Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II

Abstract

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume derive from papers presented at conferences associated with the Painted Ladies exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery (2001) and the Yale Centre for British Art (2002). Central to that exhibition was Peter Lely's series of ‘Windsor Beauties’. The term ‘series’ can be deceptive, however, as Julia Marciari Alexander and Catherine MacLeod demonstrate in their essay which contextualises Lely's ‘Beauties’ with those series assembled almost contemporaneously by the Comte de Bussy and by Cardinal Flavio Chigi. While the matching frames of the ‘Windsor’ portraits may have deceived the viewer into thinking that they were all part of a single commissioned series, ‘the disparate nature of the appearance and dates of the portraits’ suggests otherwise. Lely's ‘series’ appears to have been assembled through different forms of acquisition: ‘commissions, gifts from the sitters … and purchases from … studio stock’ (p. 103). Importantly, the editors also show that groups of contemporary female portraits were collected by ‘lesser’ court figures such as Baptist May, who emulated more illustrious collectors by assembling pictures of, among others, Louise de Kéroualle, Mary Davis, and Nell Gwyn.