Week 10: England, the Gonzaga Collection & the End of a Century of Glorious Collecting.

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^th century 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

Week 9: Archduke Leopold William’s Pictures and Collecting Art in the North

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^th century, 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^st edition.

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 Theatrum was 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.