Why did he not use the brush for a tentative veil
To hinder our view
Despite Argensola’s disapproval, Titian’s poesie, however, hidden away in the king’s private apartments did little to disturb the rigorous formality of life at court in the Alcázar. Visitors to the palace in the seventeenth century found the experience extremely unsettling. Philip IV was so impassive when he appeared in public that he resembled a statue. He was reputed to have laughed only three times in public during his entire life. Foreign ambassadors visiting the Alcázar for an audience with the king recorded the claustrophobic formality of life at court. The ambassador would be led through a succession of dark and gloomy rooms, with not even one chair to provide a modicum of comfort, before he reached the audience-chamber, where he would be greeted by Philip IV, standing beside a console table. Having saluted the ambassador by touching his hat, the king would stand motionless throughout the interview, which he would terminate by making a number of courteous but anodyne remarks. No wonder Alonso Carrillo, in his Origin of the dignity of the grandees of Castile of 1657, described Philip IV’s court as ‘a school of silence, punctiliousness and reverence’. Occasionally, the king escaped from this ultra-formal world to indulge his love of hunting. He was a brilliant horseman and a keen hunter; a contemporary, writing in 1644, praised Philip’s ability at pig-sticking and claimed that his trophies included a grand total of 400 wolves, 600 stags and 150 wild boar.
The occasional hunting excursion was one of the few opportunities Philip had to escape from his duties. Even his love of art was a part of his public persona. Philip ruled Spain throughout the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which the Spanish regarded as a crusade against Protestantism. Philip was leader of the Catholic cause and promoted a number of moral reforms including closing legal brothels in Spain and attempting to regulate priests’ sexual behaviour. His subjects would have been horrified if they knew that the king spent hours gazing at a series of erotic nudes by a Venetian artist.
In contrast, Titian’s major portraits, historical and allegorical paintings were shown in the public rooms in the Alcázar. Great care was taken in hanging them in the main reception room, known as the New Hall, or Hall of Mirrors, so that they could demonstrate the power of Spain. This was where Philip received ambassadors from as far afield as Russia and Ottoman Turkey, seated on his throne beneath Titian’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles V. A number of changes were made to the Hall of Mirrors during his reign, but they did not affect the Titian which remained in place, the most potent image of the Habsburg monarchy. Other works by the artist in the room included Religion aided by Spain, an allegorical portrait of Philip II after the battle of Lepanto, the great victory by the Christian navy, led by Spain, over the Ottoman fleet in 1571.
The painter Vincenzo Carducho, who had worked for Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV and was the author of Dialogues on Painting, thought the scheme of decoration in the Hall of Mirrors was worthy of the highest praise, ‘grave, majestic, exemplary, and worthy of imitation’. Interestingly, he contrasted this with paintings that depicted scenes from the myths of Ovid with ‘impure and immodest boorishness’, a criticism that seems to refer directly to Titian’s poesie.
One of the reasons why the Hall of Mirrors was constantly being redecorated was because of the urgent need for the king to bolster his faltering reputation. This was both personal and political. Philip IV possessed a diffident character and, in the words of Velázquez, ‘he mistrusts himself, and defers too much to others’, in particular his chief minister, the commanding Olivares, whose extravagant and ambitious personality dominated the court during the first half of Philip’s reign. Having renewed war with the Netherlands in 1621, which then proceeded to engulf the whole of Europe, Spain was committed to a generation of warfare.
Two years later Philip IV received an unusual visitor to Madrid. Charles, Prince of Wales, decided to make an impetuous visit to the Spanish capital with his friend George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of Charles’ father James I, the two men travelling incognito under the pseudonyms Thomas and John Smith. The ostensible reason for the visit was an attempt by Charles to woo the Spanish Infanta Maria Anna, sister of Philip IV.
