In Tudor England, artworks were often described as ‘lively’. What did this mean in a culture where naturalism was an alien concept? And in a time of religious upheaval, when the misuse of images might lure the soul to hell, how could liveliness be a good thing?

In this talk Christina Faraday offers an overview of her latest book. Tudor Liveliness explores a hitherto neglected aspect of Tudor art, re-enlivening the period’s vivid visual and material culture and discovering how artists were able to make absent things present and make the dead live.

Christina J. Faraday is an historian of art and ideas specialising in the Tudor period. She is a Research Fellow in history of art at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge and a BBC New Generation Thinker.

This recording was taken on 1 November 2023.