Professor Butter Beard and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger’s “Ellen Maurice”
“Whenever there comes to the same place…
the estate of the Kingdom and its most handsome dignitaries
and the daughters of great dukes of the fairest pedigrees
and the best, most attractive, ladies
in elegant London…
she was judged fairest.”
- Richard Cynwal, Welsh poet, speaking of Ellen Maurice
“She was judged fairest.” A vision in embroidered silk and starched white gauze and lace. She gently pinches an astonishing strand of opaque pearls that radiate and reflect her aristocratic pallor while also conveying her incredible wealth. The Lady Ellen Maurice (“Elin” in Welsh) was an heiress claiming direct descent from the ancient princes of Wales. And Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger captured her in her prime.
Born in Bruges, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger came to London in 1568 with his father Marcus the Elder, an engraver and painter seeking religious freedom and a haven from the repressive Spanish occupation of the Low Countries. We know little of the younger Gheeraerts’ early years or his artistic training, but while in London, father and son would have joined a large community of enterprising and well educated Dutch-speaking refugees. In 1590, he married Magdalen de Critz, a sister of the painter John de Critz. The couple had six children, four of whom unfortunately died young.
Many art historians believe Gheeraerts was probably the leading society portraitist in London at the peak of his career in the twilight of the sixteenth century. Thirty oil portraits can be confidently assigned to him on the basis of signatures or inscriptions, the best-known among them being the glorious full-length portrait of Elizabeth I known as the ‘Ditchley’ portrait in which the powerful queen is shown also dressed in white and triumphantly standing on a map of southern England. Gheeraerts died in London at the age of seventy-four after a long and successful career that, according to Adam Eaker, “bridged the achievement of Nicholas Hilliard with that of Anthony van Dyck and marked a major turning point in English portraiture.”
Ellen Maurice has a colorful history. Mr. Eaker, Associate Curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of European Paintings, writes “In the sixteenth century, the Welsh gentry, unlike their Irish counterparts, largely embraced the Protestant Reformation and the ascendance of the (originally Welsh) Tudor dynasty, seeing in the latter the fulfillment of bardic prophecies about the restoration of ancient, Celtic Britain.”
Ellen’s grandfather was Sir William Maurice of Clenneny, a Welsh politician who served in the House of Commons and is said to have coined the title "King of Great Britain" for his personal friend James I of England, and her first husband, John Owen, was also a Welshman who amassed an immense fortune while serving as private secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s "spymaster."
After John Owen died in 1611, Ellen Maurice married Sir Francis Eure, a justice of the circuit court of North Wales. She died fifteen years later and was buried at St. Mary’s Church in Selattyn (Shropshire). Many of her children survived to adulthood, including her son and heir, Sir John Owen, a noted soldier for the Royalist cause during the English Civil War in 1642.
Ellen is thought to be roughly nineteen years old when her portrait was painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and the likeness may have been commissioned to commemorate either her first marriage or presentation at court. Her “portrait in white” remained in the possession of her direct descendants until its recent acquisition in 2017 by the Metropolitan Museum. She is now holding court within the latest Met exhibition titled “The Tudors – Art and Majesty in Renaissance England,” curated by Mr. Eaker and Elizabeth Cleland, Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. And believe me, I am counting the days until I stand before her in person and smile with a silent nod of respect.
Thoughts of white lace and silk and royalty danced together in my mind this week and deliciously morphed into spiced brown butter madeleines crowned with bits of English toffee and cloaked in satiny smooth white chocolate. Perfect with a mug of robust dark roast coffee or a porcelain teacup of Earl Grey with lemon. One hint – don’t give into the temptation to fold the toffee bits into the batter. They will melt and bond the cakes to the pans making them impossible to remove. Sprinkle the bits over the batter before baking. They will maintain their crunch and enrich the delight of multiple textures in each bite. Enjoy them while you plan your visit to the Met and make ready to bow before “she who was judged fairest.”
English Toffee Madeleines dipped in White Chocolate
32 Madeleines – using two Madeleine baking trays
13 Tbsp unsalted butter
4 teaspoons local honey
4 large eggs
½ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp Chinese Five-Spice powder
½ tsp fine sea salt
½ cup Heath English Toffee Bits
1 cup white chocolate chips
1) Place the 13 Tbsp of butter and 4 tsps. of honey in a small saucepan over low heat until the butter has melted. Stir to combine, remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. (Alternatively, for a nuttier flavor, brown the butter and then pour it into a glass measuring cup and stir in the honey. The honey will reduce the temperature so the butter can be used right away.)
2) Whisk together the flour, baking powder, five-spice powder and salt. Set aside.
3) Place the eggs, sugar, and vanilla paste in a food processor and process until smooth and combined. Add the flour mixture and pulse a few times to combine. While the processor is running, slowly pour in the cooled butter/honey until the batter is combined. Pour the batter into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour. (Usually, I make my batter the night before and let it chill in the fridge overnight before baking in the morning.)
4) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray your madeleine pans with baking spray with flour.
5) Portion the batter into the individual madeleine wells - 2/3 full. Sprinkle 1 tsp toffee bits on top of the batter, making sure none of the toffee is touching the pan.
6) Place one tray in the oven and immediately turn down the oven to 375 degrees. Bake for roughly 10 minutes until the “humps” are just solid. Remove from the oven and let sit 3 minutes before turning the cakes out onto a cooling rack. Reheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake the second tray in the same manner.
7) While the madeleines are baking, melt your white chocolate either over a double bowler, or carefully in the microwave using 20 second zaps (and stirring between each zap). While the madeleines are still warm, dip into the white chocolate and place on a sheet of parchment to set the chocolate.
