Double Take: Versions and Copies of Tudor Portraits

This display brings together five pairs of near identical portraits in order to explore how and why multiple versions and copies of portraits were made in the sixteenth century. Portraits of prominent Tudor sitters from the Gallery’s collection: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Archbishop William Warham, the merchant Thomas Gresham and Lord Treasurer Thomas Sackville, are paired with portraits that have been generously loaned from other collections.

These portraits were produced to satisfy a demand for images of monarchs and prominent courtiers that often lasted long after the sitter’s death. Technical analysis undertaken as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project has used dendrochronology, infrared reflectography, x-radiography and photomicroscopy to explore the process by which these works were made and to discover which are contemporary versions of portraits, and which are later copies.