The three oldest children of Charles I Stuart (1600-1649) and Henrietta Maria de Bourbon (1609-1669), Charles (1630-1685), Mary (1631-1666) and James (1633-1685)

These are the three eldest children of Charles I of England: the future Charles II in the middle, his sister Mary, and the baby James, who would also one day be king. Van Dyck painted them in 1635, but the picture was never meant to stay in England. Their mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, commissioned it as a gift for her sister Christine, married to the Duke of Savoy in Turin, and it was sent across Europe as a keepsake between two courts. That is why an English royal group portrait has hung for centuries in Italy. Van Dyck lets the children stand with the ease of grown-ups, a spaniel at their feet, and within 15 years the civil war would cost their father his head.