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Library Journal Review

The catalog of an exhibition at London's Tate Gallery last year, this volume is an important addition to the study of Tudor and Jacobean painting. The essays on politics and painting, Holbein's portraits, and British painting and the Low Countries provide excellent background, while the essay entitled "The Methods and Materials of Three Tudor Artists" is especially interesting. The catalog entries are informative and carefully done, providing a wealth of information along with the essays, and each of the beautifully reproduced paintings is accompanied by a full entry of relevant information. A very helpful bibliography and a chronology of important events complete this work, which should be included in every serious art collections.‘Martin Chasin, Adult Inst., Bridgeport, Ct. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The title of this elegant catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, refers mainly to the great ruling families in Britain during the reign of the Tudors and Stuarts, but it also alludes to family connections and professional alliances among the artists who portrayed the royalty and the upper classes in that era. In informative introductory essays, Hearn, assistant keeper in the British collection at the Tate, and other scholars discuss the relationship of painting to politics in England between 1530 and 1630; the production and replication of Holbein's portraits during the 16th century; and the domination of British art by artists from the continent, including Holbein, Zuccaro, Rubens and Van Dyck, even though distinguished English painters such as Larkin, Oliver, Gower and Peake were active at the same time. More than 150 works, paintings, sculptures and tapestries are reproduced here in full color. They depict monarchs, members of the court and the gentry dressed in finery and surrounded by coats of arms, trophies and other symbols of their power and status. One chapter addresses the methods and materials of three Tudor artists: Bettes, Hilliard and Ketel. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

After the dynastic wars of the 1400s settled down with the Tudors on the throne, it was time to get serious about king-and queenship, meaning paintings to immortalize the monarch's glory. Hearn explores "how English was painting in England at this time" and finds it wasn't very. The summons went to the Continent, and over came Holbein and his successors to paint Henry VIII and his. This beautiful album of 150 full-color paintings reflects both the pageant of monarchs up through Charles I and nobles who commissioned likenesses of themselves. Unlike stuffy, academic art history albums, this one partakes of the perennial popular interest in British royalty, whose concern with their image didn't begin with irritation at the tabloids; as the informative text explains, Elizabeth I rigorously controlled the painting of her image, a canny PR move whose success English majors will recognize in the portrait--of ER bestride the realm--used as the cover of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. A lush combination of history and art. --Gilbert Taylor