Featured 1500s or 1600s portrait of a woman (Mary Queen of Scots?)

Adding my opinion that she looks nothing like Mary Queen of Scots, and the writing certainly gives no indication that she is... quite the opposite, in fact.
A lovely painting, nonetheless! Hopefully, when you sell, it goes to someone who can have it repaired/restored properly. Otherwise, it's doomed.

 

Mary, Queen of Scots. She became Queen of France at the age of 16. Here she is with her husband, Francis who was 15 when they ascended to the throne.

 

The National Galleries Scotland answers your question in the description on that page. The full translation is "Mary by the Grace of God Most Pious Queen of Scotland. Dowager of France, in the year of her age and reign, 36, of her English captivity 10. In the year of the salvation of men, 1578."

"D G" being the Latin abbreviation of "by the Grace of God" as "S H" is the abbreviation of "In the year of the salvation of men."

You can confirm that abbreviation here.

 

Ah never assume that what you are told about a work of art is true unless the seller has provenance (documents, records, photographs, etc.) to prove their claims. It's nice as a starting point, but as you probably know, family stories get lost to time or even exaggerated. My own elders can't always pin down the history of something they bought, let alone who owned something from where in the family.

Let's say you are right it came from Ireland, and is on verifiable English wood. This piece has been re-lined, so the stretchers may not be original. Many works of art traveled north during grand tours and the periods of fanatical art collecting.

If we have no provenance, then it's best to assess the work with what it depicts, how it was constructed, and any labels it may have.

Numbers are usually for dates, if it is a number. Colon is not an abbreviation for a date/number that I know of and the convention of adding a word signifying a date (IE "Anno") usually means it is smaller, separate, or on another line than the name, which is the more important part.

Yeah, that would be a later re-touching or over-paint probably done when they trimmed and re-lined the canvas. A good light and some magnification will probably make it clear which letters are original, given the deterioration.

Aah, bought to flip. Well I would advise you to submit it to an appropriate auction house to see what they say and perhaps they can identify it for you. It is not of Mary Queen of Scots. It doesn't look like her or her specific fashion, and (to me) is more like the Spanish style of painting than English for these types of works. Maria/Mary is (as you probably know) an extremely common name from this period in all of Christendom. It lacks REGINA and appears to be a Spanish name. I would approach a Spanish auction house, if not an International one.

 

In light of[ Debora & Any Jewelry ] knowledge re dating of fan and costume to be circa 1580s ,I maybe suggest two possible options. ( 1) Maria Colon De Toledo y Gusman (1549 - 1604) great grand daughter of Christopher Colombus or (2) Maria de Avilay Colon (1596 - 1621) his great great grand daughter,of Hispanola,Santo Domingo.Hopefully someone will be able to decipher the middle lettering,and solve the mystery.

 

Thank you for this advice, I think you make interesting points, this is a good learning process even if I have dealt quite a few times with old paintings.

I didn't buy to flip but I don't feel I'm up to the task of taking care of it the proper way at least at this point in time

 

Hi Debora. Good stuff. I will take better pictures, the one's of the back may not be of any use because the painted canvas is actually mounted on a more recent though still antique canvas.

I would assume that if the writing is in latin Colon would be written Colombus.I will continue to investigate.

I am not clinging to any set idea about who the sitter may be, I am by no means in a position to do so and whoever it is, it would be no less interssting to know.

 

The inscription is in Spanish. The Spanish surname Colón is written as Columbus in Latin.

Debora

 

Looking at her adornments, she's coming from wealth to have all those pearls, although they don't look so fine as you see in portraits of Elizabeth I. One of the riches explorers found in 'the New World' was freshwater pearls, so perhaps this is a faint possible link to Columbus. I think she has rosary beads wound around her left wrist.

 

The earliest New World pearls the Spanish were interested in were the 'black' pearls of Baja California. I doubt that in the late 1500s Mexican pearl diving had evolved to such a scale that they had found this many matching large pearls. Besides, although the painting is dirty, it looks to me that the pearls are meant to be white, not grey like the black pearls.
Given the period of the portrait, the pearls are all likely to be Asian saltwater white pearls, from either South India or Sri Lanka.
If she was lucky, maybe Basra pearls from the Persian Gulf, but with the current condition of the portrait we can't see if they were painted to have the Basra pearl lustre.
These West and South Asian regions have a tradition of pearl trade dating back a few thousand years.

As an aside, sitters didn't always own (all) the jewellery they were painted with. On Rembrandt and Rubens paintings you see the same jewel on different sitters. Rembrandt even painted non-existent jewellery to make the sitter look more special.

The beads are strung in a repetitive pattern of two white beads, two dark beads, which means it isn't a rosary.
It was customary to wear a string of beads either around the neck, around the wrist, or in the hair. So the same string of beads could be worn three different ways.

 

There is a historic connection between Ireland and Spain. For instance, there were Irish soldiers fighting for the Spanish against the Dutch in the Dutch War of Independence, 1568-1648.
There are still Irish people with Spanish ancestors. I used to know one of them, and he told me that there is a neighbourhood in or near Dublin where several families are of Spanish origin.
A Spanish painting could have ended up in Ireland through Ibero-Hibernian ties, but without proof we will never know for sure.

I don't know if the person who said British wood was used can tell the difference between British, Irish, or Spanish wood. But wood was traded internationally, so if it is indeed British wood it could have ended up in another country (Spain) through trade.