Crowning glories
Charles II: Art and Power
Charles II: Art and Power The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
If you think that we are living through tumultuous times, consider the upheavals that beset England during the 17th century. A series of savage civil wars. A king executed before a crowd at Whitehall. A decade-long republican experiment. And then, in 1660, the restoration of the monarchy, as Charles II, after 14 years in exile, entered London in triumph. This moment marks the start of Charles II: Art and Power, a sumptuous new exhibition of more than 220 works. The show’s timing is somewhat strange. Next month, an exhibition reuniting much of the stunning art collection amassed by Charles I, our greatest ruler-connoisseur, will open at the Royal Academy. Visiting The Queen’s Gallery, then, is like sitting through the sequel before watching the first instalment of the franchise.
That said, Charles II: Art and Power is, by itself, perfectly impressive and enjoyable. It is conventional to describe grand royal portraits as “dazzling” – and this exhibition, chock-full of gorgeous paintings by the likes of Paolo Veronese and Titian, as well as luxurious objets d’art, is often literally so. Early on, for instance, a dramatic, glittering display case shows off Charles’s gold and silver-gilt plate. You’d be advised to bring sunglasses.
This exhibition’s central thesis is that Charles II used art, in the widest sense, to proclaim his legitimacy and authority, during a fraught period of extreme political volatility.
It is significant, in this light, that a monarch who made important architectural alterations at Windsor Castle barely touched the rambling Tudor pile at Whitehall – presumably because he wished to signal continuity between his reign and an earlier dynasty. Understanding this also helps illuminate John Michael Wright’s well-known, opulent oil painting of Charles II enthroned while holding an orb and sceptre.
The pose – frontal, symmetrical, stiff – may be a self-consciously archaic throwback to depictions of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Certainly, it offers a striking contrast to the elegant, informal vision of kingship that Van Dyck fashioned for Charles II’S father. At the same time, beneath all the heavy regalia, including the Crown of State, a full-bottomed wig, and cascading red Parliament robes, the king’s slender legs, tapering towards high-heeled boots bejewelled in the fashionable “Persian” style, appear to caper irrepressibly – the pictorial equivalent of an irreverent twinkle in the eye, and a hint, perhaps, of the stock view of the Restoration as a time of licence and bed-hopping intrigue. At the same time, there are surprises: notably John Riley’s Bridget Holmes (1686), which commemorates James II’S then-96year-old (she lived to 100) and much-loved “Necessary Woman”, who had also served Charles I and Charles II. This tongue-in-cheek portrait in the “grand style” presents Holmes, a plainly dressed servant, in front of a splendid damask curtain, brandishing a broom as a great general would a weapon.
It’s worth keeping in mind Charles I’s reputation as a collector, since his achievements provide fascinating context for the final room of The Queen’s Gallery exhibition, mostly devoted to pictures that Charles II himself amassed. One of the conundrums of the Royal Collection is why he acquired Pieter Breugel the Elder’s Massacre of the
Innocents (c1565-67), from an art dealer in Breda. The Netherlandish painting is a masterpiece, but it remains a mystery why such a brutal Biblical subject, with soldiers murdering babies, appealed to the “Merrie Monarch”.
By 1666, this was hanging in the King’s Privy Gallery, alongside a similar painting of the same subject by Bruegel’s son, which had belonged to Charles I. Maybe Charles II was drawn to a composition that reminded him of a picture he had enjoyed as a child. Or maybe, by acquiring the “prime”
Massacre of the Innocents, and then displaying it next to an inferior version, he wished, simply, to trump his dad.
Let us allow him this little Oedipal triumph, since next month, upon the opening of the Royal Academy’s blockbuster, I guarantee that all eyes will revert to the “martyr-king”: his father, Charles I.
Until May 13. Details: 030 3123 7301