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Secondary sourcePainting1868

King John and Magna Carta

Joseph Martin Kronheim · 1868

A Victorian engraved plate showing King John signing the charter, drawn long after 1215. It shows how later writers imagined the scene.

Shows how a later artist imagined King John, the figure in this archive, signing the charter in 1215.

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Colored engraving of a medieval scene in a tent. A crowned king seated at a red draped table holds a quill and signs a scroll, while armored nobles and mitred churchmen stand behind him and a figure in a mail hood stands at left, with soldiers and banners visible outside.
Joseph Martin Kronheim, King John and Magna Carta, plate XXIV, Pictures of English History, 1868.

About this source

What it is

This is an engraved colour plate, plate XXIV from the book Pictures of English History (1868). It was created by Joseph Martin Kronheim (1810–96). It shows a crowned king seated at a red-draped table, holding a quill and signing a scroll. Armoured nobles and mitred churchmen stand behind him, and soldiers and banners appear outside a tent. The catalogue lists it as a later, imagined scene.

Why it matters

King John agreed to the Magna Carta with the English barons in 1215. The plate was made more than six hundred years later, in Victorian England, when the charter was celebrated as a foundation of English liberty. The image reveals how the nineteenth century pictured medieval power, with the king at the centre and the church and nobles around him.

Look closer

  • Who is shown with power in this scene, and who stands at the edges?
  • Why might a Victorian artist choose a tent, banners and armour to show a document being signed?
  • What does this picture leave out about the negotiations and the people who were not present?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Magna Carta on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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