"He Dyis Befoir Midnycht" The Vendetta Picture in 16th Century Scotland (Part 5)

Regent Moray

The Vendetta picture of Regent Moray is sadly lost, but it forms an important part of this story.

Despite the instability of the rule of Scotland in the 16th century, the elite in charge of the nation was a small group, as is underlined by the events following Mary, Queen of Scots' surrender at Carberry Hill in June 1567.

The confederate lords may have been in opposition to the Queen and her new husband, but the Stewart dynasty was in no danger of being replaced as, not only did rule pass nominally to Mary's son, but the Regent appointed to control the state during his minority was non other than Mary's half-brother, James Stewart, the first Earl of Moray. The young James VI was crowned by Moray and his followers in July to quell discontent over the Queen's arrest and it seems to have been an almost universally popular move. Moray himself, however, was not especially well liked. As a Protestant, his relations with Mary had always been rocky, and what support his regency had stemmed from his allegiance to the Prince and his status as avenger of the murder of Darnley.

The trials that followed the Regent's accession publicly righted some of the wrongs of the preceding era, but they also proved useful for the elimination of political rivals and Moray's authority was undermined by his reliance on the support of various lords who had themselves been implicated in Darnley's murder. When Moray himself was murdered at Linlithgow on January 23rd, 1570, Scotland was again thrown into political turmoil and instability.

Despite his lack of popular support, the pictorial record following his death (perhaps on his own instructions) explicitly restated the link between Darnley, James and himself, presumably due to the success with which his followers had used the Darnley Banner. Moray's regency had not been a tranquil period, but as with Darnley, his early, violent death (in Moray's case, at the age of forty) seems to have boosted his appeal and led to a posthumous image as 'The Good Regent.'

This newfound popularity was again captured by Edinburgh printer Robert Lekpreuik, who had published ballads mourning Darnley's murder. The series mourning Moray again stresses both the virtue of the man and the cruelty of his death, as in The Regentis Tragedie, which begins "James Erle of Murray, Regent of Renown/Now lyis dead and dulefullie put down". The various accounts of Moray's murder all agree on the main details, though not on the virtues of the man himself. The murderer was James Hamilton of Bothwelhaugh (aided by another Hamilton, the archbishop of St Andrews) whose family was aligned to the Marian cause, though typically through dynastic ambition, rather than loyalty to the Queen herself. The writer of the 16th Century Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland from Fergus I to James VI gives a typical report of the murder; "and as he be ryding throw the said towne [Linlithgow] he is schott with ane bouillat of lead ane little beneathe the naveill and to his renis, and also George Douglas being ryding with him, his horse is slayne undir him... The Regent sayis 'I am hurtt'... and on fute gangis to his ludging, and quhen he had commendit the Prince to the nobility, he dyis befoir midnycht..."

The fact that the Regent survived for some time after sustaining his wounds, in the knowledge that he would certainly die is horrible but also interesting, in that it suggests that he himself is likely to have made arrangements for the death picture that was painted shortly thereafter.

An extraordinary poem, entitled And Tragedie in Form of ane dialog Betwix Honour, Gude Fame and the Authour heirof in a Trance, published shortly after the murder took place, tells the story of the murder, describing the corpse in very accurate detail; "Paill of the face, baith blaiknit, blude and ble, / Deid eyit, dram lyke, disfigurit was he; / Nakit and bair, schot throw pudding and panche, / Abone the Navil, and out abone the hanche". The poet's vivid description is explained towards the end of the poem where he describes entering the palace at Linlithgow to view the corpse. As with the Darnley case it is apparent that the painting that was made was only one part of a wider campaign. The poet, apparently writing on the morning after the murder was probably a member of the Regent's household and it is likely that the artist was too. The poem fulfils a very similar function to the Vendetta picture, describing the horrific nature of the murder in detail, but ending with an exhortation: "Reuenge his deith, ye Lords! I say na moir." The poem also reminds us that the lying-in-state of the dead body was an important part of the death ritual, and the Vendetta pictures can be seen to some extent as an attempt to widen this experience to involve the largest possible number of witnesses.

Although the picture is lost, its description in a report to Cecil in London makes its relation to the poem, and to the Darnley Banner, clear: "There was hanged forth in the open street an ensign of black satin, on which was painted the King [Darnley] as he was found dead, the Regent in his bed as he died, with his wound open, the King [James VI] on his knees crying 'Judge and revenge my caus, Lord'" This painting was more than a call for revenge - it was also an attempt to firmly establish the dynastic importance of the young King and his Protestant credentials and thereby win followers to his cause.

The first Earl of Moray was, as befitted a son of James V, a highly cultured man, a collector of books and a patron of the arts. In 1561, he commissioned the Dutch artist Hans Eworth to paint portraits of himself and his wife Agnes Keith, probably to celebrate their marriage that year.

