The British Monarchy Miscellany
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Italian
14th Century: Duccio, Bernardo Daddi.
15th Century: Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico, Pietro Perugino, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini.
16th Century: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Pontormo,
Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Bassano, Parmigianino, Dosso
Dossi, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese.
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17th Century: Caravaggio, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Artemisia Gentileschi, Luca Giordano, Guercino, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini.
18th Century: Canaletto.
19th Century: Antonio Canova.
Flemish
15th Century: Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling.
16th Century: Quentin Matsys, Joos van Cleve, Peter Brueghel the Elder.
17th Century: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, David Teniers the Younger.
Dutch
17th Century: Daniel Mijtens, Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rjin, Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Albert Cuyp, William van der Velde the Younger, Meydert Hobbema.
German
16th Century: Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger.
18th Century: Johann Zoffanny.
19th Century: Franx Xavier Winterhalter.
French
16th Century: Francois Clouet.
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17th Century: Simon Vouet, Georges de la Tour, Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin.
18th Century: Louis-Francois Roubiliac, Jean-Etienne Liotard
19th Century: Claude Monet.
British
16th - 17th Century: Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller, Grinling Gibbons.
18th Century: William Kent, William Hogarth, Thomas Chippendale, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,
George Stubbs, William Beechey, Benjamin West.
19th Century: Thomas Lawrence, Edwin Landseer, William Powell Frith, John Singer Sargent.
20th Century: Walter Sickert, Augustus John, L.S. Lowry, Graham Sutherland, John Piper.
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Royal Patrons of the Arts
One of the functions of monarchy has always been to patronise art in all its forms and to gather great
collections for magnificent display at the royal court.
Following below is a list of the people who are generally considered to have been England’s and Britain’s greatest royal patrons of the arts, including a special mention to the greatest of them all, King George IV.
Richard II
(1367-1400)
Although he was a failure politically, Richard II presided over a great flowering of the arts during his reign. He rebuilt Westminster Hall and filled it with new sculptures, commissioned illuminated manuscripts, and left us the earliest contemporary paintings we have of an English King. He was also patron to writers Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, and his court was one of the most fashion-conscious in Europe.
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John, Duke of Bedford
(1389-1435)
John was a younger brother of King Henry V and regent of the English possessions in France in 1422-1434, during the Hundred Years War. He commissioned many lavish
illuminated manuscripts while in France, including the magnificent Bedford Hours, now in the British Library. He also assembled a great collection of gold plate and fine household items, one of which, the enamelled Royal Gold Cup, is considered a medieval treasure of the British Museum.
Henry VIII
(1491-1547)
Henry competed with other monarchs, especially King Francois I of France, in creating the most splendid Renaissance court in Europe. To that end he brought artists to England to be in his service including painter Hans Holbein, miniaturist Lucas Horenbout and sculptor Pietro Torrigiano. He also commissioned hundreds of expensive tapestries from Flanders to adorn his palaces.
He expanded the royal residences by appropriating
Hampton Court and Whitehall from Cardinal Wolsey, and he built St James Palace and Nonsuch Palace, all of which he embellished with the latest decorations.
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Elizabeth I
(1533-1603)
Despite being notoriously close-fisted when it came to doling out money, Elizabeth I encouraged the
development of selected arts during her reign. She
employed miniaturists Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, under whom the art of miniature painting reached new heights, and promoted the production of hundreds of images celebrating her eternal youth as Virgin Queen.
She also inspired writers like Edmund Spenser who wrote The Faerie Queen in her honour, and supported the development of theatre in London by famously
supporting William Shakespeare.
Anne of Denmark
(1574-1619)
James I’s Queen Consort was a patron of artists, writers and musicians. She employed the poet Ben Jonson to
produce masques at court, and the architect Inigo Jones to build the Queen’s House in Greenwich in the new
Italian classical style. She also built up a significant art collection, favouring Dutch and Italian artists, once saying to a minister that she took more pleasure in her pictures than in affairs of state.
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Charles I
(1600-1649)
Charles, the son of Anne of Denmark, inherited his
mother’s artistic interests and became one of the
greatest art collectors in the history of the monarchy. A skilled connoisseur, he bought works from all over
Europe—particularly favouring Titian—and brought to England the Raphael Cartoons to be woven into
tapestries at the Mortlake factories. In 1627 he
purchased the great Gonzaga art collection from Italy containing masterpieces by Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Mantegna which, together with his other purchases,
created the greatest art collection in Western Europe (see Lost Royal Treasures for the fate of Charles I’s collection). At his own court, he hired Anthony Van Dyck as court painter, and commissioned works by Rubens as well as sculptures by Bernini and Hubert le Sueur.
