by Alison Weir
Thanks to the teachings of Erasmus and others, and the patronage of Margaret Beaufort, John Fisher, and later Thomas Wolsey, who founded Cardinal College, Oxford, in 1525, humanism was infiltrating the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Sadly, Henry VIII’s patronage of scholars was largely confined to the court; he showed little interest in the universities until he canvassed their support for his nullity suit in the early 1530s, and it was not until the last years of his reign that he made any foundations of his own.
Katherine of Aragon, however, was a generous patron of education. She, too, enjoyed and benefited from the company of the scholars who flocked to court, but she did not ignore the universities. In 1518, she visited Merton College, Oxford, where she was received by the students with “as many demonstrations of joy and love as if she had been Juno or Minerva.” 18 She founded lectureships at Oxford and Cambridge; gave money to support the struggling new foundation of St. John’s College, Cambridge, founded by Margaret Beaufort; and, like Margaret, gave financial support to impoverished students. She also took an interest in Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford.
Katherine had been schooled by the humanist Peter Martyr, and she was “a rare and fine advocate”19 of the new learning. Many learned works were dedicated to her, and Erasmus was privately of the opinion that her scholarship was more exceptional than her husband’s. 20
The spread of learning, literacy, and education that was witnessed in the Renaissance was inspired by humanism, yet facilitated by the invention of printing. Since 1476, when William Caxton set up the first English printing press at Westminster, printed books and pamphlets had proliferated at a staggering rate. After Caxton died in 1491, his press had been taken over by his chief assistant, the Alsatian Wynkyn de Worde, a protégé of Margaret Beaufort; Worde moved the press to Fleet Street, and until his death in 1535 produced many important books, earning himself the title King’s Printer. Among his successors to both title and press was the renowned Thomas Berthelet.
As books were expensive and were available only to a wealthy few, their subject matter initially reflected the interests of the upper classes, who were at first no friends to the new learning. The most popular books were devotional works and tales of chivalry. “In our forefathers’ time, few books were read in our tongue, saving certain books of chivalry,” recalled the great scholar Roger Ascham in 1570. The most popular of these was Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (written around 1470, published 1485), and Ascham could only deplore the fact that “the whole pleasure of it standeth in open manslaughter and bold bawdery.”21 Other favourites were mediaeval romances, manuals on courtesy and hunting, and above all histories such as Robert Fabyan’s New Chronicles of England and France (1516).
Polydore Vergil had set a new fashion in historical writing and inspired a new generation of writers. Yet the moralising of the past had not been forgotten. When Thomas More wrote his History of Richard the Third (c. 1514), he expected his readers to learn from it important political lessons; in many other respects, it is the first “modern” biography.22
By contrast, the lawyer Edward Hall—no humanist, but an eyewitness— produced a well-written but traditional chronicle of Henry VIII’s reign, with vivid descriptions of pageants and state occasions. Although it is an invaluable source for the period, its style is uncritical and adulatory. 23
The spread of humanism led before long to changes in attitudes and the printing of more sophisticated works; some were controversial and some even heretical. Attempts to regulate the presses were not always successful, while banned books were often smuggled into England from abroad. The printed word was enormously influential in encouraging people to explore new ideas and ideologies—but they frequently did so at their peril.
Traditional illuminated manuscripts were still much prized, and often very valuable. It was customary to have presentation copies of printed books illustrated by hand to make them look like manuscripts. In 1525, Henry VIII employed a “limner of books” called Richard James.24
The early Tudor period produced little in the way of great literature. The age of Chaucer was long past, although his works, first printed in 1532 with a preface by the King’s Treasurer of the Chamber, Bryan Tuke,25 were still enormously popular, while the plays of Shakespeare were decades away in the future. Much of the best prose was to be found in translations of older works; it was Henry VIII who urged John Bourchier, Lord Berners, the martial Governor of Calais, to write his outstanding translation of the chronicles of Jean Froissart (1523–1525), hoping that “his worthy subjects” might be inspired to emulate the famous and warlike deeds of their ancestors.26 Berners’s other translations included a courtly romance, Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1534), for Lady Elizabeth Carew, and Antonio de Guevara’s Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius (1535), described as “a mirror for princes.”27 Henry VIII also commissioned, at the time of his invasion of France in 1513, an English translation of the Latin biography of his hero, Henry V, written by the Ferrarese humanist Tito Livio da Forli in 1437–1438.28
Henry VIII spent a fortune on illuminated manuscripts and printed books, importing many from France and Italy. He inherited some of his collection from his father and Margaret Beaufort, who left him her copy of Froissart’s chronicles. Many of his books were Bibles; classical works by Aristotle, Cicero, and Thucydides; or theological tomes, such as works by the Church Fathers and scholastic authorities including St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, St. John Bonaventura, John of Salisbury, and Peter Abelard.29 There were also the usual romances and works of chivalry, as well as several scientific treatises.
The royal library had originally been established in the early thirteenth century by King John. It was then a collection of books that travelled with the King. By the end of the fifteenth century, after successive monarchs, notably Edward IV and Henry VII, had added more volumes, it was housed in specially designated rooms in the royal palaces.
Under Henry VIII, the royal library expanded considerably. There were libraries at Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court, and Whitehall, which were looked after by each respective Keeper of the Palace. There was also a resident librarian; the first to be appointed by Henry VIII was the Flemish scholar Giles d’Ewes. These libraries were furnished with desks and lecterns, both with shelves underneath for storing books; wall-mounted shelves did not come into fashion until later in the century. The royal books were bound by the King’s Bookbinder in red or black velvet or leather,30 and they were numbered and arranged in alphabetical order.31 Some of the King’s books and manuscripts survive: several are in the British Library, while nearly a hundred duplicate volumes were donated after Henry’s death to Trinity College Oxford; some of these had originally been acquired from monastic libraries. What was left of Henry VIII’s library was to form the nucleus of the present Royal Library at Windsor.
17
“The King’s Painters”
In 1511, John Browne, later the founder of Painter-Stainers Hall in London, became the first artist to be appointed to the new post of Serjeant Painter to the King, at a salary of £20 (£6,000). Browne was not employed to paint pictures, but to carry out decorative work in the royal palaces and on the King’s ships and barges, and to make props and scenery for the Revels Office. He is also known to have painted flags, banners, surcoats, horse trappings, and perhaps the initial letters of documents. Much of his work involved heraldic devices, and in his will he refers to three books of arms and badges which he used for reference.1 The King owned similar pattern books, which he kept in his studies at Hampton Court and Whitehall.2
Until 1544, Henry’s Serjeant Painters were English and members of the Painter Stainers Guild in London, founded by Henry VIII to provide teams of artists and craftsmen to help his Serjeant Painters carry out their duties. The King was an exacting master who wanted work completed very quickly. As well as John Browne, he “had in wages for limning divers other,” 3 although their names are rarely recorded. Limning was the art of painting in miniature for manuscript illu
mination; later, the word limner was used to describe a painter of minatures.
Most English art at this time was of a decorative nature, the rest comprising crude oak-panel portraits, usually by itinerant artists; much is lost, and what does survive has often been heavily restored. There was no indigenous school of painting, and the names of few artists are known. The court’s artistic inspiration came from Burgundy, but during Henry VIII’s reign, Italian and French Renaissance influences became increasingly evident; most of the best artists and craftsmen working in England were foreigners imported by Henry VIII and Wolsey to reproduce the innovations that had appeared on the continent; royal agents were sent abroad to discover and recruit the most talented artificers, offering attractive rates of pay, short- or long-term contracts, and the prestige of working for the King. As has been remarked upon, there was fierce native resentment against aliens working in this field, and strict legislation controlling their activities. But the King was exempt.