Eworth was a successful painter, employed extensively by the court of Elizabeth I in England for portraits and as a designer of fetes, by both the aristocracy and the gentry. He had in fact painted a portrait of Lord Darnley and his younger brother in 1554, and the extent to which such portraits were important social and political tools can be seen by the fact that he made a copy of the picture on cloth, probably to be sent to Mary, Queen of Scots in 1563, when the Lennox family were keen to attract Mary's attention with their handsome and eligible son.  The Moray portraits, painted in Scotland and still in the collection of the Earls of Moray are strong examples of his realistic style in which sitters are highly individualised, the portrait of the Earl in particular being a convincing portrayal of his determined and somewhat humourless character.

The death portrait, painted in Linlithgow at very short notice, was much more likely to be the work of a Scottish artist attached to the Earl's household or, as he was away from home, a local artist who typically would be a burgess, such as Walter Binning (fl. 1540-94). Binning was a Burgess of Edinburgh but is recorded as working at Linlithgow Palace several times during his long career. Although trained as a glasswright, Binning's work included such tasks as decorating the interior and exterior of houses as well as making 'ymages', probably portraits, painting coats of arms and banners for various guilds - the sort of wide-ranging duties in fact, that might well encompass such a special commission as a Vendetta picture, with its mixture of realistic representation, emblematic elements and decorative lettering. There is no evidence to directly link Binning's name to the Regent's portrait, but he seems to have worked for the Royal household through several successive reigns and is as plausible an artist as any. But whether or not the Vendetta portrait of Moray was his, Walter Binning's career is a classic example of the Scottish painter/craftsman of the 16th century and his work no doubt conformed with the clear, graphic style demanded by the Scottish nobility in domestic commissions.

The complexities of the political chaos (and indeed civil war) following Moray's death - rarely as simple as Catholic versus Protestant or Mary versus James - meant that the picture could never become the potent, iconic symbol that the Darnley Banner had been. The cause of revenge in the name of the King was hardly likely to be forgotten though, when, following Moray's death, Lord Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox, was named Regent, partly on the advice of Elizabeth I of England. This did little for the stability of the realm, which remained unsettled until the Regency of the Earl of Morton in 1573. Morton, like Moray, Lennox and Mar before him, was a Protestant and leader of the King's party, but would ironically be executed by James VI in 1581 for his part in Darnley's murder.

Lennox, in his brief period as Regent ensured that the murder of his son was not forgotten, even into the period of the King's personal rule.  Though Regent Moray's death portrait remains untraced, it is unlikely to have been intentionally destroyed and it is not impossible that it was removed to one of his residences where, two decades later, it may have had an influence on the style and format of the now unique Vendetta portrait of his son-in-law, the second Earl, the most graphic and disturbing example of the genre.

 

 



"Avenge the Innocent Blood" - The Vendetta Picture in 16th century Scotland (Part 4)

The Darnley Memorial

The most complex, and arguably the most important Vendetta picture is The Darnley Memorial (1568), a large (1321 x 224.2cm) panel, painting in London in January 1568 by Lieven de Vogeleer. Little is known about the artist, except that he seems to have been a member of the Antwerp Guild in 1551. His presence in London at this date suggests that he was one of the many Netherlandish immigrants who fled religious persecution at home to work in London, where refugee churches had been established in 1550. In fact, the date of the painting coincides exactly with the period of the largest influx of refugees from the Netherlands arrived in the capital, as iconoclasm in Antwerp reached its height.

The picture was commissioned by Darnley's parents, the Earl and Countess of Lennox, who were, not surprisingly grief-stricken by the murder of their son. The painting is explicitly dedicated to Prince James in a Latin inscription on the extreme right which gives the date and place of the commission, as well as the purpose of the image; namely, that "he [James] shut not out of his memory the recent atrocious murder of the King his father, until God should avenge it through him". The choice of a foreign artist is not surprising, as foreign artists were generally favoured over local ones for more important commissions. The Lennox family had many English connections, not least Queen Elizabeth herself, as Darnley's mother, Margaret Lennox was in fact her cousin, a niece of Henry VIII. At the time of her son's murder, the Countess was a prisoner (albeit in fairly luxurious circumstances) in the Tower of London, where she had been since 1565 due to Elizabeth's displeasure over the marriage of Darnley and the Queen of Scots, which broke an oath of allegiance to Elizabeth herself. Despite this, relations between Elizabeth and the Lennoxes were generally good, and the Countess was freed on news of the murder, the Queen herself expressing concern over the unsolved crime.

The complex iconography was probably worked out by the Earl and Countess of Lennox who, with their younger son Charles, probably sat for the artist for their portraits  to be included in the painting. Two copies of the painting exist; the original in the Royal Collection at Holyrood Palace, and a copy, probably painted shortly afterwards, which is at Goodwood House. The Goodwood copy is important for deciphering the inscriptions which, in the Royal version have been damaged (probably on the orders of James VI) to remove damning references to Mary, Queen of Scots.

