Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England

A groundbreaking approach to the problem of realism in Tudor art

In Tudor and Jacobean England, visual art was often termed “lively.” This word was used to describe the full range of visual and material culture—from portraits to funeral monuments, book illustrations to tapestry. To a modern viewer, this claim seems perplexing: what could “liveliness” have meant in a culture with seemingly little appreciation for illusionistic naturalism? And in a period supposedly characterised by fear of ...