The English Renaissance: England Under The Tudors / The Inherited Throne

The Tudors have become the most glamorous and mythologised of English dynasties but they ruled England for barely 100 years. In just 3 generations, this upstart clan not only produced some of the more dramatic personalities and legends of the monarchy but took the country from the Middle Ages into the great artistic "rebirth" of the Continent, from stained glass and manuscripts for Henry VII to Renaissance portraits for his son and grandchildren, from militaristic fortresses to sumptuous architectural stage sets for the choreography of display. In an age of intense religious conflict, church commissions were followed by the destruction of monasteries and their heritage and, as successive rulers impose their allegiances on the people, the arts trumpeted their chosen Faiths. For the monarchy, paintings by Holbein, Horenbout and Hilliard and palaces to overawe European rivals transmitted the Tudor message and became prestige models which transformed the face of England.

The country which Henry Tudor conquered in August 1485 had been torn by civil war for nearly half a century and this took its toll on the people and on the arts. English craftsmen, once in the vanguard of medieval style, had become out of touch with contemporary models, and the nobility therefore began to look abroad for artists to realise their ambitions for Renaissance glory. The concerns of the king himself, however, were for stability and moral justification and his patronage reflects these distinctive objectives.

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