The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait by Margaret Aston (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 273 manism in the region; the Waldensian proselytization from 1 526 onward and the violent persecution that this called forth; the first weak steps of Catholic reform attempted around mid-century; the foundation of Reformed churches and the showdown of 1562—1563; the subsequent course of the Wars of Religion; and the introduction and advance of the Tridentine reforms, die new religious orders, and the novel practices that they championed. Then comes the "sociography." Finally, an extended conclusion evaluates the significance of the century's changes for the broader history of Western Christendom . In the final balance sheet, Venard, rather like John Bossy, discerns the century's deepest trends to have involved a clericalization of religion and a partial detachment of lay religious practice from the organizing structures of community life. For men in particular, these changes represented a loss of religious autonomy. This helped to prepare the way for their detachment from the faith in later centuries. More than fifteen years after its original completion, Venard's study remains a masterpiece. Now that it has finally been published, it should obtain the audience that it deserves. Philip Benedict Brown University TheKing'sBedpost: Reformation andIconography in a TudorGroupPortrait. By Margaret Aston. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1994. Pp. xii, 267. S59.95.) One of the advantages of living in the late twentieth century is that we have no difficulty in understanding the impact of visual images. At a time when Rwandans, Bosnians, and others of the world's afflicted process daily across our television screens, the instinct of the iconoclast is easily aroused. Our parents, whose information system was dominated by the "wireless," may have been better equipped to understand the effect of a two-hour sermon. Our grandparents, for whom newspapers still consisted mainly of printed words, were certainly more attuned to tracts and broadsheets. But never since the Reformation has a generation been better adjusted to visual propaganda than ours. It is appropriate, therefore, that this eccentric and sometimes brilliant book should appear in 1994. Its subject is a single intriguing but totally undistinguished picture now hanging in the Tudor gallery of the National Portrait Gallery in London. It depicts the dying Henry VIII passing on the legacy of his antipapal struggle to his son, Edward VI. Edward is attended by his councillors, headed by the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset, and under the king's feet, in postures of varying subjection and subversive action, are the pope and two regular religious who appear to be friars. Above the heads of the councillors 274 BOOK REVIEWS is an inset picture of a crowd destroying images, and scattered about the canvas are four other spaces which seem to have been designed to hold texts. Although classed as a group portrait, it is in fact a rather crudely executed piece of didactic propaganda. The picture has attracted a fair amount of attention in the past, and is frequently reproduced, but it has never before been subject to the kind of critical analysis which Dr. Aston exercises in this book. The main thrust of her argument is simple and convincing. The picture does not belong to Edward VI's reign, where it has usually been assigned to the years 1548—9, but to the early part of Elizabeth's reign, probably about 1563. It does not belong to the period of active official iconoclasm, but rather to the controversial sequel, when a restored Protestant hierarchy was battling to impose its priorities upon a reluctant queen. The iconographie evidence for this dating is assembled in great detail, particularly from the Netherlands, with reference to dated works by Maarten van Heemskerk. As there is no convincing iconographie argument supporting the earlier dating, there is an element of overkill about this. The justification for the inclusion of so much of it, and in such detail, is not that it is necessary to make the case, but it makes an interesting and worthwhile story in itself. The same could be said of other parts of the book, notably the chapter on the iconography of the 1570 edition of Foxe's Acts and Monuments. It is not irrelevant to the main theme, although...