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THE PRESENT article has been undertaken to show how the English and Spanish courts exploited portraiture and jewellery to advance both their political and dynastic aims in the context of the peace negotiations and celebrations of the new alliance that was signed in London (1604) and in Valladolid (1605). Thus the English and the Spanish monarchs indulged in a diplomatic interchange of miniatures and full-length royal portraits. In London, Queen Anna harnessed Isaac Oliver's ability as court painter; in Valladolid, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, court painter to King Philip III, was commissioned to paint the miniatures and the portraits of the Spanish monarchs as well as of the infanta Ana de Austria. The article, moreover, takes up the unresolved debate about the contested authorship of The Somerset House Conference, a memorial painting acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1882.
The political settlement initiated by the archdukes in Brussels and concluded between England and Spain in 1603/4 was signed in Whitehall Chapel, London, on 19/29 August 1604, by the constable of Castile and King James I and was ratified in the Salon Grande of the Royal Palace in Valladolid, on 30 May/9 June 1605, by the earl of Nottingham and King Philip III.1 The peace favored the resumption of the old cultural intercourse that had been forged by the dynastic policy of the early Tudor monarchs and had been flourishing until severed by Queen Elizabeth and her brother-in-- law, Philip II.2 Both courts in 1604 and 1605 put on brilliant shows of cultural self-representation with a view to strengthening the process of reconciliation. The prestige of painting played as important a role as the splendor of the court celebrations and the codified ritual of gift exchange.
In 1601 the Spanish court had moved to Valladolid, and for the following five years the presence of the court and government transformed the town into the cultural center of Spain. Town and court, in honor of the English embassy, mounted festivities on an unprecedented scale during a period of three weeks in May/June 1605. Among the 560 English and Scottish retainers chosen to accompany the earl of Nottingham on his mission to Valladolid, a good many were qualified to respond to the cultural encounter and even to...