Renaissance Research Centres: Number 6
The British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Professor Maurice Howard (Sussex),
Senior Subject Specialist for the Tudor-Stuart Galleries
The new British Galleries 1500-1900 at the V & A opened in November
2001 to general applause, which is gratifying for all those involved in them
over the several years they have taken to install. To repeat what is current by
now, this was the largest project undertaken by the Museum since the
Second World War and the cost was £31 million, just over half of which
came from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Among the key decisions that were
taken early on in the six-year project were that the new displays would
juxtapose objects in all media and that, whilst certain famous works would
justifiably be included, the selection of objects would be governed by the
need to tell chosen narratives and explore certain questions rather than be
all-inclusive. Three thousand objects are on show, but the Museum could
have packed the displays with many thousands more.
There are four interweaving, key themes to the new galleries as a
whole. ‘Who led taste?’ asks questions about cultural leadership from the
royal courts of Tudor and Stuart England to the great individual collectors
of the eighteenth century. ‘Fashionable Living’ looks at the way money was
spent on dress and luxury items, and the rites of passage of birth, marriage
and death. ‘Style’ analyses key motifs and the means of transmission
between prints and objects. ‘What was new’ looks at technical inventions
(concerning the book, scientific instruments, industrial manufactures), as
well as goods inspired by imports from overseas and the regenerating
presence of foreign skills in Britain.
The very first room of the Tudor section explores, on one side, the
Court of Henry VIII with familiar objects such as the Torrigiano bust of
Henry VII and the Henry VIII writing box alongside the great cope of cloth
of gold, on loan from Stonyhurst, and the enigmatic Robert Pyte drawing of
a triumphal arch for the King. On the opposite side of the room, issues of
Renaissance style are examined, with works in wall painting, textile, wood,
ceramic, terracotta (fragments from Suffolk Place, Southwark), silver and
paper asking the visitor to think again about the creative and often practical
juxtaposition of Gothic and ‘all’antica’ elements with which
contemporaries had no problem. The display concludes with a section from
the ‘Haynes Grange’ room, with its fully fledged Serlian application of the
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classical order to panelling. From this point, a window, as if replicating the
effect of the private oratory in a country house, looks on to an altar, later
approached head on as part of a display of the Church, before and after the
Reformation. Here again, in all media, questions are asked about the nature
of the traditional idea of the purely destructive force of religious change;
images attacked by iconoclasts are here, but so too are remarkable postReformation religious paintings, stained glass and church plate.
For Renaissance scholars, that sense of the personal aspect of the
transmission of ideas through gifts comes across most strongly in the
display on the Elizabethan court, with the Hunsdon jewels, Hilliard
miniatures, books and personal items owned by all the leading courtiers and
the Oxburgh hangings created in part by the hand of Mary, Queen of Scots.
From this point, the visitor can look past the rich over-statement and
bulbous forms of ‘Jacobean Extravagance’ through to the cooler and more
cerebral achievements of the court of Charles I, with its Mortlake tapestry,
works by Bernini and Fanelli, and drawings by Inigo Jones from the RIBA’s
collection. However, more than a hint of the Jacobean survives in the
silvered frames, the rich upholstery and the inlays of wood and precious
materials in the displays of later Restoration and Baroque. The story, thus, is
not linear or simply evolutionary, but one that is diverse and often
backward-looking; a section on ‘Protecting Possessions’ looks at how old
and treasured objects were newly cased and cared for in later times. It is
hoped that this diversity is served by the many different pathways by which
these displays can be enjoyed, interrogated and used for teaching by visitors
of all kinds of expertise.
There will be a conference on the Tudor and Stuart interior at the
Museum on 22nd and 23rd February 2002. For full details, contact the V&A
Booking Office on 0207 942 2209.
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