Panel Painting Edward IV

Object number

LDSAL297

Artist/Designer/Maker

- Artist

Production date

16th century

Material

oak
oil paint

Technique

Oil on panel

Dimensions

Height: 500mm
Width: 370mm

Location

Burlington House - (on display)

References

Reference (free text)

A copy of the report can be found in the Collections Manager's office, third floor, room 3, in the top drawer of the filing cabinet ('Paintings - Dendro Reports').

Reference (controlled)

Battles and Dynasties (2017). [Exhibition]. The Collection, Lincoln. 28 May - 4 September 2017.

Oil on oak panel portrait of Edward IV

This is the later of the two portrait of Edward IV (r. 1461-70, 1471-83) that the Society owns (see also Edward IV (arched) IV, LDSAL320. The portrait is painted on a rectangular panel, cut from a single vertical oak board taken from a tree felled after 1506, probably in the eastern Baltic region of Europe. On the reverse, all four edges are bevelled and the surface bears traces of tooling from the production process. This area also retains a fabrication mark running out of the top and left edge, very rarely found on panel paintings. The presence of this carpenter's mark and the traces of tooling suggest that the picture was intended to form part of the panelling in a decorative scheme composed of royal portraits, as in the lost early sixteenth-century examples at the castles at Kirkoswald and Naworth in Cumbria.

Here, Edward, facing to his left, slips a gilded ring on to the index finger of his right hand. His gown is painted in brown with yellow ochre, simulating brocaded cloth of gold, enriched with gilded silk loops rendered by the artist as dots of yellow pigment, using powdered gold suspended in a medium. The linear pattern of the brocade is copper resinate, which has turned brown, and malachite, which has now also darkened. Five ropes of pearls are suspended across his chest, from each of which hangs a jewelled and gilded oval pendant.