Kings, Collectors, and Paintings in the 17th Century

Collecting and Connoisseurship in England before Charles I

Though there were royal and aristocratic collectors in the late sixteenth-century, they were not as dedicated or successful as the courtiers of Charles I’s reign. Before the Stuarts came to power, picture collecting and art connoisseurship was at a low ebb during the Tudor period.[1]In fact the idea of “fine art” or sensitivity to the aesthetic quality of pictures did not exist at all. During Henry VIII’s reign (reg. 1509-1547) for instance, painters were employed as propagandists; commissioning pictures was usually for an ulterior motive.[2]A good example is the beautiful Holbein portrait of Queen Christina of Denmark which was produced in 1538 so that the King could inspect the 16 year old woman as a marriage prospect. This picture was to pass through a number of hands before arriving in one of the greatest English collectors of all time, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel who was a true connoisseur of Holbein and owned the best collection of Holbeins in the country as we shall see.[3]It is a mark of how underdeveloped English connoisseurship was during the Tudor period that the first painting by Titian known to have reached England, and owned by Mary Tudor (reg 1553-1558) had little influence on either artistic practice or art appreciation.[4]This was progress though: it showed that an English monarch was prepared to import paintings from abroad, from Spain as in the case of Antonis Mor who painted the famous portrait of “Bloody Mary” in 1554. The propagandist function of pictures became more pronounced during Elizabeth I’s period (reg. 1558-1603) when images of her flooded the land, some cheap copies which prompted legal controls on the production of royal portraiture.[5]This glut also called for connoisseurship skills, separating copy from original, which would re-emerge in the next century when portraits at the Spanish royal collection were subject to the scrutiny of Velasquez who surprisingly proved fallible on one occasion when evaluating a new arrival from England.[6]Though Elizabeth is said to have had conversations with the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard about painting, she could not be considered knowledgeable about art. This is true of her courtiers also, though some like Lord Cecil took some interest in acquiring paintings, due to a growing interest in Italian taste.[7]Unlike Charles I, Elizabeth seldom kept an eye on the international art market, though there was a rare exception. It is known that the Queen attempted to acquire an altarpiece of the Lamentation by the Flemish artist Quentin Massys, but her reason for desiring it are not known. She was unsuccessful and it was eventually purchased by the Antwerp Guild.

Daniel Mytens, Lord Arundel in His Sculpture Gallery, 1616, oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle)

Quentin Metsys the Younger, Portrait of Elizabeth I (“The Sieve Portrait”), Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Italy.

Quentin Metsys, Central panel of St John Altarpiece, 1507-08, Oil on wood, 260 x 504 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

Anthonis Mor, Queen Mary Tudor of England, 1554, Oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

A Period of Transition: The Jacobean Era.

Though Elizabeth’s successor James I could not be considered an art connoisseur in any sense of the word, there are signs that taste and discernment burgeoned at his court. His consort, the Catholic Anne of Denmark was a great collector of pictures. Though we must be cautious in linking the Catholic faith with an informed appreciation of art, there is reason to believe that people of this time might have made such a connection. Anne was jeered at by Lord Salisbury who accused her of "loving no body, but dead pictorres in a paltry gallery."The Queen also suffered the censure of the Calvinist Archbishop George Abbot who criticised her for going to look at her pictures the night before she died", though this kind of anti-religious feeling pales into insignificance next to the anger of the Puritans at Charles I’s huge art collection. Also, the situation is complicated by the fact that, to use Haworth’s words that artists did “not divide along sectarian lines.” The Catholic Rubens and the Gentileschi clan were prepared to paint great works for the Protestant king Charles I, though another Italian artist Guercino declined on the grounds that he would like neither the climate nor the heretics![8]Charles’s brother, Prince Henry is also known to have taken an interest in art; he owned a painting of Prometheus which was once thought to have been painted by Titian himself, but is now attributed to that master’s pupil, Palma Giovane. Sadly, Prince Henry’s life was cut short by fever in 1612 which greatly affected his friend and protector, Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel who had been traveling with the architect Inigo Jones on the continent when he heard the news. James’s court also attracted the young, attractive George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham) who would later become one of the four greatest art collectors in the land. Buckingham was to accompany Prince Charles on a visit to Spain in 1623 to find a bride. Whilist the young prince was unsuccessful in that endeavour, he was amply compensated by being exposed to the Titians, an experience that invigorated his desire for collecting. To help him get started, he was given as a gift the picture known as the “Pardo Venus” a Titian mythology now in the Louvre.

Isaac Oliver, Henry, Prince of Wales, c. 1612, watercolour on vellum laid on card, 13.2 x 10.0 cm, Royal Collection.

Att to Palma Giovane (previously Titian), Prometheus, 1570-1607, oil on canvas, 184. X 160.6 cms, Royal Collection

Daniel Mytens, Charles I (when Prince of Wales), 1623, oil on canvas, 204 x 130.1 cm, Royal Collection.

Titian, Jupiter and Antiope (Pardo Venus), 1535-40, reworked c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 196 x 385 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Introducing the “Whitehall Group”

The “Whitehall Group” is the convenient name given to the group of collectors, connoisseurs, dealers and agents who were associated with the Stuart court and the seventeenth-century art market. The most famous was Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) who was painted by both Rubens and Van Dyck who knew him. By the time the Civil War broke out in 1642, Arundel had been a collector for decades with about 800 paintings and many drawings by renaissance artists of the calibre of Holbein, Leonardo and Parmigianino. Arundel’s father died in the Tower and the son was brought up a Catholic. Enduring a lonely and unhappy childhood, he was lived deep within himself and developed a proud and haughty personality. Not at ease with his contemporaries, or even his wife Aletheia Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Arundel fared better with the artists and scholars in his orbit. He was especially fond of Italy which he explored in the company of Inigo Jones. Arundel also travelled to the Low Countries from where he acquired such gems as Sebastiano’s Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries. During the Civil War, Arundel stayed abroad; he raised revenue for the Royal cause, but in effect abandoned the King whom he had never really liked. He was more famous as a collector on the continent than in England which is proved by the fact that books have been written about him in the modern age.^{^[9]}

The next famous collector was George Villiers (1592-1628), later 1st Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham owed his position at court not to his birth, but to his looks, which in 1614 caught the roving eye of James I. Amassing money and honours, Buckingham mounted a charm offensive on Charles who much preferred the dashing young duke to the dour Arundel. Buckingham began collecting in the 1610s (late twenties) and within 2 years he began to outclass Arundel, though his collecting career was cut cruelly short by his assassination by a disgruntled subordinate in 1628. Amongst his treasures was Titian’s Ecce Homo (Vienna) which the King of France had desired. Arundel and Buckingham were rivals on many levels, one of which included picture collecting. Friends with Rubens, the painter said of Buckingham’s collection that he had “..never seen such a large number [of fine pictures] in one place as in the royal palace and in the gallery of the late Duke of Buckingham.”

In Francis Haskell’s words, Charles I was the “most conspicuous, but not necessarily the most successful figure.” The King was probably inspired to take up collecting by Buckingham who began at about the same time. They travelled together to Madrid where Charles was able to see an outstanding group of masterpieces. The Infanta’s brother, the 18 year old Philip IV gave Charles Titian’s Venus del Pardo (Louvre) as a gift which also whetted his appetite. Charles had ample opportunities to build up a collection as a king including Raphael’s Holy Family, though he had his blind spots- he didn’t like the art of Veronese nor Northern art.

The last of these mega-collectors was James, 3^rd Marquess and later 1^stDuke of Hamilton (1606-1649). Hamilton, a great landowner and “an ambivalent collector” (Brown) was in line to the throne of Scotland. In 1623 he was in Charles’s retinue at Madrid, and in the autumn of 1625 he accompanied Buckingham on a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries. Hamilton had no compromising ties through birth or marriage to Catholicism and he was a much more successful collector than a soldier. From Northern Europe Hamilton brought back good paintings for the King, including an “Adam and Eve” by Cranach (sold on the London Art Market). Emboldened by his success, Hamilton competed with Buckingham by renting Wallingford House from the widow of the murdered Duke and began to buy art on a lavish scale competing with Arundel through agents. For Hamilton “picture collecting signified essentially the continuation of politics by other means.” (Haskell, 25). Hamilton’s brother-in-law was posted to Venice as ambassador; and while he wasn’t a great diplomat, he was able to snap up a massive Venetian collection for Hamilton. These included Saint Margaret (Raphael and Studio, Vienna). Most satisfying of all, and even with a worsening political and economic situation, Hamilton was able to keep every single picture from the collection of the Venetian Bartolomeo della Nave, including Giorgione’s Three Philosophers(Vienna) and Antonello’s San Cassiano altarpiece.

Peter Paul Rubens, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 67 x 54 cm, National Gallery, London.

Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, c. 1625, Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Charles I in Three Positions, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 33 ¼ x 39 ¼ inches, Royal Collection.

1Daniel Mytens I, Duke of Hamilton, 1629, Oil on canvas, 221 x 140 cm, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

The Role of Dealers and Agents

This was an age of international diplomacy when many ambassadors and aristocrats travelled abroad which obviously gave them the opportunity to find and acquire art. The most famous was Sir Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester (1567-1641) who realised that his career might be advanced if he served as art agent for influential people like the Duke of Buckingham since he was, as he wrote in 1617, “by mischance made a master of such curiosities.”[10]As early as 1611 he had been in Venice searching for art for Prince Henry and Lord Salisbury, but both died in 1612 putting an end to his activities in the Venetian art market. Carleton also famously negotiated with Rubens and was friends with Arundel whom he may have met along with Inigo Jones in Venice perhaps between 1613-14. Inevitably, Carleton sought to be of use to Charles I, and to him gave Rubens’s splendid Daniel in the Lions Den, which he obtained as a result of his negotiations with the artist.[11] Mention should also be made of Balthazar Gerbier (1592-1663) who acted as agent for the Duke of Buckingham. Knowledgeable about developments in Spain, France, Italy and the Low Countries, he was called by one scholar the “Duveen of the Seventeenth-Century” because like that modern dealer he was at the centre of the international art market. ^{^[12]} Then there were roguish dealers like Daniel Nys (1572-) a Flemish dealer whose favourite trick was to move items from consignments and literally sell the buyer short; he successfully deceived Carleton but came unstuck when he tried this on Charles I during the purchase of the Gonzaga collection from Mantua in 1631.[13]Charles refused to pay up and Nys went bankrupt. Another individual involved in the Mantuan sale was Endymion Porter (1587-1649) who is portrayed next to a self-portrait of Van Dyck. A Friend of Gerbier, Porter had “remarkably cosmopolitan” tastes (Haskell). He learnt much during his adolescent years in Spain where he acted as picture dealer on behalf of the King. Also active in the Low Countries, he was responsible for commissioning Van Dyck’s lyrical Cupid and Psyche which conjures up the escapism of the Stuart court through its air of enchanted fantasy. While the dance of art patronage and the musical revels continued at the Stuart court, the volcano of civil unrest, puritanism and war was rumbling far beneath the ground. It would eventually burst asunder with tumultuous consequences for Charles, his courtiers and collecting in England.

Michiel van Mierevelt, ca. 1620, Sir Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, English Ambassador to The Netherlands from 1616 to 1625, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1614-16, oil on canvas, 268 x 374.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Gage and an Unidentified Dealer, (perhaps Sir William Petty?), c. 1622-3, oil on canvas, 115 x 113.5 National Gallery, London.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, oil on canvas, 200.2 x 192.6 cm, Royal Collection.

Slides

Daniel Mytens, Lord and Lady Arundel in their Sculpture and Picture Galleries, 1616, each oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle).
Peter Paul Rubens, Lord Arundel as Earl Marshall, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston.
Hans Holbein, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 1538, Oil on oak, 179 x 83 cm, National Gallery, London.
Anthonis Mor, Queen Mary Tudor of England, 1554, Oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Titian, Portrait of Philip II, c. 1554, Oil on canvas, 185 x 103 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
Quentin Metsys the Younger, Portrait of Elizabeth I (“The Sieve Portrait”), Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Italy.
Quentin Metsys, St John Altarpiece, 1507-08, Oil on wood, 260 x 504 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.
Correggio, The Education of Cupid, about 1528, Oil on canvas, 155 x 91,5 cm, National Gallery, London.
Isaac Oliver, Henry, Prince of Wales, c. 1612, watercolour on vellum laid on card, 13.2 x 10.0 cm, Royal Collection.
Palma Giovane, Prometheus, 1570-1607, oil on canvas, 184. X 160.6 cms, Royal Collections Trust.
Peter Paul Rubens, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 67 x 54 cm, National Gallery, London.
Wenceslaus Hollar, (After ) Sir Anthony van Dyck, Inigo Jones, 1640, engraving, Royal Collection.
Hans Holbein, Sir Richard Southwell, 1536, Oil on wood, 47.5 x 38 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Adam Elsheimer, The Finding of the Cross, c. 1603-5 (frame modern), Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.
Same without frame.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, c. 1625, Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
Andrea della Sarto, Pietà, Kunsthistorisches Museum, c. 1520, oil on wood, 99 x 120 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of the Artist, 1623, oil on canvas, 85.7 x 62.2 cm, Royal Collection.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Charles I in Three Positions, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 33 ¼ x 39 ¼ inches, Royal Collection.
Titian, Jupiter and Antiope (Pardo Venus), 1535-40, reworked c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 196 x 385 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Daniel Mytens, Charles I (when Prince of Wales), 1623, oil on canvas, 204 x 130.1 cm, Royal Collection.
Orazio Gentileschi, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 1626-30, Oil on canvas, 204,9 x 261,9 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor.[14]
Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin, 1602-06, Oil on canvas, 369 x 245 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Daniel Mytens I, Duke of Hamilton, 1629, Oil on canvas, 221 x 140 cm, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
David Teniers, Picture Gallery of Archduke Leopold William of Austria, 1651, oil on canvas, 123 x 163 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Raphael and Workshop, St Margaret, oil on wood, 192 x 122 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Michiel van Mierevelt, ca. 1620, Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, English Ambassador to The Netherlands from 1616 to 1625, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1614-16, oil on canvas, 268 x 374.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Peter Paul Rubens, A lioness, 1614-16, British Museum, black and yellow chalk, with gray wash, heightened with white bodycolour, 39.6 x 23.5 cm.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, The Painter with Sir Charles Cottrell and Balthasar Gerbier, 1645, oil on canvas, Albury Park, Guildford.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir Endymion Porter and the Artist, 1632-41, Oil on canvas, 110 x 114 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Gage and Companions, c. 1622-3, oil on canvas, 115 x 113.5 National Gallery, London.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Nicholas Lanier, oil on canvas, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Raphael, The Holy Family (“La Perla”), 1518-20, oil on wood, 114 x 115 cm, Prado, Madrid
Anthony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, oil on canvas, 200.2 x 192.6 cm, Royal Collection.

[1]For an introduction, see the first part of Richard L. Williams, “Collecting and Religion in Late-Sixteenth-Century England” in The Evolution of English Collecting: Receptions of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods, (ed) Edward Chaney, Studies in British Art, Yale University Press, 159-201.

[2]For a brief summary of painters and Henry VIII, see Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, (London, 1954).

[3] On the fortunes of the picture see Elizabeth Goldring, “An Important Early Picture Collection: The Earl of Pembroke’s 1561/2 Inventory and the Provenance of Holbein’s “Christina of Denmark”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 144, No. 1188, (Mar 2000), 157-160. The Christina was nearly lost, but luckily the National Gallery was able to buy it- with the aid of an anonymous donor- from Colnagi for £72,000; see Flaminia Gennari Santori’s essay in Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund, Richard Verdi and others, 2003, 92-97.

[4] On the Titian picture, thought to be Philip II, see Charles Hope, “Titian, Philip II and Mary Tudor” in England and the Continental Renaissance, Essays in Honour of J.B. Trapp, (ed) Edward Chaney and Peter Mack, (Boydell Press, 1990), 53-67.

[5] Auerbach, Tudor Artists, 103.

[6]For the comparison between Elizabethan controls and Spanish connoisseurship, see David Haworth, “The Royal Portrait: The Tudors” in Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485-1649, (University of California Press, 1997), 77-119, 102. Velasquez was not infallible because he de-attributed a Correggio that was actually painted by the artist, his Education of Cupid, today in the N.G.

[7] On the Cecils and Italian art, See Susan Bracken, “The Early Cecils and Italianate Taste” in The Evolution of English Collecting. For an overview of English collecting and Italian art, see Edward Chaney’s lengthy introduction to that volume.

[8]Haworth, Images of Rule, 106.

[9]The most important book on Arundel is the Holbein scholar, Mary F. S. Hervey’s The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel, (Cambridge University Press, 1921). More recently has appeared David Haworth’s Lord Arundel and His Circle, (Yale University Press, 1985).

[10]See Oliver Millar, ex cat., The Age of Charles I: Painting in England 1620-1649, (Tate, 1972), no. 6. And Robert Hill, “The Ambassador as Art Agent” in The Evolution of English Collecting, 241-251.

[11]For drawings associated with it, see John Rowlands, Rubens: Drawings and Sketches, (1977), nos 68-70.

[12]Stone, “The Market for Italian Art”, (reply to Francis Haskell), Past and Present, 1959, Nov, 1992-4.

[13]On Daniel Nys the “layman-dealer”, see Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in the Seventeenth Century Europe, (Yale University Press, 1995), 230-1.

[14]See no 10 in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, (London, NG, 1999).

“Certainly, in this land I do not find the barbarous conditions which might be presumed from its climate, so remote from Italian elegance. On the contrary, I confess that in what concerns excellent pictures by the hands of the masters, I have never seen so large a mass together as in the royal collection, and in that of the late Duke of Buckingham; while the Earl of Arundel possesses an infinity of ancient statues, both Greek and Roman.” Rubens, London, 9^th August, 1629.[1]

Overview of Arundel’s Collection.

Anyone expecting a complete record of the art possessed by the Earl of Arundel is in for a disappointment; the original record and inventory has been lost, possibly in a fire at Worksop Manor (his father-in-law’s house) in 1722. However, we are lucky that an inventory, probably drawn up in 1655 in Amsterdam after the death of Countess Arundel has survived. [2]It is thought that “the larger part of the pictures, drawings and objets de vertu” (Hervey) followed the Arundels to the Netherlands when they left England for good in 1641, though the 1655 document still lists an incredible 799 works. This 1655 inventory was originally in Italian, badly organized and presented in an unsystematic way. To aid understanding, Arundel’s biographer, Lady Mary Hervey brought the inventory under four headings: alphabetical list of artists (and works attributed to them); portraits (to which no artist’s names are appended); subjects (to which no artists names are appended); various objects of art, decoration etc. She also numbered it and I have included these numbers in the list of selected slides shown here. The intention here is give you a flavour of the broad nature of Arundel’s collection and throw some light on his collecting habits.

Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, with his grandson Thomas Howard, c. 1635-6, oil on canvas, 145.4 x 121.9 cm, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk, (119)

Sir Anthony Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1621, oil on canvas, 102.8 x 79.4 cm, Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Wenceslaus Hollar, Arundel House from the South, 17th century, etching, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Add caption

Wenceslaus Hollar, London from Arundel House, print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Arundel’s Holbeins.

If there is one artist associated with Arundel, it is Holbein; the inventory of 1655 lists no fewer than 44 works by this. The Earl inherited many of his works, some of which were portraits of his ancestors. Arundel admitted a “foolish curiosity” for Holbein, particularly because the artist’s work linked back to his predecessors and the Tudor court, e.g. Holbein’s Thomas Howard, 3^rd Duke of Norfolk. Looking at Holbein portraits is the visual equivalent of reading a historical chronicle and so he would have greatly appealed to a man with a love of history and a deep reverence for the accomplishments of his family. By the eve of the Civil War Arundel owned some 40 paintings by Holbein’s posthumous fame owed much to Arundel, and it is through him that Van Dyck and Rubens learnt about the German artist.[3]

Fruytiers (possibly based on a lost Van Dyck) Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel with their children, c. 1643, oil on copper, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk (136).

Hans Holbein, Portrait of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, c. 1539, oil on panel, 80. 6 x 60.9 cm, Royal Collection. (198)

Hans Holbein, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c. 1542, oil on panel, 55.5 x 44 cm, Sau Paolo, (197)

Hans Holbein, Sketch for The Triumph of Wealth, 1532-3, pen, watercolour and washes heightened with white, (drawing for the lost painting no. 170 in the inventory), Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Old Master Drawings.

Arundel was one of the earliest courtiers to collect a large number of old master drawings in Europe. In 1632 Arundel’s son claimed “he chiefly affects drawings” and Arundel was proud of them- he had many engraved, not only finished work but also sketches.[4]Arundel’s love of drawings goes back to 1612, but by 1637 his collection had grown so much that he created a special room for them reported by his librarian, Francis Junius. Apart from Holbein, Arundel’s favourite draughtsmen were Leonardo da Vinci and Parmigianino, though he owned works by other renaissance masters such as Michelangelo and Raphael. The history of collecting Leonardo drawings is complex, but Arundel owned a volume containing something like 600 hundred drawings by Leonardo or copyists and artists connected with him.[5]As far as Parmigianino is concerned, Arundel was the first serious English collector of this eccentric artist who specialised in a strange blend of disproportion and grace.[6]Some of these were originally in Vasari’s collection, though many were acquired from a different source, probably Venetian. After the Earl’s death at Padua in 1647, the fate of the drawings is a matter of speculation. Some might have gone to Holland and been dispersed there; others were sold at Tart Hall, the London residence of the Earl’s son, Lord Stafford, in 1720.[7]

Wenceslaus Hollar, after Cornelius Schut, Allegory of the Death of the Earl of Arundel, etching, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford. (book of drawings at bottom left)

Parmigianino, Four Studies of Figures in Architectural Settings, 1531-3, black chalk underdrawing, pen and ink with wash and white heightening, Royal Collection.

Hans Holbein, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7, Black and coloured chalks, pen and ink, andmetalpoint, on pale pink prepared paper , Royal Collection, (167)

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Head of St Anne, c. 1510-15, black chalk, wetted in places, 18.8 x 13.0 cm, Royal Collection.

Arundel’s Masterpieces.

A look through the Arundel 1655 inventory reveals a bias, unsurprisingly, towards Italian art. The big guns like Titian (37 listed), Tintoretto, Veronese are there, but we also see that he collected lesser-known artists like Dosso and Correggio (12 listed). Apart from the Italians the Earl owned a lot of “Northern” (German, Dutch, Flemish) art ranging from leading masters like Dürer to obscure artists like Spranger. The greatest Italian pieces in Arundel’s collection would be Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, Sebastiano’s Portrait of Carondolet, which Arundel bought as a Raphael. We gain some inkling of how Arundel displayed his old masters from a report by Sandart, the German artist and critic who visited Arundel House in 1627.

Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries, 1510-12, Oil on panel, 113 x 87 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, (296, listed as Raphael)

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1498, Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (110)

Correggio, Head of Christ about 1530, (cd be the Veronica ref to as 81), Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bernardo Licinio, A Man holding a Skull, 1520, oil on canvas, 75.7 x 63.5 cm, Ashmoleon, Oxford, (matches the description of no. 145 in the “Giorgione” section of the inventory).

The Fate of Arundel’s Pictures

The Arundels made arrangements for their pictures to go to the Low Countries where they arrived about 1643. Examples of the art to arrive in the Low Countries included Holbein’s Dr Chambers (Vienna) and studio versions of Titian’s Three Ages of Man. The impact of these two artists in Antwerp must have been considerable where connoisseurship was enthusiastically pursued. Towards the middle of 1645 Arundel left Antwerp for Italy while Lady Arundel left for the Low Countries. He lived most in Padua, but also visited Parma. Sadly, Arundel’s eldest grandson was now a lunatic and another grandson had become a Dominican monk; he was also angry that his wife had “scattered” his collection. The Arundel sons failed to sell their father’s art, the best items having been sent abroad to avoid looting. However, the Spanish Ambassador in London had his eye on Arundel’s impressive Raphael (Pope Leo X with his Cardinals). It was obtained and sent to Spain where Velasquez pronounced it a copy as the cardinal in the background differed from Rossi. It is now thought to be a third version painted by Bugiardini (Rome, Galleria Corsini) for Cardinal Cibo who is substituted for de’ Rossi. In 1654 Lady Arundel died in Amsterdam, just two years after her eldest son- Lord Maltravers (1608-1652). They quarrelled over Arundel’s inheritance and her Catholic faith- so she left the collection to her younger son, Lord Stafford (1612-1680). Stafford was also a Catholic, and he lost no time in selling his inheritance. Amongst the pictures to go were Veronese’s Christ and the Centurion. At this stage Lady Arundel’s will was contested by the son of her eldest son, so eventually Lord Stafford and his nephew compromised by dividing the pictures between them. Some of the Arundels were brought back to England, e.g. Holbein’s Portrait of Erasmus(NG, on loan from Longford Castle Collection). John Evelyn was scathing about the dispersal of Arundel’s collection. Most of Arundel’s pictures remained in Amsterdam for the next thirty years until they were finally dispersed by auction in 1684.[8]

Titian, the Three Ages of Man (385 as “A Shepherd with a Girl and three putti), 1512-16, oil on canvas, 106.7 x 182.9 cm, Edinburg, NGS (on loan from Duke of Sutherland)

Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, 1576, Oil on canvas, 212 x 207 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz (356)

Paolo Veronese, Twelve Apostles (fragment), 1575, oil on canvas, 170 x 178 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz

Paolo Veronese, The Ascension of Christ, c. 1575, oil on canvas, 394 x 194 cm, San Francesco, Padua.

Surveying Buckingham’s Collection.

Unlike Arundel, we do not have as much information about the Duke of Buckingham’s collection. It was not until 1907 that an inventory (the Rawlinson MS) of the pictures and goods in Buckingham’s house were published.[9]A catalogue of a portion of the collection was printed in 1758; but that was compiled as late as 1649, and only included pictures sent to Antwerp to be sold, - about 215 in number (Davies). However, the Rawlinson MS numbers 330 pictures which were at York House. The Rawlinson MS was later supplemented by three documents, now in the Wiltshire Record Office.[10]Apart from details of the artists and titles, the list also gives their location in Buckingham’s house, which I have done in brackets in this brief selection. We also have a revealing document, an account by the agent Balthasar Gerbier of his picture-buying activities (on behalf of the Duke) in Italy.[11]

Peter Paul Rubens, George Villiers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), 1625, black, red and white chalk; ink on the eyes, 15 1/16 x 10 ½ inches, Albertina, Vienna

John Hoskins, George Villiers, 1^stDuke of Buckingham, c. 1628-9, watercolour on vellum laid on playing card, 5.2 x 4.2 cm, Royal Collection.

After Anthony van Dyck, Katherine Manners, c. 1623, oil on canvas, 92.2 x 78.5 cm, Lyfrgell Collection, Genedlaethol Cymru, National Library of Wales.

The Nature of Buckingham’s Collection.

