The Shakespeare Post

King Charles I by William Marshall, 1649 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Within a generation of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, the English Civil War transformed the cultural and political landscape of the British Isles. Public theatrical performances were outlawed and, in 1644, the Globe Theatre was demolished by the Puritans. Five years later, the revolution culminated in the trial and execution of King Charles I.

This weekend, the National Portrait Gallery in London opens a new display, Charles I: King and Martyr, which explores how people struggled to understand and commemorate the king’s death. The exhibition features twenty-one prints ranging from contemporary illustrations of the king’s trial and execution to royalist propaganda portraying Charles as a martyr through nineteenth century historical scenes produced for the consumer market. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to see the prints, the majority of which have never before been on display.

Although there are many painted portraits of Charles I, Rab MacGibbon, curator for the exhibition, chose to use prints since they best illustrate how the popular image of the king was created and recreated in the centuries following his death. MacGibbon said, “The execution of King Charles I is one of the most enduringly controversial and devise episodes in British History. This display provides an opportunity to look again at the posthumous image of the king and consider the fascinating variety of ways in which the ‘king’s head’ was represented in prints.”

Along with the prints, a touch-screen display in the gallery allows visitors to see an unusual miniature oil painting portrait of Charles (NPG 6357) that uses 17 transparent mica overlays to tell the story of the king’s trial and execution. The original miniature is too fragile to be moved for the exhibit but is on display is a nearby gallery.

Two other exhibitions relating to early modern England are also on display at The National Portrait Gallery. Painting the Boy King: New Research on Portraits of Edward VI uses three portraits of Henry VIII’s male heir to show how artists responded to the challenge of making a nine-year-old boy look like a king. Shakespeare and His Circle brings together the gallery’s collection of literary portraits from the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, including recently acquired paintings of John Donne and John Fletcher.

Charles I: King and Martyr is on display 19 July - 14 December 2008 in Room 16 at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The exhibition is free to the public.

Painting the Boy King: New Research on Portraits of Edward VI is on display until 7 December 2008 while Shakespeare and His Circle is on display through January 2009.