Painting of Scotland's 'Sappho' goes on display at National Portrait Gallery

The Scots language is also being used for the first time at the gallery in the text alongside Marie Maitland’s imagined portrait.

If visitors respond positively, it is hoped Scots will be used more often in the future.

Maitland, who died in 1596, was part of the politically prominent family of the Maitlands of Lethington, in East Lothian. But while her poems feature in the treasured 16th century Maitland Quarto Manuscript, her contribution has been largely overlooked, even though her writing is thought to be one of the very earliest – if not the earliest – example of Sapphic verse in Europe, in any language, since Sappho herself.

Researcher Ashley Douglas said it was a “pretty cool claim to fame for both Scots and Scotland”.

“It’s really off-the-scale remarkable for its 16th-century context,” she said.

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However, although portraits of male members of the Maitland family survived, there were none of the female poet – a lack that has been rectified by an “imagined” portrait influenced by the surviving portraits of her brothers.

This has now gone on a display at the gallery curated by Kate Anderson (above), called James’s People, that sheds light on some of the lesser-known characters that lived and worked in Scotland under the reign of James VI.

It is shown beside Maitland’s Poem 49 in Scots, which speaks about her love for another woman. The text accompanying the imagined portrait and reproduction of the poem is in both Scots and English, an innovation for the gallery.

“We have had Gaelic texts before but never Scots,” said Anderson, senior curator of European and Scottish art and portraiture.

“I thought this was a great opportunity to integrate it as Scots was the language spoken at the time and that was the language Marie used and the majority of her poems are written in it.

“We don’t have many examples of 16th-century Scottish female writers, which is why she is so important and the imagined portrait works well in this instance because we it means we can actually put a face to the woman.”

The portrait of Marie Maitland was created by Mike Foster, Maltings Partnership. Photograph: ©Ashley Douglas

While Maitland’s signature is on the manuscript of 95 poems, it is not on Poem 49 – but was identified as hers by Douglas.

In the poem, Maitland expresses her desire to marry the woman she loves, but Douglas said its lesbian meaning had been overlooked as it was “hiding in plain sight”.

“Clearly, she was an elite, educated and literate woman,” she said. “What’s more, one of the other anonymous poems in the manuscript compares her directly to known female poets, including the historical Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos – famous as a woman poet and (in)famous for her romantic entanglements with other women.

“This all points to Marie having had a reputation as a female poet – and one in the image of Sappho.”

She added that even if it had been a poem just about female friendship, it would still have been “way ahead of its time and worth getting excited about”.

“Only male friendship was written about and only men were thought capable of forming meaningful friendships – women not being emotionally developed enough for that, of course.”  

Douglas pointed out that even though female same-sex activity was not formally criminalised in the same way as male same-sex activity, deviation from norms was not well tolerated so it was “incredibly brave” for the poet to articulate such clearly romantic and sexual desire for another woman. 

The poem showed, said Douglas, that there had always been gay people in Scotland, even though it was often “extremely difficult” to find evidence in the historical record.

“What’s irrefutable, and what’s important, is that it shows us that there have always been people who experience romantic and sexual attractions to those of the same-sex – whatever they called, or didn’t call that, and whatever their identities might or might not have been,” said Douglas.  

“Gay people in Scotland have always existed, just as they have always existed elsewhere.”

There is no end date for the display of James’s People and the gallery is free to enter and welcomes all ages.