This is the first book to address the long art history of dynastic
marriage exchange between Denmark and Britain between 1600 and 1900,
exploring portraiture, gender, and the court as a centre of cultural
exchange. This work re-evaluates the construction and staging of gender
in Northern consort portraiture over a span of three hundred years,
examining the development of the scientific and social paradigms
inflecting consort portraiture and representation, with a view to
excavating portrait images' agency at the early modern moment of their
conception. The consort's liminal position between royal houses,
territories, languages, and religion has often been equated with
political weakness, but this new work argues that this position endowed
the consort with a unique space for innovation in the representation of
elite identity. Each chapter is informed by new archival research and
introduces the reader to little known, yet astonishing works of art.
Collectively, they seek to trace a shift in practices of identity
formation over time; the transition from an emphasis on rank to an
increasingly binary emphasis on gender.