Anne of Denmark, Queen of Style

After she became Queen of England in 1603, Anne was able to dip into the Great Wardrobe of her husband’s predecessor as well as the caskets of royal jewels, but she also fashioned her own style by acquiring lots of new things: consequently you see an evolution from the “stiffer” Elizabethan style to a more elegant Jacobean appearance, so well illustrated by this last hunting portrait. But this transition came at great cost, noted by contemporaries and historians alike: in her article “Text and Textiles: Self-Presentation among the Elite in Renaissance England”, Jane Stevenson observes that “Against Elizabeth’s Great Wardrobe expenses of £9,535 in the last four years of her reign, we may set expenses of £36,377 annually for the first five years of James’s reign (a figure which does not include Queen Anne’s bills, though it does include clothes for [their sons] Henry and Charles). Towards the end of her life, Anne of Denmark had a wardrobe grant of £8,000 a year; additional, presumably, to what she chose to spend out of her general income, which was considerable.” James actually spent more than his wife on clothes, though she might have spent more on jewels: there is ample indication that she saw herself as a patron of the arts and collector, so this might have been rationalized as a national contribution rather than a personal extravagance. After all, upon his succession to the English throne, her husband proclaimed the crown jewels to be “individually and inseparably for ever annexed to the kingdome of this realme”. Whether for queen or realm, one great source–in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum– that gives us an insight into Jacobean style is the “Book of Jewels” of Dutch jeweler Arnold Lulls, a catalog of styles he presented to Anne, who clearly loved her brooches.