13 - ENGLISH SCHOOL (LATE 16TH CENTURY)A KINSHIP RIDDLEOil on panelIndistinctly inscribed ‘My faire Lady, I pray you telle me […] /What and of whom be yonder three…/ That doe come oute of the castell in such degree / And of there decente & nativitye....’ (lower centre); further indistinctly inscribed with the riddle ‘Sir the one is my brother at my father’s syde ye trouth to tell / The other by my mothers side is my brother also…/ The thirde is my owne sonne lawfully begott…/ And all these Sonnes to my husbande yt slepes here in my lappe / With out hurte of lynnege in anny degree…/ Showe me the Reason how this maye bee…’ (upper left); latersheets with transcription of riddle and the solution (affixed to the reverse)30.5 x 41.5cm (12 x 16¼in.)Provenance:Private collection, Shropshire, UKThis intriguingpainting on panel is a rare example of a sixteenth century kinship riddlepicture, a tradition that speaks to the Elizabethan penchant for puzzles, allegoriesand reason. The viewer is invited to solve the riddle of how the lady’s twohalf-brothers and her own legitimate son can all be the sons of her husband,who lies sleeping in her lap. Although several possible solutions based on aseries of marriages and remarriages have been suggested, the most probableappears to be that ‘The lady’s two half-brothers must have married thedaughters of her husband by a former marriage, which made them sons (i.e.sons-in-law) to her husband and brothers to the son of her sister.’[1]Dr LydanWarner has linked this tradition to the evolving marriage laws of the sixteenthcentury.[2] While it has been arguedthat the English examples relate to Netherlandish narrative pictures of thesame subject, Warner has pointed out that the differing solutions are dependenton the legal framework within specific regional contexts. It may be howeverthat the divergent traditions emerged from a common root Flemish manuscriptriddle.[3]There are amere handful of known surviving English examples, all of which are housed inprestigious collections. These include The Riddle devoted to Sir WilliamCecil, now at Hatfield House (sold at Sotheby’s, London, 8 December 2010,lot 14 for £61,250); The Allegorie of a Faire Ladye at The Fogg ArtMuseum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, datable to the 1570’s (no. 1959.143) and alater example of the 1620’s or ‘30s at Knole, Kent. The present lot sharesseveral compositional similarities to these three, including the two sectionsof text with slight variations and six figures (five men and one woman) in alandscape with a turreted castle beyond. It has been suggested that a pictorialprototype might have circulated in print form but a surviving example remainsto be found.[4]This versionappears share a similar textual rendering as well as the charming naivety ofthe Fogg version. It does also present previously unseen variations; the sonsare more separate and they are descending steps, rather than a path, from thecastle. Other textual evidence of English riddles identified by Warner,including one that came from Copped Hall (see Country Life, 4 August1955, p. 253), ‘a curious picture at Epping Inn’ mentioned in a letter to Gentleman’sMagazine in 1789, and two examples with slight differences in the riddleand verse do not seem to match this panel.Nonetheless,the accuracy of the sartorial detailing supports the dating of the presentpicture to the 1590s. The clothing worn by the figures in this painting wouldhave been in fashion in around the early 1590s, especially the Lady’s squaredneckline and dramatic lace ruff. The very short breeches worn by the men datefrom the late 1580s to the early 1590s, when silhouettes exaggerated youth andphysical vigour. The Lady’s husband wears an earlier fashion of a black overgownworn over a doublet with a Tudor-style cap, which would be typical for an olderman. Whereas a later pastiche might be likely to homogenise the fashionsof a particular period, the precise treatment of clothing for differentgenerations is an idiosyncrasy that one would expect from an original work. Thefabrics are likewise convincingly painted in detail, which suggests that thiswork was painted at the time when these fashions were current. Significantly,while the seventeenth century examples at Knole and Copped Hall address theLady as ‘Madam’, the earlier known examples begin with ‘My faire Lady’. Whilethe text in the current lot is partially obscured, it appears more likely tocorrespond with the latter.We aregrateful to Prof Karen Hearn and Dr Lyndan Warner for their assistance with thecataloguing of this painting.[1] R.Gibson, The Clarendon Collection, 1977, quoted in K. Hearn (ed.), Dynasties:Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530-1630, London, 1995, pp. 98-9[2] L.Warner, ‘Kinship Riddles.’ Genealogy 2022, vol. 6 (2), 43, pp. 1-30.[3] Ibid,23.[4] E.von Minnigerode, Image and Secrecy in Elizabethan England: Riddles andSelf-Fashioning in Courtly Paintings for William Ceci