Magnificent tapestries, ceiling paintings and porcelain

At Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII built upon the wonderful tapestry collection begun by Cardinal Wolsey.  Wolsey’s own closet was hung with cloth of gold, and he had more than 600 tapestries in his collection.  An ambassador from Venice described how, when visiting Wolsey ‘one has to traverse eight rooms before one reaches his audience chamber, and they are all hung with tapestry, which is changed every week’.      

The early Stuart kings James I and particularly Charles I were among the most artistic and cultured ever to have sat upon the throne, and the ceilings by Rubens commissioned for the Banqueting House are among the masterpieces of European art.  Charles I’s acquisition of the Duke of Mantua’s famous collection of Old Masters in the 1620s made the British royal collection among the best of Europe, but not too many of these pieces made their way to Hampton Court Palace. 

Late 17th-century ‘china-mania’ was an important part of Mary II’s life.  In the Low Countries, her and her husband’s palaces had included rooms decorated with china designed by Daniel Marot, and in her Water Gallery at Hampton Court Palace even the furniture was painted the blue and white colours of her Delft tiles and Chinese pots.  In her gallery at Kensington Palace no less than 154 pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain were displayed.  It was a short-lived if striking phenomenon: the old Water Gallery was destroyed when the new palace at Hampton Court was built, and Mary’s collection was given away after her death.  Two sets of portraits of beautiful women - the Lely beauties of Charles II’s court, and the Kneller beauties of William III’s – can be seen at Hampton Court today.