Above left: Engraving of Sidney by Vertue (after Oliver) c.1741 NPG D41687. Above right: memorial mural central portrait called Sir Henry Unton (NPG 710).
Click here to read Part One of this three-part series examining the extensive snakedoctoring and misidentification of the NPG 710 memorial mural.
Note: All images w/o exception used in this post fall under Fair Use laws.
Turning a Blind Eye: the Unton Memorial Portrait Reconsidered
Part Two: Enter Sir Philip Sidney
"Although
retouching and overpainting are very extensive, microscopic examination
implies that the original paint layers are in reasonable condition . .
." NPG file Unton Memorial Portrait
Any scholar of English history would assume, upon hearing a surface description of the famous life-cycle NPG's memorial mural, that the picture was painted in tribute to the celebrated life (and death) of the Elizabethan warrior-poet Sir Philip Sidney. Common sense screams as much. For example, the mural's grand funeral procession mirrors Sidney's in detail as does the life narrative of the cities Sidney visited during his Grand Tour and the battles he fought (and died) in. His legendary 25 day death-bed vigil, in which he famously repented the vanity of his life, is painstakingly recreated inside the mural. (Bear in mind, this death-bed vigil was legendary in establishing Sidney's fame.) The mural even depicts Sidney's coffin ship, the Black Prince, with its sails and hull painted black in mourning, exactly as history records the ship being painted as it deposited Sidney's body at Tower Hill.
Perhaps even more damning to the consensus identification of the uncelebrated life Sir Henry Unton, the Angel of Fame is twice depicted inside this mural as blowing her trumpet into the sitter's right ear while offering him the Crown of Triumph.
No scholar will deny that the mural as we know it today has been massively manipulated with extirpation and overpaint. These myriad surface alterations, all confirmed by the NPG, have allowed the mural to be misidentified as the unknown courtier Sir Henry Unton (it seems very likely that was the intended purpose of many of these alterations). Even the sitter's bust, in the center of the mural, has been altered, and yet the sitter still resembles Sidney in spite of the face lift of overpaint that straightened and shortened the sitter's arched nose (see below image).
Over a decade ago, long before I visited London to examine the portrait's file, I wrote the NPG about what I perceived as the obvious snake-doctoring of the mural via extensive in-painting and extirpation. I was perplexed that Strong had not mentioned any of these blatant manipulations in his "exhaustive" writings. In response the NPG sent me a few quotes from the Unton file: “Extensive retouching evident in all areas of the painting . . . large areas of retouching and extensive strengthening of many features of the painting clearly visible . . . suspect some areas seriously abraded.”
But in their reply, NPG left out the most important note, and it would be years later before I would discover a note inside the portrait's file in London that read: “Although
retouching and overpainting are very extensive, microscopic examination
implies that the original paint layers are in reasonable condition.”
Eventually I went to London to examine the portrait's infrared and x-ray results (which I had lobbied for). Infrared light, which attaches itself to carbon-based underdrawings, revealed any number of important details regarding the censored underpainting. One such detail was that a man, obviously the mural's central sitter, was depicted atop the mural riding a rearing steed while pointing a jousting lance grandly at the sky. This censored image, located center-uppermost and presiding over the mural, announced its theme of chivalry at the tilt. Yet Sir Henry Unton had no recorded history with the tilt. Is that why this important central image was censored with overpaint? Has there been a longstanding effort to mis-identify this mural?
 | |
| Above details from the NPG website Making Art in Tudor Britain. Note that the NPG describes the mysterious lance-shaking horseman as "painted out" of "the center at the top" of the portrait. |
Far from a tilt champion, Sir Henry Unton died after falling a horse. So it's curious that a mural championing his life, and death, would center itself beneath an image of a man riding a rearing steed pointing a jousting lance skyward. And it's stranger yet that horsemanship is undeniably celebrated throughout the entire mural. By contrast, Sir
Philip Sidney was a famous champion of the tilt, and his
whole legacy is attached to that symbol of chivalry and horsemanship. Sidney resided along with his sister Mary at Pembroke Place, a manor steeped in horsemanship. Sidney's legacy was grounded in horsemanship.
