This
Tudor costume history information consists of Pages 247-273 of the
chapter on early to mid-century 16th century dress in the 38 YEAR REIGN era
of Henry The Eighth 1509-1547 and taken from English Costume by Dion
Clayton Calthrop.
The 36 page section consists of a text copy of the book ENGLISH
COSTUME PAINTED & DESCRIBED BY DION CLAYTON CALTHROP. Visuals,
drawings and painted fashion plates in the book have a charm of their own and are
shown amid the text. The book covers both male and female dress history of
over 700 years spanning the era 1066-1830.
This page is about Tudor dress in
the reign of King Henry VIII 1509-1547.
For the Introduction to this book see this
introduction written by Dion Clayton Calthrop. I have adjusted
the images so they can be used for colouring
worksheets where pupils add some costume/society facts. My comments are in italics.
HENRY THE EIGHTH
Reigned thirty-eight years: 1509-1547.
Born, 1491.
Married:-
1509, Katharine of Aragon;
1532, Anne Boleyn;
1536,
Jane Seymour; 1540, Anne of Cleves;
1540, Katharine Howard;
1548, Katherine Parr.
The costume plate shows a man wearing the club-toed shoes of the
era and a white shirt embroidered in black silk - Blackwork. The
shoulders are well padded and the flat cap is feature of fashionable
dress of the reign of Henry VIII.
VERSES BY HENRY THE EIGHTH IN PRAISE OF CONSTANCY
'As the holy grouth grene with ivie all alone
Whose flowerys cannot be seen and grene wode levys be gone,
Now unto my lady, promyse to her I make
From all other only to her I me betake
Adew myne owne ladye, adew my specyall
Who hath my hart trewly, be sure, and ever shall.'
So, with songs and music of his own composition, comes the richest man
in Europe to the throne of England. Gay, brave, tall, full of conceit in
his own strength, Henry, a king, a Tudor, a handsome man, abounding in
excellence of craft and art, the inheritance from his father and
mother, figures in our pageant a veritable symbol of the Renaissance in
England.
He had, in common with the marvellous characters of that Springtime of
History, the quick intelligence and all the personal charm that the age
brought forth in abundance. In his reign the accumulated mass of brain
all over the world budded and flowered; the time gave to us a succession
of the most remarkable people in any historical period, and it is one of
the triumphs of false reasoning to prove this, in England, to have been
the result of the separation from the Catholic Church.
For centuries the
Church had organized and prepared the ground in which this tree of the
world's knowledge was planted, had pruned, cut back, nursed the tree,
until gradually it flowered, its branches spread over Christian Europe,
and when the flowering branch hanging over England gave forth its
first-fruits, those men who ate of the fruit and benefited by the shade
were the first to quarrel with the gardeners.
In these days there lived and died Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci,
Raphael, Dürer, Erasmus, Holbein, Copernicus, Luther, Rabelais, and
Michael Angelo, to mention a few men of every shade of thought,
and in this goodly time came Henry to the English throne, to leave, at
his death, instead of the firm progress of order instituted by his
father, a bankrupt country with an enormously rich Government.
You may see for the later pictures of his reign a great bloated mass of
corpulence, with running ulcers on his legs and the blood of wives and
people on his hands, striding in his well-known attitude over the
festering slums his rule had produced in London. Harry, Grace à Dieu!
The mental picture from our - costume - point of view is widely different
from that of the last reign. No longer do we see hoods and cowls, brown,
gray, white, and black in the streets, no longer the throngs of fine
craftsmen, of church-carvers, gilders, embroiderers, candle-makers,
illuminators, missal-makers; all these served but to swell the ranks of
the unemployed, and caused a new problem to England, never since solved,
of the skilled poor out of work. The hospitals were closed - that should
bring a picture to your eyes - where the streets had been thronged with
the doctors of the poor and of the rich in their habits, no monks or lay
brothers were to be seen.
The sick, the blind, the insane had no
home but the overhung back alleys where the foulest diseases might
accumulate and hot-beds of vice spring up, while in the main streets
Harry Tudor was carried to his bear-baiting, a quivering mass of jewels
shaking on his corrupt body, on his thumb that wonderful diamond the
Regale of France, stolen by him from the desecrated shrine of St. Thomas
à Becket.
