His portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as the individual character.

Although this has been an aim of portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century.
There was hardly scope enough in Antwerp for two great painters such as Rubens and Van Dyck, so in 1632 Van Dyck left Flanders and settled permanently in England, as Court painter to Charles I.All his life Charles had been an enthusiastic collector of works of art.

Born with a fine natural taste, he had improved it by study, until Rubens could say of him: 'The Prince of Wales is the best amateur of painting of all the princes in the world.

He has demanded my portrait with such insistence that he has overcome my modesty, although it does not seem to me fitting to send it to a Prince of his importance.' Two of our pictures, the Richard II.

diptych and the Edward VI.