Patrons of Power

Abstract

There was an intimate, almost inseparable connection between rule and patronage of the arts in Renaissance England. Almost without exception, the great spent lavishly on appearances whatever their particular religious sympathies may have been. Attempts have been made to equate Catholicism and patronage of the arts but this cannot balance. Sensitivity to the arts and an awareness of their powers of persuasion had little to do with religious sympathies; the rabid iconoclast Protector Somerset destroyed the heritage of medieval decorative art while putting up the most ‘progressive’ building of the sixteenth century.