Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England

Christina Faraday's book "Tudor Liveliness" explores a Tudor model of vividness grounded in rhetorical techniques for creating powerful mental images, revealing how objects across genres and contexts were part of the same intellectual and aesthetic conversations. By resurrecting a lost model for art theory, Faraday re-enlivens the vivid visual and material culture of Tudor and Jacobean England, recovering its original power to move, impress, and delight.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 25 April 2023
Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

In Tudor and Jacobean England, the term "lively" was used to describe a wide range of visual and material culture, including portraits, funeral monuments, book illustrations, and tapestries. This claim may seem perplexing to a modern viewer, as the culture seemed to have little appreciation for illusionistic naturalism and was characterized by a fear of idolatry. However, in this groundbreaking book, Christina Faraday explores a uniquely Tudor model of vividness that was grounded in rhetorical techniques for creating powerful mental images for audiences. By drawing parallels with the dominant communicative framework of the day, Tudor Liveliness sheds new light on a lost mode of Tudor art criticism and appreciation, revealing how objects across a vast range of genres and contexts were taking part in the same intellectual and aesthetic conversations. By resurrecting a lost model for art theory, Faraday re-enlivens the vivid visual and material culture of Tudor and Jacobean England, recovering its original power to move, impress, and delight.

Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Weight: 1084g
Dimension: 225 x 282 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781913107376