Richard II and The Order of Things

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Richard II and The Order of Things
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First Order of Business Taming Test

• How would you rate the difficulty level of the
  Taming scantron test?
• Very Hard
• Hard
• Medium Difficulty
• Easy
• Very Easy

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Second Order of BusinessRichard 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)

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The flat gold background in the pictures
represents

• The inability in Byzantine or iconic paintings of
  the period to paint perspective backgrounds
• Material wealth
• Richards favorite color
• The Lux or light of God
• Humanitys inherent cowardice

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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?
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3. The Rainbow Portrait

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

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

• a) Principle of hierarchy (vertical axis)
• See Chain of Being Picture

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• 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

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

• Why?
• The Renaissance English liked representations of
  realistic looking people
• The Renaissance English liked representations of
  nature
• The Protestant Reformation (1529-36) opposed
  icons and other material representations of the
  Godhead

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The Sun is now the Incarnation of the Son.
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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)
• 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

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Revisiting the Rainbow Portrait

• How old do you think Elizabeth is in this
  picture?
• 20s
• 30s
• 40s
• 50s
• 60s

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11. Unfinished Pattern of Elizabeth, by Isaac
Oliver

• How old do you think Elizabeth is in this
  picture?
• 20s
• 30s
• 40s
• 50s
• 60s

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Elizabeths realpolitik

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

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• What the Rainbow Portrait really shows
  contemporaries is something like this
• 12. The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein (1533)

What's wrong in this picture?
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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

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• 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)

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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

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Consider the exchange between Richards 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?
• Straight on, so he could ignore the skull as
  nothing but confusion and conceit, and he
  could thus appreciate the paintings realistic
  picture of a well-ordered universe.
• 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.
• Both straight on and from the side.

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• 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.