Product Description

Each year more than 250,000 people visit the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge, one of Europe's best-known buildings. This book tells the untold story of the Chapel's crowning glory, its stained glass windows, and of the people who created them - the triumphant culmination of a project completed despite wars, the death of kings and violent religious conflict. The glass symbolises the power of the Tudors, and is a mirror of their souls. Planned by Henry VII and continued by Henry VIII, the windows are dynastic propaganda, simultaneously blatant and subtle, boasting the ancient lineage of an upstart monarchy. Their unfolding scenes honoured the Catholic faith that Henry VIII was challenging in the 1530s, when he made himself head of the church to marry Anne Boleyn.The windows show how Henry commemorated his wives in art, then airbrushed them out when they fell from favour, and how he recruited leading artists to make this England's response to the Sistine Chapel. The great 'King's Glass' also flaunts the skills of its makers, many of them innovative immigrants. It is a tale of guilds and artisans as well as of the court. It is, too, a history of England, reflecting change, conflict and modernity in the sixteenth century. Exploring the stories behind these luminous treasures, this fascinating book, as vivid as a novel, uncovers the power struggles behind the beauty of the past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67276 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

The Times
`By concentrating her gaze upon one of the outstanding buildings of England, Hicks provides a history of an entire culture.'

Independent
'a jewel of a book ... a tribute to the mainly Flemish mastercraftsmen who designed and made the windows'

Contemporary Review
`This is a fine piece of scholarship and research'

Customer Reviews

OK - so far as it goes.
The newspaper reviewers have hailed this book as a marvel, but I can't help but think they were reading a different book.
Hicks provides a basic account of how stained glass is made, and then a reign-by-reign history of the stops and starts in the making of this superlative series of windows, with interesting mini-biographies of some of the major glass-painters. She does provide a sense of the milieu in which the glass was made, and of the politics behind their making - even if this is at times sketchy.
What the book lacks, though, is much account of the glass itself. Apart from the odd vignette you will get no sense of the story the windows are telling or the fascinating parallels between the Old and New Testament scenes that occur in pairs throughout. There isn't even so much as a list of the scenes' titles.
If you want to learn about the glass at King's, read something else (Hilary Wayment's history if you can find and afford it). If you are already familiar with the glass then this will tell you new things about their history. But as an introduction to the windows then, in the end, it fails to satisfy.

The King's Glass by Carola Hicks
The King's Glass: A Story of Tudor Power and Secret Art

A fascinating and engrossing story of the making of the stained glass windows of King's College Chapel. Carola Hicks takes us into the medieval period vividly describing he lives of kings, churchmen and artisans during a period of violent religious and racial conflict. Read the book then take it with you to King's College Chapel and history comes alive.

Masterful Insight
This book bridges the transition for the 'high medieval' to the 'protestant'. The way in which this transition is handled in art is fascinating. A masterful insight both into the craftsmen of the Tudor perio and a great building. the book makes me want to visit Kings again.