The Tudors: Passion, Power & Politics

Detail from Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, Robert Dudley, 1st Early of Leicester, ca. 1575, National Portait Gallery, London. © National Portrait Gallery, London

The Tudors: Passion, Power & Politics, developed in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery and National Museums Liverpool, includes some of the most iconic images in British painting, including the ‘Darnley’ and ‘Armada’ portraits of Elizabeth I. Several of the works have never been shown outside London, including a portrait of Jane Seymour after Hans Holbein the Younger and the highly unusual Sir Henry Unton (c.1558–1596) portrait, which was painted posthumously and charts key moments in his life and death.

Through the portraits, the exhibition explores this torrid period of religious conflict and political intrigue, the legacies of which continue to reverberate through contemporary British life. It features vivid likenesses of many of the most significant figures of the time, including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas More, William Cecil and Thomas Cromwell, whose fame has recently been revived by Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy.