Queen Elizabeth I, by unknown artist
oil on panel, circa 1575
National Portrait Gallery, NPG 2082

Lady Mary Rogers Harington, circa 1585 - 1590
Artist : Unknown
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OBJECT DESCRIPTION
         The portrait is a half-length executed in oil on wood panel measuring approximately 29½ inches in height by 24½ inches in width. The painting depicts a young woman seen in three-quarter frontal view, though her eyes engage the viewer directly. Her head is tilted ever-so-slightly forward. The painting is framed in black lacquered wood with gilded floral decoration, though the frame post-dates the painting, having been added in perhaps the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
         The composition of the portrait indicates that it may have been larger in overall size when executed. The arms end abruptly at the wrists, and the lower portions of the chains worn around the sitter’s neck are similarly beyond view. Additionally, a portion of the sitter’s left sleeve is not visible. Such tight cropping is inconsistent with sixteenth-century standards for portraiture composition, suggesting that the painting was reduced in size. The original painting was almost certainly a three-quarter length portrait.
         The reverse of the painting was initially covered by a modern foamcore insert with four cut-out holes exposing underlying labels. Removal of the foamcore reveals that all four edges of the perimeter are beveled. The beveling is uneven and was clearly done by hand, and the pattern of surface oxidation indicates that it was probably done in the distant past, perhaps at the time the current frame was added. The right-hand side of the lower margin has a small area of nicking approximately one inch in width, less than one-half inch high, and communicating through to the front of the painting. Surface oxidation in this area indicates that the damage is relatively recent, dating perhaps to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The damage post-dates the beveling.

Some Grey Matter

                                                        MOR

23    PORTRAIT OF PRINCESS ELIZABETH, afterwards Queen Elizabeth,
        aged 20, in embroidered black and white dress with white lawn
        ruff and gold chains — dated 1533 — on panel — 29½ in. by 24½ in.
                From the Harington Collection
                Exhibited at the VictoriaArtGallery, 1907.

         Chalk markings include a large “23” in script with underlining in the upper left hand corner, probably corresponding to the fourth paper label and written on the board surface as an inventory number pending printing of the paper label. Along the left margin is written the number “121” and the letters “JW” followed by the number “19” enclosed in a circle.
         There is no visible evidence of any artist’s mark, monogram, or signature on the reverse of the painting.

RESULTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL ANALYSES
         A conservator’s examination reveals the painting to be in excellent condition overall, given its age, with good adhesion of the paint to the prepared surface. Careful study of the painted surface reveals areas of cleaning over the subject’s face, “probably in the more recent past, while the majority of the dress and background has an older layering of a natural resin varnish.” The conservator notes especially that the areas of the two inscriptions appear not to have been cleaned at any time, “but that rather great care was taken to avoid cleaning” those areas.
         Following examination of the inscriptions under magnification, the conservator concluded that the left-hand inscription indicating the sitter’s age may be authentic and original to the work. The right-hand inscription indicating the date of creation has been heavily restored, however, and, unlike the inscription indicating age, is marked by fine incised lines above and below the entire inscription. These lines can have been cut only after the original paint was fully cured. Further, the coloration of the numerals is “cooler than that of the lettering,” suggesting that the numerals were inscribed at a different and much later point in time than the lettering “AÑO DÑ.” The conservator also notes wider spacing of the numerals relative to the lettering.
         An irregular area of the surface of the painting noted in the background to the viewer’s left has no underlying impasto or brush marks detectable under magnification, indicating that the irregularity is probably the result of damage to the panel itself rather than the result of overpainting. By comparison, impasto and brush marks are readily visible in all other areas where there is fine detail, and those marks can be felt manually. “Magnified examination of the background paint finds consistent layering, with no passage appearing to be covering additional detail.” Examination under ultraviolet light likewise shows no overpainting using modern pigments.
         Infrared reflectography is deferred at this time as unlikely to be contributory.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION
         The portrait depicts an adult woman of indeterminate, though clearly not advanced, years standing before a plain, very dark background. She has a long and narrow face with a slightly pointed chin. Her nose is also long and prominent, appearing slightly convex or aquiline. Her brown eyes gaze directly at the viewer. Her complexion is rendered as quite pale, and her lips are vivid red. The ears are covered by her wavy hair of chestnut brown, which is swept up and away from the face in a careful coiffure. Her eyebrows are a lighter shade than the hair, almost auburn.
         The sitter wears a jacket or doublet constructed of a black brocaded fabric and tailored in a very masculine style that fits close to the body. The lapels of the jacket drop well below the waist of the bodice to form a hanging sharp “V.” Each lapel is embellished with more than a dozen horizontal stripes of gold metallic-thread embroidery or applied bouillon, each stripe consisting of two rows of squares. The squares are each distinguished by stitching oriented in a direction perpendicular to its neighbor. Each stripe is edged by rope stitches and ends in a pom-pom tassel, called “frogging” (see detail photo, below).[1] The sleeves of the jacket are voluminous at the shoulder, reminiscent of mutton sleeves, and taper gradually until reaching the cuff. The cuffs are decorated with fine lace turned back over the sleeves. The upper portion of the sleeves are embellished with gold embroidery or bouillon of the same type as seen on the lapels, though that of the sleeves is laid on as a fret-motif consisting of two closely parallel lines of conjoined Vs, known in the period as “chevronwise,” with frogging added to the apex of every V.

          A loose fitting chemise of grey linen or perhaps cloth-of-silver is worn beneath the open lapels of the jacket (detail, right). The chemise is heavily embroidered with blackwork in a floral pattern consisting of Tudor roses, stylized carnations (or “pinks”), stylized daisies or chrysanthemums, and grape clusters. The blackwork is accented by scattered embroidery in-filling using gold metallic thread. The chemise has a high neckline.

