HIDDEN MESSAGES within famous painting of Henry VIII and his children | The Family of Henry VIII

hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where i bring you new videos every week on all aspects of the past today on history calling we're going to look at this famous painting of henry viii and his children plus one of his wives known by the title the family of henry viii it was painted in around 1545 and is full of hidden messages meanings and information which would once have been clear to its viewers but which are largely lost on modern audiences stay with me to hear what we can glean from the subjects chosen to be in the image and how they are positioned the statements they made with their clothes and jewelry and why controversy has raged for centuries over which tudor queen henry is sitting next to and who the woman on the far left is [Music] if you enjoy learning about history and especially royal history please remember to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel with notifications switched on so that youtube lets you know every time i upload you can also find links to my instagram account and patreon page in the description box below let's start our analysis of this oil on canvas painting which measures a whopping 144.5 centimeters by 355.9 by looking at who's depicted in it in the center we have henry viii with his soul surviving male heir the future edward vi on his right or left and his queen on his left which queen is it though this has produced quite some controversy over the years with some historians insisting it must be catherine parr who was married to henry at the time the painting was commissioned and others pointing out that this woman bears a striking resemblance to jane seymour as shown in this portrait hans holbein created of her before her untimely death in october 1537 less than two weeks after delivering edward she is even wearing the same pendant which was part of a necklace several of henry's wives wore in both images catherine who we see here and who does not look like the woman in the painting was credited with being the queen present throughout the 19th century despite the fact that as ralph warnham noted in 1867 the freedom of the painting labeled the woman as seymour the consensus today however is that this is indeed gian and that she has been added due to her status as the mother of the heir other factors also tip the balance in favor of it being her one is the hood she is wearing which is an english gable stylehood still popular during the 1530s when jean was queen catherine on the other hand who was queen from 1543 until henry's death in january 1547 favored the french hood you see here which sat further back on the head exposing the hair and which was more popular than the gablehood in the 1540s indeed as we'll see in a moment henry's daughters who are also in this painting wore french foods too then there is the fact that there was already a history of the tutors appearing posthumously in portraits the original of this image was created in 1537 by hans holbein and shows henry and jane alongside his parents elizabeth york and henry vii who had died in 1503 and 1509 respectively and even gian may have been dead by the time this work was complete we might find it odd nowadays to put a dead person into a new painting but it was a useful accepted and important way to show the dynasty's continuity and whose bloodline would carry on into future generations this is also another example of figures being presented wearing clothing popular during their lifetimes rather than modernizing them we see elizabeth of york wearing an english hood with long lapettes coming down on either side of her face and body and henry vii in a hat and rubes which evoke the fashions of the early years of the 16th century coming back to our main portrait the position of these three in the center where the eye naturally goes first in a painting like this to notes their greater importance compared to the other figures present only the king and queen have sufficient status to sit though edward's rank is emphasized not just by his proximity to his father but by the protective and paternal hand henry rests on his shoulder the elaborate canopy of state over their heads is another status symbol and when we zoom out slightly to see the king's daughters mary and elizabeth we see that they are not under it showing their lower status this lower status didn't just come from being girls though it was also thanks to the fact that henry had delegitimized them both and removed their titles of princess when he abandoned their mothers catherine of aragon and anne boleyn still mary as the elder of the two is accorded greater importance than elizabeth by being placed on their father's right this is traditionally a place of honor just think of the saying someone's right-hand man for instance and put her next to the heir apparent prince edward the inclusion of both daughters and mary's placement are all the more important as they signaled a recent political development if you've seen my video on shooter fertility problems which i'll also link below for you you'll know that by the time of this painting's creation these three were the only living acknowledged children that henry had and it must have been clear to him that he would have no more despite the large cod piece he wears over his groin in this image the size of which was meant to denote his virility he had in fact not impregnated anyone that we knew of since the start of 1537 when gn seymour conceived edward this was despite the fact that he had married three more times since her death and we know for sure that his current queen catherine parr was able to conceive because she did so after henry died and she remarried rather than leaving the future of the tudor dynasty hanging on edward's life alone he had therefore reinstated his daughters into the succession in 1543. mary was now due to succeed edward if he died childless then elizabeth would succeed mary if she too failed to produce any legitimate offspring of course this being the tutors things didn't run that smoothly and if you see the video on mary the first's life that i'll list in the description box for you you can hear all about how her little brother tried to will the throne away to their cousin liddy jane grey instead of his sisters for now though just be aware that these former princesses appearance in this family group signaled that after years of uncertainty about their position by the mid-1540s they were well and truly back in the fool it is mary's position along with her slightly greater height which allows us to differentiate her from her sister as the two look very similar otherwise despite their vastly different ages mary was about 29 elizabeth only 11 or 12. indeed the lack of care taken to make them truly unique even