Trusty Servant

FOREWORD by Malcolm Jones The Winchester Trusty Servant is a rare and remarkable survival of an emblematic painting from the Elizabethan era that has been lovingly renewed down the centuries and, as this study shows, an important witness to England's far from iconophobic, and indeed, internationalist past.Only in recent years have scholars begun to realise how early modern England was by no means as insular as traditional art history would have us believe, and in this present year, when we sever our formal political ties with Europe, it is chastening to discover the history behind this intriguing icon, a history which leads back into the literature of the French Middle Ages and further demonstrates the still under-appreciated influence of the print as a disseminator of visual ideas - from the lost Flemish or German woodcut-illustrated sheets formerly in the collection of Ferdinand Columbus, to the pourtraiture of a trusty servaunt, published by William Hoskins, which provided his young nephew John with the model for the College mural.Paul Secord's engaging narrative reveals how this - to modern eyes - bizarre image was relatively commonplace in the sixteenth century, and records how as early as 1543, Sir Thomas Chaloner noted The image or portraiture of a good seruaunt [that] the frenche men haue ... paincted in their howses. It was the witty Wykehamist, John Hoskins, who was responsible for introducing this emblematic figure, so familiar in France, into England in the 1580s, and for more than four centuries the College has carefully preserved his mural legacy. But Paul's comprehensive account brings us forward through those intervening centuries to the present day, charting each successive re-painting, thanks to the College's extraordinarily full archives, and the reactions of each generation of Wykehamists to this emblem, at once so familiar and so strange. By the 19th century the image had achieved 3D status and several such popular modern souvenirs are reproduced here.This profusely illustrated book which incorporates a wealth of new information regarding the history and evolution of Winchester's enigmatic emblem, now constitutes the definitive study of The Trusty Servant. What to generations of schoolboys and adult viewers alike has always seemed no more than an amusing 'curiosity' is here shown to be an important icon.