The Wilton Diptych

The Wilton Diptych, c 1395-99, tempera on panel, National Gallery, London

This sumptuous altarpiece is remarkable both for the detail of its iconography and for the self-aggrandisement of King Richard II who surely must have commissioned the work himself. While a few scholars think it may have been a gift or that it may have been made after Richard’s death, most believe it depicts a view of the King that accords with his conceit, so I believe it was most likely made at his behest. It is known that Richard was particularly taken with the idea that he had been anointed king, so that when the diptych places him in the same company as the Virgin Mary, her child the son of God and attendant angels, as well as John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr, he would have considered this only fitting as his kingship was consecrated. Not only did Richard rule by wielding freely the authority of the royal prerogative – a little like issuing Presidential Executive Orders by the vainglorious occupant of the White House today – but this ego-centric painting suggests that he also reigned with divine blessing.

Our views of Richard are probably unduly influenced by Shakespeare’s play. I vividly recall Ben Wishaw’s portrayal of him in The Hollow Crown which nailed that sense of petulant entitlement, the king as spoiled-child-made-man, that spoke to the ruler’s underlying weakness. One of the play’s themes is the necessity of stable governance of the nation and the qualities of character needed in the monarch to maintain this in the face of rival claims to the throne. Like the TV show Succession, it explores comparable personality flaws in its leading characters and is particularly hard-hitting on arrogance and narcissism in those who presume to take on the mantle of leader without the necessary attributes to discharge the role successfully.

However, the upside of Richard’s vanity was that it contributed to the creation of the diptych masterpiece. He was also a patron of the arts more generally and gave his backing not only to painting but spent lavishly on textiles, jewellery and buildings, including the rebuilding of Westminster Hall. One of England’s greatest poets, Geoffrey Chaucer, served him as a courtier and diplomat too, so it could be argued that for literature to flourish as richly as it did in Chaucer’s hands, this was due in no small measure to the tenor of the court culture that Richard fostered.

Incidentally, one of my favourite podcasts The Rest is History has an episode on the murder of Richard II in which the hosts have some fun discussing Richard’s feyness and his reputation for being camp and foppish; they don’t particularly contradict this view and discuss how he was the first English king to use a fork when dining at table and that he was first to use a handkerchief.

And yet, after reading the history, I can’t help feeling that the diptych, along with the gold, the gemstones, the furs, were all procured for image-burnishing purposes, to bolster the confidence of one who was perhaps a sufferer of what we might today term imposter syndrome. He was the son of the dashingly brave and noble Black Prince but remained forever in his shadow to be deposed eventually, by a more able and altogether more macho rival, Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV).

The diptych shows us a Richard not as he was but as he wanted to be seen and was probably made for his own personal use, to support his devotions. As such, it didn’t stint on its use of gold. Not till Gustave Klimt’s Golden Phase would an artist make such emphatic use of the colour, with its connotation of richness, ornamentation and preciousness. It forms the backdrop to both left and right panels, but also features abundantly in coronets, halos, clothing and jewellery. It appears on the antlers of the white hart emblems worn by the angels and most importantly, it is a gold cloth that swaddles the infant Jesus. Gold makes of the painting a visually dazzling piece of art. The tooling of the gold backgrounds spared no expense, but the ultramarine of the Virgin and angels’ robes in the right-hand panel makes use of the lapis lazuli-based pigment that was if anything, even more expensive in the period.

Although Richard is pictured kneeling, there is not much humble abasement involved. His hands are not joined together in prayer but appear to be ready to receive the infant Christ who is shown reaching over to the left-hand panel, his own hands raised as if blessing the King. Richard wears the white hart livery badge, which was his personal insignia, and the angels do likewise as if they had been inducted into his retinue; they look as if they are sporting a logo but one which can only be worn by virtue of the King’s prerogative and which wearers are proud, honoured and privileged to display. In case we were in any doubt about this distinction, the same symbol bestrews the cloth of gold cloak that Richard wears. He’s like a rich teenager sporting far too much Versace.

The pennant that flies above Mary and the angels bears the Cross of St George, the flag of the English people. It is significant that this is shown within Mary’s domain and suggests that the country is special, holy even, residing as it does under her protection. This is the medieval idea of The Dowry of the Virgin, and an early example of the notion of national exceptionalism.

Of the three figures on the left, I am particularly drawn to Saint Edmund who carries one of the arrows by which he was killed in 869, fighting against Viking invaders, which seems a pretty cruel reminder for him in his painted afterlife, as if he were a character from the TV show Ghosts, condemned to forever manifest the means of his demise. His robe is also lavishly decorated, this time with gold peacocks over a deep blue ground but is surely outshone by his spectacularly vivid red footwear. Not only does this draw the eye down to the stony ground he stands on, which contrasts with the decorative femininity of the flower meadow ground of the right-side panel but also points up John the Baptist’s barefoot hair shirt contrition, as he cradles the Lamb of God in readiness for the expiation of sin. Meanwhile, Edward the Confessor holds a ring between thumb and forefinger, a reminder of the gift he gave to a beggar who then turned out to be John the Evangelist and who in the painting, reinforces the idea of Richard occupying the realm of the miraculous.

In the third act of Shakespeare’s play, Richard recognises his own hubris as he speaks these lines:

…for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable, and humor’d thus

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

The diptych betrays that ‘self and vain conceit’ and a Richard ‘grinning at his pomp’; it is a ravishing artwork, made by an artist whose name is unrecorded but who unknowingly created a study that may have been induced by vanity but which would become vanitas art in its reminder that mortality, vulnerability and futility are the flipsides to immodesty, presumption and braggadocio.