The New Murrey and Blue blog

We’ve all seen the effigy of Henry VII, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-VII-king-of-England. What a lanky, stretch-necked sort of figure he must have presented, especially at the 6 feet 1 inch height of his complete effigy. He was something of a clothes-horse, a little like the supermodels of today, but without the looks! He died in 1509 at the age of 52.

According to this link https://tinyurl.com/7b3ddv5v the head is all that remains of his funeral effigy, the body having been destroyed by water during WWII . It’s thought to have been made by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pietro-Torrigiani , who probably used a model of Henry’s death mask to make it true to life.

“….A death mask was traditionally made of monarchs and wealthy figures using wax or plaster moulded around the person’s real face after they had passed away….Documents have shown that they were used to create funeral effigies….”

Maybe thousands of photographs will have to be taken to ascertain all manner of tiny detail that will enable calculations of how true to life (or death) Henry’s effigy actually is. Is it really based on the death mask, and therefore is it really a truly accurate likeness of the first Tudor king?

Torrigiano also created the magnificent effigies on the tomb of Henry and his queen, Elizabeth of York, in Westminster Abbey. Henry looks in better shape there!

To find out more about what is to be done to test any link between the death mask and the funeral effigy, please visit the above site.

Before I go, I cannot possibly be the first to have observed a family likeness when it comes to two specific effigies. One is Henry’s, and the other that of his grandmother, Henry V’s queen, Katherine of Valois, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Catherine-Of-Valois-After-Death/. We all know the story of how on being widowed so young, she’d fallen for a handsome Welsh servant, Owen Tudor, https://thehistoricalnovel.com/2018/01/30/the-life-and-times-of-owen-tudor/. There are various question marks about whether or not they ever married, or indeed whether Owen was Henry Tudor’s grandfather. But two sons resulted and took Owen’s name, Edmund and Jasper Tudor. The elder, Edmund, married a very young Lady Margaret Beaufort, https://www.thoughtco.com/margaret-beaufort-tudor-dynasty-3530617 , and Henry VII was the outcome. But that’s not the point. Henry was definitely the grandson of Katherine of Valois, and if you look at her funeral effigy do you—like me—see a remarkable likeness to Henry VII?

Was Katherine another clothes-horse? Slender, long-necked….like one of today’s supermodels, but more likely than her grandson to have possessed beauty?