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William Trumbull and Art Collecting in Jacobean England

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William Trumbull and Art Collecting in Jacobean England WILLIAM TRUMBULL AND ART COLLECTING IN JACOBEAN ENGLAND DAVID HOWARTH THIS article is concerned with some of the papers of William Trumbull the Elder in the British Library, which relate to the visual arts in Jacobean England. As was suggested by Sonia Anderson and Leonard Forster in a recent issue of this journal,^ the Trumbull archive is remarkably rich for the cultural historian, and many scattered references in it reveal the catholicity of those collectors in England with whom Trumbull dealt from Brussels. The acquisition of Italian art by the early Stuarts is a well-rehearsed story,^ but Trumbull's correspondents provide the earliest evidence we have to suggest that Jacobeans were drawn not only to contemporary Dutch portraits by Miereveld and Honthorst, but to early Renaissance German artists; even, indeed, to the great painters of the vanished Burgundian court which had melted away a century before Trumbull came to live among its monuments. At the very end of Trumbull's years in Brussels, a certain Daniel Skynner vs^rote to him from Antwerp about pictures. Perhaps the most intriguing reference in the two letters we shall consider is to what Skynner identifies as a portrait of Charles the Bold, ruler of Burgundy. This he believed to be by none other than Roger Van der Weyden. The relevant part of the first letter reads: [Postscript] I haue sent heerew[i]th a noate of such Italian peeces as I haue att London. And soe farr as I can learne the like will nott bee found heere. I haue given one order to Harken out for some as also for a good one of Charles Ie Hardy. I pray yf you can helpe me, I may vent some of my peeces at Lond[on]... The Italian peeces w[hi]ch are att London. I Great peece w[i]th a fayer list of Titians makinge as yt was sould to me, an excelent Peece the storye. Adam and Eua. I P[ee]c[e] of Bassan original, the storye the Angel appeeringe to the sheppherds I Great P[ee]c[e]. S^ Jerominus of Jacobus Palma. I Great P[ee]c[e]. of Raphael Urbino. w[hi]ch is defaced. I Great P[ee]c[e]. of Caualier Balione of Lot and his 2 daughters, for w[hi]ch the Marquise Hamelton offered Mr fletcher 40 Peeces. w[hi]ch I wishe hee had taken I P[ee]c[e] of Caualier Bassan. Lucretia. 140 I Great P[ee]c[e]. of an excelent Master, the storye of Neobe. w[i]th some other more good peeces.^ Skynner writing a week later, and at much greater length, refers to the iconography of'Charles le Hardy', or 'Carolus Audax\ as he now describes him: I haue beene harkeninge out bye divers about the picktures of Carolus Audax. I Cannott fynd nor learne of Anye made bye ould Cleaue. butt I haue fownd where one is an originall, himself haueinge sett att the makinge of yt, w[i]th his wiffe a daughter of Engeland; both in a Case, like unto an alter peece. to shut, are both from head to foote. butt nott aboue half a yard or thereaboute' longe. butt made bye an excelent master, one Roger Vander Weyden. the w[hi]ch made the 2 great peeces upon the towne house at Brussels. I requested one yesterdaye to goe to the p[ar]tye w[hi]ch hath them, and in talke of other matters, to take occassion to speake about them, butt hee brought me word they weere nott to sell. I haue another frend w[hi]ch knowes the partye wel. who[m] I will Imploye. about them, and yf hee bee resolued to sell them. I will lett you know the p[ri]ce, or yf I can learne out anye other, of a good master,^ It is possible that the picture was not by Van der Weyden: certain that if it was by that master, then the sitter could not have been Charles the Bold, at least not with his English Duchess. Charles had married Mary of York as his third wife in 1468, and Roger had died in 1464. Seen in a certain light, none of this matters. What makes these letters interesting in the history of taste is that they represent the earliest expansive references in English documents to a liking for the early Netherlandish masters. Identification of pictures cited in early inventories is an imprecise business and none of the pieces referred to in Skynner's lists can be identified for certain with paintings still to be seen today. It is possible that the Bassano of The Angel appearing to the Shepherds is the picture now in The National Gallery, Prague. Its provenance suggests it had belonged to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and the Archduke had bought extensively at the Commonwealth sales, quite possibly from the collections of men who had been Skynner's clients. However, there are a number of versions of this