Flemish Painting
Flemish Painting
Flemish Painting in the Fourteenth Century was based on the miniature-painting that illustrated the Mediæval manuscripts: indeed, many of the early paintings look like enlarged versions of the little pictures that adorn the vellum pages of missals and old romans. The early painters were influenced by the School of Cologne until the two Van Eycks (Hubert, 1366–1426, and Jan, 1380–1441), by their marvellous painting and by the followers they attracted, raised Flemish Art into importance and gave it a standing by itself as the School of Bruges.
Little is known of the lives of these painters except that they stood high in the favor of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who frequently sent Jan on missions to foreign countries, and that the brothers painted the great and famous altar-piece, the Adoration of the Lamb, for the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent. This great work, which is one of the most celebrated of all altar-pieces, is a landmark in the history of painting. It may be said to have inaugurated the Flemish School; and it marks an innovation as well. This Adoration of the Lamb was ordered by Jodocus Vydts, a burgomaster of Ghent, and his wife, Isabella Borluut, for their mortuary chapel in the Cathedral of St. Bavon; and Van Mander relates that when it was finished “swarms of people” came to gaze upon it; but, as the wings were closed except on special festivals, “few but the high-born and those who could afford to pay the custos saw it.” It must be remembered that at this period changes were also taking place in Italy under Gentile de Fabriano, Pisanello, and Masaccio. Whether the Van Eycks invented oil-painting or not, they had much to do with perfecting the process and influencing others to the use of the new method.
The Van Eycks had as pupils and followers all the Flemish and German painters of the day and their influence was even felt in Italy, where their pictures sold for their weight in gold.
In 1425 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, took Jan van Eyck into his service as painter and “varlet de chambre;” and Jan, thereafter, seems to have spent his life at the Court, painting portraits and designing variously, going on embassies for the Duke, and painting in Bruges and in Lille. As a portrait-painter Jan van Eyck is ranked with Dürer, Holbein, Raphael, Titian, Van Dyck, and the other great ones in this line. Undoubtedly, Jan van Eyck moved about a good deal through the Duke of Burgundy’s immense domain, which included all the Low Countries and a great part of what is now France.
We are apt to think of these early painters who laid the foundations of modern art as living in a much simpler day than our own. It is true that in the Fifteenth Century the Middle Ages were still holding their own in Flanders—the Renaissance moved very slowly northward—but it was a time of great prosperity and great luxury, especially in the Burgundian country.
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, son of the King of France, was the most luxurious prince of his time. His titles show his power. He was Duke of Burgundy, of Brabant, of Lothier and of Luxembourg; Count of Flanders, of Artois, and of Burgundy; Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zeeland, of Namur, and of Charolais; Marquis of the Holy Empire; and Lord of Friesland, of Salins, and of Mechlin. The House of Burgundy, therefore, by its inheritances, alliances and conquests, had attained such power as even to overshadow the French throne. Philip the Good (1396–1467) was even more luxurious than his grandfather, Philip the Bold. His Court was unequalled in Europe and was subject to the strictest rules of etiquette. His palaces in Brussels, Dijon, and Paris were sumptuously furnished and his collections of tapestries, gold-work, silver-work, jewels, embroideries, illuminated manuscripts, and printed books excited the admiration of such travellers and chroniclers as were privileged to see them and who, fortunately for us, have left accounts for us to read. At this period, too, the Flemings were the great craftsmen of Europe and they produced every kind of article required for the tastes and comfort of the wealthy Burgundians. Brussels and Dijon became veritable Meccas for Mediæval artists, while Bruges, Tournay, Arras, Ypres, Ghent, and Dinant held a welcome for any able craftsman or artist, who, driven from England, France, or Italy by the civil wars, sought refuge and work.
And there was plenty of work to be done!
Artistic designs of all kinds were needed for tapestry-workers, for the goldsmiths and silversmiths, for the furniture-makers, and for craftsmen busy in making articles for household use or for personal decoration. Moreover, for the great entertainments, such as weddings, receptions of princes, or celebrations in honor of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, and other important functions, a veritable army of painters, sculptors, illuminators, carvers, and machinists was needed to design, plan, and execute the entremets exhibited during the banquets and the grand decorations erected in the streets through which the processions passed.
We shall gain a better idea of the spirit of early Flemish Art if we pause for a moment to look into the palace at Lille, in 1454, when Philip the Good was celebrating the “Feast of the Pheasant.” The large hall was hung with tapestry representing the Labors of Hercules. The dressoir of enormous size was adorned with magnificent gold and silver vessels and there were three large tables, splendidly laden with viands artistically decorated. One of the guests wrote: “On a raised platform at the head of the first table sat the Duke. He was arrayed in his accustomed splendor—his dress of black velvet serving as a dark ground that heightened the brilliancy of the precious stones, valued at a million of gold crowns, with which it was profusely decked. Among the guests was a numerous body of knights, who had passed the morning in the tilting-field, and fair Flemish ladies, whose flaunting beauty had inspired these martial sports. Each course was composed of forty-four dishes, which were placed on chariots painted in gold and azure and which were moved along the tables by concealed machinery. As soon as the company was seated, the bells began to peal from the steeple of a huge pastry church with stained windows that concealed an organ and choir of singers; and three little choristers issued from the edifice and sang a very sweet chanson. Twenty-eight musicians, hidden in a mammoth pie,19 performed on various instruments and the fine viands and wines were circulated.”
After the exhibition of entremets, the pheasant was brought in, the Crusade proclaimed against the Sultan, and the vows registered.
It is safe to conjecture that Hubert and Jan van Eyck were among the painters who were employed to design the entremets, triumphal arches, and curiosities executed in pastry and in confections made of sugar, as well as to paint portraits of distinguished Flemings and altar-pieces for their churches.
The Flemish Primitives certainly had many occasions to feast their eyes upon magnificence!
John Paston, who went to Bruges to attend Charles the Bold’s second marriage in 1468 to Margaret of York, was overwhelmed and dazed by what he saw. “Nothing was like it save King Arthur’s Court,” he wrote home. The streets were hung with tapestries and cloth-of-gold, triumphal arches were erected and at intervals along her way the bride was entertained by “Histories,” the joint production of painters, decorators, dramatists, and machinists. The banquet-hall was superbly decorated and the chroniclers say “lighted by chandeliers in the form of castles surrounded by forest and mountains with revolving paths on which serpents, dragons, and other monstrous animals seemed to roam in search of prey, spouting forth jets of flame that were reflected in huge mirrors, so arranged as to catch and multiply the rays. The dishes containing the principal meats were ships, seven feet long and completely rigged, the masts and cordage gilt, the sails and streamers of silk, each floating in a silver lake between shores of verdure and enamelled rocks and attended by a fleet of boats laden with lemons, oranges, and condiments. There were thirty of these vessels and as many huge pastries in the shape of castles with banners waving from their battlements and towers; besides tents and pavilions for the fruit; jelly-dishes of crystal supported by figures of the same material dispensing streams of lavender and rose-water; and an immense profusion of gold and silver plate.”