There is another symbol in the mural, this one a heraldic beast, that is impossible to explain in regard to Sir Henry Unton (although it is once again easily explained in a portrait of Sir Philip Sidney). The wyvern, or winged dragon, was the presiding symbol atop the 2nd Earl of Pembroke's coat of arms. Pembroke, perhaps the greatest horseman of his day, was married to Sidney's sister, Pembroke Place is synonymous with both Sidney and his poetry. It makes perfect sense we find a wyvern perched above the gate to Pembroke's Wilton House when it was sketched c. 1560 (see below). Wilton was, of course, the spiritual home of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary's Arcadia (home of the prestigious Wilton Group of writers).
The influence of Wilton on Sir Philip cannot be overstated. This is likely why the unknown painter of the memorial mural included this house, with its famous pedimented roof, in a manner that highlights the house's artistic legacy: a masque is being played inside the house celebrating the goddess Diana (the adopted mythological symbol of both Elizabeth I and Mary Sidney) as well as the poet-god Mercury.
Note: Sir Henry Unton had no relationship to any masques or literary art forms; by contrast, Sir Philip Sidney wrote masques, most notably one to entertain Queen Elizabeth I.
We
find yet another wyvern presiding over the sitter's tomb on the left side
of the mural. Yet the wyfern had no association to the Unton family or
with the family of Unton's wife Lady Dorothy. If this isn't a smoking gun or sorts, then there is no such thing as a smoking gun. Does this portrait really celebrate the uneventful life of Sir Henry Unton?
So now let's examine this tomb and try to make some sense of the wyvern perched above it. Note the effigy of the giant-sized woman presiding over the funeral monument. She stands upright above a second statue of a knight (our central sitter) lying on one elbow in a pose synonymous with melancholy. (Sir Philip Sidney was of course the courtier most associated the melancholic humor). But why would there be a wyvern above Sidney's tomb when it was not his heraldic beast? In order to explain this, we first have to identify the woman presiding over the monument and figure out why this woman is pointing to a stack of books (ahem) resting on a podium. Bear in mind that Sir Henry Unton was not a writer of any note. He published no books and wrote no plays or poems. Even Sir Roy Strong admits Unton was a writer of no note or fame except for one "trite econium" which would hardly merit a stack of books on his tomb.
Is this Sir Henry Unton?
Sir Roy Strong believes this woman on the tomb is Sir Henry Unton's low-bred wife yet Strong simply ignores the fact she is gesturing at a stack of books. Her husband Henry was not a writer and neither was she, so why would Lady Unton be pointing to books? And why does she preside over her husband in this funeral monument when Unton married far beneath his social status? Sir Henry hailed from the Seymour clan and his mother was a countess. His wife was a social nobody; yet she presides not only over the tomb but also over the feast and masque taking place inside the house. Sir Roy Strong turns a blind eye to these enigmas.
Is this really Sir Henry Unton?
Let us now pause to ponder this woman's resemblance to Mary Sidney. I can't imagine any scholar would deny this resemblance, but we will return to this point later.
Strong states, correctly I think, that the woman presiding over the tomb is the same woman presiding over the feast scene within the mural. But although Strong admits the woman "presides" over the tomb and the feast, he doesn't attempt to tackle the problem of social order this presents. He identifies the woman as Sir Henry's wife, but that theory can be proven wrong using Strong's own logic. For example, Strong noted: “In a picture whose sense of scale is almost wholly dominated by social precedence, Sir Henry Unton’s mother (pictured only in the mural birth scene lower right) assumes gargantuan proportions . . . If she [the mother] were standing, the two ladies and the nurse would be dwarfed by her. Of her noble rank we are left in no doubt (Strong 85).”
