A great portion of the large sums spent by Buckingham in Spain was expended in forming that famous collection which fell, unhappily, into the hands of his son. It would appear that James I. somewhat curtailed Charles’s expenditure on this head; for we find, by an entry in the State Paper Office, that Buckingham lent the Prince twelve thousand pounds during their sojourn in Spain. Nevertheless, no specimen of Spanish art was ever conveyed to England by Charles.[[147]] A sketch was, indeed, begun of the Prince, by Velasquez, but it is doubtful if it were ever completed. Pachecho, the father-in-law of Velasquez, states that Charles was so delighted with this portrait in its unfinished state, that he presented the great painter with a hundred thousand crowns.[[148]] One may readily account for its never being completed, because Velasquez, when Charles and Buckingham left Madrid, could scarcely have finished the portraits and other pictures on which he was engaged by Philip IV.
In 1847, a picture belonging to Mr. Saare, of Reading, and supposed to have been a relic of the gallery of Whitehall, was exhibited in London as this lost portrait by Velasquez. It portrays Prince Charles in a more robust form, and with a greater breadth of countenance than any other known resemblance; and was stated to have been painted in 1623, and to have been mentioned in a privately printed catalogue of the gallery of the Earl of Fife, who died in 1809, in which it was stated that it had once belonged to the Duke of Buckingham. Unfortunately, the surname of the Duke of Buckingham was not specified; and since the title has been owned, so late as 1735, by the Sheffield family, the evidence was incomplete. A very curious controversy ensued, but facts remain much in the same state as before; and the authenticity of the portrait has been strongly disputed, if not denied, by Dr. Waagen, and others. It is singular that there was no work of Velasquez among the pictures left by Buckingham.
Whilst the great enlargement of ideas and improvement in taste, resulting from the journey into Spain, is acknowledged, it must be remembered that Charles and his favourite went, prepared in knowledge, and in an honourable emulation, to profit by all they might behold and hear. In painting, Perichief tells us, Charles “had so excellent a fancy, that he would supply the defect of art in the workman, and suddenly draw those lines, give those airs and lights, which experience and practice had taught the painters.” In every point he met the accomplished Philip IV. on equal grounds; in some he exceeded him. A good antiquary, a judge of medals, a capital mechanist--cognizant of the art of printing--there existed not a gentleman of the three kingdoms that could compete with him in universality of knowledge.[[149]] He was as ready for war as for peace; could put a watch together, yet comprehend a fortification; understood guns, and the art of ship-building; but the dearest occupation of his leisure was the collection of sculptures and paintings.
The Crown was already in possession of some good pictures, when Charles commenced his undertaking. Prince Henry had begun the work, and the nobility, perceiving the King’s love of art, imitated the Spanish nobles, and sent him presents of great value. But the great act of Charles’s life as a connoisseur, was the purchase of the collection of the Duke of Mantua, which was considered to be the richest in Europe.[[150]]
Philip IV. constantly employed his ambassadors and viceroys to buy up fine pictures for his gallery; and Charles and Buckingham likewise, on their return, adopted a similar plan on a smaller scale, by instructing Sir Henry Wotton and Balthazar Gerbier to negociate for them in works of art. It is obvious how much the royal collection at Whitehall must have been prized; since, upon its being sold during the Protectorate, the principal purchaser was Don Alonzo de Cardenas, the agent of the Spanish King, and his purchases required eighteen mules to carry them from the coast to Madrid, whence Lord Clarendon, ambassador of the exiled Charles II. was dismissed, that he might not see the treasures of his unfortunate master thus brought into a far and foreign country.[[151]]
The collection of the Duke of Mantua cost Charles eighty thousand pounds--Buckingham being the agent, and probably the instigator of this purchase. The family of Gonzaga had been, in 1627, a hundred years in forming this noble gallery. Little inferior to the Medici in their liberality to artists, they were the patrons of Andrew Mantegna, of Guido Romano, of Raphael, of Correggio, and of Titian, successively. The “Education of Cupid,” by Correggio, was among King Charles’s purchases, as well as the “Entombment,” now in the Louvre,and the “Twelve Cæsars” by Titian. Rubens purchased for him the Cartoons of Raphael, which had been sent by Leo X. to Flanders, to be worked in tapestry, and left there. Then Charles received various presents; that especially commonly styled the “Venus del Pardo,” or more properly “Jupiter and Antiope;” the figures being set off by one of the grandest landscapes by Titian, known. This gem was given by Charles to the Duke of Buckingham.[[152]] It is now in the Louvre, as is also the “Baptist,” by Leonardo da Vinci, a present originally from Louis XIII. to Charles.[[153]]
