DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61669#0060
HOLBEIN’S “AMBASSADORS”
be possible to obtain a distinct understanding of the man and of his
work. Often, indeed, the two points of view will be found to converge.
Jean de Dinteville was born on the 21st of September, 1504. He
was the third son of Gaucher de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, and of
Anne Du Plessis.
The race of Dinteville was of ancient descent and allied to the
best blood in France. It had originally been known as de Jaucourt,
but early in the fourteenth century an ancestor, Pierre de Jaucourt,
adopted the name of Dinteville, which was that of his seigneurie in
Champagne, by which the family was henceforth called. The elder
line remained and flourished at Dinteville. The younger branch,
founded by Jean de Dinteville, second son of Pierre, settled at Polisy
shortly before 1321.
A glance at an old map of France, divided into provinces, shows
that, at a certain point, the waving boundary between Champagne and
Burgundy takes a sharp curve upwards, and, doubling back, makes the
deepest of many indentures in the contour of the northern province.
This narrow strip of land, surrounded on three sides by the territory of
Champagne, formed, approximately, the ancient Comte of Bar-sur-Seine.
Attached to Champagne, and consequently to France, in 1225 (long
before the Dinteville family settled at Polisy), it passed to Burgundy
early in the fifteenth century, returning to France with that Duchy in
1477. On this often-debated ground, just at the spot where the small
river Laigne throws its waters into the Seine, stands the Chateau of
Polisy—the chief home of that branch of the house of Dinteville with
which we are here concerned.
The marriage of the first Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, with the
heiress of Deschenetz1 (or Echenay, as it is now called) in Champagne,
brought to the family another considerable fief, which, a century later,
became the theatre of an exciting drama. A second Jean de Dinteville,
sources none are more valuable than the various series of State Papers, published both in
England and France, the “ Meslanges Historiques ” of Camusat, and—for a contemporary
French view of the events of the time—the Memoirs of the Du Bellay brothers.
1 Literally, “ Des Chenets,” and often so written in early records. But the name
soon lost its original meaning and was corrupted into one word.
36
be possible to obtain a distinct understanding of the man and of his
work. Often, indeed, the two points of view will be found to converge.
Jean de Dinteville was born on the 21st of September, 1504. He
was the third son of Gaucher de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, and of
Anne Du Plessis.
The race of Dinteville was of ancient descent and allied to the
best blood in France. It had originally been known as de Jaucourt,
but early in the fourteenth century an ancestor, Pierre de Jaucourt,
adopted the name of Dinteville, which was that of his seigneurie in
Champagne, by which the family was henceforth called. The elder
line remained and flourished at Dinteville. The younger branch,
founded by Jean de Dinteville, second son of Pierre, settled at Polisy
shortly before 1321.
A glance at an old map of France, divided into provinces, shows
that, at a certain point, the waving boundary between Champagne and
Burgundy takes a sharp curve upwards, and, doubling back, makes the
deepest of many indentures in the contour of the northern province.
This narrow strip of land, surrounded on three sides by the territory of
Champagne, formed, approximately, the ancient Comte of Bar-sur-Seine.
Attached to Champagne, and consequently to France, in 1225 (long
before the Dinteville family settled at Polisy), it passed to Burgundy
early in the fifteenth century, returning to France with that Duchy in
1477. On this often-debated ground, just at the spot where the small
river Laigne throws its waters into the Seine, stands the Chateau of
Polisy—the chief home of that branch of the house of Dinteville with
which we are here concerned.
The marriage of the first Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, with the
heiress of Deschenetz1 (or Echenay, as it is now called) in Champagne,
brought to the family another considerable fief, which, a century later,
became the theatre of an exciting drama. A second Jean de Dinteville,
sources none are more valuable than the various series of State Papers, published both in
England and France, the “ Meslanges Historiques ” of Camusat, and—for a contemporary
French view of the events of the time—the Memoirs of the Du Bellay brothers.
1 Literally, “ Des Chenets,” and often so written in early records. But the name
soon lost its original meaning and was corrupted into one word.
36