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Audio Guide

English
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The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England

580. Introduction

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NARRATOR:
Welcome to The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England.

The year is 1485. Henry Tudor has just seized the throne of England. Henry’s enemies describe him in damning terms:

VOICE 1:
An unknown Welshman whose father I never knew…

NARRATOR: And another referred to Henry Tudor as...

VOICE 2:
Captain of rebels and traitors, descended of bastard blood…

NARRATOR:
But Henry’s new dynasty gained recognition from the world; and it achieved this partly through the magnificence of its art.

ELIZABETH CLELAND:
I'm Elizabeth Cleland and I'm a curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One of the things that's so compelling about the Tudors is that they really knew how to use art to project and craft this incredible impression of majesty.

ADAM EAKER:
Hi, my name is Adam Eaker. I’m an associate curator in the Department of European Paintings.

We want to present the Tudor courts as a center of Renaissance innovation and patronage. And introduce our visitors to the incredibly engaging and colorful personalities of this court.

NARRATOR:
And you’ll hear the voices of some of those personalities, in their own words, from first-hand historic accounts from the Tudor period.

This Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

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    Playlist

  1. 580. Introduction
  2. 581. Portrait of Henry VII, Unknown Netherlandish Painter, 1505
  3. 582. Henry VIII, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1537
  4. 583. Mary I, Hans Eworth, 1554
  5. 584. Sea Dog Table, After Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, 1570
  6. 585. Life of Saint Paul: The Burning of Books at Ephesus, Pieter Coecke van Aelst
  7. 586. Bishop John Fisher (1469–1535), Pietro Torrigiano, 1510–1515
  8. 587. Sir Thomas More, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527 and Margaret Roper (Margaret More 1504–1544), Hans Holbein the Younger, 1535–1536
  9. 588. Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I, British Painter, 1600
  10. 589. Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558–1605), Third Earl of Cumberland, Made under the direction of Jacob Halder, 1586
  11. 590. Henry VII Cope, 1499–1505
  12. 591. Queen Elizabeth I (“The Ditchley Portrait”), Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, ca. 1592
  13. 592. Queen Elizabeth I (“The Rainbow Portrait”), Attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, ca. 1600
  14. 593. Henry Frederick (1594–1612), Prince of Wales, with Sir John Harrington (1592–1614) in the Hunting Field, Robert Peake the Elder, 1603