Before you are two remarkably similar portraits
Before you are two remarkably similar portraits. The one in colour shows Charles II, King of England; the second, the English aristocrat and politician Charles Boyle.
Evidently, Boyle commissioned an exact copy of the king's portrait, with his own head fitted on to it. The clothes, the pose, the setting: everything repeats the royal portrait precisely.
I noticed that in his state portrait Charles II wears the regalia of the Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry in Britain. The motto of the order, "Honi soit qui mal y pense", translates roughly as "shame on him who thinks ill of it".
As you can see, Boyle is in the same robes of the order: the mantle, the sash, the collar chain and the badge. There is just one snag: a man named Charles Boyle was never a Knight of the Order of the Garter. What can one say? It all looks as though the man was acquainted neither with propriety nor with the motto of the order into which he had enrolled himself.
Times go by, but people do not change. Recall that fashionable service at frame workshops, where your face is photoshopped on to some old portrait of a noble gentleman in lace. The Gudkovs have one hanging at home)
