The skull in the painting

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Portraits mini-series, episode 16) is a short documentary about The Ambassadors, a painting by Hans Holbein from 1533. A single narrator presents the two men, friends from France (the man on the left was an ambassador who worked in England for the King of France), the two shelves of globes, books and instruments between them, and a lute with a broken string. Then the narrator shows a long, strange grey shape on the floor: in the National Gallery in London, visitors stand on the right of the painting, very close to the wall, and from there the shape becomes a skull, which Holbein stretched on purpose. In old paintings, a skull is a message: life is short. The narration uses the present simple and the past simple, with there is and can, and its words are about art, shapes and music. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (ambassador, lute). The study topic is portraits and what a picture says about the people in it.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three photos, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (Where must you stand to see the skull?) as a quick oral check. Learners should know the words left, right, floor and wall, and be able to read a date such as 1533. The pack's key words explain the new words (shelf, globe, foreground, skull, stretch).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged portrait-self-portrait (5e, "Portrait, autoportrait", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.