England under the Tudor dynasty may have been volatile and dangerous, but it was a thriving time for the arts.

Join Royal Oak as Co-curators Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker take us on a tour of their exhibition The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cleveland Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

The curators will lead us through the exhibition and illustrate some of the more than 100 objects from both The Met collection and international lenders— including the National Trust. We will examine iconic portraits, spectacular tapestries, colorful manuscripts, sculpture, as well as one of the most important pieces of 16th-century furniture in Britain, the Sea Dog table from Hardwick Hall.

From the work of Florentine sculptors to German painters; from Flemish weavers to Europe’s best armorers and goldsmiths; and finally to English craftsmen, all contributed to the emergence of a distinctly English style. Finally, we will see that despite shifting political relationships with Europe, Tudor artistic patronage legitimized a series of tumultuous reigns of the British monarchy during an uncertain time.