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Charles I, King of Great Britain

1600 - 1649

Charles I was born in 1600, crowned King of England in 1625, and beheaded outside the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall in 1649. He was an important patron of the arts and a notable collector.

Van Dyck, whose magnificent 'Equestrian Portrait of Charles I' is in the Collection, was his court painter. Works from the King's collection now in the National Gallery include Rubens's 'Peace and War' and Correggio's 'School of Love'.

Equestrian Portrait of Charles I
Anthony van Dyck
about 1638–9
Painting
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Minerva protects Pax from Mars ('Peace and War')
Peter Paul Rubens
1629-30
Painting
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Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')
Correggio
about 1525
Painting
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This person is the subject of ongoing research. We have started by researching their relationship to the enslavement of people.

Biographical notes

English monarch and art collector.

Slavery connections

There are multiple relevant connections to slavery. For instance, in 1632 King Charles I granted a licence to a syndicate of traders that gave them royal approval to transport enslaved Africans from Guinea. (‘Portraits, People & Abolition: King Charles I’, National Portrait Gallery [online], n.d., <https://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/history/abolition-of-slavery/king-charles-i> accessed 23 June 2021.)

Abolition connections

No known connections with abolition.

National Gallery painting connections

Former owner: King Charles I once owned NG3, NG10, NG46, NG624, NG658, NG946, NG1086, NG1938, and NG1172.

Bibliography

History of Parliament Trust (ed.), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History, London 1964-, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/
Checked and not found — Item on publisher's website

M. A. Kishlansky and J. Morrill, 'Charles I', in C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5143
Checked and found — Item on publisher's website

S. Madocks, 'Stuart, House of family [Stewart] (6) Charles I, King of England and Scotland', in J. Turner et al. (eds), Grove Art Online, Oxford 1998-, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T081917
Checked and found — Item on publisher's website

UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership, London 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Checked and not found — Item on publisher's website

Paintings previously owned by Charles I, King of Great Britain

(Showing 6 of 11 works)
A Man holding a Glove
A Man holding a Glove
Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)
A bearded man gazes out intently from this painting. We don't know who the sitter is, but the cut of his beard and the fashion of his hat and clothes suggest a date towards 1530. The fact that both his doublet and gown are lined with fur probably indicates that the portrait was painted during the...
Not on display
Christ appearing to the Virgin
Christ appearing to the Virgin
Follower of Rogier van der Weyden
The resurrected Christ has appeared to the Virgin Mary in a room in a fifteenth-century Netherlandish house. The appearance of Christ to the Virgin is not mentioned in the Gospels, but it was widely believed that immediately after the Resurrection he revealed himself first to his mother.In the ni...
Not on display
Equestrian Portrait of Charles I
Equestrian Portrait of Charles I
Anthony van Dyck
A man sits on a muscular horse, towering above a servant who passes him a helmet to complete his suit of armour. A Latin inscription on the tablet hanging from a tree identifies him as ‘King of Great Britain’ – this is Charles I, surveying his kingdom. Anthony van Dyck painted several portraits o...
Room 31
Landscape with a Hunting Party
Landscape with a Hunting Party
Giovanni Battista Viola
This painting is typical of Giovanni Battista Viola, who specialised in landscapes with hunting and fishing scenes. Here, in a woodland clearing, a hunter dressed in yellow lets his dogs drink from a stream, while another sounds a horn to gather the hunting party. Smartly dressed figures on horse...
Not on display
Minerva protects Pax from Mars ('Peace and War')
Minerva protects Pax from Mars ('Peace and War')
Peter Paul Rubens
This picture was made for King Charles I of England and given to him by Rubens, who was acting as an envoy of Philip IV of Spain, in 1630. The two countries had been at war for five years and both sides were keen for a peace deal. The painting is an allegory, the figures representing different vi...
Not on display
The Death of the Virgin
The Death of the Virgin
After Hugo van der Goes
This small painting shows Christ coming down from heaven to receive the soul of his mother, who lies close to death. He floats above her accompanied by angels, two of whom hold a white cloth in which to carry the Virgin’s soul to heaven.The grieving apostles are administering the last rites to th...
Not on display
The Infancy of Jupiter
The Infancy of Jupiter
Workshop of Giulio Romano
In Greek and Roman mythology, the god Saturn was warned that one of his offspring would overthrow him, so he ate his children at birth. To protect their son, his wife Ops took the infant Jupiter to the island of Crete to be raised by the Corybantes, who used the rhythm of their dancing and the cl...
Not on display
The Painter's Father
The Painter's Father
After Albrecht Dürer
This portrait of Dürer’s father, who is identifiable by the inscription, was given as a gift to King Charles I of England in 1636. When Charles was executed in 1649, it was sold. It eventually entered the National Gallery’s collection in the early twentieth century.There are four versions of the...
Not on display
The Toilet of Venus
The Toilet of Venus
Guido Reni and Studio
In this monumental painting, Venus, the goddess of love, is attended by the Three Graces, who carefully fasten her sandals and jewellery. Her son Cupid stands before his bow and arrow in the foreground, delicately holding a pearl earring between forefinger and thumb, while a putto reaches through...
Room 32
The Wilton Diptych
The Wilton Diptych
English or French (?)
This small, portable diptych is one of a handful of English panel paintings to have survived from the Middle Ages. Made for Richard II, King of England from 1377 to 1399, in the last five years of his life, it combines religious and secular imagery to embody his personal conception of kingship.O...
Not on display
Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')
Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')
Correggio
A young family enjoys a tender moment in a leafy glade. Venus, goddess of love, holds her son Cupid’s bow as his father Mercury, god of communication and wit, teaches him to read. Mercury looks down fondly at his child but Venus gazes dreamily towards us and smiles. Unusually, Venus is shown with...
Not on display
You've viewed 6 of 11 paintings