Nicholas Lanier

Lanier (1588–1666), chief court musician and one of the art agents of King Charles I of England, commissioned van Dyck for this portrait. As the picture was meant for the art-lover king’s collections, van Dyck employed all his brilliant gifts in the artistic workmanship; the setting of the knee-piece in front of ruins with a view over a romantic landscape, reminiscent of the Upper Italian Renaissance portraits, is a homage to the king’s and to van Dyck’s favourite painter. Yet van Dyck also captured Lanier’s elegant, over-refined nature, which reflects the way courtly society in the Stuart era perceived itself.