A 17th-century compound microscope.

(click on image for larger view)

King Charles II and Louise de Kéroualle

By Henri Gascar

This is the only ‘double portrait’ of Charles and one of his mistresses to survive (Louise is shown in the background with her attendants). It reflects as bold a statement as would have been acceptable of Louise’s enduring relationship with the King, commissioned, as presumably it was, by Louise herself.

Jane (née Lane), Lady Fisher

by Unknown artist
oil on canvas, circa 1660

Jane Lane (c. 1626 – 9 September 1689) played a heroic role in the Escape of Charles II in 1651. 

It is thought to be quite likely that Charles and Jane had a brief romantic relationship during their time together in the 1650’s. 

After the restoration Jane commissioned a portrait of herself. In it she was depicted as holding the royal crown with a veil over it. The symbolism is obvious: it represents her hiding the king from his enemies. But, in the picture’s top left-hand corner she had painted a scroll with a Latin legend upon it - and its meaning is far from obvious to the casual observer. The words are sic sic iuvat ire sub umbra and they are an almost precise quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid. In translation they read ”thus, thus, it pleases me to go into the shadows”.

Is this the humble affirmation of a loyal servant who having played her part in the kings preservation, was thereafter content to retire into obscurity? Her correspondence with Charles during the 1650’s suggests otherwise. Then it was Jane who took initiatives to keep the relationship alive. Knowing Charles well enough to realise that, once out of sight could well mean out of mind, she obviously feared that, once he had made provision for her in his sisters household, he might forget her. She was determined not to let that happen.

The words Jane chose to quote from the Aeneid come at the dramatic climax of the story of Dido and Aeneas. The Trojan hero arrives in Carthage where Queen Dido falls passionately in love with him. She begs him to stay and share her throne but he secretly makes plans to sail away. She discovers his perfidy and failing to dissuade him, stabs herself and has her body placed on a funeral pyre. Her final words express her own resignation but also her curse upon her inconstant lover. As she plunges in the knife she exclaims, ‘thus thus, it pleases me to go into the shadows. Let the cruel Trojan’s eyes drink in these flames from over the ocean and let him take with him the ill omen of my death”. 

It is inconceivable that Jane did not know the context of the words she quoted and that, knowing it, it did not have meaning for her. 

A Sleeping Shepherd

By Benedetto Gennari

Gennari’s commissions for Charles II parodied the virtuous innocence of Arcadian fantasies. This shepherd is ‘awakened’ by the attentions of two women, the elder encouraging the younger towards carnal debauchery.

Wedding suit of James II

In 1995 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a suit made for King James II (of England) to wear at his wedding to Mary of Modena. The Museum was helped in this acquisition by generous contributions from the National Art Collection and the National Heritage Memorial Funds. This suit is of particular importance for costume historians as it was made in the transition period between the petticoat breeches and doublet of the earlier seventeenth century and the later streamlined fitted breeches, vest and long jacket. It is also reliably dated. The jacket carries the only example of a seventeenth century garter star still attached to its original support.

The wedding took place in the winter of 1673, at Dover, and the suit was subsequently given to Sir Edward Carteret, of Guernsey. It was acquired by the Museum from his descendants. This suit was made of grey wool broadcloth (suitable for the English coast in winter), lined with coral ribbed silk. Both jacket and breeches were decorated with shaped panels of gold and silver embroidery of lilies and honeysuckle, under the embroidered panels was a strengthening layer of linen. The jacket cuffs were faced with an extension of the sleeve lining and decorated with applied gold and silver lace. Wooden buttons covered with gold and silver played an important part in the overall decorative effect.

The huge external breeches pockets were lined with matching coral silk ribbon. The jacket was very narrow and when fastened would have fitted a 32”(80cm) chest. A waistcoat and matching horsetrappings were reported to have been part of the original.

Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting 1638-9

By Artemisia Gentileschi 

Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593–1652) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation after Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegnoin Florence.

She painted many pictures of strong and suffering women from myth and the Bible – victims, suicides, warriors – and made a speciality of the Judith story. Her best-known image, Judith Beheading Holofernes shows the decapitation of Holofernes, a scene of horrific struggle and blood-letting. That she was a woman painting in the 17th century and that she was raped herself and participated in prosecuting the rapist long overshadowed her achievements as an artist. For many years she was regarded as a curiosity. Today she is regarded as one of the most progressive and expressionist painters of her generation, a major artist in her own right.