          The overskirt, though barely visible, appears to be made from the same black brocade as the jacket (above, left). The underskirt is constructed of a rich satin color-on-color brocade in a shade of brownish-red similar to pale chestnut or vermilion, though cleaning of the painting may brighten the underskirt to a truer red. The pattern of the brocading is difficult to discern but appears to consist of architectural elements resembling arches and columns, with bosses at the conjunctions of the arches. Dark spots arranged in linear groups of three may represent spangles attached to the fabric as embellishment. The underskirt is pleated or gathered along a center vertical line, perhaps a seam or opening, that lies beneath the overhanging lapels of the jacket. The skirts appear to be worn over and supported by a French farthingale.

          The sitter wears at her neck a large ruff, the span of which is almost as wide as her shoulders. The ruff is plain and unembellished — there is no lace or embroidery visible — but it is constructed of a fabric so sheer as to be essentially transparent, probably cobweb lawn (above, left). The ruff is of the closed type, forming a continuous ring around the wearer’s neck with no opening at the front. The construction of the ruff is unusual in that it appears to consist of multiple individual, separately-made and seamless organ-pipe-shaped units that are each attached to a central, loose-fitting collar band, rather than being made of a single long piece of pleated or folded fabric. Thirteen pipe-like units of graduated size are visible. Though not discernible in the portrait, the larger units at the back of the neck are probably held erect by a supportasse or underpropper.
          The lady wears affixed to the top and back of her coiffure an irregularly-shaped black beret or turban similar to the traditional hat or hood worn today by members of the Order of the Garter.
          The jewels seen in the portrait are simple but costly. Around her throat and inside the ruff she wears three close-fitting loops of single-strung beads consisting of large spherical pearls, fifteen being visible, between which lie smaller spherical pearls and tiny spherical black beads, of which nine and thirty nine, respectively, are visible (above, right). Around her neck and over her jacket she wears no fewer than six loops of fine gold chain consisting of thousands of very small plain elliptical links, today called cable links (see skirt and chemise detail photos above).[2]

          A small pendant jewel is suspended from the sitter’s hat by means of fine gold chain and a bale that appears to be stitched directly to the hat (right). The central stone of the jewel is square and faceted. It is rendered using black pigments with white highlights, the same technique commonly used in the sixteenth century to depict diamonds.[3] The stone is set in a deep, square, gold mount flanked on each side by a scroll in gold-work with white enameling. The center of each scroll is set with a single small pearl and each pearl is flanked on both sides by smaller gold beads. Three larger round pendant pearls are suspended by gold wires from the lower margin of the central mounting. On the upper edge of the central mount and supported by the scrolls is what appears to be a bulbous cylinder enameled black, distinguished by curved white lines of pigment denoting light reflecting off the higher surfaces. Attached to the front of this element is a small five-petal flower constructed of either fine goldsmith’s work enameled red or five tiny faceted rubies. The center of the flower is a small pearl. A crouching rabbit or hare in finely detailed three-dimensional white enamel-work is suspended from the hat bale by its own small bale and a single link of chain, au tremblant, intended to be a mobile element within the larger jewel.

          The background of the painting bears two inscriptions. The one to the viewer’s upper left reads “AETATIS SVE 20.” The lettering is Roman Latin block script, and the “A” and “E” are written as a grapheme (Æ), slanting to the left. The inscription indicates that the sitter was either 20 years old or in her 20 th year (i.e., 19 years old) when the portrait was executed.[4]      

INTERPRETATION OF THE PAINTED IMAGE
          The woman in the portrait appears to be of child-bearing age. That is, she is neither very young nor middle-aged or elderly. Her carefully upswept coiffure suggests she may be married.[5] She is a woman of considerable – though not extraordinary – wealth, judging by the richness of her costume. The limited nature of the jewelry, especially the relatively simple choker necklace and the larger gold necklace without precious stones, indicate a status below that of nobility. Yet the extent of the fine gold embroidery, rendered in the sixteenth century using thread made of actual gold metal, together with the diamond-set hat jewel denote significant financial standing. Similarly, the opulent brocaded fabric of her dress and the extreme sheerness of the fabric of her ruff are signs of unusual wealth. Even the depth of the black color of her dress may signify wealth, since such intensity was difficult to achieve using sixteenth-century cloth dying techniques and was usually accomplished only after multiple cycles of the dying process.[6]Because the process was a lengthy and difficult one, the finished textile was costly and could be afforded only by the wealthy. Indeed, the color black is called “sable” in heraldry, “which is a most riche furre worn of Princes and great personages,” and thus inherently symbolized wealth.[7]

