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Category: Mary Queen of Scots

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The art of political domination

Mary, Queen of Scots by Jacob de Wet II, from the Great Gallery at Holyrood Palace.

Mary, Queen of Scots by Jacob de Wet II, from the Great Gallery at Holyrood Palace.
Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse is apparently where the Queen stores the motley family geegaws that don’t fit in her other palaces. There is one room that should be of interest to art aficionados, however—the Great Gallery, which originally served as the Palace’s privy gallery and is still used for state occasions. Its decorating scheme revolves around a monumental series of portraits of the Scottish monarchs, beginning with the legendary Fergus I (who is said to have ruled Scotland from 330 BC) and ending with Charles II.
This series of paintings was intended to endorse the ancient, venerable and divinely-appointed line of the Stuarts. It told the viewer that their rule would ensure peace and prosperity for Scotland. It was done as part of Charles’ extensive restoration of the Palace after it was burned by Cromwell’s soldiers in 1650.
The portraits were done by Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob de Wet II in an act of unrivalled hard work. There is nothing incisive or unique about them, nor could there be: he churned 110 of them out at the rate of one every two weeks, working non-stop on the project from 1684 to 1686.
The Scottish king Dorna Dilla, by Jacob de Wet II, from the Great Gallery at Holyrood Palace.

The Scottish king Dorna Dilla, by Jacob de Wet II, from the Great Gallery at Holyrood Palace.
Charles II was de Wet’s principal patron. The king never saw the work; after his Scottish coronation in 1651, His Royal Highness hightailed it south and stayed there. De Wet’s portrait of Charles II was done from other likenesses. In fact, Holyrood Palace never commissioned a state portrait from any of the great painters of the day, and certainly not from either of the two great  Principle Painters in Ordinary to the King, Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller. That tells us exactly where Holyrood and Edinburgh ranked in the politics of the day.
Back to humble Jacob de Wet, then. He was first hired in 1673 by Sir William Bruce, the King’s Surveyor and Master of Works in Scotland. De Wet produced a series of classical history paintings for the newly-rebuilt state apartments at Holyrood. Many of these paintings remain. After this, he remained in Scotland, doing commercial work for the great and mighty.
The Royal Collection carefully controls images of Holyrood Palace, but here are Jacob de Wet's paintings in situ, courtesy of Susan Abernethy.

Most of Jacob de Wet’s paintings in situ, courtesy of Susan Abernethy.
In 1684 de Wet returned to Holyrood. His contract with the Royal Cashkeeper reads: “The said James de Witte binds and obleidges him to compleately draw, finish, and perfyte The Pictures of the haill Kings who have Reigned over this Kingdome of Scotland, from King Fergus the first King, TO KING CHARLES THE SECOND, OUR GRACIOUS SOVERAIGNE who now Reignes Inclusive, being all in number One hundred and ten.”
Today 97 of the final 111 portraits are on display in the Great Gallery.  They were loosely based on a series of 109 Scottish kings painted by George Jamesone in honor of Charles I’s Scottish coronation in 1633. Such of Jameson’s work as survived civil war were sent to Holyrood for de Wet to copy. De Wet relied on these, on George Buchanan’s list of Scottish kings, and on other source material. If he used any models at all, they were completely interchangeable, for there is nothing characteristic about those ancient faces.
The scale of de Wet’s achievement is unique. While he may never be remembered for his delicacy of brushwork or incisive understanding of character, he deserves recognition for having finished at all.
On leaving Holyrood, I remarked that, were I forced to live there, I’d abdicate. The weight of those ancient stones is not romantic to me; it’s oppressive. Apparently, I’m not the only person who sees historic privilege as a burden, as this sad obituary states.
I intended to post regularly from Scotland, but the internet defeated me. My mobile’s problem I sort of get; it’s elderly (all of two years). My laptop generally travels well. Its refusal to acknowledge wifi at our destinations was baffling.
Nonetheless, I’m home and working this morning after that new tradition of modern air travel: the short hop that becomes a 24-hour dance contest.
We flew with a Canadian carrier just to avoid this, and they were, in all things, far kinder than their American cousins in similar circumstances. A delay in Edinburgh caused a missed connection in Toronto that in turn revealed our luggage to have strayed, resulting in an additional delay in Montreal for Customs declarations. This meant we left the airport at rush hour, which in turn meant a climb over Grafton Notch at night when the wee sleekit moose were in motion. We left our flat in Edinburgh at 6 AM GMT and arrived at home at 1 AM EST, meaning 24 hours of travel. If I don’t make sense, that’s why.
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Seeking a crown

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, 1833, was painted three hundred years after the death of Lady Jane, but immediately after the July Revolution of 1830, which deposed the last of the Bourbon monarchs. It uses an old British story to speak obliquely about recent events in France. 
My friend K Dee recently put together a photostream of portraits of women to “help me remember, in case I ever start to forget, which sort of female image I find reflects a healthy civil society, and which I do not.” This week I’m responding to that by writing about great dames in history.
The void left after the death of Edward VI in England became an opportunity for a remarkable series of women to chase after the crown. Intending to keep it out of Catholic hands, young Edward had named his teenaged first cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor.
She was married into a family of power brokers. Her brother-in-law would become Queen Elizabeth’s close companion, confidant and, possibly, lover. Her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, was the principle power broker in her rise and fall.
Lady Jane later wrote that she accepted the crown only with reluctance, and it certainly appears that she was a pawn in a game organized by others. Northumberland moved quickly to consolidate his power, but Mary moved even faster. The Privy Council switched sides, naming Mary the queen and imprisoning Jane and her husband. Northumberland, Lady Jane, and her husband were executed.
Portrait of Mary Tudor by Antonis Mor, 1554. Whatever else you might say about the Tudors, they had fantastic portrait painters working in their courts.
Mary I of England comes down to us with the sobriquet of “Bloody Mary” for her violent suppression of Protestants: she had almost three hundred of them burned alive at the stake. But she should also be remembered as the first successful British female monarch.  She was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth I, arguably the greatest woman ruler in history.
One more claimant to the English throne deserves mention. Mary, Queen of Scots was the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, and a constant thorn in Elizabeth’s side. She was also a Tudor cousin, and Elizabeth vacillated between wanting to name her as her heir and wanting to kill her.
Portrait of Mary Stuart, 1578-79, by Nicholas Hilliard. The mount was done in the next century; the painting is watercolor on vellum.
Mary was six days old when her father died and she ascended to the Scottish throne. She spent most of her childhood in France. At the age of sixteen she married the Dauphin, who in short order left her widowed.
She returned to Scotland. Four years later, she married her first cousin, Lord Darnley, another aspirant to the English throne. While his scheming character may have attracted her at first, it eventually dawned on Mary that he was a threat to her well-being. Darnley was killed when his home was bombed. The prime suspect, the Earl of Bothwell, married Mary one month after he was acquitted.
It was typical of Mary’s career that she would act impetuously, with disastrous results. Denounced as an adulteress and murderer, she was imprisoned and forced to abdicate the Scottish crown in favor of her infant son.
Mary escaped from prison and raised an army, which was defeated. She fled to England, expecting her cousin Elizabeth to help her regain her throne. Elizabeth promptly parked Mary in the Yorkshire countryside and opened an inquiry into Darnley’s murder. Elizabeth ensured that no verdict was ever reached, and Mary spent several years in sumptuous imprisonment in England.
That didn’t prevent her from plotting against her cousin, however, who remained curiously reluctant to deal with her in the decisive Tudor manner. Finally, in 1587, Mary was tried and convicted of treason. Elizabeth’s Privy Council ordered her swift execution, and her career was at an end.


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