God Save the Queen’s Pictures

Can’t Queen Elizabeth bankroll the conservation of her own artworks?
Apparently not, judging from this announcement from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts of its “Rule Britannia!”—a show (opens Apr. 28) of 16th- and 17th-century paintings “whose core will be unprecedented loans from the collection of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.”
To get the royal loans, the museum apparently had to pay royally:
The royal paintings to be on view at VMFA customarily hang in a variety of the queen’s premier palaces, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and St. James’s Palace. Some have never been publicly exhibited before. VMFA has agreed to contribute to the conservation costs of a number of these paintings.
I guess times are tough at the palace. If so, I hope that “The Queen,” which won the Best Actress Oscar for Helen Mirren‘s impersonation, paid the monarch for her high-grossing story.