La Salle University La Salle University Digital Commons Art Museum Exhibition Catalogues La Salle University Art Museum 2-1981 Renaissance Portraits: The udorsT La Salle University Art Museum Brother Daniel Burke FSC Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/exhibition_catalogues Part of the Fine Arts Commons, and the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation La Salle University Art Museum and Burke, Brother Daniel FSC, "Renaissance Portraits: The udorT s" (1981). Art Museum Exhibition Catalogues. 87. http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/exhibition_catalogues/87 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the La Salle University Art Museum at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art Museum Exhibition Catalogues by an authorized administrator of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I The Tudors Key O Born * Acceded E O Married © Divorced D Beheaded ♦ Died I O 1 year ■ 1 year of reign E f- N 2 S 5 E Henry VII of the House of Tudor lOOOOOaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa * 1 4 8 5 ♦ 1 5 0 9 0 1 4 8 6 Elizabeth of York I I A rthur Prince of Wales 0 1 4 8 6 ♦150 2 oi 501 Catherine of Aragon I LMariMargaret _ _ _ _ James V of Scotland .........M ary Queen of Scots J g f Y ) 0 5 01489 01541 (The Stuart Family) 0 1 5 4 2 D1587 VI of Scotland O James IV 0 1 5 1 2 0 1 5 4 2 0 1 Francis II of France and I of England of Scotland O Mary of Guise 0 2 Henry Stuart - ■■■ oouoQooooDoaooaooooooooooooooaoooooaoi (Lord Darnlev) 0 1 5 6 6 O Anne of * 1 6 0 3 Denmark E Henry VIII .oocaooDoaooaaoaoaa 01491 *1509 01547 E 0 1 Catherine of Aragon 014 8 5 01509 ©1533 01536 | Mary I oooooooooaoooooooonoooooaooooooDaoaaaiimi 0 1 5 1 6 1553 * 0 1558 E O Philip II of Spain & the Low Countries 0 2 Anne Boleyn 01533I □ May 1536 Elizabeth. I. □□□□□□□□aooaaaoooaaaoaoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa E 01533 *1558 01603 0 3 Jane Seymour OMay 1 536 01537 I Edward VI o o o o o o a o o a a a a a a a a E 01537 * 01558 1547 0 4 Anne of Cleves E OJan 1540 ©July 1540 0 5 Catherine Howard O July1540 CM 542 E 0 5 Catherine Parr 01543 01548 , M ary 01498 01533 0 1 Louis XII of France 0 2 Charles Brandon (Duke of Suffolk) — — Frances - ... Lady Jane Grey 0 1517 01559 0 1537 Q1554 O Henry Grey O 1553 Lord Guildford Dudley E (Marquis of Dorset) o «n O 2 2 S as X8 «2 to2 e§ X X 5 2 X § I E E E Chronology of events 1485-1603 1485 Henry Tudor becomes Henry 1517 Martin Luther nails his '95 1558 Mary Stuart, the young Queen VII, King of England Theses' on the castle church of Scotland, is married to the 1486-95 Mantegna paints the car­ door in Wittenberg, Germany Dauphin, later Francis II of toons Triumph of Caesar' for 1 530 Francis I of France enlarges his France, who died in 1 560 the Gonzaga family in Mantua; hunting lodge Fontainebleau 1559-80 Longleat, Wiltshire, is built these cartoons are now in and employs Italian artists for Sir John Thynne Hampton Court 1532-36 Stalls and screen are made 1562 JHawkins begins slave trade 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain at King's College Chapel. between Africa and America sponsor three ships sailing Cambridge, which reveal the 1564 William Shakespeare is born at westward under the guidance fusion of the High Gothic with Stratford-on-Avon of Christopher Columbus; in­ Renaissance motifs 1565-70 Giovanni Bologna sculpts stead of the East Indies, he 1534 Henry VIII finally breaks re­ the 'Samson and a Philistine' in discovers the New World ligious ties with Rome Florence. It is now in the 1503-19 Henry VII Chapel, West­ 1538 Henry VII! builds his fantastic V & A minster, is built; the Italian palace of Nonsuch (destroyed 1567 Palladio builds the Villa Capra sculptor Torrigiano makes the in 1687), partly in competition outside Vicenza, which later in­ Tomb of Henry VII in West­ with his rival Francis I. Hans fluenced the Stuart aichitect minster Holbein made several designs Inigo Jones 1508-12 Michelangelo paints the for this residence 1572 St Bartholomew's Day Mass­ Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1547 Henry VIII and Francis I die; acre of Huguenots in France the Vatican, and plans for the Henry's only son, Edward VI, 1577-80 Sir Francis Drake sails rebuilding of St Peter's are becomes King of England round the world in the Golden being considered 1553 Edward VI dies, and there are Hind 1509 Henry VII dies and is succeeded rival successors to the throne: 1 585 The central pavilion for Robert by his son. Henry VIII Lady Jane Grey or Mary Tudor? Cecil's Burghley House is