Circle of Daniel Mytens (?Delft 1590-1644 The Hague) Portrait of King Charles I, three-quarter-length, standing, wearing a brown and gold doublet and hose, the sash of the Order of the Garter and the Great George, holding a pair of gloves, beside the Scottish crown laid on a table oil on canvas 109.2 x 83.4cm (43 x 32 13/16in). Footnotes: Although the composition of the present portrait does not appear to be directly derived from any hitherto known portrait of the King, it can be related to a number of portraits of King Charles I by Daniel Mytens. The head in the present work can be compared to the Mytens in the Royal Collection which is signed and dated 1628. The composition which shows the Great George suspended from the Garter sash is known through engravings, published by Franciscus van Hoeye after Mytens (fig.1). Perhaps most interesting of all is the presence of what must be a representation of the Scottish royal crown, which is unique to the present portrait, all the other portraits of Charles I that depict him with a crown having shown him beside the Tudor Crown, otherwise known as the Crown of Henry VIII. Although Charles succeeded his father in 1625, his long-delayed and long-awaited Scottish coronation did not take place until he finally returned to his native Scotland in the early summer of 1633, making a magnificent civic entry, the first such royal pageant in Edinburgh since 1590. It is possible that the present portrait was commissioned to record this event and is a rare contemporary depiction of the Scottish crown. The regalia known as the Honours of Scotland, which include the Crown along with the Sceptre and Sword of State, unlike their English equivalent of the time, still exist. Following the Act of Union of 1707, which unified the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and having no ceremonial role to play in the proceedings of the new Parliament of Great Britain in London, the Honours were locked away in Edinburgh Castle. There they remained all but forgotten in a chest until 1818, when a group of people including Sir Walter Scott set out to find them to great public acclaim. Charles's complicated relationship with Scotland was summarized by the historian C. V. Wedgwood: 'It was not the least of this king's misfortunes that he was always too much of a Scotsman for England and too much of an Englishman for Scotland. In many ways he was the type of the absentee Scot, rootless in England and uprooted in Scotland.' For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com