Sovereignty at Bridewell Palace: Gender in the Architectural Designs of Hans Holbein the Younger

This essay examines the representation of gender and sovereignty in a little examined design for a royal fireplace created by Hans Holbein the Younger during the reign of Henry viii. When Henry sought to divorce Catherine and to establish the Church of England, the Bridewell precinct became a site for political upheaval. As Holinshed’s Chronicle details and William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s 1613 All Is True or Henry viii would later dramatize, Bridewell and the neighboring Blackfriars staged the divorce trial and removal of Catherine’s sovereignty as Queen. By examining Holbein’s design that Bridewell palace became a palimpsest upon which the crown continually cultivated its dynastic desires –desires that Holbein’s design prove to be imbricated with questions of gender and sovereignty. Gender, sex, and reproduction are central to Holbein’s representation of the Tudor dynasty. Yet, alongside this gendered discourse is a legal one. Holbein depicts the law and justice as mechanisms which can redefine a sovereign woman’s subjectivity and curb her agency in submission to her King and husband. Thus, from Holbein’s fireplace emerges an ideology of familial dynasty and imperial aspirations built atop the legal subjection of women.