Classical and scriptural ideas of the shape of the world and the concept of a circular cosmology were traditionally reflected in art and architecture. Such views appear to have laid the foundation for the development of spherical terrestrial and astronomical images and the globe itself, from the late fifteenth century. The subsequent depiction of globes in famous paintings demonstrates the significance of globes in the promotion of the ‘new learning’ and world view – whether cosmological, geographical, political or educational. As early as the 1530s, globes (as opposed to images of the sphere of the earth or universe) started to figure prominently in painting. Sixteenth-century paintings (such as Holbein’s Ambassadors, 1533 and the Armada Portraits of Elizabeth I, from 1588) demonstrate the significance of globes. Like the globes themselves, artworks depicting them (up to our own times) reflect their importance in the context of the age and culture in which each was produced.