Portrait of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria

Van Dyck reached the English court in 1632, and almost at once Charles I made him his principal painter. This double portrait dates from that first year, and it was meant to replace an earlier, stiffer version by the Dutch painter Daniel Mytens, who had held the top job before him. Van Dyck loosened everything — the glances between the king and queen, the warmth of the colour, the easy intimacy of a picture made not for a throne room but for the queen's private apartments. Henrietta Maria offers Charles a laurel wreath. The canvas later travelled to central Europe with a prince-bishop's collection, and it hangs now in the archbishop's palace at Kroměříž, in the modern Czech Republic.