Christina, Queen of Sweden 1(626 – 19 April 1689) was Queen regnant of Sweden from 1633 to 1654, using the titles of Queen of Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Grand Princess of Finland, and Duchess of Ingria, Estonia, Livonia and Karelia. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. As the heiress presumptive, at the age of six she succeeded her father on the throne of Sweden upon his death at the Battle of Lützen. Being the daughter of a Protestant champion in the Thirty Years’ War, she caused a scandal when she abdicated her throne and converted to Catholicism in 1654. She spent her later years in Rome, becoming a leader of the theatrical and musical life there. As a queen without a country, she protected many artists and projects. She is one of the few women buried in the Vatican grotto.

Christina was moody, intelligent, and interested in books and manuscripts, religion, alchemy and science. She wanted Stockholm to become the Athens of the North. Influenced by the Counter Reformation, she was increasingly attracted to the Baroque and Mediterranean culture that took her away from her Protestant country. Her unconventional lifestyle and masculine behaviour would feature in countless novels and plays, and in opera and film. In the twentieth century, Christina became a symbol of cross-dressing,transsexuality and lesbianism.

Christina was unusual in her own time for choosing masculine dress, and she also had some masculine physical features. Whether she chose her attire because of a self-perception as masculine, or purely for reasons of functional convenience, is difficult to know.

Based on historical accounts of Christina’s physicality, some scholars believe her to have been an intersexed individual (someone with a blend of female and male genitals, hormones, or chromosomes). According to Christina’s autobiography, the midwives at her birth first believed her to be a boy because she was “completely hairy and had a coarse and strong voice.” After changing their minds, deciding that she was female, her father Gustav II Adolph decided “to find out for himself the nature of the matter.” Such ambiguity did not end with birth, as Christina made cryptic statements about her “constitution” and body throughout life. Her unusual body was also noted by many others, who noted that the queen had a masculine voice, appearance, and movements. Although not direct evidence of her bodily makeup, Christina had a disdain for marriage, sex, female conversation and childrearing that may have stemmed from the realities of such things for a person of unusual physicality. In 1965 all of these observations led to an investigation of Christina’s mortal remains, which had inconclusive results. As the physical anthropologist who undertook the investigation, Carl-Herman Hjortsjö, explained, “Our imperfect knowledge concerning the effect of intersexuality on the skeletal formation … makes it impossible to decide which positive skeletal findings should be demanded upon which to base the diagnosis of intersexuality.” Nevertheless, Hjortsjö speculated that Christina had reasonably typical female genitalia because it is recorded that she menstruated.

Christina sat, talked, walked and moved in a manner her contemporaries described as masculine. She preferred men’s company to women’s although she also enjoyed the company of other educated women. Throughout her later years, living in Rome, she formed a close relationship with Cardinal Azzolino, which was also controversial and symbolic of her attraction to relationships which were not typical for a woman of her era and station.

Portrait of Samuel Pepys  (1633 - 1703) 1690c.

By John Closterman

Henrietta Anne Stuart, Duchess of Orléans

“As an infant, Princess Henrietta was smuggled to France by her governess after the imprisonment of her father, King Charles I. She grew up at the French court with her mother and became a favourite of the French royal family. In 1661, Henriette Anne – as she was now known – married Philippe, Duke of Orleans, but the marriage was not a happy one. Jealous of his elder brother, Louis XIV, who openly flirted with Henriette, Philippe later deprived his wife of any friends, leaving her isolated and lonely. Her health failing, she nevertheless contributed to international diplomacy by facilitating a treaty between the French king and her brother, King Charles II. Her untimely death was first blamed on poison, but subsequent autopsies revealed that she died of a punctured ulcer.”

William III, 1650 - 1702. Reigned 1688 - 1702

By Anna Maria Braunin, about 1700

William was a prince of the House of Orange, the royal family of the Netherlands. He came to power in 1672 when he was appointed Captain-General and Stadholder and led the Dutch to victory over the French. In 1677 William married his cousin Mary, eldest daughter of the future James VII and II. In 1688 he accepted the invitation of seven Protestant peers to invade England and dislodge his Catholic father-in-law, now king. James fled to France and William was offered the throne jointly with Mary in 1689.

This unsettling coloured wax image presents the king as a military hero; William spent much of his reign at war, first in Ireland and then against the French in Flanders.

“Charles II was a hugely popular monarch and portraits of him were widely collected and displayed. This mezzotint was made by Edward Luttrell, one of the first artists in Britain to use this new form of printmaking, and published by Edward Cooper, who specialised in selling them. Luttrell’s image of the king is after a portrait painted by Lely from about 1671. It shows Charles wearing a fashionable wig and cravat, but dressed in a stylised antique costume, making him appear as both a seventeenth-century monarch and a Roman general or emperor. Although we recognise the king’s features and the rather sardonic look on his face, the portrait also hints at a more serious side to the so-called ‘Merry Monarch’.”

