Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) was Charles II s Principal Painter and the outstanding artistic figure of Restoration England. When Lely arrived in England in the early 1640s his ambition was to be a painter of narrative scenes and not to work as a portraitist. However, the subject pictures did not find favor with many English patrons and he produced less than thirty. As Lely s friend Richard Lovelace explained, all they wanted was their own dull counterfeits or portraits of their mistresses. Thus, Lely was obliged to turn to portraiture to make a living. Yet, his poetic pictures of figures in...