Buckingham’s taste was very close to Arundel, though he lacked the meditative and scholarly approach of his great rival. Their attitude towards collecting was reflected in their polar temperaments. Arundel’s “high bred reserve” stood in stark contrast to Buckingham’s “presumptuous self-confidence” (Hervey). Still, they both could recognise quality when they saw it. So Buckingham owned 8 Holbeins, a few Titians, of which the greatest was the Ecce Homo, a series of Tintorettos, some Veroneses (both Buckingham and Arundel had the advantage that the King did not like Veronese) a handful of Palmas and others. And like Arundel, Buckingham had little success in getting paintings by Raphael and Leonardo since most paintings by these artists had been inherited by the King of France. But that did not deter Buckingham: he tried to buy the Mona Lisa from the French Royal Collection. Unsurprisingly, he failed and had to make do with a copy instead; but Buckingham did buy a Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Prado) then thought to be by Leonardo, but today thought to have been painted by Luini. Charles I beat both by obtaining from France Leonardo’s John the Baptist(Louvre) in exchange for a Titian (untraced) and a “magnificent portrait by Holbein, an artist for whom he did not much care.” Correggio’s pictures were hard to get and Buckingham only owned two. A curious feature of Buckingham’s holdings is that owned some 27 pictures attributed to Bassano and his followers which may mark the formation of a distinct taste.[12]Can this taste reflect the view that “pictures are noble ornaments, a delightful amusement, and histories that one may read without fatigue”? (Gerbier).[13]

Titian, Cardinal Armignac and his Secretaries, oil on canvas, 104 x 114 cm, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

Titian, Ecce Homo, 1543, Oil on canvas, 242 x 361 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, (“In the Sumpter Room.”

Jacopo Bassano, Entrance of the Animals into the Ark,oil on canvas, 207 x 265, Prado, Madrid. (cd be “The Arke of Noah” in “the next chamber next to the King’s withdrawing chamber.”

Paolo Veronese, The Anointing of David, c. 1560s, Oil on canvas, 173 x 365, cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Buckingham, Rubens and Van Dyck

If Holbein was Arundel’s greatest strength, then the same could be said of Rubens for Buckingham. As a friend of Rubens it is not surprising that Buckingham collection boasted many examples of that artist’s work including Nature Adorning the Three Graces a group portrait of Aletheia Talbot and her retinue, and a number of portraits including a mythological one of the Duke and Lady Manners.[14]When Buckingham was murdered in 1628, he had the greatest collection of Rubens works in the world (about 30); but by the time the Civil War broke out, he had been bested by the King of Spain. Another contemporary artist, Van Dyck was to be found in Buckingham’s collection including the Continence of Scipio, possibly a painting thought up by another mind.[15]Then there is the recently discovered Venus and Adonis, a mythological portrait of Villiers and Lady Katharine Manners which as White says is a portrait historié that would have struck the court as “new in concept” due to its free execution and departure from convention conspicuously lacking in the portraits of the period.[16]

Anthony van Dyck, The Clemency of Scipio, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 183 x 232. 5 cm, Christchurch Gallery, Oxford, (“In the Hall, One Great Piece being Scipio”).

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir George Villiers and Lady Katharine Manners (died 1649) as Adonis and Venus, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 233.5 x 160 cm, London, Private Collection.

Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Lady Arundel with her Train, 1620, Oil on canvas, 261 x 265 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Peter Paul Rubens, Minerva and Mercury conducting the Duke of Buckingham to the Temple of Virtue, before 1625, oil on oak, 64 x 63.7 cm, National Gallery, London.

Slides.

Sir Anthony Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1621, oil on canvas, 102.8 x 79.4 cm, Getty Museum, Los Angeles.[17]
Daniel Mytens, Lord Arundel in his Sculpture Gallery, 1616, oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle).
Fruytiers (possibly based on a lost Van Dyck) Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel with their children, c. 1643, oil on copper, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk (136).
Homerus, Hellenistic sculpture, c. 2^nd century B.C., Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, height 185 cm.
Wenceslaus Hollar, Arundel House from the North, 17th century, etching, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Wenceslaus Hollar, London from Arundel House, print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Hans Holbein, Portrait of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, c. 1539, oil on panel, 80. 6 x 60.9 cm, Royal Collection. (198)
Hans Holbein, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c. 1542, oil on panel, 55.5 x 44 cm, Sau Paolo, (197)
Hans Holbein, Nikolaus Kratzer, 1528, Tempera on oak, 83 x 67 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris (192)
Hans Holbein, Sketch for The Triumph of Wealth, 1532-3, pen, watercolour and washes heightened with white, (drawing for the lost painting no. 170 in the inventory), Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Agnes Frey, 1497, Oil on canvas, 56,5 x 42,5 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.[18]
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1498, Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (110)
Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries, 1510-12, Oil on panel, 113 x 87 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, (296, listed as Raphael)
Titian, the Three Ages of Man (385 as “A Shepherd with a Girl and three putti), 1512-16, oil on canvas, 106.7 x 182.9 cm, Edinburg, NGS (on loan from Duke of Sutherland).[19]
Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, 1576, Oil on canvas, 212 x 207 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz (356).[20]
Paolo Veronese, Twelve Apostles (fragment), 1575, oil on canvas, 170 x 178 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz, (398)[21]
Paolo Veronese, The Ascension of Christ, c. 1575, oil on canvas, 394 x 194 cm, San Francesco, Padua.
Correggio, Head of Christ about 1530, (cd be the Veronica ref to as 81), Getty Museum, Los Angeles, [22]
Bernardo Licinio, A Man holding a Skull, 1520, oil on canvas, 75.7 x 63.5 cm, Ashmoleon, Oxford, (matches the description of no. 145 in the “Giorgione” section of the inventory).
Wenceslaus Hollar, after Cornelius Schut, Allegory of the Death of the Earl of Arundel, etching, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford.
Hans Holbein, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7, Black and coloured chalks, pen and ink, andmetalpoint, on pale pink prepared paper , Royal Collection, (167)
Parmigianino, Four Studies of Figures in Architectural Settings, 1531-3, black chalk underdrawing, pen and ink with wash and white heightening, Royal Collection.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Head of St Anne, c. 1510-15, black chalk, wetted in places, 18.8 x 13.0 cm, Royal Collection.
Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, with his grandson Thomas Howard, c. 1635-6, oil on canvas, 145.4 x 121.9 cm, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk, (119)
Peter Paul Rubens, George Villiers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), 1625, black, red and white chalk; ink on the eyes, 15 1/16 x 10 ½ inches, Albertina, Vienna.[23]
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir George Villiers and Lady Katharine Manners (died 1649) as Adonis and Venus, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 233.5 x 160 cm, London, Private Collection.
After Anthony van Dyck, Katherine Manners, c. 1623, oil on canvas, 92.2 x 78.5 cm, Lyfrgell Collection, Genedlaethol Cymru, National Library of Wales.
John Hoskins, George Villiers, 1^stDuke of Buckingham, c. 1628-9, watercolour on vellum laid on playing card, 5.2 x 4.2 cm, Royal Collection.
Anthony van Dyck, The Clemency of Scipio, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 183 x 232. 5 cm, Christchurch Gallery, Oxford, (“In the Hall, One Great Piece being Scipio”).
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Lady Arundel with her Train, 1620, Oil on canvas, 261 x 265 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.[24]
Titian, Cardinal Armignac and his Secretaries, oil on canvas, 104 x 114 cm, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland. [25]
Titian, Ecce Homo, 1543, Oil on canvas, 242 x 361 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, (“In the Sumpter Room”.[26]
Paolo Veronese, The Anointing of David, c. 1560s, Oil on canvas, 173 x 365, cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[27]
Jacopo Bassano, Entrance of the Animals into the Ark,oil on canvas, 207 x 265, Prado, Madrid.[28](cd be “The Arke of Noah” in “the next chamber next to the King’s withdrawing chamber.”
Gortzius Geldorp, The Penitent Magadelene, oil on panel, 67.6 52. 8 cm, (in a 17^th century gilded Florentine frame), location unknown.[29]
Peter Paul Rubens, Minerva and Mercury conducting the Duke of Buckingham to the Temple of Virtue, before 1625, oil on oak, 64 x 63.7 cm, National Gallery, London.[30]

[1] This is included in Mary Hervey, The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, (Cambridge, 1921), 284.

[2]This is included in Hervey, 473-500.

[3] On Holbein’s afterlife and critical fortunes, See “Holbein’s Fame” in Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein (Reaktion, 1997); George Vertue on Holbein, included in Hervey, App X.

[4] On Arundel as a collector of drawings, see Denys Sutton’s “Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, as a Collector of Drawings”, I, II, III, Burlington Magazine 89 (1947); 3-9,32-37, and 75-77.

[5] On Arundel as a collector of Leonardo drawings, see Jane Roberts, “Thomas Howard: The Collector Earl of Arundel and Leonardo’s Drawings” in The Evolution of English Collecting: Receptions of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods, (ed) Edward Chaney, Studies in British Art, Yale University Press, 257-283..

[6]The inventory lists 26 works including 2 watercolours.

[7]For a fascinating survey of the Arundel Parmigianino drawings, see A. E. Popham’s The Drawings of Parmigianino,(Faber), 45-51. Popham describes Arundel’s drawing as “one of the most important collections of Parmigianino’s drawings ever brought together.”

[8]Francis Haskell describes the Arundel holdings and their fate: “One gets the impression of a sort of incredible emporium, owned by absentee shareholders, which, over the years, was dipped into by purchasers of all kinds, who presumably paid their bills of exchange into the accounts of the various family members who had a stake in what remained. The name of Arundel provided a plausible guarantee of quality and authenticity, but who made the arrangements, and who determined the price is not at all clear.” The King’s Pictures, 113-114.

[9]Randall Davies, “An Inventory of the Duke of Buckingham’s Pictures, etc at York House” in 1635, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 10, no. 48, 1907, 376-382.

[10]Philip McEvansoneya, “A Note on the Duke of Buckingham’s Inventory”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 1001, (Aug 1986), 607.

[11]L. G. Philip, “Balthazar Gerbier and the Duke of Buckingham’s Pictures”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 99, np. 650 (May 1957), 155-6.

[12]Francis Haskell argues that Buckingham’s enthusiasm for Bassano, or an artist purporting to be him, “provides us with our first indication of a specific, individual, English taste in Italian painting.” The King’s Pictures, 37.

[13]See Christopher White, Anthony van Dyck: Thomas Howard: The Earl of Arundel, (Getty, 1995), 26f.

[14] A canon of Antwerp is thought to have bought the Ecce Homo (Vienna); many more were purchased by dealers (especially the Duartes family), one of whom had been jeweller to the King. They were of Portuguese- Jewish origins, nominally converted to Catholicism- and at various times they owned pictures which had been in Arundel’s as well as Buckingham’s collections. Rubens’s Nature Adorned by the Three Graces was sold by Buckingham and in 1776 found by the artist James Thornhill in Paris. On Buckingham and Rubens, see Roger Lockyer, The Life and Political Career of George Villiers First Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628, (Longman, 1981).

[15]Haworth (Arundel and his Circle, 156-7) made the valid point that the moralizing nature of the theme was more appropriate to somebody like Arundel, but wether the older man thought up this subject must remain a hypothesis at best. This is the most over-analyzed Van Dyck in his canon. Shown in Oliver Millar, The Age of Charles I (London, 1973), no. 10 and other references.

[16]White, Anthony van Dyck, 62. For the Venus and Adonis, see Michael Jaffe, “Venus and Adonis”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 132, No. 1051, (Oct 1990), 696-703.

[17]On this portrait, see White, Anthony van Dyck.

[18]Not listed in the inventory but there is a print of it by Hollar in the Ashmoleon- see White, 23, fig. 19.

[19]Exhibitions: London (2003, no. 8); Edinburgh (2004, no. 15).

[20]Exhibitions: London (1983); Venice and Washington (1990); London and

[21] According to the very helpful web site, “Cavallini to Veronese”,“a fragment from an altarpiece – probably the Ascension painted in 1575 for the church of San Francesco in Padua. Once in the Arundel collection in England, it was acquired by Bishop Karl Liechtenstein of Olomouc in 1673. The fragment was previously displayed in the National Gallery at Prague; the new museum was opened in the Archbishop’s Palace at Olomouc in 2006.”

[22]Cavallini to Veronese: “This small panel depicts the Vera icon – the veil of St Veronica which was miraculously imprinted with Christ’s features during the Passion. A late work, probably dating after 1530. It might have been painted for a patron called Veronica – possibly Veronica Gambara, wife of Conte Gilberto of Correggio. It is possibly the ‘Correggio Veronica’ listed in the inventory drawn up in Amsterdam in 1655 of the estate of Aletheia, Countess of Arundel. It was later in France (the collection of Monsieur de Sereville), and was bought by Viscount Gage in 1812. Until 1996 it was at Firle Place in Sussex.”

[23]Millar, The Age of Charles I , no. 11.

[24] On this painting see Hervey (173 f) for its provenance and the problems attached to its interpretation. The crux of the mystery is the man in the background who is seen by Hervey as an 18^th century painted addition to unite the Countess with her husband; but another view is that it could be Sir Dudley Carleton which seems more plausible. Amongst the viewers of this picture in the 18^th century was Sir Joshua Reynolds who stated that it was a portrait of the Earl and the Countess with their son (on the right) and a dwarf next to the dog. The “son” is thought to be The Countess’s dwarf and the other man her jester. Some even reject the work as from the hand of Rubens and instead give it to Van Dyck. The documentation supports its attribution to Rubens, but one is bound to say it is the most Van Dyckian picture Rubens ever painted.

[25]Cavallini to Veronese: "Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez, was French ambassador to Venice from 1536 to 1539, when this portrait was presumably painted. His secretary was Guillaume Philandrier (a pupil of the architect Serlio). The picture – one of the first by Titian to come to England – was acquired in France by the Duke of Buckingham in 1624. It was apparently appropriated by the Earl of Northumberland after Buckingham’s pictures were confiscated during the Civil War, and it has remained at Alnwick since 1671.”

[26]Cavallini to Veronese. “Signed and dated 1543 on the scroll on the steps. Painted for the Flemish merchant Giovanni d'Anna (Jan van Haanen), whose palazzo (frescoed by Pordenone) was on the Grand Canal. The picture is packed with portraits. According to Ridolfi (1648), Pontius Pilate, dressed in shimmering blue satin, is a likeness of Pietro Aretino. The two horsemen on the right are portraits of Alfonso d'Avalos (mistakenly called Charles V by Ridolfi) and Suleyman the Magnificent. The imposing fat man, opulently dressed in a red robe and ermine collar, probably represents the High Priest Caiaphas in the guise of a wealthy contemporary Jew (though he is sometimes said to be a portrait of the reigning Doge, Pietro Lando). The thin bearded man, dressed in black and leaning on a staff, was once thought to be Titian himself or the donor Giovanni d'Anna, but has been identified more recently as the Sienese preacher and religious reformer Bernardino Ochino. The blonde girl dressed in white and the child whom she draws towards her are often said (on little evidence) to be portraits of Titian's adolescent daughter Lavinia and Aretino's daughter Adria. After Henry II of France had tried unsuccessfully to buy the picture for 800 ducats in 1574, it was purchased from the d'Anna family in 1620 by the English envoy Sir Henry Wootton for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. After Thomas, Earl of Arundel, had failed to acquire it with an extraordinary offer of £7,000, it was sold (for a much smaller sum) in 1648 to Canon Hellewerve of Antwerp and then acquired by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm for his brother Emperor Ferdinand III at Prague.”

[27]Cavallini to Veronese. Once attributed to Zelotti or to Farinati, but now regarded as an early work of Veronese (1550s). In the Duke of Buckingham’s collection, which was sold at Antwerp in 1648; acquired by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm for his brother Emperor Ferdinand III at Prague.

Marco Curzio. Canvas, 222 in dia.

[28] Cavallini to Veronese: “Probably a work of collaboration between Jacopo and Francesco. Ridolfi claims that Titian bought a painting of this subject from Jacopo Bassano for the high price of 25 scudi.”

[29]Sold at Christies, 1997, for £17,250, no provenance given so impossible to say if it’s the picture in Buckingham’s gallery listed as “Geldorp’s Father- A Picture of Mary Magdalene.”

[30]Millar, The Age of Charles I, no. 12.

Surveying the King’s Pictures.

The office of “Surveyor of the King’s Pictures” was inaugurated by Abraham van der Doort who came to England in 1609. Previously a Dutch modeller and numismatist (who advised on the design of the coinage of the realm) at the court of Rudolph II in Prague, van der Doort was charged in 1625 with recording in great detail the paintings and sculptures in the expanding collection of the King, a task that he finished in 1639. Van der Doort was one of many Dutch artists serving the King (Honthorst, Steenwyck, Mytens) compared to the isolated Italian Orazio Gentileschi who gravitated towards Henrietta Maria after Buckingham had died. Sadly, this industrious scholar van der Doort was to commit suicide in response to rumours that the king might be replacing him. These proved groundless. Van der Doort’s job description was as follows: “Surveyor of all our pictures of Us, Our Heires and Successors…at Whitehall and other our houses of resort.” The requirements of the job were as follows: “To prevent and keepe them (soe much as in him lyeth) from being spoiled or defaced, to order marke and number them, and to keepe a Register of them, to receive and deliver them, and likewise to take order for the making and coppying of Pictures as Wee or the Lord Chamberlaine of Our Household shall directe. And to this End…he shall have Accesse at convenient Times unto Our Galleries Chambers and other Roomes where Our Pictures are…”[1]

The inventory of the Royal Collection survives in four manuscripts (two in the Bodleian, one at Windsor and one in the British Museum). Only one of these manuscripts (Bodleian MS Ashmole 1514) is near complete and the others are copies of that. Ashmole 1514 is thought to have been Van der Doort’s “working copy” of the catalogue containing his own alterations, emendations and corrections. The others are more carefully presented and may therefore have been for the King’s use. Between 1958-60 the then Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Oliver Millar published his own edition of Van der Doort’s catalogue for the Walpole Society.[2]

William Dobson, Portrait of Abraham van der Doort+, c. 1640, Oil on canvas, 45 x 38 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

Gerrit van Honthorst, Apollo and Diana, 1628, oil on canvas, 357 x 640 cm, Royal Collection.

Daniel Mytens, Self-Portrait, c. 1630, oil on oak panel, 68.3 x 58.9 cm, Royal Collection.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Orazio Gentileschi, 1632-9, black chalk, with some grey wash in the shadows and a few touches of pen and sepia, on paper (the principled lines are intended for transfer), 240 x 179 mm, British Museum.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Charles I of England and Henrietta of France, before 1632, Oil on canvas, 67 x 83 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

Diplomacy and Display.

Unfortunately not much is known about how the King’s collections was displayed, though Van der Doort’s inventory provides some information, mostly about Whitehall.[3]Additionally we rely on reports from ambassadors and VIPs who were received in audience by the King at Whitehall and other palaces; on the way the visitors would have passed many splendid pictures. There are also records of Masters of Ceremonies from which we can glean something of how these audiences were conducted, and even what was said. However, there is scant mention of Charles’s Titians and Raphaels; and the only mention of Van Dyck’s splendid equestrian portrait of the King is by his mother-in-law Marie de Medici, even though the painting was placed at the end of a gallery in St James’s Palace, along which were hung Titian’s portraits of Roman emperors (now lost). Some information has even come down from Cromwell’s chamberlain, Peter Sterry (1613-1672) whose imagery in his sermons seems to owe something to specific pictures in the King’s collection, especially Titian and Van Dyck.^{^[4]} There is also the issue of what role these pictures played at court. According to Haskell, the pictures at the Stuart court provided escapism, especially when augmented by court entertainments; or possibly picture display was part of a deliberate political policy engineered by the Stuarts. There is also the question of the link between religion and art which is the subject of a series on AHT- link.

British School, 17^th Century, An Interior with Charles I, Henrietta Maria, the Earls of Pembroke and Jeffrey Hudson, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 110.5 x 147.7 cm, Royal Collection.

Wenceslaus Hollar, Whitehall from the Thames, 15 x 29 cm, British Museum.

Titian, The Entombment, 1523-26, Oil on canvas, 148 x 205 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I (1600-1649) with M. de St Antoine, 1633, oil on canvas, 370 x 270 cm, Royal Collection.

Charles I’s Taste in Painting.

Obviously, the surface can only be scratched here as Charles’s collection was massive, especially after the addition of the Gonzaga holdings obtained in 1631. For some reason the King found paintings by Veronese “not verie acceptable” according to Basil Viscount Feilding (later 2^ndEarl of Denbigh). By contrast, Titian was well-represented and it might reasonably be asked what accounts for the Stuart appreciation of Titian? In the words of Francis Haskell, Titian had perfected “a style combining sensuousness and elegance that, because it could nourish the genius of later generations of artists, never ran the risk of appearing old-fashioned.”^{^[5]} An interesting exercise would be to compare Charles’s love of Titian with a modern painter like Van Dyck who could keep update Titian’s own style to suit the needs of the court. The collection would comprise a mixture of mainly Dutch, Flemish and Italian paintings. From the 1630s Van Dyck’s star would be in the ascendant;[6]there were many paintings by Rubens; and minor Dutch painters like Honthorst painted the King and Buckingham. Largely unsuccessful in luring Italian painters to his court with the exception of the Gentileschi (actually Buckingham’s guests and protected by Henrietta Maria), Charles was determined to acquire Italian art both from the renaissance and contemporary painters. From Italy, paintings by Guido Reni, Caravaggio, Gentileschi and Baglione were to be seen.[7]But it was the purchase of the lion’s share of the Mantuan collection in 1627 for £30,000, not without its complications, that boosted the King’s Italian pictures.[8]

Tintoretto, The Muses, 1578, oil on canvas, 206 x 310 cm, Royal Collection

Palma Giovane, Holy Family, 1527-8, oil on poplar panel, 60 x 81.5 cm, Royal Collection.

Correggio, Nymph with Satyr (“Jupiter and Antiope”) , oil on canvas, 190 x 124 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Woman, 1528-32, oil on poplar, 56.6 x 66.2 cm, Royal Collection

Hamilton’s Bewitchment by Art.

There exists an inventory drawn up in 1643 of the abandoned collection of the 3^rd Marquess of Hamilton.[9]These 600 pictures carry no attributions, but painstaking work has established that 50% were Venetian. Though Hamilton owned these pictures for only 5 years, the collection “retained its integrity” (Shakeshaft) past 1649 much more than the Stuart holdings. The collection passed through various hands, but a core of about 50 pictures entered the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Among these were Venetian masterpieces like G Bellini’s Young Girl Holding a Mirror, D Fetti’s mythological series including Hero and Leander, Titian’s “Madonna of the Cherries” and many others. Spurred on by the family tradition of collecting Venetian art, and inheriting his father’s pictures, the new Marquis was ready to take advantage of the Venetian art market opening up in the 1630s. Hamilton also seems to have inherited Buckingham’s dislike of Arundel since he set himself to beat the Earl and his agent William Petty. As Francis Haskell said, for Hamilton “picture collecting signified essentially the continuation of politics by other means”, while Jonathan Brown said Hamilton’s “sudden dedication to pictures is explained partly by his political manoeuvres.”[10]Hamilton was helped in his competition with Arundel by his brother-in-law, Viscount Feilding, who was posted to Venice as ambassador. While he wasn’t a great diplomat, Feilding seems to have had an eye for a picture, even developing his own taste for Roman artists as distinct from Hamilton’s Venetian preferences.[11] Feilding’s chief function however was to publicly search out the Venetian collections, including those of the Procurator Priuli and the merchant, Bartolomeo della Nave. Though not as vast as the Gonzaga collections, one scholar thought the Marquis’s pictures “were fully comparable to the Mantua pictures in quality.”[12]Looking at the splendid array of pictures represented in the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s gallery (the previous home of most of Hamilton’s pictures), one would find it hard to disagree.

Sir Anthony Van Dyke, Sir James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606-1649), 1630s, Oil on canvas, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna.

Titian, “Madonna of the Cherries”, c. 1515, Oil on wood, transferred to canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Domenico Fetti, Hero and Leander, 1622-23, Oil on wood, 42 x 96 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

David Teniers the Younger, The Picture Gallery of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, oil on canvas, 93 x 127 cm, Schleissheim.

Slides.

1)      William Dobson, Portrait of Abraham van der Doort+, c. 1640, Oil on canvas, 45 x 38 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
2)      Wenceslaus Hollar, Whitehall from the Thames, 15 x 29 cm, British Museum.
3)      British School, 17^th Century, An Interior with Charles I, Henrietta Maria, the Earls of Pembroke and Jeffrey Hudson, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 110.5 x 147.7 cm, Royal Collection.[13]
4)      Titian, The Entombment, 1523-26, Oil on canvas, 148 x 205 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
5)      Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger, The Liberation of St Peter, 1619, oil on copper, 48.3 x 66.0 cm, Royal Collection.[14]
6)      Paolo Veronese, The Finding of Moses, oil on canvas, 50 x 43, Prado,Madrid. [15]
7)      Orazio Gentileschi, The Finding of Moses, about 1633, oil on canvas, 242 x 281 cm, Prado, Madrid.[16]
8)      Sir Anthony van Dyck, Orazio Gentileschi, 1632-9, black chalk, with some grey wash in the shadows and a few touches of pen and sepia, on paper (the principled lines are intended for transfer), 240 x 179 mm, British Museum.^{^[17]}
9)      Gerrit van Honthorst, The Duke of Buckingham and his Family, 1628?, oil on canvas, 132.5 x 192.8 cm, Royal Collection. [18]
10)   Gerrit van Honthorst, Apollo and Diana, 1628, oil on canvas, 357 x 640 cm, Royal Collection. [19]
11)   Gerrit van Honthorst, Portrait of King Charles I with a Letter in his Hand, 1628, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 64.1 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.[20]
12)   Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I (1600-1649) with M. de St Antoine, 1633, oil on canvas, 370 x 270 cm, Royal Collection.[21]
13)   Daniel Mytens, Self-Portrait, c. 1630, oil on oak panel, 68.3 x 58.9 cm, Royal Collection.[22]
14)   Tintoretto, The Muses, 1578, oil on canvas, 206 x 310 cm, Royal Collection.[23]
15)   Palma Giovane, Holy Family, 1527-8, oil on poplar panel, 60 x 81.5 cm, Royal Collection.[24]
16)   Correggio, Nymph with Satyr (“Jupiter and Antiope”) , oil on canvas, 190 x 124 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.[25]
17)   Correggio, Study for Nymph in above, red chalk, Royal Collection.[26]
18)   Andrea Mantegna, The Death of the Virgin, c. 1460, tempera and gold on wood, 54 x 42 cm, Prado, Madrid.[27]
19)   Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Woman, 1528-32, oil on poplar, 56.6 x 66.2 cm, Royal Collection.[28]
20)   Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Peace and War, oil on canvas, 203.5 x 298 cm, National Gallery, London.[29]
21)   Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Queen Henrietta Maria, Before Aug 1632?, oil on canvas, 109. X 86.2 cm, Royal Collection. [30]
22)   Domenico Puligo, Portrait of a Lady (prev att to Andrea dal Sarto), 1520-30, oil on poplar panel, 58.8 x 38.6 cm.[31]
23)   Anastasio Fontebuoni, Madonna di Pistoia, 1621-23, oil on canvas, 172.3 x 132.4 cm, Royal Collection.[32]
24)   Sir Anthony van Dyck, Charles I of England and Henrietta of France, before 1632, Oil on canvas, 67 x 83 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
25)   Sir Anthony Van Dyke, Sir James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606-1649), 1630s, Oil on canvas, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna.
26)   Geertgen tot Sint Jans, The Bones of St. John the Baptist, c. 1485, Oil on panel, 172 x 139 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
27)   Giovanni Bellini, Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, 1515, Oil on canvas, 62 x 79 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
28)   Domenico Fetti, Hero and Leander, 1622-23, Oil on wood, 42 x 96 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
29)   David Teniers the Younger, The Picture Gallery of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, oil on canvas, 93 x 127 cm, Schleissheim.[33]
30)   Titian, “Madonna of the Cherries”, c. 1515, Oil on wood, transferred to canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
31)   Domenico Fetti, David and Goliath, 1620, oil on canvas, 153.5 x 125.1 cm, Royal Collection.[34]
32)   Palma Vecchio, Nymphs Bathing, oil on canvas mounted on panel, 77.5 x 124 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[35]
33)   Nicholas Régnier, Self-Portrait with a Portrait on an Easel, 1623-24, Oil on canvas, 111 x 138 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.[36]
34)   Tintoretto, Susannah and the Elders, oil on canvas, 147 x 194 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

[1] Extracted from Barrie Penrose and Simon Fielding’s discussion of another Surveyor, Anthony Blunt (1943-1973) in Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt, (Grafton Books, 1986), 311-312. Though non-art historians, Penrose and Fielding provide an admirable summary of the requirements of a connoisseur and a good summary of Van Doort’s duties which entailed “the vivid description of each picture and discussion of its frame, the information about provenance, and the distinction drawn between originals, copies and insecure attributions.”

