DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63299#0087
THE PICTURE GALLERT OF CHARLES I.
77
French crown from Francois I. and the Valois kings—eventhose brought
together by the art-loving Rudolph II. in the Imperial Castle of
Prague.
It could not boast such a group of genuine Leonardos as constitute
the chief glory of the Louvre, but it included the incomparable Cartoons
of Raphael, it had at least one Giorgione which modern criticism has spared,
its Titians were without a rival in the world, its Correggios unsurpassed,
and some of its Tintorettos genuine and splendid, if its examples of Paolo
Veronese, so far as we know them, were weak and doubtful. Let us first
cast a rapid glance at a few of the most important Florentine, Umbro-
Florentine and Roman pictures, beginning with the Raphaels.
The first is the exquisite little St. George slaying the Dragon, in
Vanderdoort’s catalogue as “ A Little St. George, which the king had
in exchange of My Lord Chamberlain, Earl of Pembroke, for the book
of Holbein’s drawings . . . .” Painted for the Duke of Urbino, and
sent over by him in 1506 as a gift to Henry VII. of England, who
had conferred upon him the Order of the Garter—the bearer being the
accomplished Baldassare Castiglione, whom Raphael painted some ten
years later—it was sold by the Commonwealth for ^150, and passing
through the La Noue, De Sourdis, and Crozat collections, found a final
resting-place in the Hermitage Gallery of St. Petersburg. The warrior-
saint wears round his knee the band of the Garter, with the com-
mencement of its device “ Honi.” The design is entirely different
from that of the Louvre St. George, painted some two years earlier, in
which the youthful master, though he has emancipated himself from
Perugino’s leading-strings, appears still in many essentials an Umbrian.
In the Hermitage picture he is, if not a Florentine, at least an Umbro-
Florentine ; and he relies, indeed, for the mainlines of his composition on
Donatello’s relief at the base of the St. George Tabernacle at Or-San-
michele1 (an old stucco copy of which, in better condition than the
1 Miss Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady), in her very interesting monograph, “ The
Early Work of Raphael” (TA Portfolio, January, 1895), has sought to prove that the
St. George sent by the Duke of Urbino to Henry VII. was not, as has been universally
assumed, the St. George of St. Petersburg, but the earlier St. George of the Louvre.
She relies on the following curious entry in the inventory of pictures, furniture,
jewels, &c., drawn up on the death of Henry VIII. (Harleian MS. 1419), in the British
Museum):—“126. Item. A table with the picture of St. George, his spear being
77
French crown from Francois I. and the Valois kings—eventhose brought
together by the art-loving Rudolph II. in the Imperial Castle of
Prague.
It could not boast such a group of genuine Leonardos as constitute
the chief glory of the Louvre, but it included the incomparable Cartoons
of Raphael, it had at least one Giorgione which modern criticism has spared,
its Titians were without a rival in the world, its Correggios unsurpassed,
and some of its Tintorettos genuine and splendid, if its examples of Paolo
Veronese, so far as we know them, were weak and doubtful. Let us first
cast a rapid glance at a few of the most important Florentine, Umbro-
Florentine and Roman pictures, beginning with the Raphaels.
The first is the exquisite little St. George slaying the Dragon, in
Vanderdoort’s catalogue as “ A Little St. George, which the king had
in exchange of My Lord Chamberlain, Earl of Pembroke, for the book
of Holbein’s drawings . . . .” Painted for the Duke of Urbino, and
sent over by him in 1506 as a gift to Henry VII. of England, who
had conferred upon him the Order of the Garter—the bearer being the
accomplished Baldassare Castiglione, whom Raphael painted some ten
years later—it was sold by the Commonwealth for ^150, and passing
through the La Noue, De Sourdis, and Crozat collections, found a final
resting-place in the Hermitage Gallery of St. Petersburg. The warrior-
saint wears round his knee the band of the Garter, with the com-
mencement of its device “ Honi.” The design is entirely different
from that of the Louvre St. George, painted some two years earlier, in
which the youthful master, though he has emancipated himself from
Perugino’s leading-strings, appears still in many essentials an Umbrian.
In the Hermitage picture he is, if not a Florentine, at least an Umbro-
Florentine ; and he relies, indeed, for the mainlines of his composition on
Donatello’s relief at the base of the St. George Tabernacle at Or-San-
michele1 (an old stucco copy of which, in better condition than the
1 Miss Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady), in her very interesting monograph, “ The
Early Work of Raphael” (TA Portfolio, January, 1895), has sought to prove that the
St. George sent by the Duke of Urbino to Henry VII. was not, as has been universally
assumed, the St. George of St. Petersburg, but the earlier St. George of the Louvre.
She relies on the following curious entry in the inventory of pictures, furniture,
jewels, &c., drawn up on the death of Henry VIII. (Harleian MS. 1419), in the British
Museum):—“126. Item. A table with the picture of St. George, his spear being