A significant contribution to the understanding of sixteenth-century English art in an historical context, this study by Susan James represents an intensive rethinking and restructuring of the Tudor art world based on a broad, detailed survey of women's diverse creative roles within that world. Through an extensive analysis of original documents, James examines and clarifies many of the misperceptions upon which modern discussions of Tudor art are based. The new evidence she lays out allows for a fresh investigation of the economics of art production, particularly in the images of Elizabeth I; of strategies for influencing political situations by carefully planned programs of portraiture; of the seminal importance of extended clans of immigrant Flemish artists and of careers of artists Susanna Horenboult and Lievine Teerlinc and their impact on the development of the portrait miniature. Drawn principally from primary sources, this book presents important new research which examines the contributions of Tudor women in the formation, distribution and popularization of the visual arts, particularly portraiture and the portrait miniature. James highlights the involvement of women as patrons, consumers and creators of art in sixteenth-century England and their use of the painted image as a statement of cultural worth. She explores and analyzes the amount of time, money, effort and ingenuity which women across all social classes invested in the development of art, in the uses they found for it, and the surprising and unexpected ways in which they exploited it.

A significant contribution to the understanding of sixteenth-century English art in an historical context, this study by Susan James represents an intensive rethinking and restructuring of the Tudor art world based on a broad, detailed survey of women's diverse creative roles within that world. Through an extensive analysis of original documents, James examines and clarifies many of the misperceptions upon which modern discussions of Tudor art are based. The new evidence she lays out allows for a fresh investigation of the economics of art production, particularly in the images of Elizabeth I; of strategies for influencing political situations by carefully planned programs of portraiture; of the seminal importance of extended clans of immigrant Flemish artists and of careers of artists Susanna Horenboult and Lievine Teerlinc and their impact on the development of the portrait miniature. Drawn principally from primary sources, this book presents important new research which examines the contributions of Tudor women in the formation, distribution and popularization of the visual arts, particularly portraiture and the portrait miniature. James highlights the involvement of women as patrons, consumers and creators of art in sixteenth-century England and their use of the painted image as a statement of cultural worth. She explores and analyzes the amount of time, money, effort and ingenuity which women across all social classes invested in the development of art, in the uses they found for it, and the surprising and unexpected ways in which they exploited it.

Contributing an original dimension to the significant body of published scholarship on women in 16th-century England, this study examines the largest corpus of women’s private writings available to historians: their wills. In these, female voices speak out, commenting on their daily lives, on identity, gender, status, familial relationships and social engagement. Wills show women to have been active participants in a civil society, well aware of their personal authority and potential influence, whose committed actions during life and charitable strategies after death could and did impact the health of that society. From an intensive analysis of more than 1200 wills, this pioneering work focuses on women from all parts of the country and all strata of society, revealing an entire population of articulate, opportunistic, and capable individuals who found the spaces between the lines of the law and used those spaces to achieve personal goals. Author Susan James demonstrates how wills describe strategies for end-of-life care, create platforms of remembrance, and offer insights into the myriad occupational endeavors in which women were engaged. James illuminates how these documents were not simply instruments of bequest and inheritance, but were statements of power and control, catalogues of material culture from which we are able to gauge a woman’s understanding of her own reality and the context that formed her environment. Wills were tools and the way in which women wielded these tools offers new ways to look at England in the 16th century and reveals the seminal role women played in its development.

This book explores (mis)representations of two female claimants to the Tudor throne, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I of England. It places Jane's attempted accession and Mary I's successful accession and reign in comparative perspective, and illustrates how the two are fundamentally linked to one another, and to broader questions of female kingship, precedent, and legitimacy. Through ten original essays, this book considers the nature and meaning of mid-Tudor queenship as it took shape, functioned, and was construed in the sixteenth century as well as its memory down to the twenty-first, in literary, musical, artistic, theatrical, and other cultural forms. Offering unique comparative insights into Jane and Mary, this volume is a key resource for researchers and students interested in the Tudor period, queenship, and historical memory.

Gender, Family, and Politics is the first full-length, gender-inclusive study of the Howard family, one of the pre-eminent families of early-modern Britain. Most of the existing scholarship on this aristocratic dynasty's political operation during the first half of the sixteenth-century centres on the male family members, and studies of the women of the early-modern period tends to focus on class or geographical location. Nicola Clark, however, places women and the question of kinship in centre-stage, arguing that this is necessary to understand the complexity of the early modern dynasty. A nuanced understanding of women's agency, dynastic identity, and politics allows us to more fully understand the political, social, religious, and cultural history of early-modern Britain.

All of the essays in this volume capture the body in a particular attitude: in distress, vulnerability, pain, pleasure, labor, health, reproduction, or preparation for death. They attend to how the body’s transformations affect the social and political arrangements that surround it. And they show how apprehension of the body – in social and political terms – gives it shape.

