Henry VIII: Court Life and Marriages
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Hans Holbein and the King’s Likeness Henry VIII: In the painter Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8– 1543), the king found a brilliant artist to promote Court Life his image and reflect the splendour of the court. and Marriages Holbein was employed on several royal projects, Henry VIII including the Whitehall mural of 1536/7 which was designed as a celebration of the achievements The reign of Henry VIII produced what is of the Tudor dynasty. Destroyed by fire in 1698, often described as the first Renaissance a fragment of the preparatory drawing (or ‘cartoon’) court in England. The king’s appetite for for the original design survives and is displayed building new palaces and staging elaborate in Room 1. It shows Henry in a pose which court tournaments, and his role as a patron emphasised his strength of will and dominant of the arts, set him apart from earlier personality. This image of the king was widely monarchs. He is popularly remembered copied and exists in several versions. today for his extraordinary marital history and six wives. Henry was determined to commemorate the establishment of the Tudor dynasty and spent lavishly on architectural projects. The most important of these was the chapel at Westminster Abbey containing the effigies of his parents Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and his grandmother King Henry VIII Margaret Beaufort, sculpted by the By Hans Holbein the Younger, i c.1536–1537 Italian artist Pietro Torrigiano. NPG 4027 Left to right King Henry VIII By an unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, c.1520 NPG 4690 Katherine of Aragon By an unknown artist, c.1520 L246 Henry VIII Anne Boleyn By an unknown artist, late sixteenth century after a portrait of c.1533–1536 NPG 668 The King’s Marriages who was executed for adultery in 1542. The king’s final marriage to Katherine Parr lasted until his The king’s first marriage in 1509 to his brother’s death, with Katherine maintaining the king’s widow, Katherine of Aragon, ended in divorce favour during his years of ill health. when Henry’s desire for a male heir led him to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. Following the The history of the king’s marriages should be birth of a daughter (later Elizabeth I), Anne was seen in the light of his obsession with producing herself rejected by Henry in 1536 after being a male heir. Given the high mortality rate of accused of adultery and was subsequently children at this date, Henry clearly hoped his beheaded. In the same month Henry married his marriages would produce several royal princes. third wife, Jane Seymour, who died after giving Contemporary portraits of Henry’s wives birth to the longed-for son, the future Edward VI. played their part in this dynastic view of marital Katherine Parr Attributed to Master John, c.1545 Two brief and unsuccessful marriages followed: partnership: the portrait types of Anne Boleyn and NPG 4451 first to Anne of Cleves, a German princess, in 1540 Katherine of Aragon shown here were probably i (annulled the same year on the grounds of non- produced to be hung alongside images of Henry This pick-up can also be found on our consummation) and then to Katherine Howard, in the houses of the nobility and gentry. website at npg.org.uk/tudor-pickup.