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After Paul van Somer (c. 1576-1621)

Anne of Denmark (1574-1619) c.1620-1700

Oil on canvas | 239.5 x 148.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 401177

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  • A full-length portrait of Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), standing with an elaborate ostrich feather fan in her right hand and resting her left hand on a table. The figure is a copy after RCIN 405813 although the architectural background has been replaced by a hanging curtain, and the marbled floor by an embroidered carpet. The curtain, carpet and tablecloth appear to be later and were perhaps added or reworked at the time when additions were made to the canvas at the bottom and along the left edge.

    The sitter wears a bodice with long hanging sleeves which is constructed from white silk decorated with tiny floral motifs in red and gold. Her skirt is of the same fabric and is pinned into pleats over a wide wheel farthingale - a fashion of which the Queen was particularly fond. On her standing lace collar she wears the elaborate jewels in the shape of a crowned S, a reference to her mother Sophia of Mecklenburg and a C4 which was a gift in 1611 from her brother Christian IV of Denmark. She also wears an IHS brooch under a Cross at her chest.
    Provenance

    Probably sold from the Cross Gallery at Somerset House for £30 to Edmund Harrison and others on 23 October 1651 (no 310); recovered at the Restoration and again listed in the Cross Gallery in 1710 (no 19); it is difficult in historic inventories to distinguish between this copy and its original (RCIN 405813), one of the two spend the 18th century in the Old Gallery at Windsor; but it is certainly this version which hung over the mantle in the Queen's Audience Chamber at Windsor by 1819, when it appears in Pyne's illustrated Royal Residences (RCIN 922100).

  • Medium and techniques

    Oil on canvas

    Measurements

    239.5 x 148.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)

  • Category
    Object type(s)

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