[2]Adrian van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I, edited with an introduction by Oliver Millar, (The Walpole Society, vol. 37, 1958-60). This was issued only to subscribers, but for a description, see the informative review by Robert R. Wark, Art Bulletin, Vol. 43, no. 1, (Dec, 1961), 348-351. There is a version of the 18^th century transcription of the Van der Doort inventory by George Vertue which can be downloaded here. Link.

[3] There is a helpful summary in the handbook to the exhibition Italian Painting and Drawings: the Royal Collection (London, 2007), 19-20.

[4] Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 80. On Sterry’s use of Van Dyck in his sermons, see Vivian de Sola Pinto, Peter Sterry: Platonist and Puritan 1613-1672(CUP, 2013). Pinto (21-22) says that while residing near Whitehall Sterry studied Van Dyck’s portraits of the Royal family, his Madone aux Pedrix as well as Titian’s Entombment, now in the Louvre.

[5]Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 35.

[6]Van Dyck was made “principalle Paynter in Ordinary to their Majesties” on 5^thJuly, 1632.

[7] Gabriele Finaldi stated (Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, London, NG, 1999, 9) that Orazio “created pictures of great refinement and beauty which pleased the King.” But this view was originated by the founder of Orazio studies, R Ward Bissell, who casts Orazio as a “Cavalier painter” in the vein of the Caroline poets. This has been thoroughly refuted by Jeremy Wood who shows how little Orazio actually produced compared to his great court rival Anthony van Dyck, the “modern Titian” and the only “Cavalier painter” at the court. Wood also shows how Charles I relied more on Northern European artists than their southern counterparts like Honthorst: “Orazio Gentileschi and some Netherlandish Artists in London: the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria”, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 28, No. 3, (2000-2001), 103-128. See also Wood and Finaldi’s “Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I” in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (Met, New York, 2001), 223-231.

[8]For the travails of the Mantuan purchase including mishaps at sea, unscrupulous dealers and the like, David Haworth “Mantua Peeces: Charles I and the Gonzaga Collection” in Splendours of the Gonzaga, (ed) David Chambers and Jane Martineau, (V&A, London, 1981-82), 95-100.

[9]The article to read is Paul Shakeshaft’s “To much bewiched with thoes intysing things”: the letters of James, third Marquis of Hamilton and Basil, Viscount Feilding, concerning collecting in Venice 1635-1639”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 128, No 995, (Feb 1986), 114-134.

[10]Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 25: Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth- Century Europe, (Yale 1995), 50.

[11]The inclusion of a group of Fetti’s pictures in Hamilton’s collection seems to reflect the taste of Feilding rather than the Marquis. Hamilton broke with convention here as Fetti was of great interest to the Stuart court- about 17 owned by the Queen. Feilding’s taste seems to have been more Roman than Venetian (Lanfranco, Valentin, Reni and Baglione).

[12] Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 27.

[13]From RC website: “Purchased by Queen Victoria from Christie's, 1888. Three other versions are known.”

[14]From RC website: “Possibly acquired by Frederick, Prince of Wales, first recorded in the Royal Collection during the reign of George III.” There is an untraced painting, “Perspective” by Steenwyck with figures by Gentileschi. Ash MS, in Somerset Hse, No. 59. For other examples of Steenwyck- link.

[15] From Cavallini to Veronese: “Finding of Moses. Canvas, 50 x 43.Pharaoh’s daughter, dressed in the height of sixteenth-century Venetian fashion, is shown the infant Moses by her attendants. On the left, a black servant holds the rush basket in which he was found. On the right, a dwarf holds a pipe (recorder or shawn). Generally regarded as the finest of a number of pictures of the Finding of Moses by Veronese and/or his workshop. (There is one almost equally small and almost identical in composition at Washington; larger versions at Dresden, Lyon and Dijon in which the composition is reversed; a very large version at Turin apparently inspired by Raphael’s ceiling fresco in the Vatican Loggia; and yet another version at Liverpool with a substantially different composition.) The Madrid picture is probably one of two small versions of the subject that were owned by Charles I. It is recorded at the Alcázar in Madrid in 1666. On the evidence of drawings (including sketches on the back of a letter dated 28 September 1582), the various versions of the Finding of Moses may all date from the early 1580s.”

[16]Gabriele Finaldi in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, No 9. The other version previously in Charles I’s collection (Gabriele Finaldi, no 8 in the same catalogue) is currently on loan to the NG from a private collection. It is recorded in the house of the painter Emanuel de Critz in 1651 of whom more next week. It later passed through the Orleans collection and hung at Castle Howard until 1995. See the entry on the second version in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi(Met, New York, 2001), no. 48.

[17]Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, No 12.

[18] From RCT website: “Recorded in the collection of Charles I.” For more information- link.

[19] From RCT website: “Recorded in the collection of Charles I, perhaps originally commissioned by the Duke of Buckingham.” For more details- link

[20]Exhibited in Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, (London and The Hague, 2007), No. 31.

[21] From RCT website: “Painted for Charles I, 1633; valued by the Trustees for Sale and sold to `Pope', 22 December 1652; Remingius van Leemput; recovered for Charles II, 1660.” For longer description- link.

[22]This would have hung in Whitehall in company with self-portraits by Rubens and Van Dyck.

[23] From RCT website: “Recorded in the Mantuan inventory, 1627; acquired by Charles I; valued at £80 by the Trustees for Sale and sold to Widmore, 28 May 1650; recovered at the Restoration.” For more details- link

[24]From R.C website: “By 1629 in collection of Charles I; probably the picture appraised at St James's, 16 February 1650, at £200, and bought by Gaspars, 22 March; recovered at the Restoration.”

[25]Acquired by Jabach, and then into the French Royal collections. Usually paired with the Education of Cupid (NG, London) which may have been copied by the English artist Isaac Oliver according to Bevilaqua and Quintavalle’s catalogue: L’opera completa del Correggio, (Milan, 1970), Nos 72-73.

[26]L’ opera completa, Appendix, “Drawings.”

[27]Probably No. 27 in Van der Doort’s inventory. Exhibited in Andrea Mantegna(London, New York, 1992), no. 17.

[28]RCT website states: “Acquired by Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga collection; recovered at the Restoration.” For details- link.

[29]Ash MS: In the “Bear-Gallery”l, No 13.

[30]From RC website: “On 8 August 1632, Charles I authorized payment to Van Dyck for £20 for ‘One of our royall Consort’. It may be No 1 “In the King’s Bedchamber” in Ash. MS. For more details- link.

[31]From RC website: “Probably the picture acquired by Cardinal Francesco Barberini from the heirs of Cardinal del Monte and sent to Queen Henrietta Maria (as a present for Charles I) on 28 July 1635.”

[32] Wood thought it is by Baglione, but as noted by him the attribution was changed to Anon. by Levey. It is too sweet for Baglione and though has certain “Caravaggio-esque” elements, it is more of a throwback to the Florentine mannerism of the late 16^thcentury. From RC website: “Provenance: In the collection of Charles I; possibly a papal gift to Queen Henrietta Maria; valued by the Trustees for Sale at Somerset House, 1649 and sold to Bass and others on 19 December 1651; recovered after the Restoration.” Click herefor longer description.

[33]The Fetti “Hero and Leander” is indicated by the Archduke in this picture while Teniers steadies Titian’s Madonna of the Cherries. On the Archduke’s Gallery, see David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting (Courtauld Inst, London, 2006).

[34]RC website states: “Probably part of the Mantuan sale to Charles I; valued at £20 by the Trustees for Sale in October 1649 and sold to Houghton and others on 16 January 1652; recovered at the Restoration.” For the Queen’s Fettis- link.

[35] Described in 1637: “A bath with 14 figures washing themselves at a fountain in faire landskip.” Panofsky believed that this was the painting that Titian referred to in a letter to Federigo Gonzaga in 1530- “Le Donne del Bagno.” See further The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, (London, 1983-4), No. 77. Copy by Teniers which was previously in Johnny van Haeften’s stock (David Teniers, London, 2006, no. 27). Freedberg’s comments on this intriguing picture are worth presenting: “Linear excitements made from liberties of description in the nude (and in the shapes of landscapes, too), an ornamentalism in design, and the transposition of Venetian colour into a high, silvered key give this work an affinity with the temper and forms of a Maniera, making a singular anticipation of an alteration in Venetian style that would not recur to this degree for almost twenty years.”

[36]Regnier moved from Rome to Venice in 1626. His collection would have suited both the tastes of Feilding and Hamilton as it contained works by Valentin and Tintoretto. For the argument that the depicted man is the Marchese Vincenzo Guistiniani, see the argument of Clovis Whitfield, The Genius of Rome: 1592-1623 (London, 2000), No. 49.

Seizure of the Pictures.

The first “authorized moves” (Haskell) may have been carried out at the end of October, 1642. Nine months after the King left London, parliamentary troops seized Windsor Castle and removed the magnificent silver plate made by Christian van Vianen for the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter lost, presumably melted down. From early 1643 onwards, more systematic confiscation and destruction followed and an inventory was made of Queen’s “hangings and household stuff.” A Rubens’s altarpiece may have been thrown in the Thames and it may have had some connection with James I’s Catholic Secretary of State, Sir George Calvert.[1]This Crucifixion by Rubens definitely hung in the Queen’s Chapel, and it seems to have been a victim of Puritan anger. It is known that instructions were given to deface “superstitious” paintings in the chapel of St James’s Palace, but it is not known which, although it looks like Rubens’s altarpiece was destroyed by an enraged Parliamentary commissioner in March 1643 on site rather than being thrown in the river.[2]Despite this vandalism, the King’s pictures survived the war “relatively unscathed.” The King’s collection became a target for the Puritans in whom it aroused anger because of the large sums spent on it, at a time when Charles was engaged in levying taxes without summoning Parliament.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Charles I, King of England at the Hunt, 1635, Oil on canvas, 266 x 207 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Att to Sir Anthony van Dyck, Crucifixion, c. 1615, 333 x 282 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

Unknown, Sir George Calvert, Secretary of State.

Paulus van Somer, King James I of England, Oil on canvas, 196 x 120 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Late King’s Goods & the Sale of His Collection.

Charles I was executed on 30^th January 1649, and two days later the Commons appointed a special committee to look after his possessions and have them locked up. A few weeks later Parliament authorized the Council of State to sell them off to pay the King’s debts, “reserving only what was necessary for the State, though this was not to exceed £10,000 in value.” Commissioners with extensive powers were appointed to draw up full inventories and to put a valuation on individual items so that these could be sold, and it was acknowledged from the first that prices would be much higher if works of art were sold abroad. The first £30,000 to be raised from these sales was to be lent to the navy, which would have to pay that sum back within about 18 months. The remaining profits were to be used to settle the debts owed to the King’s servants. The actual sales were to be conducted in the great hall of Somerset House, which had been one of the royal palaces. Contrary to what is often believed, there was never any question of an auction.[3] As Haskell says, it is “difficult to reconstruct the exact management of affairs.” There were large consignments to Somerset House because we know in May 1650 “some 250 paintings and 150 tapestries were available to shoppers visiting the palace.” (Haskell, 144). We are told that the pictures were in sections (in alphabetical sequence) placed in galleries “running around the room at a high level.” This made them difficult to see properly, also not helped by their condition- badly carried for and dusty.Initially, responses to the sale were disappointing as “times were bad, money was short and people were uneasy about acquiring the property of the late King.”[4] In the first months 38 individuals bought 375 pictures between them, but mostly at the lower end of the market which meant that by May 1650 only £7,750 had been raised from this source. This affected the King’s “Civil Servants” who were to be beneficiaries of the sale. So Parliament drew up a list of those most in need, to be paid in cash, if absolutely essential, but preferably in goods (furnishings and pictures) from Charles’s estate. So for example, a royal plumber who was owed £903 for repairs to various palaces and the Tower of London was given £400 in cash and then allowed to choose up to £500 of pictures, including Titian’s Saint Margaret Triumphing over the Devil.” Obviously, this suited Parliament,- but the plumber with a family to feed would want to turn the Titian into cash quickly. Among the “first-list” we find his silkman, his cutler, his linen-draper. There was a Second List of the King’s Creditors. More in this case was to be settled not in cash, but in goods. Because of this most of the creditors “organized themselves into 14 syndicates (which were called Dividends), under the leadership of one named individual, which in collaboration with the Trustees for the Sale, chose what to acquire up to a limit of £5,000 in the interests of his group. Within each syndicate, the objects were divided among members through the casting of votes; thus, in theory, each member became the owner of some painting or item of furniture, and could do what he liked with it.[5]However, most members recognised that it wasn’t easy to turn a Correggio into hard cash, so they tended to leave it to the head of the syndicate and ask him to arrange a sale on their behalf, possibly on the basis of a commission. These syndicates managed to acquire some of the King’s masterpieces. The one led by Thomas Bagley, the King’s glazier, obtained not only rich saddles to the value of £2,000 and 22 antique statues but also Correggio’s the Education Of Cupid, valued then at £800. Edward Bass, a minor under the Great Seal of the Realm, his syndicate was allocated Raphael’s La Perla valued at £2,000 and St George (Washington). The Eleventh Dividend (led by the King’s embroiderer, Edmund Harrison) were awarded Titian’s Pesaro and St Peter, Rubens’s Peace and War. The second syndicate, presided over by David Murray (the King’s Tailor) acquired not only many furnishings but Correggio’s Venus and Satyr (Louvre). Haskell says this is “perhaps the single most extraordinary episode in the history of English art collecting, or indeed that of any other nation.”[6]Haskell compares the English situation with the distribution of pictures in Holland and the Low Countries concluding that “The English market was not so democratic but neither was it aristocratic, or even oligarchic. It did not, however, last for long.”

Jacob de Formentrou (active Antwerp 1640-59), A Gallery of Pictures, 1659, Royal Collection

Raphael, The Holy Family, or La Perla, 1518-20,Oil on wood, 114 x 115 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Attributed to Caravaggio, (here rejected), c. 1602-4, The Calling of Sts Peter and Andrew, oil on canvas, 140.1 x 170 x cm

Raphael, St George and the Dragon, 1505-06, Oil on wood, 28.5 x 21.5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cromwell’s Share.[7]

A number of works were reserved by Cromwell for the State, but as Haskell said, it is “…very difficult to discern any taste or guiding principle at work in the making of these choices.”[8]A sum of £10,000 was put aside for this selection with another £10,000 to come later. Some of this was used for furnishings; Cromwell learned to live in “royal splendour” at Whitehall. Naturally, both Royalists and Parliamentarians were “alarmed” to discover that Cromwell had reserved for himself two pictures by Guilio Romano and his workshop- Omen of Claudius’s Imperial Power and Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. He also owned portraits of the King and Queen of France and the French Ambassador; the only other portrait was one of the royal jesters! However, Cromwell chose not to keep Titian’s Salome(Prado).[9] We also know he had an Infant Christ and Saint John Embracing (att to Parmigianino) called “two naked boys” to cloak its religious content. Additionally, Cambiaso’s Assumption of the Virgin was acquired by Cromwell under its correct title of “Mary Ascention wth ye Apostles looking on.” After the Reformation it is described as “part of the Assumption of the B. Virgin and the Apostles standing by about the Tombe.” The upper half may have been removed when it belonged to Cromwell. Francis Haskell says it was an “odd choice for him in the first place” as were two other pictures (untraced): Schiavone’s Mary, Elizabeth and Childor a Madonna with many angels and one with a scourge.

Sir Peter Lely, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell, Oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Workshop of Giulio Romano, Omen of Claudius’s Imperial Power, 1536-9, oil on panel, 121.4 x 93.5 cm, Royal Collection

Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar: 5. The Elephants, 1484-92, Tempera on canvas, 270.0 x 280.7 x 4.0 cm

Raphael, Death of Ananias, 1515, Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 385 x 440 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Collections Built up During the Interregnum.

Emanuel de Critz (1608-1665) was the son of a sarjeant painter to Charles I, included in the second list of the King’s creditors; he became head of three syndicates (first, fifth and fourteenth). Acquired Bernini’s Head of Charles I. Pictures in his collection included Tintoretto’s Esther before Ahasuerusand VD’s Charles I, Henrietta Maria with their Two Eldest Children“Great Peece”. In his house at Austen Friars (near Liverpool St Station), de Critz kept three rooms of the King’s pictures (some stored on behalf of other acquirers). He painted mediocre portraits while storing the Bernini and VD in another room. De Critz despised Cromwell because after he was awarded two antique busts from the royal collection, each valued at £120, these were retained by the government as part of its scheme for refurbishing Whitehall Palace for the Lord Protector, which affected him financially. Brought to account for his part in the Dividend scheme, De Critz reminded Charles II that he had rescued an Antinous (commissioned by Charles I) after a “fanatical Quaker” had threatened to smash it with a hammer. It sounds like a story invented to save the painter’s skin.

Colonel John Hutchison (bap. 1615 d 1664) as revealed through the testimony of his wife Lucy. In Farancis Haskell’s words, “Mrs Hutchison’s most revealing comment about her husband is that although he always remained loyal to his Puritan upbringing and abominated the ‘false, carnall, and Antichristian Doctrines of Rome’, nonetheless he ‘ had greate judgment in paintings [en] graving, sculpture, and all excellent arts, wherein he was much delighted…and would rather chuse to have none than meane jewells or pictures.”[10]Hutchison won fame in the Civil War for his strong defence of Nottingham against the royalists. He was one of the judges who sentenced the King to death on 27th January, 1649, and nearly nine months later he buys £160 worth of the King’s pictures on the first day of his posthumous sale. These included “various still lives” and surprisingly, given his Puritan background a Naked Venus and Cupid by Palma Giovane. A week later he became more ambitious and he bought three pictures attributed to Titian, including the Venus del Pardo (Louvre), the picture that Philip IV had given to the Prince of Wales soon to become Charles I. It had been valued at £500 but Hutchison had to pay £600 to get it. Then he added Holbein’s Johann Froben to his collection. IN all he spent £1,349 in cash- more than any other purchaser- for about twenty pictures, in addition sculpture, tapestries and furnishings. (179). He took his possessions to his house at Owthorpe in Nottinghamshire “intending a very neate Cabinet for them, and together “with the surveying of his buildings, and emprooving by enclosure the place he liv’d in”, they “employed him at att home…and [he] pleas’d himselfe with musick and againe fell to the practise of his violl.” Haskell says that Hutchison’s situation is important because it sheds light on the origin of the country house collection; and it shows that not every collector in those times was a courtier. Hutchison kept the Venus del Pardo for four years despite the Spanish Ambassador was keen to get hold of it. By December, 1653 it was being offered for sale at £6,000, but within three days the price had risen to £7,000. Monsieur de Bordeaux, Mazarin’s representative thought this was expensive, especially as £2,000 had to be put down at once. Colonel Hutchison thought it was reasonable because he was selling it for the sum he had paid for it.[11]Haskell asks if Hutchison was a genuine admirer of high quality art, or was he just selling for speculation? After the Civil War Hutchinson escaped execution but was discharged from the army and made ineligible for public office of any kind (and later imprisoned for alleged plotting). Hutchison was also denounced to the Lord’s Committee for possessing one of Charles I’s pictures, a Titian Holy Family (now att to Palma Giovane, Royal Coll).

Philip Lord Lisle. In his youth, Philip Lord Lisle (1619-1698) had accompanied his father (Lord Northumberland) on embassies to Copenhagen and Paris. He supported Parliament during the Civil War, but refused to serve as a judge at the trial of Charles I. He acquired between 50- 60 paintings and nearly 30 pieces of sculpture, more than any other single collector in England. Northumberland according to Haskell was the only person in the country trying to build up a collection of Old Masters from scratch. This meant he bought at either second, or even third hand, either for purchasers for cash at the initial sale such as Colonel Webb, from whom he bought Francesco Bassano (att) Summer and Boas or from royal servants like David Murray (Charles I’s tailor) Guilio Romano’s Chiron and Achilles. Lord Lisle selected works that caught his fancy rather than rely on learned opinion. He had panels by Polidoro di Caravaggio’s including his Putti with Goats, Jacopo Bassano’s The Good Samaritan and Holbein’s William Reskimer.[12]He returned these with reluctance, like his uncle, Lord Northumberland who faced a conflict of interest because he was on the picture restitution Committee. Unlike the lowly tradesmen, Lord Lisle haughtily declared that “conceiving that some Pictures and Statues are in his Custody which might be the late King Majesty’s, that he would keep them in Safety, and be ready at His Majesty’s Command, or at the Command of this House, to deliver them as he shall de directed.” The absolute final date for the return of the King’s goods was September 1660. Lord Lisle’s two batches were sent on 8^th and 10^thSeptember.[13]

Sir Justinian Isham. Isham was a cultured man who inherited Lamport Hall in which he hung a full-size copy of Van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I. This landed him in hot water with the parliamentary authorities who arrested him. Released he continued to build and collect art; he also had copies of other Van Dycks and Titian’s Portrait of Cardinal Armagnac.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary (“The Great Piece”), 1631-32, oil on canvas, 303.8 x 256.5 cm, Royal Collection

Hans Holbein the Younger, Johannes Froben, 1522, oil on panel, 48.8 x 32.4 cm, Royal Collection

Polidoro da Caravaggio, Putti with Goats, c. 1527-8, oil on pine panel, 31 x 120 cm, Royal Collection

Att to, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Justinian Isham (1610-75), oil on canvas, 60 x 47 cm, Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire

Restoration and Restitution.

Army officials were appointed to seize goods that had belonged (or thought to have belonged) to Charles I. Their methods could be brutal resulting in innocent citizens suffering. The committee had two important instruments: official document relating to the sales held on behalf of the King’s creditors between 1649 and 1653; it offered to reward “any of our well affected subjects or others who shall discover unto us any of the said Goods willfully concealed.” There were a lot of denunciations, mostly anonymous. Amongst the informers was the Flemish painter George Geldorp (d 1665) and a close friend of Van Dyck. Geldorp may have been telling the truth when he said that the pictures of Charles I were there for safe-keeping but he had a dubious reputation. The Earl of Pembroke stated that he had in his possession “four of five pictures which possibly did belong to the King”, but he said that he had bought one from Geldorp. One of Geldorp’s least charitable acts was to shop the Merchant Mr Trion who had Van Dyck’s Portrait of Charles’s I Children (Royal Coll); and M Vaeytchell who had VD’s Portrait of the Young Duke of Buckingham and his Brother. Other owners gave up their pictures voluntarily, like some of the King’s creditors including Edmund Harrison, the King’s embroiderer who lived in Grub Street (his cache included Myten’s Portrait of Christian, Duke of Brunswick. Harrison didn’t refer to the great pictures he had sold to the Spanish (Titian’s Pope Alexander VI Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to St Peter; and Rubens’s Peace and War). As for these lowly born men, Harrisons, Samwells, Merridays and Beesomes, it was a financial catastrophe. During the Restoration, their receipts from the King’s sale stating that their new goods and chattels would be theirs “for ever, to all intents and purposes whatsoever” were ruthlessly torn up and they were unable to recoup money owed to them.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, The Five Eldest Children of Charles I, 1637, oil on canvas, 163.2 x 198.8 cm, Royal Collection

Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628-87), and Lord Francis Villiers (1629-48), 1635, oil on canvas, 186.7 x 137.2 cm

Titian, Pope Alexander VI Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to St Peter, 1506-11, Oil on canvas, 146 x 184 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

George Geldorp, Portrait of a Lady, oil on canvas, 225 x 150 cm, Chequers Court.

Slides.

