The Panorama of the Renaissance

I opened this book at page 202, where there is a superb illustration of what is surely one of the most striking paintings in the world, Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533). The accompanying text calls it “almost a visual compendium of Renaissance ideas”; among its apparent themes are “international diplomacy … music, science and mortality”. The huge human skull that floats in the foreground is so foreshortened that it has to be viewed “obliquely from the far right”. In the top left‐hand corner from behind the green curtain that forms the backdrop, a silver crucifix is peeking out....