Automata, Effigies and the Limits of Liveliness: The Aesthetics of Vividness in Tudor Churches

Tudor visual art is often seen as stiff and lifeless, a result of Reformation fears about idolatry. And yet, writers at the time often described artworks as 'lively', a word associated with the vivid effects of the rhetorical technique known as 'enargeia', when described events seem to appear 'before the eyes' of an audience, making them feel like eye-witnesses. In a period when critical responses to visual art are famously thin on the ground, 'liveliness' suggests the possibility of excavating a Tudor aesthetics of vividness. But in the context of Reformation debates about the validity of images, how could vivid imagery be acceptable, even desirable? This paper challenges the traditional view that vivid images were anathema to Tudor reformers, considering a variety of 'lively' images and objects, including religious automata, funeral effigies and monuments, all of which appeared in the most contested of all Tudor spaces, the church. It will attempt to find the limits of 'liveliness', asking what features made such images desirable, and what tipped the balance to make them dangerous or idolatrous.