The Jacket

          The lady’s attire offers numerous clues as to the date when the portrait was actually executed and notably contradicts the inscribed date of 1533. The very masculine design of the jacket, with its close-fitting bodice and prominent lapels, is remarkably similar to a jacket worn by Queen Elizabeth in the Darnley Portrait – also known as the Cobham Portrait – of 1575 (right). The jacket in the Darnley/Cobham Portrait is also noteworthy for the frogging at the ends of bouillon stripes, identical to that seen here. The tapering sleeves worn by this sitter likewise essentially duplicate in shape the sleeves on Elizabeth’s dress in a portrait by George Gower and dated to circa 1588 now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), London.[8] The sleeve shape is also seen in the portrait of Elizabeth now in the Toledo ( Ohio) Museum of Art and dated to circa 1590–1592.[9]
          The turned-back cuffs of the sleeves seen in the portrait under analysis had largely replaced wrist ruffs by the end of the 1580s.[10] Similar or identical cuffs are visible in the portrait of Lettice Knollys, circa 1585, now in the collection of the Marquess of Bath, the portrait of Elizabeth Brydges by Custodis and dated 1589 now at Woburn Abbey, and the portrait of Mary Fitton, circa 1595, now at the Royal Academy of Art.
          The deep V of the waist of the bodice also implies a date of execution no earlier than the mid to late 1580s. As with turned-back cuffs replacing wrist ruffs, the V-shaped waist became popular between 1585 and 1588, reaching maximum length in about 1588.[11] The extreme shape remained popular throughout the 1590s. Portraits from the period with similar deep-V waistlines include the previously mentioned NPG portrait of Elizabeth attributed to Gower, a portrait of Lady Eleanor Herbert dated to the mid 1590s, the portrait of Mary, Countess Rivers dated 1593, the portrait of Mary Fitton circa 1595 at the Royal Academy of Art and the portrait of the same lady at Moot Hall, Malden.

The Chemise

          The chemise has a high neckline more often seen in portraits from the 1580s, contrasting with necklines of the 1590s that had once again become open. The chemise is notable for the extensive floral embroidery incorporating Tudor roses, a design motif that in the context of the late sixteenth century might seem more appropriate for Elizabeth I (see chemis detail photo, above). One costume historian has argued, however, that members of the queen’s court may have received gifts of clothing from the queen, so that what we may actually be looking at are items of the queen’s own clothing deliberately displayed in portraits other than her own.[12] The wearers are advertising their personal proximity to the monarch through these displays. It must also be noted that the design on the chemise includes floral emblems other than Tudor roses. Grapes symbolized fruitfulness (“fruit of the vine”) in sixteenth-century emblemology, while carnations or pinks signified true love and daisies denoted Christian innocence. Tudor roses represented unity.

NOTES:

[1]     Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes prepared in 1600 ... (Leeds:          Maney, 1988), 137.

[2]     Assuming the woman is of average height for the period, the total chain length would be between twenty and twenty five feet. Further          assuming the links are 22–23 carat gold and at least 5 millimeters in diameter, the weight of a chain twenty feet long would exceed 400          grams (1 pound = 453.6 grams), and a chain twenty five feet long would exceed 500 grams. For purposes of comparing contemporary          relative monetary value, an Elizabethan gold sovereign coin with a monetary value of £1 weighed approximately 15 grams. Thus a chain          weighing 400 grams would have had a relative monetary value of at least £26, while a chain weighing 500 grams would have had a relative          monetary value greater than £33. The purchasing power in 1585 of £26 was equivalent to the purchasing power of US$56,500 in 2007,          while £33 was equivalent to US$71,600. See Measuring Worth Calculator.

[3]     Henry Peacham, Graphice or The most auncient and excellent art of drawing and limming disposed into three bookes ( London :          W Stansby for John Brown, 1612), 148.

[4]     Idioms expressing age were as non-standard in sixteenth-century English as was spelling. Though properly translated as “of the age of X          years,” the phrase “ætatis sui X” was often used idiomatically to mean both “in her Xth year of age” and “X years old.” The latter is          equivalent to the modern English expression of age, while the former was based on an individual being “in his/her first year” from the time of          birth until the end of the first year of life. Thus the idiom “in her Xth year of age” is equivalent to “X minus 1 years old.”

[5]    Unmarried women were often portrayed with their hair loose, as in, for example, the portrait of Arbella Stuart at age thirteen in 1589, by          Rowland Lockey.

[6]    Leonard Mascall, A profitable booke, declaring ... with diuers colours how to die veluets and silkes, linnen and woollen, fustian and          thread. Taken out of Dutch, and Englished by L.M. (London: Thomas Purfoot, 1605), 52–53.

[7]    Henry Peacham, Graphice or The most auncient and excellent art of drawing and limming disposed into three bookes          (London: W Stansby for John Brown, 1612), 147.

[8]    See National Portrait Gallery, London, Primary Collection 541, Queen Elizabeth I, attributed to George Gower, oil on panel, circa 1588.          Many of the portraits referred to here can be viewed at Edward Buehler's wonderful website on Tudor and Elizabethan Portraits on the          pages labeled "Various 5" and "Various 6."

[9]    Reproduced in Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes ... (Leeds: Maney,          1988), 40, fig. 64.

[10]   Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes ... (Leeds: Maney, 1988), 31.

[11]   Arnold, 123 and 143.

[12]   Arnold, 85.

[13]   Arnold, 15.

[14]   See, for example, the Ditchley Portrait mentioned above, dated to circa 1592, in which Elizabeth wears an open standing ruff.

[15]   Arnold, 33 and 159.

[16]   Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Absues (London: Richard Jones, 1583), f. 33v.

[17]   Karen Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630 (London: Tate Gallery, 1995), 95.

[18]   For the Tatton Park and Pollock House Portraits, see Arnold, fig. 39 and page 31, respectively. For the portrait of Mrs Sheldon, now in a          private collection, see Arnold, fig. 284.

[19]   Arnold, 122.

[20]   The unusual forms seen in this inscription may prove to have significance as this study advances. If this left-hand inscription is original to the          painting, the letter formation and spelling may aid in identifying the artist or his studio.

[21]   For Soles as owner of a Beverly Hills art gallery, see Sarah Schrank, Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in          Los Angeles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 118.

[22]   According to the extant gallery catalogue, Mr Harington was not then residing within England, raising the possibility that the exhibition was          intended to arouse interest for purposes of selling the collection.

