Susannah Hornebolt

1503–1545

Susannah Hornebolt was a Flemish-born artist who worked at the Tudor court and is often identified as the first woman known to have been employed as an artist by the English crown. She came from an accomplished family of manuscript illuminators and entered royal service with her husband John Parker. Records place her in the households and ceremonial life surrounding Henry VIII and his queens, although few surviving works can be securely attributed to her.

Hornebolt appears only occasionally in Tudor historical fiction, and no major novel has established a standard portrayal. Her position offers writers a valuable viewpoint because an artist could observe clothing, ceremony and changing royal households while remaining a skilled worker rather than a great noble. The uncertain attribution of her art requires fiction to avoid presenting particular images as definitively hers.

Alison Weir’s The King’s Painter is set in the King's Painter by bestselling historian Alison Weir is an e-short and companion piece to the captivating fourth novel in the Six Tudor Queens series, Anna of Kleve: Queen of Secrets.