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A Drawing by ‘Robertus Pyte’ for Henry VIII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Maurice Howard
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Extract

In the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a drawing on two attached pieces of parchment measuring 68 by 44 cm, clearly carried out entirely by one hand (Fig. 1). The image is drawn in pen, with some applied wash, but it is possible that some silverpoint technique has also been used. Sharply incised lines around many of the figures suggest the intention of getting back to the ground beneath the preparation, to create the effects of highlights or perhaps to float colour or gold into these indentations. It is signed ROBERTUS PYTE on two of the steps at the bottom left and dated 1546 on the step at the far right. At some point in its history, perhaps when it was framed for the first time, it would appear that the drawing was trimmed on both sides, the topmost architectural element (likely to have been a shaped gable with curved sides) cut through, the upper piece of parchment cut into a triangular shape and dark brown-coloured strips added with a later owner’s monogram. The drawing came to the Museum in 1864 for the price of one guinea, thanks to the good offices of C. J. Richardson, and is mentioned in the Bulletin of the Acquisitions of the Museums of Sciences and Arts at the end of the 1860s. Given the remit of collection policy at that time, it was undoubtedly acquired as an example of English mid-sixteenth-century design in the classical style. Its original function and purpose were never properly investigated.

Type
Section 3: Drawings and Designs
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 22 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 I am grateful to Alan Derbyshire from Conservation of Paintings, to Mike Wheeler and Pauline Webber from Paper Conservation, and Michael Snodin of Prints, Drawings and Paintings, all at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and to Susan Foister, Curator of Sixteenth-Century British, Flemish and German Paintings at the National Gallery, for discussing both the technical and iconographical problems of the drawing with me.

2 See Strong, R., Holbein and Henry VIII (London, 1967)Google Scholar; King, J.N., Tudor Royal Iconography (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar; Lloyd, Christopher and Thurley, Simon, Henry VIII. Images of a Tudor King (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Starkey, David, Henry VIII, A European Court in England, catalogue of the exhibition at Greenwich, 1991 Google Scholar.

3 Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530-1810, 5th edn (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 51–53 Google Scholar.

4 Wells-Cole, Anthony, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

5 Harris, Eileen, assisted by Savage, Nicholas, British Architectural Books and Writers 1356-1785 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 414-15Google Scholar.

6 Wells-Cole, loc. cit.

7 On Bellin’s work in England, see Biddle, Martin, ‘Nicholas Bellin de Modena: an Italian Artificer at the Courts of Francis I and Henry VIII’, British Archaeological Association Journal, 3rd series, XXXIX (1966), pp. 106-21Google Scholar. Both Louvre and British Museum drawings are reproduced in Thurley, Simon, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (New Haven and London), pp. 217 and 229 Google Scholar. See also for the drawing, Holbein, Rowlands, John, The Age of Dürer and Holbein. German Drawings 1400-1150 (London, British Museum, 1988), cat. no. 210 Google Scholar.

8 On Robert Pyte, see Symonds, H., ‘Engravers of the Tudor and Stuart periods’, Numismatic Chronicle, 4th series, XIII, p. 357 Google Scholar; Challis, C. E., ‘Mint officials and surveyors of the Tudor period’, British Numismatic Journal, 45 (1973), p. 64 Google Scholar; idem, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester, 1978), p. 94 n.176.

9 Anglo, S., Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 277-80Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.

11 See Strong, Roy, Art and Power. Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Woodbridge, 1984), part two, chapter ii Google Scholar; The Entry of Henri II into Paris, 16 June 1549, with an introduction and notes by McFarlane, I. D. (Binghampton, New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

12 The text below the king is from Chapters 21.6 and 22.1–2, the text above in the frieze from Chapters 21.6 and 22.16-17. ‘Wear the Crown . . . of Lyfe’ on the base of the angel to the king’s right and immediately beneath the king is from Chapter 2.10. ‘Eate the Boke of Lyfe’ has not been identified.

13 See the gathering of early translations of the New Testament in The English Hexapla. Exhibiting the Six Important English Translations of the New Testament Scriptures (London, 1841). Free interpretation of the text is apparent even in the inscriptions used on the title pages of the Bibles themselves; see String, Tatiana C., ‘Henry VIII’s illuminated “Great Bible”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 9 (1996), pp. 315-24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 My quotation is taken from the standard King James translation of 1611.

15 Bale, John, The Image ofbothe Churches after the most wonderfull and heavenlie Revelation of ‘SainctJohn, 1550, as printed in Select Works of John Bale D.D., Bishop of Ossory, edited for the Society, Parker by the Christmas, Revd Henry (Cambridge, 1849), pp. 612-13Google Scholar.

16 The Davidian imagery of late images of Henry VIII is discussed by Tudor-Craig, Pamela, ‘Henry VIII and King David’, Early Tudor England. Proceedings of the 1987 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Williams, Daniel (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 183–205 Google Scholar.

17 The evidence for the Leo X scheme for Henry’s tomb is fully discussed by Mitchell, Margaret, ‘Works of Art from Rome for Henry VIII. A Study in Anglo-Papal relations as reflected in papal gifts for the English King’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 34 (1971), pp. 178–203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Llewellyn, Nigel, ‘The Royal Body: Monuments to the Dead, for the Living’, in Gent, Lucy & Llewellyn, Nigel (eds), Renaissance Bodies (London, 1990), pp. 218-40Google Scholar.

18 The Speed description is printed in Mitchell, op. cit., pp. 201-03.

19 See Thurley, Simon, Whitehall Palace. An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240-1690 (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 60–61 Google Scholar.

20 The fullest description of the Gonville and Caius Gate of Honour is found in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge, part 1 (London, RCHM, 1959), p. 80.

21 The traditional 1560s date is used in Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England. Wiltshire, revised Cherry, Bridget (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 580 Google Scholar. For the possible earlier dating, see Bold, John, Wilton House and English Palladianism. Some Wiltshire Houses (London, 1988), p. 32 Google Scholar.

22 On Kirby, see Heward, John and Taylor, Robert, Country Houses of Northamptonshire (London, 1996), pp. 245-56Google Scholar.

23 Cooper, Nicholas, Houses of the Gentry 1480-1680 (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 88 Google Scholar.

24 See King, op. cit. (n. 2 above), chap. ii.