1)      Sir Anthony van Dyck, Charles I, King of England at the Hunt, 1635, Oil on canvas, 266 x 207 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[14]
2)      Att to Sir Anthony van Dyck, Crucifixion, c. 1615, 333 x 282 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.
3)      Unknown, Sir George Calvert, Secretary of State,
4)      Paulus van Somer, King James I of England, Oil on canvas, 196 x 120 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[15]
5)      After Raphael, Christ’s Charge to Peter, Tapestry, Vatican Museum.[16]
6)      Nicholas Briot, Portrait medal of Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, silver medal, 1625, Fitzwilliam Museum.[17]
7)      Jacob de Formentrou (active Antwerp 1640-59), A Gallery of Pictures, 1659, Royal Collection.[18]
8)      George Geldorp, Portrait of a Lady, oil on canvas, 225 x 150 cm, Chequers Court.
9)      Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary (“The Great Piece”), 1631-32, oil on canvas, 303.8 x 256.5 cm, Royal Collection.[19]
10)   Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628-87), and Lord Francis Villiers (1629-48), 1635, oil on canvas, 186.7 x 137.2 cm.
11)   Emmanuel de Critz, John Tradescant the Younger with Roger Friend and a Collection of Exotic Shells, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, oil on canvas, 107 x 132 cm.[20]
12)   Sir Anthony van Dyck, The Five Eldest Children of Charles I, 1637, oil on canvas, 163.2 x 198.8 cm, Royal Collection.[21]
13)   Attributed to Caravaggio, c. 1602-4, The Calling of Sts Peter and Andrew, oil on canvas, 140.1 x 170 x cm.[22]
14)   Attributed to Caravaggio, The Annunciation, 1609-10?, oil on canvas, 285 x 205 cm, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.[23]
15)   Daniel Mytens, Duke of Brunswick, 1624?, oil on canvas, 220.6 x 140 cm, Royal Collection.[24]
16)   Titian, Pope Alexander VI Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to St Peter, 1506-11, Oil on canvas, 146 x 184 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.[25]
17)   Raphael, The Holy Family, or La Perla, 1518-20,Oil on wood, 114 x 115 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
18)   Raphael, St George and the Dragon, 1505-06, Oil on wood, 28.5 x 21.5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.[26]
19)   Sir Peter Lely, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell, Oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.[27]
20)   After Sir Anthony van Dyck, Title Page to L’Estrange’s History of Charles I, 1654.
21)   After William Faithorne, O Cromwell Crushing Babylon, i.e. the Stuart Court, etching, 17^th century.
22)   Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar: 1. The Picture-Bearers, after 1486, Tempera on canvas, 270.3 x 280.7 cm, Royal Collection, Hampton Court.[28]
23)   Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar: 5. The Elephants, 1484-92, Tempera on canvas, 270.0 x 280.7 x 4.0 cm.[29]
24)   Raphael, Death of Ananias, 1515, Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 385 x 440 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[30]
25)   Titian, Salome, about 1555, oil on canvas, 87 x 80, Prado, Madrid.[31]
26)   Workshop of Giulio Romano, Omen of Claudius’s Imperial Power, 1536-9, oil on panel, 121.4 x 93.5 cm, Royal Collection.[32]
27)   Andrea dal Sarto, Madonna della Scala, 1522-3, Oil on panel, 177 x 135 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[33]
28)   Unknown, Portrait of Colonel John Hutchinson.[34]
29)   Hans Holbein the Younger, Johannes Froben, 1522, oil on panel, 48.8 x 32.4 cm, Royal Collection.[35]
30)   , c. 1522-23, oil on panel, 48.8 x 32.4 cm, Royal Collection.[36]
31)   Hans Holbein the Younger, William Reskimmer, c. 1532-34, oil on panel, 46 x 33.5 cm, Royal Collection.[37]
32)   Polidoro da Caravaggio, Putti with Goats, c. 1527-8, oil on pine panel, 31 x 120 cm, Royal Collection.[38]
33)   Jacopo Bassano, The Good Samaritan, 1545-50, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 84.2 cm, Royal Collection.[39]
34)   Att to, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Justinian Isham (1610-75), oil on canvas, 60 x 47 cm, Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire.[40]
35)   Lamport Hall.[41]
36)   After Anthony van Dyck, Charles I (1600-49) on a White Horse, after 1633, oil on canvas, 361 x 274 cm, Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire.[42]
37)   Titian, Cardinal Armignac and his Secretaries, oil on canvas, 104 x 114 cm, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.[43]

[1] On Calvert and his involvement in the commissioning of a lost Crucifixion by Rubens, subsequently given to the Duke of Buckingham, see Albert J. Loomie, “A Lost Crucifixion by Rubens”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, No. 1124, Nov (1996), 734-739.

[2]Rubens’s Crucifixion was a victim of the Puritans’ attack on the Queen. A document relating to the Capuchins provides an eye-witness account of the destruction of the work probably done after Henrietta Maria returned from a year’s sojourn in the Netherlands in 1643. Despite protests from two French aristocrats, agents for Louis XIII, the doors of the Queen’s Chapel were battered down and an onslaught begun on the religious art. Loomie published a subsequent article on this elusive altar: “The destruction of Rubens’s Crucifixion in the Queen’s Chapel, Somerset House”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 140, No. 1147, (Oct 1998), 680-682.

[3] Haskell says that the “prices assigned to by the Commissioners to the huge number of works of art they had to dispose of were not intrinsically unreasonable and certainly not incoherent,” The King’s Pictures, 137.

[4]Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 67f.

[5] Francis Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 146.

[6]Haskell, 150: “Great masterpieces painted by Correggio and Titian, by Raphael, Holbein, by Rubens and van Dyck, for kings and princes, cardinals and courtiers were now to be found in small houses scattered through London and the countryside belonging to haberdashers and glaziers, cutlers, musicians and painters.”

[7]“In this manner did the neighbour princes join to assist Cromwell with very great sums of money…while they enriched and adorned themselves with the ruins and spoils of the surviving heir (the Prince of Wales). Lord Clarendon

[8]Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 138.

[9] Haskell, The King’s Pictures, (142-3) says that “what is so astonishing about the pictures that Cromwell did keep is not so much the fact that, with the exception of portraits by the Dutchman Paul van Somer and one seascape by Jan Porcellis, every single one of them is by an Italian artist, but that so many are of subjects that one would have thought of as dangerously provocative.”

[10] Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 177-8.

[11] Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 180. “The reason why the Colonel was able to make a profit of more than 1,1000 per cent on the picture was simple enough, and M. de Bordeaux fully grasped it. Competition from his rival Alonso de Cardenas meant that both ambassadors were now facing a seller’s market.”

[12]Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 186: “Thus Lisle proved to be the only nobleman to come to prominence during the war who was emulating the achievements of the previous generation in aiming to build up a family collection of old masters. In doing so he was reversing the situation of the last few years: pictures once again resumed their conventional course to, rather than from, the walls of the nobility.If the political situation had not changed so dramatically Lord Lisle would therefore surely have earned a noteworthy place in the history of art collecting. But the situation did change, and he found himself instructed to return all his carefully selected pictures to the restored monarchy.”

[13] Haskell (188). “Why, when so much was available to him did he buy what he (Lisle) did? His Bassanos were good as were his Polidoros. But there were Titians on the market and Correggios and Rubenses. Was it a question of money, or timing (though he seems to have been already collecting by 1650) or predilection? I cannot even to begin to answer a single one of these questions, but just to ask them does seem to me to throw some light on the achievements of Lord Arundel and the dukes of Buckingham and Hamilton, even if we exclude the King because of his very special position.”

[14]Collection of Louis XIV, purchased in 1775 from Madame du Barry.

[15] Example of Oath of Allegiance. “I, A.B., do truly and sincerely acknowledge, &c. that our sovereign lord, King James, is lawful and rightful King &c. and that the pope neither of himself nor by any authority of Church or See of Rome, or by any other means with any other, has any power to depose the king &c., or to authorize any foreign prince to invade him &c., or to give licence to any to bear arms, raise tumults, &c. &c. Also I do swear that notwithstanding any sentence of excommunication or deprivation I will bear allegiance and true faith to his Majesty &c. &c. And I do further swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure, as impious and heretical this damnable doctrine and position,--that princes which be excommunicated by the pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or by any other whatsoever. And I do believe that the pope has no power to absolve me from this oath. I do swear according to the plain and common sense, and understanding of the same words &c. &c. &c" (3 James I, c. 4).”

[16]See the catalogue to the exhibition of the cartoons and tapestries held at the V & A in London, 2010.

[17] Acquired by the Art Fund in 2003. More information on this collector by Karen Hearn, “A Question of Judgement: Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector” in The Evolution of English Collecting, 221-239.

[18]All the pictures are named on the RC website- link

[19]From the RC website: “The painting was known as 'The Greate Peece' at the time and Charles hung it prominently in the Palace at Whitehall. What sets the picture apart from other paintings of the period is the apparently effortless way in which Van Dyck seemed able to combine the formal demands of official state portraiture with the informalities of family domesticity. Its size, the acres of shimmering silk and the grand classical column lend the image official gravity. Yet at the same time the King and Queen are seated, Charles has placed his crown on one side and two tiny dogs play between the royal couple. The composition is in essence, a royal conversation piece of a kind that was to be perfected by Johann Zoffany in the mid-18th century.” More- link

[20]Catalogue of Paintings in the Ashmoleon Museum, (1980), 29: “Presented by Mr Elias Ashmole in 1683”.

[21]Millar, The Age of Charles I, No. 105. Mary, Princess Royal, Later Princess of Orange, James, Duke of York, later James II, Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II, Elizabeth and Anne.

[22]From RC website: “Bought by Charles I from William Frizell in 1637; valued at £40 by the Trustees for Sale and sold to De Critz and others on 18 November 1651; recovered at the Restoration.” For my part, I think we are dealing with a copy- this design is known to have 12 of a lost original. Proposed as an original by Maurino in 1987. For the arguments about attribution, follow this link.

[23] For the pro-attributionists, the odd blue colour that appears in the Calling of Peter and Andrew also appears in the Nancy Annunciation, for which see Caravaggio: The Final Years, (London, 2005), No. 15 and bibliography.

[24]Possibly painted for James 1.

[25]Exhibitions: Titian: Prince of Painters (Washington and Venice, 190-91), No. 4; Titian (London, 2003), No. 3.

[26]Thought to have been a gift brought over with Castiglione for Henry VII; Hermitage outbid by Mellon in 1931. For the picture’s history, see Joanna Pitman, The Raphael Trail: The Secret History of One of the World’s Most Previous Works of Art, (Ebury Press, 2006).

[27] Cromwell famously said he wanted to be painted “warts and all.”- link

[28]Andrea Mantegna (London and New York, 1992), No. 108.

[29]Andrea Mantegna, No. 112.

[30] The Cartoons were valued £300 for the lot, London, 2010, No. 4.

[31]From the Cavallini to Veronese website: Salome. Canvas, 87 x 80. “A variant of the picture in Berlin – in which the girl, once said to represent Titian’s daughter Lavinia, holds up a dish of fruit rather than the head of the Baptist on a charger. Traditionally dated about 1555. Acquired by Philip IV in 1665 at the auction of the estate of the Marqués de Leganés.”

[32]From RC website: “‘The Omen of Claudius’s Imperial Powers’ was painted to hang beneath Titian’s ‘Claudius’ on the east wall of the Cabinet of Caesars. The subject is taken from Suetonius’s ‘Twelve Caesars’ (V, 7): Claudius, created a consul by his nephew the Emperor Gaius, received an omen of his future greatness, ‘as an eagle that was flying by lit upon his shoulder’. The eagle was the symbol of Imperial Rome, and also appeared on the coat of arms of the Gonzaga family, which is presumably why this incident was chosen and why the eagle here has its wings outstretched in such a heraldic fashion.” More- link

[33]Purchased by Colonel William Wetton- “very well done and held in great esteem as being a very worthy piece.” Wetton bought it for £230 and sold it for £300. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 76.

[34] Colonel John Hutchinson (1615–1664) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England from 1648 to 1653 and in 1660. He was one of the Puritan leaders, and fought in the parliamentary army in the English Civil War. As a member of the high court of justice in 1649 he was 13th of 39 Commissioners to sign the death-warrant of King Charles I. Although he avoided the fate of some of the other regicides executed after the Restoration, he was exempted from the general pardon,only to the extent that he could not hold a public office. In 1663, he was accused of involvement in the Farnley Wood Plot, was incarcerated and died in prison. Link.

[35]From RC website: “Purchased, together with RCIN 403036, by the 1st Duke of Buckingham from Michel Le Blond. Presented to Charles I by the Duke. Sold for £100 to Colonel Hutchinson 24 May 1650. Recovered at the Restoration.”

[36]Froben was a publisher that Holbein knew in Basle.

[37]Reskimmer became Page of the Chamber to Henry VIII in 1526. Presented to Charles I by Sir Robert Killigrew. Probably dates from Holbein’s second visit to England- see Holbein in London(Tate Britain, 2006), No. 34.

[38]From the RC website: “On the left a herm under a tree, a cupid feeding a she-goat and a putto playing (?) pipes; in the centre two goats are fighting; on the right a putto leads a ram, another is riding on a sack and wearing a hooded cape. This ornamental frieze by Polidoro da Caravaggio forms part of a series of nine panels, made up of three large scenes from the story of Cupid and Psyche and six narrow friezes. They are first recorded when acquired in 1637 by Charles I. There is no documentation of the original commission and no way of telling if the set of nine is complete, although the three Psyche scenes make what could be a stand-alone group of highlights from the story. The panels are obviously decorative and were probably painted in situ for an item of furniture or the panelling of a room; they were perhaps part of the decoration of a bed, the love story of Cupid and Psyche being an appropriate subject for a bedchamber- link.

[39]From RC website: “The painting is very well preserved with unusually little repainting. It is thinly painted and several pentimenti are visible; the Samaritan’s hand with its bandage was painted over the completed thigh of the nude and the mule’s foreleg, and the small white figure of the priest was added after the landscape was painted. The figure of the Samaritan is based on the same drawing which served (in the same direction) for the kneeling shepherd in the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ (RC405772), and (in reverse) for shepherds in the ‘Adoration of the Kings’ (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). The town visible in the background is Bassano, with Monte Grappa behind it. There is a closely related painting in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, and other versions of the subject by Bassano are in Prague and the National Gallery, London.” Link

[40]From Wikipedia: “He was admitted a fellow-commoner at Christ's College, Cambridge, on 18 April 1627.Isham was a man of culture, building a library at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire. Brian Duppa was a frequent correspondent of his; and he kept in touch with Seth Ward in Oxford. He was a patron of Alexander Ross. Loans to the king as well as fines to the parliament had greatly injured the Isham estates, when in 1651, Sir Justinian succeeded to the Isham baronetcy. He had been in prison for a short time during 1649, as a delinquent, and he was now forced to compound for the estate of Shangton in Leicestershire. After the Restoration he was elected M.P. for Northamptonshire in the parliament which met in 1661. Gilbert Clerke dedicated to him a 1662 work of natural philosophy. With Henry Power he was elected to the Royal Society, shortly after its 1663 charter came into force. He died at Oxford, on 2 March 1675, and is buried in the family burial place on the north side of the chancel in Lamport Church, where there is a Latin inscription to his memory.

[41] House built in 1568. “The Ishams have lived at Lamport since 1560 and during the succeeding centuries have taken unusual care of their family papers. These give a particularly complete picture of an old country family in the third quarter of the 17th century when the first Sir Justinian was squire, revealing the sense of uncertainty hanging over the gentry during the Commonwealth, and details of their financial difficulties and arrangements. Oliver Hill and John Cornforth, English Country Houses: Caroline1625-1685(Country Life, 1966), 97.

[42]Copy of Van Dyck equestrian portrait of Charles I acquired in 1655 for £250 from the dealer Maurice Wase. “The position of the portrait of Charles I was probably specially prepared for it, and being hung close to the floor, follows Van Dyck’s baroque intention when he painted the original for the gallery in St James’s. Maurice Wase’s letter relating to this picture is dated 24^thMay, 1655, and it was on the 9^th of June that Isham was arrested.” (English Country Houses, 100).

[43]Cavallini to Veronese: Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez, was French ambassador to Venice from 1536 to 1539, when this portrait was presumably painted. His secretary was Guillaume Philandrier (a pupil of the architect Serlio). The picture – one of the first by Titian to come to England – was acquired in France by the Duke of Buckingham in 1624. It was apparently appropriated by the Earl of Northumberland after Buckingham’s pictures were confiscated during the Civil War, and it has remained at Alnwick since 1671.”

The Collections of the Spanish Kings

The Spanish monarchs had a number of advantages over Charles I: they had been collecting for eighty years before the young prince visited Madrid and viewed the glory of their collections; they also had enjoyed the services of Titian as their painter, and therefore had a large number of his works in their palaces. It was to these gigantic holdings that the current King, Philip IV was to add old masters from his regal “brother’s” collection, though he would acquire them discreetly, not openly. Born in 1603, Philip had spent his childhood surrounded by a dazzling array of the finest old masters ranging from Titian to great Flemish artists like Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. The wealth of the Spanish collection owed much to the ambitions of the Hapsburgs, especially the Emperor Charles V who considered art patronage an effective way of spreading his political ideals. From 1532 Charles V had employed Titian and been rewarded with such surpassing masterpieces as Charles V with Hound, which was given to the future Charles I in 1623, but subsequently rescued by Alonso de Cardenas.[1]Titian would supply Charles V with pictures like the Gloria and Empress Isabellafrom the 1530s until the Emperor’s abdication. Another dimension was added to the Spanish collection with the acquisitions of Mary of Hungary, the Emperor’s sister who governed the Netherlands from 1531 to 1556. Mary added Flemish jewels to her collection like Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait and Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, arguably the two finest Northern paintings in the Spanish holdings. Not that she deserted Titian: she commissioned such portraits as Charles V on Horsebackand the portrait of her nephew, Philip II of Spain (1555-98) who also was no mean collector. The Spanish monarch who is remembered as the most inconsequential was Philip III (1598-1621) who was responsible for losing Correggio’s Leda and the Swan and the Rape of Ganymede, which he sold to his relative, Rudolph II.

Titian, Charles V Standing with His Dog, 1533, Oil on canvas, 192 x 111 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Unknown Netherlandish Artist, Portrait of Mary of Hungary, c. 1550, Oil on panel, diameter 9 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition, c. 1435, Oil on oak panel, 220 x 262 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, Oil on oak, 82 x 60 cm, National Gallery, London.

The Collections of Rubens, Leganès and Haro

When Rubens died in 1640, Spanish eyes turned on his collection which numbered several hundred pictures, much antique sculpture, medals and cameos.[2]From Rubens’s collection, Philip IV acquired about 29 paintings, including copies after Titian that the Flemish painter had made in the Royal Palace. The hoard included a number of Rubens’s own paintings like Nymphs and Satyrs, Titian’s Self-Portrait, and Van Dyck’s Christ Crowned with Thornsand the Arrest of Christ. A number of subsidiary collections sprang up amongst a clan of connoisseurs including the Marquis of Leganès who had spent time in Flanders studying the collections of the Infanta Isabella, as well as smaller ones in Antwerp. There he met Rubens who gave him the flattering title: “among the greatest admirers of this art that there is in the world.” It is startling to learn that Leganès’s collection consisted of 13 items in 1630, but by 1642 thanks to money, this increased to 1150, 1132 had been acquired in 12 years. As Brown says, Leganès exhibits the “traditional Flemish-Italian bias of Spanish collectors.” So his collection included 19 Rubens, 7 Van Dycks, and over a dozen animal paintings by Snyders. Amongst the Italians, Leganès had some pretty spectacular names: Giovanni Bellini, Palma il Vecchio, Giorgione, Perugino, Raphael, Leonardo, Veronese, Bassano and Titian. Like the King, Leganès hardly owned any Spanish pictures! Another member of this collectors’ clan was Luis de Haro, minister of Philip IV. Haro was bankrolling Cárdenas during the English sales, but he also possessed an excellent collection himself. Despite his status as a royal servant, He had his own views on art. Though encouraged to buy “modern” art like Cigoli’s Ecce Homo, he rejected it because it didn’t measure up to his Raphaels and Titians. One should also remember the Duke of Lerma who owned a vast collection of paintings, including Veronese’s Venus and Mars, a picture later claimed by the Prince of Wales. Rubens painted a magnificent equestrian portrait of him.

Paolo Veronese, Mars and Venus, 1570s, Oil on canvas, 165 x 126 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Juan van der Hamen, Still Life with Flowers, Artichokes, Cherries and Glassware, 1627, Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 110.5 cm, Private collection.

Ludovico Cigoli, Ecce Homo, 1607, Oil on canvas, 175 x 135 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Annibale Carracci, Venus, Adonis and Cupid, c. 1595, Oil on canvas, 212 x 268 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Velasquez, the Royal Palaces and Collections

After Philip IV had pushed French raiders out of Aragon, he put up his sword and spent more time with his pictures. He also built a large hunting lodge, the Buen Retiro which is known to have contained landscapes by an international cohort of painters, including Poussin and Claude.[3]Another smaller lodge, the Torre de la Parada may have housed mythological works by Rubens and Jordaens.[4]But the most important palace was the Alcazar of Madrid where Philip worked with his curator Velasquez to plan the organization of his galleries and the decoration of the palace.[5]In the Alcazar inventory of 1686, the breakdown was as follows: Titian (77), Rubens (62), Tintoretto (43), Velasquez (43), Veronese (29), Bassanos (26). In El Escorial, there were 19 more canvases by Titian, 11 more by Veronese, 8 by Tintoretto and 5 by Raphael. A cautious estimate might be by 1700, the 12 royal seats housed no fewer than 5,539 paintings compared to roughly 1500 at the death of Philip II.[6] As Brown says, adding a thousand acquired during the reigns of Philip III and Charles II, that would be around 3,000 acquired directly/indirectly by Philip IV. As the French cleric, Jean Muret wrote on a visit to Madrid in 1667: “I can assure you, Sir, that there were more [pictures in the Buen Retiro] than in all Paris. I was not at all surprised when they told me that the principal quality of the dead king was his love of painting and that no one in the world understood more about it than he.” Given these incredible numbers, Philip IV as art collector ranks well above Charles I.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Mary Magdalene, oil on canvas, 162 x 241 cm, Prado, Madrid.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with St Jerome, c. 1637-8, oil on canvas, 155 x 234 cm, Prado, Madrid.

Diego Velasquez, Philip IV, 1624-27, Oil on canvas, 210 x 102 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Diego Velasquez, Self-Portrait, c. 1640, Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm, Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia.

Velasquez and Titian.

In the year that Charles I and the English connoisseurs were attending the famous seminar in Madrid, 1623, Velasquez was appointed painter to Philip IV. By the time he painted the Philip IV Standing, he had had several years to familiarize himself with the royal collection. In 1660, the Italian critic Boschini said of Velasquez: “He loved the Painters very much, Titian most of all, and Tintoretto.”[7]In the 1670s, Jusepe Martinez said that Velasquez had a connoisseur’s knowledge of Titian’s art when he said that paintings of Titian done by Sanchez Coello had passed for originals, which Velasquez admitted. As stated above, the Hapsburgs collected Titian’s art with voracity and obsession; but they also acquired paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto and Bassano, all of whom displayed techniques derived from close study of Titian. In the fateful year of Charles I’s execution, 1649, Velasquez would have been on a buying expedition for the King in Rome; he may have returned to Venice in 1651 and obtained pictures there too including examples of Venetian art.[8] His debt to Titian is visible in the backcloth of Las Hilanderas which has a direct quotation from the Venetian master’s Rape of Europa which came into the collection during the reign of Philip II. Rubens is known to have copied this and in Velasquez’s eternal masterpiece, Las Meninas, there may be reminiscences of it in the paintings in the background.

Diego Velasquez, The Fable of Arachne (Las Hilanderas), c. 1657, Oil on canvas, 220 x 289 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV, 1656-57, Oil on canvas, 318 x 276 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Oil on canvas, 185 x 205 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Slides.

1)       Titian, Charles V Standing with His Dog, 1533, Oil on canvas, 192 x 111 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
2)       Titian, Portrait of Isabella of Portugal (1503-39), 1548, Oil on canvas, 117 x 93 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[9]
3)       Titian, The Trinity in Glory, c. 1552-54, Oil on canvas, 346 x 240 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[10]
4)       Unknown Netherlandish Artist, Portrait of Mary of Hungary, c. 1550, Oil on panel, diameter 9 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
5)       Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition, c. 1435, Oil on oak panel, 220 x 262 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
6)       Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, Oil on oak, 82 x 60 cm, National Gallery, London.
7)       Robert Campin, The Marriage of Mary, c. 1428, Oil on panel, 77 x 88 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
8)       Joachim Patinir, Temptation of St Anthony, c. 1515, Oil on panel, 155 x 173 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
9)       Hieronymous Bosch, Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1500, Oil on panel, central panel: 220 x 195 cm, wings: 220 x 97 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
10)   Hieronymous Bosch, (left wing Paradise,), c. 1500, Oil on panel, 220 x 97 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
11)   Titian, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, 1548, Oil on canvas, 332 x 279 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[11]
12)   Titian, Portrait of Philip II (1527- 1598) in Armour, 1550-51, Oil on canvas, 193 x 111 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[12]
13)   Correggio, Leda with the Swan, 1531-32, Oil on canvas, 152 x 191 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.[13]
14)   Correggio, The Rape of Ganymede, 1531-32, Oil on canvas, 163.5 x 70,5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum.[14]
15)   Ludovico Cigoli, Ecce Homo, 1607, Oil on canvas, 175 x 135 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.[15]
16)   Guercino, Susanna and the Elders, 1617, Oil on canvas, 175 x 207 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
17)   Guido Reni, Atalanta and Hippomenes, c. 1612, Oil on canvas, 206 x 297 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[16]
18)   Annibale Carracci, Venus, Adonis and Cupid, c. 1595, Oil on canvas, 212 x 268 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[17]
19)   Peter Paul Rubens, Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma, oil on canvas, 283 x 200 cm, Prado, Madrid.
20)   Paolo Veronese, Mars and Venus, 1570s, Oil on canvas, 165 x 126 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.[18]
21)   Jusepe Leonardo, The Marquis of Leganés (on horse on the right) at the Surrender of Jülich, oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.
22)   Peter Paul Rubens, Annunciation, c. 1628, Oil on canvas, Rubens House, Antwerp.
23)   Juan van der Hamen, Still Life with Flowers, Artichokes, Cherries and Glassware, 1627, Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 110.5 cm, Private collection.
24)   Raphael, Madonna with the Fish, 1512-14, Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 215 x 158 cm, Museo del Prado.
25)   Diego Velasquez, Self-Portrait, c. 1640, Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm, Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia.
26)   Diego Velasquez, Philip IV, 1624-27, Oil on canvas, 210 x 102 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
27)   Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Mary Magdalene, oil on canvas, 162 x 241 cm, Prado, Madrid.
28)   Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with St Jerome, c. 1637-8, oil on canvas, 155 x 234 cm, Prado, Madrid.[19]
29)   Peter Paul Rubens, Judgment of Paris, Prado, 1638-9, oil on canvas, 199 x 379 cmMadrid, Prado.[20]
30)   Diego Velasquez, Venus at her Mirror (The Rokeby Venus), 1649-51, Oil on canvas, 122,5 x 177 cm, National Gallery, London.[21]
31)   Diego Velasquez, The Fable of Arachne (Las Hilanderas), c. 1657, Oil on canvas, 220 x 289 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
32)   Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Oil on canvas, 185 x 205 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.[22]
33)   Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV, 1656-57, Oil on canvas, 318 x 276 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
34)   Diego Velasquez, Portrait of Philip IV, 1652-53, Oil on canvas, 47 x 37,5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

[1]Given to Prince Charles along with A Girl with a Fur Wrap and the Pardo Venus.

[2]Jeffrey Muller, Rubens as Collector, (Princeton, 1989).

[3] The Spanish ambassador in Rome, Manuel de Moura commissioned around 50 landscapes from leading artists who specialised in it. Claude and Poussin participated, though not Salvator Rosa. For Poussin’s group of pictures, see Blunt, “Poussin Studies VIII: A Series of Anchorite Subjects Commissioned from Philip IV”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 101, No. 680, (Nov 1959), 387-390. In 1634 Velasquez sold 18 paintings to the Crown including two of his works painted in Italy. By 1634 the Buen Retiro contained at least 800 pictures (Brown, Kings, 122).

[4]Paintings in the Torre de la Parada numbered about 175, over 60 of which were mythologies by Rubens and his workshop (now in the Prado) and another 60 of animal and hunting scenes by Snyders and other animal painters.

[5] By 1640, the Royal Collection was about a 1000 pictures greater than it had been 10 years earlier. (Brown, Kings, 123).

[6]All in Brown, Kings, 145.

[7]Cited in Gridley McKim Smith, Greta Andersen- Bergdoll, Richard Newman, Examining Velasquez, (Yale, 1988), 34. This section is indebted to the technical discussion of Velasquez and Titian.

