The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England
Visiting Guide
Introduction
Though the Tudor dynasty ruled for only three generations, it oversaw the transformation of England from an impoverished backwater to a major European power operating on a global stage. The dynasty emerged from the devastation of the Wars of the Roses, which ended in 1485 when Henry Tudor seized the throne. The second Tudor monarch, Henry VIII, brought about England’s break with the Roman Catholic church, while his daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth I, were the first two women to rule the country in their own right.
Painfully aware that their claim to the throne was tenuous and that the prospect of a return to civil war loomed around every corner, the Tudor monarchs devoted vast resources to crafting their public image as divinely ordained rulers. At times guilty of religious intolerance and violence themselves, the Tudors benefitted in their pursuit of the finest tapestries, books, paintings, and armor from religious wars on the European continent that periodically drove waves of talented artists to seek safety in England.
This exhibition evokes the richly layered interior of a Tudor palace in order to explore the remarkable art of the English Renaissance. At the same time, it reveals the high political stakes of Tudor patronage and the cosmopolitan world of artists and merchants who served the court.
580. Introduction
Selected Artworks
View allInventing a Dynasty
Henry VII spent prodigiously to impress his subjects and assert his right to the throne he had seized by force. With an eye to solidifying international relations, he negotiated royal marriages for his children abroad, hosted foreign diplomats, and did business with Flemish art dealers and Italian bankers.
Surpassing his father’s ambitions, Henry VIII claimed supreme authority over both church and state. Infamously married six times, his decision to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn led directly to England’s departure from the Roman Catholic Church. In the wake of this breach, he continued to use artistic patronage to promote his status as a peer of Europe’s other monarchs, even as some scorned him as a heretic.
The brief reigns of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, and of his eldest daughter, Mary I, epitomized the religious strife of the sixteenth century, with Edward a devout Protestant and Mary ardently committed to the Catholic faith. Their Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I, by contrast, achieved a long reign of peace and prosperity, while still facing constant threats of foreign invasion and depending on a vast surveillance state. Maintaining strict control over her public image, she oversaw the emergence of a distinct Elizabethan style centered on the glorification of the queen herself.
581. Portrait of Henry VII, Unknown Netherlandish Painter, 1505
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581. Portrait of Henry VII, Unknown Netherlandish Painter, 1505
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582. Henry VIII, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1537
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583. Mary I, Hans Eworth, 1554
Playlist
Selected Artworks
View allSplendor
Tudor palaces and grand houses featured a range of specially demarcated spaces, from great halls for feasting and long galleries for strolling and discreet conversation to intimately scaled cabinets or “closets” for prayer, privacy, or the close contemplation of works of art. Contemporary inventories, paintings, and descriptions can help re-create these splendid interiors, most of which have long vanished.
Figurative plasterwork, decorative textiles, gleaming metalwork, and the richly dressed bodies of the courtiers themselves created a dazzling effect of overlapping surfaces. As monarchs traveled between residences, portable furnishings transported their splendor with them. Goldsmiths’ work filled credenza displays, while tapestries woven in richly dyed wools, silks, and metal-wrapped threads enveloped rooms, blurring the boundaries between actual and imagined space. In private chapels, privileged users contemplated devotional manuscripts and images, a practice eventually rejected by Protestant reformers. Games, musical instruments, and athletic tournaments all provided opportunities for ostentatious recreation.
The objects in this section speak to the Tudor monarchs’ support of local artists and newly arrived Flemish and French immigrants as well as their taste for luxurious imports, including Chinese porcelain and Indian mother-of-pearl acquired from Asian artists and merchants via increasingly globalized networks.
584. Sea Dog Table, After Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, 1570
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584. Sea Dog Table, After Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, 1570
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585. Life of Saint Paul: The Burning of Books at Ephesus, Pieter Coecke van Aelst
Playlist
Selected Artworks
View allPublic and Private Faces
Portraiture dominates the surviving record of Tudor painting. Most people in sixteenth-century England would have found the idea that a portrait should offer insight into the sitter’s personality or character surprising. Such paintings were instead commissioned as records of status, lineage, piety, and political affiliation as well as physical appearance. At a time when travel was difficult, they allowed far-flung relatives to keep in touch across long distances or prospective royal spouses to gauge the attractiveness and health of a future bride or groom. The emergence of the portrait miniature, intended to be held in the hand or worn on the body, heightened the association between portraiture and intimacy as well as the bridging of geographic separation.
