Dear Patrick, Thank you for drawing our attention to Google's Art Project and The Ambassadors.
My guess about the object behind the shepherd's dial is that it is one foot of the support for the celestial sphere. Have you seen a delightful paperback, The Ambassadors' Secret, about this painting? It's by John North, Emeritus Professor of the History of Philosophy and the Exact Sciences at the University of Groningen, Holland. Published by Phoenix; my copy is dated 2004. Published at £8.99, but remaindered at Waterstone's a few months ago at £3.99. John Lynes ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, 4 February, 2011 7:59:26 Subject: Google's Art Project and dialling After only recently learning of the Google Art Project, I looked at Holbein's Ambassadors today and like many others I was amazed at the resolution. This huge painting, it's not far off 7ft square, is here in London at the National Gallery and it is now available to view under Google's Art Project at: http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/nationalgallery/the-ambassadors Painted in 1533 it has the most interesting collection of contemporary dialling equipment all of which are painted in immense detail. There are two globes (one terrestrial and one celestial), a quadrant, a torquetum, a polyhedral dial and a shepherd's dial and some others I don't know, all of which are set in such a way as to tell some 'story' to the understanding viewer. Until now it has been almost impossible for a sundial-interested visitor to the gallery to attempt to understand much of the detail - there just isn't time - but now with this view you can. You can even see for yourself the four place names marked on the terrestrial globe (one of which helped to identify one of the depicted persons as Jean de Dinteville, the Seigneur of Polisy) and you can even read the music and words in the open book and guess at the date and time shown on the shepherd's dial.. It doesn't (I think) help with viewing the anamorphic skull as a skull - or at least you still have to turn your monitor round to do so! - and I STILL don't understand the object behind the shepherd's dial... Anybody know what that might be? Patrick ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________
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