As it turned out, however, the most interesting outcome of the expedition was that the prince developed a passion for Old Master paintings. Before coming to Spain the Venetian ambassador in London had noted the prince’s love of Venetian painting, but Charles’ only major purchase had been Raphael’s cartoons of the Acts of the Apostles (now hanging in the Victoria and Albert Museum) from which he intended to commission a series of tapestries from the recently established Mortlake tapestry factory, the first of its kind in England. It was to be the sight of the Titians in the Spanish royal collection that inspired Charles to form his magnificent artistic collection.
At first, however, after his arrival in Madrid, political concerns took precedence. James I had been negotiating the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Infanta with the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Gondomar, for many years, hoping thereby to secure a large Spanish dowry to help alleviate his acute financial problems (the dowry was initially set at £500,000, later raised to £600,000). This was a major political gamble since the majority of his Protestant subjects held strongly anti-Catholic views. For the latter part of the sixteenth century England had been at war with Spain, and James’ older subjects had vivid memories of the triumphant defeat of the Spanish Armada.
The Spanish, with their love of protocol, were aghast at the unexpected arrival of two such important guests on such a delicate diplomatic mission. Charles and Buckingham made a formal entry into Madrid on 26 March. They were greeted by Philip IV and the Count-Duke of Olivares who, with typical love of self-dramatization, was dressed in gold-embroidered clothes. The two Englishmen, in contrast dressed ‘in the English manner’ without jewels or embroidery, were then escorted in a lavish procession from the monastery of San Jeronimo to the Alcázar. Crowds gathered to watch the king riding alongside the prince beneath a canopy, entertained by dancers as they went, and one spectator commented that Charles was ‘a handsome youth of about twenty-two with a long face … rather sunburnt from the journey, and his beard is just beginning to show’.
At the Alcázar a suite of rooms had been hastily prepared for Charles and Buckingham. During the spring and summer they had ample opportunity to study the works of art in the royal apartments, particularly the wonderful group of Titians. Buckingham was already in the process of forming an important collection, including an Ecce Homo by Titian, purchased by his agent Balthasar Gerbier in Italy, and Gerbier now joined the royal party in Madrid, along with his fellow agent Tobie Matthew. The duke was later to acquire a total of 19 Titians for his London Residence, York House. Charles followed Buckingham’s lead in developing a passion for the works of Titian and the other leading artists of the Venetian School. What is apparent from the outset is that the two Englishmen regarded these works of art purely on their aesthetic merits, and their aim was to purchase examples whenever they could.
The Spanish took a very different view. They had noticed the prince’s growing interest in works of art and determined to take political advantage of this. They observed the lack of progress in the relationship between Charles and the Infanta, largely because the couple only met formally during pageants, masquerades and firework displays. But could the prospect of acquiring important paintings from the royal collection be used to persuade the Prince of Wales to convert to Catholicism? The Spanish were fighting a protracted war with the Dutch for control of the Netherlands. Just as in Philip II’s day, there was a major logistical problem in transporting troops from Spain to the Low Countries. One route was to bring them by sea up the English Channel. Protestant England was likely to favour an alliance with fellow Protestants in Holland rather than Catholic Spain, but, if there was a Catholic monarch on the English throne, it was much more likely that England would remain neutral. For Olivares, who had renewed war
with the Dutch in 1621, this was of cardinal importance.
Despite Charles’ success in purchasing two Titians, he had difficulty in buying major works by the artist on the open market (Spanish nobles, acutely conscious of status, were reluctant to part with their paintings to a foreign prince until he was married to the Infanta, and would then become part of the Spanish royal family). Olivares calculated that Spain could benefit from the Prince of Wales’ new-found passion by persuading his royal master to part with some Titians from the royal collection. The first painting to be offered to Charles was Titian’s magnificent portrait of Charles V with his Hound (Prado, Madrid), painted in 1530 shortly after he had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII. This priceless gift sums up the difference between the two parties. For the Spanish, the painting carried a clear, political message: Charles V had been crowned as emperor by the pope for his championship of Catholicism. By accepting the gift they assumed that the Prince of Wales was going to join the Habsburg royal family, accepting the authority of the pope and converting to Catholicism. Charles, however, chose to ignore the political message, and accepted the Titian purely for its aesthetic qualities. On 11 June, the prince was offered another masterpiece by Titian, his Jupiter and Antiope, better known as the Venus del Pardo (Louvre, Paris), a particular favourite of Philip III.
