What did Mary, Queen of Scots really look like?
Images via Wikimedia Commons (Francois Clouet) and Alamy Stock Photo
Have you ever glanced at portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots and thought they fall a little flat?
If you know anything about Mary, you know that she was described as having an immense amount of personal charm and beauty. She was tall, intelligent, skilled at diplomacy, witty, and overall just entrancing.
However, if you’ve taken a look at her death masks, they tell a different story of her appearance. While the two death masks above are sometimes disputed (record-keeping for each is spotty), they depict a young-looking, stunning and serene woman. Another reason they are disputed is because of just how ageless they look - could these really be the face of a 44-year old woman who had just been imprisoned for 19 years? Granted, she was under house arrest in good conditions. But, you get the idea.
In our full video on YouTube and for the blog, I’ve created some re-constructions of the Lennoxlove mask, to really dive into the appearance of Mary:
Based on the reconstruction, I do see a pretty strong resemblance with her painted portraits. These two below were both painted from life - the sketch was made when she was just a little girl (she’s so cute!). In the Lennoxlove mask, I see a very specific feature that is a “tell” indicating it is indeed of Mary - her beautiful unique upper lip shape is seen very clearly in the sketch of her as a young girl.
The death masks & reconstruction (in my opinion) make the 16th-century stylizations more obvious - the pinched lips and extremely thin brows especially.
Strangely, every single image of Mary we have that was made from life is at this exact angle. I’m unsure of the reasoning for this, but we don’t have any versions of her straight on or turned more towards the viewer. These would be helpful, as her jaw appears sharper than you might think from the front. This could also be due to weight loss from imprisonment not seen in earlier portraits. Her nose also appears quite different between the front and side views.
After checking the proportions using guides (below), based on my research and re-constructions, I do believe that the death masks are 1) both of the same woman, and 2) Representative of the features of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Side view of the Lennoxlove Death Mask
I’ve used guides to show how the proportions of every face line up pretty well.
What do you think?
A modern version for fun :)