PAINTINGS ABOUT THE EXECUTION OF MARY STUART
Perhaps the most famous execution among women of royal blood was the execution on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringate Castle in England of 44-year-old Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, accused of complicity in a Catholic conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth of England.
John Callcott Horsley. «Mary, Queen of Scots in captivity.» (1871).
Mary Stuart has remained in history a kind of noble and tragic person. However, it seems that Mary was more dominated by a woman than a queen, unlike her rival and cousin Elizabeth.
Francesco Hayes. «Mary Stuart proves her innocence.» (1832) 
Jean-Baptiste Vermeil. «Mary Stuart has received a death sentence.»
The execution itself, which took place on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringate Castle, was brilliantly described by Stefan Zweig:
Leonardo Gasser. «Farewell of Mary Stuart».
«She chooses a magnificent, festive outfit for her last outing, the strictest and most exquisite dress made of dark brown velvet, trimmed with marten fur, with a standing white collar and luxuriously flowing sleeves
Robert Herdman. «The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.»
A black silk cloak frames this proud splendor, and the heavy train is so long that Melville, her chamberlain, must respectfully support it. A snow-white widow’s veil covers her from head to toe.
Philippe Jacques Van Brie. «Mary Stuart is on her way to execution.»
Elaborate homophores and precious rosaries replace her secular jewelry, white morocco shoes tread so silently that the sound of her footsteps will not break the breathless silence at the moment when she goes to the scaffold. The queen herself took out of the treasured chest a handkerchief with which she would be blindfolded — a transparent cloud of the finest cambric, trimmed with a gold border, probably her own work. Every buckle on her dress is chosen with the greatest meaning, every little thing is tuned to the overall musical sound; it is also envisaged that she will have to throw off this dark splendor in front of the block in front of strange men. In anticipation of the last bloody minute, Mary Stuart put on a crimson silk undergarment and ordered to make long, elbow-length, fiery-colored gloves so that the blood spurting from under the axe would not stand out so sharply on her attire, Never before had a prisoner condemned to death prepared for execution with such sophisticated art and consciousness of her greatness.
At eight in the morning they knock on the door. Mary Stuart does not answer, she is still kneeling in front of the lectern and reading the retirement. Only when she has finished, she rises from her knees, and the door is opened to a second knock. The sheriff enters with a white baton in his hand-it will soon be broken-and says respectfully, with a deep bow; «Madame, the lords have sent me, they are waiting for you.» «Let’s go,» says Mary Stuart and prepares to leave…
Francesco Hayes. «Mary Stuart at the moment of the procession to the scaffold.» 
…With her head held high, she ascends both steps of the scaffold. So for fifteen years she ascended the throne of France, so she ascended the altar steps in Reims. So she would have ascended to the English throne if other stars had ruled her fate.…
Ford Madox Brown. «Mary Stuart before execution.»
…There was a lot of cruelty and violence in the Middle Ages, but you can’t call him soulless. His other customs reflected such a deep consciousness of his own inhumanity, which is inaccessible to our time. In every execution, no matter how brutal it may be, in the midst of all the horrors, there is a glimmer of human greatness; so, before touching the victim to kill or torture her, the executioner had to ask her forgiveness for his crime against her living flesh. And now the executioner and his henchman, hidden under masks, kneel before Mary Stuart and ask her forgiveness for being forced to prepare her death. And Mary Stuart answers them: «I forgive you with all my heart, for in death I see the solution of all my earthly torments.» And only then the executioner and his assistant begin to prepare…
Alexander Denis Abel-de-Piojol. «The Execution of Mary Stuart». (XIX century).
And now she has little left: to drop her head on the deck, which she wraps her arms around, like the beloved of an afterlife groom. Until the last minute, Mary Stuart is faithful to royal greatness. There is no fear in any movement, in any word of her. The daughter of the Tudors, the Stuarts and the Guises prepared to die with dignity. But what does all human dignity and all inherited and acquired self-control mean in the face of that monstrous thing that is inherent in every murder! Never — and all books and relations lie about this — can the execution of a human being represent something romantically pure and sublime. Death under the executioner’s axe remains in any case a terrible, disgusting sight, a vile massacre.
James Dromgall Linton. «Mary, Queen of Scots at the moment of execution in Fotheringate.»
At first, the executioner missed; his first blow did not fall on the neck, but thudded on the back of the head — a strangled wheezing, muffled moans escape from the sufferer. The second blow cut deep into the neck, blood spurted like a fountain. And only the third blow separated the head from the torso. And one more terrible detail: when the executioner grabs his head by the hair to show it to the audience, only his wig holds his hand. The head falls out and, covered in blood, with a crash, like a bowling tiara, rolls along the wooden flooring.
When the executioner bends down a second time and lifts her high, everyone looks in a daze: before them is a ghostly vision — the cropped gray head of an old woman. For a minute, horror shackles the audience, everyone holds their breath, no one will utter a word. And only the priest from Peterborough, finally coming to his senses, hoarsely exclaims: «Long live the Queen!»
Federico Zuccaro. «The head of Mary, Queen of Scots, after the execution.»
With a motionless, cloudy gaze, an unfamiliar wax head looks at the nobles, who, if the lot had happened otherwise, would have been her most obedient servants and exemplary subjects. For another quarter of an hour, the lips convulsively shudder, having suppressed the fear of the earthly creature with an inhuman effort; the clenched teeth gnash. Sparing the feelings of the audience, a black cloth is hastily thrown over the decapitated body and on the head of the Jellyfish. Amid the dead silence, the servants hurry to carry away their gloomy burden, but then an unexpected incident dispels the superstitious horror that has gripped everyone. For at the moment when the executioners lift the bloody corpse to carry it to the next room, where it is embalmed, something moves under the folds of clothing. The queen’s beloved dog, unnoticed by anyone, followed her and, as if fearing for the fate of her mistress, clung closely to her. Now she popped out, drenched in still wet blood. The dog barks, bites, screams, snaps and does not want to move away from the corpse. The executioners are trying in vain to tear it off by force. She is not given into the hands, is not given to persuasion, fiercely rushes at the huge black monsters who so painfully burned her with the blood of her beloved mistress. With more passion than her own son, than thousands of subjects who have sworn allegiance to her, a tiny creature is fighting for her mistress.»
Oleg Loginov
*Translated using an electronic dictionary. The original text in Russian and much more on the criminal topic can be selected on the main page of the site — https://crimerecords.info/