Like the Kirk O' Field drawing, only on a much bigger scale, the Darnley Memorial is a 'history' painting. The main focus of the picture is the effigy of Darnley himself, lying on a tomb, in what is probably supposed to be the interior of the chapel at Holyrood. The picture, like the Kirk O' Field drawing, gives a narrative of the events, though in a far less straightforward way. The circumstances of both the murder and its aftermath are alluded to throughout, while the many Latin inscriptions in the paintings serve to both accuse the murderers and call for revenge, while also reaffirming his status as King of Scotland. Darnley's Royal status was understandably important to the Lennox family pride, but also in order to affirm the legitimacy of James as the future monarch. This wasn't, however, a clear-cut issue. At the time of their marriage Mary had conferred the title 'King of Scots' on her new husband, but after their marriage began to disintegrate in 1565 she had denied him the 'Crown Matrimonial', which allowed he and his heirs legal status to rule in the event of Mary's death. Even after the birth of James, the Crown Matrimonial was not granted to Darnley, and after his murder the Lennoxes felt the need to stress the Royal ancestry of their son and grandson as Mary's situation became more precarious. Royalty is alluded to throughout the painting, in inscriptions, coats of arms, banners and architectural features, notably the unicorns bearing the crown which sit at the head of the effigy.

The largest inscription in the picture, on a painted marble tablet behind the tomb contains "An Heroic Poem upon the Death of the most Excellent Henry, King of Scots", possibly composed by Prince James' tutor George Buchanan, who was vehemently opposed to Mary and her supporters. As well as praising Darnley's qualities and accomplishments and squarely placing the blame for his murder on Mary, this poem stressed the King's Royal heritage, both through his marriage to Mary and independently of it, describing him as "a luminary of the Sacred Line of British Kings." This heritage is strengthened further by the depiction of several banners; those of the Royal House of Scotland, the Saltire and Darnley's own coat of arms.

The scene alludes to the usual surroundings of a Royal funeral, but although Darnley was in fact buried at Holyrood, no ceremony took place and no life size effigy existed. It is clear from the setting as well as the inscriptions that the Lennoxes were bitterly disappointed by the lack of respect shown for their son's body and the undignified way in which his passing was marked. Ironically, the use of a painted memorial actually gave Darnley a distinction he is unlikely to have enjoyed in reality, even in better circumstances. The tomb and effigy are shown directly in line with the high altar, featuring the figure of the risen Christ, extremely rare on post-Reformation tomb monuments, and alluding to Darnley's own Catholicism. This arrangement places the King in a liturgically important position relatively unheard of in Protestant Europe.

The kneeling donors are in the tradition of Flemish donor portraits of the 15th century, perhaps alluding the famous Royal altarpiece painted for James III by Hugo van der Goes, stressing the continuity of the Scottish crown as embodied by Darnley. The artist's Netherlandish origins are revealed in the skilful portraits and sensitively clasped hands of the Earl and Countess, although the stiffness of the poses suggests that they sat for facial portraits only, but at the same time their static quality heightens the sense of a solemn, ceremonial event.

If the Royal status of Henry was arguable, that of Mary was not, and the most important aspect of the painting is the call for vengeance against the slayers of the King, most prominently the Queen herself. A close inspection of the picture reveals the strong anti-Marian bias very clearly. As with the Royal imagery, the defamation of the Queen appears in both pictorial and written form. On the side of the bier upon which Darnley's effigy rests are two trompe l'oeil carved reliefs. The left roundel depicts Darnley and his servant William Taylor being dragged from their beds at Kirk O' Field and has an inscription reading "caedis dicti regis et servi sui in lectis"  ["the murder of the king and servant in their beds"]. The right shows the bodies lying in the orchard with an inscription reading "post caedem in horto reperiutur prostrate" ["After the murder found prostrate in the garden"].

Below in the left foreground, an inset scene, painted as though it is a framed picture restng against the picture plain, shows the battle of Carberry Hill, painted as a somewhat archaic Flemish landscape.

 

The confederate troops prominently bear the Darnley Banner as they march on the Queen's forces and as with the Kirk O' Field drawing several events are shown simultaneously. Bothwell and his servant are seen leaving the field (with an inscription "Bothwellis departing") and are also seen disappearing on the skyline (with the inscription "Bothwill fleand"). Around the frame, the details of the battle are inscribed, stressing the mass of the nobility's opposition to the acts of Bothwell and Mary. The narrative of the murder and its aftermath reaches its culmination in the recumbent effigy of the dead King with his pallid face and staring eyes, and the inscriptions issuing from the mouths of his kneeling parents and heir. The young Prince exclaims "Arise O Lord, and avenge the innocent blood of the KIng my father and me, I entreat thee, defend with your right hand." Darnley's younger brother Charles actually prays to become the instrument of divine retribution himself. The spirit of the painting is very close to the blunt language of the flood of ballads printed in Edinburgh the same year, notably the vehement Exhortatioun to the Lordis (June 1567) which advises the nobility to "Pas forwart in your interpryse/Revenge in haist the cruell act... Let him be slaine your King that slew/Bring ainis his fylthie lyfe till end", ending with the blasphemous "God blis you and your interpryse."

The sombre mood of the painting, with its depiction of solemn, religious ceremony and equally sombre, minimalist colour scheme (harmonious reds, golds and browns) encourages an introspective, meditative response from the viewer. However, this is not peaceful reflection; the mood is serious but also bitter and vengeful, encouraging the viewer to focus on the sense of injustice and tragedy. The image demands that the personal tragedy of the kneeling family applies also to the wider 'family', all of the subjects of the late and rightful King. The most important figures however, are barely visible; Bothwell, a tiny, fleeing figure, then still at large, and Queen Mary, seen surrendering to the army bearing the dead King's banner and thereby admitting her guilt. The picture therefore is a memorial of both a man and a cause, and as with its humbler precedents, is a carefull calculated work which gains force from its potent mix of narrative, documentary and propaganda.

