Philip II in The Somerset House Conference Portrait

Abstract

Critics have taken for granted that the famous group portrait of The Somerset House Conference accurately represents a room in Somerset House, and that the tapestry hanging on the wall behind the visiting Hispano-Flemish delegation must have been part of the English royal collection. It has been proposed that it depicts King David sending Uriah the Hittite to his death. However, the dates 1560 and 1561 on the tapestries framing the meeting do not tally with this scene. I propose instead that the tapestry portrays King Solomon commanding King Philip II to fight against the Ottomans, the first of an imaginary series about Lepanto that could only be in London as part of a uchronia that the painter is recreating. This reframes the whole painting and returns us to the question of attribution, and the more than probable commission by the Condestable de Castilla