(Antwerp 1599–1641 London)
Portrait of King Charles I and Queen Maria Henrietta,
oil on canvas, 33.5 x 45 cm, framed

Provenance:
Georges (1907–1990) and Philippe (born 1910) de Mestral de Saint-Saphorin, Switzerland

The present intimate and touching double portrait of Charles I of England and his French Queen Henrietta-Maria is a studio-repetition in cabinet format of the original by the King’s court artist, Anthony van Dyck (dated 1632, oil on canvas, 113.5 x 163 cm) now in the Archiepiscopal Castle in Kroměříž, Czech Republic. Van Dyck was commissioned to paint the work to fit above an ornate fireplace in ‘the drawing roome otherwise Called the greate Cabbonett’ in Somerset House, granted to the Queen as part of her jointure. The laurel handed by Charles to Henrietta Maria symbolizes the martial fame of her father, the French King Henri IV, while the olive branch held by the Queen may allude to the diplomatic prowess of Charles’s peace-loving father James I.

An immediately popular composition, several copies were commissioned from the workshop, including one recorded in the inventory of Thomas Howard, 10th Earl of Arundel, and indeed from van Dyck’s competitors. The present canvas was traditionally thought to be by Gonzales Coques, ‘The little van Dyck’, to whom another version is attributed in the Victoria and Albert Museum London (inv. no. 1342–1869). However, the finely painted execution of the faces, the delicate brushwork, the carefully coiffed hair of the queen and the orange glow on her cheeks speak against an attribution to Coques, who has a generally broader, less refined style, and instead point to an accomplished hand within van Dyck’s busy studio at Blackfriars in London.