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Absence and artlessness in Early Modern Church of England martyr portraits

University of British Columbia

This dissertation examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits of early modern Church of England martyrs, and how they emerged from and engaged with the violent religious conflicts that occurred during the long Reformation of England (1534-1688). The official religion of England changed rapidly during this period. This meant that members of various confessions were executed at different moments for the crime of heresy. Religiously motivated executions were quite dangerous for the state, because they held the potential to transform the body of the criminal into that of the martyr. Most of the Church of England martyrs were executed during the reign of Mary I (r. 1553-58), when nearly 300 men, women, and children were burned at the stake. Commemorative portraits of these martyrs were produced, importantly, in a variety of mediums and throughout the early modern period. Also studied are the posthumous portraits of Charles I who upon his beheading was popularly reframed as the martyr king. The basis for identifying a Church of England martyr relied heavily upon the faculty of sight, and much of the discourse on martyrdom in this period was couched in the terms of vision. Pictorial depictions of the martyrs register some of the anxieties generated by this reliance upon outward appearances. These portraits also dangerously evoked the contested portrayals of Catholic saints. Various tactics were therefore undertaken to minimize associations with depictions of Catholic saints, including the insertion of text, the removal of explicit references to transcendence, and an increasing preference for the medium of print. The thesis reviews how various representational strategies used to depict the Church of England martyrs—successes as well as failures—partially converted these real-life people into forms of national religious archetypes. In representations of martyrs, their personal and professional identities were overwritten by the terms of martyrdom. Portraits of them, the dissertation argues, bring to light nascent understandings of English nationhood in the form of religious ideals that were manifested in the absent body of the dead martyr. Over time, the polysemous bodies of these early modern martyrs became part of the mythos of the English nation.

Text

2023-09-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/66979

Art History

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/