History of Art Research Seminar Series 2025

Tudor Liveliness? Discovering Vividness in Post-Reformation England

Christina Faraday 

5pm October 22

Cinema, The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities

In Tudor England, artworks were often described as ‘lively’. What did this mean in a culture where naturalism was an alien concept? And in a time of religious upheaval, when the misuse of images might lure the soul to hell, how could liveliness be a good thing? In this talk we'll explore a hitherto neglected aspect of Tudor art, re-enlivening the period’s vivid visual and material culture and discovering how artists were able to make absent things present, and make the dead live.

Dr Christina Faraday is an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Among her other contributions, she is the host of the British Art Matters podcast. Her latest book is titled Tudor Liveliness: Vivid art in Post-Reformation England (Yale University Press, 2023).