Anne Roberts examines how Protestantism supported artists in the UK
In 1534 HenryVIII triggered a Tudor ‘Brexit’ from the Church of Rome when he declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.
In the wake of these changes, many artists and craftsmen were among the European migrants who began to arrive in the UK. They were economic migrants and refugees from persecution. Sound contemporary?
The Reformation is often associated with iconoclasm and the destruction of art – but in Germany, during the early days, this was not the case. We forget that one of Luther’s closest friends was an artist, the painter Lucas Cranach, who for most of his career was employed in Wittenburg as Court Painter – first to Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and later to his son John Frederick.
It is to Cranach that we owe the portraits of many early Reformers. After his excommunication by the Diet (assembly) of Worms in 1521, Luther was protected by Frederick the Wise. Having renounced his religious vows, he returned to Wittenburg in 1525 and Cranach was present as a witness at his wedding to Katharina von Bora. Cranach’s double portrait of Luther and Katherina is like a declaration of a new life.
Changing situation for artists
However, as the Reformation spread, the situation for artists began to change significantly – particularly under Zwingli, who became the leading figure of the Reformation in Switzerland. From 1523, all images of Jesus, Mary and the saints were ordered to be removed from the churches – leaving many artists suddenly unemployed.
Developments in printing meant that one alternative source of income was book illustration. The printer and scholar Johannes Froben employed Hans Holbein the Younger as an illustrator and also introduced him to a cultured literary circle, which included Erasmus.
Erasmus had spent much time in England, including five years as professor of Theology at Cambridge, and it was he who recommended Holbein to his friend Sir Thomas More. London was already an important destination for foreign craftsmen, whose skills could supply the many requirements of King Henry and Cardinal Wolsey’s lavish court.
More sat for Holbein’s earliest portrait painted in England (Frick Collection, New York) and Holbein also painted ‘Noli Me Tangere’ for More’s private chapel at his country house in Chelsea (now in the Royal Collection).
Henry’s household
Holbein’s first call to work for the Royal Household came in 1527, when he was summoned to Greenwich to design decorations for the celebrations following peace with France, overseen by the Comptroller of the Household, Sir Henry Guildford. Such contacts quickly brought him portrait commissions.
In 1528 Holbein travelled home to fulfil his commitments in Basel, but during his absence events moved swiftly and he returned in 1532 to find his most influential patron, Sir Thomas More, imprisoned in the Tower.
A medieval Common Market
Forced to seek out new commissions, Holbein found work among the German community of Hanseatic merchants at the London Steelyard (from the German Stalhof ). The Hanseatic League, which originated in Lubeck, operated like a medieval Common Market. Their London base was the largest trading complex in Britain, located on the site of what is now Cannon Street station – a separate walled community with its own warehouses and residences. The German-speaking Holbein would have enjoyed easy access.
Holbein’s portraits give us a vivid picture of these prosperous merchants, who were often able to bring Lutheran books and pamphlets into Britain, sometimes hidden among other cargoes. Importantly, they also brought news of what was happening in Germany and other centres of the Reformation.
Uncertain providence
One of the best known of these portraits, painted in 1532, shows the young Georg Gisze, working at a table covered with a richly embroidered cloth. Among the many objects which illustrate his trade is a Venetian glass vase, containing carnations (a symbol of betrothal). Three years later Gisze married in Danzig, which suggests that the portrait was commissioned in anticipation of his marriage – but a misaligned set of scales and the placing of the vase of flowers too close to the edge of the table are also reminders of the instability of the world and the uncertainties of providence.
Holbein’s depictions of working men are very different from his subsequent work as a Court painter. It was Thomas Cromwell, rather than the King, who recognised Holbein’s abilities and advanced his career at Court. Cromwell needed an artist capable of producing images of the King which would enhance his status as head of the new Church of England. Holbein’s first portraits of Henry date from 1537, the year after Ann Boleyn’s execution – but he was soon to suffer the loss of his second major patron, when Cromwell was executed in 1540.
Herr Flicke
Holbein himself died in 1543, leaving opportunities which other European artists were quick to grasp. One was Gerlach Flicke, probably born in Osnabruck, who arrived from Germany in 1545.
