Cathy's Art Diary

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 th...

Wonderful exhibition at the British Library looking at the lives of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. This is a large and quite dense show but it has everything you would want to be there if you know this period and it is such a thrill to see them together. It takes you through the lives of both queens comparing and contrasting as it goes along. Being the British Library there are a lot of documents but they are explained well and there are some iconic pieces such as the attached, the only contemporary copy of Elizabeth’s Armada Speech, and the Tide Letter, which Elizabeth wrote to her sister Mary I asking for clemency as she was sent to the Tower of London which   she wrote slowly in the hope of missing the tide and delaying imprisonment for another day. There was also the letter Mary wrote to Elizabeth telling her about the death of Rizzio. There were a good selection of portraits some of which I hadn’t seen before and some great objects such as the hanging Mary made wh...

Super exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland looking at the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. It went through her life in chronological order with a narrative commentary round the middle of the gallery and the objects illustrating the story nearby. I thought I knew quite a bit about her but I had not realized she became Queen at just 6 days old.   She made some poor choices in her life but a series of misfortunes early on stacked the cards against her. There were some wonderful objects in the exhibition such as the crime scene plan of Darnley’s murder and furniture and décor from Mary of Guise’s house. There were also some great pictures which I’d never seen including some amazing portraits in enamel. I loved a reconstruction that had been made for the exhibition of a 3D image of her based on a series of early portraits to show what she might have looked like when living in Scotland as there are no portraits from that period. It was magical to see her as it wou...