Covering 500 years, 38 patrons and several continents, this lecture is part of a series which examins audacious acts of patronage and how they resulted in some of the finest art collections in the world. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert shared a love of art that saw the couple commission works for and about one another. Albert’s own collection included over 5,000 Raphael works and copies and a hundred German, Italian and Netherlandish paintings which he acquired when his relative Prince Ludwig von Oettingen-Wallerstein (1791–1870) defaulted on a loan. Albert was also instrumental in the Great Exhibition of 1851.