Dr Kat and Katherine Parr

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome I'm dr. cat and this is reading the past today I want to talk about Catherine Parr Catherine Parr is perhaps most famous for being the sixth and final wife of Henry the eighth in the old rhyme divorced beheaded died divorced beheaded survived Catherine Parr is the one that survived in factual and fictional accounts of her life she is frequently presented as little more than a nursemaid the ideal final wife for an ailing cantankerous and frankly lethal King Henry she brings together his children and creates out of the chaos of this dysfunctional family a sense of normalcy and peace for his final years she is a proto Florence Nightingale whose patience and silence are simply legendary sainted Catherine how very boring of course nobody is that one-dimensional and while these are all factors of Catherine they are not the whole of her and for me Catherine is fascinating because she is a political animal and she thinks four or five steps ahead in many ways the politicking that we see in Elizabeth when she becomes Queen could quite easily have been learnt at her stepmothers knee she is a smart woman with aspirations both for her own political power but also for her personal faith she is an ardent devoted Protestant and for me there is an image that quite clearly shows her political aspirations and nouse at work and it's this one this full-length portrait from 15:45 attributed to master John shows catherine parr she is the first English woman not even a queen but the first English woman for stop to have herself painted full-length standing on a Turkish carpet now why is that significant well Henry frequently has himself painted full-length on Turkish carpets carpets like these are incredibly expensive they would perhaps most commonly be found on tables or on wolves they are decorative items so to be standing on them is a mark of somebody's extraordinary wealth and also power for a woman to be featured with a Turkish carpet it's quite possible that Catherine is borrowing from techniques in Flemish art where the Virgin Mary is frequently pictured as being with these Turkish carpets so in this one choice Catherine is showing herself to be royal and asserting her royal position and power but she is also highlighting her feminine piety by connecting herself in this way with the Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus also significant is the clothing that she has chosen to be portrayed in these are the finest fabrics and materials her outer gown is quite clearly shot through with gold and silver thread now these threads weren't produced in England until at least 1590 so clearly these are imported expensive luxury wares the same goes for the pearls that ornament her gown and hurt pearls don't grow in English waters so these are also imported fine goods so Catherine is presenting herself as a woman of taste and discernment keen to engage with these European marketplaces to find the goods that most appropriately ornament her royalty perhaps the most striking element of the portrait is however the Cameo girdle that catherine parr wears around her waist hanging down it's an incredibly large piece of jewelry and Susan a James calls this a hallmark in portraits of English Queen so in this wearing of cameos Catherine is conforming to the image making that is common among English Queens her predecessors and those that will come after her but one thing she does that is again incredibly novel among Queens both in England and in Europe as a whole is the brooch she wears at her chest if you can see there's a crown on it Catherine Parr in doing this is the first European Queen regnant or Queen consort to be figured wearing a crown of any kind indeed even in the next generation if we exclude the coronation portrait of Elizabeth the first there is no Queen consort or Queen regnant in Europe who is painted wearing a crown so in just these elements in these assertions of her piety but most significantly her royal position and power this is not a meek mild humble nursemaid this is a woman who knows where she belongs in the world and is quick and keen to assert that place the full-length portrait that Catherine port Commission's master John to make the reasoning behind doing so is made all the more clear when we realize that in that same year Henry has commissioned a painting of his family that looks like this in it we see him with his children we have Mary and Elizabeth and little Edward and by his side is Jane Seymour who by 1545 has been dead for eight years also Henry himself has married three further times he is an old one marriage were headed one wife and now he's with Catherine Parr while Catherine leaves behind no documentation in a written form of how she felt about this resurrection of her predecessor for me her selecting to have this portrait painted in these ways is almost a manifesto Henry and Catherine had married on the 12th of July 15:43 and the following summer Henry went off to fight the French he left Catherine as regent of England she chose at this time to bring together the Royal children and keep them with her throughout the summer that Henry was campaigning at Hampton Court she also acted politically she signed documents and gave orders and acted on behalf of her King as a protector of the realm I believe that during this period she was seeing it very much as a test-run that her protector ship of the realm while her husband was away fighting was essentially a dry run for what could happen if her husband pre deceased her and as she was essentially acting as a nursemaid of sorts she would have been aware of how unwell he was and that it looked increasingly unlikely that Edward was going to reach a majority before his father died and left him as king of England I believe that Catherine is laying the groundwork to head up a Regency Council she cultivates a relationship with Edward he writes to her and refers to her as his mother and in many ways considering how young he was when his own mother died and the quite convoluted behaviors that happened afterwards with Anne of Cleves being divorced from Henry the eighth and then Catherine Howard being executed by Henry the eighth it's most likely that for Edward Catherine Parr was really the only mother he knew so she is building on these personal relationships but she's also engaging in a political image fashioning to place herself in this position where she can take charge if or rather when her husband dies I hope you've enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did give it a like subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon next to it so you know when I'm next uploading if you'd like to tell me anything about this video you can leave it in the comment section down below or you can come and find me over on my social media on my Instagram and my Twitter I'm going to leave the links in the description box I've really enjoyed this time with you and I look forward to seeing you all next time take care bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Reading the Past

Views: 38,093

Rating: 4.966157 out of 5

Keywords: Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Katherine Parr, Henry VIII, Art History, SIx Wives

Id: zMbRlgWn1IA

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018