The painting, as an important image of the Scottish monarchy could not be destroyed, even after its cause had become part of history. James VI, though not especially interested in the visual arts, had a keen sense of the quasi-divinity of the Royal image, on one occasion executing a man for not showing the proper respect to Royal portraits.
 In later years, especially after his accession to the throne of England in 1603, he was anxious to rehabilitate the reputation of both of his parents, and it was presumably then that the inscriptions were damaged and the painting given to his Lennox relatives, not re-entering the Royal Collection until the reign of George II a century later.
James' disowning of the picture demonstrates the extent to which, even after the direct references to Mary were removed, it remained a stark image of accusation, the cumulative effect of its wealth of detail vividly recreating the bleak and angry mood surrounding its creation.

An interesting postscript to the Darnley pictures is the Lennox jewel, commissioned some time in the 1560s or 70s. Lord Lennox, Darnley's father, took over from regent Moray in 1570, but was himself shot and killed by rebels after only a year in office. Interestingly, no Vendetta picture seems to have commemorated this act, perhaps because Lennox's successor, The Earl of Mar's regency guaranteed James VI's succession. His death may, however be commemorated in the Lennox Jewel, a complex and emblematic work which relates in many ways to the pictures, The jewel, now in the Royal Collection, was commissioned by Countess Lennox, and bears inscriptions which may refer to the murder of the Regent and which certainly allude to Darnley's claim to the throne of England.

 

"That Cursed Banner" - The Vendetta Picture in 16th Century Scotland (Part 3)

The Darnley Banner

If Darnley in life had been seen as impulsive and vain, his murder at the age of 21 made these traits seem understandable and forgivable. Whatever Queen Mary's role had been in the murder, the perception of the public was that she had, at the very least, neglected the usual mourning duties  that followed the death of a King, had hastily remarried (and married the prime suspect in the murder of Darnley) and had failed to seek justice against the King's murderers.

The Diurnal of Occurents, a text probably written by an Edinburgh spectator outside of the Royal court (viewable here: http://archive.org/details/diurnalofremarka00thom), gives a vivid impression of the mood in the city. The murder took place in February 1567 and by that April public feeling against Mary and her new partner, The Earl of Bothwell had given rise to pamphlets and prints circulated among the city's occupants and displayed at the Tolbooth, so that Mary made a proclamation that "nane suld set thaim [the 'tickettis and wreittingis'] up, write nor dight thame, or gif they saw thame, they should destroy thame, and na copyse to be tane thairof" on pain of punishment. Even a pro-Marian source, the French History of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), which assumes the Queen's innocence, reports that she "was forced, by sounde of trumpet, to publishe the goode will shee had to rewenge the death of her husband".

Throughout the historical sources it is clear that the inhabitants of the capital viewed Mary's actions and motives with a great deal of scepticism. When news spread that Mary's attachment to Bothwell was not by choice but through his kidnapping and 'ravishment' of her, the author of the Diurnal states that "the mater, as is reportit, wes devisit by hir Hienes awne consent, to caus the rumour pas that he had ravist her." This rumour was spread by the Queen in an effort to quell the public opinion that the affair with Bothwell had been going on for some time, as the Diurnal's author says was "weill proven." In this atmosphere, sympathy for the dead King, as well as opposition to Bothwell and Mary, grew rapidly.

A group of nobles, known as the 'confederate lords', rallied around the young Prince James and, cynically taking Mary at her word regarding Bothwell's kidnapping and ravishment, set out to dissolve the marriage and 'free' the Queen. The group was (not surprisingly) mainly motivated by self-interest and their real aim was to establish James, a young child, on the throne in order to rule in his name.

                   The Battle Of Carberry Hill, drawing, 1567

That they did not have the Queen's interests at heart became obvious after the farcical and bloodless 'battle' of Carberry Hill in June 1567 at which Mary was taken prisoner. Indeed, the confederate lords included several individuals who had been implicated in the plot against Darnley as well as Mary's half-brother the Earl of Moray, who had almost certainly been aware of the plot to kill the King, but had turned a blind eye to it until it benefitted him to take sides.

According to contemporary sources on both sides, the Darnley Banner played a key role in the victory of the confederate lords at Carberry. The two armies arrived at Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh, on the 15th of June and, after an attempt to arrange a single combat between Bothwell and a delegate from the confederates failed when Bothwell fled the field (apparently with Mary's blessing), the Queen's army disbanded and she was taken captive. The 16th century Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland gives a typical account of the banner as it was used: "There was ane certain standart borne by twa sudderties [soldiers] bendit betwixt twa speiris, quhairin wes payntit the pictour of hir husband the King, with his sone on his knees, saying 'JUDGE AND REVENGE MY CAUS O LORD.' This standart wes ever borne befoir hir, quhair ever scho went, at the sicht whairof scho wes so mowit that scho had to be cherreischit to be hadine on horseback;, bot that nycht thay brocht hit to Edinburgh, quhar scho remainitt twa dayis." A 17th century author, sympathetic to Mary but evidently drawing on a similar source tells much the same story but adds that "They thrust her into an Inne, where if she look'd but out at window...she was sure to have that cursed banner a fresh presented."

