painting history delaroche andC lady jane grey stephen bannand linda whiteley with john guy,christ opherriopelle and annerobbins National Gallery Company,Lo ndon Distributedby YaleUn iversity Press Delaroche 9.indd 2 21/12/2009 16:00 Delaroche 9.indd 3 16/12/2009 09:37 Contents ^ This catalogue is published tO accompany Director’s Foreword · ¸ the exhibition Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey The National Gallery, London, õ February to õÁ May õb Authors’ Acknowledgements · y Copyright © õb National Gallery Company Limited The Authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents The Story of Lady Jane Grey · Act, b, to be identified as Authors of this work. John Guy All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior Lost and Found · by permission in writing of the publisher. Christopher Riopelle First published in Great Britain in õb by National Gallery Company Limited St Vincent House · Á Orange Street The Sense of the Past · õÓ London dA4 ²44 Linda Whiteley www.nationalgallery.co.uk %vÍ: í ²ï°ïï²Éí ô²í ô The Victim as Spectacle: ïAïôÉ° Paul Delaroche’s ‘Lady Jane Grey’ and Mademoiselle Anaïs · ÁÓ British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. Stephen Bann A catalogue record is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: AÉÉíí{²ïô² dúºGÓ: · ¸ Publisher Louise Rice Stephen Bann and Linda Whiteley, Project Editor Claire Young Editor Rebecca McKie with Christopher Riopelle and Anne Robbins Picture Researcher Suzanne Bosman Production Jane Hyne and Penny Le Tissier Paul Delaroche: Chronology · bÓy Designed and typeset in Brunel by Dalrymple Anne Robbins Reproduction by Altaimage, London Printed in Italy by Conti Tipocolour Cover, pages , b¸, õ, Á and b¸–y (details): Paul Delaroche (byy–bÓ¸), Lenders to the Exhibition · b¸ The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, bÁÁ. Oil on canvas, double-lined, õÓb x Áõ cm. The National Gallery, London (ÍGÓÁ). Bibliography · b¸b Opposite title page: Jules-Gabriel Levasseur (bõÁ–about b), Photographic Credits · b¸¸ aFer Eugène Buttura (bbõ–bÓõ), Portrait of Paul Delaroche, bÓÁ. Engraving on paper, õ x õb.Ó cm. Private Collection Appendix and IndeÌ · b¸y Delaroche 9.indd 4 21/12/2009 16:04 Delaroche 9.indd 5 21/12/2009 16:07 The Story of Lady Jane Grey john guy ^ Í: G´:¹ 4 ú¹ been enveloped in myth. Her date of When Jane was ‘just fourteen’ in May bÓÓb, her own tutor, John birth is invariably wrongly stated, and allegations that her father Aylmer, praised her in a letter to the leading Swiss reformer Heinrich Jverbally and physically abused her as a child have been invented Bullinger.R Jane was encouraged to write to Bullinger herself: an ex- over the centuries to turn her into a victim as well as a tragic heroine iled German divine, John of Ulm, visiting Bradgate that spring, was (fig. b).¹ She was born at Bradgate in Leicestershire on the edge of the shown a copy of one of these letters.Ý Although formal, sententious Charnwood Forest in the spring of bÓÁy, the eldest surviving child of and awkward, her letters to Bullinger are in faultless Latin. ‘In writing Frances Brandon, Henry %%%’s niece, and her husband Henry Grey, to you in this manner’, she explains, ‘I have exhibited more boldness Marquis of Dorset (later Duke of Suffolk).² Her father, unusually than prudence: but so great has been your kindness towards me, in well educated for a nobleman, was a bibliophile. Both Jane’s parents condescending to write to me, a stranger, and in supplying the nec- sympathised with the humanist and evangelical reformers, and she re- essary instruction for the adornment of my understanding and the ceived a superb education based on the model that Sir Thomas More improvement of my mind, that I should justly appear chargeable with had devised for his eldest daughter, Margaret. neglect and forgetfulness of duty, were I not to show myself mindful As a great-granddaughter of Henry %%, the founder of the Tudor of you and of your deservings in every possible way.’h She began to dynasty, and a second cousin to Edward % and his half-sisters Mary study Hebrew as well as Greek, so that she could read the Old and and Elizabeth, Jane was close to the court and its politics (see Jane’s New Testaments in the original, and a year or so later, Mildred Cooke, claim to the throne on p. b). By the terms of Henry %%%’s will, should a kinswoman and another brilliant intellectual, the wife of Sir William his own children die without heirs, she was next in line of royal suc- Cecil, Elizabeth %’s future chief minister, sent her the Greek homilies cession aFer any son that her parents might have.