Week 3: The Collections of Charles I and the Duke of Hamilton

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^nd Earl 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. 

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[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^th July, 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^th century. 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 here for 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.