»
MEN'S FASHIONS
There are two distinct classes of fashion to be seen, the
German-Swiss fashion and the English fashion, a natural evolution of the
national dress.
The German fashion is that slashed, extravagant-looking
creation which we know so well from the drawings of Albert Dürer and the
more German designs of Holbein.
The garments which were known as
'blistered' clothes are excessive growths on to the most extravagant
designs of the Henry VII date.
The shirt cut low in the neck, and sewn
with black embroidery; the little waistcoat ending at the waist and cut
straight across from shoulder to shoulder, tied with thongs of
leather or coloured laces to the breeches, leaving a gap between which
showed the shirt; the universal pouch on the breeches often highly
decorated and jewelled.
From the line drawings you will see that the
sleeves and the breeches took every form, were of any odd assortment of
colours, were cut, puffed, and splashed all over, so that the shirt
might be pushed through the holes, looking indeed 'blistered.'
The shoes were of many shapes, as I have shown, agreeing in one point
only - that the toes should be cut very broad, often, indeed, quite
square.
Short or hanging hair, both were the fashion, and little flat caps with
the rim cut at intervals, or the large flat hats of the previous reign,
covered with feathers and curiously slashed, were worn with these
costumes.
It is from these 'blistered,' padded breeches that we derive the
trunks of the next reign, the slashings grown into long ribbon-like
slits, the hose puffed at the knee.
Separate pairs of sleeves were worn with the waistcoats, or with the
petti-cotes, a favourite sleeve trimming being broad velvet bands.
The invention sprang, as usual, from necessity, by vanity to custom. In
1477 the Swiss beat and routed the Duke of Burgundy at Nantes, and the
soldiers, whose clothes were in rags, cut and tore up his silk tents,
his banners, all material they could find, and made themselves clothes
of these odd pieces - clothes still so torn and ragged that their shirts
puffed out of every hole and rent.
The arrival of the victorious army
caused all the non-fighters to copy this curious freak in clothes, and
the courtiers perpetuated the event by proclaiming blistering as the
fashion.
The other and more usual fashion springs from the habit of clothes in
bygone reigns.
Let us first take the shirt A. It will be seen how, in this reign, the
tendency of the shirt was to come close about the neck.
The previous
reign showed us, as a rule, a shirt cut very low in the neck, with
the hem drawn together with laces; these laces pulled more tightly
together, thus rucking the material into closer gathers, caused the cut
of the shirt to be altered and made so that the hem frilled out round
the neck - a collar, in fact.
That this collar took all forms under
certain limitations will be noticed, also that thick necked
gentlemen - Henry himself must have invented this - wore the collar of the
shirt turned down and tied with strings of linen.
The cuffs of the
shirt, when they showed at the wrist, were often, as was the collar,
sewn with elaborate designs in black thread or silk.
Now we take the waistcoat B. As you may see from the drawing showing the
German form of dress, this waistcoat was really a petti-cote, a
waistcoat with sleeves.
This waistcoat was generally of richly
ornamented material (Henry in purple satin, embroidered with his
initials and the Tudor rose; Henry in brocade covered with posies made
in letters of fine gold bullion).
The material was slashed and puffed or
plain, and dependent for its effect on the richness of its embroidery or
design of the fabric. It was worn with or without sleeves; in most cases
the sleeves were detachable.
The coat C. This coat was made with bases like a frock, a
skirted coat, in fact; the material used was generally plain, of velvet,
fine cloth, silk, or satin.
The varieties of cut were numerous, and are
shown in the drawings -
open to the waist,
open all the way in front,
close to the neck - every way;
where the coat was open in front it
generally parted to show the bragetto, or jewelled pouch.
It was a
matter for choice spirits to decide whether or no they should wear
sleeves to their coats, or show the sleeves of their waistcoats. No
doubt Madame Fashion saw to it that the changes were rung sufficiently
to make hay while the sun shone on extravagant tastes. The coat was held
at the waist with a sash of silk tied in a bow with short ends.
Towards
the end of the reign, foreshadowing the Elizabethan jerkin or jacket,
the custom grew more universal of the coat with sleeves and the high
neck, the bases were cut shorter to show the full trunks, and the
waistcoat was almost entirely done away with, the collar grew in
proportion, and spread, like the tail of an angry turkey, in ruffle and
folded pleat round the man's neck.
This is the extreme German-English fashion. In Germany and Switzerland
this was carried to greater lengths.
