Titian Portrait of Mary?

Rediscovered Portrait of Mary?

Has a new portrait of Mary by no less an artist that Titian come to light?

Below an image of the painting and the reverse on which is clearly legible the words " Titianus F(ecit). 

 

Assuming the portrait is of Mary she is obviously somewhat older and could not be a life painting.

Titian lived from 1488 to 1576 and the painting has been dated to 1574 and suggested that it was commissioned by King Henry 111 of France when he visited Titian and when he seems to have commissioned quite a number of portraits. If this is correct this would make Mary 33 and Titian in his late eighties. It has also been stated that there was communication by letter between Mary and Francis at this time .

Anyone able to confirm or throw further light on this? I have certainly found reference to letters to Francis penned by Mary at Tutberry in 1569; said to be 'written without light' and smuggled out of the Castle although intercepted and not received, (by this time though Titian would be dead) and also of remonstrations by Francis to Elizabeth regarding the strictness of Mary's confinement.

Assuming this to be the case what image of Mary might Francis have passed to Titian for him to work on?

My attention has also been drawn to a book "The Castles of Mary, Queen of Scots" by Charles Mackie of 1835 which (page 53) contains the following;

"I thought I had done very well by this transaction, until I saw in the Morning Chronicle ,a flaming puff, stating that "an original portrait of Mary Queen of Scotland the undoubted work of Titian, value one thousand guineas was to be seen at No 14 Pall Mall price of admission 2s.6d"

The bait took Mr. F... put £300 or £400 in his pocket by the exhibition and sold the portrait for £700 or £800."

Could this be the same portrait? Even if it is doesn't of course in itself prove the genuineness of the portrait.

The book is out of copyright and can be downloaded free on http://archive.org/stream/castlesmaryquee00mackgoog#page/n69/mode/2up

Lots of background work on the provenance of the portrait still to be done - obviously for the experts but if genuine a most interesting historical portrait.

Ronald 

Dundonald and Crossraguel

Recently a very successful Scottish Branch outing to Dundonald Castle and Crossraguel Abbey in Ayrshire.

Not the destinations we had intended but circumstances rather conspired against us . The intention had been a visit to Rowallan Castle and to Dean Castle in Kilmarnock with their associations with Mary. However access problems to Rowallan and literally only a few days beforehand intimation that Dean Castle was closed to all after masonry fell from the peel tower and the site considered dangerous.

Full credit for Society member Ann McMillan for reorganising everything at very short notice and as seems commonly to happen in these circumstances everything went so smoothly and a most excellent day out enjoyed by all.

In fairness not too much to do with Mary, although she may have visited Crossraguel when she stayed at Dunure Castle on her progress to the west and south west of Scotland in 1563.

Dundonald much more associated with King Robert 11 of Scotland who probably rebuilt it on his accession to the throne in 1371, almost certainly his favourite castle and where he died in 1390.

Crossraguel a finely preserved mediaeval monastery of the Cluniac Order which emerged virtually unscathed from the Reformation.

Two excellent guides with lots of background information from Ann herself. Good company, good meals and a splendid day out.

To view images of the day; - http://mariestuart.jalbum.net/Ayrshire/

above; Looking down from the Gatehouse at the Abbey to the Cloisters

below; Ann hold court in the sedilia and three members look on enrapt.

Ronald

Anniversary of Mary's Execution

8th. February 2012

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots by Harry Payne 1858-1927

To day is the 425^th. anniversary of Mary’s execution at Fotheringhay Castle in Northhamptonshire in 1587

The lines (gender adjusted) of Malcolm in “Macbeth”   speaking of the Thane of Cawdor spring to mind:

"Nothing in her life

Became her like the leaving of it"

There can be no doubt she died with regal dignity and almost certainly sought to die as a Catholic Martyr.

The following is a contemporary account of her execution by Robert Wynkfield (spelling  modernized)

Her prayers being ended, the executioners, kneeling, desired her Grace to forgive them her death: who answered, 'I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.' Then they, with her two women, helping her up, began to disrobe her of her apparel: then she, laying her crucifix upon the stool, one of the executioners took from her neck the Agnus Dei, which she, laying hands off it, gave to one of her women, and told the executioner, he should be answered money for it. Then she suffered them, with her two women, to disrobe her of her chain of pomander beads and all other apparel most willingly, and with joy rather than sorrow, helped to make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own hands which they had pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she had longed to be gone.