Charles II
(1630-1685)
Charles was famously more interested in science than in the arts—he founded the Royal Society and the Royal Observatory—however his artistic contributions are still noteworthy. Besides recovering much of his father’s art collection, which had been dispersed by the Republican Commonwealth, he collected Old Masters paintings and drawings including a large collection of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks. He commissioned Peter Lely to paint 580
the ladies of his court, he encouraged and patronised Christopher Wren’s work as an architect, and employed woodcarving virtuoso Grinling Gibbons to decorate his new Baroque apartments at Windsor Castle.
Caroline of Ansbach
(1683-1737)
As Queen Consort to King George II Caroline liked to surround herself with writers and artists. She made important acquisitions for the Royal Collection in the form of paintings, miniatures, drawings and cameos. She was also a patron of architect William Kent and sculptor Michael Rysbrach.
Frederick Prince of Wales
(1707-1751)
Frederick, the son of Queen Caroline and father of
George III, was a lover of art who expanded the Royal Collection by acquiring Old Masters works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Hals and Poussin. He was also a patron of
painters and architects, including William Kent who built new residences for him as well as a sumptuous state barge. A skilled musician himself, he supported opera companies and commissioned musical works.
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George III
(1738-1820)
During his long reign George III did much to encourage British arts and craftsmanship. Besides commissioning works from Allan Ramsay, Benjamin West and Thomas
Gainsborough, he also founded the Royal Academy of
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br /> Arts and patronised makers of clocks and scientific instruments. He added many masterpieces to the Royal Collection by buying large Italian collections in bulk, and amassed a fabled library of thousands of books and maps which were later given to the British Museum by his son, George IV.
Britain’s Greatest Royal Patron: George IV
(1762-1830)
George IV was arguably Britain’s greatest patron of the arts. His obsession with art collecting was legendary. He bought indiscriminately in vast scale, from silver and gold plate to jewels, paintings and sculptures, print
collections, armours and antique guns. After the French Revolution he ransacked the market for the former
belongings of the French Royal Family, creating in the process the greatest collection of Sevres porcelain and Louis XVI French furniture in the world. He was just as compulsive with paintings, of which he was a
connoisseur, especially acquiring works by Flemish and Dutch masters like Rubens and Rembrandt. At Carlton 582
House alone at one point in 1816, 136 paintings hung in the state rooms, 67 were in the private quarters, and 250
more were in storage. He supported contemporary
British artists like George Stubbs, Thomas Lawrence and William Beechey; he convinced the British government to buy the 38 paintings that became the nucleus of the National Gallery; and was instrumental in securing the Elgin Marbles for the British Museum. He also had a taste for refined jewels, and for his coronation in 1821 he commissioned the magnificent Jewelled Sword, and the State Diadem that has been worn by Queens ever since.
George’s taste however was at its grandest in
architecture. To him we owe one of the most fantastical-looking buildings in Britain, the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, while in London he created Regent Street and Regents Park, and rebuilt Buckingham Palace. At Windsor, George repaired the Castle to give it its present medieval appearance, and remodelled the interior to what it is today.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
(1819-1901, 1819-1861)
Victoria and Albert supported many types of British art together before Albert died in 1861. Their patronage included commissioning paintings and sculptures from Edwin Landseer, Franz Winterhalter and Francis
Chantrey; supporting the new art of photography; and founding new museums in South Kensington, London,
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with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851. They also championed Medieval and early Renaissance art by adding paintings to the Royal Collection and encouraging public museums to do likewise.
Queen Mary
(1867-1953)
Art and family history were Queen Mary’s great passions and she combined the two by exploring, re-organising and carefully cataloguing the entire Royal Collection. An indefatigable researcher, she re-acquired thousands of items that had once belonged to the Royal Family
including silver, jewellery, bibelots and furniture. Mary also made the collection available for study to scholars and was a supporter of several art museums, to which she often loaned Royal Collection items for exhibitions.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
(1900-2002)
Both as Queen and Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon patronised many contemporary British artists, buying and commissioning works from Augustus John, Graham
Sutherland, John Piper and Paul Nash among others. She also collected French impressionist art and assembled a splendid collection of Chelsea porcelain.
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Great Treasures
Owned by the Monarchy
Among the over one million items it holds, the Royal Collection counts important individual treasures and collections of world renown. The items below are
considered to be the most important and are listed in rough chronological order from their creation date.
The Leonardo Notebooks
The Royal Collection owns over 200 manuscript pages from Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, written between 1478-1518 and acquired by King Charles II between 1660-1685. Although not the largest collection of Leonardo notebook pages in the world, the so-called ‘Windsor Codex’ contains some of Leonardo’s finest art drawings and the largest collection of his anatomical studies.
