Carlos I na Caça

Van Dyck painted this around 1635, when Charles the First had been ruling England without calling a parliament for years and believed a king answered to no one. You would never guess a crisis was coming from the picture. Charles stands at ease in a garden, one hand on a cane, a groom and a horse waiting in the shade behind him, dressed not in armour or robes but like a gentleman out for a stroll. The Louvre calls it a compromise between casual nonchalance and royal certainty, and that is exactly the effect, a man so sure of his place he does not need to announce it. He paid van Dyck 100 pounds for it. Within 14 years the country he ruled so confidently here had gone to civil war and put him on trial, and in 1649 he was beheaded in front of his own palace.