n Phillips, Catherine Victoria (2013) Art and politics in the Austrian Netherlands: Count Charles Cobenzl (1712–70) and his collection of drawings. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4049/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] ART AND POLITICS IN THE AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS: COUNT CHARLES COBENZL (1712–70) AND HIS COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS Catherine Victoria Phillips Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate School of Arts and Humanities College of Arts University of Glasgow February 2013 © Catherine Phillips 2013 2 Abstract The Cabinet of Count Charles Cobenzl lies at the heart of the Hermitage Museum, forming the core of the collection of Old Master Drawings. Yet despite perpetual references to him as ‘grand collectionneur’, no study of Cobenzl’s collecting has ever been undertaken. Nor, in the absence of prosopographical studies of art production or collecting in the Austrian Netherlands in the middle of the eighteenth century, or indeed of other individual collectors, has it been possible to set him in a ‘collecting context’. Bringing together the works of art themselves and Cobenzl’s abundant correspondence, this thesis assesses what he owned, how and why he acquired it, the political and intellectual framework for his collecting and how he perceived the objects in his possession. Looking at Cobenzl’s roles as public figure and private collector, it shows how the latter fits into the context of the former, his collecting rooted firmly in his ambition to revive the economy and the arts of the Austrian Netherlands, in his own ambiguous status and his conflicts with the Governor, Charles de Lorraine. The battle for both real and perceived superiority was played out in many different parts of Cobenzl’s professional and private life, and he used display – the adornment of his home and his person and his collecting – as part of a play for social prestige. Cobenzl used objects as a discrete assertion of both intellectual and aesthetic superiority. This thesis proposes that Cobenzl’s transformation into a collector of drawings was an example of his perspicacious identification of emerging trends that could be turned to advantage, economic or prestigious, public or personal. He was drawn by the status of drawings, perceived as accessible only to those of greater refinement and understanding, as something elite, less accessible than the collecting of paintings. The direct and specific stimulus for his emergence as a collector of drawings lay in the provenance of two large groups of works he was offered, which permitted him to assert a very specific link to the past. It suggests that Cobenzl adopted not only the drawings, but also their histories, to negotiate social position and identity, within the context of his pragmatic utilitarianism. This egocentric study also provides the foundation for a preliminary attempt to create a context for Cobenzl’s collecting of drawings, within his circle, in the Austrian Netherlands overall, and, through analysis of his collecting practices, in the wider European context. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 15 Part I 18 1. The Importance of the Cobenzl Collection 18 2. Cobenzl as an Object of Study 22 Cobenzl the Statesman 23 Cobenzl as Patron and Collector 30 Cobenzl’s Collection 36 Cobenzl in Gorizia/Slovenian History 42 3. Sources and breakdown of Parts II and III 45 Part II 49 4. Cobenzl: Life, Work and Identity 49 Family Background 51 Life and Career 54 Nationality 57 Character 60 5. Cobenzl and the Arts Before 1753 71 Family Estates 71 Mainz and Vienna 72 Cobenzl’s Geography of the Fine Arts 76 An Interest in Art but no Collection 83 6. Cobenzl in the Austrian Netherlands 1753–70: The Public Figure – Arts for Regeneration 88 6.1 Education, Cultural Institutions and the Artistic Industries 88 Brussels and the Austrian Netherlands in 1753 92 The Economy and the Arts 94 The Rise of the Austrian Netherlands 95 Reform of the Intellectual Context 97 Public Patronage 103 Support for the Artistic Industries 106 A Note on Charles de Lorraine and the Artistic Industries 112 6.2 Cobenzl and the Cultural Heritage: Art of the Past – Art for the Future 114 Art of the Past 114 Preservation of the Cultural Heritage 114 Art of the Past on Sale 117 A National Treasure-house 120 Art for the Future 122 Art Education in the Austrian Netherlands 122 Exhibitions 126 Artists at Home and Abroad 127 A School in Rome 128 Artists from the Austrian Netherlands Training in Paris 131 4 St-Julien-des-Flamands as the Basis for an Academy in Rome 133 The Birth of Neoclassicism in the Austrian Netherlands 134 A Footnote: Cobenzl’s Artistic Legacy in Vienna? 