were sold together in one lot for the insignificant sum of 602 francs, and the purchaser was evidently Le Brun. The description of the picture in the sale-catalogue tallies almost exactly with Le Brun’s description which accompanied Pierron’s engraving. From the sale-catalogue he obtained the supposed names of the sitters, “MM. de Selve et d’Avaux,” and he evidently endorsed, without troubling to make a careful examination of his own, the further statement of the catalogue that there was no date upon it. Probably the picture was in need of cleaning, so that both signature and date were obscured. Mr. Wornum discovered them in 1865, and they had been noted by others before that date. When the picture was acquired for the National Gallery, however, the signature had again become obscured by dirt, after the passage of some thirty years, and was only deciphered after re-cleaning. Footnote 86: See Miss Hervey, _Holbein’s Ambassadors_, pt. i. chap. ii. p. 21. Footnote 87: Dickes, p. 9. Footnote 88: See below, p. 46. Footnote 89: This picture, which is the subject of a very interesting article by Miss Mary F. S. Hervey and Mr. R. Martin-Holland in the _Burlington Magazine_ for April 1911 (vol. xviii. No. xcvii. pp. 48-55), where it is reproduced, together with other works of its author, a forgotten French painter named Félix Chrétien, was described in the Beaujon catalogue as “The Court of Francis II and the principal nobles of that time, with the attributes of Moses and Aaron, who present themselves before the King of Egypt, who is Francis II himself; their names are written on the different contours of their robes,” &c. It further stated that it was “by the famous Holbein, towards 1552.” From the time of the Beaujon sale in 1787 all traces of this large panel painting—5 ft. 9 in. high by 6 ft. 2 in. wide—were lost, until it suddenly reappeared in Messrs. Christie’s saleroom on February 26, 1910, in company with the big group of Sir Thomas More and Family. In the catalogue it was given to Holbein, and was described as “Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh” (“a group of figures, said to represent King Henry VIII as Pharaoh,” &c.), and as formerly in the collection of the Prince de Cerny. The mystery of the picture’s meaning was cleared up, and the name of its painter discovered, by Miss Hervey and Mr. Martin-Holland, and will be found in their paper. It contains portraits of a number of the members of the Dinteville family, including the Bailly of Troyes, who appears as Moses, and his brother, François II, Bishop of Auxerre, as Aaron. The Pharaoh is evidently Francis I, though the likeness is by no means a good one. The names of most of the figures are given on the hems of their robes. The picture affords valuable additional proof of the identity of the personage on the spectator’s left in the “Ambassadors” with Jean de Dinteville, for the likeness is striking.