Archaeologists have announced that they believe they may have found the remains of the 15th century King, Richard III, beneath a car-park in Leicester which was once the site of a mediaeval friary. Documentary evidence suggested that the King's remains were laid to rest within the friary church and they identified the foundations of the church beneath the modern car-park.
This is of great interest to me because I portrayed the King as a character in Master Merryman so I am looking forward to hearing what identifying characteristics they have found. I used two portraits for my characterisation of the king, the well-known portrait of him as King, but also a portrait I came across in the National Gallery which purports to be of St Ivo but which I thought might be really of Richard when Duke of Gloucester as a young man in his late twenties.
The portrait, which is an extremely good one and would therefore have been very expensive, shows a dark-haired man of about that age with similar features to those in the portrait of the older King. He is very well but plainly dressed in a high status tunic edged with fur. It was illegal in the Low Countries for anyone but an aristocrat to wear fur. Shakespeare tells us - gleaning his information from older people of his day who might have seen the King in his lifetime - that Richard dressed well but plainly. He was not given to the extravagant fashions of the day.
Most significant however is the fact that the man in the picture has clearly got a hunched back. It is very pronounced and although the sitter makes an attempt to lessen its impact somewhat by throwing his hat over his shoulder to cover it, he makes no attempt to disguise it - indeed he is leaning forward so that the painter has to include it in the portrait. Yet if he were sitting up - as Richard is in the King portrait - you would not notice it at all. The painting of 'St Ivo' is dated around 1475 two years after Richard had spent some time in exile in Flanders with his sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, who might well have commissioned such a portrait of her youngest brother. The quality of the painting is such that it must have been a very high status purchaser. The sketches for the painting could easily have been done in 1473 and the portrait finished later.
The million dollar question is did Richard really have a hunchback - a question that a study of his remains will surely answer. If he didn't, of course I'm wrong, so I'm waiting with bated breath for the results of the dig.
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