                           The confederate lords with the Darnley Banner at Carberry Hill, from tan etched copy of the Darnley Memorial

A drawing, representing the design of the banner (which is also seen in miniature in the drawing of the battle of Carberry, and in an inset scene on the Darnley Memorial (more on that later) still exists in the Public Record Office Archives (SP/52/13). The design of the banner seems to have been adapted from the drawing of the murder scene, suggesting perhaps that the same artist may have been responsible for both the Kirk O' Field drawing and the painting of the banner itself. In the design, the setting is distilled to a few significant details - the tree, the wall with the gate through which the murderers entered, and the grass on which the body lay. 

Darley is pictured as he was found, his shirt around his middle and his hand covering his genitals. The partial nudity of the body would have presented a shocking spectacle to those used to the ornamental grandeur of courtly portraiture, and accurately conveys the nature of the crime while heightening the emotional impact of the design. This emotional quality is made even more explicit by the inclusion of the figure of the young Prince, kneeling at his dead father's feet and calling upon god to avenge his murder.

The divinely-sanctioned nature of the young boy is heightened by the Christogram IHS which appears in a mandorla-like border at the top-centre of the banner. Although stopping short of including an image of Christ or the Virgin Mary, this is still a surprisingly overt religious motif, reflecting the fact that the split between Marian/Jamesian factions was not a straightforward Catholic/Protestant one. The production of banners was a routine task of the Scottish craftsman/painter of the day, and the design, with the framing device of the tree is elegant rather than stark, suggesting that the artist probably belonged to this class, with its decorative ideals.

At a distance of more than 400 years it is difficult as well as pointless to try to determine the extent to which Mary was involved in the murder of Lord Darnley. But it is fair to say that her actions in the aftermath of the murder led to her downfall. The period of indecision in which the murderers went unpunished provided a perfect opportunity for Mary's enemies to rally around a figurehead who was both credible and malleable. With Mary's surrender at Carberry Hill, the potency of the confederate lords' gruesome and affecting banner seems to have been confirmed, and it was a success that was to be remembered.

 

 

"Ane Deformit Lump Of Clay": The Vendetta Picture in 16th Century Scotland (Part Two)

The Murder of Henry, Lord Darnley

Background: the murder

'Henry, King of Scots' is not a famous title, but in 1565, that was what Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley became upon his marriage to Queen Mary. A handsome, but not popular figure in his lifetime, Henry's murder at Kirk O' Field, Edinburgh in 1567 may have been the result of his own treachery. In March 1566, motivated mainly by jealousy, he had planned and helped to carry out the murder of Mary's Italian secretary, David Rizzio and, shortly afterwards, betrayed his fellow conspirators. Mary's role in the subsequent murder of her husband remains highly controversial, but whatever her motives, the Queen's pardoning of Rizzio's murderers in December 1566 was almost certain to have violent consequences.

In a night of great confusion, in which his lodging at Kirk O' Field was destroyed by a huge explosion, Darnley was murdered, probably through suffocation, by unknown assailants, most likely members of the Douglas family, his own kin. His body, along with that of one of his servants, was laid out in a nearby orchard.

The pictorial record of the murder (and this is true with almost all of the Vendetta pictures) was mirrored by other forms of popular art, notably the ballad. In Darnley's case this consisted of black letter ballads, many published in Edinburgh by a local printer, Robert Lekpreuik, rather than the sung ballads popular in the north.

The horror and mystery of the murder, along with the youth of the victim and various unsavoury rumours regarding the Queen's behaviour vastly improved public opinion of the dead man, as the ballads testify. These printed broadsides were aimed squarely at a popular audiences and, like the pictures, stress the treachery and the pity of the murder: "Ane King at evin, with Sceptur, Sword and Crown/At morn but ane deformit lump of clay/With traitouris strang sa cruellie put downe."

The Kirk O' Field Drawing

This coloured drawing made the morning after the murder, presumably at Kirk O' Field itself is of immense importance to the history of the Vendetta picture. It features, for the first time, all of the elements that define the genre. The drawing was made at the request of Sir William Drury, Marshal of Berwick and Deputy to the Earl of Bedford, to be sent in a report on the murder to Queen Elizabeth's chief advisor, William Cecil in England, presumably on the site of the murder itself. It is likely that the drawing was made by one of the many painters active in Edinburgh at the time, either attached to the Royal household at Holyrood, or perhaps one of the many 'servants' on record as being active in the town in this period. It can't be discounted that the artist was in the household of Drury himself, but the style of the drawing, clear, elegant and vigorous, agrees very well with the style of works being created across Scotland at this time in roughly contemporary works such as the murals at Kinneil House.