[23]   The family tradition of a royal visit to Kelston appeared in print in 1880. See Francis J. Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and          Genealogical, Relating to the Parish of Kelston in the County of Somerset, Part III (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1880), 3. It was          repeated in print as last as 1958 in Ian Grimble's, The Harington Family (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1958), 121.

[24]   Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), s.v. “Harington, John (c.1517-1582).”

[25]   Tradition states that Ethelreda’s mother was Joan Dyngley (or Dingley/Dingly), a laundress in the royal household.

[26]   The grant of Kelston was made on 22 September 1546 and “signed by the King himself” rather than by dry stamp, itself a mark of special          favor. See Francis J. Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical, Relating to the Parish of Kelston in the County of          Somerset , Part I (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1878), vi.

[27]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (c.1517-1582)”; Ian Grimble, The Harington Family (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1958), 90. N.B.          Assuming Ethelreda was about twenty years old when she wed, she was born at about the time that Henry VIII first took interest in Anne          Boleyn, i.e., circa 1526.

[28]   Ian Grimble, The Harington Family (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1958), 90.

[29]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (c.1517-1582).” Harington’s signed testimony in relation to those legendary scandals survives among the          manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield House.

[30]   Grimble, 93.

[31]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (c.1517-1582).”

[32]   Grimble, 92.

[33]   Grimble, 101.

[34]   W. Harry Rylands, ed., Grantees of Arms to the End of the XVII Century, vol. LXVI of The Harleian Society (London, 1915).

[35]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (c.1517-1582).”

[36]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, Sir John (bap. 1560, d. 1612);” Francis J. Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical, Relating to          the Parish of Kelston in the County of Somerset, Part III (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1880), 1. Infant John was baptized in the          Church of All Hallows, London Wall (ODNB).

[37]   There is a family tradition, repeated in the labeling of this portrait, that while at Cambridge “Boye Iacke” received from his godmother the          Queen a copy of the speech she delivered at the adjournment of the Parliament of 1576.

[38]   “History, Kelston Park, Bath, England, Record ID:1889” at http://www.parksandgardens.ac.uk, created 27 July 2007 , accessed 10          April 2009 .

[39]   The poem was exceptionally popular during the period and is thought to have influenced Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene and          William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, both of which first appeared before the public at the same time as Harington’s          translation, circa 1590.

[40]   “Philostipnos” may mean “lover of overcoming disease.” Philo = loving; Stilpo = Greek philosopher who maintained that wise men must          overcome all evil; nos = disease.

[41]   The fountain referred to once stood at Kelston and was modeled on a fountain described in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. See Margret          Trotter, “Harington’s Fountain,” Modern Language Notes 58: 8 (Dec. 1943), 614–616; Elisabeth Woodhouse, “Spirit of the Elizabethan          Garden ,” Garden History 27:1 (Summer 1999), 10–31.

[42]   Save-reverence: begging your pardon: an expression of apology formerly used before a word or remark that might be regarded as          indelicate.

[43]   John Harington, A new discourse of a stale subject, called the metamorphosis of Ajax (London: Richard Field, 1596), ff. 2r–3r.          Spelling and punctuation have been modernized here for convenience.

[44]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, Sir John (bap. 1560, d. 1612).”

[45]   The Kohler Company, manufacturer of premium bath fixtures, today markets a model of toilet known as the Kelston Comfort Height.

[46]   John Harington, Nugæ antiquæ: being a miscellaneous collection of original papers in prose and verse, ed. Henry Harington (Bath:          W. Frederick, 1769), 77.

[47]   Poynton, Memoranda ... Part III, 19 and 21. Poynton overlooked the fourth surviving son, as well as several daughters.

[48]   Poynton, Memoranda ... Part III, 33. Other surviving sons included Robert, who survived to marry Joan Jentilman on 7 March 1613, a          son George who wed Mary Combes and produced at least two sons by her (Poynton, 22), and a son James who is reported to have          become a staunch Puritan like his older brother and to have emigrated to the Massachusetts Colony, where he drowned in the 1630s.

[49]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (1588/9–1654).”

[50]   Portions of the diaries were published in 1977. See Margaret Stieg, ed., The Diary of John Harington, M.P., 1646-53: With Notes for          His Charges (Somerset Record Society, 1977).

[51]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (1588/9–1654).”

[52]   Grimble, 121.

[53]   John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 3 (London: Nichols, 1823), 250; Grimble, 121. Bath is          well to the south and west of Oxford , so that the queen’s progress would have to have been exceedingly circuitous for her to visit Kelston          while traveling from London to Oxford .

[54]   Richard Warner, The History of Bath (London: R. Crutwell, 1801), 187.

[55]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (1588/9–1654).”

[56]   ODNB, s.v. “Harington, John (1588/9–1654).”

[57]   Francis J. Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical, Relating to the Parish of Kelston in the County of Somerset, Part II          (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1879), 4.

[58]   Francis J. Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical, Relating to the Parish of Kelston in the County of Somerset , Part          IV (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1885), 35.

[59]   Poynton, Memoranda ... Part IV, 39–40, 52. This most recent John Harington was born in 1680 and was the first son of his father’s          fourth wife, Helena Gostlett (p. 53).

[60]   Poynton, Memoranda ... Part IV, 54.

[61]   Richard Harington was a Lieutenant aboard HMS Coquette during the battle known as The Forcing of the Straits of Simonoseki in          September 1864 and assumed command upon the wounding of his captain, Commander John H.I. Alexander. Harington received positive          mention in Vice-Admiral Sir William Montagu Dowell’s despatches. The Forcing led directly to the end of the Shogunates and to the          establishment of the Meiji era in Japanese Imperial history and ultimately to the westernization of Japan.

[62]   Poynton, Memoranda ... Part IV, 55.

