Episode 43: The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

THE QUEEN IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! This episode is a deep dive into one of the few oil paintings that can claim TikTok fame: the Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, which has been a beloved fixture of the National Gallery in London for decades. Come for the so-called Nine Days’ Queen, stay in spite of the 15-minute tangent about the Third Act of Succession.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's mango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay. Pleasure to meet you. And this is my podcast, obviously, where I put my art history PhD to work to do just what the title says. Tell you stuff about some things. What can I say? I was not feeling terribly creative when I named the podcast over almost seven years ago. Seven years, which just feels impossible. I do vividly remember the series of nervous breakdowns that I had while trying to make the first episode, including when I accidentally spilled a full glass of Pinot Grigio on my brand new computer, which I am still using. Thankfully, no damage, which is a gosh darn miracle. Ah, memories. Thank you for joining me for episode 43. Episode 43 is one that I have wanted to make for a while now. In many ways, the work at the center of the episode has been haunting me for just about two years, when for whatever reason it became TikTok famous. Yes, TikTok famous. Words I don't think I've ever said on the pod. I am about 95% sure that I had seen the painting before. But it was only after seeing it on TikTok that I started to poke around a little bit. Not necessarily for the purposes of the podcast, but rather because I just so happened to be a curious little capybara. I was going to say koala, but they notoriously carry chlamydia, so no thank you. I'm also allergic to cats, so can't name one of those. Anyway. I became even more interested in the painting and the person it depicts this past fall, when my best friend Drew recommended a delightful TV show called My Lady Jane, which became one of my favorite shows of the past year. The show is a very fun, fantasy-infused interpretation, which is probably a very mild word for what it is, but we'll go with it. An interpretation of the life of its titular character, Lady Jane. It's like if Bridgerton, the Tudors, Monty Python, and I don't know, the Power Rangers had a strange four-parent love child. I don't even know how the Power Rangers made it into that equation. Maybe it's like the shape-shifting and bright colors part, but it somehow feels right. In short, it's a fun, sexy, ridiculous romp of a show, very loosely, like oh so loosely, based on historical events. Sadly, it was cancelled after one season, a fact by which I will continue to feel personally victimized. But anyway. In addition to TikTok and My Lady Jane, I am also very excited about an upcoming trip I have to the United Kingdom, where one of the only must-see things on my itinerary is this work of art. That is partly because I've been so busy with work that I haven't had time to plan much, but also I'm still sad about my dog, R.I.P. Gus. And it's hard to feel excited about things when there's like a hole in your chest where your heart used to be. But before you get concerned, don't worry. I've taken up baking. I'll be fine. And I am excited to see this painting, which feels nice. It's nice to be excited about things, and so I wanted to learn more about it. I will say that I made an absolutely Herculean effort to make this episode before I left on my trip, which I am doing literally tomorrow. I had very limited time to do the recording and the editing, so this is well, see, I just screwed up there, but that is to say, this is as close to a one-shot recording as I will ever do. I'm sure it'll still take me hours, but whatever.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Spoiler alert, she did not finish editing her podcast before she went on vacation. She is now editing it on vacation. That's so much I love you.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And so without further ado, let's get into it. The part where I tell you stuff about an absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking, haunting painting. The woman who inspired it and the man who brought her back to life. Kind of. A bold choice for an act so bloody. If not for the blindfold, she may have even been mistaken for a bride. She had been just that a mere six months earlier. But much can change in half a year, in a month, even in a day. The girl knew this well. When she had awoken that morning, she had been a wife. Now she was a widow. She had gotten confirmation of that just an hour before, when she saw her husband's broken, headless body being carted from the premises. Now it was her turn. Instead of kneeling before an altar in the springtime, she now knelt before the executioner's block, ready to forfeit her life. In truth, her life had been forfeited for some time. The meeting of axe and skin was all but a formality, even a freeing. The girl was tired of waiting to die, and so the former queen became a corpse. Thousands of people had come to see her meet the executioner. It was a civilized event, one marked by order and decorum. There was no splattering of blood, no final prayers of the damned, no echoing thud of the executioner's axe. People came, they saw, and they left. Of course, Paris was no stranger to death, least of all the death of a queen. Some of those who had come to see the girl die had attended the execution of another queen just 40 years earlier. Perhaps the witnesses recalled the sudden hush of the crowd in the moments before the guillotine's blade dropped, the flash of silver a prelude to red as Marie Antoinette was deprived of both her life and her head. Such things don't fade from one's memory, even over the course of decades. Whether they had borne witness to that or not, they could not now tear their eyes away from the girl. Some even wept, but the majority were simply entranced. The promise of impending death has a way of doing that to a person. Unlike in the days of the Revolution, when the line between the damned and the angels was as thin as the edge of a guillotine's blade, this was no matter of gray, at least not the color. The French public knew a victim when they saw one. It didn't matter that the girl was British, nor did it matter that the girl was not really a girl at all, but a confection of paint applied expertly to a canvas, all strokes of the brush suppressed until the painted bodies themselves appeared to breathe. The painted girl might not have been real, but the story the painting told was. If not in its particulars, then at least in its contours. But we would do well to remember that a paint and canvas girl is not the same as one made of flesh and blood, though such a thing can be hard to remember when both have been linked in the public imagination for nearly 300 years. Dead at 17, yet immortal in so many ways. Such was the destiny of Lady Jane Grey. Painted in 1833 by French artist Paul Delaroche, the painting more or less shows what its title promises: The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, the so-called Nine Days Queen. It is a painting that has attracted significant popular attention over the course of its 192-year history. And yet we don't really know all that much about the painting, the man who painted it, or even the woman it depicts, the titular Lady Jane Gray. But you're here because you want to know more. And boy oh boy, did you come to the right place? Because we are going to talk about it all, starting with the mastermind behind the painting, French artist Paul Delaroche. Paul Delaroche is a name that I would not expect the average listener of the pod to recognize. During his career, which ranged from about 1820 to 1856-ish, during that time frame, he was a very well-known artist. But these days he's something of a one-hit wonder, in that the painting at the heart of our episode today, the execution of Lady Jane Gray, is arguably way more famous than Delaroche himself, who painted the dang thing. That is to say, I think it's much more likely that someone would recognize the painting before they recognized Paul Delaroche's name. Ain't that just the breaks? Even I didn't really know all that much about Paul Delaroche, which is saying something, because 19th-century French art was technically, technically, my secondary specialization in graduate school, kind of like a minor. To be fair, my specialization was actually 19th-century religious painting, but still, you'd think I'd have a better idea of who this guy was and what he did. What I now love about Paul Delaroche is that the critics and art historians of his day and the decades after he died, they treated him like a kind of art historical anti-hero, maybe even a villain. But in the case of Delaroche, his villainy was essentially just that he was really basic, to use the slang of present-day youth. He was basic and all of the normies liked his paintings, which obviously means he stinks and wasn't good at art. I would say riddle me that one, but we all know that snobbery abounds in the world of art history, something I am actively trying to combat. But Delaroche was not without his admirers, namely the average art curious public who just wanted to see cool stuff and not have to think about it too much or ask too many questions. Those are my people. I too mostly just want to see cool stuff that makes me feel something. And Delaroche and this painting in particular fit that bill to a T, much to the detriment of their reception by art critics. For an artist that was actually quite famous and well known during his lifetime, we really don't know all that much about Paul Delaroche, with the exception of the last decade or so of his life, which was better documented. We do know that Paul was not actually born Paul. His given name was Hippolyte Hippolyte de la Roche. Or as I like to pronounce it phonetically in my head, Hippolyte. Hippolyte de la Roche. So here's the first great life mystery for you, uh, dear listener. Why would a man whose given name is as amazing as Hippolyte choose to go by Paul? Paul Paul. For me, that is the French equivalent of someone named Richard deciding to go by Dick. I mean that respectfully. Like if you want to be a dick, be a dick. But don't expect me not to question that choice. Hippolyte Paul Del Roche was born in Paris on July 17th, 1797, when the French Revolution was still in full swing and would be for another two years. In his youth, Paul's connection to the art world was twofold. His father was an art dealer, while Paul's brother, Jules, was training to be a painter. And Jules was probably a halfway decent painter, too, because he trained in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, who was the greatest French painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. David painted works like The Death of Murat, which I like to call murder in the bathtub, and a ton of paintings having to do with Napoleon, because David was Napoleon's preferred painter man. No one asked, but my opinion of David is on par with my opinion of Raphael. His paintings are big and they are beautiful. Oof, are they boring? One woman's opinion. We'll see if my friend Jean yells at me for that one, too. When Paul voiced his desire to become a painter, he faced a little complication, because Paul's father didn't want his sons in direct competition with one another. And so he sent