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Abstract
Tracing its manifestation across three phases in her biography — marriage, separation and funeral — this article considers the image of Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702–35). Examining the objects and portraits which surrounded Clementina’s life and death offers a new historiography for the Jacobite queen in exile. It reinstates her place not only in Stuart and Jacobite history, but in the history of early modern European monarchy and queenship. Supported by documentary sources in the Stuart Papers at Windsor, it will be argued that the Stuart court in exile, their supporters and, importantly, Clementina herself, successfully fashioned for the Stuart consort an image which identified her as an early modern queen. Doing so supported the status of her marital dynasty as exiled royals. However, her image was not singular and it could be manipulated to meet the needs of personal and political agendas, beyond explicitly Jacobite ones.
Notes
1 Clarissa Campbell Orr, ‘Introduction’, in Clarissa Campbell Orr (ed.), Queenship in Europe 1660–1815: The Role of the Consort (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 1-15, p. 5.
2 Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘The Consort in the Theatre of Power: Maria Amalia of Saxony, Queen of the Two Sicilies, Queen of Spain’, in Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Adam Morton (eds), Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c.1500–1800 (London, 2017), pp. 37-63, p. 37.
3 Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Afterword: Queens Consort, Dynasty and Cultural Transfer’, in Watanabe-O’Kelly and Morton (eds), Queens Consort, pp. 231-250, p. 231.
4 Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘The Consort in the Theatre of Power’, p. 57; Almut Bues, ‘Art Collections as Dynastic Tools: The Jagiellonian Princesses Katarzyna, Queen of Sweden, and Zofia, Duchess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel’, in Watanabe-O’Kelly and Morton (eds), Queens Consort, pp. 15-36.
5 L. Granlund, ‘Queen Hedwig Eleonora of Sweden: Dowager, Builder, and Collector’, in Campbell Orr (ed.), Queenship in Europe, pp. 56-76, p. 71.
6 Charles W. Ingrao and Andrew L. Thomas, ‘Piety and Power: The Empress-Consort of the High Baroque’, in Campbell Orr (ed.), Queenship in Europe, pp. 107-130, pp. 110, 119.
7 Sybil Jack, ‘In Praise of Queens: The Public Presentation of the Virtuous Consort in Seventeenth-Century Britain’, in Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 211-224, p. 214.
8 Royal Archives, Stuart Papers [hereafter RA SP], Main series [hereafter Main], vol. 30 f.113, Charles Wogan to duke of Mar, Ohlau, April 1718; RA SP/Main/28 f.19, Wogan to Mar, Ohlau, 6 March 1718.
9 RA SP/Main/34 f.3, Marriage contract between James III and Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, 22 July 1718.
10 Charles Wogan published his own account of the rescue a few years after the event: Charles Wogan, Female Fortitude, Exemplify’d, in an Impartial Narrative of the Seizure, Escape and Marriage, of the Princess Clementina Sobiesky As it was Particularly Set Down by Mr. Charles Wogan who was a Chief Manager in that Whole Affair (London, 1722). For a modern account of the episode see Peggy Miller, A Wife for the Pretender (London, 1965).
11 Neil Guthrie, The Material Culture of the Jacobites (Cambridge, 2013), p. 87.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Joanna Marshner, Queen Caroline: Cultural Politics at the Early Eighteenth-Century Court (New Haven, 2014), p. 18.
15 Joanna Woodall, ‘An Exemplary Consort: Antonis Mor’s Portrait of Mary Tudor’, Art History 14-2 (1991), pp. 192-224, p. 204.
16 Erin Griffey, On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court (London, 2015), p. 1.
17 Woodall, ‘An Exemplary Consort’, p. 217; Griffey, On Display, pp. 1, 29.
18 Woodall, ‘An Exemplary Consort’, pp. 208-10.
19 See Edward Corp, The King Over the Water: Portraits of the Stuarts in Exile after 1689 (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 63, fig. 45.
