Painting of the Month

'The Ambassadors': Jean de Dinteville

The stylish Jean de Dinteville, wearing the French Order of Saint Michael, was in his twenty-ninth year, according to the decoration on his dagger. His family was cultured and influential, holding positions of trust in the household of King Francis I of France. This was his second of five visits as ambassador to England.

De Dinteville spent most of 1533 in England, waiting for the coronation of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's new wife, and then the birth of their child, to whom Francis I was godfather.

Jean was miserable in England and missed his family. He was constantly ill from the cold and damp. He wrote to his brother 'I am the most melancholy, weary and wearisome ambassador that ever was seen.' Perhaps as an antidote to melancholy and the English weather, one of the first things he did on his arrival was to import 'thirty tuns of Gascon wine'.


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