Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Author(s): A. C. Sewter Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 76, No.

444 (Mar., 1940), pp. 70-73+7576 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/867919 . Accessed: 01/05/2011 04:57
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QUEEN ELIZABETH BY A. C. SEWTER

AINTING

AT

KENILWORTH
no inherent difficulty, namely that the background of this portrait shows the house and grounds of Wanstead, the Essex seat of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, then the picture can be dated with fair certainty to 1578, in which year he entertained the Queen there.6 As the younger Gheraerts was born only in 1561-62, he cannot be considered as a possible author of this picture, which we may now regard as a basic document for Marcus Gheraerts senior.7 We are therefore obliged to reject the idea of his return to Antwerp in I577, and to conclude that the Marcus Gheraerts there admitted masterpainter in the Guild of St. Luke in that year was his son. The only other fully authenticated Gheraerts portrait which falls within the lifetime of the father,8 is the group of LadySidney herFamilyat Penshurst, and which is vouched for by a contemporarydocument.9 This is so entirely different from the Welbeck panel in its drawing, its space-conception, its colour, and above all its temperament, that it must be assigned to Marcus the younger. This leaves us only the Welbeck picture from which to derive a conception of the elder Gheraerts' style of portraiture in oils, while the distinctionof style between the two masters seems so considerable that the task of assembling their respective ceuvresshould not prove excessively difficult. This task, however, I am not now proposing to undertake. My concern here is to point to what must be consideredas the second indubitable Marcus Gheraertssenior, in a picture of the greatest historical importance, which has nevertheless remained hitherto unpublished and unnoticed. This
panel
[FRONTISPIECE]

England, despite its very great iconographic and historical interest, and its generally high decorative value, frequently combined with an attractive naivete of presentation, is still a field in which even the most expert art-historian moves with caution. The names of many artists of the time are known, but in more than one or two cases it is impossible to associate with them any known group of pictures. Marcus Gheraerts, whom we know to have been one of the most employed painters among the aristocracy towards the end of the reign,' and for whom there are both documents2and signed pictures to work from, should be an exception to this generalisation. But even here there is much uncertainty. There are, I think, two main reasons for this ; firstly, that the works of Marcus Gheraerts senior and junior have never been properly distinguished; and secondly, that during the first attempts to bring order to the material of Elizabethan portraiture, there was a strong tendency to label as Gheraertsnearly all those works which had hitherto borne the traditional but impossible ascription to Zuccaro. Both of these factors can be detected at work behind the nevertheless invaluable papers of Lionel Cust and Mrs. Poole publishedby the Walpole of the documents, and the known activities of the elder Gheraerts in many fields other than picturemaking, they tended to attribute to the younger Marcus every English picture for which they suggested the name, and even went so far as to say that there was no evidence that Marcus the elder engaged in portraiture in England, or that he was ever in the service of the Queen.3 Now, so far as I am aware, there is only one signed picture by Marcus Gheraerts which can possibly be by the elder painter, namely the small wholelength representation of the Queen at Welbeck Abbey,4 which is signed M. G. F. If the tradition quoted by Walpole5can be accepted, and it involves
Society in 1914. In view of the inconclusive evidence

of the Elizabethan period in

1 See FRANCIS MERES: Wit's Commonwealth, Part II [1598], pp. 286-7. 2 See The WalpoleSociety'sThird Annual Volume " Marcus [1914]: Gheraerts, Father and Son, Painters," by Mrs. R. L. POOLE; and "Marcus Gheraerts," by LIONEL CUST; also THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, Vol. XXII [19I3], p. 279, and a good discussion in BAKER C. H. COLLINS and W. G. CONSTABLE: English Painting of the Sixteenthand Seventeenth Centuries [1930] which reproduces most of the authenticated works. 3 This seems to be the opinion of both Mrs. Poole and Cust, MAGAZINE yet the documents published in THE BURLINGTON (see footnote 2) by CHARLOTTE STOPES 1913 clearly prove that in C. Marcus Gerrard, as he was called, was in the service of the queen in the year 40-41 Elizabeth, i.e., 1598-9; while the documents published by Mrs. Poole herself mention Gheraerts as " her Majesties painter " in 1617. The latter reference of course is to the younger, but the former may refer to Marcus the elder. 4 See C. F. MURRAY: Catalogue Pictures at WelbeckAbbey of [1894], which contains a good reproduction. E

