King Richard III
Unknown English artist · Late sixteenth century
Richard the Third stands in a dark red gown with a black cap and a gold collar, and his fingers are fidgeting with a ring on his little finger. His mouth is set, his eyes narrow, and the whole figure has a coiled, nervous energy. This is the image of the last Plantagenet king that Shakespeare's audiences would have recognised, painted a century after his death, and it has shaped the way people imagine him ever since.
No portrait of Richard made during his lifetime survives. This panel belongs to a group of copies derived from a lost original, all produced in the late sixteenth century when great houses were assembling sets of royal portraits. Look at the shoulders: the right one sits slightly higher than the left. Examination of the paint has shown that the raised shoulder and the narrowed eyes were exaggerated by the painter, matching the Tudor story of a crooked and scheming usurper. The gesture of pulling the ring on and off was a stock sign of unease.
The gallery acquired the panel in eighteen sixty two. When Richard's skeleton was found beneath a car park in Leicester in twenty twelve, the spine showed a real curvature from scoliosis, which would have made one shoulder higher than the other, so the portrait turned out to be partly true. It is worth standing here for a minute and asking how much of what you see is the man and how much is the legend painted over him.
Did You Know? Technical study of the panel showed that the artist deliberately raised the king's right shoulder and narrowed his eyes to fit the Tudor image of a villain.
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