All the furniture from the ill-fated King’s different palaces was brought up, and exposed for sale; and, as far as relates to the jewels, plate, and furniture, the affair was not concluded until 1653. It must, indeed, have been a melancholy sight. Cromwell, through his agent, was one of the principal purchasers. The price of each article was fixed, but, if any one offered a higher sum, preference was given. Cromwell, who resided alternately at Whitehall and Hampton Court, bought the Cartoons for 300l. The order against “superstitious” pieces was not, it seems, strictly observed; for a painting of Vandyck’s, “Mary, our Lord, and Angels,” sold for 40l.[[163]] The celebrated portrait of George, the second Duke of Buckingham, and his mother, by Vandyck, one of the finest productions of that master, was valued at 30l., and sold for 50l. Many of the finest pictures were bought by Mons. Jabach, a native of Cologne, settled in Paris, who sold his collection afterwards to Louis XIV. “The Entombment,” by Titian, which he secured, and “Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus,” are in the Louvre. Amongst the pictures in the Mantua collection, was the large “Holy Trinity;” it was bought by De Cardenas, the Spanish Ambassador; and on its arrival Philip IV. exclaimed, "That is my pearl"--and the picture has, ever since, been known by that name.
There were, also, valuable allegorical sketches by Correggio, which are among the valuable collection of drawings and designs in the Louvre.
The Imperial Gallery of the Palace Belvedere, in Vienna, contains several fine pictures from the Whitehall collection. They were bought at the sale by the Archduke Leopold William, Governor of the Netherlands, and afterwards Emperor of Austria. Reynst, an eminent Dutch connoisseur, Christina, Queen of Sweden, and Cardinal Mazarin, were amongst the purchasers--but bought still more largely of the jewels, medals, tapestry, carpets, embroidery--many of which went to adorn Mazarin’s palace in Paris. Bathazar Gerbier, and other painters, also purchased pictures--and thus, by their aid, and that of some few Englishmen, the wreck of this noble collection may still be traced in this country, but the greater portion was lost to it for ever. Some miniatures were restored;--the States-General, during the reign of Charles II., bought back the pictures formerly sold to Reynst, and presented them to Charles II.
By the exertions of that monarch, seventy of the best paintings that his father had possessed again adorned his various Palaces. St. James’s, Hampton Court, and Windsor were enriched with the works of those masters in whose productions Charles I. had so greatly delighted. But in Whitehall, the gallery of which was hung with the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Vandyck, Holbein, Rubens, and many others, had been deposited the finest specimens of their works. England seems fated never to contain a collection suitable to her wealth, her intelligence, and her wishes--for in 1697 that ancient palace, so often partially burnt, was destroyed by fire; and within its old walls and many chambers perished the various collections of Charles II., both of pictures, medals, and sculpture.[[164]]
Charles I., like all good judges of art, was extremely careful of his pictures. Hitherto the Court revels had been held in that famous gallery which Charles II. afterwards debased into a resort for gamblers and infamous women of rank; and the Banqueting-house was next appropriated to them. But during the Christmas of 1637, when two masques were to be performed, the King being one of the chief dancers, a building, the mere boarding of which cost two thousand five hundred pounds, was erected in the main court at Whitehall, because the King would not have “his pictures in the Banqueting-house burnt with lights.”[[165]]
The noble portrait by Vandyck, of Charles on horseback, was reclaimed from Seemput, a painter, who had bought it at the sale; and some few paintings which Catherine of Braganza had coolly shipped off to Lisbon, were stopped by the Lord Chamberlain in their embarkation.
When the convulsions under which the country groaned had ceased, and on the arrival of the Restoration, the nobility, though not encouraged by the reigning monarch, introduced the custom of adorning their country seats with paintings. “But the pure and elevated taste,” as Dr. Waagen expresses it, “of Charles I. had degenerated; the names of famous masters were indeed to be found, but not their works.”[[166]]
Architecture and sculpture were also arts which owe infinitely to the judicious patronage of Charles, assisted by Buckingham. Among the Mantua collection was a whole army “of old foreign emperors, captains, and senators,” whom Charles I., as Walpole tells us, “caused to land on his coasts, to come and do him homage, and attend him in his palace of St. James’s and Somerset House.”[[167]] But the King also discerned and rewarded native genius; and when he planned the noblest palace in the world at Whitehall, sent for no foreign architect, but summoned Inigo Jones to his service.
“England,” says Walpole, “adopted Holbein and Vandyck; she borrowed Rubens; she produced Inigo Jones.” Originally a joiner, Jones was brought out of obscurity, according to many accounts, by the patron who first extended a hand to assist George Villiers in his struggles in life. William Earl of Pembroke was the friend alike of the young courtier and of the son of the clothworker--the immortal Inigo. Either by the Earl of Arundel or by Pembroke--it is not certain which--Inigo was sent to Italy to learn landscape-painting; but at Rome he soon discovered the inclination and bent of his genius. It is of no use to stop the pure and flowing stream, and thus to make it turbid. Inigo “laid down his pencil, and conceived Whitehall.” Nature had not, he felt, destined him to decorate cabinets; his vocation was to build palaces. He was, however, still in danger of living in remote splendour. Christian III. enticed him to Copenhagen, whence James I. sent for him, and whence he was brought to be the Queen’s architect in Scotland. Patronized by Prince Henry, he was in despair at the death of that royal youth, and went again to Italy. It was in the interval between his two journeys to Rome that he perpetrated some buildings in bad taste; to which the appellation of “King James’s Gothic” was affixed.
His first task, as Surveyor of the Works, to which office James appointed him, was to build, for twenty pounds, a scaffolding, when the Earl and Countess of Somerset were arraigned; his next, to discover, by King James’s pedantic mandate, who were the founders of Stonehenge. In 1619, he was entrusted with the direction of the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, which was finished in two years, and ordered to draw up a plan for the whole structure.