Fit for a king: was the Wilton Diptych made in Britain or France?

This is one of Britain’s true art treasures. Was it made in Britain or in France? Either way, it belonged to King Richard II, the doomed 14th-century monarch whose weaknesses and tragedy were dramatised by Shakespeare. In the last years of his turbulent reign in the 1390s, Richard had this made so he could carry it around as a mobile altarpiece. A diptych is a painting on two wooden panels joined by a folding hinge. Richard is portrayed kneeling in the panel to the left. As he prays, flanked by saints, the blue host of heaven appear to him as an ethereal vision in the righthand panel. This is one of our earliest portraits and most rapturous works of art Illustration: The Gallery Collection/Corbis