Meanwhile, across the water, a superb royal collection had been formed. Charles i. of England (reigned 1625–49) had begun his career as a patron of art before his accession, with the acquisition of the paintings and statues collected by his deceased brother, Henry. During his matrimonial visit to Madrid in 1623 he was presented by Philip iv. with Titian’s Venus del Pardo, now in the Louvre (No. 1587). Soon after his accession he began to collect systematically, employing trusty agents to buy for him in different parts of Europe. His most notable purchase was that of the collection of the Duke of Mantua, for which he paid £18,280 between 1629 and 1632. He is said to have possessed in all 1760 pictures by the date of his execution. Most of them were disposed of at auction by order of Cromwell between 1649 and 1652.
One of the most persistent bidders at the sale of Charles i.’s pictures was Eberhard Jabach, a native of Cologne, who settled in Paris and became a naturalised Frenchman in 1647. He was an enthusiastic buyer of pictures, and his collection soon surpassed that of the French king. It was known to all French connoisseurs, and was visited by all travellers of note. In time, however, Jabach’s energies as a buyer exceeded his financial resources, and when his debts amounted to 278,718 livres he offered his collection to Louis xiv., who was most anxious to distinguish his reign by the formation of a gallery of pictures which should be in all respects worthy of it. To this end he purchased Eberhard Jabach’s collection, paying 220,000 livres for the 5542 drawings and 101 pictures which it contained. The price originally asked by Jabach was 463,425 livres. Among the masterpieces thus acquired by the king were Titian’s Entombment (No. 1584, [Plate XIII.]), which Jabach had had the good fortune to purchase from the English royal collection for the absurdly small sum of £128, and Giorgione’s Pastoral Symphony (No. 1136, [Plate X.]), which had also been among the treasures of the English Crown.
To Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), who founded the French Academy in 1635, at one time belonged Andrea Mantegna’s Parnassus (No. 1375, [Plate XIV.]), the same painter’s Wisdom victorious over the Vices (No. 1376), Lorenzo Costa’s The Court of Isabella d’Este in the Garden of the Muses (No. 1261), and the same painter’s Mythological Scene (No. 1262), together with Perugino’s Combat of Love and Chastity (No. 1567).
Another important buyer at the sale of Charles i.’s collection was Cardinal Mazarin (1602–61), who acquired several valuable pictures, besides statuary, tapestries, and other fabrics. Of Mazarin’s pictures the Louvre now possesses Raphael’s small St. Michael (No. 1502) and a Holy Family (No. 1135), which is catalogued under the name of Giorgione, but it is more probably from the hand of Cariani.
It is said that Louis xiv. preferred the pictures of his own court-painter, Charles Le Brun, to those of the Venetian master, Paolo Veronese, whose large canvas, The Supper at Emmaus (No. 1196), was nevertheless acquired during his reign. Eight pictures by Annibale Carracci, all of which are not now publicly exhibited in the Louvre (Nos. 1218, 1220, 1222, 1226, 1231–34), Albani’s Diana and Actæon (No. 1111), nine compositions by Guido Reni (Nos. 1439–55 and 1457), and ten paintings by Domenichino (Nos. 1609–10 and 1612–19), also enriched the royal collection during Louis xiv.’s reign. Nor were the great French painters neglected. The four pictures (Nos. 736–39) of The Seasons, by Nicolas Poussin, which had been commissioned in 1660 by the Duc de Richelieu for the decoration of the Château de Meudon, together with four of the largest Claudes now in the Louvre (Nos. 312, 314, 316, 317), were obtained for the royal galleries by the ever-watchful Colbert (1619–83), who had been appointed Minister of Finance on the death of Mazarin (1602–61). Flemish art, as seen in the stately pictures of Van Dyck, was represented by seven examples (Nos. 1961–63, 1970, 1973–75). On the other hand, Louis xiv. is said to have failed altogether to appreciate the work of Teniers and to have exclaimed, when some of that artist’s pictures were brought to his notice, “Ôtez-moi ces magots-là!” Only one of the thirty-nine pictures by Teniers now in the Louvre, the Interior of a Cottage (No. 2162), passed into the Gallery at that date. The almost entire absence of Dutch pictures is also to be noticed.