unfortunately completely unknown, is now in the possession of Mr. J. F. Montagu of Cold Overton Hall, Oakham, by whose courtesyit is now published. In style this picture bears a close affinity to the Welbeck panel, which, it should be remembered, is not a life-sized portrait, but a small picture, eighteen inches high, with a background view in pronounced perspective, including a little group of figures composed into a rectangle. The Cold
5 HORACE WALPOLE:Anecdotes Painting in England [I762-71]. of Vol. I, p. 135. Walpole ascribes the picture to De Heere. 6 The Queen visited Wanstead also on another occasion, in I56I (see JOHN NICHOLS: Progressesof QueenElizabeth [1788] Vol. I), but in view of her apparent age in the picture this earlier date is clearly impossible. The date 1578 is held by Murray. 7 The discussion of this problem by C. H. COLLINS BAKER and in W. G. CONSTABLE, English Painting I500-1700 [I930], pp. 27-33, favours the claims of Marcus the younger to the Welbeck picture, largely on the ground of their dating by costume to about 1590. This seems to me too late. 8 The date of his death is uncertain, but he died before I604, when Van Mander complains of not being able to obtain detailed information of his death from the son. 9 Referred to by WALPOLE, cit., Vol. I, p. op. 143. The picture BAKER is reproduced, Walpole Society,op. cit., pl. X and in COLLINS and CONSTABLE, 26. pi.

whose earlier history is most

THE BURLINGTON No. MAGAZINE, 444, Vol. lxxvi, March 1940.

71

OUEEN ELI4ABETH AND HER COURT AT SENILWORTH CASELE. HERE ATTRTBUTED TO MARCUS GHERAERTS THE ELDER.

1575. PANEI

at Elizabeth Kenilworth Queen

Overton panel is far more important in scale, but it also contains only small figures, a landscape in pronounced perspective, and all the main groups of figures are composed into rectangles. It is a style, of course, formed entirely in the Netherlands, where Gheraerts had received his training, probably under Hegghebaert Geeraerts, his father, in Bruges, which he left with his son in 1568. It is a style which finds its place naturally in that stream which, flowing from the twin sources of Patinir and Brueghel, embraces Dirk Hals whose subject matter is quite proximate to that of this picture, and finally expands into the great period of baroque painting in the Netherlands. The scene here represented, the festivities of Elizabeth's court on one of her summer progresses into the country, is described on a tablet attached to the frame as QueenElizabeth and her Courtat Hunsdon House: an early representation the Virginals. The of topography, however, cannot be made to fit even approximately to Hunsdon, and another identification of the scene has to be sought. Naturally the mind turns at once to the famous " Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth," which took place in I575 and of which two detailed contemporary accounts have been preserved.0l While, after a period of serious doubts, I finally felt that the scene could be no other than that at Kenilworth, it must be admitted that there are a good many difficulties in this identification. It is only the close correspondence of certain details with the accounts just mentioned which induces me to attempt to explain away the discrepancies. Let us first deal with the latter. In the first place, the architecture-the two wings of a very large mansion, apparently, which are seen at either end of the picture-does not correspond in the least with any building of which trace or record remains at Kenilworth. Secondly, assuming the wide causeway or bridge running into the centre of the picture to be that referred to by Laneham as set up within the base-court of the castle, the temple in the distance would then occupy a position where there seems to have been no such building. Thirdly, in the diagrams and views given in Dugdale's Warwickshire" the lake appears on the right-hand side of this base-court, whereas in the picture it is on the left. These must seem weighty difficulties, yet I believe that they are not conclusive. It would surely be a mistake to expect any scrupulous adherence to
10 ROBERT LANEHAM: A letter whearin, part of the Entertainment, ulttoo the Queenz Aiaiesty, at KillingwoorthCastl, in Warwik Sheer, in this Soomerz Progress, 1575, iz signified, etc. ; and GEORGEGASCOIGNE : The Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle, 1575. Both sources are fully reprinted by J. NIcIOLS, op. cit., Vol. I, Gascoigne's also in his Complete Wtorks [1904 , and a reprint of both sources with modernised spelling, and explanatory notes, etc., published by under the title Kenilworth Merridew (Warwick and Leamington), Festivities [1825]. 1 SIR V'nII.LIAM DUGDALE : The Antiquities of Warwickshire [1730

ed.], Vol. I, p. 243 and opposite p. 249.

