Artist: Bernard Lens III · 1740Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587)
In the early eighteenth century, Bernard Lens III widely reproduced this portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, responding to a growing antiquarian demand for copies of celebrated historical figures. Yet Lens was not working from an original likeness. The miniature he copied was then attributed to Isaac Oliver (1565-1617), although this attribution was never definitely confirmed. In the seventeenth century, the owner of ‘Oliver’s’ miniature, James, 4th Duke of Hamilton (1658-1712), commissioned its restoration by Peter Crosse (about 1645-1724) and instructed him to ‘make it as beautiful as he could’. Unfamiliar with the original likeness, Crosse softened and rounded the sitter’s facial features to suit contemporary ideals of beauty. By reproducing this modified image, Lens helped establish a highly influential but inaccurate visual type of Mary Queen of Scots, so successfully that numerous versions survive in collections today.
Who is the Sitter?
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland shortly after her birth in 1542. Raised in France, she returned to Scotland after the death of her husband, François II of France, in 1561. Her reign was marked by political instability, dynastic claims and religious conflict. Her subsequent marriages to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, further destabilised her political position. Forced to abdicate in 1567 in favour of her infant son, James VI of Scotland, after her defeat at the Battle of Langside, she fled to England, where she remained imprisoned for nineteen years, before being implicated in a plot against Elizabeth I that led to her execution.
Relationship to Power
Mary’s life and death transformed her into a powerful symbolic figure. After the English Reformation, her image circulated as a sign of Catholic allegiance and political resistance, while her execution intensified the tensions that contributed to the Spanish Armada’s failed invasion of England in 1588.
By the eighteenth century, Mary’s political and religious symbolism gave way to a more romanticised representation. The intervention by Crosse, and the subsequent reproduction of his portrait by artists like Lens, reveal how Mary’s image was continuously reshaped to serve new aesthetic, political and commercial interests.
How often do popular images shape memory more powerfully than truth?
Mary provided space for identification: women reportedly commissioned portraits in her guise, adopting her costume (the only historically accurate element in the portrait) as a vehicle for self-representation. In this way, her likeness functioned as medium through which power, memory and desire could be conveyed.