Stop and Look: Unknown Artist Portrait of Richard II

We tend to think of the history of British painting getting started under the stimulus of the German Hans Holbein who spent several years in England working for Henry VIII in the first half of the sixteenth century. Holbein certainly brought important new ideas to the whole subject with his technical mastery and the psychological subtlety of his refined draughtsmanship. But the art of painting had been flourishing in this country for at least a century before that.

One of the most famous (and beautiful) pictures in the National Gallery is the Wilton Diptych, an anonymous small altarpiece, by either an English or a French artist, still in fine condition, and dating from about the same time as this large portrait of Richard II, which confronts the visitor to Westminster Abbey where it seems to have spent the whole of its life. It’s not usually presented as the starting point of the splendid tradition of English portrait painting, but that’s what it is: a royal likeness that we can be reasonably confident is in fact a likeness, not just a hieratic, generalised symbol of kingship.

Although it dates from late in the reign of Richard II (1377-99) it shows the king in his coronation regalia, reminding its audience of the sustained majesty that he had assumed with these robes along with the crown he wears here. Richard was perhaps the first English monarch to appreciate the fine arts, and what they could do for him by way of propaganda.

The Wilton Diptych shows Richard II’s sensitivity in these respects, so we should have faith in the quality of this large-scale image both as a representation of the king and as a specimen of the skill of the craftsman he trusted to present his likeness to the world, though we don’t know his name. He has been thought to be the French sculptor-painter André Beauneveu (1335-1400), but this is merely a guess based on his dates and areas of working.

What comes across clearly is the ambition that motivated the portrait. The scale of the piece is remarkable: this is the largest portrait produced north of the Alps in the course of the Middle Ages, a fact that may bear out Richard’s reputation as arrogant and overbearing, and clearly indicates his determination to impress, to be recognised and honoured. It provides a precedent for Holbein’s (no longer extant) four-square likeness of Henry VIII and may have acted as a kind of template for that famous work: it was visible in Westminster Abbey and would have been an obvious point of reference for an artist coming from abroad to take up so prestigious a commission. 

It’s not in the best condition, having been heavily restored more than once in its six-hundred-year history. The saddest loss, perhaps, is the tooled enrichment of the crown and sceptre, and the gilt background which spread a diapered pattern across the ornate background that sets off the figure. In the nineteenth century, these losses were partly compensated for by an ornate frame added by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1866. This helps us to appreciate the impressive scale on which the portrait was conceived, and realise the effect it would have had on its first audiences: an authoritative image of undeniable power, of a king enthroned as of right in a magnificent seat. 

Here is the first visual assertion of the Divine Right of Kings, emphasised by the picture’s position in the great Abbey of St Peter in Westminster, close (as it was then) to the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, one of the saints who presents the king to the Virgin and Child in the Wilton Diptych. At the same time, we are surprised by the unexpected sense of intimacy with which Richard’s likeness is recorded. The king comes across as rather delicate, albeit forceful, a thinker rather than a doer, very much as Shakespeare characterises him.

In fact it’s highly likely that, just as this portrait was a source of inspiration for Holbein, it was one of the pieces of documentation that the playwright used in building up his own portrait – a rather thrilling thought.

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