Flight of the Queen of James II, from "Illustrated London News"

Richard Principal Leitch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mary of Modena, James II's queen, prepares here to leave England for France with her infant son, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart. Her husband has already fled before the advance of William of Orange (the latter soon to be crowned William III with his wife Mary II (daughter of James II by his first marriage). This dramatic change would be dubbed the "Glorious Revolution" and ensured the succession of a Protestant monarch in Britain. In December 1688, as the queen left Whitehall Palace, London was gripped with anti-Catholic fever, so she huddles in fear beside the tower of St. Mary's Church at Lambeth as a carriage is prepared to take her to a yacht at Gravesend. Related text in the "Illustrated London News" states: "Some time elapsed however, before the horses were harnessed. Mary, afraid that she might be recognised, would not enter the house. She remained with her child standing for shelter...under the tower of Lambeth Church, and distracted with terror whenever the ostler approached her with his lantern."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art