[8]Velasquez first visited Italy in 1629; he landed at Genoa, visited Milan, and then journeyed to Venice. From Venice he went to Rome and Naples, and from there back to Madrid, arriving early in 1631. After 20 years, he returned to Venice in 1649, arriving on May 21^st.

[9]Married Charles V in 1526 but died very young when only 36. This is a posthumous portrait.

[10]In a codicil to Charles V’s will, the Emperor described this painting; he also ordered that a high altar should be constructed containing this painting.

[11]This painting was commissioned to commemorate the Emperor’s victory over the Protestant forces at the Battle of Mühlberg on 24^th April 1547. The red is supposed to indicate the colour of the Catholic faction in the religious wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

[12]Philip was the only son of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. In 1551 he became Regent of Spain, and after his father’s abdication, King of Spain.

[13] Acquired along with Ganymede; these 2 pictures probably part of a series of the “Loves of Jupiter” (Danae, Berlin; Io, Vienna). L’opera completa del Correggio, No. 78.

[14]L’opera completa del Correggio, No. 80.

[15]Offered to Haro, but rejected by him. “And even if this picture happened to be among Cigoli’s finest, it could scarcely win a place in Don Luigi’s gallery, where are so many excellent ones by artists of the first class, including Titian, Correggio, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto and others.” Cited in Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 157. Cigoli’s stock has risen since the 17^th century. Four of his pictures (including the Ecce Homo) were shown in The Genius of Rome exhibition (London, 2000), No. 99.

[16] Bought by Philip IV from Giovanni Francesco, Marquis of Serra in 1664. Listed in the inventory of the North gallery (Alcazar) made in 1666: “ A painting measuring three varas in length and two in height, by the hand of the Bolognese, of the fable of Atalanta, with a [Canceled: gilded] black frame, [appraised] at two hundred fifty silver ducats.” One wonders if the palm leaf was a concession to Spanish prudery which seems a more viable reason than Spear’s “psycho-sexual” explanation in Richard E. Spear: The “Divine” Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni, (Yale, 1997, 65.) This 1666 inventory of the North Gallery in the Alcazar is reproduced in Orso’s Velasquez, Los Borrachos, Appendix D.

[17] Bought from the Marquis of Serra in 1664 and recorded in the inventory of the Alcazar two years later. There is a version in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna which is likely to be a copy, not least because of the truncation of the dog’s head. For an illuminating discussion of this, see Michael Daley of Artwatch’s comments- link and the comments in L’opera completa di Annibale Carracci, (Milan, 1976), No. 44a.

[18]Acquired by Philip III in 1606; inherited by Philip IV in 1621; given to Charles I in 1623; commonwealth sale, 1649-50 etch. See The Age of Titian for full provenance. Edinburgh, 2004, No. 69. And included in the recent Veronese exhibition.

[19] First recorded in the Spanish collection in 1700. Rejected by Grautoff (follower of Salvator Rosa). Blunt himself initially ascribed it to the “Silver Birch Master”. In the article cited above and his CR, he said that he changed his mind when he “saw the picture in a good light.” See Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin, 1966, No. 103. Generally accepted, and it may help to resolve the “problem” of the Silver Birch Master since the trees in paintings assigned to that individual are similar to the ones in this. Conclusion? Poussin is the Silver Birch Master! Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné (Jupiter Books, 1984), No. 145.

[20]Damisch said that it had been painted for the Torre de la Parada hunting pavilion where another mythology (Jordaen’s Wedding of Peleus and Thetis) hung. Hubert Damisch, The Judgment of Paris(University of Chicago Press), 275. As Damisch also notes (176), the Infante Ferdinand, Governor of the Low Countries, “was most astute when he informed his brother Philip IV that Rubens had finally completed the canvas and that all the painters agreed it was his finest work…he offered his own opinion..” The three goddesses are too nude.””

[21] Purchased by the NACF in 1906. For the provenance of this famous masterpiece, see Lynda Nead’s essay in Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund, Richard Verdi and co, (2004), 74-79.

[22]Rubens painted copies after Titian when he visited Madrid in the 1620s. He may have done his copy of the Rape of Europain front of the King. “I know him (Philip IV) by personal contact, for since I have rooms in the palace, he comes to see me almost every day.” Brown, Kings, 117.

Velasquez and his Rivals.[1]

Thanks to the wily machinations of Olivares, the Spanish Foreign Minister, Velasquez made headway at the Spanish court. Olivares’s Sevillian connections didn’t do any harm either as Velasquez had made a name for himself in genre scenes of that city. He also produced early high quality portraits, but still found it difficult to break through at court. Apart from the convoluted bureaucracy standing between him and the King, there was the problem that Philip IV already had 5 painters on the royal payroll: Santiago Morán the Elder (pintor de cámara); Vincente Carducho; Eugenio Cajés; and Bartolomé González (all pintores del rey, or painters to the King). There was the remaining pintor del rey, the enigmatic Francisco Lopez who probably aligned himself with Velasquez’s foes because he had professional and personal ties with these artists. Despite these obstacles, with the help of Olivares, Velasquez broke through at court. His life changed dramatically for the better when he was put on salary by the royal household and given the accolade of the only court painter allowed to paint Philip IV from life. Naturally, the young painter’s rise occasioned jealousy and political factionalism, not least because his employment arrangements were superior to the others. Unlike the others, Velasquez was given his own studio on the main floor of the King’s chief residence- the Alcázar of Madrid. Usually these rivalries would smoulder in the background, but on occasion they would flare up in the context of some competition orchestrated by the King, like the one of 1627 on the subject of the Moors expelled from Spain.[2]

Diego Velasquez, The Adoration of the Magi, 1619, Oil on canvas, 203 x 125 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

J. B. Maino, Adoration of the Kings, 1612, Oil on canvas, 315 x 174 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Eugenio Cajes, The Adoration of the Magi, 1620s, Oil on canvas, 183 x 186,5 cm, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

Vicente Carducho, The Vision of St Anthony of Padua, 1631, Oil on canvas, 227 x 170 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

The Layout of the Pictures at Alcázar

The competition between Velasquez and his rivals took place in a chamber newly created by Gómez de Mora. This was a large two-story chamber above the main entrance to the Alcázar. This “New Room” soon became a space for showing masterpieces from Philip IV’s collections. A number of pictures- such as a portrait of Philip III by Gonzales- have been lost. This would have been linked with the “Old Regime”, but Velasquez was asked to paint pictures for the new order. He was asked to painting an Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV to complement Titian’s Charles I at the Battle of Mühlberg. Velasquez won the contest with his Philip II and the Expulsion of the Moriscoes from Spain, lost. Gómez de Mora also created a “South Gallery” when he erected a screen across the southern façade of the palace. To fill his galleries, Philip drew on artists from abroad. So the King’s ambassador went to Rome to commission four paintings: Abduction of Helen (Reni); Hercules and Omphale(Artemisia Gentileschi); Sacrifice of Isaac and Solomon and Sheba(Domenichino). Apart from Reni who threw a tantrum and took his picture back to Bologna, these pictures were installed in the “New Room” in the Alcázar. To augment these, Philip IV also commissioned art from the Spanish Netherlands. We know from the eye witness account of Poussin’s patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo that the Ulysses Discovers Achilles amongst the Daughters of Lycomedes which is thought by some to be a collaboration between Rubens and Van Dyck, hung in this gallery also. Rubens had offered this picture for sale to Sir Dudley Carleton, in 1618.

Juan Gomez de Mora, Plan of the Main Floor of the Alcazar of Madrid in 1626, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica

Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, Ulysses Discovers Achilles Among the Daughters of Lycomedes, oil on canvas, 248.5 cm x 269.5 cm, Prado, Madrid

Domenichino, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1627-28, Oil on canvas, 147 x 140 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Guido Reni, The Rape of Helena, 1626-29, Oil on canvas, 253 x 265 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

An Interlude: Velasquez’s Pigments & Technique[3]

Velasquez mainly painted on linen canvas, though occasionally he used a canvas made from hemp. All were usually of a regular weave. He tended to use oil as a binder. For his pigments, Velasquez conformed to those commonly used by other 17^th century painters.[4]Velasquez used three principle BLUE pigments: azurite (drapery in Vulcan, Breda); blue verditer; ultramarine (mixed with red lake to create purple in Coronation). Sometimes the inexpensive pigment smalt was used (blue for skies of Vulcan). GREEN underwent substantial changes in the 17^thcentury. Velasquez mixed different colours to obtain green. For instance, in Vulcan, green consists of azurite, yellow lake, and possibly some yellow ochre. Malachite is rarely found in the 17^th century, but the foliage in the foreground of Breda might be an example. EARTH COLOURS like brown, red and yellow ochres are quite common in 17^th century painting. In the Breda, the trouser leg of Spinola are made up primarily of ochre, brown ochre and umber. The main RED pigments available to artists in this era (in addition to red ochre), vermilion, red lead and red lakes. Vermillion = “synthetic variety of cinnabar” (bar of metal in Vulcan); red lake found in most of Velasquez’s paintings (red sash in Breda, drapery in Coronation). In addition to yellow ochre, the other main YELLOW variant in Velasquez’s time was lead-tin yellow (Vulcan). BLACKS & BROWNS such as charcoal and bone black are found in most of Velasquez’s paintings. The main WHITE universally present in Velasquez’s works is lead-white.[5]Little is known of how Velasquez began his paintings or drew in his compositions. It is thought that thin black or brown paint “to define forms over the ground.” A sketchy under-painting with little more than contours of figures was consistent throughout his career. He applied single layers of painting, modulated in tone and hue, with lighter and darker strokes brushed into the underpainting, sometimes before it was dry.

Diego Velasquez, The Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas), 1634-35, Oil on canvas, 307 x 367 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Diego Velasquez, The Coronation of the Virgin, 1645, Oil on canvas, 178 x 135 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Diego Velasquez, The Forge of Vulcan, 1630, Oil on canvas, 223 x 290 cm, Museo del Prado

Alonso de Cárdenas,the English Sales and the Spanish Collections

While Velasquez was furthering his career at court and advancing towards the disintegration of form in his technique, his countryman, the Spanish ambassador, Alonso de Cardenas was lurking amongst the pictures on sale at Somerset House. Cárdenas had arrived in London in 1635 as “resident agent”, but had been made ambassador in 1640. Charles I dismissed him as “a silly, ignorant, odd fellow” though as Jonathan Brown has shown, Cárdenas was a shrewd operator, a man with an eye for the main chance where acquiring pictures for his monarch was concerned. Cárdenas had briefed Philip IV in 1645 that the Parliamentarians were intending to sell Charles I’s paintings to which the Spanish replied that his ambassador should find paintings “which might be originals by Titian, Veronese, or other old paintings of distinction.” Philip gave strict instructions that Cárdenas should not reveal the name of the purchaser. As Brown says, this arrangement was “unrealistic in the extreme, but does explain why Cárdenas never bought any pictures from Somerset House. Cárdenas funding came not from the King but the royal minister, Luis de Haro who was mentioned last week. Fortunately for Cárdenas, he did not have to compete with other major buyers during the commonwealth sale. Mazarin’s representative had been expelled in 1651; Leopold Wilhelm had Hamilton’s and Buckingham’s collection to keep him occupied; and Queen Christina of Sweden could have posed a threat, but she had looted the castle at Prague so she was satisfied with her art treasures. So with a clear field, Cárdenas attended Somerset House to inspect the goods and to draw up some kind of list of what he considered the most desirable pictures. As Brown ruefully observes, “it is a document certain to bring tears to the eyes of every English citizen who loves the art of painting.” This memorandum lists 60 works on show at Somerset House, Hampton Court, and St James’s. Paintings by Titian were especially desired by Cárdenas, though he was no fool when it came to knowing about art. For example, the painter’s Adlocution of the Marquis del Vasto“would have been worth £1000 if it were not worn in many parts.” But he was spot on because he judged Titian’s Christ at Emmaus and the Entombment (valued at £600 each) to be better paintings. Sadly, the painting that most excited the curiosity of Cardenas has been lost: a Giorgione showing Solomon worshipping the Idols. Cárdenas obviously took advantage of the dividend situation and managed to acquire art from these holders of impressive old masters. Amongst these were Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, Correggio’s Education of Cupid, Palma Giovane’s David and Goliath and Conversion of St Paul, and portraits by Dürer. In the sanctuary of El Escorial, Velasquez had installed some of Charles’s pictures including Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna and Child with Saint Matthew and an Angel and Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Feet of his Disciples The sacristy would have been visited by the English ambassador who was trying to return the pictures to London. Needless to say, he failed miserably!

Titian, Supper at Emmaus, c. 1530, Oil on canvas, 169 x 244 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Jacopo Tintoretto, Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples, c. 1547, Oil on canvas, 210 x 533 cm, Museo del Prado

Titian, The Marchese del Vasto Addressing his Troops, 1539-41, Oil on canvas, 223 x 165 cm

Correggio, The Education of Cupid, about. 1528, oil on canvas, 155 x 91.5 cm, National Gallery, London

Slides.

1)      Diego Velásquez, Self-Portrait, c. 1645, Oil on canvas, 104 x 83 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.[6]

2)      Diego Velásquez, Portrait of Don Gaspar de Guzman y Pimental, Count-Duke of Olivares, c. 1638, Oil on canvas, 67 x 55 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

3)      Diego Velasquez, The Adoration of the Magi, 1619, Oil on canvas, 203 x 125 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

4)      J. B. Maino, Adoration of the Kings, 1612, Oil on canvas, 315 x 174 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[7]

5)      Eugenio Cajes, The Adoration of the Magi, 1620s, Oil on canvas, 183 x 186,5 cm, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

6)      Vicente Carducho, The Vision of St Anthony of Padua, 1631, Oil on canvas, 227 x 170 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.[8]

7)      Juan van der Hamen, Offering to Flora, 1627, Oil on canvas, 216 x 140 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[9]

8)      Juan van der Hamen, Still Life with Flowers and a Dog, c. 1625-30, Oil on canvas, 228 x 95 cm

9)      Museo del Prado, Madrid.

10)   Diego Velasquez, Portrait of Cardinal Gaspar Borja y Velasco, oil on canvas, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.

11)   Bartolomeo González, Queen Margarita of Austria, 1609, Oil on canvas, 116 x 100 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

12)   Juan Gomez de Mora, Plan of the Main Floor of the Alcazar of Madrid in 1626, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica.

13)   J.B. M. Mazo, The Artist's Family, 1659-60, Oil on canvas, 150 x 172 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[10]

14)   Guido Reni, The Rape of Helena, 1626-29, Oil on canvas, 253 x 265 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[11]

15)   Tintoretto, Battle between Turks and Christians, 1588-89, Oil on canvas, 189 x 307 cm

16)   Museo del Prado.[12]

17)   Domenichino, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1627-28, Oil on canvas, 147 x 140 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

18)   Rubens, Hercules and Omphale, about 1606, oil on canvas, 178 x 216 cm, Museé du Louvre.[13]

19)   Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, Ulysses Discovers Achilles Among the Daughters of Lycomedes, oil on canvas, 248.5 cm x 269.5 cm, Prado, Madrid.[14]

20)   Diego Velasquez, The Triumph of Bacchus (Los Borrachos, The Topers), c. 1629, Oil on canvas, 165 x 225 cm, Museo del Prado.[15]

21)   Jusepe de Ribera, Drunken Silenus, about 1630, oil on canvas, 181 x 229 cm, Capodimonte, Naples.[16]

22)   El Greco, Portrait of a Doctor, 1582-85, oil on canvas, 96 x 82.3 cm, Prado, Madrid.[17]

23)   David Teniers the Younger, The Bivouac, 1640-50, oil on panel, 63 x 89 cm, Prado, Madrid.[18]

24)   Peter Paul Rubens, Diana and Callisto, c. 1639, Oil on canvas, 202 x 323 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[19]

25)   Jan Bruegel the Elder, Wedding Banquet, Oil on canvas, 84 x 126 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[20]

26)   Diego Velasquez, The Forge of Vulcan, 1630, Oil on canvas, 223 x 290 cm, Museo del Prado.[21]

27)   Diego Velasquez, The Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas), 1634-35, Oil on canvas, 307 x 367 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[22]

28)   Titian, The Entombment, 1559, Oil on canvas, 137 x 175 cm, Prado, Madrid.[23]

29)   Diego Velasquez, The Coronation of the Virgin, 1645, Oil on canvas, 178 x 135 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[24]

30)   Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Ambrogio Spinola, 1625-28, Oil on oak, 117 x 85 cm, Národní Galerie, Prague.

31)   Titian, The Marchese del Vasto Addressing his Troops, 1539-41, Oil on canvas, 223 x 165 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.[25]

33)   Titian, Supper at Emmaus, c. 1530, Oil on canvas, 169 x 244 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

34)   Correggio, The Education of Cupid, about. 1528, oil on canvas, 155 x 91.5 cm, National Gallery, London.[26]

35)   Albrecht Durer, Portrait of a Man with Baret and Scroll, 1521, Oil on oak, 50 x 36 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

36)   Jacopo Tintoretto, Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples, c. 1547, Oil on canvas, 210 x 533 cm, Museo del Prado.[27]

[1]For an overview of Velasquez’s relationships with the other royal painters, Steven N. Orso, Velasquez, Los Borrachos, and Painting at the Court of Philip IV (Cambridge, 1993), 40f.

[2]The “symbolic date of the beginning of the ‘Golden Age’ of Spanish painting,” Arrikha, “Velasquez”, 47.

[3]Information about Velasquez’s technique is taken from Gridley McKim Smith, Greta Andersen- Bergdoll and Richard Newman’s Examining Velasquez, (Yale, 1988).

[4] A statistical survey of pigments was conducted by Hermann Kühn for the Doerner Institute in Munich. As the authors of Examining Velasquez (82-83) state: “The majority of paintings included in Kühn’s analyses are Northern European; there is comparatively little published information on the materials favoured by Spanish or Italian artists in the same period. On the basis of Kühn’s analysis, it does not seem that the pigments that Velasquez used in his paintings differ much from those most commonly encountered in paintings by other European artists working at the same general time.”

[5] An interesting technical note. In 17^th century Holland, there were commercially available two types of lead-white: “lootwit” with 25% of chalk; and “schulpwit”, a more expensive variety, pure lead-white. “Velasquez’s samples do not contain nearly the amount of calchite that Dutch “lootwit” does. (Examining Velasquez, 87).

[6]There were 226 works listed by Stirling-Maxwell (1848) and attributed to Velásquez. The amount was “gradually reduced, attaining a rough 125 works” listed by 1979. This information takenfrom Avigdor Arrikha’s “Velásquez: Pintor Real” in On Depiction: Selected Writings on Art (London, 1991), 44-60, 46.

[7]Maino was named by Philip III as the future drawing master of Philip IV. Described as a student of El Greco and “a disciple of Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni” he joined the Dominicans in 1613 and thereafter painted infrequently.

[8]Janis Tomlinson: “The Carducho brothers have identified with a “reformed Mannerist” style, described as combining the drawing and compositional sense of Florentine painting with the blended contours ( or sfumato) of the Lombard school and the colourism of Venetian painters.” Painting in Spain: El Greco to Goya, (Everyman 1997), 85.

[9]From the Spanish upper-class, and though famous for his austere compositions, he hankered after recognition as a history painter- which he didn’t receive. Also a portrait painter which would have put him in conflict with Velasquez’s ambitions. It is known that Velasquez did a portrait of Cardinal Francesco Barberini which “displeased the Cardinal” (Orso). So Cassiano recommended van der Hamen “a native Spaniard of Madrid, who obtained excellent results in the painting of portraits, of flowers, and of fruit.” Sadly neither painting of the Cardinal has survived.

[10]This 1666 inventory of the North Gallery in the Alcazar is reproduced in Orso’s Velasquez, Los Borrachos, Appendix D. In 1666, 58 paintings and 19 pieces of sculpture and furniture were inventoried. The numbering is Orso’s own which I have used here. Sebastian de Herrera Barnuevo, master-in-chief of the royal works appraised the sculptures and furnishings; the paintings were appraised by Mazo, pintor de camaraand Velasquez’s son-in-law. For Mazo’s relationship to his famous father-in- law, see the article on my blog- link.

[11]Despite being happy to be rewarded by Philip IV, “he (Reni) did not put a price on it”, but he instructed Cardinal Spada not to release the picture until payment was received. Eventually Reni’s financial manipulations failed with the King’s ambassador taking a highhanded attitude to Reni which led to the picture being sent back to Bologna with the declaration by the artist “that it was no longer for sale.” There is also a copy in the Galleria Spada, Rome. Though Reni ordered one of his pupils, Giacinto Campana to paint it (to be retouched by Reni), it is likely that Reni executed the copy himself. Spear, The Divine Guido, 214, 217-218.

[12] Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no. 27: “Another measuring four varas in length and two and one-half in height, by the hand of Tintoretto, the “Rape of Helen”, [appraised] at six hundred ducats. The Prado prefers the original title- link

[13]Shown in lieu of Artemesia’s painting which is lost along with the Domenichino Solomon and Sheba. According to Spear, the Domenichino Solomon and Sheba and Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphalewere “part of a group of similar sized canvases for the Salon Nuevo, or Hall of Mirrors, of the Alcázar in Madrid, whose iconographic unity was stories of women.” Orazio and Artemesia Gentileschi, (Met, New York, 2002), 341.

[14]On the Prado’s website this is listed as “Rubens, Peter Paul (and Workshop)”- link.

[15]First inventoried in 1636, in the “Room in which His Majesty Sleeps in the Summer Apartments”, (Orso, App B) no. 16: “Another canvas measuring almost three varas in length, with a gilded and black frame, in which is Bacchus seated on a cask, crowning a drunkard. There are other figures who accompany him on his knees, another behind with a bowl in his hand, and another who is going to take off or put on his hat. It is by the hand of Diego Velasquez.” And in the Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no. 4: “Another painting measuring two and one-half varas in length and one and one-half in height, with its black frame, a history painting of Bacchus crowning his cofrades, by the hand of Diego Velasquez, [appraised] at three hundred silver ducats.

[16]Thought to have been in the collection of Gaspar Roomer, a Flemish merchant in Naples. See Painting in Naples: Caravaggio to Giordano, (London, 1982), no. 120. The realism has encouraged connections to be made between Ribera and Velasquez, but the uncompromising realism belies the fact that Ribera may have worked from a Hellenistic relief “or a contemporary print of an ancient monument” as the curators said in 1982. It is also worth mentioning that Velasquez worked from a Flemish engraving of Bacchus. As for the “influence” of Ribera on Velasquez, there was indeed a “Fable of Bacchus”, now known through three fragments in Philip IV’s apartments. Its subject was never really known, but Orso thought it could be “Bacchus in Iberia”, which had political associations as well as the usual mythological themes. This is all discussed in the author’s Velasquez, Los Borrachos, and Painting at the Court of Philip IV, 109 f.

[17]Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no. 8: “Another measuring one and one-quarter varas in height and one vara in length, of a doctor, by the hand of El Greco, [appraised] at one hundred silver ducats.” Prado link

[18]Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no. 6: “Another, on panel, with some little soldiers and many arms, Flemish by David Teniers, [appraised] at one hundred silver ducats. Prado link.

[19] Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no 20: “Another measuring four varas in length and two and one-half in height, the fable of Callisto, by the hand of Peter Paul Rubens. [appraised] at four hundred silver ducats.” Prado link.

[20] Inventory of North Gallery, 1666 no. 26: “Another measuring one and one-half varas in length and one and one-quarter varas in height, of some peasant weddings in Flanders, [appraised] at one hundred fifty silver ducats.” Prado link.

[21]According to López-Rey, the Vulcanwas inventoried in the Royal Palace in 1716 with a width of 3 varas, or about 251 cm. It was given a number, 570, visible on the bottom left of the canvas. Subsequent inventories of 1772 and 1794, the width is given at an increased 3 ½ varas (292 cm) close to the picture’s current total width of 290 cm. As the authors of Examining Velasquez state, LR concluded that strips were added between 1716 and 1772- but the reason for these alterations remains a complete mystery.

[22] A drawing in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, shows a different pose for Spinola. The figure on the far right of the picture may be a self-portrait.

[23]From the Titian catalogue (London, NG, 2003, no. 31, David Jaffe’s entry): “Sent to Philip II in 1559 together with the more carefully modelled Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon, this painting was a replacement for a version lost in transit two years earlier. The composition is likely, therefore, to have been resolved in the earlier version (which was perhaps preserved in a tracing), enabling Titian to focus on the handling…” There is a later version in the Prado, usually dated about 1572.

[24]Little discussed in the Velasquez literature, largely because of its derivative composition and iconography, but this Queen of Heaven painted for the Queen of Spain is an important essay on colour.

[25]Conceived along the lines of a classical adlocutio; but the presence of the boy carrying the helmet makes it more personal as it is his son Francesco Ferrante.

[26]After Velásquez pronounced this non-autograph, it was snapped up by Luis de Haro who perceptively wrote “but you should moderate this unpleasantness with [the knowledge] that, if they do not find it appropriate for the private quarters of His Majesty, they will hang it in mine with the good faith one ought to have, according to the knowledge of the painters over there (in London). Cited in Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 97. Brown observes it seems fitting in view of these remarks that the picture hangs in London. Correggio’s painting was subsequently confiscated by Murat, then it went to Naples in 1808, then to Vienna with Caroline Bonaparte, and then to the Marquess of Londonderry, and finally to the National Gallery in 1834. NG link. Arrikha seems to concur with Velasquez’s original judgement. “The painting, once in the Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua collection, and bought by Charles I of England in 1628, was cut down on all four sides before 1639, when it was recorded at Whitehall as having measurements almost identical with its present ones. Velásquez’s acute eye probably saw that there was something not quite right about it, an observation really rare for the period.” Arrikha, “Velásquez”, 52.

[27]Valued at £300 and acquired for £325 by Cardenas.

Louis XIII and His Artists.

The second slide, a drawing of a man in black chalk, is by none other Louis XIII, the King of France. Though far from an effective monarch- all the political and military policy was left to his advisors- Louis seems to leaned towards the arts, although he needed the prompting of his excellent teacher,-the artist Simon Vouet. Vouet had steeped himself in both Caravaggio and Michelangelo during his Italian period, but on his return to France in 1628, he became famous for a style known as “international baroque” which could be described as the artistic equivalent of the language of diplomacy at the European court culture during the 17^thcentury.[1]This style owed much to Rubens who with his decoration of the Medici gallery used baroque allegory to articulate the history and ambitions of the French monarchy. In addition to Vouet, Louis patronised many artists including Orazio Gentileschi. Gentileschi came to France- at the invitation of Marie de Medici- in 1624 and seems to have stayed there for two years before going on to London and the Duke of Buckingham. The Italian painted an Allegory of the “Felicity of the Regency” about 1626 a few years before Vouet returned to France for good. But the most famous artist was Nicolas Poussin who was summoned to Paris in 1639 at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu to undertake a number of projects including the decoration of the Grande Gallerie in the Louvre. This wasn’t a happy episode in Poussin’s career. A nineteenth century recreation of the meeting between Poussin and Louis XIII by Ansiaux gives a sense of Poussin’s disquiet as a reluctant royal painter. He certainly didn’t relish the honour. For one thing, Vouet was hostile as Poussin threatened his market; for another, the painters allocated to Poussin (contemptuously dismissed as the “brigade” by the artist) weren’t to his taste. Unsurprisingly Poussin eventually made his escape; he left France for ever in 1641 with the excuse that his wife, Anne Marie, was ill, a dodge used by Andrea dal Sarto in the previous century.

