Exhibition reunites parts of Charles I’s Royal Collection
PARTS OF the Royal Collection dismantled by Oliver Cromwell following the execution of Charles I are returning to Britain for a blockbuster show at the Royal Academy.
Just months after the monarch’s death, Charles I’s art collection, one of the most “extraordinary ever assembled”, was offered for sale and dispersed across Europe.
Everything from tapestries to blankets were sold off for as little as six shillings from what had been an “unrivalled” collection of 1,500 paintings and 500 sculptures.
They ended up around Europe, and are now being lent to the Royal Academy from the Louvre in Paris and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Spain, as well as private collections.
Although many works were retrieved by Charles II during the Restoration, others remained dispersed.
Now around 150 of the most important works will be reunited for the first time since the 17th century at the Royal Academy of Arts in the show
next year. About 90 works will be lent by the Queen from the Royal Collection for the show.
Meanwhile, at Buckingham Palace, curators are working on an exhibition on Charles II who, after ending more than a decade of Republican rule and making a triumphant return to London in 1660, acted to recover his father’s art collection.
After 14 years in exile, he used the arts to reinforce his legitimacy and authority as a ruler.
At the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, examples of new royal regalia ordered by Charles II to replace those sold off or melted down by the Parliamentarians will be on display, as well as paintings and furniture commissioned by the King to decorate his new royal residences.
A number of items recovered by Charles II during the Restoration, also part of the Royal Collection, will go on show.
Items on display, from his extravagant coronation in 1661 at Westminster Abbey, will include a silver-gilt dish measuring nearly a metre in diameter.
runs from January 27 next year at the Royal Academy Of Arts.
runs from December 8 2017 at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.