Wilton Diptych
The background and many details are inlaid with gold leaf and in places the panel has been tooled beneath the gilding to enhance the decorative quality.
In the panel with the Virgin and Christ Child, the garments are universally blue, the pigment coming from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli.
Some colours have faded; the roses in the angels' hair would originally have been a much deeper pink, and the green grass of the outer hart panel is now much darker than when painted.
The human figures are on bare rocky ground, with a forest behind, and a gold leaf "sky" decorated with a pattern made by a metal punch.
In the left inner panel the kneeling King Richard II is presented by Saints John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr, each holding their attribute.
In the right-hand panel the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her arms is surrounded by eleven angels, against a golden background and field of delicately coloured flowers.
[3] Richard's outer robe is of cloth of gold and red vermilion, the fabric decorated with his personal device of the white harts and sprigs of rosemary, the emblem of his wife Anne of Bohemia, who died in 1394.
Around his neck is a gold collar with broomscods, seed-pods of Cytisus scoparius, the common broom, which is the planta genista that gave Richard's Plantagenet dynasty its name.
[5] A hart badge of Richard's inventoried in the possession of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1435 was set with 22 pearls, two spinels, two sapphires, a ruby and a huge diamond.
[7] The identity of the kneeling king is certain because he and the angels surrounding the Virgin are wearing badges with Richard's livery, the White Hart, which also appears in the brocade of the left panel and the outside of the diptych.
Though they were surely a symptom rather than a cause of both local baronial bullying and the disputes between the king and his uncles and other lords, Parliament repeatedly tried to curb the use of livery badges.
[12] In the end it took a determined campaign by Henry VII to largely stamp out the use of livery badges by others than the king, and reduce them to things normally worn only by household servants.
[22] Alternatively the painting might represent Richard's reception into heaven after his death in 1400, though given the circumstances of his deposition, who would have commissioned such a work in the next reign is unclear.
It also importantly symbolises (in the form of the Pennant), Richard II giving his kingdom into the hands of the Holy Virgin, thereby continuing a long tradition by which England was known as "Our Lady's Dowry" and was thought to be specially under her protection.
[9] The artist, sometimes referred to as the "Wilton Master", has never been identified, or associated with other panel paintings, and the closest resemblances to his style come in some illuminated manuscripts from the 1410s.
The date of the painting, at a time when the International Gothic style was at its most similar in several courts in Europe, makes identifying the nationality of its painter more difficult.
It was documented in 1649 in an inventory of the art collection of King Charles I who had been given it by Sir James Palmer,[27] a Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber.
