Journal of the History of Collections 14 no. 2 (2002) pp.

205±213

The Windsor Beauties by Sir Peter Lely and the

collection of paintings at St James's Palace,
1674
Michael Wenzel

The Windsor Beauties, a set of ten portraits of ladies by Sir Peter Lely (1618±80), belongs amongst the
most valuable contributions of royal art patronage of the early Restoration in England. Up to now most
art historians have assumed the room with the Windsor Beauties to have been in the apartments of the
Duke and the Duchess of York at Whitehall in the 1660s, but there is good reason for locating it at their
residence at St James's Palace. This article includes a hitherto unpublished inventory which increases
our knowledge of the ducal collection of paintings. The function of the collection and the iconography of
the portraits within the ducal apartments are at the centre of interest of this study.

The Windsor Beauties, a set of ten portraits of ladies
painted in the 1660s by Sir Peter Lely (1618±80),
represents one of the most valuable contributions of
royal art patronage in early Restoration England
(Figs. 1, 2). Anne Hyde (1637±71), ®rst wife of the
Duke of York (later King James II), is regarded as its
commissioner. The earliest entry in a surviving
inventory of the Duke's possessions dates back to
the year 1674, indicating that it had been made after
the decease of the ®rst Duchess of York. This
inventory (see Appendix), kept in the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, is subdivided into object groups,
although the section `Furniture of Roomes con-
stantly up' (fols. 6r±8r) is organized as a list of
room ®ttings. The description of the rooms, for
inexplicable reasons, does not follow the sequence
of apartments at Whitehall and St James's that had
been assigned to the ducal couple, so impeding the
reconstruction of how these rooms were organized.
The paintings of the Windsor series are listed under
the White Room (fol. 7r), for which the location
within Whitehall or St James's ± as given for most of
the other rooms in this inventory ± is unfortunately
missing. Up to now most art historians have assumed
the White Room to be situated at Whitehall,1 but
there is good reason for locating it instead at St
James's Palace.2
The entry in the inventory following that for the
White Room ± the `Duchesses dressinge roome at
Whitehall' ± evidently provided the basis for locat-
ing the White Room at Whitehall. The rooms listed
prior to the White Room are, however, situated at
St James's. Amongst them were a further `Duch-
esses Dressinge roome' and a `passage betweene the
white Roome and the dressing Roome' (fol. 7v) that
can be assumed to refer to the location of the
portraits. On the day the diarist Samuel Pepys
(1633±1703) mentions the series (21 August 1668)
he visited Whitehall as well as St James's, so that
the evidence he provides is also ambivalent. Never-
theless, the context of the set of portraits in the
diary can unambiguously be assigned to his stay at
St James's Palace:3
Up betimes and with my people again to work, and ®nished
all before noon; and then by water to White-hall and there
did tell the Duke of York that I done; and he hath to my
great content desired me to come to him at Sunday next in
the afternoon to read it over, by which I have more time to
consider and correct it. . . .
After dinner, I by coach to my bookseller's in Duck-lane
and there did spend a little time and regarder su moher,
and so to St James's, where I did a little ordinary business;
and by and by comes Monsieur Colbert, the French
Imbassador to make his ®rst visit to the Duke of York,
and then to the Duchess. And I saw it: a silly piece of
ceremony, he saying only a few formal words. A comely
man, and in a black suit and cloak of silk; which is a strange
fashion now, it hath been so long left o€. This day I did
®rst see the Duke of York's room of pictures of some
Maids of Honour, done by Lilly; good, but not like.4