Paul to train with a landscape painter while Jules remained in David's studio, learning how to paint, you know, big, beautiful, and boring history paintings. As of 1816, however, David was kicked out of Paris and France more broadly alongside Sir Napoleon. Get these guys out of here. It was also around this point in 1816 that Jules decided to quit painting in favor of joining his father in the art business, which meant that Paul was no longer restricted to landscapes. And for the record, from this point on, I shall simply be referring to Paul as Delaroche, because we are done with all of the other Delaroches. So in 1818, Delaroche joins the studio of Antoine Jean Gros, whose name I cannot pronounce properly, so we'll just call him Guro. I apologize to the French and select Canadians everywhere. For this and also, you know, for other things. In many ways, this makes a lot of sense. That is to say, Delaroche joining Gro's studio. Because Gro was De Vide's right-hand guy, and ultimately he inherited De Vide's studio when Holmy was exiled from France. While we really don't know anything about Delaroche's time in Gro's studio, we do know that later, much later, when Delaroche had finally made it big, that Gro would not shut up about the fact that Delaroche trained in his studio. That goes to show that despite having a very successful career, Groh knew one great life truth. The best coattails are the ones you ride, my friends. For any practicing artist at this time, there was one place where you wanted your work exhibited, the Salon, also known as the Salon, which was a major art event in Paris that was held every one or two years, during which some of the greatest artists in France, and as of the 1800s across Europe, would come and exhibit their work to critics and the public. Delaroche started exhibiting at the Salon as early as 1822, when he would have been in his mid-20s, and he remained a fairly consistent presence there for almost every year thereafter until the late 1830s. During that time, he was one of the best-known artists in Paris, and he was particularly renowned for his history paintings. Well, I should renowned is maybe like a strong word. As we'll see, critics did not like him, but he was very well known for his history paintings, which are basically what they sound like. Really big paintings that show a scene from history. Delarouche, however, had a very specific style. As I think I explain in my Romanticism episode, which I tried to listen to the other day and found too cringy, the person who once left me a two-star review and said I talked in different fonts was absolutely correct. I mean, to be fair, I still do, but not as many fonts. I'm old and boring now. But anyway, as I think I say in that episode, in the 1800s, the academic style was the be-all end-all of what critics considered to be good art. This was the style that they taught in the official Academie de Beaux-Art, which literally translated means Academy of Attractive or Beautiful Art. The academic style was very straightforward, often very classical, idealistic, and in my personal opinion, boring. But hey, if you like that, I don't want to yuck your yum. You do you. Delaroche's signature style was somewhere between the academic style being taught in the official, you know, hoity-toity circles of French art, and romanticism, a burgeoning artistic style in the early to mid-1800s. Though I suppose it like wasn't so much a style as a kind of revolt against the academy and the academic style. The romantics were all up in their emotions. They liked drama. And all of that came out in their arts and literature and whatever else those crazy cats were making back then. Delaroche is squarely between these two poles. His visual style, the way he placed and moved paint across the canvas, was more academic than romantic. He was known for highly finished paintings that don't have obvious brushstrokes. It's like he didn't want you focusing on the how of things, how he made something, but rather on what was being depicted. This suppression of brushstrokes was common in the academy, and it's something the Impressionists and post-impressionists would absolutely riot against. Brushstrokes for everyone. But Delaroche masked that aspect of his work. He did, however, embrace romanticism when it came to choosing what to paint. He had a knack for selecting the most emotionally charged moment of a narrative and then painting the heck out of it, in a way that made the scene very accessible to the average person, which is something the critics did not appreciate, as we shall see. By the late 1820s, Delaroche was a fairly well-known painter in France. He wasn't the most popular. That superlative went to the likes of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste Dominique Angle, which is another French name that I cannot pronounce. I-N-G-R-E-S. I just, I can't. While those two were definitely like the be all and all of French art, Delaroche was definitely holding his own. And much of his work around this time, and really for his whole career, were these big history paintings, specifically with scenes from French and English history. It was in the late 1820s that Delaroche started working on the execution of Lady Jane Grey. He may or may not have started working on it officially in the 1820s, but he was thinking about it, working out ideas for the composition, and he was doing a lot of research. That is something that Delaroche really cared about, historical research, which ensured that his paintings were relatively historically accurate. Now, as we'll see, he didn't insist on everything being accurate or exact. He certainly took some artistic licenses with things, but for the most part his works were fairly historically accurate for the time. When it comes to the execution of Lady Jane Grey, Delaroche even traveled to London to do some research, though it's unclear if he specifically went to London for that research or if it just happened in the course of another trip. Either way, he was in London and he did research. Research, if you will. We know that Delaroche completed the execution of Lady Jane Grey in 1833, because he signed and dated the painting in the lower right hand corner, which is very convenient and very helpful. Merci. That means it took him over five years to go from concept to completion with this painting, though he probably wasn't working on it for that entire time. That said, the painting is quite large, so maybe it did. I don't know. If he wasn't painting it, For that entire five years, what was he doing? We know from the drawings we have that Delaroche spent several years just sketching out various aspects of the work, until he had a very good idea of what he wanted the final composition and scene to be. And scene is really the right word. The painting looks exactly like a freeze frame from a stage production, complete with props, lighting, actors, etc. There was a reason why the painting is so often referred to as theatrical, but not just because it almost looks like a play happening before our eyes. Delaroche was also a master storyteller, and he had a way of choosing the most emotionally charged moments of a story to show the viewer. You'd think that would be the moment of execution, the moment where the axe falls. But oh no, no, no, no. Delaroche knew that drama didn't require gore or violence, two things that he was not all that keen on painting. Instead, Delaroche understood that it's the moments before the violence and gore that capture our attention most. It's not just the anticipation of violence that gets us. It's the fact that we know what's coming before it happens, and yet we are powerless to stop it. That idea takes new dimensions when it comes to Lady Jane Gray, a young woman blindfolded, grasping at the air in search for the executioner's block. As for the rest of the scene, Delaroche uses the supporting figures very strategically, creating a kind of landscape of grief for the viewer to traverse. One of Jane's ladies in waiting has fainted. The other is sobbing against a column. The executioner who holds the instrument of death looks down in regret, knowing that he has a job to do but not relishing that job. And of course, there is the man who is helping Jane. The figure alternatively identified as either John Feckman, who served as a kind of spiritual advisor to Jane in her final weeks and days, or potentially John Bridges, the lieutenant of the Tower of London. Whoever it is, his reaction is tender, almost an embrace of sorts. He is providing comfort as he guides Jane's hands to the block. And so the only person in the painting who is looking out at the audience is Jane, who is blindfolded. In doing so, Delaroche creates a greater sense of immediacy and connection, but he also denies that connection in many ways by showing Jane and her blindfold. In some ways, doing that shifts the blame onto the viewer, daring us to look away while somehow keeping our eyes glued to the scene. And all I can say to that is, well played, Paul. Well played. The thing that is brilliant about this painting is that, like the reactions happening within it, it also demands a reaction from the audience. Even more brilliantly, it demands reactions regardless of whether or not you know the story of Jane Gray. Delaroche gives you every visual indication that you need to figure out what's happening. An innocent-looking young woman grasping at the executioner's block, experiencing this final moment of kindness as the executioner stands at the ready, all while hearing her friends mourn her as if she's already dead, which really she's as good as. While the scene is powerful as is, it becomes all the more so when you know the story of Jane Gray. And that is a story I'm going to tell here. Do I need to? Not really, but I want to pay homage to the woman who inspired Delaroche's famous work, the one who provokes such sympathy in her many viewers. The historical figure that is Lady Jane Grey. Another reason that I wanted to tell the story of Jane Grey is because I find her fascinating, in part because I'm a total history nerd, who would have thought, but also because of this painting. It has a way of making Jane Grey come alive to the viewer, which is horribly ironic, given that it shows her just minutes from death. But that's exactly why the painting is so moving. But the events that brought Jane to the scaffold are what make her story truly tragic. It's not just that she died in the prime of her life, but the fact that none of it was her fault. At least not really. She was a victim of the choices of the people around her, people who should have taken care of her rather than use her for their own political gains. But hey, we're talking about the tutors. And they weren't very good at the whole love thy neighbor thing. I mean, Henry VIII couldn't even be bothered to love the majority of his wives, so, you know, not a great omen for Lady Jane Grey. But who was this Lady Jane Grey, the woman who inspired Paul Delaroche's incredibly popular painting? The answer is that we're not really sure. We know very, very little about Jane's life in general, and particularly her early life, which was really her whole life, because she was at most 17 when she died. I say at most, because we don't even know when Jane was born, though the most often cited time frame for that is somewhere around October of 1537. Jane was born the daughter of Henry Gray and Lady Frances Brandon. Her father Henry was a whole lot of whatever, at least for our purposes. I don't