The Somerley Portrait: A Portrait Of Catherine Carey By Levina Teerlinc.

By Natasha Gennady Robinson

'The Somerley Portrait: A Portrait Of Catherine Carey By Levina Teerlinc' is a non fiction essay exploring the origins of a recently re discovered Tudor portrait owned by the Earls of Normanton in the United Kingdom. Once known as Lady Jane Grey by Luca Penni, the painting in its essence captures the romance and extravagance of 16th century England and the renaissance. The narrative weaves historical fact with meticulously researched conjecture in an attempt to prove the painting as Catherine Carey, daughter of Tudor England's most notorious mistress, Mary Boleyn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Natasha Gennady Robinson
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311806444

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The Somerley Portrait: A Portrait Of Catherine Carey by Levina Teerlinc

Natasha Gennady Robinson

Published By Natasha Gennady Robinson at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Natasha Gennady Robinson

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The images displayed in this text are hand drawn representations of the paintings mentioned within the text. The images within this text are therefore copyright to the author.

Front cover designed by Natasha Gennady Robinson and AJ Palm. The Somerley Portrait, featured on the cover is used thanks to the Normanton family and is copyright to them.

The Somerley Portrait called Lady Jane Grey by Luca Penni.

The Somerley Portrait

A Portrait Of Catherine Carey

By

Levina Teerlinc.

A Topical Essay

By

Natasha Gennady Robinson.

Table Of Contents.

An Introduction: The Tudor Renaissance.

Birth and Purchase

The Professor, The Painter, and the Will.

A Grey Penni’s Worth.

The Final Straw.

The Deceptive ‘D’.

The Road Less Travelled.

Blinded by Science.

A Lady in Fine Style.

A Trade for Magic Beads.

Temperance and Perseverance.

A Sumptuous Hood In Deed.

The Leopard Changes His Spots.

The Lady Hailed from Aquitaine.

Survivors in Stone.

A Very Tudor Beauty.

The Maidens and the Spears.

A Good Opinion Once Lost.

Grasp of the Privy Seal.

The Royal Shield.

At The Ready.

As the Latin Dictionary Dictates.

Pride in Appearance.

And In The Beginning.

Tit for Tat, Cat for Kat.

The Imbalance of Nature.

The Downfall of the Tudor Woman.

A House of Cards.

A Bone To Pick.

A Glorious Conclusion.

On A More Personal Note.

Acknowledgements.

References.

The Somerley Portrait. A Portrait of Catherine Carey, by Levina Teerlinc.

An Introduction: The Tudor Renaissance.

The Sixteenth Century saw the birth of many new ideas that have laid the foundation of modern and postmodern society, religion, humanism and the arts. In many cases, these new ideas and revolutions, were born of a baptism of fire. On the European continent, the renaissance swept the known world with a rebirth of every aspect of popular human idea. Reformations of thought began in every country in the western sphere, and the countries that had not yet been discovered by western explorers, would soon fall under the shadow of the European imperial dominions. Despite the revolutionary changes brought about by the European Renaissance, the constitution of the regal monarchy would not change for many centuries, leaving Europe under a select group of authoritarian rulers nominated by their royal bloodlines. But the acquisition of the crown was not always ensured by royal birth, it was also ascertained by the sword. The civil Wars of the Roses in England saw cousin against cousin fighting in the battlefield, and war waged against brothers, simply for want of the absolute power that kingship ascribed. This was not merely a feud wrought by personal need for leadership however, it was a need by individuals to prove absolutely that their claim as the right and royal heir inherent King of England was above that of their opponent, and therefore favoured by God. Men began, although not for the first time, to question whether the role of king was a role ascribed and anointed only by God, and therefore whether it was admissible for men to take the crown from an anointed king, and place it then with royal ceremony on the head of another. This deeply lying question regarding the depth of power held by a king on earth, how far it reached and how close to the hand of God it lay, planted inadvertently a seed into the minds of those of Royalty, Nobility and Philosophy, eventually leading to the separation of the English realm from the jurisdiction of the Papist led Roman Catholic Church. This major Reformation of national religion in England was initially wrought in the mid sixteenth century by the second Tudor king, Henry VIII, and led to the formation of a united Church of England by his daughter, the final Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I. The fact that this enacting of the end of apparent religious division, re-establishing the English Ruler as God’s representative on earth, was at the hand of Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, seems now poetic justice due to Anne’s involvement in its instigation. But the troubles wrought by Henry VIII’s decision to divorce his first wife in order to marry Anne Boleyn, were not so simply or plainly cast. There is much dispute even today regarding the English reformation, and even more so regarding the Rule of Henry VIII, whom some even now call tyrannical.

