The reality, however, is that the painting will remain in Boston, where 200,000 visitors every year come to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to enjoy the collection housed in her palatial residence at Fenway. Visiting the museum is like entering a time warp, wandering through rooms that have remained unchanged since Isabella’s death. Having traversed the lower floors, you find yourself upstairs in the Titian Room, where the sight of the Rape of Europa is enough to lift the flagging spirits of all art lovers. This room alone shows Isabella Stewart Gardner to have been a worthy successor to some of the most notable art collectors in history. They constitute a diverse group, ranging from the secretive and repressed Philip II and his grandson Philip IV, indulging in their passion for the erotic figure of Europa in solitary splendour in their private apartments, to the libertine Dukes of Orléans carrying on their scandalous lifestyle beneath the gaze of Europa and her bull.
What united these collectors, and Isabella herself, was the desire to possess the finest works of Titian. They regarded the painter as without peer in his ability to use colour as a way of expressing feeling. In a long and fruitful career, the painter produced a large oeuvre, but it was his poesie, painted when the artist was at the height of his powers, which best demonstrate this ability and, consequently, have been the most sought after of all his works. The Rape of Europa, representing the culmination of this series, has not only been highly sought after, but also exerted a profound influence on Titian’s fellow artists, ranging from Rubens and Velázquez in Spain, Watteau and Boucher in France, Reynolds and Lawrence in England and Whistler and Sargent in America.
It is the one painting, above all, that the National Gallery in London regrets losing when it left British shores back in the 1890s, and was one of the main reasons why the recently retired director Dr Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery (2008–15), a notable Titian scholar, was so determined to purchase Diana and Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto, the two paintings most closely associated with the Rape of Europa. As Penny has written: ‘Recollection of how the National Gallery allowed the Rape of Europa to leave the country strengthened the determination to secure the other two for public ownership over a century later.’ The success of the National Gallery’s campaign to raise £100 million to acquire the two Diana paintings, and the crowds that have flocked to see them, like those who troop into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to see the Rape of Europa, show why these great mythological works of Titian have always been placed at the pinnacle of Old Master painting.
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Family Trees of Habsburg and Orléans
Index
Aboukir Bay, Battle 129
Adams, John, President, U.S.A. 173
Agricultural Revolution 126, 144
Alba, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of 33–4
Albert, Archduke of Spanish Netherlands 66
Albert, Prince Consort 146, 148
Alcázar, Madrid 3, 16, 40, 49, 55–6, 58, 60, 66–7, 69, 80, 87, 89, 93, 97
American War of Independence 107–8, 111, 122, 173
Ancien Regime 111, 113, 119–22, 125
Angerstein, John Julius 129, 141
Aranjuez, Palace of 40–1, 75, 88
Arce, Don Pedro de 72
Aretino, Pietro 24–5
Arkwright, Richard 147
Ariosto, Ludovico 148, 155, 169, 179–80
Armada, Spanish 34, 60
Attingham Park 3, 134–40, 142
Augsburg 10–13, 23
Auto-da-Fe 31, 79
Badovaro, Federico 9, 31
Banqueting House, Whitehall 69, 76
Barry, James 130, 133
Baxter, Sylvester 184–5
Bell, Alexander Graham 161
Bellini, Giovanni 7, 27, 174, 187, 189
Berenson, Bernard 1, 165–83, 189–90
Berenson, Mary 189–90
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 83
Berry, Marie Louise Elisabeth d’Orléans, Duchess of 96–7
Berry, Mary 129
Berthollet, Claude Louis 102
Berwick, Sophia Dubouchet, Lady 136, 138
Berwick, Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron 134–40
Berwick, William, 3rd Baron 139
Bismarck, Prince Otto von 158
Blenheim Palace 155
Bode, Dr Wilhelm 156–8
Bosch, Hieronymus 36–7, 39
Boston 1, 163, 173–5, 195
Boston Museum of Fine Arts 188, 193