20 Maria Clementina Sobieska sitter file, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, S.Ph.III.59.85.
21 Woodall, ‘An Exemplary Consort’, p. 208.
22 Providing a language for understanding the roles of queens consort, Adam Morton summarises the contributions to the edited volume as revealing three potential categories: the queen as instrument manipulated by others; as agent of cultural/political influence; and as catalyst that allowed changes to happen around her. Adam Morton, ‘Introduction: Politics, Culture and Queens Consort’, in Watanabe-O’Kelly and Morton (eds.), Queens Consort, pp. 1-14, p. 3; see also in same volume, Elise Dermineur and Svante Norrhem, ‘Luise Ulrike of Prussia, Queen of Sweden, and the Search for Political Space’, pp. 84-108, p. 85.
23 RA SP/Miscellaneous [M]/Vol.32, Account Books, 23 March 1716 – c.7 April 1722.
24 RA SP/M/32 f.56.
25 RA SP/M/32 f.49.
26 Edward Corp, The Stuarts in Italy 1719–1766: A Royal Court in Permanent Exile (Cambridge, 2011). p. 28.
27 Corp, Stuarts in Italy, p. 165
28 Sir C. Petrie, ‘Introduction’ in J.T. Gilbert (ed.), Narratives of the Detention, Liberation, and Marriage of Maria Clementina Stuart, (Shannon, 1970), p. v.; A. Shields, Henry Stuart, Cardinal York and his times, (London, 1908), p. 3.
29 Aneta Markuszewska, ‘And all this because of “the weakness of your sex”: The Marital Vicissitudes of Maria Klementyna Sobieska Stuart, Wife of the Old Pretender to the English Throne’, in Almut Bues (ed.), Frictions and Failures: Cultural Encounters in Crisis (Wiesbaden, 2017), pp. 163-77; also Corp, Stuarts in Italy, chapters 7 and 8.
30 RA SP/Main/87 f.64, James III to Clementina, 9 November 1725.
31 Jennifer Germann, ‘Figuring Marie Leszczinska (1703–1768): Representing Queenship in Eighteenth-Century France’, PhD diss. University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 2002), p. 55.
32 Erin Griffey, ‘Henrietta Maria and the Politics of Widows’ Dress at the Stuart Court’, in Erin Griffey (ed.), Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women (Amsterdam, 2019), pp. 277-302, pp. 285-8; Isabelle Paresys, ‘Dressing the Queen at the French Renaissance Court: Sartorial Politics’, in Ibid., pp. 57-74, p. 66.
33 RA SP/Main/130 f.195, September 1729; RA SP/Main/134 f.115, February 1730; RA SP/Main/139 f.130, October 1730; RA SP/Main/170 f.149, May 1734.
34 RA SP/Main/87 f.83, An Account of Plate and other things Received from Mr McCarthy for the Queen’s use the 16th of November 1725.
35 RA SP/M/34 f.50, Account Books November 1722–April 1727.
36 RA SP/Main/130 f.109, August 1729.
37 RA SP/Main/132 f.182, September 1729; RA SP/Main/136 f.50, April 1730; RA SP/Main/170 f.149, May 1734; RA SP/Main/172 f.27, July 1734.
38 RA SP/Main/136 f.50, April 1730: paid the account of the cobbler for a pair of damask shoes with braid and doublers, 1.80 scudi; RA SP/Main/170 f.22, April 1734: 29 canes (measurement) of velvet, 68.40 scudi; RA SP/Main/170 f.149, May 1734: two lengths of Indian cotton, 2 scudi; ribbons, lace, white taffeta etc, 11.18 scudi.
39 RA SP/Main/130 f.109, August 1729; RA SP/Main/132 f.182, December 1729: Christmas donations to the chaplain of Our Lady of Loreto and to the sacristy of the same; to the chaplain of the Ursulines and factor of the same; to the Sacristy of Saint Cecilia and factors of the same; for a total of about 15 scudi; RA SP/Main/138 f.91, July 1730: paid by order of the Queen all the expenses which were made to repair the little church of the Madonna, including gilding two troughs, gilding two cabinets and one table, painting the two cabinets, floorboards, for washing the church etc., total 32-30 scudi; RA SP/Main/170 f.147, Expenses of the Queen for the dress of the Virgin of Loreto and a canopy given to the church of the Agonisants (another confraternity), 1734, including one cane of braided gold for the clothing of the Virgin, totalling 26.47 scudi.
