The reign of James I was the real beginning of the Augustan age in England and brought with it enormously higher standards of taste and discernment. When James made his state entry into London in 1604 the new dynasty was widely seen by contemporaries as a restoration of the Golden Age, a renewal of the Roman imperium, celebrating the union of the Kingdoms and the triumph of Protestantism. The following years brought a great outpouring of poetry, music, painting, designs for masques and processions, and sermons, all striving to create a distinctive new Stuart iconography. This book ranges broadly across the arts to analyse imagery and contemporary attitudes. There are chapters on Ben Johnson and Inigo Jones; on Stuart funerals and the religious arts; on Princess Elizabeth's wedding; and on James's triumphal entry. It was an outstanding period for collecting and connoisseurship, and the author describes the artistic enterprises of the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Buckingham as well as looking at how the arts portrayed the monarch and how James, Charles and Prince Henry patronised arts and letters themselves. This elegantly written book, its text supported by illustration and quotation, brings together much inaccessible material, and will be essential reading for historians and art historians as well as students of literature.

Product Description: Survey of the culture of the Stuart court during the reigns of James II and Charles I.