Peter Lely (1618–1680), Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland (1640–1709), with her son Charles FitzRoy (1662–1730), as the Virgin and Child, c.1664. Oil on canvas, 124.7 × 102 cm. The National Portrait Gallery, London
Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, was at the centre of Charles II’s court from the king’s return in 1660. As his mistress, she bore him five children, all later legitimised, and for many years she controlled access to the king, shaping political fortunes through her patronage.
Lely’s portrait of her, painted around 1664, is one of the boldest images of the Restoration. Villiers is cast as the Virgin Mary, holding her young son Charles FitzRoy in the role of the Christ Child. What might, in another context, have been a devotional scene becomes here an audacious conflation of sacred imagery with the politics of dynasty and desire. The effect is unsettling: a king’s mistress steps into the place of the Madonna, and the illegitimate child assumes the attributes of the Saviour.
Villiers was Lely’s most frequent subject, her beauty providing him with endless variations, and his paintings in turn making her the face of the new court. This portrait exemplifies the portrait historié, a genre that blurred the lines between history, allegory, and likeness, though here the fiction carries a sharper edge.
Her life remained turbulent. She fought bitterly with Queen Catherine of Braganza, quarrelled with Frances Stuart, and endured the king’s shifting affections before losing her position to Louise de Kérouaille. Known for her extravagance and entanglements with younger lovers, she died in 1709 aged sixty-eight.