even think I mention him again. But Jane's mother Frances is important because it's through Frances that Jane becomes heir to the English crown. Now, have I mentioned yet that Jane was the Queen of England? Sure, her reign only lasted for less than two weeks and she wasn't widely recognized by the people. But hey, let's not get too caught up in the technicality of things. Says the lady who wrote almost 6,000 words about Jane Gray and her positioning in the Tudor line of succession. But I've said it once, I'll say it again. I never claimed not to be a hypocrite. Buckle up, we're getting into it. But yes, Jane was indeed in the line of tutor succession. Her mother, Frances, was the daughter of Charles Brandon, played by the stunningly handsome Henry Cavill in the Showtime series The Tudors, which I freaking loved in college. I spent an entire month's allowance on a boxed set of seasons one and two. And I still love that show in spite of Jonathan Reese Myers' crazy eyes the whole time. But I digress. So Frances is the daughter of Henry Cavill slash Charles Brandon and Princess Margaret Tudor, who is King Henry VIII's sister. So Jane's grandmother was the princess, and her great uncle was the king. It's like the prequel to the Princess Diaries, except everyone ends up dead or really, really sad. I mean, I'd watch it, personally, especially if Henry Cavill is in it, but my taste in movies and TV shows is abysmal, as we have seen. We are going to come back in a little bit to the absolute cesspool that is Henry VIII and his six wives. But for now, all you need to remember is that Jane Gray is part of the Tudor family tree. Now, if there's one thing to know about Jane as a child, it was that she was smart. Precocious is the word most often used. And not to brag, but I too was a precocious child. And if Jane's childhood was anything like mine, she was probably annoying as hell. But unlike me, Jane allegedly spoke and read eight languages by the time she was a teenager. She was very, very impressive. Jane was also very devout. She was a hardcore Protestant, which is very important to this story. To grossly oversimplify things, like grossly oversimplify things, Protestantism was a branch of Christianity that emerged in the early 1500s as a reaction to growing unrest in Europe with the Catholic Church and the Pope. You might have heard of the Protestant Reformation, which is exactly what it sounds like. People be protesting and calling for religious reform. What it all boils down to is that Protestants believed that Catholicism and the Catholic Church had ventured too far off the Christian course. They wanted to return to a more quote-unquote authentic version of the faith as dictated by the Bible and not by the Pope. Protestantism came to England officially, kind of, less than a year after Jane was born, because in 1534, King Henry VIII, Jane's great uncle, broke his kingdom away from the Catholic Church to establish the Church of England, which for our purposes was basically Protestantism but with the king in charge. More on that later. This timeline means that Jane was one of the first generation of people ever to grow up as a Protestant from birth. There was no conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism. She was Protestant from the get-go, and she knew her Protestant business backwards and forwards. She took it very, very seriously. Now, apart from speaking eight freaking languages and being a supremely devout Christian, Protestant, Jane had a fairly run-of-the-mill childhood for a woman of her rank. I mean, by current standards, it was bonkers. But at least Jane had one thing that I hope many of us can relate to, which is the magic of bonding with one's cousins. This is particularly apt for this episode because my travel buddy, when I go to the UK, is my cousin Christina. But unlike my cousin Christina, who is a queen in her own way, Jane's cousin was the actual King of England, Edward VI, who was roughly her same age. Edward inherited the English throne from his father, Henry VIII, who finally bit it in 1547. Now that might sound harsh, but I have absolutely zero sympathy for Henry VIII, who was an awful human being. Another not fun thing in the world of Lady Jane Grey was her marriage. Girl, I feel you. At just 16, she was married off to a guy named Guildford Dudley. Guildford Dudley. While I love the name Ippolit, sexy, I refuse to get behind the name Guildford. Unless we're talking about the TV show My Lady Jane, in which case I love Guildford Dudley. But in reality, Guildford Dudley was not great, and Jane was not excited about marrying him. Someone who was very excited about this marriage was Guildford's dad, John Dudley, also known as the Duke of Northumberland. John Dudley was King Edward's closest advisor, and he basically ran the country on the kids' behalf, because one, Edward was still very young, and two, in his mid-teens, Edward's health began to seriously decline. It became clear to people close to the king, like John Dudley, that Edward VI was going to die young and without an heir. It is therefore not a coincidence that John Dudley engineered this marriage between his son and the king's cousin just months before the king's death when he was already very ill. That is because John Dudley was in possession of a very important fact, one that he may have very well helped bring into existence. Edward VI, who was super Protestant, intended to name Jane Grey as his heir, meaning that she would become the next monarch of England. Now, originally Edward's plan was that the throne would pass to Jane's sons, her heirs male, but that was wishful thinking, because those sons didn't exist yet, and everyone, including Edward, recognized that death was about to come a knock-in. So in the final days of his life, encouraged by John Dudley, Jane's new father-in-law, Edward made a vital change to his plan for succession by adding just a few words to the document, amending it to say Lady Jane Gray and her heirs male. These few added words, my friend, were the first nails in Jane's coffin. Lindsay, how can that be? Before I answer that question, let's address the rest of Jane's life, which at this point is like six more months. Edward dies on July 6, 1553. According to Edward's will, Jane Gray becomes queen. Jane has absolutely no idea that this has happened for several days, because Edward's advisors keep it very hush-hush. After several days, Jane is summoned to her father-in-law's house, and weirdly, no one was home when she got there, which was very confusing. But even more confusing for Jane is the fact that when people did show up, they all knelt before her and proclaimed that the king had died and Jane was queen. Excuse me, what now? Huh? Me? Queen? What? Jane's emotions in this moment were all over the place. Shock, terrible grief for her cousin, embarrassment for herself, because all of these people, who until about five seconds ago were her superiors, are now just kneeling before her. And of course, terror. Because this is not what Jane wants. Jane Gray does not want to be queen. That is because there were two much more likely candidates for the throne, Edward's half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, who we'll get to in just a little bit. Now, Jane does what anyone would do in this situation, and she just falls to the floor and starts crying. Girl, I feel you. After a bit more crying and yelling, Jane eventually backs down and essentially says, This is awful. I'm super sad about my cousin being dead, but if this is what God wants, which is what everyone's telling her, I guess I'll do my best. Keep in mind that she is maybe 17. In the 1500s, sure, 17 is basically ancient, but a 17-year-old is still a 17-year-old, no matter how many languages they speak and what century they lived in. At this point, there are rumors going around the kingdom that the king is dead. There's even rumors that he was poisoned by none other than John Dudley. So imagine the surprise of Londoners and the kingdom more broadly, when on July 10th, the new Queen arrives to the Tower of London, where all new monarchs spent the early days of their reigns. Needless to say, it wasn't the person they expected. They were expecting Princess Mary, Edward's half-sister, and instead they got John Dudley, the poisoner's daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, who absolutely no one knew basically anything about. So, like, huh? Well, dear listener, I promised you that we would return to the cesspool of grossness that is Henry VIII, which is what we shall now do. Apologies ahead of time. So, in order to understand Jane's claim to the throne, we have to go back a couple of generations. If you don't want this backstory, you can just jump forward about 10 minutes. But the tragedy of Jane Gray and her life is inextricably tied up in this situation. So, like a lot of people, I got into tutor history primarily through the gateway drug that is Henry VIII and how horrifically he treated his six wives. There's a dark fascination there. Despite the fact that all of that started years before Jane Grey was even like a thought in her parents' head, the events of Henry VIII's life are critical to Jane Grey's rise to the throne. Like Jane Grey, Henry VIII was never supposed to inherit the throne, because Henry VIII had an older brother who was first in line. But that brother, Arthur, died in his teens. And so Henry went from being the spare to being the heir. There was one other person who was deeply affected by Arthur's death. I mean, there was like a lot of people who were deeply affected. But in addition to Henry, his brother's death also devastated Arthur's equally young wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. Henry VIII becomes queen becomes queen. Well, no, he becomes king at the age of just seventeen. And one of the first things he does is marries Catherine, his brother's widow. That is, despite the fact that she is six years older than him and, you know, was previously married to Henry's brother. Now there's all kinds of stuff involved with his decision to marry Catherine. It's like a big old mess. But eventually the Pope himself, who is believed to be God's representative on earth, gives his blessing for this marriage to take place. And they do, they get married. By all accounts, Henry and Catherine have a fairly decent marriage for about the first ten years. During that decade, Catherine gives birth several times, though only one child survives, the Princess Mary. We must remember Mary. Mary will be important. But for Henry, Mary was a massive disappointment because she wasn't a boy, and England had never had a lady ruler before, at least not in several centuries, and even then there's some debate. But Henry cannot face the idea of dying without a male heir, and it becomes something that he grows increasingly obsessed about. With every passing year that Catherine fails to carry a healthy pregnancy to term, much less have a boy, Henry's resentment and paranoia grows. He even starts to suspect that the reason he and Catherine haven't had any sons is because she was his brother's wife. Now keep in mind, the Pope himself said it was totally okay to marry, no problems here. But ten years in, Henry decides the Pope got it wrong. God is mad, and that is the reason that Henry Tudor does not have a son. Perhaps not coincidentally, though I guess a little coincidentally, but around the same time, in the late 1520s, Henry becomes straight up obsessed with a young woman at court named