Nicolas Lanier

Nicholas Lanier was Master of the King's Music to Charles I of England, and also one of the agents who bought Italian paintings for him, most famously the Gonzaga collection from Mantua in the late 1620s. An old story says that when the king saw this portrait he decided he wanted van Dyck in London. The museum dates the canvas to around 1632, the year van Dyck did arrive, while others have placed it in 1628, when Lanier passed through Antwerp. Lanier stands before ruins and a wide landscape in the manner of north Italian Renaissance portraits, a nod to Titian, the favourite painter of both the king and van Dyck. The picture hung in the royal collection until Charles was executed. On 2 November 1649, as the king's confiscated goods were being disposed of, Lanier acquired his own portrait.