[63]   “History, Kelston Park, Bath, England, Record ID:1889” at http://www.parksandgardens.ac.uk, created 27 July 2007 , accessed 10          April 2009 .

[64]   Alliance of Religions and Conservation ; Kelston Fine Arts Gallery ; Total Sport Medicine. Other businesses housed at Kelston House          include Andrew Brownsward Collection, the company that rehabilitated the house, as well as law firms, a travel agency, an investment firm,          a computer consultant, and more.

[65]   John Trevor Cliffe, Puritans in Conflict: The Puritan Gentry During and After the Civil Wars (London: Routledge, 1988),          Appendix.

[66]   Grimble, 125. The hare, ring, and tun usage is also visible in the emblem atop the Harington Fountain (see image above).

[67]   John Harington, A new discourse of a stale subject, called the metamorphosis of Ajax: written by Misacmos, to his friend and          cousin Philostilpnos (London: Richard Field, 1596), 89 and 91.

[68]   The authenticated portrait is now in a private collection but is reproduced in Roy Strong’s The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean          Portraiture (London: Routledge and K. Paul for the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, 1969).

The Skirts

          The skirts are supported by a French farthingale, a device consisting of a single padded hoop or roll fixed around the waist, creating a bell shape in the skirts and intended to make the hips appear unnaturally wide. The French farthingale was introduced to England with the visit of François, Duke of Anjou in 1580. The style remained popular until the end of Elizabeth’s reign. French farthingales are seen in the portraits of Elizabeth Brydges, Mary Fitton, Eleanor Herbert, and Countess Rivers mentioned above, as well as in many portraits of Elizabeth painted after 1585. It is seen at perhaps its most extreme in the Ditchley Portrait of Elizabeth I, dated circa 1592, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger and now in the collection of the NPG (above, right).

The Ruff

          The ruff worn by the sitter is of a type and size seen primarily during the 1580s (see detail photo, above). Small ruffs came into fashion earlier in the sixteenth century, but by 1575 they had begun to grow to remarkable sizes, peaking by about 1586.[13] They were so large, in fact, that they are known today as “cartwheel ruffs.” And though they continued exceedingly large into the early years of the next century, they began to be worn open at the front after about 1590 and were more often constructed of cutwork or lace rather than of woven fabric.[14]
          Large ruffs became sufficiently problematic socially that legislation was passed in 1579 in an effort to limit their size and to designate which rank of personage could wear what size. Those sumptuary laws ultimately proved ineffective.[15] Four years later, in 1583, the conservative pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes decried contemporary excesses in fashion and manner, attacking the custom of large ruffs in particular.

                   They have great and monsterous ruffes, made either of Cambrick, holland, lawn, or els of some other the finest
                   cloth that can be got for money, whereof be a quarter of a yard deep, yea some more, very few lesse. So that
                   they stand a quarter of a yard (and more) from their necks hanging over their shoulder poynts, insted of a vaile.
                   But if Aeolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes, chaunce to hit uppon the crasie bark of their brused
                   ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the wind like rags flying abroad, and lye upon their shoulders like the dishcloute
                   of a lutte.[16]

          A ruff very similar to the one noted in this portrait can be seen in the portrait of Francis Sidney, Countess of Sussex, dated to between 1570 and 1575, though Lady Francis’s ruff is embellished with large pearls at the outer edges.[17] Other examples of ruffs constructed in this manner but employing lace, either as adornment or as the principal fabric, include those seen in the so-called “ Tatton Park” (below, right) and “Pollock House” portraits of Elizabeth I and a portrait of Mrs Ralph Sheldon, the latter circa 1593–1595.[18] But a ruff that is identical in every respect is seen in the portrait of Elizabeth now in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) Foundation, which has been dated to 1585–1588 (below, left).[19]

Queen Elizabeth I, by unknown artist
oil on panel, circa 1585
Tatton Park, Cheshire, England

          The evidence derived from the sitter’s costume, when taken as a whole, supports a fairly narrow span of time during which the portrait was most probably executed. The dates associated with the turned back cuffs and the very deep waistline of the jacket imply a likely earliest date of about 1585. The closed ruff, a fashion that immediately preceded the introduction of open-front ruffs in about 1590, testifies to creation before the last decade of the century. The portrait was therefore most likely executed sometime between about 1585 and about 1590.

The Inscriptions

          The date derived from the costume evidence requires that we question the inscribed date, if not both inscriptions. In regard to the date inscription specifically, which ordinarily denotes the year in which the painting was executed, the presence of inscribed lines, probably cut by the letterer as guide lines for sizing, and the wider spacing of the numerals in relation to the letters indicate that the numerals were at minimum altered well after the painting was originally executed. But because the letters and numerals of the date inscription are a different color than the age inscription, it seems likely that the entire date inscription is a later addition.
          Similarly, the inscription denoting the sitter’s age must be treated with considerable skepticism. In the absence of microscopic examination of the age inscription and in light of the issues with the other inscription, it cannot reliably be determined that the age inscription is authentic. Additionally, the age inscription itself has at least one issue that might lend to questioning it, even in the absence of other issues. “SVE” is an uncommon misspelling of the third person genitive form of the reflexive pronoun, which is properly spelled “svi” (i.e., “sui”) in classical Latin but often spelled “svæ” (suæ) in medieval and Renaissance Latin.[20] The misspelling might also be attributable to a letterer of lesser knowledge and skill, however.

