Imaging Stuart Family Politics

Thanks to Roy Strong, David Howarth, Kevin Sharpe and others, historians now have a much greater understanding of how we can read images to grasp their political messages. Sharpe has also applied this kind of close reading to textual representations of monarchy and Commonwealth. Their work has elucidated the significance of the visual representation of monarchy in negotiating, securing and promoting royal authority, but suggests also that such imagery was subject to manipulation and appropriation beyond the monarch’s control. Joining these illustrious art and literary historians is Catriona Murray, with her elegant and sustained exploration of the depiction of the progeny of Stuart monarchs in England. Her survey includes the better-known family paintings, the Van Dycks and Lelys, but, as illuminatingly, less picked-over portraits of the royal offspring, and the evidence of court entertainments, miniaturised portraits on legal documents and more widely available prints. The children are presented as cherubic babies, appealing infants, innocent children and promising youths in images created to commemorate major events in their life cycles, at baptism, investiture and, less joyfully, death. She rescues from relative obscurity the portrayal of the children who died young, focusing not just on that well-researched prince of Wales, Henry (1594–1612), but as acutely on Henry, duke of Gloucester (1640–60), and William, duke of Gloucester (1689–1700), as well as James VI and I’s babies, Sophia and Mary. Included too are the childhood depictions of the less expected heirs, the future Charles I, and Queens Mary and Anne. A final chapter examines the ‘enduring memories and the evolving afterlives’ of the prematurely deceased. Particularly striking is the inclusion of more than sixty images to demonstrate the arguments outlined, allowing the reader to see the messages conveyed—exemplary use is made of them

Appropriation · Art · Art history · Ballad · Commonwealth · Depiction · Iconography · Literature · Monarchy · Painting · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Portrait · Representation (politics · Windsor · History · Law · Philosophy · Scottish History and National Identity