The Dutch Gift of 1660 [1] was a collection of 24 mostly Italian Renaissance paintings, four by Dutch Masters, and twelve classical sculptures. The gift was presented to newly-restored King Charles II of England on 16 November by envoys of the States of Holland. [2]
Most of the paintings and all the Roman sculptures were from the Reynst collection, the most important seventeenth-century Dutch collection of paintings of the Italian sixteenth century, formed in Venice by Jan Reynst (1601–1646) and extended by his brother, Gerrit Reynst (1599–1658). [3] The gift reflected the taste Charles shared with his father, Charles I, whose large collection, one of the most magnificent in Europe, had mostly been sold abroad after he was executed in 1649. [4] Charles II was not as keen a collector as his father, but appreciated art and was later able to recover a good number of the items from the pre-war collection that remained in England, as well as purchasing many further paintings, and many significant old master drawings. [5]
Some decades later, there was a reverse movement when 36 paintings from the English Royal Collection, including at least one of those given in 1660, were taken by the Dutch King William III of England to his Dutch palace of Het Loo. His successor to the throne, Queen Anne, tried to recover these after William's death in 1702 but failed, and they mostly remain in Dutch public collections. [6] Fourteen paintings from the 1660 gift remain in the Royal Collection, with others now in different collections around the world.
The collection was promised to Charles II at a party in Mauritshuis in May 1660, to mark his return to power in the English Restoration. After the Declaration of Breda he and his two brothers James and Henry travelled to the Hague. Charles had spent many years in exile in Paris, where his mother lived, Cologne, and the Spanish Netherlands, during the short period of the English Commonwealth when England was a republic. It was intended to strengthen family ties and diplomatic relations between England and the Republic. The gift was organized by Cornelis de Graeff and Andries de Graeff. [7]
The gift seems to have included the Klencke Atlas, based on the ideas of Mare Liberum. An end of the Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660), a renewal of the Navigation Act and the foundation of the Royal African Company would mean more competition in the East, the West and Africa. Only a few years after the gift the two nations would be at war again in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
The 24 Italian paintings and the 12 sculptures had been part of the Reynst Collection assembled by Gerrit Reynst (also known as Gerard Reynst) and his brother Jan Reynst, who had been based in Venice for many years. Much of the collection originated from the famous Vendramin family collection there, though others had been acquired separately. [8] After the death of Gerrit Reynst, who drowned in the canal in front of his house, his widow sold a selection of the finest works in the collection to the States of Holland in 1660 for the then considerable sum of 80,000 guilders.
In 1660 this group and twelve Roman sculptures were presented to Charles II, augmented by four non-Italian works. The gift seems to have been organized by Amsterdam regents, especially the powerful Cornelis de Graeff and his younger brother Andries. [9] The sculptures for the gift were selected by the pre-eminent sculptor in the Netherlands, Artus Quellinus, and the art-connoisseur Gerrit van Uylenburgh, advised on and accompanied the purchase. (Much later he was to flee from financial difficulties to England and become Surveyor of the King's Pictures to Charles, from 1676 until his death three years later. [10] ) The gift was unpopular with many of the Dutch, and became a bone of contention between the Dutch political factions. [11]
In July 1660 Louis of Nassau arrived in London to find out more about Charles' preferences; his countrymen Simon van Hoorn, Michiel van Gogh from Vlissingen and the catholic Baron Joachim Ripperda van Farmsum arrived in November to negotiate the Act of Navigation and to present Charles II the Gift. [12] [13]
Previous diplomatic "Dutch Gifts" had been presented to Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1610, [14] and to Charles I in 1636, the latter including six horses and a state carriage, four paintings, a fine watch, a chest veneered with mother-of-pearl and a precious lump of ambergris [15]
Fourteen important Italian paintings from the Dutch Gift, all previously in the Reynst Collection, remain in the Royal Collection, [16] including: [17]
The Reynst collection included a Genius of Painting attributed to Guido Reni, and the older of two old copies still in the Royal Collection is first recorded at Whitehall Palace in an inventory of 1688 and described as by Reni. It is now classed as "after Reni" though no Reni original is known. [22] Whether this or an original work, formed part of the Gift cannot be confirmed, although one or the other seems likely.