PROVENANCE
          The painting is currently owned by a private collector in the United States. It was purchased through a private sale from Mr William H. Kirkbride of California, who had acquired it from his mother, Mrs Adelaide Soles Kirkbride (1919–2006), widow of Mr Malcolm Kirkbride, of Woodside, California. Mrs Kirkbride had in turn received the painting from her cousin, Mr Jack C. Soles of Beverly Hills, California. Mr Soles, owner of an art gallery, acquired the painting in London in the 1970s.[21]
          The painting’s provenance for much of the twentieth century prior the mid 1970s is undocumented, but the gallery label on the reverse corresponds in every respect to the description in an exhibition catalogue from 1907. In that year, the portrait was exhibited at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, England, as part of an exhibition of works then owned by John E. Musgrave Harington, Esquire.[22]
          Harington family tradition states that the painting had always hung at Kelston House or Manor, the ancient Harington family seat northwest of Bath in the county of Somerset, England. The same family tradition indicates that the painting was given to Sir John Harington in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I to commemorate her visit to Kelston in that year while on a royal progress to Bristol.[23]

RELEVANT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Beginnings of the Harington Family

          The portrait was, as of 1907, part of a large group of works of art known as the "Harington Collection" and associated with Kelston (or Kelweston or Kelveston) House, near Bath in the county of Somerset. Kelston was the seat of just one of many branches of the extensive Harington family that traces its origins to Robert de Haverington of Cumberland in the twelfth century and beyond. By the time of the fifteenth-century dynastic conflict between the Yorkist and Lancastrian descendants of Edward III, known today as the Wars of the Roses, one James Harington had become prominent as the Dean of York. He lost his preferment, however, upon the defeat of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, by Henry Tudor in 1485. James’s son Alexander subsequently settled in Stepney, east London, where his own son was born in 1517.
          John Harington, one of many of that name, had entered the service of Henry VIII by 1538.[24] In or about 1547 he married Ethelreda (or Esther) Malte, daughter of John Malte, Henry VIII’s tailor.[25] Ethelreda and her father received numerous and large grants of lands from King Henry during the 1530s and 1540s, including the manor of Kelston.[26] The size and number of the grants were uncommonly lavish, and many of Malte’s contemporaries considered them inappropriate for a man of his humble station. It has therefore been speculated, both then and now, that Ethelreda was actually the king’s own natural daughter planted in the Malte household to conceal her existence.[27] Regardless of her paternity, Ethelreda inherited all of her father’s lands in the year of her marriage and eventually settled Kelston on her new husband in 1555.[28]
         John Harington’s fortunes, like those of many men of the period, were cyclical. He had the misfortune to become involved with Thomas Seymour, one of King Edward VI’s uncles and the younger brother of the Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour. Though John became a member of Parliament in 1547 through Seymour’s influence, he was arrested alongside his patron when the latter was charged with treason early in 1549. Harington was interrogated regarding his knowledge of Seymour’s relationship with Elizabeth Tudor, as well as in regard to his own part in attempting to bring about a marriage between King Edward and Lady Jane Grey.[29] He was sufficiently implicated in both matters that he remained imprisoned in the Tower without charge or trial until the spring of 1550, while his former Seymour patron had been tried and executed in April 1549. Bouncing back in true Tudor-era fashion, Harington recovered his position at court following his release and was among those enriched by the rise of John Dudley in 1550 and 1551. One of the land grants he received at that time involved a half-interest in the Minories, a former convent of nuns of the Order of St Clare that had been closed during the Dissolutions of 1539. The other half interest was granted to Henry Grey, father of the Lady Jane Grey of Harington’s earlier misfortunes.[30] Harington was also appointed by Dudley to the office of Constable of Caernarfon Castle in Wales.[31]
         Harington was again imprisoned in early 1554 during Sir Thomas Wyatt’s armed rebellion against Queen Mary’s planned marriage to Prince Philip of Spain. A faction of the rebels under the leadership of Henry Grey and operating in Leicestershire had called for the restoration of Queen Jane, and Harington may have supported that faction. During this second imprisonment, Harington’s wife Ethelreda joined him as a prisoner in her own right. Ethelreda was at that time a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth Tudor, who had also been implicated as a possible co-conspirator in the rebellion, and Ethelreda faithfully accompanied her mistress to the Tower.[32]

The Elizabethan Haringtons

         John and Isabella Harington’s son, also named John, was born in early August 1560 in London, and the new queen served as godmother upon the infant’s christening on 4 August. Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk and William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke were

         During the 1580s, Harington seems to have resided primarily at Kelston and to have spent much of his time translating Ludovico Ariosto’s fantastical epic romance poem Orlando Furioso from the original Italian into English.[39] Though that work was popular and remains a subject of study among literary scholars, Harington is perhaps better known for his New discourse of a stale subiect, called the metamorphosis of Ajax: written by Misacmos, to his friend and cousin Philostilpnos. The title is a play on the ancient Greek epic poem by Ovid, “The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” The “stale subject” of Harington’s title is, however, the privy or toilet, known in Elizabethan England as “a jakes,” while the name of the fictional author, Misacmos, is Greek for “hater of filth.”[40] The satirical, bawdy, and irreverent text offers a solution to a common problem within sixteenth-century households.

