Another Candidate Portrait of John Dowland? by Roger Traversac
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Another candidate portrait of John Dowland? by Roger Traversac In the 1997 issue of the Journal of the Lute Society of America (volume xxx) Olav Chris Henriksen drew attention to an image of a lutenist on the title page of Melchior Borchgrevinck’s Giardino Novo . (Copenhagen, 1605) which may have been intended as a likeness of John Dowland, then an ornament of the Danish court. I would here like to suggest another candidate for a likeness for Dowland, namely a miniature by Isaac Oliver, 5.5 cm x 4.5 cm in size, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, here seen both in and out of its frame. The caption reads ‘Anno Domini 1590 . 27th year of his age’. In the first place, this is just the right age for Dowland, born in 1563. Of course this alone hardly warrants a positive identification. Wikipedia lists a good number of ‘English Worthies’ born in that year,1 and in private communica- tion, a curator at the V&A told me that there have been a number of attempts to name the sitter of this miniature portrait. Indeed, if the ‘aetatis suae 27’ were interpreted as meaning ‘in the year at the end of which the sitter will turn 27’, the date would even fit Shakespeare or Marlowe(!), both born in 1564—but of course the miniature looks nothing like the known or presumed portraits of either. Besides the age of the sitter is there anything else which might suggest an identification with the famous lutenist? It seems to me that, allowing for the passage of 15 years, and a modest change in styling of the beard and haircut, Isaac Oliver’s sitter might be the same man as the one in the 1605 Danish engraving. The similarity of posture and angle helps us here. The shape of the head, rather prominent nose, lips and chin all seem similar, as is the rather correct upright posture. In each case the clothes are smart and fashionable, but without extravagance or ostentation, as befitting an man who rubbed shoulders with the greatest in the land at Court, but was not himself of the highest social echelons. The ruff worn in 1590 has given way to ‘falling bands’ in 1605, but this probably just reflects changes in fashion. We can just see what looks like a gold signet ring on the little finger. The expression in the Oliver miniature suggests a man confident in himself and his abilities, which again would tally with what we know of Dowland’s professional pride. One might play around with the idea that the hand position gives a clue to the sitters identity. Might the fingers be in the position that on the lute fingerboard, would produce the notes Do–La? Who knows? But the posture, dress and relaxed hand are similar to what we see in another musi- cian’s portrait, that of Sweelinck, painted some years later. Portrait miniatures were expensive, but not absurdly so. The portrait miniature was adopted as a fashion by the ruling class of Elizabethan England. After 1570, the taste for them spread to include the nobility and gentry and eventually even the wives of the worthy citizens of London. Three pounds seem to have been the normal rate for an ordinary limning. It was not negligible in current money terms, but could not be called excessively lavish. What we can say with certainty is that the lives of Isaac Oliver and John Dowland ran parallel courses in many ways. Oliver was born just a couple of years after Dowland, in 1565/6 in Rouen. Forced to leave France at an early age to escape the wars of religion, Oliver was in London in 1590, as Dowland was. Like Dowland, he had made a journey of cultural exploration to Italy. He never really mastered English, but Dowland must have spoken French reasonably well, from his time in Paris in the household of the English Ambassador, Sir Henry Cobham—perhaps they could even have met in France. Both frequented courtly circles: while Dowland set the poems of the Earl of Essex to music, Oliver painted his wife, the Countess of Essex. Dowland dedicated his Lachrimae to Anne of Denmark; Oliver made a portrait of her too. Both lived in the suburbs to the west of the gates of the City of London, in the Fleet Street / Fetter Lane / Blackfriars area. If they did not meet at court, they may frequently have passed each other in the street. None of this is conclusive of course, but it is exciting to think that it is at least possible that we have here is a portrait of the ‘English Orpheus’. 1. All born in 1563: William Baldwin (Jesuit), John Boyle (bishop), Robert Browne (Jacobean actor), John Burges, Arthur Chichester, 1st Baron Chichester, John Coke, Henry Cuffe, Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, John Dow- land, Michael Drayton, Thomas Edmondes, Henry Floyd (Jesuit), Alexander Gill the Elder, Thomas Hamilton, 1st Earl of Haddington, George Heriot, Arthur Hildersham, Richard Hill, Richard Holiday, John Hogg, Edmund Duke, Lord William Howard, Henry Hyde (ancestor of Mary II of England), Henry Jacob, Francis Johnson (Brownist), Ralph Kettell, Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, Robert Naunton, Thomas Preston (monk), Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Sir Miles Sandys, 1st Baronet, Martin Sherson, Sir John Stradling, 1st Baronet, Joshua Sylvester, John Trevor (1563–1630), Walter Warner, Simon Weston (MP)..