When Charles the Bold was killed on the battlefield of Nancy (1477), a New Era was about to dawn. America was soon to be discovered; Vasco da Gama was to find an ocean route to the East Indies; the Moors were to be expelled from Spain; the Wars of the Roses were to end in England; Ferdinand and Isabella were to marry their daughter, the “mad Joanna,” to Philip the Fair of Austria, heir through his mother, Mary of Burgundy, to the Burgundian dominions (the issue being Charles V, born in Ghent in 1500). Of still more importance to the world of Art than these important events was the discovery of Italy by the French, who crossed the Alps with Charles VIII. The French were dazzled by what they saw in Italy. On their return the Renaissance in France and the Netherlands may be said to have begun to blossom. The ground had already been prepared by the art-loving Dukes of Burgundy.
Let us return, however, to the Bruges painters:
“The rise of the School was aided by the Fourteenth Century Art of Cologne best shown in the work of Meister Wilhelm. The Art of the movement was, for the period, strongly realistic. Natural objects were painted with the utmost fidelity, interest in still-life and genre begin to appear, and details of architecture and landscape were rendered as carefully as the heads of the most sacred personages in the compositions. So pronounced was this tendency that superficial observers are led to consider Flemish painting fundamentally material; but a thoughtful analysis will reveal a spirituality in the art quite as sincere, if not so obvious, as in the painting of contemporary Italy. In the early School, the painting was almost wholly religious, and scenes and actors were handled with reverence and deep feeling.
“The Flemings, however, inherited from earlier art a religious type to which they clung with great tenacity and which to the modern eye is ugly. The exaggeratedly-domed forehead of the Madonna, a symbol of intellect to the Fleming, is to the modern a distortion. Similarly the tiny mouth, the eyes almost without brows,20 and the other features which Flemish symbolism demanded, are now somewhat disturbing to the eye. When native realism and symbolism were coupled, as in the over realistic rendering of the ascetic Christ-Child, the effect is sometimes startling to the layman; and the beginner in the study of Flemish Art should beware of mistaking accidents of convention for artistic defects. If the conventions of Flemish Art make it at first difficult to appreciate, the technical perfection of the work must appeal to any one. Oil-painting, perfected if not necessarily invented in Flanders, gave a richness of color and a lustre of surface which specially distinguished the style. The play and delicate gradation of light over richly-colored surfaces was rendered so skillfully that the artists approached the expression of a complete visual effect, finally reached in Seventeenth Century Holland in the work of Vermeer.—Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
Next in importance to the Van Eycks comes Roger van der Weyden (1400?–1464). By 1432 Roger had made a name for himself, for he had become a master painter in the Tournay Guild. In 1450 he went to Italy and seems to have visited Cologne on his way home (see page 166).
The Maître de Flémalle (Robert Campin?), who showed a great interest in still-life, is thought to have been the master of Roger van der Weyden. Petrus Christus (1410?–1473), a native of Baerle, Holland, free citizen of Bruges in 1444, is regarded as one of the ancestors of genre painting (see page 169).
Hans Memling (1430–5–1494), a native of Holland, was a supposed pupil of Roger van der Weyden. It is believed that Roger van der Weyden took Memling with him to Italy in 1450. Memling was closely associated with his master Roger van der Weyden and sometimes painted the wing-panels for Roger’s great altar-pieces. Memling’s chief painting was done in Bruges (see page 172).
Taine thus sums up the Flemish Primitives: “A Flemish Renaissance underneath Christian ideas, such, indeed, is the two-fold nature of art under Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden, Memling, and Quentin Massys; and from these two characteristics proceed all the others. On the one hand, artists take interest in actual life; their figures are no longer symbols like the illuminations of ancient missals, nor purified spirits like the Madonnas of the School of Cologne but living beings and bodies. They attend to no anatomy, the perspective is exact, the minutest details are rendered regarding stuffs, architecture, accessories, and landscape; the relief is strong and the entire scene stamps itself on the eye and on the mind with extraordinary force and sense of stability; the greatest masters of coming times are not to surpass them in all this, nor even go so far. Nature is now discovered. The scales fall from their eyes; they have just mastered almost in a flash, the proportions, the structure, and the coloring of visible realities; and, moreover, they delight in them. Consider the superb copes wrought in gold and bedecked with diamonds, the embroidered silks, the flowered and dazzling diadems with which they ornament their saints and divine personages, all of whom represent the pomp of the Burgundian Court. Look at the calm and transparent water, the bright meadows, the red and white flowers, the blossoming trees and the sunny distances of their admirable landscapes. Observe their coloring—the strongest and richest ever seen, the pure and full tones side by side as in a Persian carpet and united solely through their harmony, the superb breaks in the folds of purple mantles, the deep azure of long, falling robes, the green draperies like a summer field permeated with sunshine, the display of gold skirts trimmed with black, the strong light which warms and enlivens the whole scene—and you have a concert in which each instrument sounds its proper note. They see the world on the bright side and make a holiday of it, a genuine fête, similar to those of this day, glowing under a more bounteous sunlight and not a heavenly Jerusalem suffused with supernatural radiance such as Fra Angelico painted. They are Flemings and they stick to the earth.”
Contemporary with Memling is Hugo Van der Goes (1430–1482), one of the last important figures in the Van Eyck School, more celebrated in his day than in ours, but powerful and austere, and painter of an altar-piece in 1476 for Tommaso Portinari, which was placed in the Church of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and was greatly admired by Ghirlandaio and Piero di Cosimo. With Gerard David (1450–1523), a follower of Memling and Massys, we leave the Flemish Primitives for a world of newer ideas.
Quentin Massys (1460–1530), creator of the Antwerp School, belongs to an intermediate epoch. He is herald of the Italianiate Flemings—Jan Mabuse, Bernard van Orley, Lambert Lombard, Jan Mostært, Bellegambe, Launcelot Blondeel, and others—all of whom, dazzled by the Renaissance, tried to combine their Flemish coldness with Italian grace. Some of them lived to see the triumph of Rubens and the rise of another School.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), is the recognized head of the Flemish School of Painting. His power was felt throughout Europe and he had more influence on taste in the Seventeenth Century than any other artist. Rubens painted more than two thousand pictures and made nearly five hundred drawings. In every style he proved himself a great master (see page 176).
Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) studied under Hendrik van Balen and then became assistant to and pupil of Rubens. After a long stay in Italy he returned to Antwerp and thence settled in England where he became Court-Painter to Charles I. In his short life he painted nearly a thousand pictures and acquired such proficiency in portraiture that he is ranked among the greatest in this line (see page 181).
The important Brueghel (or Breughel) family affords an example of heredity in painting and how in the course of generations there was transition from the old to the new art. Pieter (Peasant) Brueghel (1530–16—?) received lessons from Van Orley and Jerome Cœck, but his real master was the long dead Jerome Bosch, whose fantastic works fascinated him. Brueghel went to Italy and was delighted with the Alpine scenery; but, on his return he tried to preserve the Flemish ideas that were fast dying under the Italian cult. He persisted in portraying the familiar scenes of his boyhood and familiar humorous situations. Therefore, he received the sobriquets of “Peasant Brueghel” and “Droll Brueghel.” His two sons were equally famous. Jan or “Velvet Brueghel” (1568–1625), so-called from his fondness for wearing velvet, was famous for his flowers; and he frequently painted garlands in the pictures of Rubens. Pieter Brueghel (1574–1637), so loved painting infernal scenes that he was nicknamed “Hell-fire Brueghel.” Their sons continued their names and professions until the close of the Seventeenth Century.
Pieter Pourbus (1510–1584) and his son Frans (1540–1580) are among the best portrait-painters of the Sixteenth Century.
Frans Snyders (1579–1657) studied under Peter Brueghel and Hendrik van Balen, became the friend and associate of Rubens, and a brilliant and unsurpassed painter of fruits and animals.
Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), born in Antwerp, son of a cloth merchant, depicted scenes from domestic life and popular festivities. He was astonishingly able to render mirth and jollity. Jordaens is distinguished for his unrestrained and boisterous humor and he often repeated his somewhat crazy home-concert, “As the old ones sing, so will the young ones twitter.” Jordaens sometimes collaborated with Frans Snyders, Jan Fyt, Adriaen van Utrecht, and others. Jordaens was entirely Flemish, absolutely unaffected by the foreign influences that charmed Rubens and Van Dyck.
David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) is the greatest genre painter of the southern Netherlands. Teniers is one of those Flemish painters who were sought after in Holland during their lifetime. This may have arisen from the fact that he was closely allied with the Dutch School and with Brouwer who lived and worked in Antwerp. Teniers was an indefatigable painter and left more than eight hundred pictures,—inn-interiors, kermesses, hawking-parties, drinkers, bagpipe-players and other musicians, “conversations,” bowling-games, kitchens, Temptations of St. Anthony, and monkey-scenes. Sir Joshua Reynolds admired him and said: “The works of David Teniers, jun., are worthy of the closest attention of a painter who desires to excel in the mechanical knowledge of his art. His manner of touching, or what we call handling, has perhaps never been equalled: there is in his pictures that exact mixture of softness and sharpness which is difficult to execute.”
One of the best artists of the second period of the Antwerp School is Gonzales Coques (1614–1684), a painter of interiors of elegance, wealth, gaiety, and happy serenity, and also portraits. His distinction he borrows from Van Dyck and his color is inspired by Rubens. However, in the dimensions of his pictures and their minuteness of detail and finish, Coques is reminiscent of the Dutch School,—particularly Terborch and Metsu.
In the Eighteenth Century there is little painting to claim attention. Charles Blanc has put the matter most succinctly:
“For the Flemish School the Eighteenth Century is a long entr’acte during which the stage, so nobly occupied of old, is sad and deserted. Here and there an artist appears to remind us what Flanders was in color and decoration for two centuries. France was triumphing in spirit and grace; Italy, though decadent, was still ingenious and smiling; England at last was producing original masters; but Flanders was asleep.”
Portrait of a Lady
| Roger van der Weyden | Collection of the |
| (1400?–1464). | Hon. Andrew W. Mellon. |
This very striking portrait, an oil painting on panel (14⅜ × 10⅝), came from the Collection of the Duke of Anhalt, Ducal Castle of Dessau, and was previously in the Gothic Palace, Wörlitz, Germany.
The subject is a Flemish lady of high birth. She is not beautiful, but she has an air of great distinction. Her half-figure is turned three-quarters to the left and dressed in a dark robe with a turned-over collar, opening at the throat, where a transparent piece of soft, white muslin is arranged into a V-shape, and over this hangs a fine gold chain. A crimson girdle fastened with a gold clasp encircles her waist. The hair is brushed back from the forehead, or rather the forehead is rendered bald by the fashionable style of plucking out the hair, and covered by a close-fitting cap, composed of interlaced bands edged with a black ribbon, holding in place a thin veil; and over this a transparent white “wimple” is pinned to the cap, passing over the forehead and fastened at the back where it spreads in a wing on either shoulder. The right hand is placed over the left, presumably resting on a parapet, and a simple gold ring is on a finger of each hand.
Dr. Max Friedländer writes in Meisterwerke der Niederländischen Malerei des XV u. XVI Jahrhunderts auf der Ausstellung zu Brügge (1902):
“This simple, proud, and very well preserved portrait, which has up to the present time not received a great deal of attention, in my estimation appears to be characteristic of Roger van der Weyden, in the severe and somewhat Moorish outline of the face, in the economic modelling of the shadows, and in the drawing of the lean hands. Similar women’s portraits are in the National Gallery, London, and in Adolphe de Rothschild’s Collection (from the Nieuwenhuij’s Sale).
Roger van der Weyden, or Rogier de la Pasture, the son of Henri de la Pasture, was born in 1400 in Tournai, where the family had been settled since 1260. His father was a sculptor and gave Roger his first training. Next he was apprenticed to the Maître de Flêmalle (Robert Campin) and later went to Brussels to live. Here he quickly gained a great reputation, for in 1436 he was appointed painter to the city of Brussels. While busy on his great Last Judgment, commissioned by Nicholas Rolin for the Hospital at Beaune (a polyptych, which has been classed with the Van Eyck Adoration of the Lamb), Roger went on a long trip to Italy. Visiting Rome, he greatly admired the frescoes begun by Gentile da Fabriano in St. John Lateran. He also went to Florence, Ferrara, and, it is supposed, Venice. Roger painted a good deal in Italy and even had orders. Among other things he painted a Madonna and Child for Cosimo de’ Medici.
Roger returned home, it is thought, by way of Cologne. While on this trip, Roger was commissioned by Leonello d’Este to paint a picture.
Roger van der Weyden left as much in Italy as he brought home. His influence is seen in many of the contemporary Italians. In like manner, the influence of the Italians appears in the pictures that Roger van der Weyden painted on his return. German artists, too, fell under the spell of Roger van der Weyden, particularly Martin Schöngauer, the greatest German painter of the Fifteenth Century.
