Tag: Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger was a prolific chronicler of the Tudor monarchy, his paintings of kings, queens and courtiers hung in some of the most honorable galleries and museums in the world.

Royal portraits of the Tudor era are just as likely to be signed by Hans Holbein the Younger as anyone else, examples of his handiwork serving as the visages of the rulers who reigned during Medieval times. In my diary entry Renovating During the Tudor Era, one of the painters most famous portraits of Henry VIII shows him robust, his robes trimmed in fur and his hat tipped jauntily. The profiles of Sir Henry Wyatt and his son Sir Thomas Wyatt also ornament the post, the elder Wyatt a Tudor courtier and a member of Henry VII’s privy council. He was the owner of one of the most prestigious castles during that era, Allington, which had an authentic tiltyard on its extensive grounds.

Renovating during this time was as much about sport as it was about comfort so any landowner who had property large enough and sophisticated enough to have a tiltyard had quite a standing. The pageantry surrounding the tournaments evolved into one of the most important opportunities for proving wealth and power that existed during the sixteenth century, the sport’s heyday. Henry Wyatt would become one of the largest landowners in Kent under the two Tudor kings he served, his stature high enough to have his portrait painted by a portraiture painter of monarchs.