All this time they were pulling off her apparel, she never changed her countenance, but with smiling cheer she uttered these words,'that she never had such grooms to make her unready, and that she never put off her clothes before such a company.'

Then she, being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and crossing themselves prayed in Latin. She, turning herself to them, embracing them, said these words in French, 'Ne crie vous, j'ay prome pour vous', and so crossing and kissing them, bad them pray for her and rejoice and not weep, for that now they should see an end of all their mistress's troubles.

Then she, with a smiling countenance, turning to her men servants, as Melvin and the rest, standing upon a bench nigh the scaffold, who sometime weeping, sometime crying out aloud, and continually crossing themselves, prayed in Latin, crossing them with her hand bade them farewell, and wishing them to pray for her even until the last hour.

This done, one of the women have a Corpus Christi cloth lapped up three-corner-ways, kissing it, put it over the Queen of Scots' face, and pinned it fast to the caule of her head. Then the two women departed from her, and she kneeling down upon the cushion most resolutely, and without any token or fear of death, she spake aloud this Psalm in Latin, In Te Domine confido, non confundar in eternam, etc. Then, groping for the block, she laid down her head, putting her chin over the block with both her hands, which, holding there still, had been cut off had they not been espied. Then lying upon the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, In manus tuas, Domine, etc., three or four times. Then she, lying very still upon the block, one of the executioners holding her slightly with one of his hands, she endured two strokes of the other executioner with an axe, she making very small noise or none at all, and not stirring any part of her from the place where she lay: and so the executioner cut off her head, saving one little gristle, which being cut asunder, he lift up her head to the view of all the assembly and bade God save the Queen. Then, her dress of lawn [i.e. wig] from off her head, it appeared as grey as one of threescore and ten years old, polled very short, her face in a moment being so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and a down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.

Then Mr. Dean [Dr. Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough] said with a loud voice, 'So perish all the Queen's enemies', and afterwards the Earl of Kent came to the dead body, and standing over it, with a loud voice said, 'Such end of all the Queen's and the Gospel's enemies.'

Then one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog which was crept under her cloths, which could not be gotten forth by force, yet afterward would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders, which being imbrued with her blood was carried away and washed, as all things else were that had any blood was either burned or washed clean, and the executioners sent away with money for their fees, not having any one thing that belonged unto her. And so, every man being commanded out of the hall, except the sheriff and his men, she was carried by them up into a great chamber lying ready for the surgeons to embalm her.

Ronald Morrison

Happy Birthday Mary

Today is Mary’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mary - 469 year old today.

That said it is possible she may have been born not on the 8^th. but on the 7^th. of December (her close advisor and associate Leslie thought so) and it has been argued that perhaps the date of birth was the 7^th. but the announcement held over until the 8^th. to coincide with the Feast day of the Virgin Mary after whom she was named,

Mary though always however maintained her birthday to be the  8^th.

She was of course born in a second floor chamber at Linlithgow Palace which still exists although now roofless. Her mother was Mary of Guise, the birth was probably premature and initially reports were of a weak and sickly child. .

Her father James V had suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss on the 24^th. November. After the defeat James spent a few days with his heavily pregnant wife at Linlithgow but then, for whatever reason  moved on to his palace at Falkland.

There only five days later, no doubt disappointed at the news his wife had given birth to a daughter rather than he a son, he “turned his face to the wall and died” uttering  the words “Adieu farewell it cam wi a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass”. The reference is to the Stuart dynasty which had began with the marriage of Walter Stuart to Marjorie Bruce and which was in course to end with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. James must have seen the dynasty as doomed particularly following the death of two earlier sons James and Robert in infancy.

The birth is commemorated by the Society every year with a short  ceremony at  Mary’s tomb at Westminster Abbey (above) when flowers are laid. The ceremony was again held last Saturday.