Nineteenth-century European collectors tended to reframe their Old Masters in contemporary settings, which may have suited their purpose and the interiors where the paintings would hang, but are clearly anachronistic and out of context. Examples of framing on a grand scale for purposes of propaganda include Napoleon’s mass reframing in French Empire frames of works in the Louvre, a practice followed by some private owners, as with the Lavallard Collection of seventeenth-century paintings now in the Musée de Picardie, Amiens.

The Van Dyck and studio portrait of Charles I, having long ago been separated from its original setting, had been fitted with a late nineteenth-century oil gilded oak moulding, which had all the appearance of a temporary travelling frame. Very few early seventeenth-century English frames have survived, and the owner was extremely fortunate to acquire this magnificent (and exactly fitting) example, with its laurel-leaf border and exuberantly carved openwork scrolling oak leaves.

The transformation, illustrated here, underlines how important the appropriate setting can be for a picture, especially for a state portrait. The monarch, now fully attired, where he was previously en déshabille, has received a substantial added value well beyond the sum of his parts.

Our estimation of the value of a work of art is affected by its overall appearance far more than we realize. As we know, with countless consumer goods from scent to soft drinks, desirability is influenced by packaging. So too, for works of art. This truism is continually being demonstrated as paintings at auction or with dealers remain unsold due to mismatched or abysmal banal frames; on being reframed and allowed to perform at their best, these relics leap from the shelf into the arms of eager purchasers, their value enhanced manyfold.