Art Appreciation: Royal Portraits (1395 - 1658)

Portraying the monarch at any given historical moment could

be a fraught proposition, involving the massaging of the

sitter’s ego, and the creation of the desired political

statements through the paintings’ iconography. We will

discuss the nature of monarchy that each artist sought to

promulgate, and discuss in detail the political necessity of

each portrait’s imagery. We shall observe that this is of

paramount importance in the Tudor and Stuart eras, as the

nature of the succession, and later the question of the Divine

Right of Kings came to the fore.

Although we shall analyse each portrait in detail, assessing its

craft and the individual artist’s style, we will also discuss the

historical context in which the portraits are produced, the

nature of patronage, and we will refer to literary texts and

documents where appropriate. In this way, we shall come to

appreciate that these images are far from static or passive,

but are rather active and at the centre of the often febrile

times in which they are created. This is of particular relevance

in the years running up to and after the English Civil Wars,

during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell.