Richard II Presented to the Virgin and Child by His Patron Saint John the Baptist and Saints Edward and Edmund, c.1395-99

Against the light-coloured wall, the diptych stands as a solid golden surface that immediately organises the space around it. From a few metres away, the gold dominates; only as one draws nearer do the two panels dissolve into figures - on the left, the kneeling kings; on the right, the blue of the host of angels. Measuring 66 x 48 cm, the piece is a size somewhere between a devotional image and a mural: large enough to make an impact from a distance, small enough to appreciate up close. Lena, a gold frame just 18 mm wide, frames the canvas with a slender profile - and I think that works well here, as the work already incorporates its own ornate inner framing. This creates two distinct appearances on the wall: on the outside, the smooth gold of the moulding; on the inside, the cracked gilding of the historic panels. The print on the satin-finished Leonardo canvas carries the craquelure and imperfections of these panels right into the corners; it is indeed at these cracks that the eye lingers longest.

The Wilton Diptych was created between 1395 and 1399 as a portable devotional image for King Richard II of England; today, the original hangs in the National Gallery in London. On the left-hand panel, the young king is kneeling, with his patron saints standing behind him: John the Baptist with the Lamb, and the canonised kings Edward and Edmund. On the right-hand panel, the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus receives homage, surrounded by eleven angels in brilliant ultramarine blue, all bearing Richard’s personal emblem - the white stag. Above the scene flies the banner bearing the Cross of St George. The painting is thus more than a work of piety: it stages the divine legitimisation of rule, a political programme in the form of a folding altarpiece. What fascinates me is that something which today appears so solemn and almost monumental was originally a private painting that the king could take with him on his travels. Here, Richard II is not kneeling as a ruler before his subjects, but as a human being before Heaven - and is allowing himself to be observed whilst doing so. Personal devotion and representation merge into one in this work.