Roger van der Weyden was extremely versatile: he produced paintings in oil and painted miniatures, designed cartoons for tapestry-weavers, and made wood-engravings.
Fierens-Gevaert, the greatest authority on Flemish Primitives, says of Roger van der Weyden:
“His figures, among which males predominate, both in number and interest, do not all possess the impassibility sometimes attributed to them. Their beauty, or their moral significance, is merely restrained, just like the artist’s own emotions. Both need to be discovered. As for the expression of the color, the novel truth of the light, the profound feeling of the landscape—these are the incontestable merits in the Louvain painter. They explain his profound influence upon Memling, Gerard David, Quentin Massys, the Master of the Death of Mary, his prestige with the Sixteenth Century Renaissants, and the growing admiration of modern criticism for his genius.”
Roger van der Weyden died in Brussels, June 16, 1464, leaving many pupils and followers, the most noteworthy of whom was Hans Memling.
Portrait of a Carthusian Monk as a Saint
| Petrus Christus | Collection of |
| (1410?–1473). | Mr. Jules S. Bache. |
This interesting panel (8½ × 11⅝ inches) came to America by way of Spain, having been in the Collections of Don Ramon de Oms, Majorca, and the Marquis de Dos Aguas, Valencia.
The picture is signed and dated 1446 at the base of the portrait, below a ledge, on which an insect is slowly walking. The identity of the subject and the reason for the presence of the fly, or grasshopper (or whatever it is), are equally unknown. However, we have here a marvellous human document, which grows more amazing the longer it is studied. The portrait preserves the personality and features of a strong, kindly, and interesting man, who must have been beloved and honored, or he would not have been represented with a golden ring around his head, proclaiming him a saint.
And the painter has done more than this: he has thrown such atmosphere around the man that the interesting life in the old abbeys seems to rise before us. We see the picturesque buildings set in emerald swards and shaded by leafy trees, and surrounded by cloisters where the monks take exercise, or read in some traceried recess; and we peer into the halls where the artistic members of the community are writing, composing music, copying, or painting and illuminating beautiful miniatures in manuscripts, destined—although undreamed of by these painters and gold-leaf workers—to bring thousands of dollars at auction-sales five hundred years in the future and to be prized as treasures in a then undiscovered country across the Atlantic Ocean, whose waters were thought by those very monks to break upon the shores of Far Cathay!
Our Carthusian Monk, in his white cassock, carries us into the Chapel, where we see him and others of his Order in prayer at midnight, at early dawn, or at the vesper hour; and again with him we stroll to the near-by river in the golden sunlight of the afternoon and sit under the soft willows, dangling a line from a long fishing-pole until we have a sufficient catch for supper. On our return to the abbey we notice how heartily our Carthusian Monk welcomes a group of arriving travellers—for the abbeys were the hostelries in the Middle Ages—and we join them at supper in the refectory. Doubtless, too, our Carthusian gives us a petit verre of golden Chartreuse of his own making.
While the rules in the ancient abbeys were rigid and inflexible and religion, of course, the chief business, it was in these secluded places that art and learning were preserved and fostered. The world to-day is apt to forget what civilization owes to the Mediæval Abbey, and Petrus Christus has brought this Carthusian Monk to tell us something of what that is.
Petrus Christus was born at Baerle, on the southern border of Holland, in 1410 (it is thought). In 1444 he became a free citizen of Bruges and, as he was a follower and probably a pupil of Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, he is classed as belonging to the School of Bruges. Petrus Christus painted religious pictures and portraits and is regarded as one of the direct ancestors of genre painting. He died in 1473. Of late years his pictures have come into special prominence.
Madonna and Child With Angels
| Hans Memling | Collection of the |
| (1430–5–1494). | Hon. Andrew W. Mellon. |
This painting, an oil on panel (23 × 19 inches), came from the Collection of the Duke of Anhalt, Gothic Palace, Wörlitz, near Dessau, Germany.
The Virgin in a blue robe and red mantle is seated on a canopied throne, behind which is an embroidered hanging. Her eyes are looking downward upon a missal which she holds in her left hand. On her right knee, and supported by her right arm, is seated the Holy Child, who reaches out for an apple, offered to Him by a kneeling Angel. This Angel holds in his left hand a viol and bow. At the right, another kneeling Angel is playing a harp. The scene is framed in a Gothic arch, flanked on either side by a circular column, each column supporting a single male figure in a sculptured niche: on the right, St. Simon the Apostle is holding a saw, and on the left, the Prophet David is holding a harp. On each spandrel of the arch a cherub is holding a globe. Beyond this again, on either side of the throne, we see a landscape with a castle on the left and a church and river on the right. In the foreground there is a tessellated floor covered with an Oriental rug.
This idea of angels playing instruments21 Memling may have learned from Italy.
Hans Memling (or Memlinc), was born in 1430 or 1435, supposedly in Memelynck (whence his name) near Alkmaar in Holland. Tradition says that his family removed to the diocese of Mainz when he was fifteen. Memling seems to have painted in Cologne before he went to Bruges about 1465, where it is thought he was a pupil of Roger van der Weyden. It is certain that he was a master painter in Bruges in 1467. In 1479 he painted his masterpiece, The Marriage of St. Catherine, ordered by Jan Floreins for the St. John’s Hospital, Bruges, and also a smaller triptych, The Adoration of the Magi, for the same building. Another great work was the Shrine of St. Ursula, ordered by the Hospital in 1480 to enclose some relics of St. Ursula brought from the Holy Land,—a miniature Gothic chapel adorned with finials, statuettes, and medallions representing episodes in the life of St. Ursula. Memling died in 1494 in Bruges, which contains to-day a great number of his works.
Memling, in common with the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden was fond of enamelling his grassy swards, where the people sit or walk, with beautifully painted flowers; such as the daisy, the anemone, and the iris. Hans Memling is the most attractive of all the painters of the Netherlandish School, the most human, the most poetic, most graceful and the tenderest, merging, as did Fra Angelico (1387–1455), his contemporary, from Mediæval to Renaissance. Indeed Hans Memling is often called the “Flemish Fra Angelico.”
Portrait of a Young Gentleman
| Hans Memling | Collection of |
| (1430–1494). | Mrs. John N. Willys. |
Here we have the portrait of a young gentleman nearly full face, and clad in a black doublet which is open at the neck showing a white linen shirt with a narrow black circular band around the top. On his head is a circular black felt cap with narrow brim. The dense masses of his brownish red hair fall over his shoulders and completely cover his forehead to the top of his eyebrows. He has blue eyes and an intensely thoughtful and serious expression, and he holds in his left hand a scroll of paper, which might seem to indicate that he is a poet. The background consists of a woody landscape, and on the left is a river with two swans.
