Favouring order and restraint, Pujol has depicted the death of Mary Queen of Scots, a pivotal moment in history, which took place at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire in 1587. Pujol’s technique is consistent with the academic training he received as student of Jacques-Louis David. David was a key influential artist in the Neoclassical movement, responsible for moving art styles away from the playful and decorative nature of Rococo towards the balanced compositions and limited colour palettes of Neoclassical paintings of historical, mythological, and moral narratives.
Pujol’s painting shows the moment just before the execution, Mary is depicted, surrounded by her attendants, preparing for her fate. Aligning with Neoclassical ideas, the overall feel of the painting comes across as composed and peaceful despite the context behind it. Pujol encourages the viewer to contemplate sacrifice, not spectacle; the painting is about meaning, not about the historical event itself. Emotion is present here but it is restrained, disciplined, austere; there is no chaos or gore. All that remains is dignity and virtue.
Mary, placed in the centre of the composition, is isolated and illuminated by a ghostly spotlight, reflecting Neoclassical theatrical staging and narrative scenes. She is painted with soft brushstrokes as simultaneously composed and exposed; she prepares with controlled inevitability surrounded by rigid and institutional male figures. Pujol has created a dialogue between femininity and authority, and discourse between vulnerability and power. Mary has been transformed by Pujol and his paintbrush from a political prisoner into a religious and moral figure. Mary was executed for treason after years of imprisonment and political tension between England and Scotland. Here Pujol has inflicted a moral contrast onto the viewer, depicted Mary as a victim against the Elizabethan system. The painting invites sympathy for Mary not the state. The painting measures 259 x 331 cm and was designed to feel monumental and authoritative. Present day, it remains a visual historical statement.
Pujol’s interpretation of the event is clean and solemn. He takes the constructed historical narrative and by removing the shock, chaos, and physical brutality of Mary’s execution creates a moral lesson.
‘La mort de Marie Stuart (The Death of Mary Stuart) is more a rumination upon the last cruelty of power than a depiction of a particular moment in history. Here is a queen not of legends or conquest, but a body broken before eyes as rigid, ritualistic and so-far away as the very members of the court itself – yet at its core: an excruciatingly human glimpse into the dying out of the public self to begin the inevitable private stillness of mortality. I appreciate the juxtaposition between dignity and powerlessness in the picture – the ritual tending appears, even now, an act of tender preservation of grace in the face of overwhelming historical aggression. The artist implies something about the inherent vulnerability of rule, about the corporeality that is the seat of power ultimately being reduced, so quickly, to the indignity of death and its inevitable passivity; yet something about the final compassion for the dying echoes beyond titles and histories into more enduring truths.
