While the Society primarily collected objects, manuscripts and books relating to British history, rituals of power are universal and crop up throughout our non-British collections.
The ’souvenir’ album of miniatures brought back from Delhi deliberately shows Mughal rulers in their pomp, with liberal use of gold leaf and beautiful colours, while the illuminated Book of Hours inadvertently gives us a view of late 15th century French royal dress and regalia, having transposed King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba into a contemporary setting. Likewise, the image of the Spanish court in the woodblock is most probably the carver’s imagination rather than an accurate depiction – the conceptual imagery being strong enough for viewers to understand its representation of a royal court.
