[2] The colours of the costumes and pattern of the lace collars are different in each portrait, though the blue riband of the Order of the Garter is present in all three.

[2] The painting was probably begun in the latter part of 1635 and was sent to Rome in 1636 to be used as a reference work for the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create a marble bust of Charles I.

Queen Henrietta Maria commissioned Bernini to make a companion bust of her, but the English Civil War intervened and it was never made.

The bust of Charles was sold at the end of the English Civil War but recovered for the Royal Collection on the Restoration, only to be destroyed by a fire in Whitehall Palace in January 1698.

Many copies of the work were made, possibly by supporters of the royal House of Stuart, including one created around 1750 and now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.