The overcoat D is the gown of the previous reign cut, for the dandy,
into a shorter affair, reaching not far below the knee; for the
grave man it remained long, but, for all, the collar had changed to a
wide affair stretching well over the shoulders. It was made, this
collar, of such stuff as lined the cloak, maybe it was of fur, or of
satin, of silk, or of cloth of gold.
The tremendous folds of these
overcoats gave to the persons in them a sense of splendour and dignity;
the short sleeves of the fashionable overcoats, puffed and swollen,
barred with rich appliqué designs or bars of fur, reaching only to the
elbow, there to end in a hem of fur or some rich stuff, the collar as
wide as these padded shoulders, all told in effect as garments which
gave a great air of well-being and richness to their owner.
Of course, I suppose one must explain, the sleeves varied in every
way: were long, short, full, medium full, according to taste. Sometimes the overcoats were sleeveless.
Beneath these garments the trunks
were worn - loose little breeches, which, in the German style, were
bagged, puffed, rolled, and slashed in infinite varieties. Let it be
noticed that the cutting of slashes was hardly ever a straight slit, but
in the curve of an elongated S or a double S curve.
All men wore tight hose, in some cases puffed at the knee; in fact,
the bagging, sagging, and slashing of hose suggested the separate
breeches or trunks of hose.
The shoes were very broad, and were sometimes stuffed into a mound at
the toes, were sewn with precious stones, and, also, were cut and
puffed with silk.
The little flat cap will be seen in all its varieties in the
drawings.
The Irish were forbidden by law to wear a shirt, smock, kerchor, bendel,
neckerchor, mocket (a handkerchor), or linen cap coloured or dyed with
saffron; or to wear in shirts or smocks above seven yards of cloth.
To wear black genet you must be royal; to wear sable you must rank above
a viscount; to wear martin (marten) or velvet trimming you must be worth over two
hundred marks a year.
Short hair came into fashion about 1521.
So well known is the story of Sir Philip Calthrop and John Drakes the
shoemaker of Norwich, who tried to ape the fashion, that I must here
allude to this ancestor of mine who was the first of the dandies of
note, among persons not of the royal blood.
The story itself, retold in
every history of costume, is to this effect: Drakes, the
shoemaker, seeing that the county talked of Sir Philip's clothes,
ordered a gown from the same tailor. This reached the ears of Sir
Philip, who then ordered his gown to be cut as full of slashes as the
shears could make it. The ruin of cloth so staggered the shoemaker that
he vowed to keep to his own humble fashion in future.
No doubt Sir
Philip's slashes were cunningly embroidered round, and the gown made
rich and sparkling with the device of seed pearls so much in use. This
man's son, also Sir Philip, married Amy, daughter of Sir William Boleyn,
of Blickling, Norfolk. She was aunt to Queen Anne Boleyn.
[We now move from King Henry the Eight's costume to ladies Tudor
dress.]
The woman wears a plain but rich looking dress and on her head a peculiar head-dress
with a pad support of
silk in front to hold it from the forehead. The half-sleeves are clearly
visible.
One cannot call to mind pictures of this time without, in the first
instance, seeing the form of Henry rise up sharply before us followed by
his company of wives. The fat, uxorious giant comes straight to the
front of the picture, he dominates the age pictorially; and, as a
fitting background, one sees the six women who were sacrificed on the
political altar to pander to his vanity.
Katherine of Aragon - the fine
and noble lady - a tool of political desires, cast off after Henry had
searched his precious conscience, after eighteen years of married life,
to find that he had scruples as to the spirituality of the marriage.
Anne Boleyn, tainted with the life of the Court, a pitiful figure in
spite of all her odious crimes; how often must a ghost, in a black satin
nightdress edged with black velvet, have haunted the royal dreams. And
the rest of them, clustered round the vain king, while in the background
the great figures of the time loom hugely as they play with the crowned
puppets.
The note of the time, as we look at it with our eyes keen on the
picture, is the final evolution of the hood.
Bit by bit, inch by
inch, the plain fabric has become enriched, each succeeding step in an
elaboration of the simple form; the border next to the face is turned
back, then the hood is lined with fine stuff and the turnover shows this
to advantage; then the sides are split and the back is made more full;
then a tag is sewn on to the sides by which means the cut side may
be fastened off the shoulders.