As a final inducement Olivares persuaded his sovereign to offer Charles the Rape of Europa and the rest of the poesie, so beloved of Philip II, and widely regarded as some of the greatest works of the Venetian master. There could be no better example of the role that major works of art played as a diplomatic counter. Vicente Carducho, like the rest of the Spanish Court, was amazed at this largesse, recording in his Dialogues on Painting: ‘I then saw them packed into crates, for shipping to England, these being Diana Bathing, Europa, Danae, and the rest.’
The gift appeared to have had the desired effect with Charles agreeing to the key religious issues. Although the prince was not willing to convert to Catholicism, he ignored warnings from his senior advisers, the English ambassador John Digby, First Earl of Bristol, and Sir Francis Cottington, ex-ambassador and Charles’ secretary, and consented to grant freedom of worship to English Roman Catholics, repealing anti-Catholic legislation and allowing the Infanta, once they were married, to control her children’s religious education. Remarkably, James I acquiesced in the agreement. This was all the more surprising, considering the unpopularity of his pro-Spanish policy with his predominantly Protestant subjects. He had been compelled to dissolve Parliament two years earlier when the Commons, led by Sir Edward Coke, the most important jurist in England, had presented him with a petition in favour of a war with Spain and that the Prince of Wales should marry a Protestant.
Bristol and Cottington were increasingly concerned that the prince was giving too much away. They realized that he was a virtual captive in Madrid, under pressure from the Catholic divines, who frequently visited him, to convert to Catholicism. Their concerns appeared amply justified when Charles suddenly caved in to further Spanish demands on 7 July, agreeing to give the Spanish total control over the proposed marriage and to allow English Catholics virtual independence from governmental control. By now James I had had second thoughts at events in Spain, and when he heard of these new concessions his son had made on this crucial issue, he was so aghast that he feared he would lose his crown.
In fact Charles had decided that capitulation was the only course to adopt if he was to escape Madrid. Once he was free from the Spanish capital, he had decided to repudiate the agreement. This cynical ploy was to be typical of Charles’ negotiating technique throughout his reign, particularly when he felt that he had been cornered by his opponents, notably when he was a prisoner of the Parliamentarians after the Civil War. His tactic was to make an agreement he had no intention of honouring.
The Spanish, however, were taken in. On 9 September, Charles and Buckingham left Madrid, their first stop being the Escorial, where the two Englishmen had a further chance to admire the extraordinary collection formed by Philip II, centred on the works of Titian. Charles then took leave of Philip IV, reiterating his promise to marry the Infanta by proxy once he had received papal dispensation. In fact, as soon as he reached Segovia, he instructed the Earl of Bristol to formally call the match off. This greatly upset the Spanish and, not surprisingly, they made haste to prevent Titian’s paintings, which had been packed up, from leaving for England. They were brought back and rehung in Philip’s apartments in the Alcázar.
Bristol, who had spent many years promoting the idea of the marriage, but had strongly opposed the sudden appearance of the Prince of Wales in Spain, was most upset that the Spanish, with whom he was on excellent terms, should have felt that he was acting in bad faith when he relayed the news. The earl was made the scapegoat for the whole affair. As a typical example of Charles’ bad man-management, on returning to England Bristol was confined to his estates but was permitted to return to court if he would admit his fault. This he refused to do, resulting in Charles, by now king, sending his stubborn minister to the Tower where he remained until 1628. Charles thus alienated one of his most able servants; the two men were not reconciled until the eve of the Civil War in 1641.
