Martyr-likeness stippled and dedicated upward for genteel possession

The whole thing fits in one hand. Twenty-one centimeters by seventeen, ruled and mounted, a sheet held at arm's length and turned to the light. At the center of that small field hangs a heavy jeweled cross, worked in stipple to catch its own weight of ornament, laid over the black bodice like a relic set out for inspection. This is the first fact the page offers: not a face but a thing to keep, hung where the eye must land. The Scottish queen wore that cross to the block and would not trade it for her life. Here it is the brightest object on a leaf sized for a folio.

The tonal work earns one sincere word: patient. Whoever cut this plate coaxed the goffered ruff, the translucent lace, and the pearled band above the brow into a soft granular light the Scottish-subject portrait had long wanted in print and rarely secured. Unshowy. Exact. But this is a fifth state of five, pulled and repolished until the surface offers no resistance, and beneath it runs a dedication to the Duchess of York at a Pall Mall address. The face is invented—after a painting, never a sitting—so the printseller does not sell the sovereign. He sells access to her, smoothed and inscribed upward to living royalty, so that hanging a beheaded Scot in a cabinet may pass for reverence. A worn psalter needs no dedication to be believed; a true relic asks nothing of its owner's rank. This sheet asks a great deal and returns a likeness it never saw. Weigh it plainly. She kept the cross at the cost of her head; the plate surrenders both, five times over, priced for a drawing-room wall and flattered upward to secure the sale. What is acquired here is not a queen but the pleasure of holding her defeat—and what the owner has bought instead of her likeness. — SG