# Oxford University Press 2002 0954-6650 02

 michael wenzel
St James's Palace, the main domicile of the Duke and
the Duchess of York, had been extensively altered
since 1660 (Fig. 3). During the time of the Inter-
regnum the estate was used as a military head-
quarters and barracks. The ducal apartment,
situated on the garden front, was so luxuriously
furnished that a French visitor concluded that the
Duke and his wife were accommodated better than
the King or the Queen. According to the documents
of the King's Works, the most extravagant furniture
was to be found in the bedroom of the Duchess, but a
reconstruction of the room organization within the
palace is dicult due to the insuciently recorded
material of ground plans.5
A simple and incomplete ground plan of the palace
from 1689 contains the names of the di€erent rooms
of the Duchess's apartments (Fig. 4). These names
rarely coincide with those from the 1674 inventory,
although it does, indeed, report a passage behind the
206
Fig. 1. Sir Peter Lely, Barbara Villiers,
Duchess of Cleveland, c.1664±5.
124.56101.6 cm. Hampton Court Palace.
The Royal Collection, # 2002, Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Dressing Room which could lead to the assumption
that the White Room was located in the part of the
building named in the plan as the King's Lodgings.
This may seem evident since there is no secure
evidence of whether the apartments of the Duke of
York were located in this part of the palace or in the
new wing erected prior to 1682 on the west side of
the Duchess's accommodation, containing three con-
nected rooms on its main ¯oor.6 However, the room
following the dressing room in the King's Lodgings
is ± at least on the plans recorded later ± relatively
small, so that it is also likely ± and with a higher
degree of probability ± that the White Room was
situated together with the library in the west wing
just mentioned. Furthermore, those two rooms
belong to the few listed in the inventory of 1674
that are not assigned to a particular occupant and
could, therefore, have ful®lled general functions.
After the second wedding of the Duke of York in
the windsor beauties by sir peter lely

Fig. 2. Sir Peter Lely, Frances Stuart,

Duchess of Richmond, c.1662±5.
125.76103.5 cm. Hampton Court Palace.
The Royal Collection, # 2002, Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Fig. 3. St James's Palace, view from south-

west, c.1705 (from Kip's Britannia
Illustrata, 1708).