The failure of the expedition inflamed anti-Spanish sentiment in England. The nation celebrated the Prince of Wales’ return without a Catholic bride (though their jubilation was short-lived as Charles was shortly to marry a French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII). Englishmen flocked to watch Thomas Middleton’s A Game of Chess, which opened in London in August 1624 to packed audiences. Spectators particularly enjoyed the ridicule heaped on the Jesuits, portrayed as lecherous and avaricious, and the Count of Gondomar, Spanish ambassador to England for many years, caricatured as the Black Knight, with numerous jokes about his physical impediments. The Privy Council, sensitive that this was subtle criticism of the government’s promotion of the Spanish alliance, closed the play after just nine days. The king, however, influenced by the mercurial Buckingham, was soon leading England into a war with Spain and the idea of an Anglo–Spanish marriage between Charles and the Infanta was therefore politically dead. (The Infanta was to marry her cousin Ferdinand III, the Holy Roman Emperor, a much more suitable match.)
For Charles, however, the Spanish trip was a voyage of discovery. The prince had been very impressed by the court of Philip IV and on his return to England he took to wearing sober, Spanish costume and based his courtly protocol on the Habsburg model. Charles brought back three major works by Titian: the Portrait of Charles V with his Hound, the Pardo Venus and the Woman in a Fur Wrap (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna) but, tantalizingly, the group of poesie, including the Rape of Europa, never left Spain. Charles lamented his failure to land this ultimate artistic coup (copies made by Michael Cross, a minor painter, sent over by the king, proved a scant substitute). Six years later, the king was still pestering Sir Francis Cottington, who was now English ambassador to Spain, to try to extricate the Titians from Spain.
The situation in 1629, however, was very different from that of 1623. The Spanish could see no political advantage in sending the paintings to England, so they remained in situ. Spurred on by this failure, Charles was to spend the rest of his reign amassing as many works by Titian and his fellow Venetians as he could buy to form the central part of his collection, the finest formed by any British monarch. His greatest artistic coup was the acquisition of the Gonzaga collection from Mantua. As in his dealings with the Spanish on his adventurous trip to Madrid in 1623, Charles took a very different view of the purchase of these paintings to that of his opponents. For the king, the acquisition of these magnificent Renaissance and Baroque paintings was well worth the enormous price he had to pay for them. His Puritan enemies, however, condemned the numerous religious paintings, filled with Catholic symbolism, which they felt gave clear evidence of the king’s crypto-papism.
Interestingly, Charles I’s taste was very similar to that of Philip IV. Bot
h monarchs had a passion for the work of Titian; Philip, of course, was fortunate enough to inherit his collection from his grandfather while Charles was obliged to purchase his collection of 45 works by the Venetian artist. The two monarchs also enjoyed the works of Raphael and his followers. Among contemporaries, Charles I preferred to patronize Anthony Van Dyck, whose majestic portraits, strongly influenced by the richness of Titian’s colours, created an iconic image of the king, based on the idea of the Divine Right of Kings (he was knighted by the grateful monarch). His portraits were to exert a formative influence on the great eighteenth-century British portraitists Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Philip IV preferred the works of Van Dyck’s master Peter Paul Rubens, and the Fleming was to make an impact on Spanish painting as great as that of Titian. Rubens had already visited Spain in 1603, where he had paid homage to Titian in his powerful equestrian portrait of Philip III’s chief minister the Duke of Lerma. Rubens had been struck by the ‘splendid works of Titian, of Raphael and others’, comparing them with works by contemporary painters, which he dismissed as showing ‘incredible incompetence and carelessness’.
The Flemish painter made his visit during an eight-year sojourn in Italy, where he made an intense study of the great works of art in the main artistic centres, Venice, Genoa, Florence and Rome. He also spent several years based in Mantua, making a careful study of the Titians in the Ducal Palace, commissioned by the duke’s ancestor Federico Gonzaga (this was the collection that Charles I acquired in 1627–30). On returning to his native Antwerp, Rubens became the leading painter in Flanders. He acknowledged his debt to Titian, and was seen as the leader of the colourists, who took their inspiration from the great Venetian painters, as opposed to the classicists led by Nicholas Poussin, the leading French artist working in Rome, who based their style on the art of Raphael and antique sculpture.
The Rape of Europa Page 7
