Microcosms: Illuminating the Global in Tudor and Early Stuart Portraits Teachers’ Resource © from Detail National Portrait Gallery, London Gallery, PortraitNational Contents Elizabeth I Elizabeth How to use this resource Setting the scene Wooden conduits to golden worlds , unknownartist, c. , English 1588 541) (NPG Refugee artists London’s taste for foreign wares Global colour networks: sourcing pigments Pigment case study: cochineal (I) Cochineal (II) Enquiry: Katherine of Aragon & Catalina Eastern empires A multicultural court: the Moroccan ambassador Persia fever Clothing: global threads Atlantic competition Ruffs in Jamestown? Feathers Pearls The African presence (I) and (II) The limits of representation Were women colonizers? Who is missing? Widening the frame 2 How to use this resource: This resource is aimed at teachers to use with Key Stage 4-5 History students studying the Tudor and Stuart periods. It focuses on issues of global exchange, migration, and the beginnings of empire that developed in England at the very time that these portraits were being commissioned and painted. All the images from the National Portrait Gallery Collection can be viewed online via https://www.npg.org.uk using the NPG number in the image caption. This pack is intended to encourage students to ask new questions about these artworks (and others), thinking critically about the dynamics of global production and exchange that informed their creation. Teachers are welcome to adapt content for younger groups. Elizabeth I, unknown English artist, c. 1600 based on a lost portrait from 1558 (NPG 5175) © National Portrait Gallery, London. 3 Setting the scene An island, divided by the Reformation, struggles to articulate its identity. As a new dynasty, the Tudors seek to demonstrate their authority and legitimacy at home and abroad. Monarchs and state agents asked themselves: were they part of Europe? A cosmopolitan nation in their own right? How would they govern the many individuals who came into the realm from other shores, from religious refugees to Africans in merchant households? And how might English identity change as a result of maritime exploration and colonizing new territories? These questions and ambitions have left ongoing and deeply fraught legacies today. As the English began to engage with travel, trade, and expansion to a degree to which they never had before, glimpses of their global ambitions manifested themselves in portraiture. Like the gold flecks enlivening these paintings’ jewels, these global elements, once seen, Detail from Elizabeth I, unknown cannot be unseen. We encourage you to look for more! English artist, c. 1600 based on a lost portrait from 1558 (NPG 5175) © National Portrait Gallery, London. This crown differs from the open crowns of the medieval period. It is called an imperial crown. What do you think is the significance of this? 4 Wooden conduits to golden worlds Most sixteenth century portraits in the Tudor galleries were painted on wooden panels. If you approach a Tudor portrait, chances are you’ll notice evidence of its life as a tree. Like portraiture, trade and exploration blossomed in the Tudor and Stuart era. Wood, too, was the medium that made this possible. Wooden ships, and the objects and people these carried, connected the English to the rest of the world. Portraits are not just images, but objects. From the wood panels themselves, to the crushed bugs or gold leaf that artists used to express political ideas and personal taste, there is a distinct relationship between the global and the domestic, the desire to create national cohesion and yet the reliance on migrant artists and foreign commodities to do so. Artists often used oak from the Baltic region (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) for Tudor paintings, as this was higher quality wood than English oak, and more suitable to cut down into regular-sized boards for painting. For more information on what wood tells us about paintings, visit: https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes/blog/against-grain- construction-tudor-panel-paintings Microdetail of gold lettering on frame from King Henry VI, unknown artist, c. 1540 (NPG 2457) © National Portrait Watch the Dendrochronology film at the bottom of the webpage: Gallery, London; below, detail of decoration on jewelled band, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02031/King-Edward-VI showing raised dots made from lead white covered by azurite from King Henry VIII, unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, c. 1520 (NPG 4690) ) © National Portrait Gallery, London. 5 Refugee artists Activity: Observe a range of Tudor and early Stuart portraits. Who painted them? Which of them were painted by English artists? Does it surprise you to see that most of the iconic images that we associate with English royalty were painted by migrants? Many painters at the English court, as well as silversmiths, silk weavers, goldsmiths, physicians, and botanists, were religious refugees. Self-portrait by Isaac Oliver, c. 1590 (NPG 4852) © National See p.21 for a link to the Runnymede Trust’s resource ‘Our Migration Stories’. Portrait Gallery, London. Born in France, the Protestant Isaac Oliver moved to London to escape the French wars of religion. His painting was influenced by the styles and techniques of Italian and Flemish painters. 