Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1647-1702), beauty at the Court of Charles II, portrait medal in lead, c.1667, by John Roettier, a 19th century striking, bust left, loosely draped, her hair drawn up and with plain diadem, 70mm (MI 541/195; MI pl LV, 1). Very fine and showing the usual flaws and rust marks.

The die for this medal, from which no specimens were struck in the 17th century, was one of a number of Roettier family dies sold by a Mr. Cox to the coin dealer and jeweller Matthew Young, of Ludgate Hill (London), in 1828. Young was to give all of the dies to the British Museum in 1829 and only a very few specimens were struck.

Frances Stuart - La Belle Stuart - was a notable beauty at the court of Charles II and was married in March 1667. Roettier worked on medallic portraits of two further beauties, all unfinished, but that of the Duchess of Richmond was to be used by him, in a reduced size, as the model for Britannia on the medal for the reverse of the Peace of Breda (MI 535/185-186) and the subsequent new copper coinage. Whilst the diarist John Evelyn was to write of "the fair Mrs. Stuart", Samuel Pepys, 25 February 1667, wrote of the Breda medal "where in little is Mrs. Stewart's face, as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think; and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by".

Provenance: Baldwin Auction, 6 February, 2010 (lot 384).