207
 michael wenzel
Fig. 4. St James's Palace, outline plan, 1689. British Museum, London.
1673, the apartments formerly assigned to the Duch-
ess were rearranged for Mary of Modena. The
ground plan of 1689 therefore gives an account of
this later state, whereas one can assume that the
inventory of 1674 represents the situation during the
residence of Anne Hyde prior to these changes.
According to historical sources, it was especially
the apartments of the Duchess that were most
expensively furnished,7 which can be con®rmed by
the entries in the inventory of 1674. This is another
fact in favour of the assumption that the Windsor
Beauties were located at St James's Palace, since these
female portraits were, according to the inventory
records of 1674, the only paintings in the ducal
apartments and state rooms of the Palace and had
represented the most important and most extensive
commission under the patronage of the Duchess of
York. The majority of the rooms were decorated
with tapestries of gold thread or with wall hangings
made of damask or silk. The inventory contains the
usual furniture such as seating, tables (mostly made
of tropical woods, e.g. `Jemaica wood'), mirrors, etc.8
208
The recording of further paintings owned by the
Duke of York is, however, limited to two rooms: the
Oce and the Green Mohair Closet at Whitehall.
Both collections had been laid out as picture galleries
but were obviously not excessively valuable. The
collection's emphasis is on portraits of the royal
family as well as of the English and European
nobility, landscapes, portraits of unnamed subjects,
and also a very small number of religious and
mythological subjects. The relatively large number
of unnamed female portraits is remarkable, especially
in the Green Mohair Closet, which contains further
portraits of `Windsor Beauties': Mrs Myddelton, the
Duchess of Cleveland and the Countess of Rochester
(fol. 17v, nos. 43, 47, 51).
In contrast to those paintings the Windsor series is
clearly assigned to a speci®c room and therefore to a
particular furnishing programme. In the inventory of
1674 (fol. 22v) only Lely's portraits of the Admirals
and that of the Duke in the Great Chamber of
Culford Hall are organized in a similar way.9 This
room is marked clearly as a main State room since it
 the windsor beauties by sir peter lely
occupies a special position within the inventory list.
Besides that, at Culford Hall further paintings were
placed only in the bedrooms of the King and the
Duke: these paintings alone were portraits of mem-
bers of the royal family. Thus, the portrait galleries
in the possession of the Duke and the Duchess of
York were laid out as both functionally and pro-
grammatically complementary ± as representations of
gender in court society.
The inventory of the White Room stands out from
those of the other rooms in many ways. There is no
clear assignment of the room to any one of the
apartments in the inventory list. The room is char-
acterized as remarkable on account of its wall hang-
ings made of white sarcenet, a silk material that gave
the room its name, and of blue mohair. `Six narrow
long pictures' were situated below the female por-
traits: they are convincingly identi®ed as paintings by
Andrea Schiavone (1522±63) now at Hampton Court
and Kensington (Fig. 5).10 This set of paintings of an
Italian Old Master is taken to represent by far the
most valuable part of the art gallery owned by the
Duke of York.11 Of these seven paintings, the six
kept at Hampton Court, with widths of approxi-
mately 105±107 cm (apart from one panel of 116.3
cm) di€er in width only negligibly from those of the
Windsor series (c.101±103.5 cm). The seventh paint-
ing, however, The Departure of Briseis (according to
older interpretations a Rape of Helena) now at
Kensington, is, at 19.26172 cm, remarkably wider,
and a location in the White Room is hence unlikely.
The subjects of the six panels formerly in the
White Room are rather vague. Nearly all of the
paintings share a common subject matter, in that
they show pastoral settings. Three of them are related
to the biblical account of Jacob and Esau: The Meeting
of Jacob and Rachel, The Meeting of Jacob and Esau and
The Blessing of Jacob. The identi®cation and inter-
pretation of the particular scenes will not be discussed
here since the topic is a demanding one in its own
Fig. 5. Andrea Schiavone, The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, c.1550. 18.26105.3 cm. Hampton Court Palace. The Royal Collection,
# 2002, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
209
right. However, it is crucial to note that the icono-
graphy of the Schiavone panels contains speci®c levels
of meaning that are fundamentally coded in the
encounter between man and woman, the setting up
of matrimony or other family rites of passage between
the generations, all these topics being embedded in a
