The English Renaissance: England Under The Tudors / Division and Destruction

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 extraordinary artistic creations of the age sit side-by-side with tragic campaigns of destruction. The palaces and personal magnificence of Henry VIII were funded, at least in part, by the wealth of the Church that he pillaged and his secular creations supplant the lost treasures of 5 centuries of church building and decoration. We look at the spirit and legacy of iconoclasm, and at art under Edward VI and Mary, often inspired by the politics of religious schism.

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