It was during the residence of Buckingham in Paris that he became acquainted with Rubens. Eventually he bought the whole of the collection of statues, paintings, and other valuable works of art, which that master had formed at a cost of about a thousand pounds, and which he sold to the Duke for ten thousand. But it was not often that Buckingham increased his stores so easily; so early as the year 1613, he had in his household Balthazar Gerbier d’Ouvilly, of Antwerp, a sort of amanuensis, or, as Sanderson styles him, a “common penman,” whose transcribing the decalogue for the Dutch Church was one of his first steps to preferment. Gerbier became a miniature painter, and in that ostensible capacity went into Spain with the Duke; he painted, amongst other portraits of the family, a fine oval miniature of his patron on horseback, which, in Walpole’s time, belonged to the Duchess of Northumberland; the figure, dressed in scarlet and gold, is finished with great care--and the horse, dark grey, with a white mane, is very animated; underneath the horse is a landscape with figures, and over the Duke’s head is suspended his motto, “Fidei curricula crux.” It was in allusion to the well-known talents of Gerbier that the Duchess of Buckingham wrote to the Duke, when in Spain, begging him, “if he had leisure to sit to Gerbier for his portrait, that she might have it well done in little.”
Gerbier seems at that time to have been a special favourite with the King and Queen, who supped once at his house--the entertainment, it is said, costing the painter a thousand pounds.[[154]] Gerbier, like Rubens, was employed in delicate diplomatic missions; he was also an architect and an author, and the founder of an Academy for foreign languages, and “for all noble sciences and exercises,” as he expressed it. As a diplomatist, Gerbier negociated in Flanders a private treaty with Spain:--as an architect, his fame rested, in the reign of Charles, chiefly on a large room built near the Water Gate, at York Stairs, in the Strand, which was commended by Charles I. almost as much as the Banqueting House. Encouraged by this encomium, Gerbier wrote a small work on magnificent buildings, proposing to level Fleet Street and Cheapside, and to erect a fine gate at Temple Bar; a plan of which was presented to Charles II., in whose reign Gerbier died. He was the rival, or believed himself to be so, of Inigo Jones. Hempstead-Marshal, the seat of Lord Craven, long since burned down, was Gerbier’s last effort: he died before it was completed, and was buried in the chancel of the church at that place.
His literary works seem to have been very singular compounds of falsehood, invective, and flattery. Horace Walpole believes him to have been the author of a tract printed by authority, in 1651, three years after the execution of Charles I., entitled “The Nonsuch Charles, his character,” and considers it one of the basest libels ever published. “The style, the folly, the wretched reasoning, are,” he observes, “consistent with Gerbier’s usual works; he must, at all events,” he decides, “have furnished materials.” Nevertheless, two years afterwards, Gerbier published a piece styled “Les Effets Pernicieux,” written in French, and to this he affixed his name; it was printed at the “Stag,” and composed apparently as a precautionary palliative to the other work, in case of the restoration of the Stuarts; and the notion seems to have succeeded, since Gerbier returned to England with Charles II., and the triumphal arches, erected on the Restoration, were designed by this singularly versatile man.[[155]] He had, however, the merit, as we have seen, of endeavouring to form an Academy, somewhat on the plan of the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street. Sir Francis Keynaston at that time resided in Covent Garden, and at his house the Academy was held. None but gentlemen were admitted. Arts were taught by professors, in lectures, Gerbier being one of the lecturers. The academy was afterwards removed to Whitefriars; then to Bethnal Green, whence he dedicated one of his lectures on Military Architecture to General Skippon, whom he loaded with the most fulsome, and from one who had, like himself, been overwhelmed by kindnesses from Charles I.--the most treacherous flattery.
It is unsatisfactory to refer to any statement of Gerbier’s as reliable; in a work on “Royal Favourites,” written in French, he stated that Dr. Egglisham had applied to him, through Sir William Chaloner, to procure his pardon, on condition of his confessing that he had been instigated by others to publish his libel on Buckingham. Gerbier stated that he had applied to the Secretary of State, but received no answer. It is unfortunate that no one could believe Gerbier, either when he calumniated or when he excused any individual.