Key in a search term below to search our website.
Last updated: 8 February 2022
From 1716, the exiled claimant to the British thrones, James Frances Edward Stuart, and his court lived in Italy, and after 1719 it settled permanently in Rome. Scottish collections reflect the significance of material and visual culture in articulating, promoting, and prolonging the Jacobite cause in exile.
Using the museum’s collections alongside letters and papers from the time, this project attempted to track the movement of objects and images between the exiled Stuart court and their supporters in Scotland. It brought a better understanding of how material culture was used by supporters to express loyalty to the cause, as well as what that loyalty was based on. Through the exchanges between court and supporters, a material and visual language of Jacobite sympathy emerged, which endured thereafter in the romantic popular culture of the post-1760 Jacobite ‘lost cause’. This research examined how that language was originally developed through networks of personal and symbolic exchange.
Project title
Loyal Exchange: the material and visual culture of Jacobite exile, 1716-60
Student
Dr Georgia Vunghillis
Project active
2017 - 2021
Funder
AHRC Scottish Cultural Heritage Consortium (SCHC) – Collaborative Doctoral Partnership
University of Edinburgh Supervisor
Professor Viccy Coltman - History of Art
National Museums Scotland Supervisor
Dr Stuart Allan - Scottish History & Archaeology
Research theme
Scotland's Material Heritage