         There be three special things that I have heard much boasted of,
         and therefore would willingliest see. The one a fountain standing
         on pillars, like that in Ariosto, under which you may dine and
         supp[41]; the second a shooting close with a xii score mark to every          point of the card, in which I hear you have hit a mark that many
         shoot at, viz: to make a barren stony land fruitful with a little cost;
         the third is a thing that I cannot name well without save-reverence,[42]          and yet it sounds not unlike the shooting place, but it is in plain
         English a shitting place. Though, if it be so sweet and so cleanly
         as I hear, it is a wrong to it to use “save reverence,” for one told
         me, it is as sweet as my parlor, and I would think discourtesy,
         one should say, “save reverence my parlor.” But if I might entreat
         you (as you partly promised me at your last being here) to set
         down the manner of it in writing, so plain as our gross wits here
         may understand it, or to cause your man M. Combe (who I
         understand can paint prettily) make a draught, or plot thereof
         to be well conceived, you should make many of your friends
         much beholding to you, and perhaps you might cause reformation
         in many houses that you wish well unto, that will think no scorn
         to follow your good example. Nay to tell you my opinion
         seriously, if you have so easy, so cheap, and so infallible a way
         for avoiding such annoyances in great houses. You may not only
         pleasure many great persons, but do her Majesty good service in
         her palace of Greenwich and other stately houses, that are oft
         annoyed with such savors, as where many mouths be fed can
         hardly be avoided. Also you might be a great benefactor to the
         City of London, and all other populous towns, who stand in great
         need of such conveniences.[43]

Page 17 of the text offers a woodcut illustration of the device, one of the earliest versions of a “water closet” or flushing toilet. Harington had invented it himself and

Sir John Harington's "privie in perfection,"
precursor to the "water closet"
(click here to enlarge image in new window,
use browser "Back" button to return here)

         Harington’s marriage to Mary Rogers, whom he called “Mall,” seems to have been a love-match.[46] He wrote poems, sonnets, and epigrams to her regularly, many of which were eventually published. Their marital relationship is one of the best documented of the period. In return, Mary gave her husband perhaps as many as fifteen children. At least five were daughters, four of whom survived to adulthood (a fifth is known to have died in childhood). There were at least six or seven named sons, only four of whom seem to have survived infancy.[47]
         The first son to survive birth was born in 1589 at Kelston and christened John after his father and grandfather.[48] This third John Harington was destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. After attending Trinity College, Oxford, he studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, but, improving on his father’s record, he completed his studies there and was called to the bar in 1615. In 1623, he made a match as advantageous as his father’s had been, marrying Dionysia Ley, daughter of the Earl of Marlborough. He became a justice of the peace for Somerset in 1625. Harington ( III) became a staunch Puritan but remained loyal to King Charles I up to the outbreak of the civil wars of the 1630s and 1640s. As a supporter of the parliamentary party, he was elected an MP for Somerset in 1646 to replace a member ejected during the purge of Royalists in that year. He later withdrew during Pride’s Purge of late 1648, objecting to the radical policies of Oliver Cromwell.[49] He returned to the practice of law, and his manuscript diaries for the period between 1646 and 1653 have long been an invaluable resource for historians studying the civil war period of British history.[50] Harington ( III) died in 1654. He was survived by a daughter and two sons, the younger of whom (another John) also became an MP for Somerset and for Bath.[51]
         Meanwhile, John and Mary Harington continued to experience the cyclical fortunes of Elizabethan courtiers. Harington was appointed High Sheriff of Somerset in 1591.[52] The following year, according to family tradition and early-nineteenth-century antiquarian texts, the Haringtons received Queen Elizabeth as a visitor to Kelston as she passed through Bath on her way to Oxford.[53] The royal party reportedly dined in the courtyard underneath the massive fountain (below) that the elder Harington had erected there before 1567.[54]

young John’s godfathers.[36] He was educated first at Eton College, then at King’s College, Cambridge.[37] There he counted among his friends Robert Devereaux, a man destined to become one of Elizabeth’s favorites and Earl of Essex. It was an auspicious beginning.
         The senior John Harington died in London on 1 July 1582 (Isabella had pre-deceased him in 1579) while the younger Harington was at Lincoln’s Inn studying the law. Young Harington soon left his studies and took possession of the manor at Kelston in June 1583. Little more than six or seven weeks later he married Mary Rogers, daughter of his new Somerset neighbor, George Rogers of Cannington. The Harington and the Rogers families had probably become acquainted initially through their mutual connections at court. George Rogers’ father was Sir Edward Rogers (d. 1568), Elizabeth’s Vice-Chamberlain, Comptroller of the Royal Household, and captain of the guard from the first days of the reign, as well as a privy councilor. Though George Rogers appears not to have had such an illustrious career, he did possess significant wealth as his father’s sole heir, and thus the marriage was a very advantageous one for young Harington. With his wife’s dowry share in the Rogers’s wealth added to his own, Harington was able to complete construction of the ostentatious house on the family’s Somerset manor begun by his father sometime between 1567 and 1574.[38] Upon its completion around 1590, it was said to have been the largest and grandest house in the county of Somerset.    

         The remainder of the 1590s were spent writing and seeking patronage, though Harington did go to Ireland in 1599. He served as a commander in the forces of his Cambridge classmate Robert Devereaux, who had been tasked by Elizabeth with putting down the insurrection known today as Tyrone’s Rebellion. Harington was knighted by Devereaux during the expedition, on 30 July 1599. Upon his return to England, Harington faced the queen’s wrath for having accepted the knighthood, though the queen’s fit of pique was largely misdirected anger over Devereaux’s unauthorized return from Ireland. Harington at least had the good sense not to become involved in Devereaux’s own subsequent rebellion of early 1602, instead becoming a strong supporter of James VI of Scotland to replace Elizabeth upon her death.
         Following the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of James VI & I in 1603, Harington suffered brief imprisonment due to unpaid debts. The debts were not his own, but rather those of his maternal uncle, for whom he had stood guarantor. The debt amounted to £4000, a huge sum. Harington spent the remainder of his life searching for ways to make money, especially through appointment to high office. He “applied for” a number of jobs in the Jacobean administration in the way that most men sought office during the era: he wrote treatises and published works outlining his solutions to various problems facing the government of the day, especially the question of Ireland. He is reported, for example, to have sought the job of Lord Chancellor of Ireland as well as that of Archbishop of Dublin (despite a complete lack of religious training!).[55]
         Sir John Harington died on 20 November 1612 at the age of 52 and was buried at Kelston in St Nicholas Parish Church. His much beloved wife, Lady Mary Rogers Harington, survived him by more than two decades, dying in 1634, and was buried next to her husband.[56] Their monuments within the church are no longer extant, though a commemorative wall plaque was erected in 1706.[57]