Anne Boleyn. His obsession with Anne and the idea of a son snowballs to the point where Henry desperately wants to marry Anne. But the Pope says, heck no. Now, in response to not getting what he wants, Henry throws the most epic of all temper tantrums, and he takes things into his own hands and breaks England away from the Catholic Church, forming the Church of England, of which Henry is the head. As head of the Church, Henry doesn't just head for a divorce. He straight up annuls his marriage to Catherine, which turns their child, Lady Mary, from a princess into an illegitimate child of the king. If he annuls their marriage, their marriage never really happened, and so any children born of that relationship are not legitimate. And boy oh boy, pun intended, do I have some bad news for Henry VIII? Because in 1533, after ten years of sneaking around, he finally marries Anne. And because karma is real, they too only have one surviving child, a daughter, Elizabeth. Just three years after Henry got exactly what he wanted: a marriage to Anne, he again decides to annul his marriage, citing reasons with a capital R. We're not gonna go into that. But long story short, he has Anne beheaded, which is tough stuff. It is also tough stuff for Elizabeth, because in addition to losing her mother, she too is rendered illegitimate. So Henry has gone from one heir, a girl, uh, to zero heirs, to another heir, a girl, uh, to no heirs. That all changes when Henry meets his third wife, Jane Seymour, who he marries just ten days after beheading his second wife. That must have been weird. But it's all worth it, because Jane Seymour gives Henry a son, who they name Edward. Unfortunately, Jane dies shortly after giving birth. And this is the point for us where the Henry VIII stuff doesn't really matter as much anymore, but long story short, he goes on to marry three more times, one of which also ends in beheading. And then he goes and dies in 1547. To which I say, good riddance. I don't actively wish harm on anyone, but if you're one for three on executing your wives, uh, that's not a great ratio, and you're not a good person. Before dying, though, Henry continued to be very concerned about the fact that he only had one son. He had an heir, but he wanted a spare. But that just simply wasn't going to happen. So, in response, Henry VIII, obviously while he's still alive, has Parliament passed something called the Third Act of Succession, which is a revision of Acts 1 and 2, because Henry was a dang mess. The third Act of Succession, which is the only one that we care about, states that unless Henry VIII says otherwise in his will, Mary and Elizabeth are to be reinstated to the line of succession. So if Henry or Edward die without male heirs, Mary and Elizabeth would be first and second in line for the throne, respectively. Mary is first, Elizabeth is second. Henry VIII is so extra with all of this that he has Parliament pass yet another law stating that any attempt to overthrow the third act of succession was high treason and punishable by death. Unfortunately, this is where Jane Gray comes in. Not promising. Because Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII, names her as his heir. He does so in blatant disregard of the law, which states that Mary and Elizabeth are second and third in line to the throne, after him, of course. Being the silly little sausages they were, Edward and his counselors believe that Edward's will will be enough to override this. Ha, nice try. Historians can only guess as to why Edward would disregard his father's wishes and divert the line of succession away from his half-sisters. More than likely it had something to do with the fact that one, Edward had spent his entire life believing his sisters were illegitimate children, making them, you know, illegitimate heirs. Two, Edward wasn't cool with the idea of a lady ruler. I wonder where he got that nonsense from. Maybe his father? Hmm? And three, Edward's sister Mary was still a hardcore Catholic. And Protestant Edward is worried that Mary will reinstate Catholicism in England. Which, for Edward, is gonna happen over his dead body. And spoiler alert, that is exactly what happens. In a way, it makes sense that Edward passes over Elizabeth as well, despite her being a Protestant. You can't disregard one half-sister in favor of your other half-sister without causing, you know, major shenanigans. Instead, as we have heard, Edward writes a will that names Jane Gray's sons as his heirs. This kind of makes sense, I guess, because Jane's hypothetical sons would be the closest to a male heir that Edward would have. But it also makes no sense because Jane doesn't have sons, and Edward is like about to die. And so on his deathbed, with John Dudley whispering in his ear, Edward amends his will to name Jane Gray as his heir. We know this. I've said it like 15 times. With the benefit of hindsight, which you know what they say about that, this is all pretty ridiculous. Because one, the next female heir shouldn't be Jane, it should be her mother Frances. But Frances is past her prime, gross, and is very unlikely to have any more sons or any kids in general. So Edward bypasses her. Goodbye. But the move to name Jane as heir also makes no sense, because by law, the third act of succession is still in place. The only will that can overthrow that is Henry the Ace, and that ink dried a long time ago. But John Dudley and his little snake friends all think that they can get away with this, especially if they control the person on the throne. And if history had gone a different way, maybe they would have succeeded. But oh dear listeners, they did not. So none of this scheming was public. The broader kingdom just assumed that Lady Mary would become queen upon Edward's death. So imagine their surprise and supreme disappointment when some nobody named Jane shows up, and Edward's former counselors are like, Yep, the king's dead, here's your new queen, who many of you have never heard of. Needless to say, Jane received a very tepid welcome into London. But hey, a queen got a queen. So Jane and her feckless husband Guildford move into the royal chambers of the Tower of London, where Jane starts doing queenly stuff. She converses with counselors, she prepares for her coronation, and she's even being shown the crown jewels. And it is clear that Jane is extremely overwhelmed by all of this, because when someone tries to put a crown on her head, she straight up has a panic attack. That all only escalated when someone is like, hey, don't worry, we'll also make one for your husband, Guildford, and Jane starts to panic even more. Because Jane was smart. So even though everyone is trying to convince her that God wants this, God wants you on the throne, she can clearly see that all of this is being engineered by her father-in-law. While this is all happening, the Lady Mary is made aware of the passing of her brother and this ridiculous business of Jane being crowned queen. And Mary was completely and totally pissed. She even sent a messenger to Jane and her entourage that amounted to you're an imposter, bend the knee, or pay the price. Mary was not messing around. And there was every reason for Jane and her people to be very nervous about all of this. Because Mary had already jumped into action and was readying an army to fight on her behalf. What happens next is an absolute ridiculous comedy of errors on behalf of John Dudley. The man who machinated all of this to begin with. I mean, like, he's the reason this is happening. And he's also the reason this all stops happening. That is because John Dudley sets out to apprehend the Lady Mary and get her under control. Something that he should have done about 10 days earlier. To boot, John Dudley tries to raise an army on Jane's behalf, but with every passing day, the soldiers are defecting and moving to Mary's side. Everything is going wrong for John Dudley, and as an extension, everything is going wrong for Jane Grey. Because in London, her counselors are starting to have buyer's remorse, and John Dudley is not there to talk them out of it. One by one, just like the soldiers, they too start to desert Jane. On July 19th, all hope becomes lost when Jane's former counselors proclaim Lady Mary to be queen, much to the delight of commoners and nobles alike. The crowds in London were absolutely jubilant with this information. Jane, for her part, took the news of her downfall better than most. She had never wanted to be queen. But unfortunately, that didn't matter, and she and everyone around her were well and truly fudged. They were fudged. Did I mean something else? Yes, I did. But we're gonna keep it PG 13, because I'm told by several listeners that they consider this a family show, which is wonderful, though on second thought, this episode is about a woman getting her head cut off, so you know, maybe not so much. Speaking of heads getting cut off, I will reiterate the fact that Jane and whoever still supported her were well and truly fudged. Jane had been queen, even if a false one, for just 13 days. The public, however, had been aware of her for just nine, earning her the rather wonderful neg- I mean, it's not wonderful for her, but it's certainly got a ring to it, of the nine days queen. Factually inaccurate, yes, but satisfying nonetheless. The thirteen days queen just, you know, doesn't have the same ring to it. By nightfall, on July 19th, Queen Mary's guards had arrived to take Jane and Guildford from the royal apartments to the royal prisons. It was not a long walk. The Tower of London was equal parts palace and prison, something Jane would come to know all too well. That said, as a noblewoman, Jane was kept in pretty decent digs, essentially as a prisoner guest of the tower's live-in jailer. Guildford wasn't as lucky, but he was still hardly living rough, though to be fair, I guess it's all relative. But the Beauchamp Tower where he was placed was not all that bad. That said, Jane and Guildford would have heard the celebration and fanfare that signaled the arrival of Lady Mary, now Queen Mary, who arrived in London in early August. Mary was joined in procession by her half-sister Elizabeth, who would take up the throne in Mary's wake, though at the time Mary was still hoping that she would have children, which, considering that she was 37 years old and not married, wishful thinking. Even so, after decades of hardship, the sight of Henry VIII's daughters presenting a unified front as they rode into London must have been quite the sight. Despite staying at the same complex, like a five-minute walk away, Jane was not granted an audience with the new Queen, who, like Edward VI, was Jane's cousin. Instead, Jane had to write a letter begging for mercy. To give Mary some credit, it has been long accepted that Mary intended to spare Jane and Guildford. Mary knew that Jane had not sought the Queenship for herself. She had been forced into the matter, used as a pawn and puppet by the likes of John Dudley, one person who Mary was not inclined to spare. He was quickly found guilty of treason and died by beheading by the time August was out. It would take much longer for Jane and Guildford to learn their fates, starting with their trial for treason in November of 1553. Both pled guilty, even though they knew there was only one sentence for those guilty of treason: death. While the two teenagers likely believed that Queen Mary would spare them in the end, hearing their formal sentences read aloud in the courtroom must have been terrifying. Guildford