Political art of a more glamorous sort is also the subject at Tate Britain. Van Dyck and Britain (from 18 February) treats the Antwerp-born artist's huge influence not just on 17th-century British portraiture but also on succeeding generations of artists - from Lely and Reynolds to Sargent. It will include some 60 Van Dycks - with major loans from the Royal Collection and the National Trust - and 70 works by later admirers. As the official image-maker to the Stuart court, Van Dyck (1599-1641) received generous treatment from Charles I when, after an early visit in 1620, he returned permanently in 1632. In return for a knighthood, rooms in the royal palace at Eltham, a house in Blackfriars and a good stipend, Van Dyck proved that the divine right of kings could come in informal as well as hieratic guise. His pictures of the Royal family, showing Charles as a pre-ordained leader at ease with power, set the model for subsequent aristocratic portraiture as a mixture of luxury and entitlement.

Van Dyck's images of benign power were produced for a tainted cause. He died in 1641, a year too soon to see that so many of the sitters he depicted naturally assuming Cavalier pomp turned Roundhead in the Civil War.