{"id":51642,"date":"2016-07-31T18:50:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51642"},"modified":"2016-07-31T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:50:50","slug":"sunday-surprise-peering-digitally-around-corners-1-holbein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51642","title":{"rendered":"Sunday surprise: peering digitally around corners 1: Holbein"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — a saunter through London’s National Gallery with Holbein’s Ambassadors, a skull and a psalter ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Let’s begin with Hans Holbein<\/strong>, The Ambassadors<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Holbein<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

First up for consideration is this anamorphic skull detail<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"Holbein<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The very oddly misshapen object in the foreground is in fact a skull, visible as such from the right position vis-a-vis<\/em> the painting. It has puzzled countless people for ages, and no doubt considerably increased the painting’s fame in the process. The simplest explanation I’ve found is this one<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It has also been hypothesized that the painting is meant to hang in a stairwell, so that a person walking up the stairs from the painting’s right would be startled by the appearance of the skull. From such an angle, the skull appears in its correct aspect ratio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the skull, resolved<\/strong> — to show it as it appears from the correct viewing angle — an angle from which the rest of the painting makes no sense, mark you:<\/p>\n

\"Holbein_Skull\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

That’s the most striking detail in the painting, but also of interest is this Psalter detail<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"Holbein<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The psalter is depicted in the painting in the same perspective as the two figures, globe, carpet and so forth, but it’s at an angle to the viewer — and an enterprising fellow therefore decided to work computationnal magic and show us the psalter rectified<\/a><\/strong>, as we might see it if we were in the room, went over, and looked down at it:<\/p>\n

\"Ambassadors_Lutherian_Psalms\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

All of this reminds me of another brilliant work of art, featuring an analogous shifting of viewpoint: Ridley Scott<\/strong>‘s Blade Runner<\/a>, which I’ll explore in Part II of this two-part post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — a saunter through London’s National Gallery with Holbein’s Ambassadors, a skull and a psalter ] . Let’s begin with Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors: ** First up for consideration is this anamorphic skull detail: The very oddly misshapen object in the foreground is in fact a skull, visible as such from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[384,385,526,67,480,757,676,946,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-art-history","category-charles-cameron","category-movies","category-music","category-musings","category-scriptures","category-sunday-surprise","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51642"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51731,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51642\/revisions\/51731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}