Triple Portrait of Charles I (after Anthony van Dick)

This work is listed as a copy after Anthony van Dyck's famous Triple Portrait of Charles I, the original painted in 1635–1636 and now in the Royal Collection. Van Dyck's original was sent to Rome to enable Gian Lorenzo Bernini to carve a portrait bust of the English king without requiring Charles to travel. Maratta's copy, dated 1800 in the database (almost certainly a cataloguing error given that Maratta died in 1713), was likely made during the artist's lifetime as part of the flourishing Roman market for high-quality copies after famous northern European works. Skilled Baroque painters regularly produced copies of admired works as study exercises and commercial products. A copy of the Van Dyck triple portrait by Maratta would have carried significant prestige given both the original's fame and Maratta's standing as Rome's leading painter. The work is now at Weston Park in Shropshire, an English country house whose collection reflects the sophisticated collecting of its aristocratic owners.

Copying Van Dyck's luminous, silky paint surface — famous for its atmospheric blending and aristocratic refinement — required a painter of genuine skill to avoid producing a mechanical reproduction. Maratta, trained in Italian classical tradition, would have brought a slightly different sensibility to the task: his modeling is more architecturally firm, his paint surface somewhat drier than Van Dyck's liquid touch. Comparison with the original reveals where Maratta's hand asserts itself.