Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")

Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")

John Rogers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving shows William Douglas (son of Sir William Douglas) helping Mary Queen of Scots to escape from Lochleven Castle. While confined there for eleven months in 1566-67 she had been forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James. Douglas masterminded the queen's escape from the island fortress on May 2, 1568. The print was based on an eighteenth-century painting by Robert Smirke, reengraved here to illustrate Thomas Gaspey's "The History of England: from the text of Hume and Smollett, to the Reign of George III" (1830, with later editions in 1852-54 and 1860).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")Mary, Queen of Scots escaping Lochleven Castle (from "The History of England")

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.