and his fellow male conspirators, including his brothers, were to be dragged, hung, and left to rot before their corpses were disemboweled, their entrails burned, and their corpses decapitated. As if that wasn't thorough enough, what remained of their bodies would be cut into quarters before the pieces of their mutilated corpses were put on display. Ugh! Yikes. Jane's sentence was much simpler, though still horrific. She was to die either by being burnt at the stake or by simple decapitation, whatever best pleased the Queen. In the end, Jane and Guildford's deaths were indeed slow. They remained prisoners in the Tower of London for several more months while Queen Mary debated, even agonized, over what she should do. She didn't want to kill her cousin, and she was also in a pretty good mood after her marriage to Prince Philip of Spain in 1554. Mary's choice of groom, however, was controversial in the kingdom, particularly amongst Protestants. They saw the writing on the wall. Mary was clearly signaling her intent to return England to the Catholic faith, and of course, the oversight of the Pope. If the words that Edward included in his will were the first nails in Jane's coffin, the actions of select individuals in 1554 were the last. Jane's father and a man by the name of Sir Thomas Wyatt planned a rebellion on her behalf, though really they were mostly hellbent on putting a Protestant queen on the throne. And they already had one waiting for them in the tower, Lady Jane Gray. This plan, as you might have guessed, failed miserably. And everyone involved, including Jane's father, who I said I wouldn't mention again, but I guess I have, but everyone involved in this plan were arrested for treason and sentenced to death. In the end, the plot to overthrow Mary's queendom had the opposite of its intended effect. Far from putting Jane back on the throne, the rebellion forced Mary to an unpleasant realization. Jane Grey had to die. And so she did. On February 12, 1554, 17-year-old Jane Grey watched from her window of her tower room as her husband was marched through the tower complex and off to the hill, where the queen had commuted his sentence from total mutilation to a simple beheading. I would argue that that's also mutilation, but it seems downright civilized compared to being hung, drawn, and quartered, etc. Heartbreakingly, Jane also watched Guildford's body return, San's head. She was said to have cried out for the fate of the husband that she had never really wanted, only to compose herself as her own meeting with the executioner's blade drew near. But Jane's execution was not like Guildford's. Unlike in the French Revolution, in Tudor times, high-ranking women like Jane Gray, and my other favorite lady in Tudor history, Anne Boleyn, they were not subject to public executions. People like Guildford were. They were executed on the hill where plenty of people could see. Jane was instead executed at the Tower Green, an open area within the confines of the complex, in the immediate vicinity of where she was being held. In fact, in a recent biography, Nicola Tallas states that Jane would have actually heard the construction of the scaffold on which she was to die, which is very dark. My goodness. When it was her turn to die, Jane was escorted to the scaffold by two ladies in waiting, as well as the lieutenant of the tower, John Bridges. Jane's spiritual advisor while she was in the tower, John Feckenham, joined her on the scaffold. While Jane had resisted all of his attempts to convert her to Catholicism, she had grown fond of the man, and his presence would have been something of a comfort, or rather as much comfort as one can be given in those moments. Then, after exchanging words of parting, it was time. Feckenham helped Jane climb the stairs, where a masked figure in black was waiting, an axe at his side. With him looming in her peripheral vision, Jane spoke to the crowd. Jane went on to profess not exactly her guilt, but her complicit role in the guilt of others. Although she had consented to the unlawful act installing her as queen, Jane made it clear that she never wanted or coveted the position. She also spoke about her faith as a Christian woman, thanked God and Jesus, and beseeched the small crowd that gathered to pray for her while she was alive. She took off her gloves, passed them in her prayer book to those nearby, and untied her gown. At this point, the executioner knelt before her, asking for forgiveness for what he was tasked to do, and Jane, for her part, granted it willingly. He then motioned for the blindfold to be put over her eyes. It's at this point that Jane's panic began to break through. Her hands swept through the air, and for the first time since arriving on the scaffold, she lost her composure, crying out, What shall I do? Where is it? Someone, presumably Feckenim or Bridges, stepped forward to assist her, and mustering up the final courage remaining in her body, Jane knelts and put her head upon the block. She had enough time to say one final prayer. Lord Jesus, unto thy hands I commend my spirit. Those were Jane Grey's final words before the executioner did his job and did it well. Cleaving her head from her body with one stroke. Seventeen-year-old Jane Grey was dead. Sadly, for all the respect they showed her in her final moments, Jane's body was abandoned on the scaffold, where it remained for several hours before someone came to collect it for burial. She was interred in the chapel of St. Peter at Vinkela, a church within the confines of the Tower Grounds. While death had released Jane's soul from imprisonment, her body has remained inside the Tower Grounds for over 400 years. As for Mary, like, do we care about Mary? I guess we care about Mary. So Queen Mary I of England rules for just five years, and in that five years, she does indeed reinstate or try to reinstate Catholicism in England. And it does not go well. In fact, she burns something like 300 people at the stake for trying to stop her doing that, earning her the nickname Bloody Mary. Mary does die without children, leaving her sister Elizabeth as her heir. Queen Elizabeth I reigns for over 40 years and completely undoes all of Mary's pro-Catholic stuff, essentially doing everything that her father, Henry VIII, had tried to do during his reign. Notoriously known as the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth never married, and she also dies without a direct heir, marking the end of the Tudor line, the thing that Henry VIII was oh so concerned about. Maybe if Jane Grey had been allowed to live, that line would have continued, but alas, we shall never know. And that, my friends, is the story of Lady Jane Grey. As much as I like her story, and like her as much as you can like any, you know, historical figure about whom we know nothing, it's fair to say, I think, that Lady Jane Grey's place in English history is fairly inconsequential. That is especially true compared to Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, who were both absolute titans of English history. Instead, the history books largely remember Jane as a false queen, a usurper, a pretender, a momentary roadblock to the ascension of Queen Mary. There are even debates about whether or not Jane Grey should be considered a queen by historical standards. After all, if the people don't accept you as their queen, are you really a queen at all? It's a good question. There is also, of course, the famous saying that history is written by the winners, in this case, Queen Mary, and later Queen Elizabeth. Neither of them would ever recognize their cousin as anything other than a pretender, because their own legitimacy as rulers depended on Jane's lack of legitimacy. That begs the question: what inspired Paul Delaroche to paint Lady Jane Grey in the first place? In the 1820s and 1830s, there was a swell of Anglo Mania in France, which is to say a mania for all things British, especially British history. It isn't always clear how these trends happen, but this Anglo-Mania probably owes quite a bit to the popularity of Scottish author Walter Scott, whose historical novels were an absolute hit in France. There's also the fact that in addition to Scott's novels being bonkers popular, that France had just, and to a certain extent still was, struggling with its own royal history. Why not delight in the historical tragedy of their frenemies across the pond? Additionally, more British people were traveling to France in the wake of the Revolution, and the French and British were on better terms than they had been for a very long time. All of that conflated translates into a growing interest in British history. And do you know who loved British history? Our boy, Paul Delaroche. But Delaroche was not alone. While his execution of Lady Jane Grey is by far the most famous painting of Jane Grey, it wasn't the only one of her from the time. In the ten years before Delaroche's painting, at least four other paintings of Jane Grey had graced the walls of various salons, which is interesting, because even in the period of Angloania, Jane Grey was a pretty obscure British figure as far as the British general public was concerned. So how in the world did this painting become so dang popular in 1834? As I've said a couple of times now, this painting would pull you in regardless of whether or not you knew anything about Jane Gray. You don't need the historical context that I just spent 30 minutes laying out for you, if not longer. An innocent young woman having a moment of panic as she scrambles for the executioner's block. It was an absolutely spectacular moment for Delelose to choose. For a minute, imagine standing in front of this painting. Like, really, imagine it. Think of what it's like to stand as a viewer just a few feet away, staring at the scene. It's the closest that most of us, probably and hopefully, will ever get to witnessing an execution. For all of his aversion to explicit violence and gore, Delaroche demands that the viewer anticipate the violence to come. If the painting were to unfreeze and the moment played out like the stage said it is, Jane's blood would soon soak the pristine hay at our feet, into which her head would almost certainly roll. Now imagine being a viewer in 1830s France, just a few decades after the many executions and massacres of the Revolution. It is entirely possible that some, if not many, salon goers had witnessed one or more of those executions, maybe even that of the Queen Marie Antoinette. It must have been a very strange and compelling experience to look upon the execution of Lady Jane Gray and remember recent events of history. One critic hit the nail on the head when he described Delelose's ability to choose moments and subjects that, quote, attack the nervous system of the public. In other words, moments that demand an instinctual response. As a historian, though, it is my job to burst some bubbles. Perhaps the biggest bubble of all is whether or not Jane's execution actually happened in the way that Delaroche, a history painter, depicts it. Now, to be clear, Delaroche is working from historical accounts of Jane's death. Those accounts, however, are very questionable. There was only one eyewitness account of her execution, which included very few details about the event itself. The writer literally uses the word etc. to refer to everything happening after Jane climbs the scaffold. Now I'm paraphrasing the old-timey English, but the account literally concludes with something like, She climbed the scaffold, she