Botticelli, Sandro 149, 168, 180
Boucher, Francois 49, 99, 195
Bridgewater, Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of 127–9, 132, 144
Bridgewater Canal 127, 147
Brissot, Jaques-Pierre 105, 109–10
Bristol, John Digby, 1st Earl of 62–4
Browning, Robert 164
Bryan, Michael 127–8
Buchanan, William 131
Buckingham, George Villiers, 1st Duke of 59–61
Buen Retiro, Palace of 73–5, 79
Calderon de la Barca, Pedro 57, 73
Calonne, Charles-Alexandre de 110
Cardenas, Don Alonso de 76–7
Carducho, Vicenzo 59, 62
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of 128, 134, 144
Carlyle, Thomas 122, 166
Carmontelle, Louis Carrogis de 102, 105
Carnegie, Andrew 162
Carracci, Annibale 92–4, 128–9, 131–3, 137
Carter, Morris 163–4, 185, 191–3
Casals, Pablo 188
Cassatt, Mary 181
Castiglione, Baldassare 20
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia 115, 118, 181
Cavalcasalle, Giovanni Battista 153, 166, 168
Cervantes, Miguel de 3, 54
Chantrey, Sir Francis 150
Charles, Archduke of Austria 86
Charles, Prince of Wales and later Charles I, King of England 56, 59–66, 69, 75–7, 87–8, 94, 141, 171–2
Charles II, King of England 85, 95, 142
Charles II, King of Spain 3, 78, 85
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain 9, 13–4, 32, 35, 39, 62, 69, 75–6, 87
Charles X, King of France 108, 114
Chase, William Merritt 164
Chateau de Saint-Cloud 101–2
Christina, Queen of Sweden 94, 99
Churchill, John, 1st Duke of Marlborough 86
Claude Lorraine 75, 83, 131–2, 137
Clement VII, Pope 62
Clive, Robert 1st Baron 122
Clooney, George 193, 195
Cobham Hall 3, 141–6, 154, 157, 180
Coke, Sir Edward 63
Coke, Thomas, 1st Earl of Leicester 89, 126
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 54, 83–5
Cole, Sir Henry 146
Colnaghi’s 156–7, 167–8
Constable, John 149
Contant d’Ivry, Pierre 103
Conti, Prince of 98
Corday, Charlotte 105
Correggio, Antonio da 4, 22, 39, 48, 87, 94–5, 99, 176
Cottington, Sir Francis 62–3, 65
Council of Trent 15, 26, 32
Coypel, Charles-Antoine 95, 99
Crawford, Francis 181
Cromwell, Oliver 76
Crowe, Sir Joseph Archer 153, 168
Crozat, Pierre 93–5
Curtis, Daniel 163
Curtis, Ralph 164
Cust, Lionel 155
D’Alembert, Jena le Rond 102
D’Angevillier, Count 106
D’Artois, Comte see Charles X
D’Este, Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara 8, 24, 141
D’Orvilliers, Louis Guillouet, Comte d’, Admiral 107
Danton, Georges 111, 113
Darby, Abraham 131
Darnley, John Bligh, 5th Earl of 3, 140–4
&
nbsp; Darnley, John Stuart Bligh, 6th Earl of 154, 168–9, 171, 173
Darnley, Ivo Bligh, 8th Earl of 179–80
David, Jaques-Louis 105–6, 119
Denon, Dominique Vivant 130
Desmoulins, Camille 105, 109, 111–13
Diaz del Valle, Lazaro 70
Dickens, Charles 143–4
Diderot, Denis 105
Dolce, Lodovico 18–19, 46
Domenichino, Domenico Zampieri called 129, 132
Dubouchet, Sophia see Lady Berwick
Dumouriez, Charles-Francois du Perier, General 122
Durer, Albrecht 76, 156, 194
Duthe, Rosalie 102
Duveen, Joseph, Lord 170, 182
Eastlake, Sir Charles Lock 146, 153
Edison, Thomas 161
Edsel, Robert 195
Egmont, Lamoral, Count of 33
Egremont, George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of 150
El Greco, Domenikos Theotokopoulos 34, 38–9
El Pardo, Palace of 40–1
Eliot Norton, Charles 149, 163, 186, 188
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 141–2
Elizabeth, Queen of Spain (wife of Philip IV)
Elizabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain (wife of Philip II) 32, 41
Elliott, Grace Dalrymple 113, 121
Ellison, Henry 103
Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy 38
Engels, Friedrich 148
English Civil War 63–4
Escorial, San Lorenzo de 33, 35–40, 43, 63, 77, 84, 151
Estates General 110–12
Eugene of Savoy, Prince 86, 95
Fairbairn, Sir Thomas 150
Farnese, Alessandro, Duke of Parma 33, 39
Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro 15
Fenway Court 173, 176, 180, 183, 191–2
Forth, Nathaniel Parker 115
Fra Angelico 149, 189
Fragonard, Jean-Honore 102
Francois I, King of France 14, 27
Francoise Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans 90, 95
French Revolution 4, 102, 106, 112–22
Frick, Henry Clay 162, 183, 191
Frith, William Powell 150
Gainsborough, Thomas 65, 169, 177–8
Gardner, Isabella Stewart
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