Dr Kathleen Kennedy

Through a catalogue, exhibition, collection and monograph, this research project seeks to reframe the way we think about late medieval book design. England is generally understood to have adopted Renaissance aesthetics relatively late, but such a faulty assessment is based on selective, late Tudor evidence. This project will situate early English woodcut designs, including border and initial woodcuts, inside their fullest artistic context, among contemporary English manuscript art traditions and trace the roots of early Tudor manuscript and woodcut art back into the 15th century. In the end, audiences will come to understand how early Tudor English book designers actively shaped an English Renaissance aesthetic.