built 1514 The first Portuguese ships Mary Tudor sent Jane to the and echoes an influence from arrive in China Tower, where she was executed the Loire Valley Chateaux in France 1 5 1 4 - 30s Work begins on Hampton in 1554 Court Palace for Cardinal 1553 Mary Tudor becomes Queen of 1587 Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Wolsey. (This was later one England as Mary I. In 1 554 she Scots) is executed at Fotherin- of Henry Vlll's residences and marries Philip of Spain, grand­ gay has Renaissance motifs) son of Joanna of Aragon, who 1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada 1515 Pope Leo X commissions was the sister of Mary's mother 1589 Henry III of France is assas­ Raphael to paint ten cartoons Catherine sinated and succeeded by for tapestries to be hung on the 1 554 Mary I reinstates the Church of Henry of Navarre as Henry IV walls in the Sistine Chapel; Rome; persecution of Protes­ 1590-96 Hardwick Hall is built for Henry VIII ordered a set of nine tants follows Bess of Shrewsbury, possibly tapestries to be woven from 1555 Charles V of Spain and the by Sir Robert Smythson. who these cartoons which are now Habsburg Empire abdicates in built Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, in Berlin; however, seven of favour of his son and brother; a few years earlier the original cartoons are in the Philip II receives Spain and the 1597 Shakespeare's Romeo and V & A Low Countries and Ferdinand I Juliet first published 1 5 1 5 - 25 Francis I of France enlarges the Habsburg states, Austria 1603 Elizabeth I dies without a his castle at Blois in the Loire and Hungary direct heir: the Crown goes to Valley, using Italian Renais­ 1 558 Mary Tudor dies and Elizabeth, King James VI of Scotland, sance architectural models her sister, becomes Queen son of Mary Stuart. From: Looking at The Tudor Period, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1972. RENAISSANCE PORTRAITS: The Tudors This exhibit inaugurates what we hope wiil be a series using portraits from the Gallery's fledgling collection of portrait prints. We begin with political and literary figures of the Tudor period. The English Renaissance, as opposed especially to the Middle Ages, is one of high interest in the individual person­ ality — and only in such a period does the art of portraiture flourish. For a portrait is not simply a likeness. An artist's painting of a model, for example, is typically a likeness, but he or she is presented simply as a human figure or as the repre­ sentative of a class, not as John Jones or Mary Smith. Beyond external appearances, furthermore, we say that some portraits have "captured the personality" of the sitter, have conveyed some of the emotional or other traits we know or imagine to be characteristic. And when we are not enjoying such real or imagined resemblance, then, as Aristotle said, we may still respond to "the finish of the workmanship, or the coloring, or some such other cause," Hence, beyond physical likeness and 2 characterization, there is the possibility of interesting pattern and structure in the image itself. However, if portraiture flourished in Renaissance England, as more brilliantly in other parts of Europe, we have to admit that it was largely in painting rather than in the engravings and etchings presented here. Among the European masters attracted to the court of Henry VIII, none was more important than Hans Holbein, whose finely detailed but rather flat, two-dimensional style dominated English painting well into the 17th century, even in the more sunny portraits of the master miniaturist of the next period, Nicholas Hilliard. It was to Holbein's easel paintings and to his superb portrait drawings, that engravers turned when they sought an accurate likeness for a frontispiece or for the series of royal and noble portraits that became so popular with Henry Holland's Baz?1iologia (1618) and Herwologia (1620), a popularity sustained well into the following century in Thomas Birch's The Heads of The Most Illustrious Persons of Great Britain ... (17^3-52), illustrated with engravings by George Vertue and Jacobus Hou- braken — all of whom are represented in the present exhibition. The portrait prints here of the Tudor courts — and of the writers who flourished under them -- group themselves naturally around the two key personalities of Henry VIII and of his daughter - 3 - by Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth I, What is, perhaps, surprising is the extent to which both focus the anguished concern of their subjects with royal marriage, heirs, and peaceful succession.