Carlos I (1600-1649)

Anthony van Dyck arrived in London in 1632 and became Charles I's court painter, and over the next few years he painted the king something like 40 times, shaping the very image by which we still picture him. Here Charles stands in his robes of state, the crown and orb set on a table beside him, every inch the sacred and untouchable monarch. It was a carefully built picture of authority, and within a few years that authority collapsed. Charles clashed with Parliament, and by 1642 the country was at war with itself. In 1649 the king painted here so grandly was tried by his own subjects and beheaded outside his palace at Whitehall.