If you’re reading this blog through the RSS feed and haven’t looked at the actual site in a while you probably won’t have any idea of what I’m talking about but I finally found a blog banner that I’m happy with after several months of experimentation. When I updated everything back at the start of the year to fix some issues, I updated to a new theme that had a big picture banner up at the top. I knew that I should take advantage of all that space to do something neat, so I broke out the Photoshop and starting cutting things out of portraits and mashing things together and was totally disappointed in how everything I tried turned out. Then I had a brainwave and started playing around with paintings of *places* (especially since they had good horizontal lines) and finally hit on something that I like! I know that somewhere along the way I saw a site with a similar style banner and it lodged in my head as a neat design idea. (I wish I could remember something more specific to give proper credit!)
I’ve put four new banners together (so far) but I’ll leave the other three as future surprises and switch them out every few months.
So, a little information about the first new picture banner:
Click on the image for a larger version
London from Southwark Anglo-Dutch School c. 1630
Oil on panel (Baltic Oak) 57.7 cm x 85.7 cm (22 3/4 in x 33 3/4 in)
This version is the one at the Museum of London, which you can order a print of here. (There is a similar version at Chatsworth in the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.) This is the earliest surviving oil painting with London as the sole subject and it shows a panorama from Whitehall on the left to past the Tower of London at the right.
I’ve added some labels to the picture above with identifications below:
1. Old St. Paul’s Cathedral. The spire was destroyed by fire in 1561 and was not re-built before the Cathedral itself was destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666
2. St. Mary Overie, re-named St. Saviour’s after the Dissolution and Southwark Cathedral since 1905.
3. Old London Bridge
4. Heads on spikes at the end of London Bridge
5. The Tower of London.
6. Four theaters (see below)
7. Whitehall and Westminster (sadly I don’t have a high-enough resolution version to pick out the exact details)
Trying to sort out which of the theaters was which on the south bank has been a challenge but they probably include some combination of The Swan, The Globe, The Hope, The Rose, or The Bear Garden (for bull and bear baiting). Part of the problem is that the painting’s date isn’t firm, and it probably drew on earlier drawings and etchings. The theaters changed several times from the late Elizabethan times through the first half of the 17th century so figuring out which ones are portrayed in this painting is hard (assuming that it even represents an accurate image of the city at the time). The one at the far left is almost certainly The Swan, and I’m thinking that the one at the far right is The Globe. The one tucked behind it might be The Rose, but I can’t be sure. If anyone finds more concrete identifications, please leave a note in the comments!
This portrait of London is represented in 3-D model form in the Museum of London. It’s a marvel! Such excellent detail, and there is a immediacy about it…like you’re hovering right over the city in a helicopter…1600 style, of course 🙂
To me, the most striking feature are the poor heads on London Bridge. Always did wonder where executed eyes would gaze.
Can’t wait for your other banners, Lara!
Hi Lara, this portrait is taken from almost the same place as Visscher’s of 1616. The theatre to the far right is certainly the Globe and that to the far left the Swan which was in the north-east corner of the Paris Garden. The Bear Garden may well be the Rose as early excavations of the Rose site have shown the likelihood that bull and/or bear baiting took place. The earlier theatres may well have been dual- or multi-purpose as that referred to as the Bear Garden does seem to change location. The site of the Globe in earlier portraits is sometimes known as the Bulle Bayting. I agree with Tracey about the heads on London Bridge. Visscher, too, takes note of these.
I love love LOVE this banner! I hadn’t noticed the heads–eek!
🙂
Great banner! Per the heads – who was likely to be beheaded circa the date of this painting? Or were they leftover heads from other reigns?
Thanks everyone!
Keith has spelled out the frustration I was alluding to when I was try to figure out the theaters. I found one reconstruction painting made in the 1980s that had the area c. 1600 and had 4 theaters on it, but pretty much everything else I found that was Elizabethan or Stuart only had three. The Globe and The Swan were pretty consistently in the same places, but the place and name of theaters in between were the problems. See, this is why it takes me so long to get anything done on the site – I get bogged down researching some little detail because I want to try my best to get it right! 🙂
As for the heads, pretty gruesome, aren’t they? Can’t imagine what it would have been like seeing them in person. Since the date of the painting isn’t firm it might be hard to identify anyone who may have specifically been up there. Although if they match up exactly to one of the earlier drawings or sketches and that one has a firm date, it might be possible.
By the way, my understanding as to why a lot of these London panoramas from the period are basically is the same is that they were all done from the top of St. Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral), with the artist then adding the church itself in at the bottom center. There is a nice discussion of the work in “Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530-1630” ed. by Karen Hearn, which is where I got the technical info on the painting from.
Last night I was flicking through my copy of Gamini Salgado’s The Elizabethan Underworld (certainly worth reading if you haven’t aleasdy done so), and in the endpapers there is an unattributed map of London from 1588 (MS Sloane 2596, fo 52.). From west (Paris Garden) to east, it details bull baiting, bear baiting, Globe Theatre and then the Rose Theatre which is slightly south east of The Clink. The Globe is approximately 1/8 mile south-west of the Rose on what is named as Maid Lane. The heads on the spikes I think are just artistic license. They seem to match pretty much the positions on the Visscher map. Cartography is sent to try us!
Thanks for the info Keith!
These old maps are beautiful but have really caused me some grief in connection with my research on the Mowbray London properties at Broken Wharf near St Paul’s and Norfolk House in Lambeth, because of the variation in the positioning of buildings.
Your map here shows the ‘ great engin’ built in the 1590’s to raise water from the Thames – it is the peculiar shaped tall grey building with the sloping sides to the left of the cathedral, but it should be on the other side and nearer the foreshore. Visscher also had it in the wrong place. It was built amongst what was left of the old Mowbray mansion known as Broken Wharf or Norfolk Inn and should be opposite the tall ship in the middle of the river. Like much of the area it was destroyed in the Great Fire, but modern City streets tend still to follow the pattern of the old ones. It was lovely to find that the modern block of luxury flats built on the old site has been named ‘Norfolk House’.
These maps must have been so difficult to execute I think we have to forgive a few errors. For my purposes Hollar’s maps are the most accurate.