Lady Mary: Beauty and Brutality

Painting Scars Out

Once, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was one of the most beautiful women in England. By the time that Jonathan Richardson painted her in her Turkish robes in 1726, however, it had been over a decade since smallpox ravaged her beauty. Artists regularly brushed out the pits and scars of disease, but Richardson went of his way to grant her a return to shining expanses of smooth and creamy skin, at least in paint.

Painting Slavery In

Far more disturbing, at least in 21st-century context, is who Richardson painted in: no one bothered to note the name of the young African boy standing beside Lady Mary in the shadows. He wears an outsized red coat and, disturbingly, a silver collar around his neck. In The Speckled Monster, he is Jackey, one of Zabdiel Boylston‘s enslaved attendants.

It’s an exquisite and horrifying painting, witness to the beauty and brutality of the eighteenth century.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
by Jonathan Richardson (c. 1726)
Collection of the Earl of Harrowby

“All that morning and into the afternoon, Zabdiel stood with his friends and watched the image of Lady Mary bloom upon Mr. Richardson’s canvas, as the painter captured the uptilt of her shoes, the light that skated like gold wine from the falls of her caftan, the jewels winking at her waist and cascading over one ear. Most amazingly, Mr. Richardson caught the glitter of her eyes fixed on them all with challenge and with pride. Behind her, in the shadow of his parasol, Jackey peered up at her with much the same intensity, his almond eyes fusing awe and fury.”

 

—The Speckled Monster

More Inspiration and Illustrations for The Speckled Monster