Art and Power: The Visual World of Mary Queen of Scots

Fascinating two-day online course from the Wallace Collection on Mary, Queen of Scots, and the art that surrounded her.

Christine Faraday, of Gonville and Caius College, started by taking us though Mary’s life weaving into it the art and buildings which she would have known from the wonderful carved ceiling heads from Stirling Castle, through the art of the French court and the concept of the use of an Imprese as personal emblems. Most interesting was the section on the embroideries she worked on with Bess of Hardwick while in captivity, now called the Oxburgh Hangings. Faraday took us through the iconography of them and some of the sources of the images.

Day two we looked at images of Mary both in her lifetime and after. We looked at the wonderful Clouet portraits and drawings of her while she was at the French court as a child and talked about how she commissioned miniatures of herself from the continent when she was in captivity to give to her supporters. I was fascinated by the last section on the commissioning of tombs for Mary and Elizabeth I by Mary’s son, James I, comparing and contrasting their design, inscription and positions within Westminster Abbey.

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