though we can see from other portraits of them that they didn't really look alike at all might be seen as another sign of their relative insignificance next to henry and edward they were important enough to put into the painting but not important enough to bother spending a lot of time recording their differing features just like their dresses their faces seem to have been painted to a template on the subject of clothes the outfits the royal family are wearing are yet another nod to their superior status as we see them be decked in super expensive gold and crimson cloth with equally luxurious furs on the lining of henry's coat and trimming the sleeves and skirt of the queen's dress sanctuary laws in force at the time meant that certain fabrics including furs and velvets could only be worn by the highest ranking people in the land and it was undoubtedly a conscious choice to show the royals in such fabrics to further enhance their position something which contemporary viewers would have immediately understood something which has also attracted scholars attention is the jewelry elizabeth is wearing the necklace the future gloriana sports bears an a pendant and this has also been taken by some as an indication of her identity because that was the initial of her mother and anne was known to wear pearl necklaces with her initials on them seen most famously in the b necklace portraits of her however as i discussed in my videos on that necklace and on a portrait of elizabeth completed in about 1546 both linked below for you while elizabeth might have inherited some of her mother's jewels the a we see here may also be a religious symbol standing for isbis maria meaning under the protection of mary it's actually impossible to know how to interpret this for sure the virgin mary would be an odd figure for a girl being raised as a protestant to reference yet it would also have been politically foolish to reference the disgraced and executed anne especially considering elizabeth had only just had her position in the line of succession restored to her it's one of the questions this painting raises which has never been satisfactorily answered zooming out further we can see the peripheral figures in the painting to our right we have will summer or summers king henry's jester standing in profile with a monkey on his shoulders perhaps in reference to his job this is not the only picture will appears in with the king and the monarch seems to have been genuinely fond of him will would go on to serve in edward and mary's households and attended elizabeth's coronation in 1559 before dying the following year to learn more about him see my video on his life on the left of the image we see a female figure those who attended the tudor court no doubt knew who she was as soon as they saw her but for us things are more complicated there are two popular identities assigned to her one is mother jack who was one of prince edward's nurse maids and whose sternum was apparently jackson thus her title we know fairly little about her life but we have this hallbine drawing which was later labelled as being her and which shows a woman in the same style of hood as in the family of henry viii portrait the other potential candidate is jean the fool this woman was queen catherine pars full at this point in time though she had also worked in the households of anne boleyn and princess mary she actually seems the more likely of the two to be the woman in this portrait partly because it makes sense for symmetry purposes to have the kings fill on one side of the image and the queen's on the other and partly because of her clothing as jane's entry in the oxford dictionary of national biography states the listings meaning the listings for the clothing bought for jean suggest that her fool's uniform was a dutch coin consisting of a curdle with an upstanding collar worn over a pleated forepart the pleat stiffened with buckram or linen such an outfit almost certainly identifies her as the left-hand figure in the portrait of the family of henry viii whoever she was like will her presence here suggests that she was an important and even loved member of the royal household like master summer she is well dressed for a servant even if her outfit isn't a patch on what the king queen and his children are tired in so now that we've looked at all the figures in the painting let's consider the backdrop they are placed in for it is heavy with royal and specifically tutor symbolism i've already mentioned the canopy over the king queen and prince but look at it more closely and you'll see the royal coat of arms above henry's head as if we weren't already sure who we were looking at observe the carpet they are standing on too this heavily worked piece of material would have cost a small fortune and serves to emphasize the royal status of the central subjects note that the girls don't get to stand on it henry is so important his feet even rest on cushion the canopy of state is held up by elaborate pillars worked in gold and we can see that the entire wall which forms the back of the painting is composed of similarly elaborate and expensive carved woodwork above the family is the most famous shooter symbol of them all rows and rows of red and white tudor roses everything about this picture screams royalty wealth power and shooters if we look through the archways where our two peripheral figures are standing we can see parts of the gardens at the royal palace of whitehall and the london skyline like the female figure these gardens and the skyline would have been well known to those who originally saw the painting but are likely lost on many viewers today the website of the royal collection trust which cares for this artwork gives a good succinct summary of its backdrop it says the heraldic kings beasts carved in wood with gilt horns and set on columns are prominently displayed amidst the floor beds which are demarked by wooden fencing and painted in the tudor colours of white and green through the archway on the left can be seen part of whitehall palace and the westminster clockhouse balanced by a view through the archway on the right of the north transept of westminster abbey and a single turret of henry viii's great close tennis court tragically whitehall palace burnt down in 1698 so we have to treasure these little insights into its appearance and that of its gardens so much for what the painting shows who created it for centuries it was credited to the aforementioned hands-hole by the younger however it is most definitely not by him for one thing holbein was too good a painter to provide us with two virtually identical princesses with little in their features to indicate their very different ages and appearance for another he died in 1543 two years before this painting was created in actual fact we don't know who the artist