Did you know that the National Portrait Gallery in London has a main collection of almost 10,000 portraits? They have all sorts of portraits, from paintings, to video portraits, miniatures to sculptures. But even more amazing is that the total collection reaches over 1,000,000! That's a whole lot of portraits!

The National Portrait Gallery first opened in 1856 and until 1969 it only held portraits of people who were not living anymore (except for Royalty!). Then, in 1969 the rule was changed so that living people could have their portraits in the gallery. This was because the gallery was meant to be a record of key people through history rather than just a gallery showing art.

The oldest portrait in the gallery goes all the way back to 1505 - a portrait of King Henry VII by an unknown artist. Amazingly, the largest portrait is more than 52,000 times larger than the smallest one in the gallery! The smallest one is not much bigger than a thumbnail.