Stop and Look – Sir Peter Lely’s Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, with her son as the Virgin and Child

Peter Lely came to England from his native Westphalia before the Civil War, and by the time of Charles II’s Restoration in 1660 had become Van Dyck’s undisputed successor, being appointed principal painter to the King in that year. One of his jobs was to celebrate the circle of “beauties” with which Charles surrounded himself; women from every walk of life elevated, thanks to their physical charms, to the highest ranks of the aristocracy. 

Barbara Villers was herself well-born and married a Roman Catholic, Roger Palmer, whom the King ennobled as Earl of Castlemaine once she had established herself in the royal favour. In July 1660, Pepys noticed “the King and Dukes … with Madam Palmer, a pretty woman that they have a fancy to make her husband a cuckold.”

Before long, she and Palmer were divorced, but the King made her Countess of Castlemaine in her own right. She was also given the title of Duchess of Cleveland, and her eldest son Charles Fitzroy (from the French ‘fils du Roi’- king’s son), was granted a dispensation by which he came into the dukedom. As if that weren’t enough dignity for the little boy, in Lely’s picture of him with his mother he takes on the temporary sanctity of the Christ Child himself. The blue cloak the duchess wears is, of course, the traditional garb of the Virgin Mary. Her famously abundant brown hair is hidden beneath a modest grey-brown scarf. 

So this is a thoroughly blasphemous image, carried out with all the authority of Lely’s fine technique and mastery of colour – really a grand joke, of the kind that appealed to Charles’s court. (When Barbara converted to Catholicism he claimed that he was interested in ladies’ bodies, not their souls, a disingenuous, if deeply sexist, remark considering that he himself was drawn to the Roman church). The duchess’s knowing expression  – almost a complicit smirk – and “come-to-bed” eyes are no accident. We might almost be surprised that she isn’t displaying an expanse of naked bosom into the bargain. Lely painted her more than once, often in voluptuous attire, but Charles certainly derived sensual pleasure from contemplating his mistresses as exemplars of virtue. 

Barbara was, in fact, as dissolute as any of Charles’s ladies. She was promiscuous and extravagant with money – especially other people’s. She fell from favour as a consequence of the political situation, which turned against Catholics in 1673, and also, because of Charles’s roving eye: he took up with other beauties and then told her “he cared not whom she loved”. 

The fluted column and brooding landscape that set the tone for this portrait had been introduced as appropriate to religious subjects in the sixteenth century, and had been adopted by Van Dyck for portraits earlier in the seventeenth. They were standard accessories for Lely and his contemporaries and would remain ubiquitous in portraiture until the early nineteenth century. Here, Lely uses them as almost subliminal pointers to royal grandeur.

Sir Peter Lely 1618-80
Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, with her son as the Virgin and Child
Oil on canvas 49 1/8 x 40 1/8 in. (124.7 x 102 cm.) c1664
National Portrait Gallery