The front is now stiffened and shaped at
an angle, this front is sewn with jewels, and, as the angle forms a gap
between the forehead and the point of the hood, a pad is added to fill
in the vacant space.
At last one arrives at the diamond-shaped
head-dress worn in this reign, and, in this reign, elaborated in every
way, elaborated, in fact, out of existence.
In order to make the
head-dress in its 1509 state you must make the white lining with the
jewelled turnover as a separate cap. However, I think that the drawings
speak for themselves more plainly than I can write.
Every device for crowding jewels together was used,
criss-cross, in groups of small numbers, in great masses.
Pendants were worn, hung upon
jewelled chains that wound twice round the neck, once close to the neck,
the second loop loose and passed, as a rule, under the lawn shift.
Large brooches decorated the bodices, brooches with drop ornaments, the
body of the brooch of fine gold workmanship, many of them wrought in
Italy.
The shift, delicately embroidered with black silk, had often a
band of jewellery upon it, and this shift was square cut, following the
shape of the bodice.
The bodice of the gown was square cut and much stiffened to a
box-like shape.
The sleeves of the gown were narrow at the shoulders, and after
fitting the arm for about six inches down from the shoulders, they
widened gradually until, just below the elbow, they became square and
very full; in this way they showed the false under-sleeve.
This
under-sleeve was generally made of a fine rich-patterned silk or
brocade, the same stuff which formed the under-gown; the sleeve was a
binding for the very full lawn or cambric sleeve which showed in a
ruffle at the wrist and in great puffs under the forearm.
The
under-sleeve was really more like a gauntlet, as it was generally held
together by buttoned tags; it was puffed with other coloured silk,
slashed to show the shift, or it might be plain.
Now the sleeve of the gown was subject to much alteration.
It was,
as I have described, made very square and full at the elbow, and over
this some ladies wore a false sleeve of gold net - you may imagine the
length to which net will go, studied with jewels, crossed in many ways,
twisted into patterns, sewn on to the sleeve in sloping lines - but,
besides this, the sleeve was turned back to form a deep square cuff
which was often made of black or coloured velvet, or of fur.
In all this I am taking no account of the German fashions, which I
must describe separately. Look at the drawings I have made of the German
fashion. I find that they leave me dumb - mere man has but a limited
vocabulary when the talk comes to clothes - and these dresses that look
like silk pumpkins, blistered and puffed and slashed, sewn in
ribs, swollen, and altogether so queer, are beyond the furious dashes
that my pen makes at truth and millinery.
The costumes of the people of
this age have grown up in the minds of most artists as being inseparable
from the drawings of Holbein and Dürer.
Surely, I say to myself, most people who will read this will know
their Holbein and Dürer, between whom there lies a vast difference, but
who between them show, the one, the estate of England, and the other,
those most German fashions which had so powerful an influence upon our
own.
Both these men show the profusion of richness, the extravagant
follies of the dress of their time, how, to use the words of Pliny: 'We
penetrate into the bowels of the earth, digging veins of gold and
silver, and ores of brass and lead; we seek also for gems and certain
little pebbles. Driving galleries into the depths, we draw out the
bowels of the earth, that the gems we seek may be worn on the finger.
How many hands are wasted in order that a single joint may sparkle! If
any hell there were, it had assuredly ere now been disclosed by the
borings of avarice and luxury!'
˚
Or in the writings of Tertullian, called by Sigismund Feyerabendt,
citizen and printer of Frankfort, a 'most strict censor who most
severely blames women:' 'Come now,' says Tertullian, 'if from the first
both the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Chinese spun from the tree,
and the Tyrians dyed and the Phrygians embroidered, and the Babylonians
inwove; and if pearls shone and rubies flashed, if gold itself, too,
came up from the earth with the desire for it; and if now, too, no lying
but the mirror's were allowed, Eve, I suppose, would have desired
these things on her expulsion from Paradise, and when spiritually dead.'
One sees by the tortured and twisted German fashion that the hair was
plaited, and so, in curves and twists, dropped into coarse gold-web nets, thrust into web nets with velvet pouches to them, so that the hair
stuck out behind in a great knob, or at the side in two protuberances;
over all a cap like to the man's, but that it was infinitely more
feathered and jewelled.
Then, again, they wore those hideous barbes or
beard-like linen cloths, over the chin, and an infinite variety of caps
of linen upon their heads - caps which showed always the form of the head
beneath.
In common with the men, their overcoats and cloaks were voluminous,
and needed to be so if those great sleeves had to be stuffed into them;
fur collars or silk collars, with facings to match, were rolled
over to show little or great expanses of these materials.
Here, to show what dainty creatures were our lady ancestors, to show
from what beef and blood and bone we come, I give you (keep your eye
meanwhile upon the wonderful dresses) the daily allowance of a Maid of
Honour.
Every morning at breakfast one chyne of beef from the kitchen, one chete
loaf and one maunchet at the pantry bar, and one gallon of ale at the
buttery bar.
For dinner a piece of beef, a stroke of roast and a reward from the
kitchen. A caste of chete bread from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale
at the buttery bar.
Afternoon - should they suffer the pangs of hunger - a maunchet of bread
from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale at the buttery bar.
Supper, a messe of pottage, a piece of mutton and a reward from the
kitchen. A caste of chete bread from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale
at the buttery bar.
After supper - to insure a good night's rest - a chete loaf and a maunchet
from the pantry bar, and half a gallon of ale from the seller bar.
Four and a half gallons of ale! I wonder did they drink it all
themselves? All this, and down in the mornings in velvets and silks,
with faces as fresh as primroses.
It is the fate of all articles of clothing or adornment, naturally tied
or twisted, or folded and pinned by the devotees of fashion, to become,
after some little time, made up, ready made, into the shapes which had
before some of the owner's mood and personality about them.
These hoods
worn by the women, these wide sleeves to the gowns, these hanging
sleeves to the overcoats, the velvet slip of under-dress, all, in their
time, became falsified into ready-made articles. With the hoods you can
see for yourselves how they lend themselves by their shape to personal
taste; they were made up, all ready sewn; where pins had been used, the
folds of velvet at the back were made steadfast, the crimp of the white
linen was determined, the angle of the side-flap ruled by some unwritten
law of mode.
In the end, by a process of evolution, the diamond shape
disappeared, and the cap was placed further back on the head, the
contour being circular where it had previously been pointed. The velvet
hanging-piece remained at the back of the head, but was smaller,
in one piece, and was never pinned up, and the entire shape gradually
altered towards, and finally into, the well-known
Mary Queen of Scots
head-dress, with which every reader must be familiar.
It has often occurred to me while writing this book that the absolute
history of one such head-dress would be of more help than these isolated
remarks, which have to be dropped only to be taken up in another reign,
but I have felt that, after all, the arrangement is best as it stands,
because we can follow, if we are willing, the complete wardrobe of one
reign into the next, without mixing the two up.
It is difficult to keep
two interests running together, but I myself have felt, when reading
other works on the subject, that the way in which the various articles of clothing are mixed up is more disturbing than useful.
The wide sleeve to the gown, once part and parcel of the gown, was at
last made separate from it - as a cuff more than a sleeve naturally
widening - and in the next reign, among the most fashionable, left out
altogether.
The upper part of the dress, once cut low and square to show
the under-dress, or a vest of other stuff, was now made, towards the end
of the reign, with a false top of other stuff, so replacing the
under-dress.
Lacing was carried to extremes, so that the body was pinched into the
hard roll-like appearance always identified with this time; on the other
hand, many, wiser women I should say, were this the place for morals,
preferred to lace loose, and show, beneath the lacing, the colour of the
under-dress.
Many were the varieties of girdle and belt, from plain silk sashes with
tasselled ends to rich jewelled chain girdles ending in heavy ornaments.
For detail one can do no better than go to Holbein, the master of
detail, and to-day, when photographs of pictures are so cheap, and lives
of painters, copiously illustrated, are so easily attainable at
low prices, it is the finest education, not only in painting, but in
Tudor atmosphere and in matters of dress, to go straightway and study
the master - that master who touched, without intention, on the moral of
his age when he painted a miniature of the Blessed Thomas More on the
back of a playing card.
Falstaff will not wear coarse dowlas shirts, dandies call for ostrich
feathers, ladies must have Coventry blue gowns and Italian flag-shaped
fans; everybody is in the fashion from milkmaids to ladies of the court,
each as best as they may manage it. The Jew moves about the streets in
his long gaberdine and yellow cap, the lady pads about her garden
in tall chopines, and the gentleman sits down as well as he may in his
bombasted breeches and smokes Herbe de la Reine in a pipe of clay, and
the country woman walks along in her stamell red petticoat guarded or
strapped with black, or rides past to market in her over-guard skirts.
