But the splendorous setting, including walls painted a deep royal blue, can't dispel the notion that this may be the homeliest object ever to get star treatment in a major art museum.
For the decoration of the throne room of the new Buen Retiro palace, completed in 1635, Velázquez painted a series of royal equestrian portraits, following a tradition that goes back in Spain to Titian's portrait of Charles V at Mühlberg (1548) and was continued by Rubens.
Through the years it has been painted a variety of colors, including royal blue and gray.
Royal Mail painted a postbox gold in Horsforth, where the brothers grew up, to mark the victory, annoying people in Bramhope where the brothers now live.
Desportes was invited by King John III Sobieski to the court of Poland (1695 96), where he painted a number of portraits of members of the royal family.
Mr. Clench had written most of the book in advance and churned out the final 4,000 words in two days, according to The A.P. Another book in the pipeline about the royal romance comes from Andrew Morton, whose 1992 book, "Diana: Her True Story," painted an unflattering portrait of the royal family and Diana's romance with Prince Charles.
Terence McInerney has a panoramic painting of a royal procession, with a lush, humid forest backdrop, from the Deccan.
The duchess had been "let down" by "another pretty ordinary painting of a royal of the sort that we've really been churning out for the last few hundred years in Britain".
I hope that world leaders, who quite often seem a bit more keen on things like getting re-elected than things like global justice, take more notice of global Internet campaigns championed by former prime ministers than current prime ministers and their deputies do of students throwing paint at a royal Rolls-Royce.
