Portrait of Philip Herbert,4th Earl of Pembroke, his second wife Lady Anne Clifford,14th Baroness of Clifford and his surviving children by his first marriage and Lady Mary Villiers

Van Dyck's monumental group portrait of the Herbert family at Wilton House (1635) is one of the largest and most complex English aristocratic portraits of the seventeenth century. Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke — Lord Chamberlain to Charles I — assembled his blended family including his second wife Lady Anne Clifford, his surviving children from his first marriage, and Lady Mary Villiers. The painting performs the dynastic ambition and social cohesion of the Caroline elite, displaying the family as a stable institution in a court that would dissolve into civil war within a decade. It hung at Wilton, the Pembroke seat, for which it was designed.

The horizontal format accommodates a large cast arranged in a frieze-like composition with Van Dyck's characteristic spatial ease. Each figure occupies distinct psychological space while the group coheres through interconnecting gazes and gestures. Textures of silk, lace, and velvet are differentiated with extraordinary skill.