topographical accuracy in a painting of this date, at any rate in the relationships between the various objects represented, accurate though they may be individually. The painter's task being to give a comprehensive illustration of the occasion, he has quite possibly gathered into a single panorama features which may have been situated on opposite sides of the castle. Moreover, it is known that Leicester was responsible for large-scale reorganization of the garden-landscape at Kenilworth, and it is quite within possibility that in 1575 the relation of water to base-court was as shown in the picture. In fact, the correspondence of the picture with Laneham's account in his opening pages is, in this matter, close. The fantastic temple in the centre distance one can hardly take for a permanent structure, and if it is regarded as a temporary scenic erection, that difficulty entirely disappears. Indeed, the more one looks at the architecture at each end, the more the idea grows on one that this is not architecture of solid stonework, but likewise a painted temporary construction. The two porticoes, especially, with their slender columns, elaborate reliefs, statues, and particularly the balustrade of that on the left through which no interstices show the sky, have hardly a look of permanence. And the fantastically elaborate walls to which they adjoin, with their statues in niches, their reliefs, their architrave windows, balconies and attic reliefs, are too much of an Elizabethan dream to be regarded as serious realities. It can be proved from Laneham's letter that such artificial architecture formed part of the Kenilworth decorations, and the character of these, as exemplified by the great "cage" or aviary, is very similar to the constructions shown in the picture. He speaks of this cage: " sumptuoous and beautifull . . a fair moolding was couched all aboout : from that upward, foour great wyndoz a front, and too at each eend, every one a fyve foot wide, az many mo eeven above them, divided on all parts by a transum and architrave, so raunging aboout the cage. Each windo arched in the top, and parted from oother in eeven distauns by flat fayr bolteld columns, all in form and beauty alike, that supported a cumly cornish couched al along upon the bole square; . . Under the cornish again, every part beautifyed with great diamonds, emerauds, rubyes, and saphyres; poynted, tabled, rok, and round; garnisht with their golld, by skilful hed and hand, and by toile and pensil so lyvely exprest, az it mought bee great marveil and pleasure to consider how neer excellency of Art could approach unto perfection of Nature." To come now to those details which fit with less difficulty the identification of the scene as Kenilworth, the town and church spire of Kenilworth seen in the distance to the left, and Warwick Castle in the distant landscape to the right, approach even to topographical accuracy. In the temple at the centre distance, will be observed a large female

72

OF FRONTISPIECE, SHOWING, A-DETAIL QUEEN ELIZABETH AND PHILIP SIDNEY.

IN THE CENTRE, ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER,

OF FRONTISPIECE, SHOWING GROUP OF THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE, AND NEGRO BAND B-DETAIL AND DANCERS IN THE BACKGROUND.

PLATE II.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AT KENILWORTII

at Elizabeth Kenilworth Queen

statue, while a row of statues lines each side of the bridge in the centre middle-distance, and a fountain occupies a central position at the near end of it. The statue in the temple I take to be a pictorial reference to the Sibyl who, " cumly clad in a pall of white sylk, pronounced a proper poezi in English rime and meeter: of effect, hoow great gladnesse her gracious prezenze brought into everie stede whear it pleazed her too cum . . ." and so on. The statues on the bridge can be understood Laneham recounts that in the basesimilarly. court of the castle was erected over a dry valley a bridge seventy feet long and twenty feet broad, gravelled for walking on, and railed on each side with a balustrade and seven posts. On each post was a cage or basket containing presents purporting to come from the deities Sylvanus, Pomona, Ceres, Bacchus, Neptune, Mars and Phoebus. The number of deities, who are shown in the picture in the form of statues, does not agree with this account, and all but the two nearest the are not recognizable; are plainly Mars (on the left) and foreground Phoebus (on the right), so that this interpretation appears probable. The fountain is thus described by Laneham : "In the centre (az it wear) of this goodly Gardein, vaz theer placed a very fayr Foountain, cast intoo an eight square, reared a four foot hy; from the midst whearof a colum up set in shape of too Athlants joined togeather a back half; the toon looking East, toother West, with theyr hands upholding a fayr formed boll of a three foot over; from wheans sundry fine pipez did lyvely distill continuall streamz intoo the receyt of the foountayn, mayntayned styll too foot deep by the same fresh falling water: whearin pleasaunly playing too and fro, and round about, carp, tench, bream, and, for varietee, perch and eel, fish fayr-liking all, and large : In the toppe, the raggedstaff; which, with the boll, the pillar, and eyght sidez beneath, wear all heawen oout of rich and hard white marbl. A one syde, Neptune wyth hiz tridental fuskin triumphing in hiz throne, trayled into the deep by his marine horsez. On another, Thetis in her chariot drawn by her dolphins. Then, Triton by his fishez. Heer Protheushearding hiz sea bulls. Thear Doris and her doughterz solacing a sea and sandz. The wavez soourging with froth and fome, entermengled in place, with walez, whirlpoolz, sturgeonz, tunneyz, conchs, and wealks, all engraven by exquisit devize and skill, so az I maye thinke
this not much inferioour unto Phoebusgatez ..." etc.

