‘Una Grande Opera Al Mio Re’: Gilt-Bronze Effigies in England From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Countess of Richmond and Derby, was one of the most remarkable women of her time. A wealthy heiress, she was married early, and was already widowed at the age of thirteen, shortly before the birth of her son, who was to become King Henry VII. During the Wars of the Roses she learned to survive through political astuteness, though she showed that she was willing to risk all for her son when, during Richard III's reign, she conspired to bring Henry to the throne. Her devotion to Henry, together with her outstanding personal qualities, meant that when he became king in 1485, Lady Margaret remained his most trusted supporter and adviser. Accorded semi-regal status, she administered her vast estates with exemplary efficiency and fairness, showing a concern for individuals which sprang from her own religious humility. She is best known today for her patronage of learning, particularly at Cambridge, where in addition to providing endowments for individual religious scholars, she was the foundress of Christ's and St John's Colleges. In view of Lady Margaret's achievements it seems entirely appropriate, not only that she is buried in Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, but also that her epitaph was written by Erasmus and that her splendid gilt bronze tomb-effigy (fig. 1) is the masterpiece of another man of the Renaissance, the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano.

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Pawns of international finance and politics: Florentine sculptors at the court of Henry VIII

Sicca

2006

Renaissance Studies

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The aim of this paper is to place the projected tomb of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon within a wider context of events that are specifically of a political and economic nature. The artists are at once pawns in the hands of diplomats and financiers motivated by their inner rationale, as well as actors in their own right, discovering in a somewhat tentative way that, though not entirely free from the system of patronage of either institutions or princely families, they could jostle for position on the international stage, relying almost entirely on their own enterprising skills. The episode of the tomb, far from being a footnote in the history of the competition between Michelangelo and Bandinelli, offers an unusual insight into the workings of Medici patronage at a very delicate time in the history of both Leo X and Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. The favour accorded to Baccio Bandinelli precluded, during Leo's lifetime, the possibility that any other sculptor would be offered even a chance of being a candidate for this commission. The death of the pontiff left the Cardinal not only in a political quandary but also in dire financial straits. Yet the support and loyalty of the English monarch were crucial to Giulio de’ Medici's success in his own endeavours to ascend the papal throne and, perhaps more importantly, to preserve Medici control over Florence. The trusted members of the Medici entourage representing both Florence and the family's interests at the court of Henry VIII, prevented the tomb project from dying altogether. The involvement of Giovanni Cavalcanti and his business partners Pierfrancesco de’ Bardi and Zanobi Girolami, as well as that of Giovanni Gaddi, was financial since each partner bought stakes in the models prepared by a number of artists, but at the same time aesthetic judgement had to be exercised by one if not all the investors in selecting the authors of the models sent to London in 1521–1523. This opened the way for sculptors who had previously suffered from Bandinelli's overbearing dominance: namely Baccio da Montelupo, and Jacopo Sansovino.

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‘Una Grande Opera Al Mio Re’: Gilt-Bronze Effigies in England From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

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The Visual Culture of Fifteenth-Century England

The Visual Culture of Fifteenth-Century England

The Portraiture of Lady Margaret Beaufort

Pawns of international finance and politics: Florentine sculptors at the court of Henry VIII

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