136 7. Cobenzl in the Austrian Netherlands 1753–70: The Collector – Arts for the Self 138 1753–60. A House, a Garden and much Porcelain 140 1761. A New Era and a Collection of Drawings 146 1762. Drawings from the Crozat Collection 148 1763. The Predominance of Drawings 151 1764. Rubens, More Drawings and Near-bankruptcy 156 1765. Paintings Overtake Drawings 160 1764–68. Rubens and Van Dyck 164 The Sale 167 Part III 171 8. Cultures of Collecting in the Austrian Netherlands 171 Sale Catalogues as a Source of Information 173 An Export Market 177 Collectors in the Austrian Netherlands 179 Collections of Paintings 183 Collectors and Collections of Drawings 190 Connoisseurship in the Austrian Netherlands 199 9. Acts of Collecting 204 Auction v Private Sale 204 Corruption: Theft and Undue Pressure 212 The Role of Networks 215 10. Acts of Possession 222 A Cabinet of Paintings v Furniture Pictures and Portraits 222 The Physical Location of the Cabinet 225 The Physical Arrangement of the Drawings 226 The Intellectual Arrangement of the Drawings 228 The Intellectual Arrangement of the Drawings in Context 234 Private and Public Consumption 238 11. The Significance of the Collection 247 The Politics of Provenance 247 Drawings as Elite Collecting 250 Peer Provenance 253 Continuity of Provenance: The Collection Moves On 255 Conclusion 257 Appendix I: Paintings in Cobenzl’s Cabinet, as sold to Catherine the Great in 1768 260 Appendix II: Cobenzl’s acquisition transactions by type 264 Sources and bibliography 266 5 List of Tables Table 1. The contents of Cobenzl’s library in the context of Brussels and Paris. Based on statistics produced by Bernard Desmaele (Brussels), Michel Marion (Paris) and Claude Sorgeloos (Cobenzl). Sorgeloos used slightly different criteria for his thematic analysis. 172 Table 2. Printed sales catalogues including works of art 1725–1800, based on an analysis of IDC Publishers’ Art Sales Catalogues Online, the updated version of Frits Lugt’s Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques. For the period 1775–1800 figures were affected by the French Revolution and the occupation of the Austrian Netherlands, which suppressed auction activity and made unoccupied London the centre of the auction world. 175 Table 3. Auctions in the Southern Netherlands with printed sales catalogues. Table created by Filip Vermeylen, published in Hans Cools, Marika Keblusek, Badeloch Noldus, eds, Your Humble Servant. Agents in Early Modern Europe, Hilversum, 2006, p. 115. The auctions in question are only those containing paintings (i.e. not book and print auctions). 176 Table 4. Analysis of the thematic categories of Cobenzl’s paintings, set in context against a range of auctions in Antwerp and Brussels. The categories and data for Antwerp and Brussels from Dries Lyna, ‘The Cultural Construction of Value: Art Auctions in Antwerp and Brussels (1700–1794)’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Antwerp, 2010, p. 200, graph 7.1. 185 Table 5. Cobenzl’s Cabinet by school (according to attributions in the catalogue). 186 Table 6. The artists featuring in Cobenzl’s Cabinet of Paintings in the context of contemporary taste and fashion. 189 Table 7. Catalogues of sales including a significant number of drawings 1725–99 (i.e. not just a few drawings amongst the prints). The figures for France, England and Holland were produced by Michiel Plomp (Plomp 2001, p. 10) those for the Southern Netherlands were added by this author. 191 Table 8. Sale catalogues in the Southern Netherlands 1725–99 with over 200 drawings. Precise numbers are complicated by the large number of ‘recueils’ and lots containing ‘plusieurs desseins’. 193 Table 9. Published biographies of Swiss artists and Cobenzl’s holdings of Swiss drawings. 233 6 List of Figures [Some of these images have been removed for copyright reasons] Figure 1. Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. This is a typical intact Cobenzl mount. © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 17 Figure 2. Louis de Caulery (c. 1580–1621?), Landscape with Courtly Figures by a River. © The Trustees of the British Museum. One of a group of more than twenty drawings from Cobenzl’s collection that gave their name to ‘The Master of the Hermitage Sketchbook’ (although they are now agreed not to be the work of a single artist). This drawing was sold from the Hermitage in 1931 20 Figure 3. Gerard (Gerrit) Dou (1613–75), Old Woman Unreeling Threads.