For much of early modern history, the opportunity to be immortalized in a portrait was explicitly tied to social class: only landed elites and royalty had the money and power to commission such an endeavour. But in the second half of the 16th century, access began to widen to the urban middle class,[...]

Who were the Tudor kings and queens and what did they really look like? Mention Henry VIII and the familiar image of the rotund, bearded fellow of Hans Holbein the Youngers portraits immediately springs to mind reinforced, perhaps, by memories of a monochromatic Charles Laughton wielding a chicken l[...]