ARTES is delighted to share Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón’s report of her work, funded by the ARTES-CEEH Scholarship for Spanish PhDs.
The ARTES-CEEH Spanish PhD Scholarship was a wonderful opportunity to research portraiture, gender, and the construction of the image of power in the beginning of the Spanish and English royal collections. It enabled me to conduct a week-long research stay in the Study Centre of the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. In the Casón del Buen Retiro I was able to document examples of royal portraits linked to Anglo-Spanish relations and royal women’s artistic patronage in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. I learned of the importance of King Charles II of Spain’s consort, Queen Maria Luisa of Orleans, who was the daughter of Henrietta of England. She brought several portraits of her English relatives to Spain such as effigies of her mother or Kings Charles II and James II of England. These became incorporated to the Spanish royal collection and are now part of the Prado Museum.
I was invited by the social media team to talk about this project in their daily Instagram live session to explain England’s role in the presence of iconic female portraits in this museum, like the one of Queen Isabella I of Castile or the one of her granddaughter Queen Mary I of England.
I focused on Mary I’s portrait because of the presence of a pair of gloves that are very similar to those present in other female portraits of her relatives painted by the same artist also displayed in room 56. They currently have an interactive installation that recreates the smell of these gloves. According to Dr. Alejandro Vergara, Head of the Conservation Area of Flemish Painting and Northern Schools, these luxurious objects were infused with perfume and sent as expensive gifts. I was able to trace a gift of ten pairs of gloves sent from an unnamed Spanish noblewoman in Mary’s privy purse expenses. As a nod to her, a pair of these gloves is most likely the ones chosen by the Tudor monarch to be represented for a portrait that she knew was going to end up in Spain.
I studied their catalogue of miniature portraiture since this format was key in the introduction of Renaissance court portraiture into Tudor England. On the one hand, I was able to identify one labelled Retrato de mujer that is likely a depiction of the foundress of this institution, Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza. She was the consort of Ferdinand VII of Spain. On the other hand, I am still working on the identification of a second miniature portrait that could be a depiction of Queen Maria Luisa de Orleans who made key contributions to this museum’s collection in relation to English royalty previously mentioned.
During the study of this catalogue, I identified an effigy of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of United States of America. It was probably painted during the time that he served as the first ambassador to France of the newly founded United States of America (1776–1785).
I also spent a very fruitful week-long research stay in London where I visited The National Gallery to study in-situ a portrait connected to Antonis Mor’s portrait of Mary I. This is the effigy of Pope Julius II painted by Raphael. Both portraits follow the same model established by the Italian artist in 1511. There is a version of Raphael’s portrait documented in the post-mortem inventory of Henry VIII in St. James’s Palace. This means that Mary I owned it and most likely asked Mor to follow this model and represent her in the same maner facing the other way. This would have allowed Mary I to display her version alongside the portrait of the pontiff who had authorised her parents’ marriage as a sign of her legitimacy as the first Queen Regnant.
I was very fortunate to meet with Charlotte Bolland, curator of the National Portrait Gallery. We discussed my project and my research. We visited the new Tudor display together and she showed me the archive. She gave me a lot of insight on how to use the museum’s resources. She also informed me of an exhibition focused on Henry VIII’s six wives this coming summer and asked me about my willingness to participate as an expert on Queen Catherine of Aragon. I was also very privileged to be able to visit the Witt Library where I found many useful images. I am still working on some new avenues that this visit opened in my research into female Renaissance portraiture.
Finally, I was also able to document a misidentification in a Spanish royal female portrait in Petworth House. It is an effigy attributed to Juan Pantoja de la Cruz identified as the infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. The presence of the ‘double C’, a symbol identified by graduate student Rafael Conesa Tornel of the Arte, Poder y Género Research Group. This means that the sitter is the infanta Catalina Micaela not her sister. We are now preparing the publication of this discovery where I will be able to show my gratitude to ARTES and the CEEH for funding this project focused on gender and Renaissance portraiture at the beginning of the Spanish and English royal collections.
ARTES 