Panel Painting Portrait of Queen Mary I
Object number
LDSAL336
Artist/Designer/Maker
Eworth, Hans - Artist
Production date
1554
Material
oak
oil paint
oil paint
Technique
Oil on panel
Painting and Painting Techniques
Painting and Painting Techniques
Dimensions
height: 1040mm
width: 780mm
height (frame): 1325mm
width (frame): 1070mm
width: 780mm
height (frame): 1325mm
width (frame): 1070mm
Location
Burlington House - (on display)
Inscriptions
Inscription content
HE
References
Reference (free text)
David Gaimster, Sarah McCarthy, and Bernard Nurse, eds., Making History, Antiquaries in Britain, 1707-2007 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007), pp. 88-9, no. 53.Illustrations, pp. 88-9.
Reference (free text)
Dendrochronological Consultancy LimitedReport 201Tree-ring anaylsis of a panel painting : Mary I, Hans Eworth 1554By Ian Tyers, December 2009
Reference (controlled)
'The real Tudors: Kings and Queens rediscovered' (2014). [Exhibition]. National Portrait Gallery, London.12 September 2014 - 1 March 2015.
Oil on oak panel portrait of Queen Mary I by Hans Eworth.
This is the first major portrait of Mary (1516–58; reigned 1553–58) after her coronation on 1 October 1553 and it was probably painted around the time of her thirty-eighth birthday (18 February 1554). The portrait presents her as a woman who has, through a sad and lonely youth, honed an iron determination and a sense of destiny. It pre-dates the very different image of the Queen devised by the Netherlandish artist Anthonis Mor, of which three full-scale and many bust-length versions are known, and which has been argued as portraying her in the guise of a Hapsburg consort.
Mary stands in the pose established by Holbein for demure women. Behind her is a red velvet Cloth of Estate. Such cloths are usually shown paned, as here. It was clearly a decorative feature, showing the sheen of the material to best advantage. However, it owed its origin to necessity. Velvet was the most valuable of all materials, and Cloths of Estate, with their canopies, travelled with their owners. They could turn an empty room into an audience chamber, and are shown functioning thus in numerous pictures and illuminations from the fifteenth century onwards. The distinctive fold marks represent the creases that were inevitable when the cloth was packed in a saddle bag for a journey.
At her breast, Mary wears a table diamond with a pearl pendant. The brooch corresponds with the first entry in Katherine Parr’s inventory of ‘Jewells in a coffer having written upon it the Queenes Jewells’, which lists an ‘ouche or flower containing a fair diamond tabled holden by Antiques with a large pendant pearl’. In Mary’s Inventory this same diamond ‘holden by Antiques with a large pendant perle’ is the first item listed. The pendant hanging from Mary’s waist was carefully described in Henry VIII’s Jewel Book of 1521 as: ‘A tablet of gold wt Reliques called the tablet of Burbone garnished wt the iiij Evangelists vii sapphires not fine and 5 course balacys the glasse of the leves broken in many places and divers of the Reliques shaken out lacking one claspe waiying 10 gidders ... clxxvij oz d’. Mary found this broken and neglected reliquary of the Four Evangelists in the Royal Treasury, and had it repaired for her own use. The fact that Mary is not wearing her simple gold hoop wedding ring (so clearly shown in her portrait by Antonio Mor of the end of 1554) shows that this picture was painted before the wedding. Instead, she wears two rings on the fourth finger of her left hand, both with diamonds. One of them was her coronation ring.
The identification of Hans Eworth (active 1540–74) as the artist was first made by Lionel Cust in 1913. First recorded in 1540 in the strongly Catholic Antwerp, Eworth and his brother fled as ‘heretics’ in 1544 to Protestant Amsterdam, and thence to Protestant London by or before 1549. Yet Hans’ subsequent career in England was dependent upon the Catholic network, pre-eminently as portraitist to Queen Mary, for all but his last two working years.
Mary stands in the pose established by Holbein for demure women. Behind her is a red velvet Cloth of Estate. Such cloths are usually shown paned, as here. It was clearly a decorative feature, showing the sheen of the material to best advantage. However, it owed its origin to necessity. Velvet was the most valuable of all materials, and Cloths of Estate, with their canopies, travelled with their owners. They could turn an empty room into an audience chamber, and are shown functioning thus in numerous pictures and illuminations from the fifteenth century onwards. The distinctive fold marks represent the creases that were inevitable when the cloth was packed in a saddle bag for a journey.
At her breast, Mary wears a table diamond with a pearl pendant. The brooch corresponds with the first entry in Katherine Parr’s inventory of ‘Jewells in a coffer having written upon it the Queenes Jewells’, which lists an ‘ouche or flower containing a fair diamond tabled holden by Antiques with a large pendant pearl’. In Mary’s Inventory this same diamond ‘holden by Antiques with a large pendant perle’ is the first item listed. The pendant hanging from Mary’s waist was carefully described in Henry VIII’s Jewel Book of 1521 as: ‘A tablet of gold wt Reliques called the tablet of Burbone garnished wt the iiij Evangelists vii sapphires not fine and 5 course balacys the glasse of the leves broken in many places and divers of the Reliques shaken out lacking one claspe waiying 10 gidders ... clxxvij oz d’. Mary found this broken and neglected reliquary of the Four Evangelists in the Royal Treasury, and had it repaired for her own use. The fact that Mary is not wearing her simple gold hoop wedding ring (so clearly shown in her portrait by Antonio Mor of the end of 1554) shows that this picture was painted before the wedding. Instead, she wears two rings on the fourth finger of her left hand, both with diamonds. One of them was her coronation ring.
The identification of Hans Eworth (active 1540–74) as the artist was first made by Lionel Cust in 1913. First recorded in 1540 in the strongly Catholic Antwerp, Eworth and his brother fled as ‘heretics’ in 1544 to Protestant Amsterdam, and thence to Protestant London by or before 1549. Yet Hans’ subsequent career in England was dependent upon the Catholic network, pre-eminently as portraitist to Queen Mary, for all but his last two working years.