, for instance, could be more grotesque than the collection of different and totally unlike portraits which he has picked out of various galleries in Europe, and would persuade us to accept as all representing the valiant Count Philip, the defender of Vienna. The

mere possibility of his taking all these, together The with the French cleric in The Ambassadors, for Ambassadors one and the same person, would seem to argue Unriddled him form-blind in the same degree as the whole tenour of his book unfortunately argues him fact-blind and evidence-proof. S. C.

UN DES PEINTRES PEU CONNUS DE L'ÉCOLE FLAMANDE DE TRANSITION. Jean Gossart de Maubeuge, sa vie et son œuvre, d'après les dernières recherches et des documents inédits. Par Maurice Gossart. 147 pp., 2 engravings, and 12 phototypes. Lille, 1903. Being at Veere some years ago, and finding that I had a few hours at my disposal before the members of the gild of St. Thomas and St. Luke could arrive, I bethought me of the local archives, which I fancied would probably contain documents throwing light on the history and works of Gossart. I found the archives in confusion, and was not so fortunate as to discover anything. I had hoped on taking up the present volume to find that the author had been more fortunate, but, alas, it contains no mention of these archives, which probably still await the visit of someone with leisure and patience to devote to their examination. It is a pity that M. Gossart has not been able to undertake this ; still we must be thankful for what he has done. Any attempt to clear up the history of an artist of note, especially of one to whom many works are attributed, is deserving of praise and encouragement. The settling of the date of Gossart's visit to Italy with Philip of Burgundy and of his death are two important additions to our knowledge. ¶ John Gossart, son of Simon, a bookbinder, was born at Maubeuge about 1472. It is not known when or to whom he was apprenticed, or where he worked prior to 1503, in which year he was admitted as free master into the gild of St. Luke at Antwerp. In 1508 he went to Rome with his patron, Philip of Burgundy, admiral of Flanders, who was sent by the Archduchess Margaret on an embassy to Pope Julius II. Starting from Mechlin on October 26, 1508, they visited Verona and Florence on their way to the Eternal City, where, after the return of Philip, Gossart remained copying antique works of art for him until July 1509, when he set out for the Netherlands, arriving at Middleburg in November. He remained in the service of Philip until the death of that prince in 1524, and then entered that of Adolphus of Burgundy, marquis of Veere, with whom he remained until his death in 1533. So far good, and had the