Postgraduate Course: Picturing Authority: Art and Politics at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (HIAR11082)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Holbein and Henry VIII; Van Dyck and Charles I; Kneller and William III. The visual arts played a crucial role in fashioning and promoting the royal public image. The course introduces students to key issues in the relationship between art and politics in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain. |
| Course description |
Through close study of royal portraiture, decorative schemes, printed ephemera, medals and court spectacle, the course will explore how monarchs constructed images of authority, assessing the iconography, significance and impact of these efforts. Through individual presentations, group work, class discussion and site visits to, for example, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Holyrood House, students will consider important aspects of the fashioning process, including continuities and advances present in representations of each reign; relationships between royal patrons, artists and their public; and the diplomatic and propagandistic efficacy of the visual arts.
The course aims:
* To provide students with a comprehensive survey of developments in royal visual display in Britain during the period c.1530-1700
* To situate the careers of native and foreign artists within the contexts of the royal court and its patronage
* To explore the propagandistic importance of early modern visual culture and the changing political priorities which it expressed
* To develop team-working and communication skills
Week 1: Introduction: Artistic Relationships: Patron, Artist and Audience
Week 2: The Portraiture of Power: Holbein and Henry VIII
Week 3: Reformation and Counter-Reformation: Religion and Art under Edward VI and Mary I
Week 4: The Elizabethan Icon: Fashioning the Virgin Queen
Week 5: Peace in our Times: Rubens, James VI and I, and the Art of Diplomacy
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: The Image of the King: Art at the Court of Charles I
Week 8: Access and Display: The Spaces of Royal Power
Week 9: Re-presenting Rule: Tradition and Innovation at the Restoration Court
Week 10: Image Wars: Propaganda at the Rival Stuart Courts
Week 11: Mothering the Nation: The Patronage of Queen Anne
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- discuss Tudor and Stuart visual culture with relation to recent historiography on art and authority in early modern Britain
- place individual artists within a clear chronology and assess their impact upon developments in court culture
- assess the primary visual and material sources through which monarchs fashioned their images
- demonstrate developed skills of visual enquiry, analysis and communication
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Reading List
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Adamson, John (ed.) The Princely Courts of Europe (London, 1999).
Aston, Margaret, The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (Cambridge, 1995).
Corp, Edward (ed.), A Court in Exile: The Stuarts in France 1689-1718 (Cambridge, 2004).
Donovan, Fiona, Rubens and England (New Haven and London, 2004).
Hearn, Karen, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630 (London, 1995).
Hearn, Karen (ed.), Van Dyck in Britain (London, 2009).
Holmes, Geoffrey, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain (London, 1993).
Howarth, David, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485-1649 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997).
Keay, Anna, The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (New York and London, 2008).
Schwoerer, Lois G, 'Images of Queen Mary II, 1689-95' in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1989).
Sharpe, Kevin, Image Wars, Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England 1603-1660 (New Haven and London, 2010).
Sharpe, Kevin, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, Authority and Image in Sixteenth Century England (New Haven and London, 2009).
Smuts, R. Malcolm (ed.), The Stuart Court in Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge, 1996).
Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London, 1999). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
* Visual and critical analysis
* Independent research
* Presentation and communication skills
* Group work
* Organisation and planning |
| Keywords | Early modern,politics,image,Tudor,Stuart,display,authority |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Catriona Murray
Tel: (0131 6)51 5940
Email: |
Course secretary | Mr Nathan Ross-Hammond
Tel: (0131 6)51 5880
Email: |
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