Henry VIII, King of England from 1509 to 1547, is famous for many things. But not everyone knows that he was a great collector. For one thing, he collected wives. He married six different women at a time when divorce was basically prohibited and uncooperative wives often died alone. The king also collected houses. He claimed numerous important houses and palaces, including Westminster, Berkhamsted, Fotheringhay, Warwick, Kenilworth and some of his favorites: Greenwich, Whitehall and Hampton Court. He even had Royal Residences in the Tower of London. One of King Henry’s largest collections was that of tapestries. He eventually assembled more than 2,000 of these woven images to arrange Hampton Court Palace and his other royal residences.
But why would the king spend so much money and energy collecting woven pictures to decorate his walls? What was behind these expensive tapestries?
Tapestry making was a large industry in northern France and the southern Netherlands during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Tapestry is a form of textile art created by skilled artisans. The pieces were woven by hand on a loom. Weaving a tapestry required each thread to be carefully placed on the loom by hand. This painstaking process allowed workers to create complex designs that included intricate features for people, animals, and plants. Usually the threads of the chain were made of Picardy linen or wool. The striking threads were made of Italian silk or gold and silver threads imported from Cyprus. Textile workers and guilds flourished in Belgium and France, and tapestries created there were exported throughout Europe.
Tapestries were sometimes woven in sets. A set of tapestries often told a biblical or mythical story through a series of images. This art on the woven tapestry was meant to produce illusions of what reality should be: a more intellectual, more scientific, grander world. This world could follow the owner wherever he went, since the tapestries were portable and could be transported from one residence to another.
Rich and powerful men collected tapestries because they could really impress visitors. Before having to cede Hampton Court to King Henry, Cardinal Wolsey sent London merchant Richard Gresham to Brussels with 1,000 marks to buy the best tapestries he could find. The Venetian ambassador told this story of his visit to Wolsey: “One has to pass through eight rooms before reaching his audience chamber, and they are all covered with tapestries, which are changed once a week” (1).
In September 1528 King Henry became disgusted with Wolsey’s work and took over Hampton Court Palace. King Henry embarked on a massive rebuilding project, creating new kitchens, a Council Chamber, and a series of private rooms for himself. Additionally, Henry rebuilt the Great Hall, which featured large walls for displaying tapestries. To decorate Hampton Court and other royal residences, Henry collected tapestries to communicate his wealth and power. The tapestries adorned such important public rooms as the Great Hall and the Great Surveillance Chamber.
One of the most famous series in Henry’s collection is the Abraham’s story series, which he commissioned specifically for Hampton Court. This series was woven in Brussels around 1540 by Wilhelm Pannemaker after designs by Bernard van Orley. Tea Abraham’s story The tapestries include ten separate pieces, each measuring approximately sixteen feet high and twenty-six feet wide. These tapestries are of amazing quality, with highly skilled weaving and a large number of metal threads, with many threads of gold and silver. In fact, the amount of gold makes them one of the most opulent products of the Brussels industry.
Due to the amount of gold and silver and the high quality of workmanship, it is estimated that each tapestry cost Henry as much money as a fully equipped and manned battleship. This means that the entire set costs as much as a fleet of battleships. Tea Abraham The tapestries are a good example of King Henry’s main goal in collecting tapestries: to demonstrate his great wealth to visitors from around the world. King Henry believed that these tapestries would create a positive impression and convince all who came to Hampton Court and other royal palaces of him.
King Henry was right about Abraham’s tapestries being a symbol of wealth and power. His influence lasted much longer than Enrique’s. Approximately 100 years after Henry’s death, during the English Revolution, revolutionaries seized control of the country and executed King Charles I, with Oliver Cromwell ruling as Lord Protector. Much of the royal property was sold to the highest bidder. But Abraham the tapestries were worth so much money that he could not sell them. They remained in the possession of Oliver Cromwell at Hampton Court. Like the rest of his assets, they returned to the property of the crown when the monarchy was reestablished. These tapestries were selected to adorn the walls of Westminster Abbey at the coronation of King James II in 1685.
The choice of the Abraham The tapestries, commissioned by Henry VIII in 1540, to celebrate the restoration of the monarchy more than 100 years later, demonstrate its importance as a symbol of royalty and power. Although Henry VIII may not have understood the full historical significance of it, he did understand the impact of the tapestries on the perception of him as king. Hampton Court Palace was King Henry’s favorite residence. He made it a great symbol of his royalty and the strength of the Tudor dynasty. The magnificent tapestries that adorned the palace walls during his reign were a fitting symbol of King Henry VIII’s wealth, wisdom, and royalty. For him, the tapestries were much more than decorations or insulation. They were literally the embodiment of the real image of him.
1. Hedley, O. (1971) hampton court palace. London: Pitkin Pictorials.