DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63299#0022
14
THE PICTURE GALLERT OF CHARLES I.
Pembroke family at Wilton House ; the gems descended to the Marl-
borough family, in whose possession they remained until the recent
dispersion of the Blenheim collections.
Among the pictures we note as having passed through the Earl’s hands
—in this case as intermediary only—the Portrait of Albert Direr by Himself
1498 (Madrid), and Portrait of Direr s Father, of 1497 (Syon House),
both of which, as will be seen, are afterwards found in Charles I’s. col-
lection. There was also in the collection, as Hollar’s print shows, the
Lady of the FIrleger Family of 1497, now at the Stacdel Institut of
Frankfurt-am-Main. The wonderful series of Holbeins, which a pane-
gyrist with measureless exaggeration described as being “ more of that
exquisite painter Hans Holbein than are in the world besides,” included
among many other things the great full-length Christina of Danemark
Duchess of Milan, once, as the inventory already referred to shows, in
Henry VIII.’s collection ; the original Edward VI. as an Infant, now
in the Provincial Gallery at Hanover ; the Duke of Norfolk, the original
of which is at Windsor Castle, while an old copy supplies its place
at. Arundel; the Dr. fohn Chambers, Physician to Henry VIIL, now
in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna ; the Anne of Cleves, now in the
Louvre, or a picture identical with it in design ; a fane Seymour,
which cannot have been, and from Hollar’s engraving does not appear
to be, that now at Vienna. But the most precious section of the Holbein
collection was perhaps that unique series of studies in black chalk,
heightened with colour, portraying notable personages of Henry VIII.’s
court, many of them the preliminary studies for still extant por-
traits in oils by the Bale master.1 This great series of drawings
which was subsequently to go through so many strange vicissitudes
before it found a final resting-place in the royal collection at Windsor
Castle, was the subject of an amusing deal. It was, as we find from
an entry in Vanderdoort’s catalogue of the King’s pictures, exchanged by
Charles with the Earl of Pembroke, for the Little St. George, of
Raphael, and then by the latter immediately passed on to that Holbein
collector -par excellence, the Earl of Arundel, but in exchange for what
picture or work of art we do not learn. If Charles appears to have
1 The Windsor drawings were last publicly exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition,
held at the New Gallery in 1890.
THE PICTURE GALLERT OF CHARLES I.
Pembroke family at Wilton House ; the gems descended to the Marl-
borough family, in whose possession they remained until the recent
dispersion of the Blenheim collections.
Among the pictures we note as having passed through the Earl’s hands
—in this case as intermediary only—the Portrait of Albert Direr by Himself
1498 (Madrid), and Portrait of Direr s Father, of 1497 (Syon House),
both of which, as will be seen, are afterwards found in Charles I’s. col-
lection. There was also in the collection, as Hollar’s print shows, the
Lady of the FIrleger Family of 1497, now at the Stacdel Institut of
Frankfurt-am-Main. The wonderful series of Holbeins, which a pane-
gyrist with measureless exaggeration described as being “ more of that
exquisite painter Hans Holbein than are in the world besides,” included
among many other things the great full-length Christina of Danemark
Duchess of Milan, once, as the inventory already referred to shows, in
Henry VIII.’s collection ; the original Edward VI. as an Infant, now
in the Provincial Gallery at Hanover ; the Duke of Norfolk, the original
of which is at Windsor Castle, while an old copy supplies its place
at. Arundel; the Dr. fohn Chambers, Physician to Henry VIIL, now
in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna ; the Anne of Cleves, now in the
Louvre, or a picture identical with it in design ; a fane Seymour,
which cannot have been, and from Hollar’s engraving does not appear
to be, that now at Vienna. But the most precious section of the Holbein
collection was perhaps that unique series of studies in black chalk,
heightened with colour, portraying notable personages of Henry VIII.’s
court, many of them the preliminary studies for still extant por-
traits in oils by the Bale master.1 This great series of drawings
which was subsequently to go through so many strange vicissitudes
before it found a final resting-place in the royal collection at Windsor
Castle, was the subject of an amusing deal. It was, as we find from
an entry in Vanderdoort’s catalogue of the King’s pictures, exchanged by
Charles with the Earl of Pembroke, for the Little St. George, of
Raphael, and then by the latter immediately passed on to that Holbein
collector -par excellence, the Earl of Arundel, but in exchange for what
picture or work of art we do not learn. If Charles appears to have
1 The Windsor drawings were last publicly exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition,
held at the New Gallery in 1890.