Timothy Schroder's “A Marvel to Behold”: Gold and Silver at the Court of Henry VIII is an astonishingly good book about a subject that many readers will find unfamiliar. Whereas studies of material culture in Tudor England have highlighted the prominence of painting, architecture, tapestry, and clothing, Schroder positions gold and silver objects at the very center of court life. His masterful exploration and explanation of these objects—in the form of plate, cups, salts, jewelry, and coins—makes this book a watershed in the history and analysis of English art and culture. The centrality of these valuable objects has not been recognized to this extent before. Schroder's major contributions are his expansion of our understanding of what the visual culture of Tudor England was and his complication of the modern insistence on the primacy of painting. While the book is detailed, with very precise descriptions and analyses of individual works, Schroder's writing is lively and engaging. It is also smartly and beautifully illustrated with crisp color images.

The key strengths of A Marvel to Behold are, first, Schroder's deployment of an extensive amount of documentary evidence. He has mined court records, ambassadorial correspondence, contemporary inventories, chronicles, and other written sources for accounts and recollections of objects fashioned from gold, silver, and jewels. The extraordinary attention to the documentary history of these objects is a model for other disciplinary approaches to the history of this period. The second obvious strength is Schroder's expert knowledge of metalwork, having served as prime warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company and president of the Silver Society. Schroder is exceptionally well positioned to explore and explain this material to the nonexpert. This he does beautifully.

Schroder focuses A Marvel to Behold on the first half of the sixteenth century in England. Schroder organizes the material chronologically, with very strong chapters on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, on the Field of Cloth of Gold, and on the well-known court artist Hans Holbein the Younger, who was, as Schroder demonstrates, responsible for some of the most inventive and sophisticated designs for metalwork at the Tudor court. The events of the reign, such as the Field of Cloth of Gold, the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, are interwoven with explanations of the important role of plate, coin, and other fine metal objects. Schroder also offers insights into the significance of these objects to the lives of ambassadors, providing a detailed view into their world. The nature of these objects as gifts and their importance in international exchange at the very highest levels is a revelation. In addition to discussion of key events in which plate and jewelry featured prominently, there are fascinating analyses of the workings of the Jewel House and the lived experience of Tudor goldsmiths.

Set within the chapters are very strong set pieces: Schroder's detailed descriptions and formal analyses of extant works such as the Royal Clock Salt (170–73), a hybrid object made up of silver-gilt, enamel, shell, agate, pearls, and garnets, and now in the Company of Goldsmiths in London, are illuminating and invite the reader to follow along as he examines these multifaceted works of art. Along these same lines, Schroder's expertise allows him to challenge prevailing views, such as Eric Ives's assertion that Holbein's design for a fountain cannot be associated with a New Year's gift to Anne Boleyn in 1534. Schroder reads the drawing with a much more critical eye than had Ives, and he persuasively corrects the identification (195).

In a book that is meticulously written and edited, it is jarring to find a glaring error, such as the one on page 277, where Schroder mistakes the name of the great Tudor historian J. J. Scarisbrick. He repeats the mistake in both the footnote and in the bibliography. Schroder might also have included more footnotes to the secondary scholarship. His notes concentrate heavily on the primary documents, but he would have done well to situate this work more clearly within the existing art historical, historical, and material culture literature. Additionally, while the descriptions of Henry VIII depriving Katherine of Aragon and Princess Mary of their household plate are chilling, Schroder might have avoided the biographical retreats into old-fashioned characterizations of the king as “voracious” and “the most avaricious of men,” the title of chapter 14. This did not contribute anything and lowers the register of this otherwise exemplary study.