knelt down, etc., and then it just ends. It wasn't until a few weeks or even months later that another account of Jane's death started to circulate, one that included the moment in which Jane gropes for the block. The people responsible for writing that account were almost certainly not in attendance on the day that she died. For that reason, the source itself is apocryphal. That's the word used, apocryphal. Which is to say we can't fully trust its contents. If anyone is interested in this, there is an absolutely wonderful article by John Ghee that traces the development of Jane's execution story, and it is fascinating. Long story short, there was a push by the anti-Mary faction of Londoners to depict Jane as a martyr, and things just snowballed over the course of decades and centuries. There are even instances of people forging documents allegedly by Jane to reinforce these popular narratives. In many ways, Del Roche's painting is the ultimate contribution to the apocryphal story of Jane Gray's execution. This combination of doctored historical documents, forgeries, biased accounts taken at face value, and yes, popular paintings would all but ensure that the story of Jane's execution became regarded as a kind of fact, even among some historians. For the most part, though, the scene is passably historically accurate. Like on a scale of National Geographic Documentary Reenactment and Showtime's The Tudors, it's closer to the first than it is to the second. That said, it's not entirely historically accurate. This is all sort of relative. And it's interesting because Del Roche did a ton of research when devising his paintings. And while I'm sure there's things he accidentally screws up, for the most part, when he deviates from historical record, it's probably artistic license rather than a mistake. So for example, and I do realize that by pointing out all of the ways that this painting is not historically accurate, that I'm kind of defeating the point, but go with it. So for example, Jane Gray did not wear white to her execution. That is a bonker's idea. White as a color was reserved for young, unmarried women and glorious martyrs. At the time, Jane was a wife and a disgraced usurper to the throne. She would not have presumed to wear white. I will say that in this painting, it is clear that Jane is wearing underclothes. It's a little bit hard to see it at first because the colors are very similar, but if you look at the lady in waiting that's on the ground, on her lap you can see some kind of dress or robe or other item of overclothing that is draped over her, as if she was handed it before she collapsed, which is probably precisely what happened. Jane would have dressed in underclothes with something over them to go to the scaffold. Once she was on the scaffold, she would have removed her, you know, whatever she was wearing on the outside of her underclothes, whether that was a dress or a robe, and she would have handed that to her lady in waiting. Because let's be real, why get blood on a perfectly good dress? But even so, this complaint, well, is it a complaint? I don't know. This point about the historical inaccuracy of Jane's clothing still stands. Because according to firsthand accounts of Jane's execution, she actually wore black. The idea being that black was a penitent color, and a much more appropriate color for your execution. Like if there's any outfit that's appropriate for that situation, trust me, it's a black dress. But in having her in white, Delaroche emphasizes her almost angelic, pristine appearance. In this painting, Jane is without guilt. There's also the dramatic anticipation of this white silk dress being a canvas for Jane's blood, which would undoubtedly spatter and stain and soak the fabric. It is a blank canvas for anticipatory violence. Jane would also not have worn her hair in a way that it obscured her neck. Now I know that this sounds crazy, but if you're going to be executed by decapitation, you want to make your neck as easy a target as possible. You do not want the executioner to have to take two, three, four swipes before its lights out. That is one of the many life lessons you should take away from this episode. So why does Deleleroche paint Jane with hair just spilling down over her shoulder? I don't know. It could be that it simply looks better, or it could be that it enhances her femininity, therefore having a better chance of sort of dredging up your protective instincts for this young, helpless, pretty girl. Other historical inaccuracies in the painting are a little odder. For example, the lady in waiting who is like fainted to the floor, she has a rosary in her lap, as if it fell from her fingers. Now, rosaries are a Catholic thing, and Lady Jane Gray was a staunch Protestant. She was so staunchly Protestant that she rejected all attempts to convert her before her death, even if it meant more time to live. For a 17-year-old, Jane had more conviction than the vast majority of people, especially when it came to her faith. It is quite unlikely that her ladies in waiting would have been openly using Catholic instruments around her, which includes rosaries. That said, I can't think of a reason why Del Roche would have deliberately included it, knowing that Jane and her ladies were likely Protestant. Maybe there's some kind of symbolism that I'm not getting, or maybe it was just a mistake. But in 1830s France, society was becoming far less religious and increasingly more secular. Even so, Catholicism was still the predominant form of Christianity being practiced. So again, maybe it was just a mistake, and Delaroche didn't immediately associate a rosary with a distinct branch of Christianity. It's entirely possible. One of the biggest historical inaccuracies of the painting is its setting, which does not look a whole lot like any part of the Tower of London, much less the area where Jane died. We know where that was, the Tower Green, which was a kind of outdoor green space within the walls of the tower complex. So why then did Delaroche switch up the setting and show Jane in a kind of dungeon-ish scenario? One reason might just be to heighten the sense of drama and claustrophobia in the scene, the sensation that there's really no chance for escape. Mind you, there wouldn't have been a chance of escape on the Tower Green either, but a grassy lawn in the middle of the day doesn't really have the same sense of drama, though I suppose it is kind of like weirdly upsetting in its own way. In addition to the Tower of London being unrecognizable, there's also the question of Jane herself. It is believed that Delaroche may have painted Jane in the guise of an actress with whom Delelose was having a romantic entanglement. And that was as good of a model as any, because we have very few contemporary accounts of what Jane Gray looked like. For my sort of Jane Grey enthusiasts out there, you might occasionally find reference to a letter written by a Genoese merchant who allegedly caught a glimpse of Jane as she walked into the tower in July of 1553. He describes her as being short and skinny, very pretty, with brown eyes and auburn hair. He even states that she has freckles, which is a little inclusion that always kind of hits me in the feels. That said, this quote-unquote source was almost certainly fake, as it only started circulating in the early 1900s. For their part, the authentic accounts of what Jane looked like by ambassadors and people who saw her in the tower don't go into virtually any detail. They just say that she was pretty, whatever that means. But Lindsay, don't we have portraits of Lady Jane Grey? No, we don't. At least not authenticated ones. There have been quite a few that people thought might be Jane, but historians and art historians have largely debunked those. We do have portraits of Jane's sisters, Catherine and Mary, which is very cool, but as Henry VIII learned when he first met his wife Anne of Cleves, Tudor portraits are not always accurate. Anne of Cleves? More like Anne of Catfish. That's a story for a different day. Rather fortuitously, I recently, as in yesterday, came across a BBC article from just a week ago, and this is in March of 2025, about yet another alleged portrait of Jane Gray. But the article is your classic art history mystery type thing. It could be Jane Gray, it has been said to be Jane Gray, we're excited about the potential of it possibly being Jane Gray. It's all completely hypothetical. I also don't know how exactly you prove the identity of a portrait. Specifically when we have no idea what the person actually looked like, but hey, it is fun to speculate. And I mean that very genuinely. I'm not being snarky. You know me, I love a good art history mystery. What isn't a mystery is the reception that Delaroche's painting received at the 1834 Salon, where it proved to be nothing short of a phenomenon and one of the most popular paintings the salon had seen in literally years. The organizers of the exhibition clearly anticipated this, as they gave the painting pride of place in the exhibition. This, in spite of Delaroche being far less renowned than some of his peers, including Delacroix and Ang, still can't say it, both of whom were deeply disappointed at Delaroche stealing their thunder. The public, for their part, appreciated the immediacy and the theatricality of the painting. One salon goer, a woman who was writing for a women's journal, openly states that she knew nothing about fine art and was often unimpressed by the art that really excited critics and academics. This Delroche painting was far more her style, presenting the public with a painting that demanded an emotional reaction and embraced naturalism over artifice. But while the public absolutely adored this painting, not everyone was a fan. One in particular, a critic by the name of Gautier, absolutely savaged the painting and Paul Delaroche more broadly. He stated that Delaroche was not a good painter, but a charlatan, someone who fed the public what they wanted, but showed little to no inventiveness. Critics like Gautier also accused Delaroche of plagiarism, specifically of a 1795 painting of the execution of Mary of Scots by John Opie, a painting that Delaroche would have known through prints. And thank goodness for those prints, because as far as I know, that painting is now long gone. To be fair, I definitely see some resemblance between the Delaroche painting and the Opie composition, which shows Mary Queen of Scots kneeling before the executioner's block as a soldier ties a blindfold around her eyes. That said, the savagery, and it was like savage, the savagery with which Delaroche was accused of plagiarism was way, way overblown. I mean, hello, this is art history. Painters were always copying and taking inspiration from the greats and the not so greats. Delaroche was hardly the thief that his peers made him out to be. And if Delaroche was considered a thief and a copycat, the same could be said for plenty of others in the coming decades. Between 1835 and 1877, over 20 additional paintings of Jane Grey were exhibited at the Paris Salon. But as for Delaroche's painting, after its month-long exhibition at the 1834 Salon, the execution of Lady Jane Grey traveled to a new home, the Florentine villa of Count Anatoly Demodoff, who sounds ancient but was only 22 at the time. Demodoff was a great patron of the arts even at a very young age, and he particularly enjoyed romantic art. The thing is, the fact that the execution of Lady Jane Grey entered a private