The English Renaissance: England Under The Tudors / The Face of the King – Horenbout and Holbein

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.

For nearly a century, Flemish painters like van Eyck and Campin, Italians like Leonardo and Titian had been immortalising their patrons, but Henry VIII had no one to celebrate and disseminate his image until, in the 1520's the Horenbout family brought to his court the most avant garde of European form and style. So successful were they that their contemporary success was to outshine even the man whose name has become almost synonymous with the royal image, Hans Holbein. You will examine and contrast the art of these great portraitists through images of the king and his circle.

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