Philip de Champaigne, Louis XIII Crowned by Victory (Siege of La Rochelle, 1628), 1635, Oil on canvas, 228 x 175 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Louis XIII, Portrait of a Man, black chalk, white highlighting, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Orazio Gentileschi, Public Felicity, oil on canvas, 268 x 1`70 cm, c.1625, Museé du Louvre.

Jean-Joseph Ansiaux, Cardinal Richelieu presenting Poussin to Louis XIII, 1817, oil on canvas, 262 x 325.4 cm, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) and Patronage

Much of the employment of artists and collections in France was due to the energy and vision of Cardinal Richelieu who guided both the political and artistic direction of France. This was only achieved by great intelligence and ruthlessness. These qualities are evident in the brilliant portraits of Cardinal Armand d’Plessis d’ Richelieu by Phillipe de Champaigne. Richelieu’s political career began in 1614, and after aligning himself with Marie de Medici, he gained a Cardinal’s hat in 1622.Richelieu’s rise continued In 1624 when he became chief Minister to Louis XIII who was terrified of him. Richelieu was subsequently made a duke and appointed to the Order of the Holy Spirit which he wears in Champaigne’s portrait. Apart from achieving great political power, Richelieu amassed large reserves of wealth, mainly with the objective of elevating his family to the highest nobility.[2]He built for himself the Palais-Cardinal (Palais-Royal), a chateau at Rueil, and the ancestral chateau of Poitou- this contained one room of paintings by Poussin such as the Triumph of Pan. Brown describes the death inventory of the Palais-Cardinal as a “compelling document” but despite the luxury objects, it is the picture collection which is the most notable. Masterpieces by Leonardo, Mantegna, Perugino, Costa, Veronese, Caravaggio, Titian and Poussin attest to the splendour of the Cardinal’s collection.

Lorenzo Costa, The Reign of Comus, c. 1511, Oil on canvas, 152 x 238 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Nicolas Poussin, Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1636, oil on canvas, 128. 8 x 151.1 cm, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

Andrea Mantegna, Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, 1499-1502, Tempera on canvas, 160 x 192 cm, Musée du Louvre.

Lorenzo Costa, Court of Isabella d'Este, c. 1506, Oil on canvas, 164 x 197 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Cardinal Mazarin

Giulio Mazarin, later known as Jules Mazarin, came from origins of great obscurity. His father made a humble living with the Colonna family in Rome. Mazarin solved his poverty by fixing himself to important and wealthy people like the Barberini, Pope Urban VIII in the 1630s. Mazarin initiated links with France in 1630 after meeting Richelieu. In 1641, his ascent continued with the acquisition of a Cardinal’s hat; but it was after Richelieu’s death in 1642 that Mazarin really gained supreme power. After the civil war (Fronde), Mazarin orchestrated peace overtures with Spain’s envoy, Luis de Haro who had scored over Mazarin in the English sales. Thanks to the Barberini Mazarin loved art and set out to collect it, though in small lots unlike other “megacollectors” on this course. Like Arundel and co, Mazarin ran a network of agents and spies who were charged with the responsibility of seeking out art. Mazarin’s collection was confiscated by the frondeurs, but, luckily, it was recovered in 1653. An inventory was made in this year listing 431 pictures as original, with only 17 pictures copies.[3]But the death inventory of 1661 lists 546 originals, ninety copies and 241 portraits of popes. As Brown states, “as these inventories make clear, Mazarin favoured the works of painters he had known in Rome, especially the so-called Bolognese/Roman classicists.”[4]This group included Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Guercino, Albani and Pietro da Cortona. No art lover or connoisseur wants to contemplate the fact that they will be parted from art permanently by inevitable death; but perhaps the most heart-rending reminder of this is the conversation between Mazarin and the count of Brienne: “Look, my good friend, at this beautiful painting by Correggio and also at the Venus of Titian (the Pardo Venus), and at that incomparable Deluge by Annibale Carracci.[5]Oh my poor friend, all this must be left behind. Farewell dear pictures that I have loved so well and which have cost me so much.”

Unfortunately for Mazarin, his opportunity to buy masterpieces from Charles I’s collection was thwarted by the eruption of the Fronde which forced him to leave Paris twice. When the dust had settled, the Spanish had made off with all the best pictures. Still, Mazarin did well to acquire Titian’s Pardo Venus (bought at a very high price), but as the best pictures were in short supply Mazarin had to make do with portraits by Van Dyck which were purchased by Mazarin’s agent in London- Antoine de Bordeaux. Mazarin’s management of these Van Dyck pictures offers insights into his connoisseurial acumen. He was worried about copies and imparted this sage advice to Bordeaux: “It is necessary to be on guard not to allow yourself to be fooled, because it is difficult to discern a copy from an original when the copy is well done.” Another example of Mazarin’s judgment on pictures is revealed in his response to an enquiry about a Giulio Romano.[6]

Robert Nanteuil, Cardinal Jules Mazarin in his Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean Marot, Palais Mazarin, from Cabinet des singularitiés d’ architecture etc, 17th century, etching

Titian, Jupiter and Antiope (Pardo Venus), 1535-40, reworked c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 196 x 385 cm, Musée du Louvre.

Correggio, The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, 1526-27, Wood, 105 x 102 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Other French Collectors.

Richelieu certainly spurred many members of the French court to collect pictures and build galleries for their houses. These included the Duc de Créquy who acquired the work of Italian painters like Lanfranco, Reni and the Carracci; also, he patronised French painters in Rome like Claude and Poussin. Créquy died in battle against the Spanish in 1638. Louis Phèlypeaux de La Vrillière (1599- 1681) was another important collector. Amongst the pictures that La Vrillière owned were Raphael’s Madonna with the Blue Diadem and Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda, the former inherited from his father-in-law Michel Particelli d’Emery who also owned a large collection of pictures of his own. Last, but certainly not least was Everhard Jabach, a banker from Cologne who became a French citizen in 1647 and grew immensely rich. A picture collector, dealer and an impeccable connoisseur said to be able to tell two true Raphael originals out of a mass of 300, Jabach amassed both paintings and drawing some from the collection of Louis XIV’s disgraced minister, Fouquet.[7]The splendid group portrait of Jabach and his family was purchased by the Met this year. Today, about three-quarters of Jabach’s collection is in the Louvre including Leonardo’s John the Baptist, Titian’s Woman at her Toilette, and fine pictures from Italians like Sebastiano del Piombo, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino and Guilio Romano.

Titian, Woman with a Mirror, c. 1514, Oil on canvas, 93 x 76 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Leonardo da Vinci, St John the Baptist, 1513-16, Oil on panel, 69 x 57 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Raphael, Madonna with the Blue Diadem, 1510-11, Oil on wood, 68 x 44 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and Family, 1660, oil on canvas, 280 x 328 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Slides

1)      Philip de Champaigne, Louis XIII Crowned by Victory (Siege of La Rochelle, 1628), 1635, Oil on canvas, 228 x 175 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

2)      Louis XIII, Portrait of a Man, black chalk, white highlighting, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

3)      Simon Vouet, Time Vanquished by Love, Hope and Renown, 1645-46, Oil on canvas, 187 x 142 cm, Musée du Berry, Bourges.

4)      Orazio Gentileschi, Public Felicity, oil on canvas, 268 x 1`70 cm, c.1625, Museé du Louvre.[8]

5)      Simon Vouet, Allegory of Wealth, 1630-35, Oil on canvas, 170 x 124 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

6)      Giovanni Baglione, Clio, Oil on canvas, 195 x 150 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras.

7)      Laurent de La Hyre, Allegory of Music, 1649, oil on canvas, 105.7 x 144.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

8)      Phillipe de Champaigne, Triple Portrait of Richelieu, c. 1640, Oil on canvas, 58 x 72 cm, National Gallery, London.[9]

9)      Phillipe de Champaigne, Cardinal Richelieu, 1633-40, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 259.5 x 178.5 cm.[10]

10)   Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1510, Oil on wood, 168 x 130 cm,11)   Musée du Louvre.

11)   Paolo Veronese. Supper at Emmaus, Louvre, c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 242 x 416 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

12)   Andrea Mantegna, Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, 1499-1502, Tempera on canvas, 160 x 192 cm, Musée du Louvre.

13)   Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus, 1497, tempera and gold on canvas, 54.6 cm × 70.7 cm (21.5 in × 27.8 in).

14)   Lorenzo Costa, Court of Isabella d'Este, c. 1506, Oil on canvas, 164 x 197 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

15)   Nicolas Poussin, Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1636, oil on canvas, 128. 8 x 151.1 cm, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

16)   Nicolas Poussin, Triumph of Pan, 1636, oil on canvas, 135.9 x 146 cm, London, National Gallery.[11]

17)   Perugino, Combat of Love and Chastity, 1505, Canvas, 160 x 191 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

18)   Lorenzo Costa, The Reign of Comus, c. 1511, Oil on canvas, 152 x 238 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

19)   Jacques Stella, the Liberality of Titus (Allegory of the Liberality of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu), Alternate Title: The Liberality of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, c. 1637-1638, oil on canvas, 191 x 146.2 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard.

20)   Jean-Joseph Ansiaux, Cardinal Richelieu presenting Poussin to Louis XIII, 1817, oil on canvas, 262 x 325.4 cm, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.[12]

21)   Nicolas Poussin, The Saving of Truth from Envy and Discord, c. 1641, circular, diameter, 197 cm, Museé du Louvre.[13]

22)   Caravaggio, Musical Concert, 1595-96, Oil on canvas, 92 x 118,5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

23)   Lionello Spada, Aeneas and Anchises, c. 1615, Oil on canvas, 195 x 132 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

24)   Robert Nanteuil, Cardinal Jules Mazarin in his Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

25)   Jean Marot, Palais Mazarin, from Cabinet des singularitiés d’ architecture etc, 17th century, etching.

26)   Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), c. 1503-5, Oil on panel, 77 x 53 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

27)   Raphael, Madonna with the Blue Diadem, 1510-11, Oil on wood, 68 x 44 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[14]

28)   Titian, Perseus and Andromeda, 1554-56, Oil on canvas, 185 x 199 cm, Wallace Collection, London.

29)   Raphael, The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist (La Belle Jardinière), 1507, Oil on wood, 122 x 80 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

30)   Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and Family, 1660, oil on canvas, 280 x 328 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.For more information and progress about the restoration, see the Met's website- link

31)   Titian, Pastoral Concert, 1508-09, Oil on canvas, 110 x 138 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

32)   Leonardo da Vinci, St John the Baptist, 1513-16, Oil on panel, 69 x 57 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

33)   Titian, Woman with a Mirror, c. 1514, Oil on canvas, 93 x 76 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

34)   Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin, 1602-06, Oil on canvas, 369 x 245 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

[1]Blunt in Art and Architecture in Seventeenth-Century France, (Pelican History of Art, 1953, 239) characterised Vouet’s return to France in 1627 as the start of a new era in painting, but this view has been questioned by some French scholars. Alain Mérot for instance, stated that “1627 marked no absolute beginning.” Mérot, Le Peinture françaises au XVII siècle, (Paris, 1994), 104. Mérot mentions the influence of Orazio’s Public Felicity- see below- on French painters; also, there were paintings in France by Guido Reni (an Assumptionand the Abduction of Helen) which had launched the Italianate movement. According to this narrative, Vouet merely aligned himself with this movement which had already begun.

[2]Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 191.

[3]Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 186.

[4]Brown, Kings, 186.

[5]The picture was in fact painted by Agostino Carracci’s son, Antonio Carracci- see below.

[6]Cited in Brown, 187:” As for the picture by Guilio Romano, for which they are asking 800 livres, I would be pleased to know the dimensions and with which figures it is filled {i.e. the composition], and if it is a very beautiful and original piece and as well done as other portraits of which you have spoken.”

[7] The comment of the Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens, is cited in Brown, Kings (206): “We examined with him at the house of M Colbert a large quantity of drawings [from the Arundel Collection] that a gentleman from Flanders has brought here and is offering to sell to the King. You would have unparalleled pleasure to see how Jabach determines the authenticity of these pieces with magisterial conceitedness, concluding that, of the three hundred drawings that were attributed to Raphael, there were but two originals.”

[8] Originally attributed to Jean Monier, it was identified as a work by Orazio by Charles Sterling in a 1958 article which is alluded to in an essay on Orazio’s two years in France, Jean-Pierre Cuzin, “Gentileschi and France, Gentileschi and the French” in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, (Met, New York, 2001), 203-213, “PF”, no. 44. Sterling concluded that this figure was an allegory about the vicissitudes of Marie de Medici after the assassination of her husband Henri IV in 1610, Sterling, “Gentileschi in France”, “Burlington Magazine”, No. 100, (1958), 112-121.

[9]May have been owned by the sculptor Mochi; presented to the NG in 1869.

[10]Presented to the NG in 1895.

[11] A letter tells us that Gaspard de Daillon, Bishop of Albi, took “deux tableaux de Bacchanales” to the Château de Richelieu in 1636, after showing them to the Cardinal at Amiens. These were the Triumph of Pan and Triumph of Bacchus. For lengthy discussion of the Pan, and bibliography, see Humphrey Wine, The Seventeenth-Century French Paintings, National Gallery, (Yale, 2001), 350f. The governor of Richelieu’s Château, Benjamin Vignier describes the Cabinet du Roi (where the pictures were hung) as a room of some ten by twelve metres in area, and some five metres high. The paintings by Poussin were placed together along with some pictures that Richelieu had obtained from the Mantuan court before 1635. According to Vignier, the order of the paintings was as follows: Mantegna’s Minerva Expelling the Vices; to the right of this was Mantegna’s Parnassus; then Poussin’s Banquet of Silenus (known only through a copy); Vignier then describes “the third painting near by the windows” (Costa’s Court of Isabella d’Este); opposite this was Poussin’s Triumph of Bacchus next to which was the artist’s Triumph of Pan followed by Perugino’s Combat of Love and Chastity; and finally Mantegna/Costa’s Reign of Comus.

[12]Ansiaux commits the error of showing Poussin presenting a picture he had not yet painted- the Testament of Eudamidasof 1648.

[13]Commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu for the ceiling of the Grande Cabinet of the Palais Cardinal, along with the Moses and the Burning Bush, which was over the fireplace.

[14]The French curators were disinclined to see this as a work by Raphael and suggested instead the name of Gian Francesco Penni. Raphael dans le collections françaises (Paris, 1983-84), no. 17.

Jabach and the Fouquet Scandal.

During the 1650s Jabach lurked amongst the collectors at the Commonwealth Sale with the intention of thwarting the ambitions of the Spanish, and he outwitted them a few times. This was unsurprising as Jabach was both financier and art dealer; and it was in those capacities that he sold 61 pictures of Cardinal Mazarin as a gift to Louis XIV’s Minister of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet. It wasn’t strictly a gift as there was a colossal sum of 240,000 livres involved, but then Fouquet liked to live lavishly. Then as now with financial dealing, all was not as it seemed. It transpired that Fouquet had not personally paid for the pictures, but had relied on money advanced from a client, Nicolas Doublet who was destined never to be reimbursed because Fouquet was accused of creative accounting and dismissed from office in September 1661. However, the painter Charles Le Brun who had decorated Fouquet’s magnificent chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte,[1]petitioned Colbert to pay Doublet; but instead, Colbert decided to buy Mazarin’s paintings himself, and in April 1662 made a payment of 330,000 livres, not to the hapless Doublet but to Jabach who as Brown says had “mysteriously once again come into possession of the pictures.” Not only did Jabach raise the price of the Fouquet sale, but he probably increased the number of pictures from sixty-one to one hundred. In 1664 Jabach became Director of the French East India Company, and this, along with other interests ensured that money was no object in buying pictures for his collection.

Sir Peter Lely, Everhard Jabach, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, oil on canvas, 124 x 105 cm.

Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Melun, 55 kms, SW of Paris.

Charles Le Brun, The Triumph of Faith, 1658-60, Oil on canvas, Château, Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and Family, 1660, oil on canvas, 280 x 328 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jabach’s Enterprizes.

Paolo Veronese, Virgin and Child with Sts Justine and George and a Benedictine, oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris

Gilles Rousselet, Louis Henri de Loménie, Count of Brienne.

Titian, Pastoral Concert (Fête champêtre), 1508-09, Oil on canvas, 110 x 138 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Claude Lefebvre, Jean Baptiste Colbert, 1666, Oil on canvas, 118 x 113 cm, Château de Versailles, Versailles.

Somebody who had helped Jabach liquidate his first collection and build his second was Mazarin’s secretary, Louis Henri de Loménie, Count of Brienne (1636-98). A well-travelled man who had ventured as far as Lapland, Brienne was an ardent lover of pictures. He could be speaking for many art collectors of the period with his enthusiastic declaration of love for paintings, though his claims as a great connoisseur have to be taken with a pinch of salt: “I spent a great deal of money on paintings. I love them; I love them to the point of madness. I know them very well. I can buy a painting without consulting anyone and without being fooled by the Jabachs and the Perruchots [a dealer], by the Forests and Podestas, those horse-traders of paintings who, in their time, have often sold copies for originals.”[2]By 1662 Brienne owned fifty pictures which were paraded in a catalogue (written in Latin, a sign of his grandiose ambitions) but his fortunes took a turn for the worse due to his gambling. Expelled from court, Brienne wandered through Germany for three years before ending up in the asylum of St Lazare in Paris, for a stay of sixteen years. Brienne’s downfall benefited Jabach as he acquired some of his pictures including Veronese’s Virgin and Child with Sts Justine and George and a Benedictine. Brienne’s pictures were only a small tranche of Jabach’s collecting empire; he also acquired pictures from the Arundel holdings, not to mention selling re-touched drawings to Colbert whose acquisitions from Jabach numbered about 40%. It is estimated that by the time of Jabach’s death in 1695, the banker’s collection numbered nearly seven hundred paintings, 4500 drawings, with the emphasis in this third collection on Flemish and French pictures, though Jabach had copies of great Italian art he had owned previously.[3]

Colbert’s Acquisitions and other collectors.

In addition to buying art from Jabach, Colbert used other sources such as the collection of Cardinal Mazarin, some of which were bequests to the King. This was a precedent which had begun with Cardinal Richelieu who had, near the end of his life, presented some of his art to Louis XIII. Another important source was the great collector, the duke of Richelieu, nephew of the Cardinal (1629-1715). The duke had a liking for the painters of seventeenth-century Rome. He was responsible for influencing taste so that Parisian collectors sought out Poussin, Annibale, Guido and Albani.[4]One distinguished visitor to the Duke of Richelieu’s gallery was the famous sculptor, Gianlorenzo Bernini who was notoriously hard to please in matters of art. He has left us some of his insightful comments on the pictures in the duke’s gallery which he said was “just as a collection should be, with nothing in it but the best. “ AS for examples of his insight on pictures and the display of them, Bernini said that Poussin’s Plague at Ashdod, hung very high, should be hung lower; he also noted that in Titian’s so-called Madonna of the Rabbit, the sky had “changed and blackened, so that it came forward instead of receding.”[5]Not one for standing on diplomatic protocol, Bernini was outspoken in his criticism of Louis XIV’s collection, even going so far as to censure it in front of the King himself: “As for the other matter, instead of so many cabinets, vases, cut-glass, etc, he would have wished the King to have examples of some Greek statuary in one or two rooms and pictures by first class masters in others.” Bernini had clearly overstepped the mark this time because this frankness alienated him from the King and Colbert resulting in the sculptor’s dismissal from the service of the French court.

Charles de la Fosse, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, oil on canvas, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Tours.

Poussin, Plague at Ashdod, 1630, oil on canvas, 148 x 198 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

Titian, Madonna and Child with St Catherine and a Rabbit, 1530, Oil on canvas, 74 x 84 cm, Musée du Louvre.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Paris and Oenone, 1648, Oil on canvas, 119 x 150 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The Sun King’s Picture Collection

In the next decade, the great art amateur or art lover, Roger de Piles, visited the cabinet of the King’s pictures which suggests that the collection was open to members of the public. The collection was shuffled from building to building, but initially was housed in the Louvre. In December 1681, Louis XIV toured the cabinet du roi at the Louvre and the newspaper the Mercure galant offers a report of this visit, helpfully giving us the earliest description of the Sun King’s art collection.[6] We are told of a set of seven rooms in the Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre housing works by Correggio, Leonardo, Carracci, Van Dyck, Poussin and others- all the right names in other words. The breakdown was as follows: Correggio (6), Guilio Romano (5), Leonardo (10), Giorgione (9), Palma Vecchio (4), Titian (23), Carracci (19), Domenichino (8), Reni (12), Tintoretto (6), Veronese (18), Van Dyck (14), Poussin (17), Le Brun (6). Louis commented on the juxtaposition of Le Brun pictures next to the Old Masters concluding “they hold up well among those by these great masters, and after his death will be much sought after, but he hopes he will not have this advantage so soon because he needs him.” It need hardly be stated that this judgment on Le Brun compared to the Old Masters reflects badly on the King’s lack of perception where fine art is concerned. Le Brun is a fine master, but hardly in the first rank of artists.

Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701, Oil on canvas, 277 x 194 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris Louis.

Charles Le Brun, The Family of Darius before Alexander, c. 1660, Oil on canvas, 164 x 260 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles

Unknown 17th century German engraver, Palais du Louvre.

Baciccio, Portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1665, Oil on canvas, 72 x 61 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.

Decline.

After Bernini had returned to Rome, twenty-five of the Duke’s finest paintings were sold to the crown for 50,000 livres during a period of what could be called one of the richest periods of collecting by the crown inaugurated by Colbert in the 1660s.[7]After Colbert’s death in 1683, a draft of the inventory was made by Le Brun (signed and dated 18^th October, 1683). This lists 426 paintings; an appendix adds another fifty- seven, a total of 483. The final inventory of Louis XIV’s paintings would number 2,400 paintings. As Brown says, from this point until the death of the King in 1715, the rate of accumulation declines with the exception of the 21 canvases and sculpture bequeathed by the King’s gardener, André Le Nôtre. This decline merits an explanation and Brown attributes the reason for the decline in picture purchases to Louis XIV himself who he says “had no eye for pictures” or who simply regarded them as extensions of the royal splendour of his reign. Bernini’s candour notwithstanding, the Roman sculptor was right about the organization of the French royal collection. As Brown concludes, it was acquired mainly for “reasons of state” and it was only the lectures of Le Brun, Philippe de Champaigne, and Sébastian Bourdon on pictures in the collection – such as Raphael’s St Michael- which elevated the holdings into something more than a symbol of royal privilege and power.

Carlo Maratta, André La Notre, 1680, oil on canvas, 112 x 85 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles.

Charles Le Brun, Louis XIV Visiting the Gobelins Factory, 1673, Tapestry, 370 x 576 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles.

Att to Adam Frans van der Meulen, Construction of the Château de Versailles, 1680, Oil on canvas, 108 x 142.3 cm, Royal Collection, London.

Raphael, St Michael and the Devil, 1518, Oil transferred from wood to canvas, 268 x 160 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Slides.

1)      Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and Family, 1660, oil on canvas, 280 x 328 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.[8]

2)      Sir Peter Lely, Everhard Jabach, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, oil on canvas, 124 x 105 cm.

3)      Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and Family installed at Olantigh House, Kent, with top of canvas folded over, photo from “Country Life”, 1969.

4)      Photograph, formerly Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed in World War II.

5)      Hans Holbein, Erasmus, 1523, Oil on wood, 43 x 33 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

6)      Leonardo da Vinci, St John the Baptist, 1513-16, Oil on panel, 69 x 57 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

7)      Titian, Woman with a Mirror, c. 1514, Oil on canvas, 93 x 76 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

8)      Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin, 1602-06, Oil on canvas, 369 x 245 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

9)      Titian, Pastoral Concert (Fête champêtre), 1508-09, Oil on canvas, 110 x 138 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

10)   Correggio, Allegory of Virtue, 1525-30, Distemper, 142 x 86 cm, Musée du Louvre.

11)   Charles Le Brun, Chancellor Séguier at the Entry of Louis XIV into Paris, 1655-61, Oil on canvas, 295 x 351 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

12)   Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Melun, 55 kms, SW of Paris.

13)   Charles Le Brun, The Triumph of Faith, 1658-60, Oil on canvas, Château, Vaux-le-Vicomte.

14)   Charles Le Brun, Holy Family with the Adoration of the Child, 1655, Oil on canvas, 87 x 118 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

15)   Charles Le Brun, The Family of Darius before Alexander, c. 1660, Oil on canvas, 164 x 260 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles.[9]

16)   Raphael, The Holy Family, 1518, Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 207 x 140 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[10]

17)   Pierre Mignard, Perseus and Andromeda, 1679, Oil on canvas, 150 x 198 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

18)   Gilles Rousselet, Louis Henri de Loménie, Count of Brienne.

19)   Paolo Veronese, Virgin and Child with Sts Justine and George and a Benedictine, oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.[11]

20)   Charles de la Fosse, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, oil on canvas, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Tours.

21)   Charles de la Fosse The Finding of Moses, 1675-80, Oil on canvas, 125 x 110 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

22)   Baciccio, Portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1665, Oil on canvas, 72 x 61 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.

23)   Titian, Madonna and Child with St Catherine and a Rabbit, 1530, Oil on canvas, 74 x 84 cm, Musée du Louvre.

24)   Poussin, Plague at Ashdod, 1630, oil on canvas, 148 x 198 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

25)   Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Paris and Oenone, 1648, Oil on canvas, 119 x 150 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

26)   Nicolas Poussin, Rebecca and Eliezer, oil on canvas, 118 x 199 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

27)   Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of the Damned, c. 1620, Oil on canvas, 286 x 224 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

28)   Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701, Oil on canvas, 277 x 194 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris Louis.

29)   Claude Lefebvre, Jean Baptiste Colbert, 1666, Oil on canvas, 118 x 113 cm, Château de Versailles, Versailles.

30)   Unknown 17th century German engraver, Palais du Louvre.

31)   Att to Adam Frans van der Meulen, Construction of the Château de Versailles, 1680, Oil on canvas, 108 x 142.3 cm, Royal Collection, London.[12]

32)   Charles Le Brun, Louis XIV Visiting the Gobelins Factory, 1673, Tapestry, 370 x 576 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles.

33)   Carlo Maratta, André La Notre, 1680, oil on canvas, 112 x 85 cm, Musée National du Château, Versailles.

34)   Sébastian Bourdon, Portrait of a Man, Oil on canvas, 105 x 65 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

35)   Raphael, St Michael and the Devil, 1518, Oil transferred from wood to canvas, 268 x 160 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[13]

[1] Claude Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun et description détaille de ses ouvrages, (Droz, 2004), 249-250.

