Les Cinq Aînés des enfants de Charles Ier

Van Dyck painted these five children of Charles I in 1637, when the English court still felt secure and the king was ruling without a Parliament. Court painters of the day usually dressed royal children as small, stiff adults. Van Dyck let them be children instead. The future Charles II, about seven, rests one hand on the head of a huge mastiff, the baby Anne sits at the front, and a spaniel begs at the right. Their satins and lace still say exactly whose children these are. Within a few years the world in this picture came apart. Civil war broke out in 1642, Charles I was executed in 1649, and Anne, the infant here, died at three, before any of it happened.