Triple Portrait of Charles I

 

 

Painted by Sir Antony Van Dyck (1599-1641) around 1635-6, this canvas was sent to Florence to enable the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) to carve a bust of King Charles. His marble creation was received with great delight by the royal couple in 1637, although the pro-Royalist diarist John Evelyn noted that Bernini had seen in the portrait “something of funest [sic] and unhappy, which the Countenance of that Excellent Prince foreboded.”The bust itself perished in the fire at Whitehall Palace in 1698; the painting remained in Rome with Bernini’s descendants until 1802, and was bought by George IV in 1822.