Dr. Max J. Friedländer, of Berlin, after examining the picture wrote to the present owner: “I was greatly interested in the Memling portrait from the Taylor Collection which I saw at your place. It is positively a characteristic work of the hand of the Master.”
This picture painted on panel (13½ × 9 inches) came from the John Edward Taylor Collection, London, in 1912.
Louis XIII King of France
| Peter Paul Rubens | Collection of |
| (1577–1640). | Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart. |
This interesting oil painting on canvas (46½ × 38 inches) came from the Collection of the Emperor of Germany, Palace of Charlottenburg near Berlin, and was originally in the Collection of the Archduke Leopold William of Austria at the Ducal Palace, Brussels. It was painted between 1622 and 1625, and is supposed to be a companion to the portrait of Anne of Austria (now in the Prado).
Louis XIII is represented about the age of twenty-five, life-size, and three-quarter length, looking at the observer from a background of sky, portico, and red drapery. He has a slight moustache and his hair is curled and falls down to the fine lace ruff around his neck. He is dressed in a polished steel suit of armor and rests his left hand, wearing a gauntlet, on a table covered by a cloth. A marshal’s bâton is in his right hand. The Cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit hangs from a ribbon at his right side and on his left hangs a sword from a belt. Over his shoulder is thrown a bright blue velvet and ermine mantle embroidered with fleur-de-lys and on the table is seen his helmet surmounted by rich plumes of ostrich feathers.
Louis XIII, son of Henri IV and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici, was born in 1601 and became king at the age of nine, on his father’s assassination in 1610. Marie de’ Medici, then becoming Regent, determined to bring France into close relation with the House of Austria and Spain, and, consequently, brought about the marriage of her son in 1615 with Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish King, Philip III.
Louis does not seem to have inherited any of the talents of the Medici family, nor any of the dashing charm of his father, the gallant “King Henry of Navarre.” He acquiesced for a time in his mother’s government and in the rule of her favorites, among whom the Marshall d’Ancre was notable; but in 1617 he had the latter assassinated with the help of Charles d’Albert, Sieur de Luynes. This caused a breach between him and his mother and their relations continued hostile until death.
In 1624 Cardinal Richelieu, who had been Marie de’ Medici’s chief adviser, entered into the King’s council, and, thereafter, Richelieu directed the policy of France and controlled Louis XIII. Many conflicts resulted between the Protestants and the nobles of France; and Louis was made the enemy of his mother, Gaston d’Orléans (his brother) and, frequently, of his wife, Anne of Austria. On one occasion the Queen Mother and Gaston d’Orléans gained influence over Louis and he was about to dismiss Richelieu; but the Cardinal regained his power and immediately punished his enemies. The Queen Mother was forced to flee to Brussels and Gaston d’Orléans to Lorraine. Towards the end of his reign Louis is quoted as having said to Richelieu: “We have lived together too long to be separated.”
Cardinal Richelieu died in December, 1642, and Louis died a few months later, in May, 1643.
Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, in 1577, and received his first education in the Jesuit College in Antwerp, and, for a few years, thereafter, was page to a noble lady. At the age of thirteen he began to study painting under Tobias Verhaagt, whom he left to study under Adam van Noort. Next he worked under Otto van Veen. In 1600 he went to Italy, entering the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, with whom he remained for eight years, interrupted by missions to various courts. In 1603 he visited Madrid and went to Venice, Rome, and Genoa. In 1609, on the death of the Duke of Mantua, Rubens returned to Antwerp and became Court-Painter to Albert and Isabella, Regents of the Netherlands. In that year also Rubens married Isabella Brandt. His studio at Antwerp now became famous and attracted students from every town in Europe.
He had barely established himself when he wrote to a friend in 1611: “On every side I am overwhelmed with solicitations. Without the least exaggeration, I may assure you that I have already had to refuse more than a hundred pupils.”
In 1621 Rubens was called by Marie de’ Medici to Paris to decorate the gallery in the Palace of the Luxembourg. At this period the style Rubens, which he introduced on his return from Italy and which was inspired by the late Italian Renaissance, was all the rage.
In 1622 he published a book on the Palaces of Genoa; and from the preface we learn that he was perfectly delighted to see the “old style known as barbarous, or Gothic, go out of fashion, to the great honor of the country, and disappear from Flanders, giving place to symmetrical buildings designed by men of better taste and conforming to the rules of the Greek and Roman antique.”
Rubens was a favorite with several kings and when he was neither painting nor teaching, he was visiting some foreign court on an embassy. On one of these visits to London in 1629–30 he was knighted by Charles I.
In 1630 he married again (Isabella Brandt having died in 1626), uniting himself to his first wife’s niece, Helena Fourment, who was but sixteen. Rubens now built a palatial house in Antwerp, where, as well as in his Château de Steen in the vicinity, he lived a happy, industrious, and splendid life, having everything the world could give in the way of honors and joys. Rubens’s influence upon the artists of his own time was very great and he dominated the entire art taste of Europe during the first three quarters of the Seventeenth Century.
Religious subjects, mythological subjects, landscapes, hunting scenes, portraits, and still-life,—everything came easily to his brush. Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote a fine analysis of Rubens, in which he says: “The striking brilliancy of his colors, and their lively opposition to each other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, the animated pencil with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken and keep alive the attention of the spectator; awaken in him, in some measure, correspondent sensations, and make him feel a degree of that enthusiasm with which the painter was carried away. To this we may add the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work, so that the whole seems to be conducted and grow out of one mind: everything is of a piece and fits its place.
“Besides the excellency of Rubens in these general powers, he possessed the true art of imitating. He saw the objects of nature with a painter’s eye; he saw at once the predominant feature by which every object is known and distinguished; and as soon as seen, it was executed with a facility that is astonishing. Rubens was, perhaps, the greatest master in the mechanical part of the art, the best workman with his tools, that ever exercised a pencil.
“This power which Rubens possessed in the highest degree enabled him to represent whatever he undertook better than any other painter. His animals, particularly lions and horses, are so admirable that it may be said they were never properly represented but by him. His portraits rank with the best works of the painters who have made that branch of art the sole business of their lives; and of those he has left a great variety of specimens. The same may be said of his landscapes.
“The difference of the manner of Rubens from that of any other painter before him is in nothing more distinguishable than in his coloring, which is totally different from that of Titian, Correggio, or any of the great colorists. The effect of his pictures may be not improperly compared to clusters of flowers; all his colors appear as clear and as beautiful; at the same time he has avoided that tawdry effect which one would expect such gay colors to produce; in this respect resembling Barocci more than any other painter. What was said of an ancient painter may be applied to those two artists, that their figures look as if they fed upon roses.”