An event of extreme importance in this pompous reign was the institution of the French Academy of Arts, in 1648, with Charles Le Brun (1619–90) as Director, the despotic power which he exercised in art matters bringing about his further appointment as Director of the Gobelins tapestry works in 1660.
In 1681 the Crown pictures and other royal art treasures were brought to the Louvre from Versailles and were temporarily exhibited there, the king paying a state visit to the capital on December 5 to see his cabinet de tableaux. We read that the walls of eleven rooms were covered up to the cornices. The collection, putting on one side all doubts as to strict authenticity, included six paintings by Correggio, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, nineteen by A. Carracci, twelve by Guido Reno, and eighteen by Paolo Veronese. These treasures, however, did not remain long at the Louvre, but were “packed up, loaded on rough carts, and taken back over the paved roads to Versailles,” which had now taken precedence over Fontainebleau as a royal residence; and at Versailles the Court mainly resided until the Revolution, although Louis xiv. greatly enlarged the Louvre Palace and planted the Tuileries Gardens. At the death of le Roi Soleil the Crown pictures numbered 1500.
The energy of Louis xiv. was followed by the apathy of his degenerate successor, Louis xv. (reigned 1715–74), who, however, added 300 pictures to the royal collection. The Virgin with the Blue Diadem or Virgin with the Veil (No. 1497), which still passes under the name of Raphael, was among the pictures which then passed out of the collection of the Prince de Carignan into the possession of the Crown. It was now a sorry moment for the pictures which, “scattered through the interminable and then ill-kept country palaces of the French Crown, exposed to every injury of time, ignorance, and weather, regarded at best in the light of old furniture and too often in that of old lumber, pleaded in vain for respect and care. No public Catalogue told of their existence; the generation that had talked of them had passed away; it was nobody’s business to ask for them, and few actually knew where they were. Even the new-comers passed into the same void which had swallowed their predecessors.” Some of the pictures previously recorded now disappeared completely, without leaving a clue to their fate. Eventually, in 1746, M. de la Fonte de Saint-Yenne in a pamphlet directed public opinion to the fact that these Crown pictures had for fifty years been hidden and neglected in “une obscure prison de Versailles.” As a result of this, in 1750, by the king’s permission, 110 pictures selected from the different schools of painting were brought from Versailles to the Palais de Luxembourg, where the large canvases by Rubens (now in the Salle Rubens at the Louvre) were regarded as forming a centre d’études. Here for the first time, and for two days only in the week, they were shown under certain restrictions to a limited public. In 1785 they were again removed to Versailles.
Although Louis xiv.’s well-known grudge against Holland probably accounted for the almost entire absence of Dutch pictures from the Crown possessions, Louis xvi. had the good taste to acquire works by Aelbert Cuyp (No. 2341, Landscape); Jan van Goyen (No. 2375, Banks of a Dutch River, and No. 2377, A River in Holland); B. van der Helst (No. 2394, The Officers of the Arquebusiers of St. Sebastian); G. Metsu (No. 2461, The Alchemist); Adriaen van Ostade (No. 2495, The Painter’s Family[?], and No. 2496, The Schoolmaster); Isaac van Ostade (No. 2510, A Frozen Canal in Holland); Rembrandt (No. 2539, The Pilgrims at Emmaus, No. 2540, and No. 2541, The Philosopher in Meditation, No. 2555, Portrait of Rembrandt aged); Jacob van Ruisdael (No. 2559, Landscape, and No. 2560, Sunny Landscape); Terborgh (No. 2587, The Military Gallant); and Philips Wouverman (No. 2621, The Prize Ox, and No. 2625, The Stag Hunt). Five of the less important of Murillo’s pictures now in the Louvre (Nos. 1712–15 and No. 1717) were also acquired at this period, and the series of twenty-two large canvases illustrating Scenes from the Life of St. Bruno by Eustache Le Sueur were also purchased by Louis xvi.
From 1725 onwards the Salon held its Exhibitions in the Salon Carré (Room IV.), but after 1848 this room was used only for Paintings by the Old Masters.