The format of the picture raises an important point about Scottish painting in this period. Recent writers on Scottish art of the 16th Century have stressed the independence of Scottish art from the influence of England. This is certainly the case with the larger-scale decorative work already mentioned and as mentioned, the Scottish court was usually less insular than that of England and therefore open to continental, rather than southern influences. However, while this is accurate up to a point (especially in the earlier years of the 16th century), it is not the whole picture. It was normal for the great families of Scotland, such as the Lennoxes and the Stewarts ,to have links in the English court and this essentially meant that, especially post-Reformation, portrait painters such as Hans Eworth had networks of clients that were not restricted by national boundaries. While these artists introduced Britain to a relatively modern style of Northern European painting, European emblem books were providing native artists across Britain with an almost literary approach to art that can be seen across the whole range of British art, from portraiture, to decorative painting and manuscript illumination. The Kirk O' Field drawing also represents another type of artwork common in Britain; the 'history' picture. Although regarded as outmoded and naïve in the wake of the Italian Renaissance's (admittedly delayed) impact on Britain, the genre was used by local painters for decades to come. The 'history' has the ability to relate a narrative through the condensation of several scenes into one (often compartmentalised) picture. The form, probably derived from the medieval manuscript and print tradition was extensively used in both secular and religious works throughout Britain, the most famous example being the Memorial Picture of Sir Henry Unton (1596), in which scenes from the sitter's life, as well as his funeral procession, are arranged around his portrait.

The strength of this kind of picture is that it allows for a documentary realism and a narrative alongside allegorical or symbolic elements, drawn together by a single theme, in the case of Henry Unton, that of commemoration. The history picture is also open to many different adaptations, lending itself easily to the emblematic portraits popular in Elizabethan England, and also to works with a strong element of propaganda, such as the allegorical painting of Edward VI and the Pope (c.1568-71), closely contemporary with the Darnley pictures, in which portrait-like images of Henry VIII and Edward VI are combined with the satirical depiction of the Pope and an inset image of Protestants engaged in the destruction of religion images.

This picture also demonstrates the way in which text can be employed in the history picture, explaining and reinforcing its meaning. The decorative arts of Scotland, despite having evolved quite separately from those of England, also included these elements, often combining heraldic devices, portraiture, figure painting and text, often moralising in nature, demonstrating the shared medieval heritage of the two nations.  Equally important to the Vendetta genre are the banners created by the artist/craftsmen of Britain and Europe for use in all kinds of processions and celebrations, including funerals, coronations and triumphal entries. This kind of painting was, though at the centre of the social life of the courts of Europe, but was by its nature ephemeral, and so very few examples survive.  The Vendetta picture, though a distinct genre, is almost a hybrid of history picture and processional banner, though it utilises their elements in a particularly pointed way.

The Kirk O' Field drawing is immediately recognisable as a history picture; with the aftermath of the murder represented as a narrative of events with the corpse of Darnley as its focal point. As befits its purpose of informing the viewer of the sequence of events, the drawing includes all of the key elements in an easily readable way.

In the top right the most important feature, the bodies in the orchard, is shown on a larger scale than the other details. Darnley's body is shown as it was found, laid under a tree in his nightshirt, his hand covering his genitals. His servant, William Taylor, is shown nearby, dumped unceremoniously by the murderers, in contrast to the careful laying-out of the King. Articles of clothing and a dagger are shown scattered on the ground. The figures are elegantly and economically drawn in a style very similar to that seen in the Scottish armorial books popular in this period. The gateway used by the murderers is shown, and it is possible to reconstruct their route from the ruined house on the left. At the bottom of the drawing, as in the Unton Memorial painting, the funeral rites are shown, with the body of Taylor being buried in the grounds of the small church which gave Kirk O' Field its name, while Darnley is being carried to the abbey at Holyrood, where he was buried a few days later, with little of the usual Royal pomp and ceremony.

The elements that make this drawing more than just a simple, documentary narrative, however, are the concealed murderers on horseback shown on the right, shown in an enclosed box to represent the fact that they were hidden (though it was not certain where exactly this was) and, most importantly, the figure of the infant Prince James in the upper left of the picture.

 The Prince, then less than a year old, is shown sitting up in his bed, his hands clasped in prayer. Issuing from his mouth is a scroll reading "Judge and Revenge My Caus O Lord". This emotive statement is in stark contrast to the other inscriptions in the picture, which merely supply details of place names, and was obviously intended to provide the viewer with a taste of the sense of outrage that swept through the city the morning after the murder, and which had already begun to focus on the Queen. Though this accurately depicts the suspicions of the local people as recorded in written sources, its tone is emotive rather than objective.

That the picture's intended viewer, William Cecil, was a fanatical Protestant and Mary's greatest enemy in the English also suggests that this drawing was not the product of a cold recording of evidence. In the days following the murder public attention was focussed on the Queen, and her failure to address the public calls for revenge was arguably more damaging to her reputation than the murder itself. As the drawing shows, the infant James, though controversially baptised a Catholic, provided a potent rallying point for those opposing the Queen, and the death of his father presented an ideal opportunity to take sides without allying oneself to Darnley himself. The presence of James was also important to Cecil as Elizabeth was not unsympathetic to Mary, and her instinct was to protect the sanctity of the monarchy, especially as the Tudor and Stewart dynasties were linked by blood. James, as a legitimate heir to the throne, unsullied by scandal and in need of a guiding hand for many years to come, was a powerful focus for those with political ambitions on both sides of the border.

