Beaded Picture

This beaded picture is an unusual piece of Stuart embroidery in a style popular in seventeenth-century England. The picture has a two-dimensional appearance because the figures are outlined in black and lack realistic shading. They stand in conventional poses. Any sense of depth results from the overlapping of shapes, but this is negated by the artist’s disregard for the conventions of size and perspective: objects or animals in the background are as large as those in the foreground. The scene itself is marked by simplicity, almost naiveté—not surprisingly, as this type of beadwork was often executed by young girls. This example, however, is of the highest quality, and thus unlikely to have been worked by a child.

Although there is no way of knowing the subjects’ identities, their fine and fashionable clothing shows that they are people of wealth. Often beadwork of this type portrayed Old Testament stories or royal personages. The man’s gift of a flowering tree branch to the woman may signify an engagement, a marriage, or a political alliance. In fact, this scene strongly resembles an engraving by Robert van Voerst dating from 1634 based on a painting by Anthony van Dyck. The van Voerst engraving portrays Charles I and Henrietta Maria exchanging leafy branches. Although the image shown here is not identical to that in the engraving, the similarity between the poses cannot be discounted. The engraving may have served as the inspiration for this piece, with some artistic license on the beadworker’s part.