co- or superordinate pastoral context.12
The technique ± canvas on panel ± and the format
of the Schiavone panels unambiguously refer to their
origin in Italian interior decoration or to their initial
assignment to a marital bed (or, less probably, a
cassone) of the sixteenth century. Consequently, the
paintings can be seen according to a tradition of
decorative art, summarized under the collective term
cassone painting, that was commissioned for the
camera of the bridal pair.13 The painting showing
the Briseis episode taken from the Iliad, though not
integrated in the White Room, clearly points towards
this topic: Achilles had to surrender his beautiful
captive to Agamemnon, later to be returned to him so
that Briseis could pin her hopes on a marriage with
Achilles again. There is good reason to assume that
the Schiavone panels, traditionally codi®ed by their
form, content and initial function, were consciously
installed below six of the Windsor portraits as
representations of a `female' iconography relating to
marriage, love, fertility, family and household.
This leads to the conclusion that the White Room
can be assigned to the female sphere, although it was
not speci®cally registered as belonging to the apart-
ments of the Duchess in the inventory and would,
therefore, initially have been interpreted as a room of
general representation of the ducal couple. This
assumption reinforces the exceptional degree of in¯u-
ence and self-consciousness of Anne Hyde in her
elevated position as Duchess of York until the late
1660s, which had also been recorded in other historical
sources.14 Although the last years before her death in
1671 were marked by personal illness and bereave-
ments, the Duchess and her court were certainly able to
 michael wenzel
develop the gendered iconography of the White Room.
Compared with it, the complementary gendered pro-
gramme of the portrait galleries at St James's and at
Culford Hall was a more traditional subject in Euro-
pean court culture. There was no speci®c knowledge
or connoisseurship necessary to create such a theme.15
Though rare, the combination of female portraits and
gendered Italian paintings of the cassone type was not
absolutely unusual in late seventeenth-century Eng-
land. A set of copies after Polidoro da Caravaggio,16
`narrow long pictures' showing Psyche subjects and
putto-friezes, was let into the panelling of the Beauty
Room at Petworth House, above portraits of ladies of
the court painted by Michael Dahl in c.1700.17 It is also
very likely that the Polidoro panels had hung already in
a similar manner with female portraits by Van Dyck at
Northumberland House in 1671.18
Appendix
Excerpts of the inventory of the Duke of York, 1671±74 (Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Bodl. 891)
[ fol. 1v]
Goods of his Roy:ll Highnesse the Duke of Yorke
in the custody and Charge of Philipp Kinnersley
Yeoman of his R:ll Highnesse wardrobe of Beds:
the ®rst of June 1674
[tapestries]
[ fol. 2v]
Rich Beds apparelles
[...]
[ fol. 5v]
Cloathes of State
[...]
Chayres Stooles & Cushions, without furniture and
skreens
[...]
[ fol. 6r]
Furniture of Roomes constantly up
Duches's green Clossett att Whitehall
[...]
Duchesses stool Roome
[...]
Groom of the Bedchambers Roome
[...]
210
St James's Palace, as the main residence of the Duke
and Duchess of York, had been adjusted mainly for the
representation of the Duchess and of the wider net-
work of ladies at the English Court. The White Room
contained, along with its set of female portraits, the
valuable Schiavone panels and its sumptuous wall
hangings, a type of decoration that could project a
great range of visual in¯uence. After the Duke suc-
ceeded to the throne as King James II in 1685, he
reinforced this perception by giving St James's Palace
to the Queen as her residence (a role that formerly had
been ful®lled by Somerset House, which at this time
was still in the occupation of the dowager Queen
Catherine). The Schiavone panels, brought to Ken-
sington around 1697, also formed part of the inventory
in the Queen's apartments there, until they were
transferred to Hampton Court in 1833.
Dukes stool Roome at Whitehall
[...]
Duchesses Clossett at St James's
[...]
The great Bedchamber
Hung round with Dutch guylt leather
[ fol. 7v]
Dukes yellow Clossett
Hung round with yellow Damaske . . .
Duchesses Dressing roome
Hung round wth guylt leather . . .
Duchesses stoole Roome at St James's
Hung round with green silk and thread Damaske
hangings
The passage betweene the white Roome and dressing
Roome
Hung wth Guylt Leather
Groomes of the bedchamber at St James's
Hung round wth green and white silke & thread
damask hangings . . .
[ fol. 7r]
White Room
Hunge wth white sarsanett, and over it blew
Mohair with silke fringe, and hung about with
pictures viz the Duchesse of Richmonds, the
 the windsor beauties by sir peter lely

