chamber. In the catalogue of Vander Doort,. who was keeper of the king's cabinet, it is thus described:-"No. 23. Item. Done upon the right light, the second picture of Queen Mary of Scotland, upon a bluegrounded square card, dressed in her hair, in a carnation habit laced with small gold lace, and a string of pearls about her neck, in a little plain falling band, she putting on her second finger her wedding ring. Supposed to be done by Jennet, a French limner."

This Jennet is of course François Clouet or Janet, the well-known portrait painter. The miniature has never been out of the royal possession: its authenticity is therefore without a shadow of doubt, and it may be accepted as a standard authority on the vexed

question of the true features of the beautiful queen. Much confusion has arisen with regard to the portraits of Mary from the fact that another miniature also in the royal collection was accepted as authentic, and it is the one engraved by Houbraken in his series of portraits. This is the one with the black hat and large ruff, but it is certainly not Queen Mary, and is now supposed to be the Countess of Nottingham, the heroine of the story of the Earl of Essex's ring. The painting, it may be observed, is by Isaac Oliver, who, as he was only born in 1556, could have hardly painted Queen Mary of Scotland in the bloom of her beauty.

Here it may be observed that even of the names attached by the most ancient traditions to portraits, very many are misleading, and

ANNE OF DENMARK.

By ISAAC OLIVER.

lady in gorgeous apparel with a longish nose, light hair, and an enormous ruff, must be

Queen Elizabeth, and if with a crown or mark of royalty that evidence would be accepted as final, in which case poor Anne of Denmark, who, as the mother of Charles I. and Henry Prince of Wales, deserves some remembrance, would be left without a portrait at all. Vertue, who should have known better, has engraved a portrait of her in profile as Queen Elizabeth, from a miniature now at Windsor, given on the preceeding page, and many more instances of the same mistake are known to the curious in portraiture. The time perhaps may come when all doubt will be at rest as to the features of Catharine of Arragon-of

Mary of Scotland we have already spokenand when Anne Boleyn and others may be recognised as easily as the beauties of the present day.

Anne of Denmark and her royal and wise consort James I. were painted over and over again by the greatest miniature painter of his time, Isaac Oliver, to whom we owe perhaps the finest and most elaborate works in this style of art which have ever been produced. He painted all the great and noble of his day-heads, busts, and often full-lengths-besides working on large compositions, one of them, the Crucifixion, being over a foot square: this he left unfinished at