It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least hereabouts, that the Royal Collection should be nationalised. It's a disgrace that the Queen owns all these marvellous works of art ...
Or is it? I've been having subversive thoughts recently – subversive when it comes to republicanism, that is. I'm just not feeling offended by the Royal Collection any more; it seems to be doing a good job. Its catalogues of drawings at Windsor Castle are exemplary. It loans a lot of works, including for long periods to our public collections. And the Queen's Gallery does put on proper shows. What's to be cross about, really?
I still worry about security: should works precious to humankind be kept in an ancient castle? But apart from that, the Cromwellian passion has died. I don't really mind that the Queen has so many masterpieces. There's one thing I love in art more than anything else: mystery. It is good to be able to chance on treasures, to encounter works of art you never knew or to see old favourites when you don't expect it. And this is what old collections allow us. The sporadic visibility, eccentricity and sheer size of the Royal Collection make it hard to know in total. This means you can be surprised by it again and again.
The other day, I saw some erotic Renaissance paintings in a small room at Hampton Court. I also saw a supreme masterpiece, Holbein's Noli Me Tangere, displayed in the royal gallery above the palace chapel – a perfect and evocative setting. It's so unexpected, at least in Britain, to see a great religious painting actually in a religious setting. If Holbein's painting belonged to the National Gallery, we'd never chance up on it in Henry VIII's private prayer closet juxtaposed with a vista of the knobbly pendants of the chapel's late Gothic ceiling.
I don't want art to be smoothed into modern shapes, and I don't want collections to become the property of bureaucrats who keep everything in storerooms. And so the Royal Collection strikes me as an image not of snobs snaffling up the loot, but of history enduring and flourishing.