theme by the Bassano clan. There is no record of a Lucretia by the Bassani. The St Jerome by Palma Vecchio was probably an independent 'portrait' extrapolated from the Madonna and Child with St Jerome and St Helen, which Palma had painted for Rovigo in 1512. Just such a picture, and evidently a copy of the Rovigo St Jerome, is now in the Pinacoteca Reale in Turin. Presumably the Adam and Eve associated with Titian was a version or copy of the autograph picture in the Prado now known as The Fall of Man and then in the Spanish Habsburg collections, where, according to current scholarship, it was copied by Rubens during his embassy to Spain in 1628. Perhaps, however, Rubens's copy was after Skynner's version which evidently lay to hand in Antwerp three years earlier. The painting which sheds most light on early Stuart taste is the Baglione. Cavaliere Giovanni Baglione, the author of Le Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti and a distinguished follower of Caravaggio, was enjoying a flourishing studio practice at the time. It has not been possible to identify the picture, but his work was certainly popular with English collectors. Charles I would own at least two works, a St John the Baptist wreathing a Lamb and a Virgin and Child, both of which were presented in the first instance to Henrietta Maria by Cardinal Francesco Barberini. The Virgin and Child is recorded as hanging in the Queen's bedchamber at her death and was therefore a favourite painting. The inclusion of what we may take to have been an ambitious Old Testament narrative scene by a living Italian is further evidence of a marked taste for contemporary art in England in the early seventeenth century.^ The diary of Georg Rodolph Weckherlin, father-in-law of Trumbull's son, now also amongst the Trumbull Papers, provides allusive and provocative references, not only to the comings and goings of living artists, but like the letters of Daniel Skynner, to the work of the dead. On 2 March 1636/7 Weckherhn tells us that he waited upon His Majesty at St James's >hen my Lord Chamberlane presented his Ma*^ with a booke of Holbens drawings'.^ This cannot refer to the celebrated book of Windsor portraits.^ According to the German artist Joachim Sandrart, who came to England with the more famous Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst in 1628, there were 'complete books of his [Holbein's] sketches' in the great London houses: several with Arundel, and at least one at that stage in Charles Fs collection. This was shown to Sandrart by Inigo Jones and contained designs for dishes, daggers, salt-cellars and other decorative pieces. It may be, therefore, that in presenting the King with another Holbein *book' in 1637, Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke, the principal sitter in the Pembroke Family at Wilton, was making amends for what had been a tactical error committed several years earlier. Probably in 1627, Pembroke had received from Charles I the book of portrait drawings by Holbein, now in the Royal Library, giving the King in return the St George and the Dragon by Raphael (National Gallery, Washington), which, legend has it, Baldassare Castiglione had presented to Henry VII in 1506 on behalf of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro in gratitude for the Garter which Henry had bestowed on the Italian princeling in 1504. Unwisely perhaps, Pembroke had immediately handed the 'great booke'-the Windsor portrait drawings - straight to Arundel whose passion for Holbein was something of a joke in an otherwise deeply serious and competitive pursuit. The King, however, may not have been amused, and so now ten years later, Pembroke may have been doing what he could to put matters straight. Whatever the nature of this particular Holbein book, happily we can be more precise about another work of art referred to in a letter to be found amongst Trumbull's miscellaneous correspondence. This makes specific mention of a painting by Rubens, so complementing a celebrated collection of other documents in the Public Record Office, which concern the same picture.^ As agent to the court of the Archdukes at Brussels, 1609-25, an important aspect of Trumbull's work was connected with the pursuit of such diverse curiosities we maybe tempted to imagine his house, often something of a fine art repository, looked like one of those wunderkammers, so popular as a subject amongst Flemish painters. As Sonia Anderson made clear, in the main Trumbull was a man for books, not pictures. Before, however, turning to his role as purveyor of luxuries to others, it may be of interest to catch a glimpse of his own more modest purchases.
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