QUEEN CAROLINE’S MINI MASTERPIECES

George II was happily married to Queen Caroline (below), whose interest in the visual arts and scholarship impressed her contemporaries, even if it sometimes baffled her husband. They were a close and supportive couple, despite his bad temper, but they quarrelled when she swapped around the furniture and changed the pictures on the walls at Kensington Palace. He once insisted she put back what he called ‘the gigantic fat Venus’ – a large Renaissance painting of Venus and Cupid by Giorgio Vasari after a design by Michelangelo. It is still in the Royal Collection.

An art lover with a sense of history, she for the first time systematically gathered together all the miniature portraits in the Royal Collection and displayed them, along with several drawings by Hans

Holbein that she found in the bottom drawer of a bureau at Kensington. Caroline was also the first member of the Royal Family to show a sustained interest in historic gems. Some of those that she collected are illustrated above. The outstanding dark blue and white Adoration Of The Magi was probably made in northern Italy in the 16th century, while the gold pendant showing a woman in profile is French and from the mid-16th century. The cameo of Henry VIII and his son, Edward, is derived from portraits by Hans Holbein but is more probably a modern piece from the early 18th century, towards the end of Caroline’s life – she died in

1737, aged 54.

Clockwise from top left: Adoration Of The Magi, a gold pendant showing a woman, and Henry VIII with Edward