Mary of Modena
Simon Verelst
ca. 1680
This portrait of the queen consort of James Il, made before she was queen, was painted by Verelst, trained as a painter of flowers and part of a family of painters who had moved to London from the Dutch Republic. Like many painters who came to Britain, he turned his hand to making portraits to survive. In the following generation, all the Verelst family worked as portraitists, in oils on both canvas and copper. Based on comparison with his fully attributed work, Simon's nephew John emerges as the likely painter of both versions of the group portraits in this bay. John was also a dealer in works of art, and it may have been in this capacity that he first came to know Yale-thought by contemporaries to be a "great bubble" (i.e., very gullible) as a collector.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0