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Oil on canvas, a full-length
portrait of The Prince Charles, aged about 16, standing on a green velvet
carpet with a gold fringe, wearing a Greenwich armour decorated by blueing and
with gilded decoration, his left hand on a table covered with a green velvet
cloth with gold decoration and fringing, his close helmet on the table and
decorated with the ostrich plumes of The Prince of Wales; the right background,
as viewed, formed of green velvet hangings fringed with gold, the upper left
background, as viewed, painted with the [ incomplete] inscription,
[LE TRE]S HAULT
[TRES E]XCELLENT
ET
[TRE]S [IL]LUSTRE PRINCE
CHARLES PRINCE DE
GALLES,
an impression of the badge of The
Prince of Wales visible above the inscription. Contained in a modern black
wooden frame with a gilded fillet.
Height 85 ¼”, width 50
¾”.
This magnificent, princely portrait
of the young man who was to become King Charles I of England, Scotland, Ireland
and France in 1625 shows him as an adolescent, some nine years earlier. It is
one of two such portraits known. In both versions the Prince is dressed in a
superb, decorated armour from the Royal Workshops at Greenwich and armed with a
magnificent swept-hilt rapier, its hilt probably from the workshop of Robert
South. Both this portrait and the armour depicted therein are worthy of lengthy
investigation.
Prince Charles was born in
Dunfermline, Fife, in 1600, three years before his father, King James VI of
Scotland, succeeded to the throne of England as King James I, thus uniting the
Crowns of the old enemies. While successive kings of England had laid
sufficient claim to the throne of France to quarter the Arms of France on their
shields of Arms, successive kings of Scotland had courted, and been courted by,
French monarchs anxious to have an ally on the northern border of their
traditional enemy. The unification of the Crowns of England and Scotland in
1603 brought about two related seismic shifts in northern European politics:
the constant wars, border raiding and tension between England and Scotland
ceased and so did the need for an alliance between Scotland and France against
England. King James VI & I was eager to avoid both the horrors and the
costs of war and saw no reason to continue the enmity of his new, united,
kingdom - which he christened Great Britain - with France, although he did not
go so far as to remove the Arms of France from his heraldry.
Having succeeded a childless queen,
Elizabeth I, on the throne of England, James was anxious to establish a dynasty
linked to the Royal houses of Europe: such alliances were intended not only to
strengthen the status of Britain and its Royal family but also to avoid
unnecessary wars. James and his queen, Anne of Denmark, lost their eldest son,
Prince Henry - created Prince of Wales at the age of 16 in 1610, to typhoid
fever in 1612. Having failed to found a dynasty through Henry, King James
changed his plans and tried to find a suitable wife for Henry’s younger
brother, Charles.
At the time, negotiations for foreign
marriages usually began with an exchange of images between the putative couple:
inevitably, such images tended to flatter their sitters. Created Prince of
Wales in 1616, and thus demonstrably heir to a kingdom, Prince Charles had
great status and this portrait, almost certainly painted soon after his
investiture as Prince of Wales, is intended to leave no doubt about that
status. It is, literally, spelt out in the universal diplomatic language of old
French: Le Très Hault, Très Excellent et Très Illustre
Prince Charles, Prince de Galles (The Most High, Most Excellent and Most
Illustrious Prince Charles, Prince of Wales). The armour, too, denotes status
of a very particular kind since, in its decorative imagery, it demonstrates all
the style and titles that Charles could expect to inherit when he became king.
While wearing this armour, Charles was wearing the emblems of the three
kingdoms to which he was proclaimed heir: the roses symbolise England, the
thistles Scotland and the fleurs-de-lys France. Ireland has been omitted from
the national floral iconography; it had long been regarded as part of England.
Charles spent the years 1616-1624
scouring Europe in search of a bride. More than one diplomatic portrait would
have been necessary as a precursor to the prince’s personal advances and
this may explain the recorded existence of two versions of this portrait. The
other version of this portrait is in a private noble collection in Scotland and
illustrated, in order to illustrate the armour, in AVB Norman’s Arms and
Armour (London, 1964, p. 54), in which publication - of forty years ago - the
armour was attributed to William Pickering of Greenwich: this is an attribution
since superseded by later research.