Edward IV and Henry VII had established royal workshops for the artists and craftsmen they employed; Henry VIII expanded the workshops, although very little is known about how they functioned. One atelier at Richmond employed illuminators; it was managed by the royal librarian, Giles d’Ewes.4 Later in the reign, two distinct schools of craftsmen were established at court: Italian sculptors and Flemish glaziers. One of the latter was a Dutchman, Galyon Hone (or Hoon), who in 1517 succeeded Bernard Flower as King’s Glazier, working from a new royal workshop in Southwark. Hoon designed stained glass for many of the royal palaces and the Savoy Chapel before continuing Flower’s work on the magnificent windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, with designs that were High Renaissance in concept.
Henry VIII was one of the greatest English patrons of the arts. He spent vast sums on them. Much of this went on decorative schemes and ephemeral items intended to glorify the royal image, and a great deal is lost and known only from written records. Yet there is no doubt that Henry took a keen interest in artistic developments and was desirous of showing himself to be a European in taste. To begin with it was Wolsey who set the pace in artistic patronage, but Henry was never one to be outdone, and soon took the lead.
In Italy the revival of classical art and architecture was facilitated by the diversity of ruins and artefacts remaining, but in England there were few such blueprints. Italian artistic influence usually reached England through trade and via Englishmen who had visited Italy and Italian craftsmen who had worked in Flanders and France, and also through imported Italian books, but it was not until 1516 that the craze for all things “antique” became fashionable and began to undermine the artistic dominance of Burgundy. Of course, Renaissance art was not unknown at court prior to that date: Henry VII had been given Raphael’s St. George and the Dragon by Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, in return for the Order of the Garter, 5 and around 1500 the Italian sculptor Guido Mazzone had produced a bust which probably represents a smiling young Henry VIII as Duke of York. But such examples were not widely known in England.
The first great Italian artist employed by Henry VIII was Pietro Torrigiano, the Florentine sculptor. Torrigiano was a volatile man with a chequered background: he had learned his craft alongside Michelangelo in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence; there, Torrigiano had quarrelled with Michelangelo, and famously broken his nose. Later, after working on commissions for the Borgias in Rome, he had fought as a mercenary in the Italian wars.
It was perhaps at Wolsey’s suggestion that Henry invited Torrigiano to England in 1511 to design and execute a tomb for Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, which was to be the centrepiece of the magnificent Perpendicular Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Torrigiano worked on the tomb between 1512 and 1518. He wanted Benevenuto Cellini to assist him with the project, but Cellini refused to be associated with a man of so violent a temper, nor did he wish to live among “such beasts as the English.” 6 In the event, Torrigiano produced the first masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture to be seen in England, with lifelike bronze effigies—the faces had probably been taken from death masks—resting on a classical marble sarcophagus that had the arms of England supported by plump putti at each end. He also completed a tomb for Margaret Beaufort, which bore a strikingly austere marble effigy of that formidable lady, based on drawings made from memory by Maynard the Fleming, and an epitaph by Erasmus. The two tombs set new precedents for English funerary monuments.
These were not the only works that Torrigiano executed in England. He executed painted terracotta busts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, which Henry VIII later displayed in his study at Whitehall,7 and also a bust of Bishop Fisher.8 In 1516, he sculpted a Florentine-style wall tomb for Dr. John Yonge, Master of the Rolls, in the Rolls Chapel, Chancery Lane, and he may also have been responsible for the sculptured portrait roundel of Sir Thomas Lovell, Treasurer of the Household, now in Westminster Abbey. In 1517, Torrigiano began work on a marble altar with terracotta angels which was to stand before Henry VII’s tomb. It was completed after his death by Benedetto di Rovezzano, but destroyed in 1644 during the Civil War; the present altar is a 1930s reconstruction.
