580. Introduction

NARRATOR: Welcome to The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. The year is 1485. Henry Tudor has just seized the throne of England. Henry’s enemies describe him in damning terms: VOICE 1: An unknown Welshman whose father I never knew… NARRATOR: And another referred to Henry Tudor as... VOICE 2: Captain of rebels and traitors, descended of bastard blood… NARRATOR: But Henry’s new dynasty gained recognition from the world; and it achieved this partly through the magnificence of its art. ELIZABETH CLELAND: I'm Elizabeth Cleland and I'm a curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of the things that's so compelling about the Tudors is that they really knew how to use art to project and craft this incredible impression of majesty. ADAM EAKER: Hi, my name is Adam Eaker. I’m an associate curator in the Department of European Paintings. We want to present the Tudor courts as a center of Renaissance innovation and patronage. And introduce our visitors to the incredibly engaging and colorful personalities of this court. NARRATOR: And you’ll hear the voices of some of those personalities, in their own words, from first-hand historic accounts from the Tudor period. This Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. ###