England’s Tudor dynasty occupies a lot of pop culture real estate. King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth I have been the subjects of novels, plays, films, television series and a multitude of books charting their political and personal lives. Between Henry’s unfortunate marriages and Elizabeth’s battles to hold her throne, there’s a saga of history to explore.

It feels fitting that “The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England,” now on view at the Legion of Honor, gives us the biggest Tudor stars without delay: Upon entering, Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1540 portrait of Henry and Nicholas Hilliard’s 1576-78 painting of Elizabeth take center stage. With their highly detailed depictions of regal garb and sympathetically rendered faces, they’re not only spectacular works of art, they’re dazzling pieces of propaganda for a house still declaring its legitimacy following the internal strife of the War of the Roses.

“Even though Henry VII was famously stingy, he knew that to shore up this tenuous claim, magnificence and art patronage would play a significant role,” said Martin Chapman, curator in charge of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “And of course we know about Henry VIII and his extraordinary ability to capture the public imagination. Even though he tore the country apart and was essentially a bullying despot at the end of his life, he was still popular because of that ability. The Tudors were propagandizing to an extent their predecessors, the Plantagenets, didn’t.”

“The Tudors,” organized with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art, gives you all the beauty of the era while never shying away from the messier history that defines large periods of the family’s 118 years in power.

After Henry VII seized the crown, he invested in the arts as a way of further declaring his kingly power and splendor, following the mode of other royal families in Renaissance Italy and France. The parallel flourishing of the arts in Northern Europe and subsequent cultural exchange is also evident throughout the exhibition.

Henry VIII inherited a kingdom in a moment of relative peace and prosperity, then sent it into turmoil, splitting England from the Catholic Church to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Still, his reign is also characterized by the building and decoration of numerous palaces, as well as his support of scholarship and artists, particularly the German Holbein the Younger.

The brief reigns of Henry VIII’s protestant son King Edward IV and Catholic daughter Mary I were mostly characterized by campaigns of religious persecution and violence. When Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, she inherited not only conflicts with Spain and her Scottish cousin Queen Mary Stuart, but also a golden era of arts and culture until her death and the end of the Tudor dynasty in 1603.

In its exclusive West Coast engagement, the exhibition is arranged chronologically, which should make aspects of the show more accessible to anyone not up on British history.

Beginning with Henry VII’s reign, we see how textiles and dress are used to project both majesty and authority. A velvet and cloth-of-gold clerical vestment commissioned for Henry VII’s chapel with depictions of the Tudor roses, crowns and religious icons is magnificent in its workmanship, as are tapestries from the reign of Henry VIII shown farther on.

Holbein the Younger’s portrait “Hermann von Wedigh III,” depicting a Cologne councilman, also hints at the importance of the German painter’s influence on the Tudor court, specifically the combination of text with image.

“Holbein really was arguably the greatest portraitist of Northern Europe,” said Chapman. “Henry brings Holbein (from Germany), where he works for the whole court and portrays the whole court to an extraordinary degree.”

Moving on to Henry VIII, a Florentine “furnishing” textile wall hanging of velvet gold cloth paired with an etched and gilded steel set of field armor likely made for the king further the notion of projecting power through un-quiet luxury. Seeing the 6-foot-2 armor in standing position also reinforces what was then the extraordinary stature of the king: It’s quite the juxtaposition with the 1509 portrait of young Henry attributed to Dutch painter Meynnart Wewyck.

This earliest surviving painting of Henry VIII shows him at the beginning of his reign, beardless and boyish, and also in a more medieval mode of portraiture than would be associated with him after Holbein the Younger’s more naturalistic depictions. The painter’s 1536-37 portrait of Henry’s third wife, the ill-fated Jane Seymour, is also a highlight with its gentle yet steadfast expression, indicative of her role as court peacemaker. Seymour and Henry’s son, the brief boy king Edward VI, was also painted by Holbein the Younger as an ornately dressed child prince.

The final two galleries are devoted to Elizabeth I and offer two more spectacular depictions of the “Virgin Queen”: George Gower’s famed 1567 “Hampden Portrait,” the earliest surviving full-body portrait of the queen, shows her as a new ruler against a backdrop of gold cloth with fruits and flora just beyond, representing the bounty of both England and the young queen herself. The famous 1599 “Hardwick Portrait” of the queen, attributed to the workshop of Hilliard, shows her much later in life. She’s portrayed against the emblems of rule: A regal red velvet cloth of state and her throne dominate much of the image, while her petticoat embroidered with images of water animals and plants again reinforces the importance of textile and fashion.

With a family so conscious of their image making, is it any wonder we’re still fascinated by their stories centuries later?

Reach Tony Bravo: tbravo@sfchronicle.com