Acquired by the present owner in 1982.
The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
This work looks well at present. Cleaning is not recommended, although the varnish should perhaps be freshened. On the reverse, there are two vertical lines of reinforcement addressing cracks to the panel through the left and right sides.
The face shows only a few retouches on the left side of the forehead and on the left side of the nose. There is a wavy line of retouches beginning in the earring on the right running diagonally down through the ruff. There are isolated retouches visible under ultraviolet light in the upper left background.
To the naked eye, it can be seen that the right side of the lace ruff has been repainted. This campaign of retouching also includes part of the feather in the upper right, some of the pearls beneath the ruff and possibly even some of the decorative elements of the clothing in the lower right.
While there is no reason to necessarily doubt the period of the painting on the right side, there certainly has been a fairly consistent amount of repainting to a 3 ½ inch band of the panel on the right side.
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Queen Elizabeth Stuart (1596 - 1662) was the eldest daughter of King James I of England and his wife, Queen Anne of Denmark. In 1613, after a year of courtship, Elizabeth married the German Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and within two months of marriage, the newlyweds moved to the Electoral Court at Heidelberg. Six years later, following the death of King Matthias, they transferred to Prague; in August of 1619 Frederick took the throne as King of Bohemia and Elizabeth was crowned Queen. Their reign, however, was short-lived. The Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, a former contender for the Bavarian crown, defeated Frederick at the Battle of White Mountain in November that same year and, though their rule continued for some months from Prague, Elizabeth was dubbed the “Winter Queen” due to her one season on the throne.
Mierevelt was a renowned for his remarkable skills in portraiture, and his creations were often frank and truthful depictions of their subjects. He was the official painter at the court of the Stadholder in Delft, and enjoyed much favor from the House of Orange, who commissioned numerous portraits of their family members.1 A number of portraits of Elizabeth Stuart by Mierevelt are extant, though that most closely resembling the present work is a depiction of the queen now in the Gemeentehuis Sint Maartensdijk, Tholen (inv. no. 7, fig. 1). In that work the sitter appears to be some years older and is shown in three-quarter length, holding a fan, however she is depicted in the same feathered headdress and black gown, with a triple string of pearls, down the front of her stomacher.
1. R. O. Ekkart, “Michiel van Mierevelt” in The Dictionary of Art, vol. 21, p. 486.
