Artists of The Tudor Court - A Community of Artists

A Community of Artists

Many of the artists active at the Tudor court were connected by ties of family, marriage, and training. Lucas Horenbout (often called Hornebolt in England), who began painting and illuminating for Henry VIII in the mid-1520s, was accompanied in his workshop by his sister Susanna, who was also an illuminator. It is generally accepted that Lucas Horenbout taught Hans Holbein the Younger the techniques of painting miniatures on vellum when Holbein was engaged by Henry VIII in the early 1530s.

Lucas and Susanna Horenbout's father, Gerard Horenbout - possibly he was the Master of James IV of Scotland - was an active member of the Ghent-Bruges School of manuscript illustrators and also was employed briefly at the Tudor court. In Bruges, Gerard was associated with Sanders Bening or Benninck and his son Simon, with whom he worked on the illustrations for the Grimani Breviary. Simon Bening's eldest daughter Levina Teerlinc was also trained as an illuminator. She entered the service of Henry VIII at the close of 1546 following the deaths of Holbein (1543) and Lucas Horenbout (1544), and would remain as court painter to Henry's son Edward VI and as painter and lady-in-waiting to both his daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth. Levina Teerlinc, in turn, taught the art of limning to Nicholas Hilliard, an apprentice goldsmith who would marry the daughter of Queen Elizabeth's jeweler and rise to become the supreme miniaturist of the age. John Bettes the Elder apprenticed his son, John the Younger to Hilliard. Hilliard's most famous student, Isaac Oliver, later limner to Anne of Denmark and Henry, Prince of Wales, was married to the niece of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Gheeraerts was also the brother-in-law of Lucas de Heere's apprentice John de Critz the Elder, who took the dynasty into the Stuart period, and was succeeded as Serjeant-Painter by his son. De Heere was also a religious refugee from Flanders; although the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation acted to reduce artistic contacts, especially with Italy, England could also benefit from them.