Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was a Flemish artist working at the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter. He became a fashionable portraitist in the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth I under the patronage of her champion and pageant-master Sir Henry Lee. He introduced a new aesthetic in English court painting that captured the essence of a sitter through close observation. He became a favorite portraitist of James I's queen Anne of Denmark, but fell out of fashion in the late 1610s.
Engraving by Wenceslas Hollar, 1644, of a self-portrait of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, 1627 (now lost).
Unfinished portrait sketch of Sir Henry Lee, likely to have been from life; oil on canvas, c. 1600
Queen Elizabeth I, the Ditchley Portrait, c. 1592. Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 1596
Artists of the Tudor court
The artists of the Tudor court are the painters and limners engaged by the monarchs of England's Tudor dynasty and their courtiers between 1485 and 1603, from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I.
The Rainbow Portrait by an unknown artist, possibly Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, an image of Elizabeth I as the "Queen of Love and Beauty" c. 1600, epitomizes the elaborate iconography associated with later Tudor court portraiture.
Portrait of Jane Seymour by Holbein, 1536–37
Drawing of Jane Seymour by Holbein, 1536–37
Detail of Georg Hoefnagel's 1568 watercolour of the south frontage of Nonsuch Palace, one of the only two good images - which differ considerably. The stucco reliefs are shown in blue-ish grey.
