National Portrait Gallery, London
Today, we are all extremely familiar with what our Royal Family looks like, thanks to advances in photography and the advent of the internet and television, yet 500 years ago, the public only knew what their King (or Queen) looked like thanks to royal portraiture.
Employing court artists to capture their likeness, most monarchs utilised coded symbolism to get important messages about who they were across: the future King James II was painted as the Roman God of War, Mars, to showcase his strength, while Queen Anne was dressed up to look like her famous predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I.