Richard II and The Order of Things

First Order of Business : Taming Test

How would you rate the difficulty level of the Taming scantron test?

A) Very Hard

B) Hard

C) Medium Difficulty

D) Easy

E) Very Easy

Second Order of Business:Richard II and the Order of Things

Portraits of the Ruler behind Richard II:

1. Anonymous Portrait of Richard II, 1398

2. The Wilton Diptych (1395)

The flat gold background in the pictures represents:

A) The inability in Byzantine or iconic paintings of the period to paint perspective backgrounds

B) Material wealth

C) Richard’s favorite color

D) The Lux or light of God

E) Humanity’s inherent cowardice

Richard II in Shakespeare's time when the play Richard II was written (composed c. 1595) Queen Elizabeth I

3. Elizabeth I Portrait, probably by Isaac Oliver (c. 1600)

What do you see in this portrait?

The emblematic meaning: a Virgin Queen who is an immortal goddess ushering in a new Golden Age

3. The Rainbow Portrait:

The painting is built on principles of a Chain of Being universe

a) Principle of hierarchy (vertical axis)

See Chain of Being Picture

b) Principle of Correspondence

• microcosm/ body politic/ macrocosm

-in the Rainbow Portrait, we see a woman/queen/sun ruling over her body/subjects/universe

-see Chain of Being Chart below

Chain of Being Chart of Correspondences

But look back to the iconographic Wilton Diptych. Instead of icons, the British in the Rainbow Portrait have portraiture and landscape.

Why?

A) The Renaissance English liked representations of realistic looking people

B) The Renaissance English liked representations of nature

C) The Protestant Reformation (1529-36) opposed icons and other material representations of the Godhead

The Sun is now the Incarnation of the Son.

Portraits of Elizabeth showing Cult of Virgin Queen, and specifically the face/sun equation:

4. Princess Elizabeth, Aged 13, attributed to William Scrots (c. 1546-1547)

5.Elizabeth I: The "Phoenix" Portrait, attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1572-1547)6. Ermine Portrait, attributed to William Segar (1585)7. Sieve Portrait, attributed to Cornelius Ketel (c.

1580-83)8. Frontspiece to John Case, Sphaera Civitatis

(The Spheres of Government) (c. 1588)9. Armada Portrait (1588)10. Ditchley Portrait, by Marcus Gheeraerts the

Younger (c. 1592)10a. Close-up of Ditchley Portrait

Revisiting the Rainbow Portrait

How old do you think Elizabeth is in this picture?

A) 20sB) 30sC) 40sD) 50sE) 60s

11. Unfinished Pattern of Elizabeth, by Isaac Oliver

How old do you think Elizabeth is in this picture?

A) 20sB) 30sC) 40sD) 50sE) 60s

Elizabeth’s realpolitik:

She issued never-aging face patterns for painters to copy.

What the Rainbow Portrait really shows contemporaries is something like this:

12. The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein (1533)

What's wrong in this picture?

Order and Maskedness in the Chain of Being

On the one hand, as in The Ambassadors, Elizabeth's portraits are images of virtue (and political control): we see an ordered universe that can be "read" according to the old Chain of Being)

On the other hand, we see the skull of The Ambassadors behind Elizabeth's "mask": the sudden perception of a "mask" in the Chain of Being universe in the first place.

13. The Ambassador's Anamorphic Death's Head

13a. The Ambassador's Un-Anamorphic Death's Head

That maskedness is flaunted in this perspective portrait of Edward VI:

14. Edward VI, Anamorphic portrait by William Scrots, 1546 (as anamorphosis)

15. Edward VI, Anamorphic portrait by Scrots, 1546 (as seen in perspective)

Conclusion: Siting/Sighting Richard II:

A characterization of the High Renaissance sensibility:

• an at once secure belief in a stable order (everything in its place)

• and--at any moment--a radical, "perspectural" destabilization, a complete openness to re-interpretation of the world, to a consciousness of "representation" as a mask, as mere words, as play rather than state

Consider the exchange between Richard’s Queen and one of his followers, Bushy (p. 39; 2.2.10-33)

How does Bushy advise the Queen to view life, or perspective portraits like the Ambassadors?

A) Straight on, so he could ignore the skull as “nothing but confusion” and “conceit,” and he could thus appreciate the painting’s realistic picture of a well-ordered universe.

B) From the side, so he could see the grievous shape of the skull which threatens his ordered universe and is masked as “confusion” in a frontal viewing.

C) Both straight on and from the side.

“Perspectural" destabilization is what Richard II himself comes to see in Shakespeare's play

– He comes to see his ordered universe as itself a “mere” fabricated conceit

– He comes to see himself as mere story, a “representation,” increasingly open to interpretation

– And, in viewing his reign thus awry, he comes to see the grievous skull in the picture of his ordered universe.