The arts

• In March, major photo agencies issued a rare “kill notice” on a photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales after evidence emerged that it had been tampered with.
• In fact, British monarchs have grappled with issues of representation, accuracy and flattery in portraits since the Middle Ages, as the stories of these five monarchs show.

1. Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509)

• Henry VII had a relatively weak claim to the throne when he defeated Richard III in 1485, but he recognised the value of the visual arts in promoting his reign.
• In 1504, his government ordered a reform of the coinage, issuing silver coins with a new likeness of Henry VII in profile.

2. Mary Queen of Scots (reigned 1542-1567)

• On February 10 1567, Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, died in an explosion in Edinburgh.
• Placards appeared depicting the queen as a bare-breasted mermaid, holding a falconry lure to symbolise her siren-like seduction of Bothwell.

3. Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603)

• Recognising the damage that bad representations could do to a monarch’s reputation, Elizabeth I’s regime made several attempts to control her image.
• The portrait was apparently never finished, and historians have sometimes assumed that Elizabeth rejected it.

4. George III (reigned 1760-1820)

• When the French Revolution began in 1789, many in Britain feared the revolutionary spirit would spread.
• Gillray’s retort, Vices overlook’d in the New Proclamation (1792), took aim at the king’s hypocrisy, representing George III and Queen Charlotte as “avarice” clutching moneybags, and the Prince of Wales, future George IV, as “drunkenness”.

5. Victoria (reigned 1837-1901)

• Queen Victoria commissioned a portrait from the German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter in 1843, as a surprise gift for her husband Prince Albert’s 24th birthday.
• Kept in Albert’s private writing room at Windsor, it depicts Victoria in a low-cut, translucent dress, leaning against a red cushion, her lips slightly parted.