6 London’s taste for foreign wares The circulation of peoples and goods enlivens the seemingly fixed nature of portraits. Behind these images is a world of commerce and migration. Tudor and early Stuart London was a bustling port town, full of cross- currencies of exchange. Access to goods relied on vast trading networks involving foreign merchants and go- betweens. The portraits at the National Portrait Gallery are indicative of rising consumerism in Elizabethan England. The inclusion of merchants in the Tudor galleries demonstrates the rising status of these individuals, who sought to show their wealth through forms of representation that had hitherto mainly been used by aristocrats. A port record from the 1560s indicates some of the goods that came into London at this time: Ambergris, whale secretion used for perfume Beaver skins, North America Brazilwood, wood from a Brazilian tree, used as a dye Glass beads, Milan Sugar in large crystalized pieces, Morocco and the Levant (Western Asia) Cochineal insects used to produce a scarlet dye, Mexico Fustian fabric, Italy Drinking glasses, Venice Pepper, West Africa Raisins, Spain Sir Thomas Gresham, unknown artist, c. 1565 Turmeric for dye and medicine, East Indies (NPG 352) © National Portrait Gallery, London. Wine, Italy and France Cheese, Holland Portraits like this one of Sir Thomas Gresham may not seem particularly extravagant. But the abundant gold hints at Gresham’s wealth, as With the establishment of trading companies like the East India Company and the Virginia Company, port records does the rich depth of his clothes. Gresham began cataloguing larger numbers of Chinese porcelain, Indian textiles, spices, silks, ivory, and tobacco. The founded the Royal Exchange – a place for City trafficking of such goods involved the movement of people, too. Explorers and merchants brought Africans into merchants to sell their wares from abroad. England to serve as interpreters and guides for future voyages. Some Africans worked as sailors on board European ships. English traders were frequently in a position of vulnerability when they sought to establish trade with other powers and political systems, reliant on the abilities of those who helped them along the way. 7 Global colour networks: sourcing pigments Ultramarine (above), the most expensive pigment for early modern artists, was a deep blue made from grinding lapis lazuli, a stone sourced in North Eastern Afghanistan. Many of the blues in the Gallery (such as this striking image of Henry VII, left), are made from azurite, a costly blue pigment, though less expensive than ultramarine. Henry VII, unknown Netherlandish artist, c. 1505 (NPG 416) © National Portrait Gallery, London. 8 Pigment case study: cochineal (I) Cochineal was a red dye used in some paints, clothes, and cosmetics, sourced from the prickly pear cactuses of Central America. Various shades of red featured prominently in Tudor and early Stuart portraits. The paintings here do not contain known traces of cochineal, but they depict fabrics and textiles that used cochineal dye. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, unknown X-ray radiography shows us the Sir Thomas More, after Hans Holbein the This detail from More’s velvet sleeves artist, c. 1589-95, based on a work depth and range of reds in Wolsey’s Younger, c. early 1600s, based on a work from highlight the depth of colour in the sleeves. from 1520 (NPG 32) © National clothing (detail of his hat). 1527 (NPG 4358) © National Portrait Gallery, Portrait Gallery, London. London. 9 Cochineal (II) This rare English manuscript from the seventeenth century includes this detailed description of how indigenous Americans sourced cochineal in Guatemala and Mexico. Though some pigments were cheaply and widely- produced, this source encourages us to think more about the kinds of human labour required to source the costlier pigments in this gallery. ‘The cochineal is an insect bred in a fruit. [They] would rot in their husks…did not the Indians…spread under the branches of the [cactus] tree a large linen cloth, and then with sticks shake the branches, and so disturb the Beinecke Library, Yale University, mssOsborn b160. Photo by Lauren Working. poor insects that they take wing to be gone, till the heat of the sun so disorders them that they fall down dead on the cloth, where the Indians Are we, like Elizabethans, consuming beetles? How might we be leave them under they are thoroughly dry. When they fly [the beetles] are doing this? red, when they fall they are black, and when first they are dry they are white, though the colour changes a little after. These make the rich scarlet Cochineal extract is still found in certain foods and cosmetics, colour.’ including some lipsticks.