NARRATOR:
In this section, we come face to face with some of the extraordinary personalities of the Tudor period – like this terracotta bust of John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. He was a stern critic of decadence and extravagance. He once said:

MALE VOICE:
Truly, most reverend Fathers, what this vanity in temporal things worketh in you, I know not…

NARRATOR:
Fisher was a scholar and an important figure in the Church during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII.

MALE VOICE:
I perceive a great impediment to devotion in attending after triumphs, receiving of ambassadors, haunting of princes’ courts, and such like ways.

NARRATOR:
Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano captures some of Fisher’s charisma.

Elizabeth Cleland.

ELIZABETH CLELAND:
I think we can really share the amazement that Tudor courtiers felt when they experienced Torrigiano’s work for the first time. It’s just so incredibly lifelike. There’s this sense of arrested movement; if you turn away, he’s going to move his head. Those tiny curls around his ears: one can really believe that they cover his whole head—that they’re underneath that scholar’s cap.

It’s as if he’s captured a little bit of his soul. The way he’s modeled in terracotta: you’ve got the stern set of his mouth, and the slightly furrowed brow. He was a man who really prided himself in keeping to his principles, and I think we get a sense of that, looking at the bust.

NARRATOR:
Fisher’s principles cost him dearly. When Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome, Fisher could not bring himself to support the king.

ELIZABETH CLELAND:
The pope, trying to draw attention to his plight, names him cardinal, and then Henry’s reaction is: Okay, then I’ll send his head to Rome to receive his cardinal’s cap. He doesn’t quite do that, but he does have him publicly executed. So, the glories and the beauty of the Tudor period, but also the horror and the violence, I think are encapsulated right here in this bust.

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