The Borrowdale graphite mine in England's northern Lake District was constructed on an exceptional graphite deposit that was first excavated in the sixteenth century. The dense, dark, and smooth material found there drove an artistic innovation: the modern pencil. Cumbrian graphite was synonymous with the pencil which, in turn, helped popularise the sketching tour, predicating the presence of artists such as J. M. W. Turner in the Lake District on the mineral composition of its topography. Drawings of the striking rural landscape in the environs of the mine, however, belied the reach of its mineral deposits. While Turner's sketches of the area obscure industrial infrastructure, this article reads between the drawings' imprecise lines to reveal an encounter between artist and industrial landscape that was mediated through material. Through his experiments with the notational possibilities of graphite and his interest in industrial sites, Turner's approach to the landscape encompassed both the visible landscape and its subterranean components.
Limning is an art form traditionally associated with early modern portrait miniature painting. However, the term was used contemporaneously to describe a more extensive range of watercolour-based art forms, including botanical illustrations, heraldry, and landscapes. One type of limning can be found in the *alba amicorum* (meaning "friendship albums" or "books of friends") of travellers to London in the early seventeenth century. This article explores the German soldier Michael van Meer's album, which contains an extensive array of unusual and vivid limnings that capture aspects of the Jacobean court and include likenesses of James VI and I and Anna of Denmark. After considering the technical and theoretical relationship between *alba* limnings produced in London and other forms of limning, it then demonstrates how the limned illustrations of Jacobean London shed light on the dissemination of royal and courtly images and, in their depictions of James and Anna in public settings, project a sense of royal visibility and accessibility. Viewed as limnings, these *alba* illustrations reveal how English visual culture intersected with the northern European *album amicorum* tradition.
Closets played a prominent role in the devotional life of the early Stuart court, where they offered a small space for prayer, liturgy, and diplomatic engagement for the monarch and other members of the royal family. The chapel closet, overlooking the household chapel, was the most prominent of these spaces and regularly hosted the guests invited by the monarch and members of the royal family. Intimacy and access mattered in the early modern court. Being able to speak, touch, and hear the king was a mark of privilege and potential influence. This article examines surviving evidence from the Great Wardrobe Accounts, pictorial representations, and a handful of surviving eyewitness accounts of services to reconstruct the internal environment and appearance of James's chapel closet. James spent far more than Elizabeth I on the furnishings of his closet and limited its ceremonial use to members of the royal family. While the Jacobean chapel closet has been closely associated with the rise of prominent churchmen in favour of greater church beautification such as Richard Neile, clerk of the closet between 1603 and 1632, the article argues that this prominent courtly space reveals an energetic pattern of material splendour promoted from James's accession that was closely connected to his personal conception of his English kingship.
The marriage of Elizabeth Stuart to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in February 1613, offered a lavish counter-attraction to the solemn mourning that had accompanied the death of her brother, Henry, Prince of Wales, just a few months before. Amid dynastic rupture, the match fortuitously shifted the focus from its recent loss onto the future of the line. Indeed, following the birth of Prince Frederick Henry in 1614, and for the next sixteen years until the birth of a healthy son to King Charles I and his consort, Queen Henrietta Maria, the ever-growing Palatine brood represented the next stage in the Stuart succession. Separated by distance from their potential subjects, it was important that the electoral couple continued to cultivate ties with the British people and, as their family grew, a familiarity with the prospective royal line was encouraged. A steady stream of printed images was enlisted in this campaign, designed to introduce the public back home to the Palatine family. Tracing the development of their visual portrayal in line with the shifting fortunes of the royal couple and their children, this article explores how these representations sought to naturalise a foreign royal family while forging cross-European dynastic loyalties. Images of Elizabeth's family, whether portrayed as a lineal standby or even as an alternative, could endorse, or indeed complicate, dynastic rhetorics. As I shall argue, the affective bonds encouraged in word and image actually risked splitting Stuart allegiances.
In the final decades of the sixteenth century, King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England and Ireland), with the support of his queen, Anna of Denmark, engaged in a rich programme of patronage and visual and material display that centred the themes of dynasty, unity, and Protestantism to promote and bolster James's claim as Elizabeth I's successor. This royal patronage of Scottish and European émigré artists saw the production, dissemination, and presentation of art, print, and luxury objects both at home and abroad. However, James and Anna's cultural programme has been overlooked, and no study to date has taken an overview of the output of the artistic activity that flourished in Scotland during this crucial period, when the question of the succession was at the heart of Scottish, English, and Irish politics. The article seeks to address this gap and brings together portraits, prints, jewellery, coins, and medallions dating from the years between about 1580 and 1604 to analyse the iconography and messaging devised during James's succession campaign. It also demonstrates how interconnected these art forms were and sheds light on the unique network of Edinburgh-based artists and makers working for the king and court in the late sixteenth century.
