The public exhibition of this splendid example of Holbein’s art produced a long and interesting correspondence in the _Times_ newspaper. Sir J. C. Robinson upheld Dr. Woltmann’s belief that the two men were Wyat and Leland, but Sir Sidney Colvin,[78] by means of convincing proofs, showed that this attribution was untenable, as also that of Le Brun. He gave, at the same time, four reasons for supposing that the personage on the left was really a Frenchman and an ambassador—(1) the traditional title; (2) its having been sold into this country from France; (3) the wearing of the French order of Saint-Michel; and (4) the close resemblance in dress and fashion of the personage in question and the portrait of another French Ambassador, the “Morette” at Dresden. He proposed, as a probable solution, the name of Jean de Dinteville—a suggestion which afterwards proved to be the correct one. When, in August 1891, the picture was cleaned, and the name of Polisy, Dinteville’s birthplace, an obscure village in Burgundy, was discovered on the terrestrial globe, the only other French towns upon it being Paris, Lyon and Bayonne, the identity of the left-hand figure was placed almost beyond doubt. Sir Sidney also suggested that the second person might be Nicolas Bourbon, the French poet. Footnote 78: _The Times_, September 1890. Other attempted identifications included such divers personages as Lord Rochford, brother of Anne Boleyn; Count Balthazar Castiglione, who came to England to receive the Order of the Garter for the Duke of Urbino; and Guillaume and Jean du Bellay. The last-named solution was published in a pamphlet in 1890 by Mr. Elias Dexter, under the title of _Holbein’s Ambassadors Identified_. The writer sought to prove that the National Gallery picture and the one engraved for Le Brun were not the same, and that there must be two versions of the subject in existence. This contention he based on a number of slight differences between the accessories in the picture and in Pierron’s print, but such differences may be easily explained by the inferiority of the engraver’s work and the unusual complexity of the many details. To prove the identity of the two sitters with the brothers Du Bellay, who in 1533 were about 42 and 41 years of age respectively, he was obliged to declare the inscriptions on the dagger and the book to be forgeries. It is true that Jean du Bellay was in England in that year for a short time, and this is Mr. Dexter’s sole evidence, though he professes to see a strong likeness between the two ambassadors and the portraits of the brothers Du Bellay engraved on the same plate in the ninth volume of the _Versailles Gallery_.