This too shall pass...

As the years go by, I find something strangely comforting in looking at portraits of individuals long departed. As they stare out at us, across the centuries that separate their lives from ours, I try to read any emotion that may lie behind their quizzical air and imagine the personality beyond, and likewise seek to piece together a notion of their existence from the scraps of information offered. Most of these endeavours do not lead very far, for even if I learn of the broad framework of their life events from my twenty-first century vantage point, I can never grasp how their lives were led, or understand the full extent of the power exerted on these by forces and influences that have relatively little hold or impact for the majority of us nowadays. However, I can recognise that these individuals experienced much the same gamut of feelings that we do today, and why wouldn't it be so? Hope, fear, love, grudges, ambition, disappointment; all crisscrossed past lives and drove existences much in the same way as they do now, albeit then untempered by the knowledge, science and technology and indeed hindsight that shape society today. They indeed posed the same fundamental questions concerning our time on Earth that we might today, if only we were not so preoccupied by consuming life in every possible sense. Ultimately they had a clearer understanding than us that life is short, regardless of how many years it extends, and that each stage and event passes and leads inevitably to the next, waxing and waning until death itself. Nothing lasts...

This summer I discovered the portrait above of Sir Henry Unton (1558-1596) at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and was rather suprised to see it referred to as a 'well-known' piece, for I had certainly never heard of it. The artist himmself is unidentified and yet his work lives on, hundreds of years on! And what an intriguing painting this proved to be... Set amongst many other Tudor portraits, this work was indeed unique. Unlike the full-length or the bust portraits that focus primarily on the figure, here the relatively youthful face of this diplomat - decked out in his Elizabethan finery - is surrounded by insightful vignettes of his existence, from cradle to grave. Commissioned by his widow, following his death in 1596, the ‘story picture’ of Sir Henry Unton lays out the key events of his 39 years in an anti-clockwise sequence that starts in the bottom right-hand corner. In almost each of these scenes - excepting his birth and death - we see miniature images of Sir Unton as the protagonist, all virtually the same scaled-down version of the main central portrait. The memorial portrait was very much in keeping with the interest of Elizabethan and Jacobean society for life's ephemerality but here, instead of being a rather dismal memento mori to 'remember that we must die', this visual narrative appears to be more a celebration of a short but active existence that also offers us a glimpse of life in the late 16th century.

In the detail above, we see the baby Henry in the arms of his mother, Anne Dudley (née Seymour), the Countess of Warwick, in Unton House. Her status is apparent from her fine clothes, the lady's maids, the odd little dog lying by her feet, and the richly-dressed table in the background. We have no real notion, however, of just how remarkable this particular individual was in her own right. Indeed, thanks to her Humanist education, along with her sisters (Jane and Margaret), she composed Latin poetry to honour Marguerite de Navarre on her death - the first published work written by English women before the 1560s; quite a feat. Towards the end of her relatively short life (dying in 1588 at just 50 years), Anne suffered from episodes of madness and was finally in the custody of her son, Henry. In this portrait however, we simply see the infant Henry seemingly scowling at a nurse who prepares to relieve the mother!

Youthful Henry is later depicted at study in Oriel College, Oxford, in 1573 before he went on to study Law in London and to travel beyond the Alps to Venice and Padua. I love the wonky perspective of the architecture around Henry, and the image of him as the studious young man, disportionally large, with his nose buried in a book at the open window!

We also see Henry on horse-back, holding up a parasol, whilst riding a strangely lumpen white stead, before going on to serve with the English army in the Netherlands (1585-86), a duty for which he was knighted in 1586.

He became a resident ambassador to France in 1591, but returned to England the following year suffering from jaundice. Back in his home land, Henry was elected as an MP for Berkshire in 1593 and his worldy success is reflected in the banquet scene, where he sits in a central position, almost with a twinkle of glee in his eye!

In another scene, Henry plays the lute while a masque of Mercury and Diana is performed around him but these festivities are offset by calmer moments, given to music-making, study or discussion....

I love the image of Henry below, cutting a solitary figure, with his strangely-proportioned arms stuck in front of him, as if as a hasty addition on the part of the artist to give Sir Unton more gravitas!

Henry again took up an ambassadorial role in 1595-6, as he returned to France but this was ended by an almost fatal fall from a horse, followed by a fever that indeed resulted in his demise, despite care from the royal physician to Henri IV. Henry is represented on his death-bed in the painting, with individuals at his side, displaying varying degrees of emotional response...

Apparently Henry's body was transported across the Channel to England in a black ship, as a mark of respect, and this we see in the background of the painting, with the hearse being brought back to his home of Wadley House, near Oxford.

From there, the funeral procession leads on to All Saint’s Church, Faringdon, where his funeral was held in 1596. The somber line of mourners in their long black clothing accompany the pall-bearers who carry Henry's coffin, likewise swathed in black...

Sir Henry Unton's final resting place is an imposing tomb monument which bears his effigy in recumbent form, leaning on one elbow, a large sword by his side and his widowed wife kneeling above him.

Presiding over all of these different scenes is, of course, the central image of Henry Unton himself, in his prime. He is seated in an impressive chair with a cameo necklace honouring the French king, Henry IV, resting on the desk from which he writes. Just by his shoulders, are the allegorical figures of Fame and Death, the one as an angel blowing a trumpet and holding out a coronet to herald elevated status and success, whilst the other is a skeletal form that brandishes a hour-glass to mark the ephemeral nature of Life, along with its trials and tribulations.

Life and Death, light and darkness are also underlined by the symbolic sun and crescent moon images in the corners of the work, with beams directed at the figure of Sir Henry in the different scenes, guiding us where the inscriptions can no longer do, having become illegible with the passing of time - how fitting!