Some guys have all the luck and some girls have to do with…well…less. That’s what Henry VIII’s sister Mary may have been thinking when she received a painting in 1514 of her betrothed Charles V. A letter of 30 June 1514 mentions a portrait of Charles that had been sent to Mary ‘where he is very badly depicted’ (où il est tres mal contrefait), which may relate to the anonymous painting first recorded in the collection of Henry VIII and now part of the British Royal Collection. Charles V was identifiable by his dramatically undershot lower jaw, known as the ‘Habsburg lip’. This unsightly quality, rendered in almost cartoon-like detail in this portrait, serves only to make the physical impression of this ruler more powerful - the combination of the strong jaw and steady gaze of the Emperor give him a commanding image. This remarkable panel, together with 50 other Flemish paintings from the Royal Collection, can be seen at the Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts during the summer months. They have come off the walls of Hampton Court, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle to leave Britain for the first time since they were acquired by the Crown.

Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting, the first exhibition ever mounted of Flemish paintings in the Royal Collection, brings together works from the 15th to 17th centuries, including masterpieces by Hans Memling, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan Brueghel, Van Dyck and Rubens. By the 1550s the Netherlands enjoyed a level of wealth that remained unmatched in the West for centuries. The paintings in the exhibition were produced during a period of extraordinary turbulence and its immediate aftermath (the Eighty Years War with Spain, from 1568 to 1648, all but destroyed the region’s infrastructure and creative industries), when peace was finally restored to the region.

Incidentally, the marriage beteen Mary and Charles V never happened due to changes in the political alliances of the European powers. Mary, who was once described by a Venetian Ambassador as ‘a Paradise- tall, slender, grey-eyed, possessing an extreme pallor’, became the wife of the French King Louis XII at Abbeville in 1514 and on 10 March 1526, Charles V married his first cousin Isabella of Portugal. When Louis died, Mary still got herself a Charles, but this time the lucky guy was Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. No Habsburg lip on him, no commanding image, no marriage de raison, but just a girl marrying the man she’d been in love with for years.

Picture: Portrait of Charles V, Flemish School, 16th century ( The Royal Collection © 2008,
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN 403439)

Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
(16 May 2008 - 21 September 2008), The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace (17 October 2008 - 26 April 2009)