If it is not a pre-nuptial portrait,
the fact that it can be almost certainly dated to 1616 and the investiture of
the prince as Prince of Wales may likewise explain the existence of two
versions. The “Scottish” version of this portrait has significantly
more Caledonian imagery present upon it than does the portrait offered here,
the right couter (elbow defence) being prominently decorated with a thistle and
another thistle replacing the rose shown beneath the Garter sash on the right
of the breastplate in this portrait. The “Scottish” version has
descended in the family of Robert Ker, 1st earl of Ancrum, who was not only a
groom of the bedchamber to Prince Henry but also a gentleman of the bedchamber
to Prince Charles during the prince’s abortive mission to Spain in search
of a wife in 1623. That a Scottish courtier-diplomat should have possessed one
of the two known versions of what may well be either a pre-nuptial portrait or
an investiture portrait must be significant. He may have been charged with its
care while Prince Charles was in search of a foreign wife or he may have been
charged with the care of copy painted for use in Scotland - and thus noticeably
more “Scottish” in its iconography. Thus, if the version in Scotland
is either a diplomatic or national example, the example offered here must be
either another diplomatic copy or the version painted for use in England.
The artist to whose manner this
painting is ascribed, Paul van Somer, has suffered from having too many
paintings of the early seventeenth century ascribed to him and so ascription to
van Somer is an element of paintings research now treated with some care.
However, it is recorded that van Somer was working for the British Royal family
from 1616 until his death in London in 1621; it is likewise known that he was
employed to paint “State” portraits - the official Royal images that
would, once approved, be copied by lesser painters for dissemination, engraving
and publication. Van Somer is known to have painted a pair of portraits of the
King and Queen in 1618: these are now in the British Royal Collection. Another
portrait of the King by van Somer not only hangs at the Palace of Holyroodhouse
in Edinburgh - official residence of the British monarch in Scotland - but also
clearly incorporates a large number of pieces of an armour similar to that worn
by Prince Charles in this portrait.
Two factors are therefore certain.
Van Somer was in the employ of the Royal family at the time of Prince
Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales in 1616, the year in which the
prince began searching for a wife abroad and would thus begin requiring
diplomatic portraits. An armour similar to that depicted in this portrait was
in existence when van Somer painted Prince Charles’s father, in the
Holyroodhouse portrait, in 1618: most of the elements of this armour, or one
very like it, still exist, in the British Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
The question of the accuracy of
armour depicted in portraits is not an easy one to answer; it is one that has
been the subject of constant debate, research and publication - the indefinable
and inexplicable factors of artistic licence and client requirements being
recognised but incapable of accurate analysis. One of the few certainties is
that to “see” or “read” paintings too literally is almost
always a mistake. More can be said conclusively about the armour depicted in
this portrait than can be said, with certainty, about the accuracy of its
depiction. The attribution of the armour believed to be depicted here is no
longer to the Royal Workshops at Greenwich under the mastership of William
Pickering but, rather, to those workshops under the earlier mastership of Jacob
Halder. Halder died in 1608 and is known to have supervised the manufacture of
an armour for the 12-year old Prince Henry just before his death: this is the
armour of which most parts are at Windsor and the armour closest in its
decoration to that in our portrait and its “Scottish” version.
While one cannot exclude the
possibility that the Prince of Wales is depicted in this portrait, and in its
“Scottish” version, in an armour made at Greenwich specifically for
him and which no longer exists, or in an imaginary armour based upon that made
for his brother in 1608, what seems to be more likely is that he is depicted
wearing elements of the armour made for his late brother about eight years
before this portrait was painted. In 1608, Prince Henry had been 12 years old
and was a well-grown and robust child. In 1616, Prince Charles was 16 years old
and of a slight and diminutive build much in need of an artist’s flattery;
while the extant armour of his dead brother might have fitted him, both
artistic licence and an element of invention would probably have helped improve
the portrait.
The knee-length tassets depicted are
no longer thought to exist, if - indeed - they ever did: they are certainly not
at Windsor. Such tassets had become fashionable by the time that this portrait
was executed and so the artist may either have invented them, extrapolating
from the remainder of the armour in order to achieve their design, or they may
since have been lost - perhaps in the chaos of the British Civil Wars 1642-51.
The same armour was used in a posthumous portrait of Henry, Prince of Wales,
painted by Sir Anthony Van Dyck for King Charles I in the late 1630s, and now
in the British Royal Collection. In this portrait of Prince Henry, the armour
more closely resembles that depicted in the “Scottish” version of
this portrait. When it was painted the long-dead Prince was depicted in
knee-length tassets and high leather boots of the style current in the 1630s.
This portrait poses several
imponderable questions. We cannot know what the artist was instructed to
depict, or copy, and what allowances he had to make in carrying out his
instructions; we cannot be certain that this portrait and its
“Scottish” version were painted contemporaneously, although that
seems likely; we do know the locations of the surviving elements of the armour
that is probably depicted, although we cannot know which elements are
missing.
What is certain is that the painting
depicts Charles, Prince of Wales, dressed in a magnificent Greenwich armour and
equipped with an English sword of the best quality. Probably painted as a
diplomatic portrait following his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1616, it
depicts the adolescent Prince as the emblem of his father’s kingdom and as
one of the most eligible bachelors in Europe.
Image reproduced by courtesy of Peter
Finer |
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