³ And by the age of of Saint Basil.¹/ bb she had caught the eye of Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, one As Jane matured, she became increasingly confident and asser- of King Edward’s uncles, whO had married Henry %%%’s sixth queen, tive, determined to cultivate her status as an evangelical Protestant Katherine Parr, shortly aFer Henry’s death. Seymour had a scheme figurehead and not averse to one-upmanship. Although she had loved to marry Jane to Edward, and he bargained with the Greys for her fine clothes and braided hair as a child, when urged by her father and wardship. Jane was briefly installed at Seymour Place in London, but tutor to imitate her cousin Elizabeth in dressing plainly, she quickly a serious scandal involving Seymour’s ambitions and his relationship got the message, and when sent a costly dress of ‘tinsel, cloth of gold, with the young Elizabeth, on whom he alsO had designs, led to his fall and velvet, laid on with parchment lace of gold’ as a New Year’s giF and execution on a charge of treason, and Jane returned to Bradgate by Mary, a staunch Catholic, she asked curtly: ‘ “What shall I do with to resume her studies. it?” “Marry,” said a gentlewoman, “Wear it.” “Nay,” quoth she, “that In the summer of bÓÓ, Roger Ascham, the most famous Tudor were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s word, and leave educationalist, visited Bradgate, where he found Jane reading Plato’s my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s word.” ’¹¹ Phaedo in Greek ‘and that with as much delight as some gentlemen Religion lay at the heart of the political crisis in Edward %’s reign. would read a merry tale in Boccaccio’. When he asked why she was not In the spring of bÓÓÁ, when Jane was b¸, the young king fell mortally ill out hunting with her family in the park, she smiled and said smugly: and planned to exclude his sisters from the succession. He believed that ‘All their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find neither could be trusted not to reverse or modify his new Protestant in Plato.’ì AFerwards, Ascham discreetly hinted that Jane was a better settlement. He was convinced that both were legally barred from scholar than her cousin Elizabeth, whose tutor he briefly was.9 inheriting the crown, for both had been declared illegitimate by his 8 | ADD RUNNING FOOT? £%Í%ÍG 4%º´¹ | í Delaroche 9.indd 8 15/12/2009 16:05 Delaroche 9.indd 9 16/12/2009 09:37 The Tudor Succession father’s Parliaments.¹² At this stage the idea that any woman, includ- ‘device’ had been the product of a deranged mind.¹R Although the ing Jane Grey, might succeed him was anathema to Edward. When young king had legally bound his privy councillors, nobles and judges ^ in April he first began to jot down his ideas to ‘devise’ the crown to a to observe his ‘device’ in the final days of his life, their consent had been Protestant heir, his tuberculosis was in remission and he envisaged extracted by fear and threats, and most people, especially the citizens that before his death, Jane’s mother, Frances, would have a son or that of London, continued to support Mary. The Duke of Northumberland HENRY VII Elizabeth of York Jane herself would marry and that her son would be the rightful suc- was sent with an army to defeat her, but when a naval squadron Off m. b]X[–b[`_ b]YY–b[`Z cessor. To this end, a series of dynastic marriages was hastily arranged the Norfolk coast defected and handed over their artillery to her, his in late May by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, the effective trOOps melted away. regent: Northumberland’s son, Guildford Dudley, was married to Jane As late as the bth, Jane was still sending out letters signed ‘Jane and his allies betrothed to her sisters. the Quene’ to sheriffs and magistrates ordering them to rally and Catherine Arthur HENRY VIII Margaret Tudor Mary Tudor m. But in June bÓÓÁ, it was clear that Edward was dying. With insufficient emphasising that her rule was founded on ‘consent’ to Edward’s of Aragon d. b[`a b[`_–b[]\ d. b[]b d. b[ZZ time to summon Parliament, he therefore ‘devised’ the crown ‘tO the ‘device’. But even her kinsman William Cecil was among those pre- m. m. m. ¹Ý L[ady] Jane and her heires masles’, followed by her sisters Katherine paring to slip away to Mary. ‘And seeing great perils threatened upon (b) Catherine (a) Anne Boleyn (Z) Jane Seymour (b) James IV (a) Archibald (b) Louis XII (a) Charles Brandon and Mary, and by the eldest son of their cousin Margaret Clifford if us by the likeness of the time’, he had scribbled in a note to Mildred, ‘I of Aragon m.