Renaissance ideas and English culture

Why did Renaissance ideas influence English culture in H8 reign?

Knowledge of classical learning increased among elite groups

Growing number of schools became influenced by humanist approaches to education

H8 saw himself as promoter of new ideas and of humanism

Crown needed well-educated diplomats who could communicate with their counterparts in other countries in an elegant style

Who was the most important English humanist writer?

Thomas More

What did More combine to be successfull?

His intellectual interests with his work as a lawyer and statesman

What other writers demonstrated their humanist influences?

Thomas Lupset and Thomas Starkey

What did Renaissance ideas also influence?

Visual culture

What did H8 commission an Italian sculptor to do?

Produce tombs of his parents and his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort

What was the Italian sculptor called?

Pietro Torrigiano

What style were the tombs produced in?

Renaissance style

Where are the tombs situated?

Lady Chapel of Westminster

What’s Lady Chapel a fine example of?

Late fifteenth century perpendicular Gothic architecture

What’s another example of Renaissance style within a famous perpendicular setting?

the rood screen erected in the early 1530s in the chapel of the King’s College, Cambridge

What does this rood screen celebrate?

Marriage of H8 and Anne Boleyn

What remained the predominant culture farm?

Gothic perpendicular style

Where were the dominant painters in H8 court from?

Northern Renaissance

What did Northern Renaissance owe more to over Italian Renaissance?

Gothic influence

Who was the best-known painter at court?

German Hans Holbein

Who was the best paid painter at court?

Fleming Lucas Horenbout

What was more esteemed than paintings?

Tapestries

What origin were tapestries?

Flemish

What did tapestries often display?

Chivalric themes from medieval culture

What was Henry more in his building tastes?

Conservative

What exhibited classical influence?

Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court

What was H8 a general patron of?

Music and musicians

What was the most distinctive influence on music?

Flemish

What did England’s main cultural links reflect?

Close commercial ties between England and Low Countries