Rinaldo and Armida
| Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Collection of |
| (1599–1641). | Mr. Jacob Epstein. |
This picture, oils on canvas (90 × 96 inches), came from the Collection of the Duke of Newcastle, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, to its present home in Baltimore.
Rinaldo is in shining, silver-blue armor with a flowing mantle of golden yellow, which is clasped at the shoulder. Armida wears a blue robe and a red mantle. The sky is blue with white clouds and there is a tree in the background and an enchanted lake at the right.
The influence of Van Dyck’s master, Rubens, is very apparent in this gorgeous picture, where all the delights of the Garden of Armida are set forth—that magic garden that Tasso described in his Jerusalem Delivered, to which many a Crusader was lured.
Another Rinaldo and Armida by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.
Armida was a beautiful sorceress; and it was difficult to resist her enchantment. Two messengers were sent from the Christian Army with a talisman to effect Rinaldo’s escape. Armida followed Rinaldo and, not being able to regain her power over him, rushed into the combat and was killed. Rinaldo came of the noble Este family and ran away at the age of fifteen to join the Crusaders. He was enrolled in the “Adventurers Squadron” and is often called the “Achilles of the Christian Army.”
Anthony, or Antoon, van Dyck, was born at Antwerp in 1599, son of a silk-merchant. At the age of ten he became the pupil of Henrik van Balen and entered Rubens’s studio as assistant in 1618, when only seventeen. He soon achieved a reputation for his portraits and visited England. In 1621, by Rubens’s advice, he went to Italy, having already acquired a reputation. After a five years’ stay, much of which time was spent in Genoa, Van Dyck returned home and painted his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion for the Church of St. Michael in Ghent, which established his reputation. In 1630 he again visited England; but, not meeting with the reception he had anticipated, he returned to Antwerp. However, in 1632, Charles I, who had seen a portrait of his Chapelmaster by Van Dyck, sent for him to come to England. On this occasion the painter was warmly welcomed, lodged by the King at Blackfriars, and, in the following year was knighted and given a pension for life. Van Dyck was the second painter to have an English Knighthood. Thenceforward Van Dyck lived very grandly, having a town house and also a country house at Eltham. He was always magnificently dressed, had numerous coaches and horses, and kept so good a table that few princes were better served. Van Dyck died in London in 1641, at the age of forty-two, having left a prodigious amount of work and a fortune of £20,000 sterling, notwithstanding his expensive manner of living. He was buried in Old St. Paul’s, near the tomb of John of Gaunt; but his remains, of course, perished in the Great Fire of 1666.
In the short span of his life—forty-two years—he painted nearly a thousand pictures. Van Dyck has three styles. The first is his Italian period; the second, his Flemish period, dating from his return from Italy in 1626 to his departure for England in 1631; and the third, his English period, from 1631 to 1641. The latter period is the greatest and the most distinguished for grace, elegance, and aristocratic quality.
“More noble than Rubens in his choice of form,” writes Charles Blanc, “Van Dyck had fewer faults than his master, but perhaps also less grandeur. His color was as charming without being so splendid. His design was learned, but without pedantry; and his contours were always governed by the sentiment of grace, or fire of genius. Very nearly the equal of Titian in portraiture, Van Dyck has sometimes risen to a great height in his historical compositions, in which the beauty of the expression is often as admirable as the excellence of the touch.”
Dædalus and Icarus
| Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Collection of |
| (1599–1641). | Mr. Frank P. Wood. |
A treasure of art, long in England in the famous Collection of the late Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Northumberland, is Van Dyck’s poetic version of the ancient Greek myth regarding man’s attempt at flight. Van Dyck was so fond of this subject that he painted it more than once.
This work is an oil painting on canvas (46 × 35 inches).
The figures are nearly life-size and very finely modelled. Icarus is nude save for a red drapery caught around the waist by a narrow band of bluish green,—a rather strange aviator’s suit to our way of thinking to-day! The position of his right hand would seem to tell us that Icarus is about to speak to his father, who, standing behind him, has apparently just fastened on his son’s wings and who appears to be giving him that sage advice about flying too near the sun. The flashing eyes and knitted brow of young Icarus indicate that this advice is not relished.
Max Rooses has noted that Icarus is not unlike the Angels that Van Dyck was fond of painting; calls attention to his beautiful, waving, golden hair; and finds a strong likeness between Icarus and the artist himself in his youth. One of the wings shows a white interior and the other, in the shadow, a bluish green exterior.
Dædalus was a mythical personage under whom the Greek writers personified the earliest development of human flight and also the arts of sculpture and architecture. Some traditions represent Dædalus as of the royal race of the Erechthidæ and others make him a Cretan. Dædalus devoted himself to sculpture and taught his sister’s son, Talus, who soon surpassed him. Consequently, in envy Dædalus killed this young rival. Condemned to death in Athens for this murder, Dædalus fled to Crete, where his fame won him the friendship of King Minos. When Queen Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Dædalus constructed the Labyrinth at Cnossus in which the Minotaur was kept; and for doing this King Minos imprisoned him. However, Pasiphae released him. This was of not much advantage, however, because King Minos had seized all the ships on the coast of Crete. “Necessity is the mother of invention:” Dædalus had to get away. The question was “how?”. The result was that Dædalus made wings for himself and for his son, Icarus, and fastened them on the shoulders with wax, cautioning the youth not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus would not pay attention to this advice and, flying too high, the wax melted and he dropped down and was drowned in that part of the Ægean Sea, which is now called after him the Icarian Sea.
Dædalus, however, flew safely over the Ægean and reached Sicily, where he was protected by Cocalus, King of that Island. When King Minos heard where Dædalus had taken refuge he sailed with a great fleet to Sicily; but was murdered there by Cocalus. According to some accounts, Dædalus alighted on his flight from Crete at Cumæ in Italy, where he erected a temple to Apollo in which he offered the wings with which he had flown. Like Lindberg, his descendant, he placed his “We” in a museum!
Many works of art were attributed to Dædalus in Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Also the Greeks gave the name of Dædala to the ancient wooden statues of the gods ornamented with gilding, bright colors, and real drapery.
It is appropriate to add here a sonnet by an old French poet, Philippe Desportes (1545–1606) entitled “Icare”:
ICARE
Icare est chut ici, le jeune audacieux,
Qui pour voler au ciel eut assez de courage:
Ici tomba son corps dégarni de plumage,
Laissant tous braves cœurs de sa chute envieux.
O bienheureux travail d’un esprit glorieux,
Qui tire un grand gain d’un si petit dommage!
O bienheureux malheur plein de tant d’avantage,
Qu’il rende le vaincu des ans victorieux!
Un chemin si nouveau n’étonna sa jeunesse,
Le pouvoir lui faillit, mais non le hardiesse;
Il eut pour le brûler des astres le plus beau;
Il mourut poursuivant une haute aventure;
Le ciel fut son désir, la mer sa sépulture;
Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus riche tombeau?
