Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-69)

Van Dyck reached London in the spring of 1632 and was knighted that July. One of the first things he did for his new employers was to sit the queen down on her own. Henrietta Maria was 22, French and Catholic, seven years married to Charles I, and the Royal Collection reads this as probably the first single portrait van Dyck made of her in England. It set the pattern. Variations followed, from his own hand and from his assistants, which is why so many versions of this face survive in British houses. The dress is worth looking at, because in these first English portraits he was still recording detail he later simplified. The silvery blue silk has been pinked all over with small wavy cuts to catch the light, carnation ribbons warm the cool colour, and the lace at the cuffs stands out in stiff spikes.