was but he evidently took great inspiration from holbein the images of henry and jane seymour follow that pienter's portraits of the pair very closely and as the royal collection trust website adds echoes of holbein can also be detected in quote the classicizing style of the architecture and the intricacy of the decorative motifs so liberally highlighted in gold for the final section of this video i'm going to talk about the picture's provenance in other words how has it made it from henry viii's possession in 1545 to us today for a start i have to issue a small disclaimer here we aren't 100 sure it was pinned during henry's rein rather than edwards but everything points to that the age edward is represented as the fact that he isn't presented as the king and the inclusion of both of his sisters though he had a very troubled relationship with the catholic mary during his reign all suggest that this painting was done for the father not the son the earliest reference we have to its existence in the royal records though actually comes from nearly a century later in 1639 the king of england was charles the first and he was an avid collector of art his curator was a dutch man named abraham vanderdort and in that year he completed a catalogue of the royal pictures including those held at whitehall palace it contains the following description of the family of henry viii portrait item a long piece painted with gold where king henry viii sits with his queen and his son prince edward on the right side and his two daughters queen mary and queen elizabeth standing at each side and a fool at the left side in the door with a jack and napes on his shoulder jaconip is an old word for a team monkey and on the other side a wedding woman little entire figures note that vander dort does not give any painter's name nor does he identify which queen is with henry and he either doesn't know the names of the two figures on the extreme left and right or doesn't feel they are worth mentioning which i find is a classic problem with servants if they're in pictures at all they're often overlooked if you know anything about charles the first you probably know that he ended up losing his throne and his head to the forces of oliver cromwell in the late 1640s he was executed in january 1649 and his goods were all seized and sold off including this painting for this reason it appears in an inventory and valuation of charles's belongings just 10 years after vanderdort's description and we find out from this inventory that it was sold to a colonel webb on the 27th of october 1649 for the sum of 15 pints the description of it there wasn't as good as that provided by vander dort however it is still evidently referring to this picture as it calls it quote king henry viii prince edward princess mary and princess elizabeth together in one piece end quote again no painter is given and whoever inventoried the work was presumably not sure which queen consort they were looking at and didn't care about the servant figures webb evidently didn't own it for terribly long as once charles the first son charles ii was restored to the throne in 1660 the painting quickly made its way back into royal possession and was listed in 1666 as hanging in the king's privy gallery back at whitehall palace like the solo portrait of elizabeth the first which i discussed in an earlier video the fact that it still exists tells us that it escaped the whitehall fire at the end of that century and we get an intriguing little clue as to where it went from a book written by george virtue and published in 1757 this book actually just repeats vanderdort's description but look at the little handwritten comment added on to this copy it says of the painting that at the time the writer made this comment and we don't know how long after the book's publication this happened quote it is now in the private apartment at windsor end quote this is a reference to windsor castle where by the way the picture of elizabeth the first had also ended up after the blaze if this is indeed where the painting went and i see no reason to doubt this commenter even though they also misidentified jane seymour as catherine parr windsor wasn't its home for long in 1842 anna jamison wrote a book about art galleries in and near london in which she commented that although the portrait was then in the queen's gallery at hampton court palace it had quote for some years hung in the meeting room of the society of antiquaries in somerset house having been lent to them by george iii george ran between 1760 and 1820 though the loan was surely made before he famously became incapacitated in 1811 and his eldest son became the prince regent when the move to hampton court palace occurred is unclear but as we've seen jameson says that it was there by 1842 and it is still there today a few black and white photographs of it were taken in the late 19th century which showed that it is still in the same condition as it was then but according to an article in the times newspaper on the 2nd of april 1986 it did apparently suffer some water damage after a fire at the palace that year it has evidently been expertly restored however and is back on the walls where it belongs that's it for today but before i leave you i'd like to thank my wonderful patrons for their generous support of this channel which helps me to keep creating videos for you if you'd like to become a patron and get some history calling perks see the patreon link in the description box below i also know from comments under earlier videos that some of you prefer to make a one-off donation and for that youtube have created a thanks button below videos with preset amounts which will enable you to do so this allows you to post a customizable and brightly colored comment and get a one-time animation over the top of the video should you choose to do this then again thank you so much for your support but please do bear in mind that there is no pressure to join patreon or donate in any way let me know in the comments below whether you think the painting shows jane seymour or catherine parr and mother jack or jane the fool and if you'd like more art or tutor history check out one of these videos next whatever you select please enjoy and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 152,410

Keywords: Famous painting of henry viii and his children, painting of henry viii and his children, pictures of henry viii and his children, why were dead people put in paintings, what did elizabeth i look like when she was young, what happened to charles i's art collection, elizabeth i before she was queen, paintings in the royal collection, which tudor queen, henry viii and his children, hans holbein the younger, the family of henry viii, Katherine Parr

Id: Eiq5QomXJ5E

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022