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick
| Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Collection of |
| (1599–1641). | Mr. Jules S. Bache. |
In silver doublet with slashed sleeves embroidered with flowers, crimson knee-breeches edged with gold braid, pink silk stockings and white shoes with lace rosettes (or “shoe roses,” as they were called in those days), a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder and held by his gloved hand, white lawn collar and cuffs edged with handsome lace, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, stands before us, a picture of elegance, manly beauty, and aristocratic hauteur. He is standing full front with his head turned three-quarters to the left, in which direction he is also looking, and he is holding his black felt hat in his right hand. His armor and bâton of command are lying on the ground by his side. The embroidered curtain in the background does not prevent us from seeing a naval engagement on his right.
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, came of very distinguished ancestry on the maternal line, for his mother was Penelope Devereux, the sister of Essex, whose mother, Lettice Knollys, had been Maid of Honor to Queen Elizabeth (and who captivated the Earl of Leicester), and whose father, Walter Devereux, was first Earl of Essex (died 1576). Penelope’s father had wished her to marry Sir Philip Sidney; but the Earl of Huntingdon, Penelope’s guardian, ruled otherwise and forced her to marry Lord Rich, “a man of independent fortune and a known estate but otherwise of an uncourtly disposition, unsociable, austere, and of no agreeable conversation to her.”
Lady Rich, the most beautiful woman in all London, particularly famous for her sparkling black eyes, plunged wildly into society and was the most admired and courted woman of the Court. She played, too, a leading part in the rebellion of her distinguished brother, Essex. Lady Rich lives in literature as Sidney’s Stella. The romance between these lovers, “Astrophel and Stella,” never cooled. When Sidney learned of Penelope’s marriage to “the rich Lord Rich,” he played with her new name as follows:
“Towards Aurora’s court a nymph doth dwell,
Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see;
Beauties so far from reach of words that we
Abase her praise saying she doth excel:
Rich in those gifts which give the eternal crown;
Who, though most rich in these and every part
Which makes the patents of true worldly bliss,
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.”
Lord Rich was created Earl of Warwick in 1618; but he had been divorced from Lady Rich in 1605, thirteen years before he succeeded to this title. On obtaining her divorce Lady Rich then married Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire and eighth Baron Mountjoy, who, in defense of his marriage, wrote the following:
“A lady of great birth and virtue being in the power of her friends, was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after; between whom, from the first day, there ensued continued discord, although the same fears that forced her to marry constrained her to live with him. Instead of a comforter, he did study in all things to torment her; and by fear and fraud, did practice to deceive her of her dowry.”
Sidney was always writing of Stella’s marvellous black eyes and their shining rays:
“When nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes,
In color black, why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beauty black, like painter wise,
Fame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Least, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas black seems Beauty’s contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus—she, minding Love should be
Placed even there, gave his this mourning weed
To honor all their deaths who for her bleed.”
There is every reason, therefore, why the subject of this picture should be so handsome, so distinguished, and so fascinating.
Robert Rich was born in 1587 and was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1603 and in that year was created a Knight of the Bath. He was quite old enough to have remembered the exciting days of the Essex conspiracy, the part his mother took in this, her imprisonment and release, and his uncle’s execution in 1601. At the age of twenty-three he was elected to Parliament and was again elected in 1614. In 1619 he succeeded to the title.
Robert Rich was one of the original members of the Company for the Plantation of the Bermudas in 1614 and was granted a seat on the Council of the New England Company in 1620, which two great enterprises connect this handsome lord with our own country. Also in 1624 Robert Rich was made a member of the Council of the Virginia Government. Yet this was not all. Warwick’s Colonial interests brought him into close relation with the leading men of the Puritan Party and link his name with the early history of the New England Colonies. He was closely associated with the origin of Connecticut, for in 1632 he granted to Lord Say, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, and others what is known as “the old patent of Connecticut,” under which the town of Saybrook (named for Lord Say and Lord Brooke) was founded.
In English politics Warwick opposed the policy of Charles I and, consequently, after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, he was arrested by the King’s order.
As temporal head of the Puritans and opposed to the party in the Established Church led by Archbishop Laud, Warwick concurred in the prosecution of Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. In 1643 Warwick was appointed Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, serving Parliament in opposition to Charles I, and he bore the title of Governor-in-Chief of all the islands and other plantations subject to the English Crown, on which authority he became associated with the founding of the Colony of Rhode Island. After the monarchy and the House of Lords had both been swept away, the Earl of Warwick gave his support and encouragement to Oliver Cromwell. The marriage of Cromwell’s daughter to Warwick’s grandson proves the strength of the friendship. The Earl of Warwick died on April 19, 1658, and was buried at Felsted, Essex. He had been three times married.
This picture, in oils on canvas (83 × 49 inches), belonged in the Collection of the Marquess of Breadalbane, Taymouth Castle, Scotland, and to the Collection of the Hon. Mrs. Robert Baillie-Hamilton, Langton, Duns, Scotland.
Queen Henrietta Maria With Jeffrey Hudson and a Monkey
| Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Collection of |
| (1599–1641). | Mr. William Randolph Hearst. |
This full-length portrait in oils on canvas (85¼ × 52 inches) was painted in 1633, the year that Van Dyck was knighted and when he had been about a year in the service of Charles I. Its pedigree is interesting. The painting was in the possession of the Newports, Earls Bradford of the first creation, and was left in 1762, on the death of the fifth Earl, to his sister, Diana, Countess of Mountrath. From the Countess of Mountrath it descended to her son, the last Earl of Mountrath, and from him to the first Earl of Dorchester, of Milton Abbey, where it remained until removed by the Earl of Portarlington to Emo Park, Queen’s County, Ireland. In 1881 Thomas George, first Earl of Northbrook, acquired it by exchange from the Earl of Portarlington; and from the latter it was inherited by Francis George, the second Earl of Northbrook, whence it came to the present owner.
The Queen of Charles I, proud and handsome, is very French and Italian in general style; for be it remembered that Henrietta Maria was the daughter of the gallant King Henry of Navarre and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici, and that she was, consequently, the sister of Louis XIII (see page 176).
The Queen has brown hair curled in “ringlets” and one “ringlet” falls on her shoulder. Her face is oval and delicate and her eyes are brown. She is standing at full length on a step with her head slightly turned to the left, dressed in a blue silk gown (of the shade we now call “Alice blue”), trimmed with narrow gold braid, and a large black felt hat with a white plume, lace collar and a kerchief over her shoulders with two pink bows in front. Beautifully painted frills of lace adorn the elbow sleeves. With her left hand she touches a stiff fold in her dress and with her right hand she caresses a little brown monkey perched on the shoulder of Jeffrey Hudson, the famous dwarf. The little dwarf is about thirteen years of age and is much under size. He has light hair and the slightly wizened face that usually goes with this kind of freak. Indeed our little Jeffrey looks not unlike the pictures of the famous “Gen. Tom Thumb” of Barnum days in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Jeffrey Hudson wears a suit of brick-dust red velvet, a lace collar, and long, brown boots.
