A Historical and Technical Investigation of Sir Peter Lely's Cimon and Efigenia from the Collection at Doddington Hall
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A Historical and Technical Investigation of Sir Peter Lely’s Cimon and Efigenia from the Collection at Doddington Hall. Introduction German Westphalia. The name of Lely, under which he would become famous as an artist, stems from the The Conservation and Art Historical Analysis Project lily, which adorned the gable of his father’s house in 1 at the Courtauld Institute Research Forum aimed to Soest. carry out technical investigation and art historical re- In emulation of Vasari and the Netherlandish search on Sir Peter Lely’s painting Cimon and Efigenia. artist-biographer Karel van Mander, Houbraken wrote The painting came to the Courtauld Gallery in 2012 on the lives of the most famous Dutch artists. Peter for the Lely: A Lyrical Vision exhibition, which focused Lely proves an interesting case, as he seems as much – on Lely’s subject pictures from his earlier years in Eng- or perhaps even more – an English artist. When Lely’s land. After the exhibition, Cimon and Efigenia was soldier-father noticed that his son preferred wielding brought to the conservation department for conser- the brush over the sword and the art of painting over vation treatment. Cimon and Efigenia’s conservation the art of warfare, he sent his 18-year-old son to the treatment, along with previous technical examination Dutch city of Haarlem to study under the painter Frans 2 of the Courtauld Gallery’s Peter Lely subject pictures, Pieter de Grebber. Hardly any work from the time he provided a unique opportunity to further investigate spent in Haarlem is known, however, and it seems that the history of this painting and its place within Lely’s Lely’s career only became truly established when he practice and oeuvre. In her essay “Becoming Peter moved to London in 1641, travelling in the suite of Lely” in the Lely: A Lyrical Vision catalogue, Caroline William II of Orange, who sought to marry the daugh- Campbell describes Lely as a “pictoral magpie: picking ter of Charles I, Mary. Just a few years later, in Oc- up ideas and motifs from any number of sources, but tober of 1647, Lely became a freeman of the London uniting them in a fashion which combined the Italian Painter-Stainer’s company. Renaissance and the Dutch Classicist movement, but Netherlandish painters had been present in in a more Baroque and showy manner.” This report London throughout the sixteenth and early seven- will explore how Peter Lely’s many influences (artistic, teenth centuries, as many fled religious strife begin- cultural, and literary) contributed to the formation ning in the 1530’s, or later followed the example of 3 of this painting: through composition, materials, and court artist Anthony van Dyck. Van Dyck died in techniques. 1641, the year that Lely arrived in England. After Van Dyck, Peter Lely was perhaps the most accomplished of the Dutch fortune-seekers of his generation. Lely’s early English works depict subjects from mythology Historical Investigation of and history, painted in the Haarlem classicist style, Cimon and Efigenia featuring romantic landscapes and rich colouring. Lely by Esther van der Hoorn however found these paintings unpopular in England, and subsequently turned to portraiture as his main area Context in Sir Peter Lely´s Oeuvre of expertise.4 Lely had been taught in portraiture by De Grebber, and according to Houbraken, had es- As was recounted by Dutch art historian avant- tablished a reputation as an excellent portrait painter la-lettre Arnold Houbraken in his 1718 work The during the short period in which he lived in Haarlem. Great Theatre of Dutch Painters, Peter Lely was born It was for his portraiture that Lely became incredibly Pieter van der Faes on the 14th of September 1618 sought after, resulting in his appointment as Principal to Dutch parents living in the small town of Soest, in Painter to the Restoration court of Charles II in 1661.5 1 Figure 1. Cimon and Efigenia. Attributed to Sir Peter Lely. Dated after 1650. 131 x 150 cm. Oil on canvas. Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire. Lely might have profited from the vacuum left in Lon- was a commission.6 The former hypothesis would be don after William Dobson’s move to Royalist Oxford possible, as Lely continued working with art dealers during the English civil war. in London, most notably George Geldrop.7 The painting under consideration in our re- The provenance of the painting, however, search appears to be from the early decades of Lely’s is relatively uncertain. The work is presently in the career, as it is a so-called ‘subject picture’ rather than collection of Doddington Hall, an Elizabethean man- a portrait. The scene depicts a narrative from secular sion in Lincolnshire. In all probability, the painting literature, painted in the richly coloured, dramatically was brought to Doddington Hall in the second half illuminated style preferred in Haarlem, combined of the 18th century by Lord John Delaval, first-born with influences from Italian art, especially Titian. In son to Rhoda Apreece, who had inherited Doddington his later portraiture, Lely would fuse these stylistic through her mother.8 How Lely’s Cimon and Efigenia characteristics with the traditions of Van Dyck’s grand might have come into the possession of the Delavals Baroque style of English portraiture. As Cimon and remains thus far unknown. The painting might have Efigenia presumably is one of Lely’s earlier works, been bought at the sale of Lely’s personal collection and not a portrait of a known sitter but a narrative after his death in 1680. In the inventory made up for scene, it is unclear whether it was a piece made for the this sale, there was listed as lot 83 under the heading market, as was common in Haarlem, or if the painting ‘History paintings of Sir Peter Lely’ a picture of ‘The 2 History of Cimon, with naked figures.’9 However, the 10 days by a group of elite citizens who have fled the ‘History of Cimon’ mentioned in this inventory might Florentine Plague of 1348, seeking safety in a deserted also have been Lely’s painting of the same subject villa in nearby Fiesole. To pass the time, they told sto- presently in Knole House, Kent. ries of love and fortune. Cimon and Efigenia feature in the first story told on the Fifth Day. Lely’s Artistic Heritage The reception of the Decameron in England commences with the possibility of Chaucer hav- In the late sixteenth-century Karel van Mander, ing been inspired by Boccaccio’s frame narrative.12 a Haarlem-based artist and the author of the Lives of William Painter’s the Palace of Pleasure of 1566 for the Dutch Artists, modelled after Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, many years remained the most extensive collection an ‘academy’ of painting in Haarlem together with his of translated fables from the Decameron, but the first contemporaries Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van full English translation of the Decameron appeared in Haarlem.10 Although we should not consider this to 1620.13 Lely did read Dutch, however, he could have be comparable to Italian examples of truly academic also consulted the Dutch translation of 1564 by Dirck schools of painting, jointly these three artists did con- Coornhert.14 Still, his English clients would presum- stitute a very influential ‘Haarlem School’. The Haar- ably have been most familiar with the 1620 English lem School of the late sixteenth century produced a translation. style that has been called Haarlem Mannerism, featur- Despite him being the son of the king of Cy- ing convoluted postures and extravagant proportions, prus, a “Noble Gentleman, who was commonly called after the example of the Flemish artist Bartholomeus Aristippus, and exceeded all other of the Country Spranger, who had travelled extensively through Italy. in the goods of Fortune,” Cimon turned out to be a Although few works by Frans Pieter de Greb- course, uncivilised and unlettered youth, who above ber, Lely’s teacher, have been left to us, it appears that all lacked “the reall ornament of the soule, reason and he was a follower of the Haarlem Mannerist school judgement; being (indeed a meere Ideot or Foole,).” as well. De Grebber was also a painter of so-called Because he embarrassed his family so, Cimon was ‘schutterstukken’, which depicted all the members of sent to live away from the court to work on the farm- the prestigious civilian city guards. During his time as ing lands. One day, as he was walking through his a pupil of De Grebber, Lely must have taken in skills meadows, Cimon stumbled upon a sleeping beauty in portraiture. In his narrative scenes, however, Lely and her handmaidens. Near a fountain at the edge of does not show much Mannerist qualities. Instead, he the meadow, Cimon “espied a very beautifull young seems to have been inspired by the reactionary Clas- Damosell, seeming to be fast asleepe, attired in such sicist movement that emerged in Haarlem in the early fine loose garments, as hidde very little of her white seventeenth century. Frans de Grebber’s son Pieter body.” The encounter with the sleeping Efigenia worked in this style, and Lely may have seen work by would prove life-changing for Cimon, as seeing this him as well. perfect specimen of beauty imbued within him the In London, Lely again saw new sources of humanist civility previously lacking: as Cimon fell in inspiration: in his later portraiture, he fused the rich love with Efigenia, the prince’s heart opened up to all colours and dramatic lighting that were preferred in the virtuous qualities that had been missing before.