German-born painter Hans Holbein the Younger was a key figure in the transformation of this genre during the reign of Henry VIII. Initially working for a clientele of German merchants and humanist scholars, he soon attracted the attention of the English court with his unparalleled technical mastery and ability to capture a likeness, for which he used preparatory drawings made from life. He also served the court by producing designs for metalwork and other works of decorative art.
586. Bishop John Fisher (1469–1535), Pietro Torrigiano, 1510–1515
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586. Bishop John Fisher (1469–1535), Pietro Torrigiano, 1510–1515
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587. Sir Thomas More, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527 and Margaret Roper (Margaret More 1504–1544), Hans Holbein the Younger, 1535–1536
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588. Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I, British Painter, 1600
Playlist
Selected Artworks
View allLanguages of Ornament
Similar to other elites of Renaissance Europe, the Tudors had an interest in the artistic legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. The decorative artists of sixteenth-century England, however, often blended this classical tradition with motifs from the natural world. They drew upon both the long- standing conventions of floral symbolism and the untamed wilderness beyond the confines of towns and palaces, experienced through the ritual of the hunt and frequently evoked in contemporary poetry and drama.
The mazes, topiary, and terracing of Tudor gardens provided a controlled experience of nature, while elaborate court masques and choreographed tournaments were make-believe settings for courtiers to evoke chivalric romance and pay tribute to the monarch, particularly Elizabeth I, who encouraged acts of public devotion from her courtiers. Such events reveal a nostalgia for the early Middle Ages, rooted in the (originally Welsh) Tudor family’s appropriation of King Arthur as a legendary ancestor. Interlacing geometric straps evoking Celtic knotwork and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts appear in decorative patterning on everything from armor to table carpets. Combining the classical, the natural, and medieval revivalism, Tudor arts attest to the emergence of a unique English Renaissance aesthetic.
589. Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558–1605), Third Earl of Cumberland, Made under the direction of Jacob Halder, 1586
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589. Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558–1605), Third Earl of Cumberland, Made under the direction of Jacob Halder, 1586
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590. Henry VII Cope, 1499–1505
Playlist
Selected Artworks
View allAllegories and Icons
The Protestant Reformation brought about the wholesale removal and destruction of religious images in English churches. While some artists experimented with new kinds of religious painting that would inspire intellectual contemplation, most instead focused their attention on investing the monarch, as newly proclaimed head of the church, with sacred authority. During Elizabeth I’s reign, printmakers, many based on the continent, created mass- produced images that celebrated the queen as protector of the Protestant cause.
Painting in the Elizabethan period reveals a stylistic shift away from the naturalistic portraits made under Henry VIII, particularly as embodied in the work of Hans Holbein. Facing enormous pressure as an unmarried woman ruler, Elizabeth exerted tight control over her image. Well into her sixties, she was depicted as an ageless and semidivine beauty. Her carefully vetted portraitists drew upon the elaborate allegories devised by court poets to pay tribute to the queen and her immense powers. Courtiers followed the monarch’s lead, commissioning portraits that reveal less about the sitters’ appearances than about their literary tastes and idiosyncratic personal symbolism. Such paintings delight the eye with their flattened decorative surfaces and close attention to the rendering of textiles and jewels.
591. Queen Elizabeth I (“The Ditchley Portrait”), Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, ca. 1592
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591. Queen Elizabeth I (“The Ditchley Portrait”), Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, ca. 1592
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592. Queen Elizabeth I (“The Rainbow Portrait”), Attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, ca. 1600
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593. Henry Frederick (1594–1612), Prince of Wales, with Sir John Harrington (1592–1614) in the Hunting Field, Robert Peake the Elder, 1603