In the background, to the left, there is a stone wall and upon it a flower-pot holding an orange tree, and farther away we note some trees and, still farther beyond, the sky. To the right of the fluted pillar on the right, there is a sort of ledge or shelf covered with a brilliant orange silk curtain on which rests a crown of gold studded with pearls, which informs us of the presence of Royalty.
Queen Henrietta Maria was born in 1609, the year before her father, Henri IV, King of France, was assassinated. In 1624, when she was about fifteen, the Prince of Wales offered marriage; and this was consented to by her brother, Louis XIII, on condition that the English Roman Catholics should be relieved from the enforcement of the penal laws. In June, 1625, Henrietta Maria was married by proxy and went to England, thus encumbered with political and religious pledges that were certain to bring unpopularity upon everybody concerned. The Prince of Wales had now become King of England and he soon found an excuse for breaking his promise to relieve the English Roman Catholics. This course of action offended the Queen deeply. The early years of Charles’s married life were very unhappy and the favorite, the dashing Buckingham, fanned the flames of the King’s discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham in 1628, the King and Queen became deeply attached to each other; and from that moment the bond of affection that united them was never loosened.
For a number of years Henrietta Maria’s chief interests lay with her young family. Her children were: Charles II (born 1630); Mary, Princess of Orange (born 1631); James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, (born 1633); Elizabeth (born 1636); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (born 1640); and Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orléans (born 1644). The Queen also delighted in the amusements of the gay and brilliant Court. With political matters she had nothing to do until 1637, when she opened a diplomatic communication with the See of Rome, to help her co-religionists. She appointed an agent to reside in Rome and Rome sent to her a Papal agent (a Scotchman named George Conn), who soon made many converts among the English nobility and gentry.
Protestant England took alarm and, therefore, the Queen became very unpopular. When the Scottish troubles broke out Queen Henrietta Maria raised money from her fellow Catholics to support the King’s army on the Borders in 1639; and in 1640, during the sitting of the Short Parliament, the Queen urged her husband to oppose himself to the House of Commons in defence of the Catholics. When the Long Parliament met, the Catholics were believed to be the authors and agents of every arbitrary scheme supposed to have entered into the plans of Strafford or Laud. During the Long Parliament Henrietta Maria urged the Pope to lend money to enable her to restore her husband’s authority and she threw herself heart and soul into the schemes for rescuing Strafford and coercing Parliament. The Army Plot, the schemes for using Scotland against England, and the attempt upon the five members—Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, Hoiles, and Strode—were the fruits of her political activity.
Next the Queen effected her passage to the Continent and in February, 1643, she returned and, landing at Burlington Quay, placed herself at the head of a band of Loyalists and marched through England to join the King near Oxford. After little more than a residence there of a year, on the 3d of April, 1644, she parted from her husband to see his face no more; but as long as Charles I was alive she never ceased to encourage him to resistance. Henrietta Maria found refuge in France, for Richelieu was then dead and Anne of Austria proved compassionate, yet she had much to suffer in her exile. The execution of her husband was a terrible distress. There is a story with some truth that she married her equerry, Lord Jermyn, which may account for the estrangement of her children.
When Henrietta Maria returned to England after the Restoration, she found that she had no place in the new Court. Parliament gave her a grant of £30,000 a year in compensation for the loss of her dower-lands and her son, Charles II, added a similar sum as a pension from himself. In January, 1661, Henrietta returned to France to be present at the marriage of her daughter, Henrietta, to the Duc d’Orléans, but in July, 1662, she was back in England, taking up her residence at Somerset House. Three years later she returned to France and died at Colombes, near Paris, in 1666.
The other personage in this double portrait, Jeffrey Hudson, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father was a butcher, who kept and baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. Neither of his parents was undersized. When he was nine years old his father carried Jeffrey to Burleigh-on-the-Hill and offered him to the Duchess of Buckingham, who took him into her service. At that time he was scarcely eighteen inches in height and, if we may believe Fuller, “without any deformity, wholly proportioned.”
Shortly afterwards Charles I and Henrietta Maria passed through Rutland and the Duke of Buckingham gave a dinner in their honor. During one of the courses an enormous pie22 was served; and when it was cut, out jumped Jeffrey Hudson! The Queen was so delighted with the sprightly little dwarf that she appropriated him at once and he became a Court favorite.
Jeffrey had a number of adventures. On one occasion, when he was sent to France to procure a nurse for the Queen, the ship was captured on the return voyage by a Flemish pirate and Jeffrey, the nurse, and the Queen’s dancing-master were all taken to Dunkirk. Then Jeffrey also saw some military service. When the Prince of Orange besieged Breda in 1637, “Strenuous Jeffrey” was in the Prince’s camp in company with the Earl of Warwick (see page 187) and the Earl of Northampton, who were volunteers in the Dutch Service.
During the Civil Wars Jeffrey Hudson is said to have been a Captain of the Horse. It is certain that he followed the Queen, for he was with her in the flight to Pendennis Castle, in June, 1644, and he went with her to Paris. “He was,” says Fuller, “though a dwarf, no dastard”; and, accordingly, when insulted by Crofts at Paris in 1649, he shot him dead with a pistol in a duel. Crofts had rashly armed himself only with a squirt. In consequence of this, Jeffrey had to leave Paris, although Henrietta Maria saved him from imprisonment, which, however, he had frequently experienced. At sea Jeffrey was captured by a Turkish rover, carried to Barbary, and sold as a slave. His miseries, according to his own account, made him grow taller. Jeffrey managed to get back to England about 1658, at which time Heath addressed some lines to him in his Clarastella.
After the Restoration, Jeffrey Hudson lived quietly in the country for some time on a pension subscribed by the Duke of Buckingham and others; but, on coming up to London to push his fortunes at Court, he, being a Roman Catholic, was suspected of complicity in the Popish Plot (1679) and was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster.
In June, 1680, and April, 1681, “Captain Jeffrey Hudson” received respectively £50 and £20 from Charles II’s secret service fund. Jeffrey Hudson died in 1682.
Accounts of his height vary, but, according to his own statement (as made to Wright, the historian of Rutland), after reaching the age of seven, when he was eighteen inches high, he did not grow at all until he was thirty, when he shot up three feet, six or nine. Hudson’s waistcoat, breeches, and stockings are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.