40 Corp, Stuarts in Italy, p. 220.
41 RA SP/Main/177 f.167, Sister Mary Rosa Howard to James III, Brussels, 17 February 1735.
42 An Account of the Funeral Ceremonies perform’d at Rome, in Honour of the Princess Clementina Sobieski. Translated from the Roman Journal of Jan. 29, 1735. No 2729 (Dublin, 1735).
43 Cardinal Vincenzo Gotti, Parentalia Mariae Clementinae Magn. Britan. Franc., et Hibern .regin. issu Clementis XII. Pont. Max (Rome, 1736). With thanks to Ilaria Marchi for her translation of this text.
44 RA SP/Main/192 f.85, James III to Lewis Innes, Rome, 16 December 1736.
45 Corp, Stuarts in Italy, p. 221.
46 For other Stuart and British royal funerals, see Paul S. Fritz, ‘The Trade in Death: The Royal Funerals in England, 1685–1830’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 15-3, (1982), pp. 291-316; Michael Schaich, ‘The Funerals of the British Monarchy’, in Michael Schaich (ed.), Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2007), pp. 421-450, 424-6; for early-modern funeral apparati, see Minou Schraven, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (Farnham, 2014), pp. 1-10.
47 Schaich, ‘Funerals of the British Monarchy’, p. 440.
48 Mark Hengerer, ‘The Funerals of the Habsburg Emperors in the Eighteenth Century’, in Schaich (ed.), Monarchy and Religion, pp. 367-93, p. 371; Mary II was presented as saintly during her funeral in order to further promote and consolidate the values of the Glorious Revolution, Schaich, ‘Funerals of the British Monarchy’, p. 441.
49 Schraven, Festive Funerals, p. 2.
50 Schraven, Festive Funerals, p. 3; Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Early Modern European Festivals: Politics and Performance, Event and Record’, in J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Arts, Politics and Performance (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 15-25, pp. 19-23.
51 James F. McMillan, ‘Innes, Lewis (1651–1738), Roman Catholic Priest and Courtier’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Consulted online, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14431.
52 RA SP/Main/192 f.34, James Edgar to Innes, 5 December 1736 (James Edgar was Secretary to the court 1728–62).
53 RA SP/Main/192 f.34, James Edgar to Innes, 5 December 1736; RA SP/Main/192 f.85, James III to Innes, Rome, 16 December 1736.
54 RA SP/Main/191 f.90, James III to Innes, Rome, 11 November 1736.
55 Antonio Pinelli (ed.), The Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican, vol. 4 Testi 2 Schede (Modena, 2000), p. 530.
56 Ibid, p. 529.
57 Edward Gregg, ‘Monarchs without a Crown’, in Robert Oresko, G.C. Gibbs and H.M. Scott (eds), Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 382-422, p. 419.
58 Corp, Stuarts in Italy, p. 228.
59 Edward Corp, ‘The Extended Exile of James III’, in Philip Mansel and Torsten Riotte (eds), Monarchy and Exile: The Politics of Legitimacy from Marie de Médicis to Wilhelm II (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 165-177, p. 170; Corp, Stuarts in Italy, pp. 221, 228.
60 Edward Gregg, ‘The Exiled Stuarts: Martyrs for the Faith?’, in Schaich (ed.), Monarchy and Religion, pp. 187-213, pp. 202ff; Gregg, ‘Monarchs without a Crown’, p. 404.
61 RA SP/Main/177 f.24, James III to Colonel O’Brien, Rome, 19 January 1735.
62 Parentalia, p. 30: ‘pur non ostante a’ secoli, che verranno faràperpetua fede in quanto pregio, e riverenza si tenesse la virtùsotto il felicissimo refno di Clemente XII. E mostrandolo i Padri a’ figliuoli, i cittadini agli esteri; le gloriose gesta dell’uno, e dell’altra andranno rammemorando.’
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Georgia Vullinghs
Georgia Vullinghs
Georgia Vullinghs is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher with the University of Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland. Her thesis, ‘Loyal Exchange: The Material and Visual Culture of Jacobite Exile, c.1716–1760’, offers a cultural history of eighteenth-century Jacobitism, focussing on the experience of and responses to Stuart exile. Her wider research interests lie in eighteenth-century British cultural and social history.