Paintings no longer in the Royal Collection include a Guercino, Semiramis Receiving Word of the Revolt of Babylon (1624), [23] now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which was given by Charles to Barbara Villiers, his mistress, or to their son, Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Cleveland. Jacopo Bassano's Christ carrying the Cross is now in the National Gallery, London, having been given to Catherine of Braganza, Charles's queen, [24] after his death.
Two religious works, besides the Bassano, were recorded in an inventory of 1688/9 as being in Catherine's apartments, one "said to be Raphael" of the Holy Family with a lamb, and a group attributed to Titian of "Our Saviour with his feet on a cushion, The B. Virgin St John and St Elizabeth". These may have returned with her to Portugal in 1692. [25]
Of the four non-Italian works, two were by Gerrit Dou, [26] one of which, The Young Mother (1658), was only two years old when presented. The regents of the city of Leiden may have chosen The Young Mother to augment the yacht Mary as a means to encourage Charles to look after the interests of the House of Orange in the Netherlands, which had lost effective political power in 1650. At the time of the Restoration, Charles' sister Mary was in perilous political waters as the guardian of her son, Prince William III of Orange. [27] This was one of those works repatriated by William III and is now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. [28]
A heavily damaged version of The Mocking of Ceres by Adam Elsheimer (c. 1605), long thought to be a copy, but now seen as the original of this rare and important work, surfaced in the English art market in the 1970s and is now in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. [29] The composition is known from a copy in the Prado and an engraving, and the painting was still in the Royal Collection during the reign of George II. [30] The damage was apparently caused by fire, perhaps in the 1698 fire of the Palace of Whitehall, when a considerable part of the Royal Collection was lost, probably including most of the statues in the 1660 Gift, though at least one of these remains in England. [31]
The fourth non-Italian painting was a work by Pieter Jansz Saenredam, a recent (1648) and unusually large protestant church interior of the Groote Kerk, Haarlem, [32] which might have been intended to cement feelings of grateful nostalgia in Charles. This was apparently given to one of William III's Dutch courtiers, William van Huls, Clerk of the Robes and Wardrobe, as it appeared in his sale; it is now in the National Gallery of Scotland. [33]
The Gift included with a yacht, the Mary, a tapestry, and bedroom furniture which had belonged to Charles' sister Mary Henrietta Stuart. [34] John Evelyn, visiting Hampton Court Palacein 1662, noted that "The Queen's bed was an embroidery of silver on crimson velvet, and cost 8000l., being a present made by the States of Holland when his Majesty returned, and had formerly been given by them to our King's sister, the Princess of Orange, and, being bought of her again, was now presented to the King." [35] A very tricky issue was the education and upbringing of her son, the orphan William III of Orange.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, south London. It opened to the public in 1817 and was designed by the Regency architect Sir John Soane. His design was recognized for its innovative and influential method of illumination for viewing the art. It is the oldest public art gallery in England and was made an independent charitable trust in 1994. Until then, the gallery was part of the College of God's Gift, a charitable foundation established by the actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Edward Alleyn in the early 17th century. The acquisition of artworks by its founders and bequests from its many patrons resulted in Dulwich Picture Gallery housing one of the country's finest collections of Old Masters, especially rich in French, Italian and Spanish Baroque paintings, and in British portraits from the Tudor era to the 19th century.
Gerrit Dou, also known as GerardDouw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe-l'œil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. He was a student of Rembrandt.
Gerard van Honthorst was a Dutch Golden Age painter who became known for his depiction of artificially lit scenes, eventually receiving the nickname Gherardo delle Notti. Early in his career he visited Rome, where he had great success painting in a style influenced by Caravaggio. Following his return to the Netherlands he became a leading portrait painter. Van Honthorst's contemporaries included Utrecht painters Hendrick Ter Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen.
Karel Dujardin was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Although he did a few portraits and a few history paintings of religious subjects, most of his work is small Italianate landscape scenes with animals and peasants, and other genre scenes. Dujardin spent two extended periods, at the beginning and end of his career, in Italy, and most of his paintings and landscape etchings have an Italian or Italianate setting.
The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic life-size marble sculpture portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BC, now on display at the Louvre.
Events from the year 1660 in art.
The Vendramin Family Venerating a Relic of the True Cross is a large painting by the 16th century Venetian master Titian and his workshop, executed in the early 1540s, and now in the National Gallery in London.