The call for revenge was therefore not simply an emotive cry for justice and in this sense the drawing is an important precursor to the first large-scale, public Vendetta pictures, defining their mixture of documentary and propaganda within an established traditional format which would be readily recognisable to a contemporary audience. the potent combination of fact and polemic was to have an immediate and successful follow-up in the Darnley Banner and it is possible that the same artist was responsible for the design of the work, itself perhaps derived from the Kirk O' Field drawing.

 

 

Seeing Dead People - The Vendetta Picture in 16th Century Scotland (Part One)

Since the Victorian era, pictures of dead people - not pictures of people who have died, but pictures of actual dead people have usually served one of two functions; to commemorate (like Victorian corpse photographs, an interesting subject in itself) or as crime-scene records.

For a brief period in sixteenth century Scotland though, they were those things but more; a tool of propaganda - a record, an accusation, a call for justice. As such they were a symptom of the specific, complex and in many ways contradictory culture which created them and then, appropriately, when the elements that had led to their creation were replaced with something more reflective, the need for these kind of pictures disappeared.

Background;

Art, Patronage and Politics in 16th Century Scotland

Like every other period, the mid-sixteenth century was a troubled time in Europe, and the nature of these troubles - especially the Protestant Reformation and subsequent iconoclasm - had an unusually direct impact on the visual arts of the time. The act of painting itself became, on the one hand distrusted as a source of idolatry and on the other a potent weapon in the propaganda war between the Protestant and Catholic faiths. Only the art of portraiture, closely identified with the Princely courts of the time, continued more or less as before, though it was not unchanged by the upheavals in society. In Britain (anyway not exactly a world leader paintings at the time) this situation was exacerbated by dynastic problems. In England, the short, troubled reigns of Edward VI and Mary I led to a breakdown in courtly culture which didn't really stabilise until some years into the reign of Elizabeth I. The situation in Scotland was even more precarious.

The Reformation north of the border had been achieved with a minimum of violence, but the death of James V in 1542 had ushered in a period of chronic instability. A period of short regencies accompanied by inter-factional fighting was not improved by the beginning of the personal reign of James' French-raised, Catholic daughter, Mary in 1561, not least because 1560 had been the year when Scotland officially became Protestant.

After the murder of Mary's husband, Henry, Lord Darnley in 1567 and her unpopular marriage to the Earl of Bothwell shortly thereafter, the situation worsened into a state of actual civil war, where rival groups of nobles, often (but not always) divided by religion, gathered around Mary's infant son, the future James VI and Mary herself. The existence of two royal courts, neither stable enough to be based in one place for a significant length of time, was hardly conducive to the production of visual art, and indeed during these years, Scotland, which had long been part of the courtly culture of Northern Europe failed, like England, to keep abreast of the latest artistic developments which were occurring elsewhere.



 The young lord Darnley and his brother, painted by Hans Eworth in 1563

It was precisely because of this troubled situation though, that a short-lived but distinctive genre emerged in Scotland; the vendetta picture. Not especially innovative in terms of technique or impressive in scale, these pictures nevertheless generally feature a vigorous, documentary realism allied to a pointed propagandist purpose, making them distinctive and sometimes intense examples of 16th century art, unique to Scotland in this period.

Hugo van der Goes' Trinity College Altarpiece

Up until the death of James V in the aftermath of the battle of Solway Moss in 1542, the Scottish court had been an active participant in the Northern Renaissance. The links of trade and marriage, especially to France and the Low Countries, had produced a body of painting, metalwork and writing, including the Trinity College Altarpiece (c. 1470) produced for James III by the Flemish master Hugo van der Goes, the 15th Century mace of St Salvator's College, St Andrews and the poetry of William Dunbar, Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas, which was entirely comparable with that of other Northern European countries.

 Under James V, a typical renaissance Prince, this achievement was extended to include large-scale building programmes. It had remained the case that major painting commissions were normally awarded to foreign (especially Dutch or Flemish) artists, but the native court artists of the king were at the forefront of fashion in the production of decorative works such as Books of Hours, illuminated manuscripts and the decoration of churches, palaces and houses. In fact, a distinctive decorative approach had evolved in this period, a recognisable 'national style' which was notable for its vigour and simplicity and for the confidence with which Scottish painters tackled large-scale commissions, such as wall and ceiling paintings.

Painted ceiling in Crathes Castle, c. 1599

This illustrative native tradition was the only aspect of the Scottish renaissance to survive the double blow of the Protestant Reformation and the dissolution of the Royal court following the death of James V. and as such it is crucial both to the study of Scottish art in the sixteenth century and to the Vendetta genre itself.

