Alexis Simon Belle (1674–1734), Portrait of Queen Mary of Modena in Exile

Alexis Simon Belle (1674–1734)
Portrait of Queen Mary of Modena in Exile (1658-1718)
c.1709
Oil on canvas
28 3/8 x 24 3/4 in.

Provenance
Queen Mary of Modena (1658-1718);
Lady Lucy Herbert CRSA (1669–1743/44);
English Convent (Monastery of Nazareth) Bruges, until 1967;
Fr Dom Philip Decloedt OSB.

This portrayal of Queen Mary of Modena, the exiled Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, is a bust portrait by Alexis Simon Belle derived in part from an earlier three-quarter-length by François de Troy (1745-1730). de Troy was an eminent painter at the French court and his portrait celebrated the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of Mary of Modena and James VII and II. Although this is now lost, a copy survives in the collection at Sizergh Castle, Cumbria. Alexis Simon Belle, then chief court painter to the British court at St Germain, was subsequently intermittently commissioned by the exiled monarchs to paint bust-length versions as presentation pieces for loyal followers eager to show their support for the Jacobite cause. Indeed, this portrait has a particularly important royal and religious provenance. It was bequeathed to the English Convent at Bruges by Queen Mary of Modena, either to mark her old companion Lady Lucy Herbert’s becoming Procuratress of the convent in 1699 or Prioress in 1709. Lady Lucy Herbert CRSA (1669-1743/44) was the daughter of William Herbert, 1st Marquis of Powis, a leading Catholic nobleman, by his wife Elizabeth Somerset, younger daughter of Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquis of Worcester. Powis was loyal to James II in the Revolution of 1688 and continued to serve the exiled monarch in exile (he was subsequently created 1st Duke of Powis in the ‘Jacobite Peerage’). His daughter Lady Lucy entered the English Convent at Bruges shortly after the Revolution in 1690 and there remained an active institutional supporter of Jacobite cause, hence being given this portrait which would remain in the convent’s collection for centuries thereafter. Whiteman’s are grateful to Sr Mary Aline, Prioress and Archivist at The English Convent (Monastery of Nazareth) Bruges, for her help cataloguing this picture who also pointed out that ‘it is mentioned as 'gifts before 1729'. The portrait remained here in the English Convent (Monastery of Nazareth) until it was sold in 1967 to Dom Philip Decloedt OSB then chaplain of the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre -Sint Trudo Abbey in Maele(near Bruges). After a while it was sold to a private person.’

When Mary of Modena first learnt that she was to be married to James, Duke of York – the future James II – she burst into tears. Her original wish was to enter a convent, and she tried repeatedly to persuade James’ emissary, the Earl of Peterborough, that she was unwilling to marry, least of all a man she had never met. However, James, heir to Charles II, and by then openly Catholic, was in desperate need of a suitable Catholic wife, and the match was viewed by her family as a good one. Mary was prevailed upon to marry James by proxy and left for London in late 1673. As a future Catholic Queen whose main purpose was to produce a male Catholic heir for James, Mary endured a hostile reception in Protestant England when she arrived in late 1673. She was lampooned in the press and forced to practice mass in private. Nonetheless, she and James swiftly proceeded with the marriage. In 1685 James and Mary ascended to the throne without an heir and the succession seemed destined to pass to James’ Protestant daughter Mary from his first marriage to Anne Hyde.

In 1688 the Queen finally gave birth to a son, James, and the prospect of a secured Catholic succession alarmed the political class. Rumours were quickly spread to undermine the birth, and the baby was alleged to have been smuggled into the Queen’s bed in a warming pan. The many Protestant witnesses who were forced to be present at the child’s birth stood with their backs to the bed, in order to avoid being called as witnesses to the Prince’s legitimacy. The ensuing chaos served as the perfect excuse for William of Orange, husband of James’ elder daughter, Mary, to launch an invasion, and by the end of the year James II had been forced to flee to France. Mary herself had had to escape from St James’ Palace disguised as a washerwoman. From then, until her death in 1718, Mary’s life was spent in exile at the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, where she ceaselessly promoted the cause of her husband and, from 1701, her son, in their fruitless attempts to regain the throne.