Self-portrait with a Sunflower, van Dyck

This exhibition on Charles I's art collection at the Royal Academy is simply breathtaking. What a coup to bring it all together. (The jostling crowd in the first couple of galleries was breathtaking, too, but it does thin out as you go round.)

If you go, do read the labels which tell you where each work in which palace - and its fate in the Commonwealth Sale of the royal collection in 1649.

Charles I, 1635-6, van Dyck

There's no denying that Charles was fortunate in his court painter. Here was a weedy, 5ft3in stammerer with rickets ... and van Dyck turned him into a King. (At school we used to giggle because the history teacher had such a pash on him.)

Charles V with a Dog, Titian, 1533

I didn't come away with any sense that the King really had an eye for art; he just owned lots of it! He inherited works of the northern Renaissance ... I envied his Holbeins far more than any Venetian works. And he bought a massive job lot, sight unseen, from the Gonzagas. This Titian was a gift.

Robert Cheseman, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533

This was one of my favourites. The disdain in his eyes ...

Erasmus, Quinten Massys, 1517

But Erasmus reminds me of Mark Rylance.

John More, Hans Holbein the Younger

I've always loved Holbein's portraits of Thomas More's family; they're so alive.

Derich Born, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533

And doesn't young Derich Born, the 23-year-old steel merchant look immensely full of himself? The inscription on the ledge reads: If you added a voice, this would be Derich his very self. You would be in doubt whether the painter or his father made him. 

Charles I and Henrietta Maria Holding a Laurel Wreath, van Dyck, 1632

Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson, van Dyck

And here we are back with the King and Queen. They are all exquisite. 
Now ... am I going to follow-up with Charles II?