Little is known of Flicke’s life, but it is significant that his first major portrait should be of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. The style clearly shows Holbein’s influence. Cranmer, then in his mid-50s, holds the Epistles of St Paul and has a copy of St Augustine’s Of Faith and Works.
However Flicke also left a record of his suffering for his own faith. In the National Portrait Gallery is a tiny painting – the first known self portrait in England – made while Flicke was a prisoner in the Tower of London during the reign of Mary and inscribed as ‘painted from a looking glass for his dear friends. so that they might have something to remember him after his death’.
Elizabeth’s reign
After Elizabeth’s accession, artists and craftsmen were among the wave of Protestant refugees fleeing from persecution in the Netherlands. In 1554, Queen Mary’s marriage to Philip II of Spain had been hugely unpopular. Philip became ruler of the Netherlands in 1555 and, under the Duke of Alva, instigated a ferocious persecution of Protestants there.
Many refugee artists are recorded as members of the Dutch Church at Austin Friars. Immigrants from the Low Countries living in London already made up the largest foreign community in the city. In 1550, Edward VI had issued a charter granting the nave of the church of Austin Friars for the use of ‘German and other foreigners to practice, enjoy, use and exercise their own rites and ceremonies, and their own ecclesiastical discipline … , without impeachment, disturbance or vexation.’
Flemish artists
Elizabeth was painted by Flemish artists throughout her reign. The famous ‘Armada Portrait’ – recently saved for the nation – was made in 1588 by an unidentified Flemish painter. It clearly shows how art in England, like the English church, had moved away from Catholic Italy, and owed more to Flemish manuscript illumination and heraldry than to Renaissance traditions. The background shows two episodes in the defeat of the Armada. On the left, English fireships threaten the Spanish fleet, while on the right the ships are driven onto the rocks amid stormy seas by the ‘Protestant Wind’.
The artist Lucas de Heere, who fled with his family from Ghent to London in the late 1560s, is recorded as an Elder in the Dutch church. His best-known picture, The Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession, celebrates the harmony established by Elizabeth, on the right, who holds the hand of Peace and is followed by Plenty. Her father, Henry VIII, sits on his throne, passing the sword of justice to his Protestant son Edward VI.
Like many artists of that time, de Heere took pupils – both in Ghent, and later in England. Of these, the best known today is Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Gheeraerts’ father had been a member of the Protestant community in Bruges until persecution forced him into exile in London in about 1568, with his young son Marcus II. One of the most beautiful portraits of Elizabeth I is Gheeraerts’ so-called ‘Peace Portrait’, where the queen, symbolizing the goddess of peace, stands above the sword of state holding an olive branch.
The elder Gheeraerts became a member of the Dutch Reformed congregation, before returning to the Netherlands in the late 1580s. However, his son stayed on, to make a successful career as a second generation immigrant, becoming principal artist to the elderly Elizabeth I and subsequently to James I’s consort, Queen Anne of Denmark.
Chief miniaturist
Among so many Flemish artists, only one English name stands out. Nicholas Hilliard (c.1547–1619) is best known as Queen Elizabeth’s chief miniaturist, although he painted at least two famous half-length portraits of the Queen. He was the son of Richard Hilliard, a staunchly Protestant goldsmith who became Sheriff of Exeter in 1568. As a child he was attached to the household of the leading Exeter Protestant and merchant John Bodley, father of Thomas Bodley, the founder of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.
On the accession of Queen Mary, Bodley removed his family to Geneva, where members of the exile community were involved in the production of the Geneva Bible. In May 1557 Hilliard, then ten years old, was recorded there as one of an 11-strong Bodley family group at a service presided over by John Knox.
Hillyard’s beautiful ‘Ermine Portrait’ of Elizabeth at Hatfield House shows the Queen with the sword of state, symbolising justice, and an ermine – a heraldic symbol of royalty, but also of truth and purity. In legend it would die rather than soil its pure white winter coat.
The complex iconography of these Elizabethan portraits has become part of English history – but they also demonstrate the huge impact of Protestant European artists on our visual culture.