Portrait of a Gentleman, thought to be the actor Henry Harris (1633/4-1704) 1660s

Sir Peter Lely

Henry Harris was one of the leading actors of the late seventeenth century, and is known to us chiefly through his friendship with Samuel Pepys. He was recorded by Pepys to have demanded, and got, £20 for each new play – more than any other actor – and in 1663 he was made Yeoman of the Revels for life, with lodgings at court. As part of the new generation of actors eager to please a post-Puritan audience, Harris played an important role in leading Londoners out of the rigid austerity of Cromwell’s republic into the florid grandeur of the Stuart monarchy. He performed regularly for the King and the Duke of York. His friendship with Pepys began in 1667, the diarist thinking him ‘a very excellent person, such as in my whole [life] I do not know another better qualified for converse… I was mightily pleased with his company’ ’. He was a ‘very curious and understanding person in all pictures and other things – and a man of fine conversation’, and Pepys seems to have relied on the actor, who was something of a rogue, to experience the wilder antics of London life. After one evening of drink and merriment, he noted that ‘…Lord, their mad bawdy talk did make my heart ake.’’ Furthermore, the two evidently enjoyed art, for they visited both Samuel Cooper, the miniaturist, and John Hayls, from whom Pepys commissioned Harris’ portrait in 1668. Indeed, Harris was initially known as an artist, and later earned in excess of £300 per annum as chief engraver at the Royal Mint.

May Day

The traditions of dancing around a maypole are routed in European paganism, and the maypole has had a troubled history.  Practised by the Romans to celebrate Flora, the goddess of Flowers, May Day celebrations were strongly aligned with the arrival of spring and fertility, and the act of dancing around a maypole was symbolic of bringing the community together in thanksgiving. After the Reformation, during the reign of Edward VI, Protestants denounced the maypole as idolatrous, and many were burned, but it was not until the Interregnum that May Day practises were abolished, labelled, along with much else, as dangerous superstition.  Despite this, with the Restoration came the return of the maypole, and the May Day traditions continued.

John Stow, England’s great surveyor, describes May Day celebrations in London:

“In the Month of May, May games namely on May day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walke into the sweet Meddowes and green woods, there to rejoyce their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet Flowers, and with the harmonie of Birdes, praising God in their kinde. And for example hereof, King Henry the eighth, as in the third of his reigne, and divers other yeeres, so namely in the seventh of his reigne, on May day in the morning, with Queene Katharine his wife, accompanied with many Lords and Ladies, rode a Maying from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooters-hill: where as they passed by the way, they espyed a company of tall Yeomen, clothed all in greene, with greene hoods, and with bowes and arrowes, to the number of 200.  One, being their Chieftaine, Robin Hood, required the King and all his company to stay and see his men shoot: whereunto the King granting, Robin Hood whistled, and all the 200 Archers shot off, loosing all at once; and when he whistled againe, they likewise shot againe: their Arrowes whistled by craft of the head, so that the noise was strange and loud, which greatly delighted the King, Queene, and their company.  Moreover, this Robin Hood desired the King and Queene, with their retinue, to enter the greene Wood, where, in Arbours made with boughes, and deckt with flowers, they were set and served plentifully with venison and wine, by Robin Hood and his men, to their great contentment.

I find also, that in the month of May, the Citizens of London (of all estates) lightly in every Parish, or sometime two or three Parishes joyning together, had their severall Maynings, and did fetch in May-poles, with divers warlike shewes, with good Archers, Morice-dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long; and towards the evening, they had stage-plaies, and Bonefires in the streets.”

Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France

By Anthony van Dyck

A portrait of a young Henry, Lord Darnley, the hated second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots and the father of her only child, James I of England

On 10 February 1567, the bodies of Henry and his servant at the time were discovered in the orchard of Kirk o’ Field, Edinburgh, where they had been staying. Surrounding Henry and his servant was a cloak, a dagger, a chair and a coat. Henry was dressed only in his nightshirt, suggesting he had fled in some haste from his bedchamber. A violent explosion had occurred that night at the house, but evidence pointed to Henry escaping assassination, only to be murdered when he got outside. There was no sign of stab wounds, gun wounds, bruises or strangulation marks on the body. It is most likely that Henry and his servant were suffocated, There was evidence that Henry and his valet had been strangled and that the explosion was set as an attempt to cover up the murders.

A soldier under the pay of the Earl, William Blackadder was allegedly the first non-participant to happen upon the scene and for that reason was initially treated as a suspect. Although initially cleared of any involvement in the murder, he was offered up by the conspirators and convicted at a show trial, after which he was executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered before each of his limbs was nailed to the gates of a different Scottish town.

James Hepburn 4th Earl of Bothwell who became Mary’s third husband, as well as Mary herself were among those who also came under suspicion for the murder.