The instability of court life continued during the minority of James V's daughter Mary, ('Queen of Scots') but some important decorative schemes were commissioned by the aristocracy, notably the Regent Arran at Kinneil House during the 1550s-60s.

mural at Kinneil House c.1550s

Links with France also continued during this period, not least because of the young Queen's residence in Paris. When Mary's French mother, Marie de Guise, became Regent from 1554-60 the French influence continued, although the first half of the century also included the first outbreaks of iconoclasm in Scotland. In the 1540s, the Reformation arrived fully fledged in Scotland and religious painting all but ceased.The Reformation itself was relatively less violent than elsewhere, partly because of the weakness of the crown, which was exacerbated by a new anti-French feeling among the nobility, which undermined Marie de Guise's authority. When Marie died in 1560 the Reformers inherited the rule of the country, and even the return from France of the Queen later that year failed to fully reverse the situation.

In fact, the Royal court of Scotland was never to fully regain the stability and prominence it had had in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, though it did recover some of its dignity post 1579, when King James VI took up his personal rule. This situation meant that, although the visual arts in Scotland didn't die out altogether, their development was, by the standards of Europe generally, severely crippled. Portrait painters, such as Hans Eworth and Adrian Vanson still came to Scotland from the Low Countries to paint the nobility, but they were isolated figures and on the whole there was not the same exchange of ideas and innovations as there had been in the previous century. 

Meanwhile, the native painters of Scotland continued to fulfil the tasks of portraiture, heraldic and decorative painting in the style that they had developed in the fifteenth century, but although they looked to the emblem books of the continent for inspiration, their role as craftsmen, rather than artistic personalities and their reliance on the now relatively insular Crown and nobility for employment left them little opportunity for the kind of individual artistic growth seen throughout mainland Europe (and it's worth pointing out that the decade of the1560s alone produced iconic works by Bosch, Breughel, Titian, Veronese and El Greco).

Little is known about the training of Scottish painters in the 16th century, but it seems to have been a common occurrence for a painter to have a family background in the craft. Like any craftsman in the period, they would be apprenticed to a master, under whom they would work for a pre-arranged period (generally seven years for painters) before presenting a piece of work to their master which, if judged good enough, would qualify him to work independently. A painter also had to be admitted as a Burgess and enrol in the Guild of Wrights and Masons (there was no Painters' Guild until late in the 17th century) before they could legally work. Once enrolled, they could be employed by the Crown and nobility, as well as local town authorities on all kinds of artistic and decorative commissions as well as public celebrations.

The Vendetta picture, a work containing portrait-style representation and narrative painting alongside written inscriptions, seems to take its form from the varied commissions of these heraldic or decorative painters. The patrons who commissioned these works were themselves members of the aristocracy whose houses were commonly adorned with these emblematic decorative schemes and it seems likely that their familiarity with this type of work shaped the form they wished these pictures to take, whether they were commissioned from a local painter, or as in the case of the Darnley Memorial (more on that later), a visiting continental artist. Therefore the Vendetta picture can be interpreted as the attempt of a lively, well-established courtly tradition to cope with the demands of a darker time in which the very courtly society which formed it began to disintegrate.

Revenge in 16th Century Scotland

The term 'Vendetta picture' presupposes a society in which the concept of revenge plays a part. The religious divisions and subsequent breakdown of law and order throughout Europe in the second half of the 16th century led to widespread debate about revenge, seen most prominently in the rash of 'revenge tragedies' which began to appear in the English theatre from Pickering's Horestes (1567) onwards, culminating in the morbid plays of John Webster in the early years of the 17th century. The issues raised in such works reflected the genuine concerns of the audience. Revenge, summed up by Francis Bacon in his Essays (1625) as 'a kind of wild justice' was not only illegal, but expressly forbidden by divine authority: 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord'. This commandment was firmly upheld by Jean Calvin, one of the most decisive influences on the 16th Century Kirk of Scotland, but the desire for revenge, and the concept of the bloodfeud (more on that later too) remained strong, especially where the law was seen to be deficient or corrupt. 

The seemingly clear-cut words of the bible were also complicated by the divinely-sanctioned nature of monarchy. That monarchy could override even God is seen in the bizarre English 'Bond of Association' where leading nobles signed a pledge obliging them blasphemously to take 'uttermost revenge' on anyone attempting to overthrow Elizabeth I or usurp the throne. By contrast, James VI, although famous for his elevated view of the divine nature of monarchy, which he described thus; 'Monarchie...which forme of gouernmente, as resembling the Divinitie, approacheth nearest to perfection" was nevertheless cautious about the subject of revenge. In his book on statecraft, Basilikon Doron (1599), he specifically advised his son Henry to be intolerant of 'unlawfull things, such as revenge'. This attitude is entirely consistent with James' view of himself as a peacemaker, but it perhaps also reflects the experiences of his youth, when he was used as a figurehead by a faction of nobles in opposition to his own mother. In that situation, his Royal position allowed his party to call for revenge in the name of God and the king, to the extent that the phrase Judge and Avenge my Cause, O Lord became a kind of catchphrase of the young King, appearing in several paintings, as well as becoming the refrain for a 24 stanza ballad, The Kingis Complaint, published in Edinburgh in 1570 when the King was four years old. Revenge was a potent but highly ambiguous concept, which could, despite its illegal and anti-Christian nature, be presented as not only just, but even pleasing to God.
 

James VI as a child.