The Secrets Hidden In Tudor Art
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are diamonds black, and how does a triangle show power in Tudor portraits? From Henry VII’s shrewd statecraft to the glittering reign of Elizabeth I, the Tudors projected their power not just through politics, but through visual propaganda, art and objects.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr Christina Faraday, who ventures beyond the Tudor rose and the famous faces painted by Holbein to take us deeper, uncovering how art and objects shaped the ambitions and identities of people at every level of Tudor society.
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The Women Who Painted the Tudors
Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry |
| 0:06.8 | the 8th's English stronghold? With a subscription to history hit, you can dive into our Tudor |
| 0:12.1 | past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You also unlock hundreds of |
| 0:18.4 | hours of original documentaries with a brand new release |
| 0:21.8 | every single week. Covering everything from the ancient world to World War II, just visit |
| 0:28.1 | historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:34.9 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, |
| 0:40.7 | the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, |
| 0:45.2 | from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise, |
| 0:49.8 | relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. |
| 0:54.0 | Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. |
| 1:16.6 | Whichever way you look at it, the art of the Tudors was really something special. Think of all the H's, the Horam boots, Holbein, Hiliard. |
| 1:21.6 | Some of the greatest artists of all time graced the Tudor courts. |
| 1:26.6 | But art for the Tudors was far more than the painted image. |
| 1:31.4 | In fact, portraits weren't even the most valuable or prized of the arts. That honour went to tapestries |
| 1:37.1 | and to armour, both the work of workshops, not single individuals, which may be why we, with our |
| 1:43.6 | focus on the lone genius, have |
| 1:45.5 | overlooked them. An art as a category was even more capacious than that. We distinguished too readily, |
| 1:53.5 | I think, between art and craft. But to tell the full story of art in the 16th century, we need it all. |
| 2:00.8 | Classicism in architecture, carpets from |
| 2:03.1 | Turkey, the visual art of the local parish church, all of it. And that is what my guest today |
| 2:10.3 | has done in her new book for the full 118 years of the Tudor dynasty. Dr. Christina Faraday is a historian of art and ideas, and an affiliated lecturer at the University |
... |
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