Royal and State Portraits

Royal and State Portraits gathers formal painted portraits commissioned to project the authority, legitimacy and dynastic standing of a reigning monarch or head of state, a genre that flourished across European courts from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. As portrait painting matured through the Baroque and Rococo periods, images of opulently attired rulers became a deliberate means of affirming power in societies increasingly organized around secular courts, showing sitters enthroned, mounted on horseback, or surrounded by regalia and symbols of conquest and continuity. This group anchors five such works held in this atlas: painted state portraits of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, Napoleon and Charles V, each created to present the sitter's rule to subjects, allies and rivals rather than to record a private likeness, and each tied to religious claims of monarchical authority the atlas otherwise documents.