Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, as St Catherine

Henrietta Maria was a French Catholic princess married to Charles I of England, and her faith was a running grievance in a Protestant kingdom edging toward civil war. Around 1639 van Dyck, the king's court painter, showed her as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the early Christian martyr, with the spiked wheel of her legend beside her. Dressing a living queen as a Catholic saint was no neutral choice in London in those years, a few seasons before Parliament and crown came to blows. Van Dyck had spent the decade making the Stuart court look effortlessly grand, and he would be dead by 1641. The face was long hidden under later overpaint, and only cleaning brought the queen back out.