It was by this able, scurrilous sycophant that the catalogue of Buckingham’s pictures was drawn up. In it were enumerated thirteen pictures by Rubens, whom the Duke had seen when he was at Antwerp, shortly before the Expedition to Rhé. When, in 1630, the great painter came to England as a diplomatist, the Duke was dead, but the sovereign who had so greatly encouraged his tastes, did not, as Walpole remarks, “overlook in the ambassador the talents of the painter.” Rubens painted, for three thousand pounds, the ceiling of the Banqueting House built by Inigo Jones--and depicting the “Apotheosis of King James;” a subject highly inconsistent for the purpose for which it is now most strangely appropriated as a chapel. Vandyck was to have adorned the sides with the history of the Garter; so that three great masters would have combined to form that noblest room in the world; but so grand a possession was not destined to be the work of former times, or the pride of our own.
After Buckingham’s death, some of his pictures were bought by the King, some by the Earl of Northumberland, and some by Abbot Montague.[[156]] In the collection there were nineteen pictures by Titian, seventeen by Tintoret, thirteen by Paul Veronese, twenty-one by Bassano, two by Julio Romano, two by Georgione, eight by Palina, three by Guido, thirteen by Rubens, three by Leonardo da Vinci, two by Correggio, and three by Raphael, besides several by inferior masters whose productions are scarce. The great prize of the collection was the “Ecce Homo,” of Titian, eight feet in length and twelve in breadth. For this magnificent work of art, in which portraits of the Pope, the Emperors Charles V. and Solyman the Magnificent are introduced, the Earl of Arundel had offered Buckingham seven thousand pounds in land or money. The proposal was refused, and the “Ecce Homo” shared the fate of many of the other pictures in the year 1648.
George, the second Duke of Buckingham, among whose few good qualities was a loyal adherence to that family to whom his father owed all, after being allowed by the Parliament a period of fifty days to choose between desertion of the Stuarts and outlawry, chose the latter. His estates were seized, but his father’s pictures, many of which still hung on the now gloomy walls of York House, were sent to him in his exile at Antwerp, by an old servant, John Traylinan, who had been left to guard the property. These were now sold for bread. Duart, of Antwerp, purchased some of them, but the greater number became the possession of the Archduke Leopold, and were removed to the Castle of Prague. Amongst them was the “Ecce Homo;” which has been described as embodying the greatest merits of its incomparable painter.[[157]]
Buckingham’s collection contained two hundred and thirty pictures. One may conceive how grandly they must have adorned York House, where in every chamber were emblazoned the arms of the two families, lions and peacocks, the houses of Villiers and Manners, who were for a few brief years united by one common bond under that roof.[[158]] Neither pains nor money were ever spared by Charles, or by Buckingham, to enrich their collections. Charles, with his own hands, wrote a letter inviting Albano to England. Buckingham endeavoured to attract Carlo Maratti, who had painted for him portraits of a Prince and Princess of Brunswick, to the English Court; but Maratti excused himself on the plea that he was not yet perfect in his art.[[159]] Little could the King have foretold that his treasures at Whitehall would have been sold, as Horace Walpole expresses it, by “inch of candle;” or the Duke that his son and heir should have parted with his father’s collection to save himself from starvation in a foreign country. Such events seem to confirm Sydney Smith’s counsel to a friend, not to look forward more than to a futurity of two hours’ duration.
Charles I., less happy than Buckingham, had the chagrin to hear that his favourite’s beloved collection was partially sold, three years before his own death. It seems, as Walpole expresses it, “to have become part of the religion of the time to war on the arts, because they had been countenanced at Court.” In 1645 the Parliament ordered the two collections to be sold; but, lest the public exigencies should not be thought to afford sufficient cause for this step, they passed the following acts to colour their proceedings:--
“Ordered, (July 23, 1635,) that all such pictures and statues there (at York House) as are without any superstition, shall be forthwith sold.”[[160]]
“Ordered, that all such pictures as shall have the representation of the second person in the Trinity upon them shall be forthwith burnt.”
"Ordered, that all such pictures there, as have the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burnt."[[161]]
This, Walpole remarks, was a worthy contrast to Archbishop Laud, who made a Star Chamber business of a man’s breaking some painted glass in the cathedral at Salisbury. Times were changed; Laud, however, looked on the offence as an indication of a spirit of destruction and irreverence;--unhappily, he was right.
Such was the fate of Buckingham’s pictures: a brief notice of the proceedings which dispersed the far more valuable collection of the King must not be omitted. Immediately after Charles’s death, votes were passed for the sale of his pictures, statues, jewels, and “hangings.” It was then ordered that inventories should be made, and commissioners be appointed to appraise, secure, and inventory the said goods. Cromwell, to his honour, attempted to stop the dispersion of these valuables; but he had matters of even greater importance to engage his attention, and the sale, about the year 1650, appears, as far as the paintings were concerned, to have been completed. From that time no further mention of them is to be found in the Journals of the House of Commons.[[162]]