CONCLUSION
         This painting is certainly not a portrait of Elizabeth Tudor painted in 1553 while she was still a princess, and the Harington family tradition that identifies it as a gift from her on the occasion of a visit to Kelston Hall during a progress of 1592 is not supported by the historical evidence. Queen Elizabeth did not make a royal progress through Somerset in that year, nor did she do so within the last fifteen years of her reign. The family tradition perhaps falsely remembers her progress through Bath to Oxford in 1574, during which she well may have stopped in on her Vice-Chamberlain, John Harington of Stepney, inspected his new grand mansion, and dined under his massive fountain. Whether or not she gave her loyal servant a portrait of herself is not documented, but it is unlikely in any case that she would have given him a portrait done decades previously. More commonly, hosts sought permission from the Queen to commission commemorative portraits themselves, and this is not a commemorative portrait.
         The date inscription is not original to the painting and is probably instead the result of a later alteration or addition. It is quite likely that the inscriptions were altered or added at the same time the painting was reduced in size, and that the reduction was necessitated by damage incurred when Kelston Hall was twice ransacked during the civil wars of the 1640s.[65]
         The letterer who added or altered the inscription appears to have assumed, erroneously, that “Anno Domini” indicates the year of the subject’s birth. Elizabeth I was born 7 September 1533 and was thus twenty years old in 1553. The correlation of the two inscriptions has led to the painting being dated to 1553. But as stated above, that date is not supported by the evidence derived from the sitter’s costume, which instead situates the painting in the penultimate decade of the sixteenth century.
         As regards the identity of the sitter, the principal clue is the hat jewel. The Harington family of Kelston is known to have engaged with the Tudor-era fondness for visual/verbal punning and to have used three carefully chosen items as badges: a hare, a ring, and a tun.[66] An example of that is visible in the topper on the Harington Fountain, seen above. The jewel clearly incorporates the Harington hare. Less apparent in the painting, perhaps, is the tun, which can be defined as a cask for wine and ale or a chimney pot, the bulbous end of a chimney stack. The author and translator John Harington notably employed “tun” in its latter meaning in his Metamorphosis of Ajax.[67] The vaguely rendered black enameled element above the diamond may therefore represent either a wine cask "tun" or the chimney-pot type of "tun." And for the ring, one need only look to the small gold ring by which the hare dangles. Because the jewel can easily be associated with the Haringtons of Kelston, it follows that the woman depicted in this portrait is a member of that Harington family.
         The mistress of Kelston Hall in the period between 1585 and 1590 when this painting was created was Lady Mary Rogers Harington. She was a relatively young woman, having married John Harington as her first husband in 1583. Her date of birth is unknown, but she could easily have been aged 20 years at any point in the second half of the 1580s. There were no other young-adult Harington women living at Kelston at the time. Further, the lengthy neck chain in this portrait exactly matches in every respect a chain worn by Mary Rogers Harington in an authenticated double portrait of her and her husband painted at about the same time (below). In that authenticated painting, she also wears a very large ruff and a grey linen or cloth-of-silver chemise with blackwork embroidery depicting Tudor roses with gold in-filling. As the wife of one of Queen Elizabeth’s godsons, she was in a position to receive gifts of clothing from the queen, and we may be seeing those hand-me-downs here. Lady Harington’s dress in the authenticated portrait has, like the jacket in this painting, an extended V-shaped waistline on the bodice.[68]

         Lady Mary Rogers Harington produced her first son in 1589, comfortably within the span of time during which this painting was most probably executed. Art historians have noted the development of portraiture of women in the advanced stages of pregnancy in the late Tudor period, “an age when production of a male heir was perhaps a woman’s finest achievement.” They have suggested that these pregnancy portraits were records of anticipated dynastic success. It would perhaps be useful to investigate how many portraits of Elizabethan women can be identified as having been created less than one year post-partum, recording the dynastic success once the mother had reliably survived the rigors of childbearing. It seems likely that this portrait may be part of a previously unidentified genre.
         The collective body of evidence testifies to this painting being a previously unknown portrait of Lady Mary Rogers Harington, wife of Sir John Harington of Kelston Hall, painted in or about 1589 to commemorate the successful arrival of the first Harington male heir.

                                                                                                                                                John Stephan Edwards, Ph.D.
                                                                                                                                                Palm Springs, California
                                                                                                                                                14 April 2009

A Brief Note on Artist Attribution:

         While the artist of this work has not yet been identified, it is known that the Haringtons repeatedly patronized the leading artists of the day. Sir John Harington had his portrait painted in the early 1590s by Hieronymo Custodis (NPG 3121). A portrait by Marcus Gheerearts the Younger dated 1592 and now in the collection of the Tate Britain has been identified as Lady Mary Rogers Harington (T01872). Though the style of neither inscription in this painting matches that found in Custodis’s or Gheereaarts’ works, the questions surrounding the inscriptions do not allow ruling out either artist until further research and analysis has been completed. Other late Elizabethan portraitists that merit consideration and elimination include George Gower and Francis Segar, among others. It seems unlikely that the artist of this portrait was anything less than a known one associated with Elizabeth’s court.

Portraits of Lady Jane Grey

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