Let us imagine, by way of a picture of the times, the Queen in her
bedchamber under the hands of her tiring-women: She is sitting before a
mirror in her embroidered chemise of fine Raynes linen, in her
under-linen petticoat and her silk stockings with the gold thread
clocks. Over these she wears a rich wrap. Slippers are on her feet.
In
front of her, on a table, are rouge and chalk and a pad of
cotton-wool - already she has made up her face, and her bright bird-like
eyes shine in a painted mask, her strong face, her hawk-like nose and
her expressionless mouth reflect back at her from the mirror. Beside the
rouge pot is a Nuremberg egg watch, quietly ticking in its crystal case.
One of the women brings forward a number of attires of false hair,
golden and red, and from these the Queen chooses one. It is a close
periwig of tight red curls, among which pearls and pieces of
burnished metal shine. With great care this wig is fastened on to the
Queen's head, and she watches the process with her bright eyes and still
features in the great mirror.
Then, when this wig is fixed to her mind, she rises, and is helped into
the privie coat of bones and buckram, which is laced tightly by the
women at her back. Now comes the moment when they are about to fasten on
her whalebone hips the great farthingale - over which her voluminous
petticoats and skirts will fall. The wheel of bone is tied with ribbons
about her waist, and there securely fastened. After some delay in
choosing an under-gown, she then puts on several linen petticoats, one
over another, to give the required fulness to her figure; and then comes
the stiffly-embroidered under-gown - in this case but a petticoat with a
linen bodice which has no sleeves.
HENRY THE EIGHTH COSTUME
Reigned thirty-eight years: 1509-1547. Born, 1491.
Wives of King Henry VIII:-
1509, Katharine of Aragon;
1532, Anne Boleyn;
1536,
Jane Seymour; 1540, Anne of Cleves;
1540, Katharine Howard;
1548, Katherine Parr.
This
Tudor costume history information
above consists of Pages 247-273 of the
chapter on early to mid-century 16th century dress in the 38 YEAR REIGN era
of Henry The Eighth 1509-1547 and taken from English Costume by Dion
Clayton Calthrop.
The 36 page section consists of a text copy of the book ENGLISH
COSTUME PAINTED & DESCRIBED BY DION CLAYTON CALTHROP. Visuals,
drawings and painted fashion plates in the book have a charm of their own and are
shown amid the text. The book covers both male and female dress history of
over 700 years spanning the era 1066-1830.
This page is about King Henry VIII costume 1509-1547 - Tudor dynasty.
For the Introduction to this book see this
introduction written by Dion Clayton Calthrop. I have adjusted
the images so they can be used for colouring
worksheets where pupils add some costume/society facts. My comments are in italics.
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This
Tudor costume history information consists of Pages 247-273 of the
chapter on early to mid-century 16th century dress in the 38 YEAR REIGN era
of Henry The Eighth 1509-1547 and taken from English Costume by Dion
Clayton Calthrop.
In these days there lived and died Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci,
Raphael, Dürer, Erasmus, Holbein, Copernicus, Luther, Rabelais, and
Michael Angelo, to mention a few men of every shade of thought,
and in this goodly time came Henry to the English throne, to leave, at
his death, instead of the firm progress of order instituted by his
father, a bankrupt country with an enormously rich Government.
No doubt Sir
Philip's slashes were cunningly embroidered round, and the gown made
rich and sparkling with the device of seed pearls so much in use. This
man's son, also Sir Philip, married Amy, daughter of Sir William Boleyn,
of Blickling, Norfolk. She was aunt to Queen Anne Boleyn.
Afternoon - should they suffer the pangs of hunger - a maunchet of bread
from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale at the buttery bar.
For detail one can do no better than go to Holbein, the master of
detail, and to-day, when photographs of pictures are so cheap, and lives
of painters, copiously illustrated, are so easily attainable at
low prices, it is the finest education, not only in painting, but in
Tudor atmosphere and in matters of dress, to go straightway and study
the master - that master who touched, without intention, on the moral of
his age when he painted a miniature of the Blessed Thomas More on the
back of a playing card.