collection in Italy meant that its days of being admired by hordes of art lovers was gone, at least for a time. Now, in a private collection away from the eyes of the art-loving public, the painting faded into obscurity, out of sight and out of mind. Delaroche had intended to combat that fate by commissioning an Italian printmaker to create a print of the painting, but it turns out that guy was slow as heck, and it took 20 years for him to perfect the print. Unfortunately, Delaroche did not live to see the completed work, though he had plenty to do in the meantime, including the task of painting a massive mural in the auditorium of Paris' premier school, the Ecole de Beaux-Arts. That mural, known as the Hemicycle, is a clear homage to Raphael's school of Athens, but instead of great philosophers, the Hemicycle features 75 of the greatest artists in history. The mural was a massive undertaking, with the finished work measuring in at over 88 feet long. Unfortunately, a fire damaged that mural in 1855. While Delaroche did attempt to restore part of it, the work was ultimately left to his pupils, as on November 3, 1856, Delaroche suddenly fell ill. While the illness did come quickly, Delaroche had been long afflicted by liver and heart conditions, though it's unclear if those contributed to his death the following day. My guess is probably. At the time of his death, Delaroche was one of the most famous painters of his generation, something that prompted a massive retrospective exhibition of his greatest works. That exhibition took place in Paris in 1857. It was a rather extraordinary event, with paintings shipped in from private collections all over Europe, including the execution of Lady Jane Gray. The exhibition was a fitting send-off for the artist, one who had proven his ability to create works that appealed to a wide audience. But that popularity was not to last, as Norman Ziff wrote in his 1975 dissertation on Delaroche, quote, tastes and standards were changing, new aesthetic values were gaining acceptance. Unfortunately, before too long, it would be highly unfashionable to speak charitably of Delaroche, an artist who had nonetheless contributed so much to the total enrichment of a major phase of 19th century French painting. Delaroche soon fell into obscurity, and unfortunately, the execution of Lady Jane Grey followed suit. The execution of Lady Jane Gray remained in the Demidoff collection until 1870, when it was purchased by a man named John Hugh for the absolutely enormous sum of 110,000 francs. For context, Demidoff purchased the work for somewhere around 8,000 back in 1833. That's what you call a return on investment. The painting changed hands a few more times until in 1902 it was bequeathed to the National Gallery of Arts in London. At the time, the painting was estimated to have a value of just 1,500 pounds, which was absolute peanuts compared to what it fetched in 1870, in what was a clear indication of Delaroche's waning popularity. Within just two days of inheriting the work, the curators at the National Gallery of Art sent the painting to the Tate Gallery, which at the time was parts of this multi-museum system. It is unclear whether the painting went immediately on display or into storage. In fact, we know very little about where or how it was displayed for the first two decades it spent in the collection. But that changed in the earliest days of 1928, when the team at the Tate Gallery took the painting out of storage and put it on display in the basement gallery alongside works by John Martin and James McNeil Whistler. But fate, dear listeners, is a very fickle thing. You see, in the weeks leading up to the painting finally being on exhibition, the good people of West Central England had experienced a very white Christmas. It had been a snowstorm for the records, followed by unseasonably warm weather. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but when snow melts, it turns to water, and water always has a way of finding a place to go, whether you want it to or not. As the snow in west central England melted, it ran into the Thames, the great river that runs through southern England. That melt was joined by heavy rainfall, causing the Thames to swell even further. Due to this conflation of weather-related events, the level of the Thames rose dramatically, reaching its highest point on January 7th, when the river registered as being 18 feet higher than usual. 18 feet. That's nearly two stories in building terms. It was also higher than the embankments in the city could withstand. The force of the water was so strong that it demolished structures specifically designed to contain it. Unfortunately, the Tate Gallery is right on the Thames, and this rise in the river proved near catastrophic for its exhibition halls, specifically the ones in the basement, which filled with dirty, silty, smelly water. To add insult to injury, it wasn't just water rushing in from outside, though that absolutely happened. The tate was also built on an old site that hadn't been properly filled, something they found out about when water started gushing up from the floor. This all happened within days, if not hours, of the execution of Lady Jane Grey going on display in the basement galleries. It was among 18 works deemed damaged beyond repair due to the flooding, while another 300 some paintings were considered badly or partially damaged, but still salvageable. The losses suffered by the Tate, though, were nothing, like nothing, compared to the broader impacts of the flood across London. The swelling waters of the Thames claimed the lives of at least 14 people, and it left thousands more homeless. Against those losses, a few ruined paintings, even masterpieces, were a very small price to pay. But at the time, the execution of Lady Jane Grey was not considered a masterpiece. In a report written about the flood in 1930, it was concluded that very few of the paintings lost in the flood would, quote, be regarded as of primary importance from an artistic perspective. End quote. Which is just uff. After the flood, the execution of Lady Jane Grey and 17 other canvases were rolled up and forgotten about for over 40 years. And I mean that very literally. Instead of doing whatever one is supposed to do with ruined masterpieces, the canvases were instead removed from their frames, rolled up, and transported to the conservation lab, not to undergo restoration, but to molder beneath a table for four plus decades. They haunted this space like big, quiet ghosts, a constant reminder, if only subconsciously, of the fate that awaits the paintings the wizards in conservation couldn't save. But that all changed in 1973, when a young curator named Christopher Johnstone paid a visit to the Tate's conservation lab. He was trying to confirm some rumors that he had heard that some of the 18 paintings said to be damaged beyond repair in the flood weren't, in fact, damaged beyond repair. There was one painting in particular that Johnstone had in mind, and it wasn't the execution of Lady Jane Gray. It was instead an epic painting by English painter John Morton showing the fiery destruction of Pompeii. That day in the conservation studio, Johnstone noticed that some of the interns were working on one of those 18 paintings, one by Turner. The head conservationists shared that they used it as an intern project, figuring that it couldn't hurt, and maybe several generations of interns might eventually find a way to restore it into good working condition. Johnstone couldn't help but wonder, if the damaged Turner was still in the studio, might not some of the other paintings still be around? It's a valid question. Johnstone then noticed a stack of huge canvas rolls under the central conservation table, the ones that had literally been there untouched for decades. After some gentle begging, Johnstone got the conservators to commit to unrolling some of the larger canvases, the ones that could conceivably be the painting he was searching for by Martin. A few days later, Johnstone got the call. The Tates conservators wanted him to come down immediately. They had found the Martin. When he arrived, however, Johnstone found the painting in a quote, terrible mess. But the team had also found another painting, one that had been rolled inside the Martin before it had been put into storage. One guess which painting? That's right. Paul Delaroche's execution of Lady Jane Gray. Speaking to the New Zealand Herald in 2010, John Stone reflected on seeing the painting for the first time. Quote, it was an extraordinary moment, because on the one hand, I was incredibly disappointed that what I was looking for was not worth pursuing at all. And on the other hand, this extraordinary 1830s work was in virtually pristine condition. End quote. John Stone does go on to say, however, that he wasn't particularly interested in Delaroche's work, and he didn't think much more of the find. The Tate Conservators, however, were very excited, particularly since the work was in such good shape. Maybe not pristine, as John Stone asserted, but in his defense it probably looked amazing next to the ruination that was Martin's work. After its rediscovery, the execution of Lady Jane Grey was returned to the National Gallery of Art, as the Tate and the NGA had become separate entities some 20 years earlier. Around the same time, a PhD student named Norman Ziff started writing a dissertation on Delaroche, the first scholarly attention paid to old Hippolyte in some time. It is unclear, however, exactly why the National Gallery decided to restore the Delaroche painting, which was treated as a kind of art historical curiosity rather than a masterpiece. The curator at the time, Cecil Gold, reiterated long-standing reservations and even prejudices against Paul Delaroche. Gold called Delaroche, quote, something of a charlatan who merits his present obscurity, end quote. Gold even went so far as to say, quote, the only question concerning him, Delaroche, which is likely to interest the current generation, is just why he was so successful in his lifetime. End quote. While I am offended on Delaroche's behalf, I do kind of secretly love, except not so secretly, because I'm telling you, but I love when curators and museum professionals are just able to give their honest opinion about stuff. It makes reading old museum catalogs a lot more interesting. So imagine everyone's surprise when the newly restored work went on display in 1975, only to become one of the most popular paintings at the National Gallery, which is a mecca of masterpieces. Even in that environment, the execution of Lady Jane Grey called to visitors like a siren song, and that song has never stopped. The painting has remained on almost continuous display ever since. It is so beloved that when the gallery loaned it out in 2003, visitors were absolutely pissed and they let their feelings about it be known. Many of them even said they had come to the National Gallery specifically to see this work. To this day, the painting is so popular that the wood floor in front of it requires frequent maintenance due to the sheer amount of foot traffic. It also has the honor of being the best-selling postcard in the museum gift shop. I, for one, will be buying several of those when I go to the National Gallery in just a couple weeks. Update. So here we are. But there is an upside to that, which is that I have now been to the National Gallery to see the execution of Lady Jane Gray. Something that required me to practically body surf