Chapter 9 - The Unton Portrait Reconsidered

Summary

The Unton Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, London, is among the most famous representations of memory and mortality in early modern England. It depicts Sir Henry Unton (c. 1558–1596), his life and death. This chapter argues that the Unton Memorial Picture deserves to be reconsidered not primarily as a narrative of Unton’s life and death, but as a meditation on memory and mortality. Analysis of the spatial organisation of the portrait shows how early modern English elite culture approached the arts of death in the wake of the Reformation. Equal weight was given to life, death and its attendant rituals, and to the afterlife, including the fate of body, soul, and memory. Close reading of the architecture and imagery of Unton’s monument as depicted in the portrait demonstrates that the tomb was at the forefront of the stylistic development of English sepulchral art. This allows the portrait to be redated to around 1606, a decade after the death of its subject, and understood as part of a programmatic approach to Unton’s memory authored by his widow Dorothy. The chapter contributes to development of a theory of memory and commemoration authentic to the English Renaissance.