[2] As Richard Spear notes, Brienne’s connoisseurial ability was thrown into doubt by his purchase of a small version on copper of Guido’s Crucifixion of St Peter (“cet excellent tableau”) which Spear considers “ a good copy of the altarpiece.” Brienne had boasted that one cannot confuse a painting by Guido with a painting by Guercino, an Albani with a Domenichino, a Lanfranco with an Annibale.” The Divine Guido, 273-4. Interestingly, Mazarin did mistake a Lanfranco for an Annibale.

[3]From the Met’s website: “ …at his death an inventory was drawn up listing 688 pictures—not, it should be said, equivalent in quality to those he sold to the crown, some being copies—and 4,515 drawings, whose quality may be judged by the fact that many entered the discriminating collections of Pierre Crozat (1665–1740), Carl Gustav Tessin (1695–1770), and Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774); many further enriched the Louvre’s collection.”

[4]The dealer Perruchot said of Albani: “As for the paintings of Francesco Albani, they are esteemed in Paris, as long as they are not his latest works.” Then he adds: “The paintings of Annibale Carracci, of Domenichino and of Guido Bolognese are still greatly esteemed in Paris.” Brown, 213.

[5]These are Chantelou’s reports of Bernini’s comments

[6]This report from the Mercure galant, December 1681, is quoted in Robert W. Berger, Public Access to Art in Paris: A Documentary History from the Middle Ages to 1800 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 86f.

[7]Blunt provides a useful overview of art during the transition from Colbert to Louvois: Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700, (Yale, Pelican History of Art, 1953, rep. 1982), 359f.

[8]Two versions are known, both originally in Cologne. One was destroyed in Berlin during the war and the other was neglected because it hung in a country house in Kent; it was offered for sale in 2013 and bought by the Met in 2014. The family (l to r) are Jabach, Everhard the Younger, Anna Maria née de Groote, Hélène, Heinrich, and Anna Maria.

[9]Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun, 273f.

[10] This was transferred to Versailles in 1695 where it was placed next to Raphael’s St Michael. Seen as guided by Raphael, but with the contributions of several of his collaborators, Raphael dans le collections françaises, (Paris, 1983-4), no. 10.

[11]From Cavallini to Veronese: Holy Family with Saints and a Donor. Canvas, 90 x 90. St George is the saint on the left. On the right, St Giustina introduces the donor, who has been identified as Girolamo Scrocchetto, the abbot who commissioned the Wedding at Cana for San Giorgio Maggiore. The abbot is portrayed as a guest on the right of the Wedding at Cana. Here he is shown as a much younger man; so the painting presumably dates from early in his first period as abbot, between 1551 and 1554. Acquired by Louis XIV in 1671 from the German banker Everhard Jabach. (The French king acquired no less than twenty-two paintings by, or attributed to, Veronese between 1662 and 1683, more than half of them from Jabach.)

[12]From The RC web site: This picture shows the building of Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles and can be dated on the basis of the architecture, which corresponds to the considerable extensions begun in 1678 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. During these years the forecourt was remodelled and new ranges added on the east side. In the painting the palace itself is finished, but the two Ailes des Ministres, separated by the Place d’Armes, are still under construction. The painting is of particular interest in illustrating an extensive and complicated building operation in progress. In the centre foreground a group of architects, including Mansart discuss a plan. The figure in black wearing the riband and star of the Order of the Holy Ghost is almost certainly Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who, together with Louis XIV, was the chief arbiter of taste in France during his time in office. Above in the centre is a coach approaching the palace: this might well be conveying Louis XIV after having inspected building progress. For more details- link.

[13]According to Vasari, painted for Francois I. The choice of saint might refer to the Order of St Michel. Raphael dans le collections françaises, no. 9.

Collecting and the Art Market in Antwerp

The market in Antwerp has been called “the first showroom in postclassical Europe to be constructed expressly for the exhibition and sale of works of art” (Ewing). Our Lady’s “Pand” (covered market) was a courtyard in the ground of the Church of Our Lady, later the cathedral of Antwerp. The Pand was rented to art merchants during biennial trade fairs; stalls were occupied by painters, sculptors, joiners and booksellers. The Pand grew and grew, and with the establishment of the Antwerp Exchange, the city became a centre of cultural and financial activity. Unfortunately, the “New Bourse” put the Pand out of business and ushered in the era of modern capital with pictures becoming swept up in the whirlwind of trade and commerce. Things slowed down with the revolt of the Northern provinces in 1570 with Antwerp riven by religious factionalism between Catholics and Calvinists. Things became steadier with the advent of the Archduke Albert and his consort Isabella (Rubens’s patrons) during which a truce was engineered between 1609-21. This encouraged the recovery of the art market and ushered in a new era for Northern art and a roll call of illustrious names like Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, Snyders Jan Breughel the Elder. A window onto the world of Antwerp collecting and the market is provided by the genre known as the “cabinet picture” which shows paintings, natural objects, and scientific instruments in some patron’s gallery. Though these contain some truth about the state of art collecting in Antwerp and the north, they should ultimately be seen as elaborate fictions designed to flatter the patron and announce his civilised taste.

Attributed to Adriaen van Stalbent, Gallery Picture, oil on canvas, Prado, Museo Prado.

Frans Francken II, Art Room, 1636, Oil on wood, 74 x 78 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Willem van Haecht, Gallery of Cornelis van der Gheest, 1628, Oil on panel, 100 x 130 cm, Rubenshuis, Antwerp.

Anthony van Dyck, Cornelius van der Gheest, oil on oak, 37.5 x 32.5 cm, National Gallery, London.

Archduke Leopold William.

There are many reasons for the metamorphosis from a Hapsburg cleric into a great art collector which are identified in Jonathan Brown’s Kings and Connoisseurs. The chief factors are (a) the legacy of Hapsburg collecting suggesting that art accumulation was in the dynasty’s genes; (b) the dispersal of gigantic collections of art from England (Charles I, Arundel’s and Hamilton’s); (c) the growth of the art market in cities like Antwerp. It was during the boom in the art market that Archduke Leopold William of Austria became governor of the Spanish Netherlands on 11^th April, 1647. The northern provinces of the Netherlands (later known as the Dutch Republic) had declared their independence from Spain; the southern area was, however, ruled over by a member of a Royal Family, or elevated aristocrat. Cousin of Philip IV, he was eventually persuaded by that august monarch to take control of the southern provinces. Leopold was born in Graz on 6^th January, second son of Ferdinand II. Originally, a clerical career beckoned but in 1639 Leopold switched to General of the Imperial Army leading campaigns against such foes as Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. However, Leopold’s successes on the field were few, mainly due to Spain’s declining power. Until 1636, the Archduke seems to have taken no part in the world of art and collecting. Leopold had his own painter, Jan van den Hoecke who was a mediocre artist competent at representing his patron in various celebratory poses and situations. Leopold’s eyes may have been opened to the world of collectors when the Earl of Arundel visited him in Vienna in 1636. The event is recorded in a diary by a functionary who notes tersely and dismissively that there is not much to see, - only “a few pictures” in the Archduke’s gallery.[1]

David Teniers, Modello for the Frontispiece of the Theatrum Pictorium, 1658, oil on panel, Private Collection

David Teniers, the Younger, Portrait of Leopold William in Armour, oil on canvas, 203 x 138 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Att to Jan Breughel the Younger, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia strolling in the Grounds of the Palace on the Coudenberg in Brussels, oil on panel, 150 x 128 cm, Prado, Museo Prado.

David Teniers, Peasants Dancing and Feasting, 1660, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 63.8 x 74.9 cm

David Teniers (1610-1690) the Younger and Archduke Leopold

Other collectors nearer home such as the Bishop of Ghent, Anton Triest (1576-1657) may have impressed him enough to want to start a gallery of his own. A letter of 8th November expresses amazement at the modern Flemish paintings in the Bishop’s house, especially David Teniers’s colourful scenes of peasants and fairs. Teniers was admitted as a Master of the Guild of St Luke in 1632, but he had made his scenes of peasants known to the public before then. His Prodigal Son painted for the Guild (now in the Hermitage) was much admired and did much to enhance his reputation. Teniers rose to become head of the Guild of St Luke in 1644, and it was shortly after this that he came to the attention of the Archduke. Teniers brought Leopold a large painting and many commissions followed. With the death of Jan van der Hoecke in 1650, Teniers assumed his duties and Leopold appointed him court painter in 1651- at the latest. Leaving his native city of Antwerp where he had enjoyed considerable success, Teniers moved his house and workshop to Brussels to take up the job of court painter.

David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Willem in his Gallery in Brussels, about 1651, oil on canvas, 123 x 163 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

David Teniers the Younger, The Gallery of Archduke Leopold in Brussels, 1640, Oil on canvas, 96 x 128 cm, Staatsgalerie, Schleissheim. Leopold points to Fetti's Hero and Leander while Teniers steadies Titian's Madonna of the Cherries.

David Teniers, Self-Portrait, before 1648, etching by Peter de Jode, from Cornelis de Bie, 1662.

The Archduke’s Picture Gallery, English & Other Collections & the Theatrum Pictorum.

Amongst Tenier’s duties was presiding over the Archduke’s picture gallery which by 1650 was one of the most outstanding collections in Europe. As we learnt earlier on this course, the beating heart of this magnificent collection was the Duke of Hamilton’s pictures. It is estimated that Leopold acquired a staggering 400 pictures from the estate of the Duke, but lack of documentation means this important purchase remains shrouded in mystery. Though Teniers was despatched to England, no more than four paintings from Charles I’s are believed to have come into the Archduke’s picture gallery.[2]But the Archduke did get more involved in the sale of another one of the large English collection,- the Duke of Buckingham’s which was brought via Amsterdam to be put up for sale in Antwerp, but in this case Leopold was acting for his brother, Leopold III who wanted to make up for art treasures lost at Castle Prague looted by the Swedish army in 1648.[3]The purchase of the Buckingham pictures was not concluded until 1650 and the sum involved was £5,000, a considerably smaller amount than the collection had been valued at in 1649- 30,000 guilden (guilders). The Buckingham works sold in 1650 are thought to have been of the highest quality with no copies or unattributed paintings.[4]According to McEvansoneya, it seems to have been well known that Leopold intended to buy up pictures in Antwerp as well as in Brussels as indicated by documents.[5]We learn much about the nature of Leopold’s gallery, not only from Tenier’s paintings of it, but from the Theatrum Pictura (Theatre of Painting) a book produced with engravings done by a team of eleven of the most famous Italian works in the collection.[6]Note that the pictures were all of different sizes, but Teniers was compelled to make them all the same to fit into his book. As he put it: “The original pictures, copies of which you see here, are not all the same form and size; therefore it was necessary to reduce them all to the same form and size so that they could be presented to you more appropriately in this book.”[7]An important task of Teniers would have been to make small copies on panel of the originals (his so-called pasticci). In addition to Italian pictures (617), Leopold also owned 885 northern pictures, mostly Flemish, with some German.[8]There is much to admire here, such as Breughel’s peasant scenes, altarpieces by Rogier van der Weyden and Bosch, as well as portraits by Jan van Eyck.

Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Triptych, c. 1445, Oil on oak panel, 101 x 70 cm (central panel), 101 x 35 cm (each wing), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Pieter Breughel, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on panel, 46 x 63 ¾ inches, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, 1431-32, Oil on wood, 34,1 x 27,3 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Peter Paul Rubens, Cimon and Iphigenia, 1617, oil on canvas, 81.9 x 111 inches, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Slides.

1)      Jacob de Formentrou (active Antwerp 1640-59), A Gallery of Pictures, 1659, Royal Collection.

2)      Attributed to Adriaen van Stalbent, Gallery Picture, oil on canvas, Prado, Museo Prado.

3)      Frans Francken II, Art Room, 1636, Oil on wood, 74 x 78 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

4)      Willem van Haecht, Gallery of Cornelis van der Ghent, 1628, Oil on panel, 100 x 130 cm, Rubenshuis, Antwerp.

5)      Anthony van Dyck, Cornelius van der Gheest, oil on oak, 37.5 x 32.5 cm, National Gallery, London.

6)      Peter Thys, Archduke Leopold William, oil on canvas, size not known, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

7)      David Teniers, the Younger, Portrait of Leopold William in Armour, oil on canvas, 203 x 138 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,

8)      Att to Jan Breughel the Younger, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia strolling in the Grounds of the Palace on the Coudenberg in Brussels, oil on panel, 150 x 128 cm, Prado, Museo Prado.

9)      David Teniers, Self-Portrait, before 1648, etching by Peter de Jode, from Cornelis de Bie, 1662.

10)   David Teniers the Younger, Self-Portrait, about 1654-55, oil on canvas, 117 x 97 cm, Private Collection/ David Teniers the Younger, Portrait of Anna and Justin Leopold Teniers, about 1654-55, oil on canvas, Private Collection.

11)   David Teniers, Flemish Kermess, 1652, Oil on canvas, 157 x 221 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

12)   David Teniers, Peasants Dancing and Feasting, 1660, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 63.8 x 74.9 cm.[9]Link

13)   Jan van Troyen, Frontispiece of the Theatrum Pictorum, etching.[10]

14)   David Teniers, Modello for the Frontispiece of the Theatrum Pictorium, 1658, oil on panel, Private Collection.

15)   Titian, prev att to Palma Vecchio, “Il Violante”, c. 1514, Oil on canvas, 65 x 51 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

16)   Lucas Vorsterman II (after Pieter Thys), Portrait of David Teniers, from the Theatrum Pictorum.[11]

17)   Wenceslaus Hollar, Self-portrait, 17^thcentury, etching, second state, 15.6 x 11 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

18)   Wenceslaus Hollar Engraving of Durer’s Self-Portrait, 1645, etching.

19)   Titian, Portrait of Jacopo Strada, 1567-68, oil on canvas, 125 x 95 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

20)   Unknown artist, Titian’s Portrait of Jacopo Strada, etching.

21)   David Teniers the Younger, The Gallery of Archduke Leopold in Brussels, 1640, Oil on canvas, 96 x 128 cm, Staatsgalerie, Schleissheim.

22)   Wenceslaus Hollar, detail of a gallery of painting by Teniers featuring Esther and Ahasuerus by Veronese, 1651-52, 48.4 x 55.6 cm.[12]

23)   David Teniers, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery, 1651, oil on canvas, 127 x 162.6 cm, Petworth House.

24)   Frans van der Steen (after a drawing by Nicolas van Hoy), Porticuum Prospectus, A Gallery in Stallburg in Vienna, Theatrum Pictorium, 1^stedition.

25)   David Teniers (after Bassano), The Good Samaritan, oil on wood, 17.1 x 22.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.[13]

26)   David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Willem in his Gallery in Brussels, about 1651, oil on canvas, 123 x 163 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

27)   Guido Reni, St Peter Weeping, c. 1635-37, oil on canvas, 74 x 61 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[14]

28)   Peter Paul Rubens, Cimon and Iphigenia, 1617, oil on canvas, 81.9 x 111 inches, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[15]

29)   Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Triptych, c. 1445, Oil on oak panel, 101 x 70 cm (central panel), 101 x 35 cm (each wing), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

30)   Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, 1431-32, Oil on wood, 34,1 x 27,3 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

31)   Frans Francken and David Teniers, Interior of a Picture Gallery c. 1615 and c. 1650, oil on panel, 58.5 x 79 cm, Courtauld Institute, London.

32)   Hieronymous Bosch, Last Judgment Triptych, 1504-08, Mixed technique on panel, 163 x 128 cm (central panel), 167 x 60 cm (each wing), Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

33)   Pieter Breughel, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on panel, 46 x 63 ¾ inches, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[16]

34)   Pieter Breughel, Return of the Herd, 1565, oil on panel, 46 x 62 5/8 inches, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

[1]“On the next day, which was Sunday, 26^th June, His Excellency [Arundel] had an audience with the Queen of Hungary and Archduke Leopold, the emperor’s second son. There is nothing noteworthy about the archduke’s palace apart from its spacious courtyard. Visiting the archduke’s lodging the following day, we saw only a few pictures.” Cited in Brown, 148. Hervey (Life of Arundel, 370) says this remark suggests that the Archduke had “already acquired some reputation” in art collecting, hence the astonishment at finding so little in the Archduke’s place in Vienna.

[2] Teniers homed in on the Earl of Pembroke’s gallery where he bought some pictures like Titian’s Venus and Cupid with an Organ Player. Teniers irritated Cardenas, the Spanish ambassador, but he must have been useful as a connoisseur. Most of Tenier’s pictures were sent to Fuensaldana in Brussels who then then passed them on to other Spanish collectors including Philip IV. Fuensalda also bought pictures in Antwerp like Van Dyck’s Continence of Scipio The painting ended up in Philip IV’s collection but is now in Christchurch Gallery, Oxford.

[3] Leopold III through his go-between brother may have been trying to buy back imperial property. After the death of Rudolph II in 1612, 115 paintings which he had left to his brother the Archduke Albert were removed to Flanders in 1616, and subsequently sold off. Several of these later appeared in Buckingham’s collection, possibly via Rubens. Philip McEvansoneya, “The Sequestration and Dispersal of the Buckingham Collection”, Journal of the History of Collections, 8, no. 2, (1996), 133-154, 142.

[4]McEvansoneya, “The Sequestration and Dispersal of the Buckingham Collection”, 136.

[5]For example, a letter cited by McEvansoneya from Jan van der Hoecke: “His Highness has said to me that when he comes to Antwerp he wishes to see all the most beautiful things that can be seen in Antwerp in the art of painting, and that he wishes to buy all the most beautiful things that suit him best, according to his own taste.”

[6]For this, see the exhibition catalogue to David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, ed. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen and others (Courtauld Institute, London, 2006). The Theatrumwas most successful; five editions have been identified (1660, 1673, 1684, c. 1700 and finally 1755). The first edition was produced at Tenier’s own expense.

[7]David Teniers, 25. The printed copies of Italian paintings divide into five different sizes

[8] Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 162. Teniers listed these in an “appended list of principally Northern artists represented in the Archduke’s collection.” David Teniers, 19. According to an inventory drawn up in Vienna in 1659, Archduke Leopold owned 517 Italian paintings and 880 paintings from the Dutch, Flemish and German schools.

[9] From Met’s website: “?Jeanne d'Albert de Luynes, comtesse de Verrue (until d. 1736; her estate sale, Paris, March 27, 1737, for Fr 1,755); marquis de Brunoy (until 1776; his anonymous sale, Joullain fils, Paris, December 2, 1776, no. 30, as "Lendemain des Noces," with "Accords flamands," for 10, 999.19 livres, to Merle); Lord Radstock (until 1810; sold to Bonnemaison); [François Bonnemaison, 1810–11; sold to Penrice]; Thomas Penrice, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (1811–d. 1816); Mrs. Penrice, Great Yarmouth (by 1826–at least 1829); by descent to John Penrice, Great Yarmouth (until 1844; his sale, Christie's, London, July 6, 1844, no. 9, as "Le Lendemain des noces," for £519, to Nieuwenhuys); marquès de Salamanca, Madrid and Paris (until 1867; his sale, Paris, June 3–6, 1867, no. 120, for Fr 24,000); comte Cornet de Ways Ruart, Brussels (until 1870); William T. Blodgett, Paris (from 1870; sold half share to Johnston); William T. Blodgett, Paris, and John Taylor Johnston, New York (1870–71; sold to MMA).”

[10]“Pallas’s gifts are Leopold’s own. Bravely and gently he devotes himself here to arms, there to the arts.The arms belong to another time. Artists surround him now with beautiful forms, for he very much likes his crown. With art a true likeness is painted, without it an ordinary one; This hand made a likeness only with submission.”

[11]The towers in the background are thought to be his country seat “Three Towers”, (Drij Toren) which he acquired in the 1650s, Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 183.

[12]Teniers may have met Hollar in Antwerp where Hollar lived between 1644 and 1652, but the motivation for using Hollars’s print for the Theatrum Pictorum remains unknown. The curators of the Teniers exhibition say that “In adapting Hollar’s large copper plate, Teniers may also have sought to save time and costs.”

[13]The original is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, (Leopold’s) and another reduced version is in the Courtauld (David Teniers, no. 22). A painting of the Good Samaritan is mentioned by Viscount Feilding in a list sent to Hamilton (March, 1636). In June 1637, Feilding sent a different list of paintings in “Bartolomeo della Nave study”. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen thinks two versions were involved, one now in the KH, Vienna. Teniers not only selected it for the TP but included it in three of his gallery views for the archduke (Petworth, Prado and the KH, Vienna). It found further fame in other illustrated books, in the 18^th century.

[14]As observed previously, Viscount Feilding wrote to Hamilton on the subject of Guido Reni’s heads. “…the Helanas head of Guido Reno is of his schoole, but thought to be touch’d by him, but for St Peeter’s head I am assur’d itt is an original, and am promis’d a certificate thereof from Guido Rheno, and that itt is of his most fierce and best way.” Spear comments: The original (in Vienna) “…appears to be an autograph variant of a very similar canvas in the Prado, indicating that, in this instance anyway, Fielding was not misled.” The Divine Guido, 239.

[15] The tale intended to demonstrate the power of love. As Iphigenia sleeps in a grove by the sea, a noble, but coarse and unlettered Cypriot youth, Cymon, seeing Iphigenia's beauty, falls in love with her. Cymon, by the power of love, becomes an educated and polished courtier. This is not given the “Cimon and Iphigenia” in Buckingham’s collection, but it might be the “Hermit with a Naked Woman” which hung in the “Vaulted Room” in York House, Randall Davies, “An Inventory of the Duke of Buckingham’s Pictures at York House”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 10, no 48, (March 1907), 376- 382, 380.

[16] Thought to have been painted for a certain Antwerp merchant called Niclaes Jonghelinck. Probably there were originally 12 pictures representing the months of the year. Five enumerated in Leopold’s collection. In his 1660 “catalogue” of Leopold’s collection, Teniers speaks of “six pictures representing the variety (diversitié) of the Twelve Months by the old Bruegel.” Wolfgang Stechow, Breughel, (Thames and Hudson), 1990, 86, where Stechow says the present pictures represents the month of January.

Collecting Art and the “Prestige of Painting” in the Seventeenth-Century

Nearly all of the collectors on this course were either of royal or aristocratic blood, or had some title or honour associated with the ruling houses of Europe. Seventeenth-century collectors were merely following the example set by their illustrious predecessors, a roll of call of famous families and dynasties who possessed the wealth, status and power to amass art: the Farnese, the Medici, the Gonzaga, the Borghese. The galleries of these puissant families boasted paintings, tapestries, sculpture and drawings that were the envy of artists, collectors and scholars. Their art is today hung on the walls of leading museums throughout the world and draws huge crowds. This is what Brown calls “the prestige of painting” reflected in the increasingly high prices that paintings are sold for today.[1]Yet as Brown cautions us, other types of objects like silverware, tapestries and others would be valued far higher than painting. For example an inventory of Cardinal Richelieu values his paintings 80, 000 livres, but his silver was valued at 237,000 livres. And Mazarin’s pictures were estimated to be worth 224, 873 livres but the eighteen diamonds (les dix-huit Mazarins) were valued at a staggering 1,931, 000 livres. Here Brown is identifying the material value of the work, not what could be called its symbolic value, i.e the stylistic, art historical, aesthetic qualities which are difficult, if not impossible, to value financially. Another crucial difference between earlier collectors and the monarchs of the seventeenth-century is that families like the Gonzaga accumulated their art gradually, piecemeal over time. By contrast, rulers like Charles I, Louis XIV and Rudolph II acquired their collections almost at a flash. It took only a few years to transform the English royal collection into something outstanding by the purchase of the Gonzaga holdings in 1628.

Domenico Morone, Battle between the Gonzaga and the Bonacolsi, 1494, Oil on wood Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Hendrick Pot, Charles I, Henrietta Maria & Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II, Royal Collection

Attributed to Andrea Mantegna, Francesco Gonzaga 4th Marchese of Mantua, black chalk with some wash and white highlights on greenish paper, cut down on all sides, 347 x 238 mm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Andrea Mantegna, Triumphs of Ceasar. Canvas III: Captured statues and siege equipment , a representation of a captured city and inscriptions (The Triumphal Carts), distemper (?) on canvas, 2.66 x 2.78 m, Royal Collection.

Charles I and the Gonzaga Collections.

An illustration of the difference in patterns of collecting between the renaissance and the seventeenth-century can be seen if the links between Charles I and the Gonzaga holdings are compared. Links between the English and the Mantuan court begin about 1608. An Englishman, Thomas Coryat visited Mantua in that year and compared the Italian city to London.[2]This theme is one of the themes (Mantua/London) running through the 1982 exhibition Splendour of the Gonzaga which surveyed the art collection of the Mantuan family, most of which the English crown would acquire in 1628. The Gonzaga collection involved generations of the family including Ludovico Gonzaga who was Mantegna’s patron. Mantegna’s splendid Triumphs of Ceasar would come to England and remain there. Mantegna also served Isabella d’Este the “First Lady of the Renaissance” whose portraits- or women that may be her- are in the royal collection. Isabella’s son Federigo was also a collector, though mainly of learned erotica by the likes of Guilio Romano and Correggio whose art found their way temporarily into the English collection. Nearer the seventeenth-century, painters like Peter Paul Rubens and Domenico Fetti were employed by the Gonzaga. Rubens painted a large altarpiece, Adoration of the Trinity which includes the Gonzaga family; this only exists in fragments. Fetti painted many heads of saints and martyrs; many of these came into Charles’s collection and stayed there. Another strand of Gonzaga collecting was their knot of Flemish pictures including two Jan van Eycks that Isabella is thought to have owned. An altarpiece attributed to Jan Provost was acquired by Charles in in 1627, sold in 1650 and then recovered by the Crown.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Gonzaga Family Worshipping the Holy Trinity, 1604-05, Oil on canvas, 430 x 700 cm, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Andrea Mantegna, The Court of Gonzaga, 1465-74, Walnut oil on plaster, 805 x 807 cm, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.

Andrea Mantegna, Madonna della Vittoria, Louvre, Madonna of Victory, 1496, Tempera on canvas, 280 x 166 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Domenico Fetti, Margherita Gonzaga Receiving the Model of the Church of St Ursula, c. 1615, Oil on canvas, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

The Dutch Gift.

An engraving of the so-called Isabella at Hampton Court was made by Pieter Holsteyn II for a picture book of paintings in the collection of the Dutchman Gerard Reynst in the 1650s.The Reynst collection is one of the few of its kind made in the Dutch republic during this century, which to Brown illustrates how “the ideal of the princely gallery took hold amongst the mercantile class.”[3]The question of the acquisition of Italian paintings cannot be gone into here, but the Reynst cache was mainly acquired from a Venetian collection.[4]Like Teniers with his Theatrum Pictorium, Reynst used a book of engravings to publicise his collection. By this time however, about twenty-four of his finest paintings had been sold to the states of Holland and West Friesland and subsequently presented to Charles II of England in 1660. The so called “Dutch Gift” made to Charles II on his assumption to the throne in 1660, numbered masterpieces believed to be by Titian and Raphael, respectively. Of the latter, the “Portrait of Isabelle d’Este” is now attributed to Guilio Romano, and rather than Isabella it is thought to represent her daughter-in-law Margherita Paleogo. Perhaps the most impressive picture in this hoard is Lorenzo Lotto’s portrait of another collector, Andrea Odoni who lived in Venice. Other collection publications included the Cabinet du Roi, a huge collection of prints.