Countesse of Northumberlands, Lady €ran Hide, 5 Duke of Glocester . . .

lady €amouth, Duchesse of Cleaveland, Mrs 6 A Lady . . .
Midletons, Lady Denhams, Lady whitemores, 7 A Lady . . .
Lady Henriett Hide, Lady Sunderlands, Madam 8 A yong man . . .
Grammonds gone for €rame, six narrow long 9 A woman . . .
pictures under the great ones, a Jemaica wood table 10 A woman . . .
and stand 11 Upon Copper wth a guylt frame,
Duchesses dressinge roome at Whitehall 12 A Venus and Cupid . . .
Hung round wth green velvett and a partycoloured 13 A Dutch print . . .
silk fringe . . . 14 A Landshape . . .
The Library at St James's 15 King of Spaine . . .
a Clossett within it 16 A Landshape . . .
[...] 17 A Landshape . . .
[ fol. 8v] 18 A litle picture . . .
Dukes Blew Clossett at St James's 19 A Landshape . . .
Hung round with Damaske . . . 20 A Landshape . . .
Duchesses dressinge room at Whitehall 21 A picture . . .
[repetition of the entry of fol. 7r] 22 A Perspective,
Lady Mary's Clossett at St James's 23 A naked Venus . . .
Hung with blew Damask with gold and silver
fringe . . . [ fol. 17v]
Lady Annes Clossett at St James's Pictures in the green Mohaire Clossett at Whitehall
Hung with green Morello Mohayre, wth silver and 24 A Lady . . .
gold fringe . . . 25 Lady Su€olke . . .
26 Duke of Cabridge . . .
[ fol. 8r] 27 A Lady . . .
Lady Maryes clossett at Richmond 28 Our Lady and Christ . . .
Hung round with purple and white, and Lemon 29 A litle picture . . .
and white Drugett . . . 30 A Cruci®x . . .
Dukes Clossett at Whitehall 31 A church in perspective . . .
Hung round with sad coloured Mohaire with party 32 Our Saviour . . .
coloured silk fringe . . . 33 A Lady . . .
[ fol. 9v] 34 A Lady . . .
Cabenetts, Rich Tables, Stands, Looking glasses, 35 Queen Mother . . .
Branches sconces, Andirons & 36 A Lady . . .
[...] 37 Duke of York . . .
[ fol. 10r] 38 Lady Anne . . .
Carpetts 39 A picture . . .
[...] 40 A Lady . . .
41 A Lady . . .
[ fol. 11v] 42 Duke of Yorke in st Georges Robes . . .
Curtaines 43 Mrs Midlton . . .
[...] 44 A Lady . . .
[ fol. 16r] 45 St John's . . .
Pictures in the oce 46 A litle round Landshape . . .
1 A picture of ¯owers with a guylt frame 47 Duchesse of Cleaveland . . .
2 A small Landshape . . . 48 A Lady . . .
3 Princesse Royalls pict[ure] . . . 49 The King in st Georges Robes . . .
4 The late kings pict[ure] . . . 50 A Lady . . .

