Controversial Royal Portraits

02 Oct 2023

Q.
What have been some of the most controversial royal portraits over the years?

A.
This whole business of painting portraits – let alone royal portraits – is not for the faint-hearted. What if your all-powerful subject hates what you create? What if the royal trusts you, likes the portrait, then it’s released to a world that roundly mocks the result?

Some royals encourage their portraitists to take risks and stand by them at the reveal. The Holy Emperor Rudolph II, for example, served as a patron to artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo and was a fan of his humour. He, and later Hapsburgs, encouraged Arcimboldo’s fruit and vegetable royal portraits.

Here, we see Arcimoldo’s 1590 portrait of Holy Emperor Rudolph II as Vertumnus, god of seasons and plant growth in Roman mythology.

395 years later, Andy Warhol released Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth II, one in a series of cheeky royals portraits that were in no way commissioned.

“I want to be as famous as the Queen of England,” Warhol had once said.

Warhol’s screenprints of Queen Elizabeth II were based on one of her Silver Jubilee photographic portraits from 1977. Would Warhol be surprised to learn that, in 2012, the Queen purchased all four Warhol portraits to be displayed in Windsor Castle?

Also featured in Warhol’s series were Queens Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, Beatrix of the Netherlands and Magrethe II of Denmark.

Here are some other high profile royal portraits that have attracted high scrutiny, fierce fans, and equally fierce detractors. What’s your take on them?