(We will return to this socially gargantuan red-haired mother in Part III of this series. Trust me when I say there is a good reason this portrait has been systematically censored.)
What Strong is saying is that caste, aka noble blood, dictates the size of the
various sitters within this mural. The so-called mother Unton, seen only in the birth panel lower right, is a social giant because, Strong tells us, she was the daughter of Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector. Yet Strong makes no attempt to explain why Unton's low-born wife is also portrayed as a social giant. Unton married far beneath himself; yet his so-called wife is painted gigantically and presides over the mural's feast, masque, and monument. Strong simply ignores this fact because he can't make any sense of it.
To solve these mysteries we have to understand that this socially gigantic woman presiding over the mural, and pointing to the dead knight's stack of books on the tomb, is very likely Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, the beloved sister (and rumored bed mate) of Sir Philip Sidney. (This also explains why there is a wyvern on top of the tomb.) No scholar would question for a moment that Mary Sidney was a social giant. Pembroke Place, home of the Wilton writers group, has been likened unto a kingdom unto itself. It was fabulously wealthy. Mary Sidney was a countess, after all, a social giant.
Let's return for a moment to that stack of books displayed on the tomb. These enigmatic books, so at odds with the life of Henry Unton, suddenly make perfect sense if we understand to tomb to belong to Sir Philip Sidney. His sister Mary Sidney not only published all of her brother's books after his death--they were never published while he was alive--she even revised them prior to publication. She is depicted as gigantic in size throughout the mural because her social status was, like her brother's, gargantuan.
Added to all this, the woman, even in miniature, greatly resembles Mary Sidney Herbert.
It's obvious that the
base of the tomb, especially the part that contains heraldry, has been drastically manipulated. The demarcation and
discoloration on the left side obliterates an entire section of the red
fence. This fencing proves this is not a modest wall memorial, such as
the one that has survived in Faringdon of Unton’s parents (Although Unton's tomb has not survived, there is no record of it resembling the mural's tomb in any way); instead we have in our mural a
grand tomb styled in the Westminster fashion for Queen Elizabeth I’s. Beneath this tomb we see two coffins that correspond to the two statues above it: one horizontal and one vertical. This a tomb, perhaps only of the imagination, that holds both Mary and Sir Philip Sidney.
An entire mythology, lacking any rational content, has been built by Strong to explain why Unton's low-bred wife features so prominently throughout the portrait. Strong argues (ahem) that Lady Unton painted the mural even though she had zero background as an artist. Bear in mind, this mural is a masterpiece of miniature painting that has been attributed at times to the great miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. It is the second most popular painting owned by the NPR. It's clear that Strong argues the mural was painted by Lady Unton simply to make his other arguments regarding the portrait appear less absurd.
The desperate notion that the mural was painted by Mrs. Unton is the only explanation, however fantastical, that can explain her gigantic presence residing over the tomb, feast, and masque. Basically Strong is arguing Lady Uton was a great painter, however secretive, with a giant ego. The theory deserves ridicule. This is a great work of art, no doubt, and we are asked to believe Lady Unton, who was not a painter, created this timeless masterpiece to celebrate her destitute husband's nonexistent literary career that features with it her husband being crowned, not once but twice, by the angel of fame.
No one in the art world would argue Sir Henry Unton to have been famous or worthy of such honors.
Now let's look at the various life episodes, filled with travels and wars, that orbit the central bust in a counterclock motion starting with the provocative birth scene (which we will put aside for now). The low countries, where Sidney died, are clearly depicted next to his death bed scene. Yet Sir Henry Unton died in the French commune of Coucy La Fere, and that site is no where to be found in this mural, although there is an attempt to make it seem so via the art of overpaint. Specifically there is a sloppy label telling us we are in France when we are obviously not in France. France, inside the world of this mural, is located far to the right-hand side of the Low Countries in the mural geography.