211
 michael wenzel
51 Lady Heriett Hide . . .
52 Late king . . .
[...]
[ fol. 21v]
Goods of his Royall Highnesse the Duke of York
at Culford hall in the charge of Madam Elliott: 23
Octob:r 1671
[...]
[ fol. 22v]
Great Chamber
Hung round with green and white silk and thread
Damaske with Matt under the hangings, the Dukes
picture and eight of the Admiralls viz prince
Rupert, Generalls, Sr Jn Lawsons, Sr Christopher
Minnes, Sr Wm Barkley, Sr Joseph Jourden, Sr
Tho: Titteman & Sr Jn: Harman, ve guylt
sconces, two chystall [sic] Lookeinglasses, six white
Calicoe window Curtaines, one Elbow chaire, two
high stooles, four foulding stooles, one
Jemaicawood table & stands wth brasses
Address for correspondence
Dr Michael Wenzel, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum,
Museumstraûe 1, D-38100 Braunschweig, Germany.
wenzelm@gmx.de
Notes and references
1 Following the account given by O. Millar, The Tudor, Stuart
and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The
Queen (London, 1963), p. 124, almost all relevant literature
makes the same statement, e.g. J. D. Stewart, `Pin-ups or
Virtues? the concept of the ``Beauties'' in late Stewart por-
traiture', in J. D. Stewart and H. W. Liebert, English Portraits
of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Los Angeles, 1974),
pp. 3±43, esp. p. 3, and S. G. Tasch, Studien zum weiblichen
RollenportraÈt in England von Anthonis van Dyck bis Joshua
Reynolds (Weimar, 1999), p. 48.
2 This has been indicated by O. Millar, The Queen's Pictures
(London, 1977), p. 70. Knowing the author's thesis from his
unpublished dissertation (M. Wenzel, `Heldinnengalerie ±
SchoÈnheitengalerie. Studien zu Genese und Funktion weibli-
cher Bildnisgalerien 1470±1715' [Heidelberg 2001], pp. 283±
7), Catharine MacLeod remarks in a recent essay that during
the reign of Charles II the Windsor Beauties `hung either at
Whitehall or St James's'. See C. MacLeod, ` ``Good, but not
like'': Peter Lely, portrait practice and the creation of a court
outlook', in C. MacLeod and J. Marciari Alexander (eds.),
Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II (London and
New Haven, 2001), pp. 50±61, esp. p. 53.
3 Even in the latest monograph of Whitehall no indication of a
White Room in the apartment of the Duke and the Duchess of
York can be found; see S. Thurley, Whitehall Palace: An
212
The Kinges bedchamber
Hung with grideline and white thread Damask
hangings & Matted under, one landshape chymney
peice, two white Calicoe window Curtaines . . .
two chrystall Lookeinglasses : The Queenes,
Duchesses, Princesse Royall, Lady Maryes and
Prince of Orange's Pictures . . .
Kings back staires
Gentlemens Beds
[...]
[ fol. 23v]
[...]
Dukes Bedchamber
Hung round wth Blew, goldcolour and white
brockado thread and silk Damaske, and Matted
under the hangings, one landshape Chymney peice
. . . Maddams Madamozells & the Duke of
Cambridges pictures . . .
Dukes backstaires
Gentlemens beds
[...]
architectural history of the Royal Apartments 1240±1698 (New
Haven and London, 1999), esp. pp. 124±5. However, Simon
Thurley kindly con®rmed the thesis of the author in a personal
enquiry on 5 June 2000.
4 R. C. Latham and W. Matthews (eds.), The Diary of Samuel
Pepys, vol. ix: 1668±1669 (London, 1976), pp. 283±5.
5 Cf. H. M. Colvin et al., The History of the King's Works, vol. v:
1660±1782 (London, 1976), p. 233, and kind communication
by Susanne Groom, Historic Royal Palaces, East Molesey
(Surrey), on 21 July 1997.
6 Colvin, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 233±6 and pls. 25±6.
7 See note 5.
8 Regarding the various ®ttings as furnishing and textiles, cf. the
valuable remarks and comments of terms in P. Thornton,
Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France and
Holland (New Haven and London, 1978).
9 The eight portraits of the Duke's ¯ag-ocers in the Battle of
Lowestoft at Culford Hall are part of a set of thirteen paintings
now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich (except
for the portrait of Prince Rupert, now in the Royal Collection).
See Millar, op. cit. (note 1), p. 123.
10 Ibid., p. 124. These paintings cannot be detected in the royal
inventories drawn up prior to 1674. The only other set of
paintings in the Royal Collection that could be identi®ed with
the `narrow long pictures' is by Polidoro da Caravaggio. But
this set was at this time already in the ownership of the King,
brother of the Duke. The description as `narrow long picture'
or `piece' in contemporary inventories is characteristic of this
genre.
11 The high esteem of the complementary set by Polidoro da
Caravaggio in the ownership of the Crown is also remarkable.
 the windsor beauties by sir peter lely

This set was purchased by Charles I, but it was sold to the 10th
Earl of Northumberland during the Interregnum. It was
returned to the Crown during the Restoration by the Earl of
Northumberland after the Earl had secured copies of it. See J.
Wood, `Van Dyck and the Earl of Northumberland: taste and
collecting in Stuart England', in S. J. Barnes and A. K.
Wheelock (eds.), Van Dyck 350 (Washington, Hanover and
London, 1994), pp. 281±324, esp. p. 297.
12 Regarding the panels, see J. Shearman, The Early Italian
Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (Cambridge,
1983), pp. 228±31, cat. no. 241±7.
13 For an overview see P. Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance
Art: Gender ± representation ± identity (Manchester and New
York, 1997), pp. 21±46.
14 See P. Earle, The Life and Times of James II (London, 1972),
pp. 52±7, 85±6.
15 Cf. the author's dissertation (see note 2).
16 See notes 10 and 11.
17 See A. Laing, In Trust for the Nation: Paintings from National
Trust houses (London, 1995), p. 233.
18 The 1671 inventory of the Northumberland collection, nos.
23±6, quoted in Wood, op. cit. (note 11), p. 305.

213