who painted this?

Question

http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=whomh9.png

Answer 1

Hans Holbein; it's a famous example of anamorphic art. the distorted image is said to represent that death is inevitable, but it should be noted that the name Holbein means "hollow bone".

Answer 2

The Ambassadors
Full title: Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ('The Ambassadors')

1533

HOLBEIN the Younger, Hans
1497/8 - 1543

NG1314. Bought with contributions from Charles Cotes, Lord Iveagh and Lord Rothschild, 1890.

This picture memorialises two wealthy, educated and powerful young men. At the left is Jean de Dinteville, aged 29, French ambassador to England in 1533. To the right stands his friend, Georges de Selve, aged 25, Bishop of Lavaur, who acted on several occasions as ambassador to the Emperor, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See.

The picture is in a tradition showing learned men with books and instruments. The objects on the upper shelf include a celestial globe, a portable sundial and various other instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring time. Among the objects on the lower shelf is a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book, a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe. Certain details could be interpreted as references to contemporary religious divisions. The broken lute string, for example, may signify religious discord, while the Lutheran hymn book may be a plea for Christian harmony.

In the foreground is the distorted image of a skull, a symbol of mortality. When seen from a point to the right of the picture the distortion is corrected.

Oil on oak
207 x 209.5 cm.


'The Ambassadors': Skull

This strange object is a skull, painted in distorted perspective known as an anamorphosis. It can best be seen standing at the right of the painting.

Many sixteenth-century European portraits include skulls as reminders of death. One contemporary noted 'people do cause their counterfeits to be made to see how time doth alter them…and to pray to God that as they do draw toward their end in this world, so they may be the more ready to die.'

Sometimes skulls were hidden on the back of pictures. Holbein cleverly concealed his skull on the front - a dramatic warning against faith in worldly achievement and wealth, depicted in the picture, instead of in the world to come, symbolised by the tiny crucifix in the top left-hand corner.

De Dinteville's skull hat badge must be similar to the 'little death's head' that the artist Albrecht Dürer bought in 1521.


Here's a site where you can view the painting.

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/h/holbe

Answer 3

Holbein

Answer 4

Hans Holbien.

Answer 5

dunno, am waiting 2 know myself