Queen Henrietta Maria

In 1636 the queen of England sat for a portrait that was going to Rome. Henrietta Maria was French and Catholic and married to Charles I in a Protestant kingdom, and the painting was a gift for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope's nephew and Cardinal Protector of England and Scotland, who regarded her as his best chance of drawing England back to the Catholic church. Van Dyck was the king's painter in London by then, and pictures sent abroad like this one were part of how his name travelled through Europe.

The Metropolitan notes that the queen is pregnant here, her hands folded over her abdomen. The crown set on the table beside her does the work of identifying her, since she wears nothing else of rank, only pearls over gold satin and a wide fall of lace at the shoulders. By 1639 the canvas was recorded in Barberini's collection in Rome. It reached New York in 2019, in the bequest of Jayne Wrightsman.