Antonio Verrio, The Sea Triumph of Charles II, c. 1674, oil on canvas, 224.5 x 231.0 cm, Royal Collection

Paolo Veronese, The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1562-69, oil on canvas, 148.0 x 199. 5 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660)

Titian, Madonna and Child in a Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, 1535-40, oil on panel, 85.2 x 120. 3 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660)

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Oldoni, 1527, oil on canvas, 104.3 x 116.8 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660)

The End of a Century of Glorious Collecting.

“Without being crudely determinist, we have to risk the hypothesis that English collecting in the early seventeenth-century was an anomaly, the outcome of a historical accident. It lacked a real substructure, such was its characteristic, in varying degrees, of the formation of all other private- and ultimately national- collections at different times and in different places. Collecting and the tastes associated with it had not spread widely or deeply in English society: it was not shared by the majority of the wealthy, powerful and educated, nor was it emulated in diluted form by many of more modest means, nor was it supported by a sympathetic public opinion, derived from some degree of familiarity with the arts. When the Titians and Raphaels began to flow back to England after 1789, all these conditions were in place. But that is another story.” Francis Haskell.

As should be obvious by now, collecting in 17^thcentury Europe was the preserve of a favoured few; they were wealthy, implicated in the structures of power, and eager to acquire pictures for a multiplicity of reasons. This was an elitist taste, in no shape or form dependent on “public opinion” since that would only be formed with the rise of the middle-classes in the eighteenth-century and beyond. Though sumptuous and magnificent palaces to house large collections would survive, the trend would be towards more manageable depositories of art. And the name of painters that later collectors would seek out would not be exclusively Titian and Raphael, Reni and Mantegna, but Claude and Poussin (really only present in French and Italian collections in the seventeenth-century), Gaspar Dughet, Salvator Rosa, Gerrit Dou, Guercino and Murillo- the list goes on. It seems fitting to conclude this course with Francis Haskell’s observation: “it was not in fact until after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasion of Italy that significant numbers of pictures of the same nature and quality as those that could have been seen in Whitehall and the Strand in January 1642 began once again to be imported into England.”[5]Many of these old masters would hang in the country houses of earls, dukes and lords, - but this is for another course.[6]

David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his Gallery, 1651Oil on canvas, 96 x 129 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Guilio Romano, Portrait of a Lady, traditionally called Isabella d’Este, oil on panel, 115. 5 x 90.5 cm

Guido Reni, The Toilet of Venus, 1621-23, Oil on canvas, 282 x 206 cm, National Gallery, London

Jan Provost, c. 1520, Triptych: The Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints (Baptist and Martha) and Donors, oil on oak panel, panels centre 78.1 x 59.4 cm; left wing, 76.2 x 24 cm, Royal Collection

Slides.

1)      Hendrick Pot, Charles I, Henrietta Maria & Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II, Royal Collection.[7]

2)      Mantegna, Triumphs of Caesar. Canvas IX: Julius Ceasar on his Chariot, distemper (?) on canvas, 2.68 x 2.79 m, Royal Collection.

3)      Domenico Morone, Battle between the Gonzaga and the Bonacolsi, 1494, Oil on wood Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.[8]

4)      Attributed to Andrea Mantegna, Francesco Gonzaga 4th Marchese of Mantua, black chalk with some wash and white highlights on greenish paper, cut down on all sides, 347 x 238 mm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.[9]

5)      Mantegna, The north wall: The Court of Gonzaga, 1465-74, Walnut oil on plaster, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.

6)      Andrea Mantegna, The Court of Gonzaga, 1465-74, Walnut oil on plaster, 805 x 807 cm, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.

7)      Same: Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga and Barbara of Brandenburg with their family.

8)      Same: Barbara Gonzaga (1455-1505)

9)      Andrea Mantegna, Madonna della Vittoria, Louvre, Madonna of Victory, 1496, Tempera on canvas, 280 x 166 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

10)   Andrea Mantegna, Triumphs of Ceasar. Canvas III: Captured statues and siege equipment , a representation of a captured city and inscriptions (The Triumphal Carts), distemper (?) on canvas, 2.66 x 2.78 m, Royal Collection.

11)   Guilio Romano, Portrait of a Lady, traditionally called Isabella d’Este, oil on panel, 115. 5 x 90.5 cm.[10]

12)   Lorenzo Costa, Young Woman with a Lap Dog, c. 1500, oil on panel (poplar), 45.5 x 55.1 cm.[11]

13)   Domenico Fetti, Margherita Gonzaga Receiving the Model of the Church of St Ursula, c. 1615, Oil on canvas, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

14)   Domenico Fetti, St Barbara, c. 1620, oil on canvas, 100.7 x 75.6 cm, Royal Collection.[12]

15)   Peter Paul Rubens, The Gonzaga Family Worshipping the Holy Trinity, 1604-05, Oil on canvas, 430 x 700 cm, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.[13]

16)   Detail: Vincenzo I.

17)   Detail: Eleonora do Medici and her mother-in-law, Eleonora of Austria.

18)   Jan Provost, c. 1520, Triptych: The Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints (Baptist and Martha) and Donors, oil on oak panel, panels centre 78.1 x 59.4 cm; left wing, 76.2 x 24 cm, Royal Collection.[14]

19)   Same: exterior; a hidden man holding a skull, and a miser.

20)   Guido Reni, The Toilet of Venus, 1621-23, Oil on canvas, 282 x 206 cm, National Gallery, London.[15]

21)   Pieter Holsteyn II (after Guilio Romano), Isabella d’Este, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

22)   Albrecht Durer, Portrait of a Young Fürleger with Loose Hair, 1497, Oil on canvas, 56 x 43 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

23)   Wenceslaus Hollar, Woman with Loosed Hair, engraving.

24)   Domenichino, St Cecilia, 1617-18, Oil on canvas, 160 x 120 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

25)   Etienne Picart, after Domenichino, St Cecilia, engraving, British Museum, London.[16]

26)   Daniel Mytens, Lord and Lady Arundel in their Sculpture and Picture Galleries, 1616, each oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle).

27)   Sir Peter Lely, Charles II, c. 1670, oil on canvas, 122.2 x 99.1 cm, Royal Collection.[17]

28)   Antonio Verrio, The Sea Triumph of Charles II, c. 1674, oil on canvas, 224.5 x 231.0 cm, Royal Collection.[18]

29)   Titian, Madonna and Child in a Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, 1535-40, oil on panel, 85.2 x 120. 3 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[19]

30)   Paolo Veronese, The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1562-69, oil on canvas, 148.0 x 199. 5 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[20]

31)   Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Oldoni, 1527, oil on canvas, 104.3 x 116.8 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[21]

32)   Parmigianino, Pallas Athena, 1531-8, oil on canvas, 64.0 x 45. 4 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[22]

33)   Titian, Portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro, 1514-18, oil on canvas, 85.7 x 72.7 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[23]

34)   Andrea Schiavone, The Judgement of Midas, c. 1548-50, oil on canvas, 167.6 x 197.7 cm, Royal Collection. (Dutch Gift, 1660).[24]

35)   David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his Gallery, 1651Oil on canvas, 96 x 129 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

[1]Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 228.

[2] D. S. Chambers, “Mantua and London” in Splendours of the Gonzaga, (London, V& A, 1982), XVII- XXIII.

[3]Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 237.

[4]But, this will be one of the themes on my next course, “Rembrandt to Reynolds” – details to follow,

[5]Francis Haskell, The King’s Pictures, 192-3.

[6] I am meditating a course on “The Rise and Fall of the Country House Art Collection.”

[7] Purchased by George IV from Sir Thomas Baring as part of a group of 86 Dutch and Flemish paintings, most of which were collected by Sir Thomas’s father, Sir Francis Baring; they arrived at Carlton House on 6 May 1814. For more information- RC link

[8] Made for Francesco Gonzaga by Morone, an artist who spent most of his life in Verona. Splendours of the Gonzaga, no 2.

[9]Andrea Mantegna, no. 105 for other attributions including Giovanni Bellini and Bonsignori to whom it is attributed in Splendours of the Gonzaga, no. 63.

[10]Splendours of the Gonzaga, no. 110. The RC website identifies the sitter as Margherita Paleologo, Isabella’s daughter-in-law- link

[11]The sitter cannot be identified though Berenson said it was Isabella d’Este: Splendours of the Gonzaga, no. 112.

[12]Fetti is listed on the Mantuan payroll from 1613 and he comes off it in 1622. Free brushwork might indicate the influence of Rubens and Veronese: Splendours of the Gonzaga, 224.

[13] A photo of a reconstruction of the altarpiece can be found in Splendours of the Gonzaga, no 228.

[14] Listed in the Mantuan inventory of 1627; acquired by Charles I (CR brand on reverse of central panel); apparently sold in 1650 but recovered by the crown. Donors not identified; Gonzaga owned some Netherlandish art; could have been in the collection of Vincenzo I who owned many Flemish pictures, Splendours of the Gonzaga, no. 234. For details- link

[15]Probably painted for the Duke of Mantua in 1622; subsequently presented by William IV to the NG in 1836. The NG website lists this as “Studio of Reni.” The whole question of Reni’s studio, copies and originals is discussed in Spear, The Divine Guido, chapter 13. Spear concludes that the situation with the London picture is the same as pertaining to the Venus “Il Diamante” at Toledo: that the Venus “was a studio picture based on Reni’s design and thus might be the “original” for which Reni was given a diamond,” Spear, 231 and note. Ng- link

[16]According to Brown (Kings and Connoisseurs, 239), only thirty-eight pictures in the French Royal collection were engraved. The so-called Cabinet du Roi whose inception dates from 1665 consisted of over 950 prints, of which this small group was from the royal picture collection.

[17] First recorded in the Royal Collection during the reign of Queen Victoria. From RC website: “Three-quarter-length portrait of Charles II (1630-85), standing in armour, wearing the chain of the Garter, holding a baton in his right hand, and resting his left hand on a helmet below the crown and sceptre. The canvas appears to have been left unfinished by Lely and was probably completed later, possibly in Lely's studio.” Link

[18]From RC website: “This was probably the first work painted by Verrio for Charles II. The subject may have been inspired to some extent by the signing, on 9 February 1674, of the Treaty of Westminster, which brought to an end the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The portrait of the King does not seem to be taken from life and was probably worked up by Verrio from a miniature ..” link

[19]From RC website: “This painting was described by Ridolfi when he saw it in the Reynst collection as ‘one of Titian’s exceptional works’ (una delle singolari fatiche di Titiano).The Virgin and Christ Child sit on the bank of a stream set in a landscape in the Dolomites. The Virgin picks a campanula, while Christ selects a rose, symbol of his Passion.” More - link

[20] Sent from Venice to Amsterdam by Jan Reynst; acquired from the collection of his brother Gerard Reynst by States of Holland & West Friesland and presented to Charles II, Nov 1660. RC- link

[21]Provenance: Andrea Odoni; his brother, Alvise Odoni by 1555; Lucas van Uffelen, probably by 1623; Gerard Reynst, 1639; States of Holland and West Friesland for presentation to Charles II, 1660. For more, RC link

[22] Acquired by the Reynst collection, Amsterdam, by the States of Holland and West Friesland and presented to Charles II, 1660. RC link.

[23]RC- link

[24] Technical note from RC website: “Schiavone here uses a coarsely woven twill canvas. It is typical of his technique to paint highlights in white, over which he added translucent glazes to model from light to deep shadow. Here the figures are caught in the dramatic light falling from the left, which creates abrupt transitions. Apollo and Minerva (the only two Olympians), with smoother and whiter skin, match in colour and bracket the composition. Tmolus is, by contrast, shaggy and set against trees to suggest Ovid’s description of him: ‘The aged judge shook his ears free of the trees’. The technique is rapid and sketchy: the feet speedily indicated, the fingers expressive rather than anatomically correct, the instrument at an unresolved angle. The contrasts of light and dark throughout the painting have become exaggerated with age: the artist must have intended a more natural transition between the unusually schematic white clouds and part of the blue of the sky, which now has a thunderous look. A previous restorer gave Midas ass’s ears (removed in the 1988 restoration), when in fact Schiavone had barely indicated them.” link

Collecting and Connoisseurship in England before Charles I

Daniel Mytens, Lord Arundel in His Sculpture Gallery, 1616, oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle)

Quentin Metsys the Younger, Portrait of Elizabeth I (“The Sieve Portrait”), Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Italy.

Quentin Metsys, Central panel of St John Altarpiece, 1507-08, Oil on wood, 260 x 504 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

Anthonis Mor, Queen Mary Tudor of England, 1554, Oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

A Period of Transition: The Jacobean Era.

Isaac Oliver, Henry, Prince of Wales, c. 1612, watercolour on vellum laid on card, 13.2 x 10.0 cm, Royal Collection.

Att to Palma Giovane (previously Titian), Prometheus, 1570-1607, oil on canvas, 184. X 160.6 cms, Royal Collection

Daniel Mytens, Charles I (when Prince of Wales), 1623, oil on canvas, 204 x 130.1 cm, Royal Collection.

Titian, Jupiter and Antiope (Pardo Venus), 1535-40, reworked c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 196 x 385 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Introducing the “Whitehall Group”

Peter Paul Rubens, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 67 x 54 cm, National Gallery, London.

Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, c. 1625, Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Charles I in Three Positions, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 33 ¼ x 39 ¼ inches, Royal Collection.

1Daniel Mytens I, Duke of Hamilton, 1629, Oil on canvas, 221 x 140 cm, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

The Role of Dealers and Agents

Michiel van Mierevelt, ca. 1620, Sir Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, English Ambassador to The Netherlands from 1616 to 1625, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1614-16, oil on canvas, 268 x 374.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Gage and an Unidentified Dealer, (perhaps Sir William Petty?), c. 1622-3, oil on canvas, 115 x 113.5 National Gallery, London.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, oil on canvas, 200.2 x 192.6 cm, Royal Collection.

Slides

Daniel Mytens, Lord and Lady Arundel in their Sculpture and Picture Galleries, 1616, each oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle).
Peter Paul Rubens, Lord Arundel as Earl Marshall, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston.
Hans Holbein, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 1538, Oil on oak, 179 x 83 cm, National Gallery, London.
Anthonis Mor, Queen Mary Tudor of England, 1554, Oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Titian, Portrait of Philip II, c. 1554, Oil on canvas, 185 x 103 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
Quentin Metsys the Younger, Portrait of Elizabeth I (“The Sieve Portrait”), Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Italy.
Quentin Metsys, St John Altarpiece, 1507-08, Oil on wood, 260 x 504 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.
Correggio, The Education of Cupid, about 1528, Oil on canvas, 155 x 91,5 cm, National Gallery, London.
Isaac Oliver, Henry, Prince of Wales, c. 1612, watercolour on vellum laid on card, 13.2 x 10.0 cm, Royal Collection.
Palma Giovane, Prometheus, 1570-1607, oil on canvas, 184. X 160.6 cms, Royal Collections Trust.
Peter Paul Rubens, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1629-30, oil on canvas, 67 x 54 cm, National Gallery, London.
Wenceslaus Hollar, (After ) Sir Anthony van Dyck, Inigo Jones, 1640, engraving, Royal Collection.
Hans Holbein, Sir Richard Southwell, 1536, Oil on wood, 47.5 x 38 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Adam Elsheimer, The Finding of the Cross, c. 1603-5 (frame modern), Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.
Same without frame.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, c. 1625, Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
Andrea della Sarto, Pietà, Kunsthistorisches Museum, c. 1520, oil on wood, 99 x 120 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of the Artist, 1623, oil on canvas, 85.7 x 62.2 cm, Royal Collection.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Charles I in Three Positions, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 33 ¼ x 39 ¼ inches, Royal Collection.
Titian, Jupiter and Antiope (Pardo Venus), 1535-40, reworked c. 1560, Oil on canvas, 196 x 385 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Daniel Mytens, Charles I (when Prince of Wales), 1623, oil on canvas, 204 x 130.1 cm, Royal Collection.
Orazio Gentileschi, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 1626-30, Oil on canvas, 204,9 x 261,9 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor.[14]
Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin, 1602-06, Oil on canvas, 369 x 245 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Daniel Mytens I, Duke of Hamilton, 1629, Oil on canvas, 221 x 140 cm, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
David Teniers, Picture Gallery of Archduke Leopold William of Austria, 1651, oil on canvas, 123 x 163 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Raphael and Workshop, St Margaret, oil on wood, 192 x 122 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Michiel van Mierevelt, ca. 1620, Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, English Ambassador to The Netherlands from 1616 to 1625, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1614-16, oil on canvas, 268 x 374.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Peter Paul Rubens, A lioness, 1614-16, British Museum, black and yellow chalk, with gray wash, heightened with white bodycolour, 39.6 x 23.5 cm.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, The Painter with Sir Charles Cottrell and Balthasar Gerbier, 1645, oil on canvas, Albury Park, Guildford.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir Endymion Porter and the Artist, 1632-41, Oil on canvas, 110 x 114 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, George Gage and Companions, c. 1622-3, oil on canvas, 115 x 113.5 National Gallery, London.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Nicholas Lanier, oil on canvas, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Raphael, The Holy Family (“La Perla”), 1518-20, oil on wood, 114 x 115 cm, Prado, Madrid
Anthony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, oil on canvas, 200.2 x 192.6 cm, Royal Collection.

[2]For a brief summary of painters and Henry VIII, see Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, (London, 1954).

[5] Auerbach, Tudor Artists, 103.

[8]Haworth, Images of Rule, 106.

[11]For drawings associated with it, see John Rowlands, Rubens: Drawings and Sketches, (1977), nos 68-70.

[12]Stone, “The Market for Italian Art”, (reply to Francis Haskell), Past and Present, 1959, Nov, 1992-4.

[13]On Daniel Nys the “layman-dealer”, see Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in the Seventeenth Century Europe, (Yale University Press, 1995), 230-1.

[14]See no 10 in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, (London, NG, 1999).

Overview of Arundel’s Collection.

Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, with his grandson Thomas Howard, c. 1635-6, oil on canvas, 145.4 x 121.9 cm, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk, (119)

Sir Anthony Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1621, oil on canvas, 102.8 x 79.4 cm, Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Wenceslaus Hollar, Arundel House from the South, 17th century, etching, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Add caption

Wenceslaus Hollar, London from Arundel House, print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Arundel’s Holbeins.

Fruytiers (possibly based on a lost Van Dyck) Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel with their children, c. 1643, oil on copper, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk (136).

Hans Holbein, Portrait of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, c. 1539, oil on panel, 80. 6 x 60.9 cm, Royal Collection. (198)

Hans Holbein, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c. 1542, oil on panel, 55.5 x 44 cm, Sau Paolo, (197)

Hans Holbein, Sketch for The Triumph of Wealth, 1532-3, pen, watercolour and washes heightened with white, (drawing for the lost painting no. 170 in the inventory), Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Old Master Drawings.

Wenceslaus Hollar, after Cornelius Schut, Allegory of the Death of the Earl of Arundel, etching, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford. (book of drawings at bottom left)

Parmigianino, Four Studies of Figures in Architectural Settings, 1531-3, black chalk underdrawing, pen and ink with wash and white heightening, Royal Collection.

Hans Holbein, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7, Black and coloured chalks, pen and ink, andmetalpoint, on pale pink prepared paper , Royal Collection, (167)

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Head of St Anne, c. 1510-15, black chalk, wetted in places, 18.8 x 13.0 cm, Royal Collection.

Arundel’s Masterpieces.

Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries, 1510-12, Oil on panel, 113 x 87 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, (296, listed as Raphael)

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1498, Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (110)

Correggio, Head of Christ about 1530, (cd be the Veronica ref to as 81), Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bernardo Licinio, A Man holding a Skull, 1520, oil on canvas, 75.7 x 63.5 cm, Ashmoleon, Oxford, (matches the description of no. 145 in the “Giorgione” section of the inventory).

The Fate of Arundel’s Pictures

Titian, the Three Ages of Man (385 as “A Shepherd with a Girl and three putti), 1512-16, oil on canvas, 106.7 x 182.9 cm, Edinburg, NGS (on loan from Duke of Sutherland)

Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, 1576, Oil on canvas, 212 x 207 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz (356)

Paolo Veronese, Twelve Apostles (fragment), 1575, oil on canvas, 170 x 178 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz

Paolo Veronese, The Ascension of Christ, c. 1575, oil on canvas, 394 x 194 cm, San Francesco, Padua.

Surveying Buckingham’s Collection.

Peter Paul Rubens, George Villiers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), 1625, black, red and white chalk; ink on the eyes, 15 1/16 x 10 ½ inches, Albertina, Vienna

John Hoskins, George Villiers, 1^stDuke of Buckingham, c. 1628-9, watercolour on vellum laid on playing card, 5.2 x 4.2 cm, Royal Collection.

After Anthony van Dyck, Katherine Manners, c. 1623, oil on canvas, 92.2 x 78.5 cm, Lyfrgell Collection, Genedlaethol Cymru, National Library of Wales.

The Nature of Buckingham’s Collection.

Titian, Cardinal Armignac and his Secretaries, oil on canvas, 104 x 114 cm, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

Titian, Ecce Homo, 1543, Oil on canvas, 242 x 361 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, (“In the Sumpter Room.”

Jacopo Bassano, Entrance of the Animals into the Ark,oil on canvas, 207 x 265, Prado, Madrid. (cd be “The Arke of Noah” in “the next chamber next to the King’s withdrawing chamber.”

Paolo Veronese, The Anointing of David, c. 1560s, Oil on canvas, 173 x 365, cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Buckingham, Rubens and Van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck, The Clemency of Scipio, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 183 x 232. 5 cm, Christchurch Gallery, Oxford, (“In the Hall, One Great Piece being Scipio”).

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir George Villiers and Lady Katharine Manners (died 1649) as Adonis and Venus, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 233.5 x 160 cm, London, Private Collection.

Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Lady Arundel with her Train, 1620, Oil on canvas, 261 x 265 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Peter Paul Rubens, Minerva and Mercury conducting the Duke of Buckingham to the Temple of Virtue, before 1625, oil on oak, 64 x 63.7 cm, National Gallery, London.

Slides.

Sir Anthony Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1621, oil on canvas, 102.8 x 79.4 cm, Getty Museum, Los Angeles.[17]
Daniel Mytens, Lord Arundel in his Sculpture Gallery, 1616, oil on canvas, 8 ½ x 50 inches, London, National Portrait Gallery (on loan to Arundel Castle).
Fruytiers (possibly based on a lost Van Dyck) Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel with their children, c. 1643, oil on copper, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk (136).
Homerus, Hellenistic sculpture, c. 2^nd century B.C., Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, height 185 cm.
Wenceslaus Hollar, Arundel House from the North, 17th century, etching, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Wenceslaus Hollar, London from Arundel House, print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Hans Holbein, Portrait of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, c. 1539, oil on panel, 80. 6 x 60.9 cm, Royal Collection. (198)
Hans Holbein, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c. 1542, oil on panel, 55.5 x 44 cm, Sau Paolo, (197)
Hans Holbein, Nikolaus Kratzer, 1528, Tempera on oak, 83 x 67 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris (192)
Hans Holbein, Sketch for The Triumph of Wealth, 1532-3, pen, watercolour and washes heightened with white, (drawing for the lost painting no. 170 in the inventory), Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Agnes Frey, 1497, Oil on canvas, 56,5 x 42,5 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.[18]
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1498, Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (110)
Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries, 1510-12, Oil on panel, 113 x 87 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, (296, listed as Raphael)
Titian, the Three Ages of Man (385 as “A Shepherd with a Girl and three putti), 1512-16, oil on canvas, 106.7 x 182.9 cm, Edinburg, NGS (on loan from Duke of Sutherland).[19]
Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, 1576, Oil on canvas, 212 x 207 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz (356).[20]
Paolo Veronese, Twelve Apostles (fragment), 1575, oil on canvas, 170 x 178 cm, State Museum, Kromeriz, (398)[21]
Paolo Veronese, The Ascension of Christ, c. 1575, oil on canvas, 394 x 194 cm, San Francesco, Padua.
Correggio, Head of Christ about 1530, (cd be the Veronica ref to as 81), Getty Museum, Los Angeles, [22]
Bernardo Licinio, A Man holding a Skull, 1520, oil on canvas, 75.7 x 63.5 cm, Ashmoleon, Oxford, (matches the description of no. 145 in the “Giorgione” section of the inventory).
Wenceslaus Hollar, after Cornelius Schut, Allegory of the Death of the Earl of Arundel, etching, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford.
Hans Holbein, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7, Black and coloured chalks, pen and ink, andmetalpoint, on pale pink prepared paper , Royal Collection, (167)
Parmigianino, Four Studies of Figures in Architectural Settings, 1531-3, black chalk underdrawing, pen and ink with wash and white heightening, Royal Collection.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Head of St Anne, c. 1510-15, black chalk, wetted in places, 18.8 x 13.0 cm, Royal Collection.
Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, with his grandson Thomas Howard, c. 1635-6, oil on canvas, 145.4 x 121.9 cm, Arundel Castle, Duke of Norfolk, (119)
Peter Paul Rubens, George Villiers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), 1625, black, red and white chalk; ink on the eyes, 15 1/16 x 10 ½ inches, Albertina, Vienna.[23]
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir George Villiers and Lady Katharine Manners (died 1649) as Adonis and Venus, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 233.5 x 160 cm, London, Private Collection.
After Anthony van Dyck, Katherine Manners, c. 1623, oil on canvas, 92.2 x 78.5 cm, Lyfrgell Collection, Genedlaethol Cymru, National Library of Wales.
John Hoskins, George Villiers, 1^stDuke of Buckingham, c. 1628-9, watercolour on vellum laid on playing card, 5.2 x 4.2 cm, Royal Collection.
Anthony van Dyck, The Clemency of Scipio, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 183 x 232. 5 cm, Christchurch Gallery, Oxford, (“In the Hall, One Great Piece being Scipio”).
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Lady Arundel with her Train, 1620, Oil on canvas, 261 x 265 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.[24]
Titian, Cardinal Armignac and his Secretaries, oil on canvas, 104 x 114 cm, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland. [25]
Titian, Ecce Homo, 1543, Oil on canvas, 242 x 361 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, (“In the Sumpter Room”.[26]
Paolo Veronese, The Anointing of David, c. 1560s, Oil on canvas, 173 x 365, cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[27]
Jacopo Bassano, Entrance of the Animals into the Ark,oil on canvas, 207 x 265, Prado, Madrid.[28](cd be “The Arke of Noah” in “the next chamber next to the King’s withdrawing chamber.”
Gortzius Geldorp, The Penitent Magadelene, oil on panel, 67.6 52. 8 cm, (in a 17^th century gilded Florentine frame), location unknown.[29]
Peter Paul Rubens, Minerva and Mercury conducting the Duke of Buckingham to the Temple of Virtue, before 1625, oil on oak, 64 x 63.7 cm, National Gallery, London.[30]