Italian Material Culture At The Tudor Court

PhDThis thesis analyses the means by which items of Italian material culture came into the possession of the Tudor monarchs. The different modes of acquisition provide the structure for an investigation into Anglo-Italian relations during the sixteenth century. Although the items that came to England took many forms a synthesising approach is made possible by the fact that the ‘biographies’ of the objects which have been selected all share a common element – they reached England and were owned by the Tudor monarchs as a result of direct contact with Italian individuals. As a result, disparate items such as glass, armour, books, textiles and horses can be discussed as part of a broader whole in which elements of one culture travelled to another. This is not a discussion of the developing dominance of Italian culture over Western Europe during the sixteenth century, for, although the adjective ‘Italian’ carried clear connotations in late sixteenth-century England it appears to have been rarely used in relation to material culture. Instead it is a study of the appreciation of technical skill and the attempts that were made to appropriate it, which in turn provides a point of access to the life histories of the Italians who came to England in the sixteenth century and the way in which their interaction with the highest levels of the court played a role in shaping the idea of Italy and the Italian in England.Collaborative Doctoral Award Arts and Humanities Research Council The Royal Collection, Central Research Fun