Henry VIII was the son born of a marital alliance between the houses of York and Lancaster, and with this alliance, peace was brought to a long feuding country. Although Henry’s father, Henry VII had won the English kingship in the battlefield after slaying his distant cousin Richard III, Henry VIII did not seem to personally warrant the merits of civil war. He inherited a country at peace, and wished to keep it that way. At the least, he wished to keep the crown for himself and his heirs, all too well knowing the upheavals caused by the overthrowing of a Monarch. With a royal fortune that showed him as one of the greatest monarchs in Europe of his time, Henry was intent to flaunt his wealth, as well as his inherent power. His court was extravagant in its fashions, its doings, and Henry was a great patron of the arts. The accession of the sumptuous and more often than not ostentatious Henry VIII brought along with it the establishment of England’s greatest era of artistic culture. This fact is proven by the many artists recorded as being on the royal payroll, far exceeding the few meager appointments made by his father. These facts can be easily ascertained due to the continued existence of a great deal of Tudor primary information. We still have much recorded evidence of not only the royal accounts and expenses and the running of the royal households; but letters, and papers both foreign and domestic; stately and personal. We can see the particulars of Henry’s life from the ledgers kept by his employees, as well as the recordings of all elements involved in his daily doings, his stately celebrations and even his royal conquests. A great example of the flamboyance of detail involved in the King of England’s events, are the specifications recorded for the function known as ‘The Field of the Cloth of Gold’. Hosted by Henry VIII in English occupied France as a means to solidify his alliance with the French King Francis I, it was as much a means to prove Henry’s great wealth and taste. In all its remaining details, this diplomatic nod to the peace treaty signed between the two great European monarchs, although rendered eventually ineffectual by both men’s egos, must have lived up to its glorious name. His reception twenty years later held for his future wife Anne of Cleves in Calais, although slightly less ostentatious in materialism, proved to be equally diplomatically ineffectual. That is, aside from promoting Henry Tudor’s continuing wealth and prosperity. In actuality, it seems all aspects of Henry VIII’s life, as well as those of his court, were notoriously marred by over opulence and excess.

Henry VIII had hundreds of men and women who lived within his household, having stations and royal occupations that ran from the likes of chancellors and privy counselors, right down to those in servitude to himself and his queen, aiding in their domestic duties. From the grooms who dressed the King, to those who rendered him clean after his most privy duties, an assignment within the King’s privy chamber, no matter how servile, was a greatly sort after profession due to its pay, its prestige, and the fact that being close to this king in most cases afforded a prosperous future (if one were to discount the fact that those he made high, he broke hard). In numbers of thousands, men and women of all degrees of social importance constituted Henry’s household and his court, as those who served him usually had those who served them, and so went a chain of men and women living in utter excess. An hierarchy of royal courtiers, leaving a trail of debt to their hosts, as the royal court moved throughout the English country side on the travelling exhibition known as the ‘Royal Progress’. The records of Henry’s governing and personal life that exist to this day, show abundant evidence of not only his excessive lifestyle, but also his self-indulgent nature as a ruler. Henry VIII is infamous for being a king immersed in his own power, often to the fatal detriment of his courtiers. And after turning his country upside down to annul his marriage to his first queen in order to marry another, after only three years of marriage he then annulled his marriage to his second queen, just prior to having her executed. Only to marry yet another more youthful and hopefully more fertile paramour. His wives in total numbered six, two of which were beheaded for treason, and for insulting the King’s

Reviews for The Somerley Portrait

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To the author: Please learn the difference between bare and bear.