Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) writer and traveller

Location

Country: Turkey
City: Ankara
Place: British Embassy

A scholar and an antiquarian, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a woman who defied convention: the first western woman to write about the Ottomans. She also introduced smallpox inoculation to western medicine after witnessing it in Adrianople (now Edirne), and was the first foreign woman to interact with Ottoman aristocratic women within their sexually segregated milieu. Her detailed observations touch on social history, cultural constraints, aesthetics, entertainment of women and medical history. She was the wife of British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Edward Montagu who served there between 1716 and 1718. 

On the reverse of the canvas, the Montagu coat of arms has been painted, with the Latin inscription ‘pie repone to’, meaning ‘place yourself piously’ below. Under the coat of arms, a carefully painted inscription states that the portrait was presented by the sitter to her friend Henrietta Cavendish Harley (née Holles, 1694-1755), Countess of Oxford and Mortimer. However, later accounts state that the work was commissioned by Harley and presented by her to the sitter.

Carlo Francesco Rusca was born in 1696 in Lugano, within the Italian-speaking area of Ticino in southern Switzerland. He studied under the Italian painter and etcher Giacomo Amigoni (c.1685-1752) and was active from 1722 until his death in 1769. He worked in numerous European cities, including Venice, Kassel, Hanover, Brunswick and Milan. He is known to have been in London in 1739, when his portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont) was painted, indicating that Lady Mary sat for him before she left England for Italy later that year. Rusca died in Milan in 1769.

People

Lady Mary Wortley (née Lady Mary Pierrepont) Montagu (1689 - 1762)

Places

Subjects

ink pot/ink stand, book, writer, travel & tourism, female portrait, skull, woman, 18th century costume, ermine, robe, bracelet, earring, pearls, handkerchief, fur, memento mori

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Carlo Francesco Rusca (1696 - 1769)

Title

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) writer and traveller

Date

1739

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 85.00 cm, width: 66.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Trustees of the Wharncliffe Estate, February 1959

Inscription

Inscribed on verso of canvas: [coat of arms] PIE REPONE TE / The Right Honourable / Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. / Done from the Life by / Carolus De Rusca, Eques Mediolanensis / Pinxit Londini Anno. 1739 / Given by her Ladyship to / Henrietta Cavendishe Holles, / Countess of Oxford, & Countess Mortimer

Provenance

Collection of the sitter; by whom presented to Henrietta Cavendish Harley (née Holles; 1694-1755); collection of the Trustees of the Wharncliffe Estate (on loan to the Ministry of works from 1955); from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in 1959

GAC number

3320