Let's look at these labels, some of which are purposely misleading. Four cities are labeled in an
inconsistent white lettering: VENIS, PADDUA, NIMINGGAN (further labeled
THE LOW COUNTRIES), and CUSHIA (further labeled FRANCE). The lettering
especially degenerates regarding these last two cities, which Strong believes depicts Nymegen in the Netherlands and Coucy La Fere in France. Strong offers no sound explanation for why a giant, walled city is labeld in such a manner if can be confused with the French commune of Coucy La Fere. For the record, this label reads, "CUSHIA."
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| Various labels appearing on the NPG Memorial Portrait called Sir Henry Unton. |
Coucy La
Fere, where Unton died, was not a city filled with walls, rivers, and Gothic towers but was indisputably a commune in northern France. Unton was sent there, against
his will, by Elizabeth I. In an episode typical of his life, a life he himself described as "clownish," he arrived there only to be publicly shunned by the French king. This disgrace, one of many Unton endured, caused him to write home that, “I do hide my
head in shame.” Then, shortly after penning this letter, he fell off a horse and died.
It's sad to report, although Unton admitted it himself, there is very little to celebrate in the life of Sir Henry Unton. He was disowned by Elizabeth I a number of times. He participated in no literary endeavors. He died in massive debt without children after which his wife almost immediately remarried. This was hardly a life to be recalled via a grand mural.
Recall that it was after being shunned by the French king in Coucy that Unton fell off his horse, took a fever,
and died. The painter’s decision, therefore, to portray Unton mounted
gaily on horseback capering toward so-called Coucy La Fere might seem a bit odd, yes?
Although Strong somehow insists that the great European city labeled "Cushia" is the village of Coucy La Fere, it's clear that the artist, a trained miniaturist, went to great pains to depict a city as bisected by a large river, surrounded by a wall, and filled with many magnificent Gothic towers. In fact it was these towers that cause Lionel Cust, Strong’s predecessor as head of the NPG, to describe this city as “oriental.” Although Cust was most likely incorrect about this, he, unlike Strong, can at least differentiate between a great walled city and a commune. Nothing could be more obvious than the fact this great city is not Coucy La Fere, which is why no scholar, Strong included, has ever cited one similarity between this painted city landscape and the commune where Unton died.
The landscape depicted here most likely reveals to us the city of Krakow, which was also known back then as Cracovia (with various spellings). The city, divided by the Vistula River, boasted 46 Gothic tower in medieval times. Sir Philip Sidney toured that city as part of his Grand Tour. (There were even rumors he might be made their king.) Sir Henry Unton never went to Krakow.
Here is how Katherine Duncan-Jones describes Sidney trip to Kracow.
Osborn calculated that the round trip from Vienna to Cracow amounted to about 550 miles, requiring "close to forty miles in the saddle for each of the fourteen days." If Sidney and Bryskett were indeed 'Still with the Muses sporting,' as they trotted up and down central Europe, it is no wonder that Sidney wrote in Astrophel and Stella that his Muse:
"Tempers her words to trampling horse's feet/
More oft than to a chamber melody . . ."
The mural's bust depicts a writer, posing with pen, paper, and ink,
who twice in the pictorial narrative receives the Crown of Triumph from
the Angel of Fame. Even Sir Roy Strong admits the central bust is posed in the rare, writerly style of Shakespeare and Stowe. And the mural's sitter is writing with pen-in-hand before a green theatrical curtain. That this central sitter is a famous writer, and not a
minor ambassador, is glaringly obvious if you approach the mural with any objectivity.
Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to convince us this portrait celebrates Sir Henry Unton, a man who in no way, shape, or form merited such a portrait.
Part III of this series will discuss the political message of this mural and the reasons why it has been so heavily censored.
Note: all image in this post are being used for the purpose of identification and fall under Fair Use laws.
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