Diana Kirke, later Countess of Oxford - YCBA Collections Search

Sir Peter Lely, 1618–1680, Dutch, active in England (from 1643), Diana Kirke, later Countess of Oxford, ca. 1665

Creator:: Sir Peter Lely, 1618–1680, Dutch, active in England (from 1643)
Title:: Diana Kirke, later Countess of Oxford
Date:: ca. 1665
Medium:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: Support (PTG): 52 x 41 inches (132.1 x 104.1 cm) and Frame: 61 x 50 x 3 3/4 inches (154.9 x 127 x 9.5 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:: Inscribed in ocher paint, lower right: "Diana Kirke | Cts, of Oxford."
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1981.25.756
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1981.25.756FR
Subject Terms:: countess | curls | earrings | flowers (plants) | jewels | nude | portrait | woman
Associated People:: Kirke, Diana (after 1646-1719), Countess of Oxford
Access:: On view in the galleries
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:5046
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

The Dutch painter Peter Lely moved to London in about 1643 and came into his own after 1660 when he was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to the pleasure-loving court of the restored Charles II. Diana Kirke (d. 1707) was one of the great beauties at court where her parents held office in the royal household. Their beautiful daughter was a valuable asset in promoting their interests. Diana, described as “free of morality” by one contemporary, was soon rumored to be attached to two powerful men before becoming the mistress of Aubrey de Vere, twentieth Earl of Oxford, whom she married in 1673. De Vere may have commissioned this portrait of his mistress. With deliberate irony, Lely casts her as Venus with a rose and bare breast, rather than as her namesake, the chaste goddess Diana.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime… Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" The portrait of Diana Kirke (d. 1707) is one of Lely's most sensuous and beautiful. It exemplifies his lush painterly and brilliantly coloristic style, reminiscent of that of Rubens, in which the richly painted surfaces echo and magnify the voluptuousness-and eroticism-of the subject. Like the mistress of Marvell's poem, Diana Kirke exudes provocative intimacy and mystery. With her beguiling stare she coyly commands her viewers, all the while remaining frustratingly silent in her ambiguous gesture. A modern-day Venus, does she proffer her rose to her viewer or deny him its beauty? Languorously posing, breast carelessly exposed by the falling yoke of her silken shift, does she promise or simply tempt? Likea rose herself, will she provide soft comfort or wound with her hidden thorns? Arousing questions and desires, she resists all answers. The painting was most likely commissioned by Kirke's lover, Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford. Painted in the late 1660s, when Kirke was openly acknowledged at court as Oxford's mistress, the work closely follows the standard pattern used for portraits of "Restoration Beauties," a formula Lely had devised earlier in that decade with his Windsor Beauties, a series commissioned by the Duke and Duchess of York (Royal Collection). From early in his career Lely's portraits of women were perceived as deriving from a single facial model, one thought to be fashioned from the features of Charles II's most notorious and powerful mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland: a contemporary noted that "Sir Peter Lilly…put something of Clevelands face…her Languishing Eyes into every one Picture, so that all his pictures had an air of one another."1 Certainly, Kirke's almond "bedroom" eyes and pursed rosy lips resemble closely those of her rival court beauties. Yet her intimate pose (subtly different from so many of the known, nearly formulaic stances of other sitters) and the careful attention lavished on the portrait by the artist himself set this image apart from the majority of Lely's female portraits of this period, most of which were produced by his studio assistants in an almost assembly-line fashion. Perhaps,in the longstanding tradition of portraits of mistresses commissioned by their royal lovers, Oxford had this picture painted for his own pleasure, keeping it in his private chambers, to be viewed and appreciated only by him and his inner circle of friends and associates. Kirke belonged to the bevy of beautiful young women so sought after by young courtiers like Oxford who roamed the halls of Whitehall in the 1660s. Second daughter of George Kirke, Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles II and Keeper of Whitehall Palace, she moved in aristocratic circles from an early age. Sometime after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, an event in which Oxford played a significant role, Kirke and Oxford began their open liaison. They eventually married in April 1673; later, their youngest daughter Diana was-like her mother-renowned at court for her beauty. The family's fate would be forever linked to that of the royal family by the 1694 marriage of the young Diana to the first Duke of St. Albans, Charles Beauclerk, an illegitimate son of Charles II by his infamous mistress, the actress Nell Gwyn.

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 34, no. 6, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

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Painted Ladies : Women at the Court of Charles II (National Portrait Gallery, 2001-10-11 - 2002-01-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986, Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, pp. 4, 9, 15, no. 35, color plate 2, N590.2 A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

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Karen Hearn, Lady Anne Clifford, culture, patronage and gender in 17th-century Britain , no. 7, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds, 2009, fig. 21, DA378.P4 L34 2009 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Catharine MacLeod, Painted ladies : Women at the court of Charles II, , National Portrait Gallery, London, 2001, pp. 100-01, 243, no. 21, ND1314.3 M23 2001 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 34, no. 6, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John McDonald, A Feast of Mellon, Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 1998, p. 14, Film An Sy25 (SML) Also Available Online (Factiva database) [ORBIS]

Oliver Millar, Sir Peter Lely, 1618-80, [catalogue of an] exhibition at [the] National Portrait Gallery, 17 November, 1978 to 18 March, 1979 , National Portrait Gallery, London, 1978, no. 46, NJ18 L54 M55 (YCBA) [YCBA]

National Portrait Gallery, London; Exhibit, Art International, Vol. 22, February 1979, pp. 43-44, N1 A1 A7 + (A & A) [ORBIS]

Paul Mellon's Legacy, a passion for British art. [large print labels] , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 +P381 2007, Mellon Shelf (YCBA) [YCBA]

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Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and fiction, dress in art and literature in Stuart England , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005, p. 270, pl. 173, NX650 C663 R53+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

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Randolph Vigne, From strangers to citizens, the integration of immigrant communities in Britain, Ireland, and colonial America, 1550-1750 , Sussex Academic Press, Brighton Portland, 2001, p. 23, no. 71, DA125 A1 F76X 2001 (SML) [ORBIS]

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John Wilmerding, In honor of Paul Mellon, collector and benefactor, Essays , National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC & Hanover, NH, 1986, p. 266, fig. 7, N7442.2 M455 1986 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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