'Setting' the Stuart court: placing portraits in the 'performance' of Anglo-Spanish negotiations

This article interrogates three manuscript inventories for Anna of Denmark’s collection at the Tudor palace of Oatlands in Surrey, written at yearly intervals in 1616, 1617 and 1618. It explores the changing display of her paintings there in lavishly furnished settings and the positioning of a new portrait, Paul van Somer’s Anne of Denmark. Van Somer locates his subject in the hunting park at Oatlands with a representation, in the background, of an Inigo Jones gateway. This article explores Anna’s agency as a collector and patron. It proposes new readings for the interplay between portraiture, architecture, and the decorative and performing arts at the early Stuart court. Through a study of particular occasions at which they were seen by foreign ambassadors, it proposes a political currency for the queen’s collection and for van Somer’s portraits and Jones’s architecture, as integral components in the elaborate ‘performances’ of the court.