Let us begin with a search for his purpose and meaning at least.
The picture is a diptych--that is to say, it is a painting done upon two wings or shutters hinged, so as to allow of their being closed together.

You have no doubt been wondering why I called it a portrait, for the picture is far from being what to-day would commonly be described as such.

Richard himself is not even the most conspicuous figure; and he is kneeling and praying to the Virgin.

What should we think if any living sovereign, ordering a state portrait, had himself portrayed surrounded on one side by his predecessors on the throne, and on the other side by the Virgin and Child and angels?
But, in the fourteenth century, it was nothing strange that the Virgin and Child, the angels, John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor, Edmund the Martyr, and Richard II.

should be thus depicted.