The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world.
Gerrit Reynst was, like his younger brother Jan (1601–1646), a Dutch merchant and art collector from Amsterdam, with his brother owner of the Reynst Collection. He was an alderman and member of the town council, entering it in 1646.
Jan Reynst was a Protestant Dutch merchant in Amsterdam and, with his elder brother Gerrit, an art collector and owner of the Reynst collection.
Cornelis de Graeff, often named Polsbroek or de heer van (lord) Polsbroek during his lifetime, was an influential regent and burgomaster (mayor) of Amsterdam, statesman and diplomat of Holland and the Republic of the United Netherlands at the height of the Dutch Golden Age.
The Reynst Collection, probably the most extensive Dutch 17th-century collection of art and artefacts, was owned by the Dutch merchants Gerrit Reynst and Jan Reynst. The collection was put on display in their house at the sign of Hope on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It consisted of over 200 Italian paintings and over 300 sculptures, most of them ancient Roman. There were other antiquities: ten sepulchral monuments, five votive reliefs, nine cinerary urns, "Etruscan" vases, and Christian objects, as well as engraved gems. The collection was dispersed in the 1660s and 1670s, after both brothers had died, and Gerrit's widow sold parts to various buyers.
Gerrit van Uylenburgh, or Gerrit Uylenburgh, was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art-dealer. He was the eldest son of Hendrick van Uylenburgh and took over the family art-dealing business after Hendrick's death and burial in the Westerkerk church in 1661. This business, then in a house on Lauriergracht, formerly owned by Govaert Flinck, played a key role in the art world of the Dutch Golden Age.
The House of Vendramin was a rich merchant family of Venice, Italy, who were among the case nuove or "new houses" who joined the patrician class when the Libro d'Oro was opened after the battle of Chioggia. Andrea Vendramin served as the sole Vendramin Doge from 1476–78, at the height of Venetian power, though in 1477 an Antonio Feleto was imprisoned, then banished, for remarking in public that the Council of the Forty-One must have been hard-pressed to elect a cheesemonger Doge. In his youth, Andrea and his brother Luca, in joint ventures, used to ship from Alexandria enough goods to fill a galley or a galley and a half, Malipiero recorded in retrospect: even his factors grew rich managing his affairs. At this period, mentions of Vendramins in various fields of business occur; Luca Vendramin (d.1527) founded a successful bank on the still-wooden Rialto Bridge with three Capelli brothers in 1507, but in his will of 1524 forbade his sons from continuing in banking. An early text on accounting mentions that the Vendramins' soap is so reliably good that you can buy it without inspecting it. Later they owned an important theatre.
The Orleans Collection was a very important collection of over 500 paintings formed by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, mostly acquired between about 1700 and his death in 1723. Apart from the great royal-become-national collections of Europe it is arguably the greatest private collection of Western art, especially Italian, ever assembled, and probably the most famous, helped by the fact that most of the collection has been accessible to the public since it was formed, whether in Paris, or subsequently in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere.
The Portrait of Andrea Odoni is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto dated 1527, now in the Royal Collection of the United Kingdom. It hangs in the Picture Gallery in Buckingham Palace, London. The style is typical of Lotto's Venetian period, with denser tones, a softer chromatic range and atmospheric effects at the boundaries. The painting is signed and dated by Lotto.
Johannes Klencke, van Klenck or Klenckius was a Dutch teacher in philosophy at the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam.
Shepherd with a flute, or Boy with a Pipe, is a painting in oil on canvas of perhaps 1510–1515, in recent decades usually attributed to Titian, though in the past often to Giorgione. It is now in the Royal Collection in the King's Closet at Windsor Castle. Since at least 1983 it has been called Boy with a Pipe by the Royal Collection; previous titles the collection recognise include Shepherd with a pipe, and The Shepherd.
The Galleria Spada is a museum in Rome, which is housed in the Palazzo Spada on Piazza Capo di Ferro. The palazzo is also famous for its façade and for the forced perspective gallery by Francesco Borromini.
Portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro, also known as Portrait of a Man, is an oil painting by the Venetian master Titian, dated to about 1513. It is part of the Royal Collection, and hangs in Buckingham Palace.