Queens and Consorts: Likeness in Life and Death
This free display opens at the National Portrait Gallery in room 3 on 12th June. Running until 28th February 2014, the display looks at the comparison between portraits and copies of tomb effigies.
‘Sculptural tomb effigies offer a fascinating comparative to painted portraits. This display focuses on a small selection of portraits of sixteenth-century queens and consorts, pairing copies of the sculpted effigies from the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey with painted portraits, in order to explore the process of exchange that occurred between the images that represent the sitters in life and those that memorialise them in death.
This comparison can be explored in the Gallery through the display of electrotype copies of the effigies. These were made by the Birmingham firm of Elkington & Co. in the late nineteenth century, and were based on plaster cast moulds taken by Domenico Brucciani. For example, the electrotype copy of Maximilian Colte’s effigy of Elizabeth I can be compared both with a portrait of her as a young queen, and with the magnificent image presented in the ‘Ditchley’ portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, which is on display in Room 2.’ (NPG)
(from http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2013/queens-and-consorts-likeness-in-life-and-death.php)
Treasons, Plots and Murder
This free display opens at the National Portrait Gallery on 26th May in room 16. Running until 16th February 2014, the display looks at seventeenth century plots and how these events were portrayed in print.
‘The seventeenth century was witness to frequent and often gruesome plots, scandals and murders. From the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 to the Rye House Plot of 1683 the motivation was often religious; although religion and political power were inextricably linked during the Stuart period. Not all seventeenth-century ‘plots’ were plots at all; the Popish Plot of 1678 was fabricated by Titus Oates with a consequence that dozens of innocent people were brutally executed. Sexual politics could be equally controversial and were central to the case of the Thomas Overbury murder in 1613. This display explores these unwholesome episodes through contemporary prints and raises questions about the role that print culture could play in promoting a highly biased version of events.’ (NPG)
(from: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2013/treason-plots-and-murder.php)
