The Royal Collection Trust, founded in 1993, claims to hold art in trust for we the people. But if you want to know who really possesses it, look in a book that reproduces any of its hundreds of Leonardo da Vinci drawings – you will find it says: “copyright Her Majesty Elizabeth II.”
Now that will change to Charles III. Whoever the current monarch, however the royal collection redefines itself, it remains the inherited collection of British rulers, going back to the Tudors and Stuarts. The Abraham tapestries, likely to have been commissioned by Henry VIII, still hang in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace where they could be seen in the 16th century; Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, created for Charles I a few years before he was beheaded, is currently at Hampton Court in its Cumberland Gallery.