over crowds gathering in the museum galleries. But I thought it'd be fun to insert some post-encounter thoughts that I had while standing in front of it. So the first thing that hit me was that the painting is quite large. It's definitely bigger than I expected. Of course, I knew the dimensions of the work, but you know, forgive me, I don't have many 8x9 paintings hanging out to use as a visual reference for just how big this thing is in real life. I don't know if the figures are life size. The executioner does look like he would be life size, but the other ones are maybe a little bit smaller. But it is much bigger than I was uh imagining in my head. The second takeaway is holy crap, there were a lot of people gathered around it. At any given time, there was probably between 10 and 20 people just swarming the painting. To be fair, I should not have been surprised by that because we went to this museum, which is like a top museum in the world, and it's free. We went there on a Sunday afternoon, which I imagine is peak period for people coming in. And I probably should have thought more about that, but I was in London for two days and there was really no other time to go. So there I was. That said, it's no Mona Lisa. There's not, you know, like hordes of people, but it's really hard to stand and fully appreciate the painting when you're in a hot, weirdly slightly humid gallery space getting elbowed in the temple by someone trying to take a selfie. Though now that I reflect on that, maybe the environment was similar to what people experienced when seeing the painting at the salon in 1834. So I suppose there's that, but you know, like that's just not that's not my thing. That's not how I like to encounter arts, which is what we would call a me problem. The third and final takeaway, at least for the purposes of the pod, is that the painting reproduces really well. Or should I say the reproductions available of it, like on the National Gallery website, are very high quality. And by reproduction, I mean when you when you see a painting on a website or printed in a book, like that's a reproduction. And oftentimes reproductions are quite bad. The colors are different, the shadow density is very different, like there's actually stuff in the shadows when you see it in person versus online, it just looks inky black. Uh, saturation is sometimes changed to make the paintings look more dramatic when in reality they're a bit muted. Like that's all the kind of stuff that gets in the way of a faithful reproduction. This painting does not suffer from any of that. Is it perfect? Of course not. I would say that in person the colors are perhaps a smidge warmer, and Jane kind of glows a little bit more, like she just seems more luminescent. Is that a word? I don't know. But hey, let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Because the reproduction on the National Gallery website is very impressive. I'm not going to say almost as good as seeing it in person because I feel like that's art historical heresy, but at least you can do so in the comfort of your own home, knowing that it looks a lot like that in person. My overall takeaway is that it was super cool to see the painting in person, but to be honest, it didn't feel as special as I hoped that it might. The experience of seeing it. The painting itself is like is beautiful, not taken away from the painting. It's beautiful and it's very moving. But this experience did reinforce the fact that viewing art and relating to art isn't just about you and the artwork. It's also about the setting and the circumstances under which you're viewing something. And that was very starkly contrasted with uh a different visit that I did, which was to the Tower of London. I was really excited to see the chapel where where Jane um is buried, but that's currently closed to put in an elevator. The accessibility renovations ruin the party again. No, I'm just kidding, that's a very noble cause. But despite the fact that I couldn't see that, just being at the Tower of London, walking around uh the buildings, being in the various towers, and of course being on the grounds in and around where Jane uh would have been executed, felt very special. And it made me feel close to Jane Gray in a way that the painting didn't. Which makes me feel really weird to say because I I don't uh how do I put this? It's almost like characters from a book. You know that they're not real, but to you they kind of are real, and you relate to them and you think of them very fondly. I feel that same way about historical figures, and I'm sure it it's just a very human inclination to feel that connection. Now I draw the line at thinking we know them, because you can't know someone who died 500 years ago. But that sense of human connection shouldn't be downplayed. It shouldn't be swept aside because it's irrational. You're allowed to feel things, and I felt things at the Tower of London, like emotionally. Although I almost did get bit by a raven. They do warn you about that, now it's minding my own business. But I turned a corner, there was a raven, and he did try to chomp me. My life flashed before my eyes. I was also delighted to see that the Tower of London Didactics, like the things that you read when you're walking around the premises, those refer to Jane Grey as Queen Jane Grey. Which is one, not all that common. You don't often see Lady Jane Grey referred to as Queen Jane Grey. That's why we know her as Lady Jane Grey. But two, it's interesting that nowadays, 500 years after she died, or almost 500 years after she died, the prison she never left now pays homage to her queenship, the very reason she was executed. It was also very cool to see the commemorative um, like work of art, I suppose you could I mean it's definitely a work of art, uh, the commemorative memorial to those who were executed on the Tower Green. That has allegedly been there since the early 2000s, but I have been to the Tower of London twice before this time, and I do not remember seeing that. So it was like encountering it for the first time. It is a glass disc with a pillow, a crystal or a glass pillow at its center that has an indentation in the center of it. I assume this is invoking the pillow on which people would have knelt while they were putting their heads on the block. But being a pillow, you also get the sense that maybe someone had just laid their head there and arisen, or that there's some kind of unseen force that is weighing on the pillow, reminding us of all of the people who unfortunately died in the tower and particularly on the tower green, including, of course, Our Lady Jane, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard, along with a couple of other people. That very touching memorial was made by a British artist named Brian Catling. But even that memorial was not the most moving thing that I saw on my most recent visit to the Tower of London. That honor goes to a very small piece of graffiti. Yes, graffiti. Specifically a name that was carved into the wall of the Beauchamp Tower. Now, the Beauchamp Tower and other towers on the sort of bigger tower complex have these wonderful pieces of preserved graffiti from prisoners who were uh who were there at various times in history. And some of those pieces of graffiti were very clearly done by Jane's supporters. But the one that I zeroed in on was a very simple carving of Jane's name into the stone. It's believed, or maybe um maybe it's rather hoped, because it makes for a good story, that that was the work of none other than Mr. Lady Jane Gray, Guildford Dudley. Despite my reservations about his name and sort of his general character in life, I found that extremely touching. Needless to say, I had a great time on vacation, and I'm really glad that I could share some of it with you. But we got a pod to finish, so haunting piano, take it away. It's a relationship that was forged across both centuries and seas, resulting in a painting so beloved and magnetic that visitors leave a physical impression on the space in which it hangs. It seems almost impossible that Jane Gray, Paul Delaroche, and this painting were relegated to the margins of history for so long, rarely spared a mention, much less a kind one. But such is the benefit of hindsight. Though to be fair, that is a rather strange word to describe the fate of a painting that famously features a blindfolded teenage girl at its center. As I was writing this episode, I kept thinking of a phrase that's often shouted in the streets when a king or a queen dies. They are words that almost certainly went unspoken on that cold February day when 17 year old Lady Jane Gray, the so called Nine Days Queen, presented herself to die. Also that her cousin could sit more comfortably on the throne. Believed to be her birthright. The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen. The saying itself is intended to honor an unbroken royal lineage, to signal that the death of a monarch does not equal the death of a kingdom. In the case of Lady Jane Grey, however, the words take on a different connotation. One that speaks to the fact that she will always be remembered more for dying than for living. But thanks to the brilliance of Paul Delaroche and his palette, she and her story have stirred the imaginations and hearts of viewers for generations, and will continue to do so for centuries to come. Yes, Jane Gray is dead, but in many ways she still lives on, if only in paints in canvas form. And to that I say, long live Lady Jane Grey. That is all I have for you this evening on the execution of Lady Jane Gray. I'm going to make this ending shorter than usual, because you girl gotta go. But I have already updated the podcast website where you can find all of the sources and images related to today's episode. Though I will give a little quick shout out to the likes of Stephen Bann, Nicola Talas, and Norman Ziff for their wonderful books and exhibition catalogs on Jane Gray and Deleleroche's painting of her. Everything else you can find on the podcast website, which is stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. If you enjoyed this episode, I would hugely appreciate it if you took the time to leave it a review. I worked really hard to get this one out in a slightly more timely manner than usual. So if you would take just two minutes to rate and review the show wherever you listen, I would be enormously appreciative of that. If anyone wants to reach out directly, the podcast email is stuffabout things podcast at gmail.com. I have a bunch of emails currently in my inbox. I will eventually respond to them. I am so sorry for the delay. I thank you so much for your time and your support, and I will be back before you know it with another episode. But for right now, your girl has to pack a bag and catch a plane. I'm off to see the Queen. Queen Jane Grey, that is, of course. But first, I have to survive driving in a Vauxhall Corsa through the Scottish Highlands, so wish me luck. No, seriously, I need it. The usual thanks go out to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org, in addition to freesound.org for the royalty-free music featured in the episode. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto Number Four by Kevin McLeod, while the second, juntier tune is called Success Dreams. That is it from me, with the exception of your usual reminder to go look at something beautiful today. All right, we are rolling. Don't touch the cord. Everything might fall apart. Oh, I just touched the cord. Au revoir.