Carefully kept in preservation storage, some the drawings are often shown to the public during special exhibitions at the royal palaces.
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The Raphael Cartoons
The great Renaissance master Raphael painted these
large cartoon paintings in 1515-16 to serve as models for tapestries to be hung in the Vatican. Depicting stories of St Peter and St Paul from the New Testament, they are considered some of his greatest works and are the largest commission he ever undertook. Of the original 10
cartoons seven have survived and are part of the Royal Collection. They were purchased by Charles I in 1623
when he was Prince of Wales and have remained in
Britain ever since. In 1699 William III installed them in a specially built gallery at Hampton Court Palace where however only copies exist today. Queen Victoria
permanently lent the original cartoons in 1865 to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London where they still hang today in a specially designed gallery.
Portrait Miniatures
Counting over 3,000 pieces, the Royal Collection’s
holdings of miniatures is one of the largest in the world, and includes some of the earliest miniatures ever made in Europe at the start of the 16th century. The collection covers over 300 years of development in the art, from the court of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria, and is particularly strong on royal portraits. Visual likenesses of several Tudor royals and courtiers are known only from miniatures held in the Royal Collection. Works are
regularly on show to the public at the royal palaces and in special exhibitions.
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The Abraham Tapestries
Commissioned by Henry VIII to celebrate the birth of his son Edward in 1537, these tapestries are only a small surviving part of Henry VIII’s immense tapestries
collection which at his death counted over 2,000 large pieces. Officially called The Story of Abraham Cycle, this tapestries set was made in the 1540s and consists of ten large pieces showing different episodes from the life of the Hebrew patriarch. They were woven in Flanders in gold thread and cost Henry VIII over 2,000 pounds, the equivalent of two battleships in contemporary money.
When the Royal Collection was auctioned off in the 1650s after the abolition of the monarchy the tapestries were valued to be the most expensive item in the collection and considered so important that Oliver Cromwell kept them from being sold. They can currently be seen at Hampton Court Palace in London.
Canaletto Paintings
The Canaletto holdings in the Royal Collection, consisting of 50 paintings and over 140 drawings, are considered to be the largest and finest group of works by the Venetian artist in existence. The bulk of the collection was bought by George III in 1762 from Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice who had been one of Canaletto’s
patrons. Most of the paintings record detailed views of 18th century Venice but also include views of London 587
painted while Canaletto was living in England in 1746-1755. Most of the paintings can be seen in the occupied and historic royal palaces, and in special exhibitions.
Sevres Porcelains
The collection of Sevres porcelains owned by the British Monarchy is largely acknowledged to be the finest in the world. Numbering hundreds of pieces, the collection was mostly assembled by George IV from the time he was
Prince of Wales in the 1780s until his death in 1830.
Many of the pieces were made for the French Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, and were bought by George after the French monarchy was abolished at the French Revolution in the 1790s. The collection includes complete, elaborate dinner services which are still used during state banquets.
Other pieces include vases, urns and table decorations which
normally adorn the state rooms of the royal
palaces.
Faberge Works
There are over 500 Faberge pieces in the Royal
Collection, representing the largest and most important private Faberge collection in the world, both in variety and quality. It includes four of the famous Russian Imperial eggs, but also small boxes, cigarette cases, crystal flowers, figurines, bibelots, and the largest set of miniature carved animals that Faberge ever created. The 588
collection was started in the late 19th century by Albert, Prince of Wales, and his wife Alexandra of Denmark, and was greatly expanded after they became King and Queen in 1901. Later monarchs and other members of the Royal Family continued to add pieces throughout the 20th
century, with the latest additions made by the present Prince of Wales. Many of the objects are regularly shown to the public during special exhibitions at the royal palaces.
Queen Mary’s Doll House
The most unique treasure in the Royal Collection, Queen Mary’s Doll House is claimed to be the largest and most beautiful doll house in the world. Built between 1921-1924, it was created to be a gift for Queen Mary from the British public, to thank the Royal Family for their support during the First World War. More than 1,500 artists and craftsmen made contributions to the project, with many famous firms, including McVities, HMV and Rolls Royce, fashioning special miniature items for the house. The house is built in 1:12 scale and measures 1.52 metres high by 2.59 metres wide. Everything is built in the highest quality and with the finest materials. It contains three floors, and a basement garage filled with replicas of contemporary royal cars. It has working electricity, working lifts, and hot and cold water running in the bathrooms. There are hand-painted portraits of Royal Family members throughout the house, and the cellar is 589