A rare examination of the political, social, and economic contexts in which painters in Tudor and Early Stuart England lived and workedWhile famous artists such as Holbein, Rubens, or Van Dyck are all known for their creative periods in England or their employment at the English court, they still had to make ends meet, as did the less well-known practitioners of their craft. This book, by one of the leading historians of Tudor and Stuart England, sheds light on the daily concerns, practices, and activities of many of these painters. Drawing on a biographical database comprising nearly 3000 painters and craftsmen - strangers and native English, Londoners and provincial townsmen, men and sometimes women, celebrity artists and 'mere painters' - this book offers an account of what it meant to paint for a living in early modern England. It considers the origins of these painters as well as their geographical location, the varieties of their expertise, and the personnel and spatial arrangements of their workshops. Engagingly written, the book captures a sense of mobility and exchange between England and the continent through the considerable influence of stranger-painters, undermining traditional notions about the insular character of this phase in the history of English art. By showing how painters responded to the greater political, religious, and economic upheavals of the time, the study refracts the history of England itself through the lens of this particular occupation.Engagingly written, the book captures a sense of mobility and exchange between England and the continent through the considerable influence of stranger-painters, undermining traditional notions about the insular character of this phase in the history of English art. By showing how painters responded to the greater political, religious, and economic upheavals of the time, the study refracts the history of England itself through the lens of this particular occupation.Engagingly written, the book captures a sense of mobility and exchange between England and the continent through the considerable influence of stranger-painters, undermining traditional notions about the insular character of this phase in the history of English art. By showing how painters responded to the greater political, religious, and economic upheavals of the time, the study refracts the history of England itself through the lens of this particular occupation.Engagingly written, the book captures a sense of mobility and exchange between England and the continent through the considerable influence of stranger-painters, undermining traditional notions about the insular character of this phase in the history of English art. By showing how painters responded to the greater political, religious, and economic upheavals of the time, the study refracts the history of England itself through the lens of this particular occupation.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Why are early modern English dramatists preoccupied with unfinished processes of ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’? And what did the terms ‘finished’ or ‘incomplete’ mean for dramatists and their audiences in this period? Making and unmaking in early modern English drama is about the significance of visual things that are ‘under construction’ in works by playwrights including Shakespeare, Robert Greene and John Lyly. Illustrated with examples from across visual and material culture, it opens up new interpretations of the place of aesthetic form in the early modern imagination. Plays are explored as a part of a lively post-Reformation visual culture, alongside a diverse range of contexts and themes, including iconoclasm, painting, sculpture, clothing and jewellery, automata and invisibility. Asking what it meant for Shakespeare and his contemporaries to ‘begin’ or ‘end’ a literary or visual work, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern English drama, literature, visual culture and history.

From Margaret of Anjou to Katherine Parr, All the Queen’s Jewels examines the jewellery collections of the ten queen consorts of England between 1445–1548 and investigates the collections of jewels a queen had access to, as well as the varying contexts in which queens used and wore jewels. The jewellery worn by queens reflected both their gender and their status as the first lady of the realm. Jewels were more than decorative adornments; they were an explicit display of wealth, majesty and authority. They were often given to queens by those who wished to seek her favour or influence and were also associated with key moments in their lifecycle. These included courtship and marriage, successfully negotiating childbirth (and thus providing dynastic continuity), and their elevation to queenly status or coronation. This book explores the way that queens acquired jewels, whether via their predecessor, their own commission or through gift giving. It underscores that jewels were a vital tool that enabled queens to shape their identities as consort, and to fashion images of power that could be seen by their households, court and contemporaries. This book is perfect for anyone interested in medieval and Tudor history, queenship, jewellery and the history of material culture.

The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe is a comprehensive and ground-breaking survey of the lives of women in early-modern Europe between 1450 and 1750. Covering a period of dramatic political and cultural change, the book challenges the current contours and chronologies of European history by observing them through the lens of female experience. The collaborative research of this book covers four themes: the affective world; practical knowledge for life; politics and religion; arts, science and humanities. These themes are interwoven through the chapters, which encompass all areas of women’s lives: sexuality, emotions, health and wellbeing, educational attainment, litigation and the practical and leisured application of knowledge, skills and artistry from medicine to theology. The intellectual lives of women, through reading and writing, and their spirituality and engagement with the material world, are also explored. So too is the sheer energy of female work, including farming and manufacture, skilled craft and artwork, theatrical work and scientific enquiry. The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe revises the chronological and ideological parameters of early-modern European history by opening the reader’s eyes to an exciting age of female productivity, social engagement and political activism across European and transatlantic boundaries. It is essential reading for students and researchers of early-modern history, the history of women and gender studies.