New exhibition considers the life of King James VI & I

The National

27-04-2025

Some consider his 58-year reign to be less historically significant than the lives of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and his son, King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland. The execution of Mary in 1587 was a key moment in Europe's religious conflict, while the regicide of Charles in 1649 marked the dramatic victory of the English Revolution.
Other people would place the emphasis on James's fanatical obsession with witches and witchcraft, which led to the gruesome executions of more than 2500 people (the overwhelming majority of them women) in Scotland alone. Then there is James, the gay icon, known for his intimacy with a number of young, attractive male favourites.
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Whatever aspect of James's life one considers to be most significant, one thing that is certain is that his accession to the English throne in 1603 set in train a political process that would lead, ultimately, to the formation of the British state in 1707.
All of these aspects of James's life and reign – and others besides – are subjects of the fascinating new exhibition The World Of King James VI & I at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. The show boasts a rich and diverse series of paintings, drawings, artefacts, books and letters which cast a compelling light on James's life and times.
The exhibition includes – as one would expect – a number of portraits of James, including a 1606 painting attributed to the Flemish artist John de Critz. This full-length portrait – in which the king leans nonchalantly against a piece of furniture while wearing a bejewelled black hat – testifies to James's love of fine clothes and jewellery.
Perhaps the most interesting portrait of James – who acceded to the throne of Scotland at the tender age of 13 months – is the painting of him as a young boy kneeling at the memorial to his father, Lord Darnley, who was murdered when James was still an infant. Painted by another Flemish artist, Livinus de Vogelaare, it shows James as a very young boy, with a miniature crown on his head.
The child cuts an isolated figure. His mother was in exile, his father dead, and he had no siblings. The Vogelaare picture depicts the power James will obtain when he comes of age, but it portrays, too, a child alone in the world, save for the courtiers who raised him.
The show is understandably circumspect on the question of James's sexual orientation, about which there has been considerable speculation for more than 500 years. However, it does display intriguing artworks and items pertaining to the king's favourites.
Arguably, the finest painting in the exhibition is that of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, by the great Flemish Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens. A beautifully executed portrait of a young man who is widely believed to have been one of James's lovers, the picture captures not only Villiers's unquestionably good looks, but also, somehow, his reputed charm and charisma.
Following the death of Elizabeth I of England and his accession to the English throne, James would become the human embodiment of a developing union between Scotland and England. One fascinating artwork – from the surprisingly early point of 1604 – depicts a series of six proposals for the flag of the nascent United Kingdom, five of which place the Scottish St Andrew's cross in a secondary position to the English cross of St George.
Curator Kate Anderson and her team have brought into the show aspects of James's times that – whilst very important – would surely have been overlooked in the past. One particularly significant subject is early European colonialism.
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We know from Shakespeare's final play The Tempest – which was written in 1610-11, during James reign in England – that European colonialism was already well under way. In the play, the Italian nobleman and sorcerer Prospero subjugates the native islander Caliban, whom he depicts, not as a human, but a monster.
Two artworks in the show portray the complexity of the racist conception of the First Nations people of North America as an exotic 'other' by European colonialists. In one picture, we see the famous Native American writer Pocahontas, who has converted (forcibly or otherwise) to Christianity, is wearing Western garb and has married English tobacco plantation owner John Rolfe.
In another spine-chilling and outrageous image, we see the Native American man Eiakintomino displayed – as an objectified, incarcerated human exhibit – in the zoo at St James's Park in London alongside animals and birds.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, there are paintings of Mary, Queen of Scots, including a fictitious double portrait from the 1580s of Mary and her son, James VI. The painting is based upon existing portraits of the two, who could not have sat together at that time as Mary was imprisoned in England.
There are depictions, too, of James's queen, Anne of Denmark. Objects in the show include coins from the period and a beautiful embroidered women's bodice, which was typical of the clothes worn in James's English court.
For those who enjoy interactive elements in gallery exhibitions, there are numerous places in the show where one can scan a QR code to hear audio material. Indeed, at one impressive point, you can pass your smartphone over monochrome drawings of the grand wooden archways that were erected for James's London coronation and see them transformed into colour.
Typically of the National Galleries of Scotland, this is a brilliantly put together exhibition, and one that offers superb, sometimes startling, insights into the life and times of the pivotal monarch in the development of the British state.
The World Of King James VI & I is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh until September 14: nationalgalleries.org