Queen Henrietta Maria had been so delighted with the sculptor Bernini’s bust of her husband, Charles I, that she was determined to have a companion bust. Van Dyck painted at least two preparatory portraits (this and RCIN 400159, one profile and one frontal) in August 1638, but it was not until June 1639 that the Queen wrote to Bernini of her desire to have a bust of herself. Van Dyck asked for payment of £15 for two portraits of the Queen ‘pour Mons Barnino’. Three portraits were probably completed (the third possibly that in the Memphis Brooks Museum), but were never sent to Rome: presumably because of the beginnings of the unrest troubling the English Court, though Bernini had apparently flatly refused to do another bust on the basis of a painting even, as Nicholas Stone records, ‘if thaire were best picture done by the hand of Raphyell’ (Raphael). It is possible that the portraits were never delivered to the Queen, let alone the sculptor.

At some period this painting seems to have been used as the door in a piece of furniture, as a lock of a fairly early date has been sunk into the stretcher to the far left, just above the Queen’s right shoulder.