The Kings and Queens of Europe: William Verdult's Other Monumental Series
Alongside the Treasures of King Tut, William Verdult spent years developing a second monumental, jewel-accented series: the Kings and Queens of Europe. Where the Tut works used the archetype of a single boy-king to interrogate power and mortality, the Kings and Queens series widened that inquiry across roughly two dozen historical European rulers, from medieval sovereigns to nineteenth-century monarchs.
The Same Material Philosophy, a Different Subject
Verdult built the Kings and Queens portraits the way he built the Tut series: incorporating diamonds, gold, and other precious stones directly into the composition rather than applying them as decoration. Estate records from 2009 list the series among the artist's actively exhibited bodies of work, describing it in the same terms used for the Tut treasures — material integrated as meaning, not ornament.
Sovereigns Rendered as Burdened, Not Triumphant
What separates the series from conventional royal portraiture is its psychological angle. Verdult didn't paint these rulers as figures of triumph. According to the Estate's scholarly account, the jewel-accented portraits depict historical rulers "not as triumphant figures but as individuals encased — often imprisoned — by the symbols of their own authority." The crown, in other words, becomes a kind of confinement as much as a distinction — a theme consistent with Verdult's lifelong preoccupation with power rendered powerless by circumstance, whether death, as in the Tut series, or the isolating weight of inherited status.
A Roster Spanning Centuries
A 2009 estate catalog documents at least 28 titled works in the series, each built around a specific historical figure: William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mary I, Richard II, Richard III, Charles I, Charles II, Queen Victoria, and the Czarina of Russia among them, alongside continental figures such as Philip II of Spain and Frederick III. The paintings vary in scale, most falling between roughly 18x24 and 30x40 inches — sized for the same kind of hospitality and private-venue installations where Verdult chose to exhibit the Tut series, rather than the conventional museum circuit.
Why This Matters to Collectors Today
The Kings and Queens of Europe series is best understood not as a stand-alone royal-portrait project but as the second half of a single philosophical inquiry Verdult carried out across two monumental bodies of work — one Egyptian, one European, both asking what happens to absolute authority once it's stripped of its power to protect the person wearing it. For collectors evaluating a jewel-accented Verdult portrait of a named European monarch, that context is part of what establishes it within the artist's larger, coherent body of work rather than as an isolated commission.
Read more about the philosophical project behind Verdult's monumental series in Verdult Unveiled: The Art, Myth, and Man in Focus.