‘The Tudors’ exhibit at the Legion of Honor in S.F. shines a revealing light on the oft-depicted British aristocracy during the 15th-17th centuries.
From Bette Davis to Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, from Charles Laughton to Jonathan Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII, from “Fire Over England” to “Wolf Hall,” the Tudor era has kept movies, operas, TV series and books stuffed with drama and intrigue. And beheadings.
There is plenty of intrigue, too, if you trace the social and political moves during the Tudors’ 118-year reign, from 1485 to 1603. Britain was becoming the British Empire. The merchant class was expanding. And though he’s not part of the exhibit, Shakespeare was cranking out histories, comedies and tragedies.
Throughout their reign, the Tudors used art — especially portraits full of symbolism — to promote their legitimacy, authority and power. In the earliest surviving full-length portrait , the queen wears an elaborate crimson dress and stands on a Turkish carpet. She holds a carnation, a symbol of marital love, in her right hand, and there’s a background of fruit including pears and pomegranates — all of which “characterize the young queen as a marriageable beauty,” the caption notes.
As revealing as anything in the exhibit are paintings by German-born Hans Holbein the Younger, one of the great portraitists of all time, who became Tudor court painter in the 1530s.
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