Another Italian who was enticed to England early in Henry’s reign was Vincenzo Volpe (or Vulpe), a native of Naples, who arrived before 1512 and remained in the royal employ until 1532. The King set him to work painting heraldic designs on his ships and barges, and later commissioned him to paint maps of Rye and Hastings. Volpe also drew up a pictorial plan of Dover harbour that was presented to the King by the people of Dover.9
Most pictures painted in England were portraits. Portraiture evolved considerably and became highly fashionable during Henry VIII’s reign, which was when a quintessentially English style began to develop, although it was foreign artists such as Hans Holbein who made this possible. Prior to Holbein’s arrival in 1526, there were few portrait painters of note working in England.
Portraits on wood were known as tables, while those on canvas were called stained cloths. Many of those that survive from the early sixteenth century betray some Burgundian influence. Portraits were painted to order, yet there was little money to be made out of them, for in the days before Holbein they were considered to be of less value than wall hangings. There were, however, many portraits in the royal collection; these were important, not so much as works of art, but as dynastic advertisements. In an age before photography, they were also tools of diplomacy, used often in marriage negotiations or as goodwill tokens between rulers.
Henry VIII owned a set of royal portraits—including those of Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III—painted by the so-called cast shadow workshop around 1518–1535.10 That of Richard III was over-painted soon after its completion, to make the image of the King look as evil as his reputation was deemed to warrant. Henry also had a portrait from life of his grandmother, Elizabeth Wydeville, dating from about 1471–1480, and a series of foreign royal portraits, among them images of Louis XII, Ferdinand and Isabella, and the three children of Christian II of Denmark.
The sitters in Tudor portraits are often identified by badges, coats of arms, and inscriptions. Rank and wealth were proclaimed through costume, jewellery, and insignia, and elaborate symbolism, much of it still not fully understood, was used to convey more subtle messages. Full-length portraits were rare; most portraits were head-and-shoulders studies, with the hands sometimes resting on a shelf. Some portraits were rectangular, others had arched crowns. Several versions of a portrait, of varying quality, could exist: Henry VII arranged for copies of royal portraits to hang in all his greater houses, while loyal subjects would obtain copies of portraits of the King and his family to hang in their homes.
Henry VIII’s portraits were beautifully framed, some with “black ebony garnished with silver,” some with wood painted black and gilded, and others with walnut wood.11 To prevent them from fading, brightly coloured curtains of silk or sarcanet were kept drawn in front of them; those at Hampton Court were yellow and green.12
; One of the first portrait painters to be patronised by Henry VIII was Jan Raf (or Rave), a master of the Painters’ Guild of Bruges, more commonly known by his Latinised name, Johannes Corvus, working in England from about 1518 until his death in 1544. One of the most famous of his surviving works is the portrait of Bishop Foxe (c.1518) now in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The portrait of Henry’s sister Mary Tudor (c.1529) at Sudeley Castle is similar in manner and may also be by him,13 as may the portrait of Katherine of Aragon in the National Portrait Gallery.14 Because his style was imitated, it is often difficult to say with certainty which of the portraits ascribed to him are definitely by him.
The Renaissance portrait medal was first seen in England in Henry VIII’s reign. One of the first was the medal of the King in profile, with a bonnet, straight hair, and a beard, by the German master Hans Schwarz;15 it probably dates from the mid-1520s.
Comparatively few portraits of Henry VIII survive from the period before 1525. One at Windsor, formerly thought to portray his brother Arthur, shows Henry as an adolescent. Of three known early representations of Henry as King, one, dating from about 1509, is in the Berger Collection in Denver; one is in the Fairhaven Collection at Anglesey Abbey; and the whereabouts of the third is unknown. A half-length in the National Portrait Gallery by an unknown Flemish artist, dating from about 1520, is the first to show Henry bearded. The Dutch artist Lucas Cornelisz de Koch is said to have come to England with his large family in 1521 and to have painted the King, but his work cannot now be traced.16