Throughout history there have been many women who have made an impact on the world around them, but unless you dig, quite often mainstream history does not mention them. When I came across a reference to a Flemish artist, Susanna Horenbout, daughter of one of the most eminent and talented illuminators and painters of his day, Gerard Horenbout, and how she was sent to the court of Henry VIII, most likely to work as a court painter, I was intrigued. The more I discovered, the more intrigued I became, and I ended up writing a historical fiction series with Susanna as the main character.
In order to learn about the training Susanna would have had, I read books on the art of illumination and painting in the Renaissance; how it was done, and what tools and paints were used. And one of the things I discovered was that the Ghent School of Illumination–the style of illumination Susanna would have learnt, was a very literal school. They tried to render images exactly as they would look in real life, with no creative license or artistic impressions. But not only were they painstakingly accurate in their images, they also liked to inject some whimsy into their work. Cats would walk across the writing on page, people would play jokes on each other in the painting.
I loved that. And I used it in shaping who Susanna was as a person. She is sharp-eyed and direct, just like the style she trained in, but there is a playfulness about her in her work and in herself. But of course, that isn’t all there is to it. Because Susanna is a woman, working in a field almost entirely dominated by men, and her employers are almost all men. There is no question things would have been hard for her, in making her way both professionally and socially.
I used that in how I shaped her character, too. She is used to being insulted, and she bears it well, but it wears her down. She also has no expectations for a normal life. She can’t live without her art, and she understands she will have to make personal sacrifices because of that, because she could never be a conventional wife.
As it happens, Susanna did find happiness, despite the various problems she faced, and I loved that I could write a strong love story through the series with her and Parker, one of Henry VIII’s courtiers, and still be completely true to events. Her marriage to John Parker is how art historians realised she came to England before the rest of her family, because it precedes their arrival.
IN A TREACHEROUS COURT is my fictional version of why Susanna was sent ahead of her brother, what happened to her, and how she met and became involved with John Parker. And while I may land her in extremely hot water, and plunge her deep in the pool of international intrigue, where I can, and far more often than even I thought possible, much of my plot is based on fact. For me, the saddest thing is that aside from a brass plaque found in All Saint’s Church in Fulham, London, which is most likely Susanna’s work, nothing else of what she worked on has survived. The tragedy is that although Albrecht Dürer praised her work highly when she was only eighteen, and on her death several Italian master painters eulogized her as an exceptional illuminator, none of her paintings and illuminations remain.
RULES OF BEHAVIOUR
I couldn’t use the language of the time in IN A TREACHEROUS COURT (it would be like reading a book in pre-Shakespearean English), but I wanted to set the scene, give readers a taste of the cadence and poetry of the speech of the time and some context to the rules and mores of behaviour under which my characters would have lived. My solution was to use quotes from THE COURTIER, an Italian book on courtly manners written by Count Baldessar Castillo around the time IN A TREACHEROUS COURT is set, which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby a number of years later. The book is in four parts, and the first part is really the ‘quick guide’ or cheat sheet for the rest of the book, containing the main dos and don’ts on how to behave at court. It was great fun choosing a rule for a courtier and a rule for a lady in waiting for the start of each chapter.
As I mention above, Susanna Horenbout was trained as an artist and illuminator in her father’s studio in Ghent (in modern day Belgium), and art historians are sure she was sent over to Henry’s court ahead of her father and brother. John Parker, the other main protagonist, was one of Henry VIII’s ‘new men’, courtiers who were not noblemen, but in the meritocracy Henry was trying to establish, loyalty, and usefulness, could definitely overcome a lack of blue blood. They are both outsiders, but talented enough, and intelligent enough, to find a place for themselves in the world they find themselves in.
The Count Castillo’s advice on the fitting and proper behaviour for those who wanted to advance at court just worked so well. Where I could, I tried to match up the quotes (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) to what was happening in the scenes of that chapter. Some of my favourites include:
The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: Not to be a babbler, brauler, or chatter, nor lavish of his tunge.
Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: To shape him that is oversaucie wyth her, or that hath small respecte in hys talke, suche an answere, that he maye well understande she is offended wyth hym. (LOVE this one! :))
The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: To be handesome and clenly in his apparaile.
Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: To be heedefull and remembre that men may with lesse jeopardy show to be in love, then women.
The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: His love towarde women, not to be sensuall or fleshlie, but honest and godly, and more ruled with reason, then appetyte: and to love better the beawtye of the minde, then of the bodie.
Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: Not to be lyghte of creditt that she is beloved, thoughe a man commune familierlye with her of love.
As you can tell, the Count Castillo had some great advice for the men and women of court.