group of Hercules and Antaeus, instead of supporting the "boll" as described by Laneham, actually surmount the structure. But whether Laneham or Gheraerts was the more accurate in this matter it is impossible to decide ; it was not a literal age, and a small common denominator among the two is all one may expect. The elaborate barge which is seen on the water to the left, beyond the portico which shelters an orchestra, is probably that referred to by Laneham under the date of July I2th: "Tuisday, pleazaunt passing of the time with muzik and daunsing; saving that toward night it liked her Majesty too walk afoot into the Chase over the bridge: whear it pleased her to stand, while upon the pool oout of a barge fine appoynted for the purpoze, too heer sundry kinds of very delectabl muzik." Incidentally, it is worth noting that as well as singers, there are under the portico musicians playing the lute, the viola da gamba, the flute and the virginals. The negro band, which is seen between Mars and the fountain, and the negro boy dancers beyond the fountain to the right, all of them dressed in scarlet, are not mentioned by Laneham, though he does mention some Morris dancers. Rather more surprisingly, he makes no mention of a troupe of Italian actors of the Commedia dell'Arte, who occupy the centre foreground of the picture astonishing feats of an Italian acrobat, and since it is known that the actors of the Commedia dell'Arte sometimes performed ballets and acrobatics,12 it is quite possible that the acrobat was a member of the troupe. This detail of the picture is of very special interest, for not only is this the earliest record of the Commedia dell'Arte in England, but it is one of the earliest pictorial records of the troupe. Moreover, two of the actors can with fair probability be identified ; the Pantaloon on the left appears to be the actor Giulio Pasquati, who was a member of the Ganassa and Gelosi troupes, and who appears in the engravings of the Recueil Fossard (about I577); the Zany who brandishes a violin appears to be Gabriele Panzanini, also of the Gelosi company. Almost certainly, therefore, it is the Gelosi company which is represented, and although no other record exists of a visit to England, their whereabouts in 1575 is not known. They were in Venice, Milan and again Venice in I574, and they were playing in Venice in 1576 when invited by Henri III to Blois for the opening of the Etats. The visit to England therefore fits conveniently into their record, occupying presumably the summer of 1575. The other members of the troupe shown are the Doctor and Inamorata, Harlequin, a little figure playing a drum (under the statue of Phoebus), and a figure on the left, below the white horse, speaking to a lady.
12 See P. L. DUCHARTRE: The Italian [I929], pp. 24, 86 Comedy and 125. In this discussion of points connected with the Commedia dell'Arte I have relied entirely on Duchartre's conclusions.

[PLATE II,

B].

He

does,

however,

describe

the

This fantastic description, which in spite of its profusion leaves one with a confused conception of the object, is tolerably approximated by the fountain in the picture, though here the two figures back to back are above and not below the bowl, and the whole fountain appears to be circular and not octagonal. But since the dolphins between the figures immediately above the bowl are plainly discernible, I am inclined to think that these are Thetis, Neptune, Triton, etc., and the " too Athlants," apparently a

75

QueenElizabethat Kenilworth
The lovers (on left) are played by members of the court. To come at last to the figures of the members of the court, it has been found unfortunatelyimpossible to identify with certainty more than three of them Leicester, the host who provided these festivities, wearing a scarlet doublet and hat, and walking on the Queen's right ; the Queen herself, a dainty, wide-eyed figure dressed in white, with pale golden-red hair and wearing a crown; and on her left, with his arm interlinked in hers, Leicester's nephew the young Philip Sidney, in white doublet and scarlet trunk hose, who had only recently returned from his continental tour, and was still only in his twenty-first year.13 The principal difficulty in the way of making further identifications is that comparatively few portraits of this early period of Elizabeth's reign survive. (Gheraerts'engraving of the Processionof the Knights of the Garter, which would probably be of use, is not at the moment available, and the small copy of it in Ashmole's " Order of the Garter " is too much reduced to be of much service.) The lady who extends her hand towards the players, and the lady and gentleman who are prominentlyplaced on the left, are obviously persons of some importance, as also are those forming a group in the lower right corner. It is noticeable that the only figures whose eyes are
13 See D. N. B., Vol. 52, p. 222, where his presence at these festivities is expressly mentioned.

[PLATE II, A], namely Robert Dudley,

Earl of

directed towards the spectator are the queen and this lady in black on the left. Possibly she may be the source of the artist's commission and, if the hypothesis is not too wild, were she Ann, Lady Hunsdon, with her husband Sir George Carey, Baron Hunsdon (the queen's first cousin and nearest living relative), it would be easily intelligible that later generations imagined the scene to be the occasion of the queen's visit to Hunsdon House in
I57I.

A last detail to which I would draw attention is the group of figures beyond the principal group, gathered for an alfresco meal around a cloth spread on the ground, and at the same time playing on the lute. In this picture, then, we have already all the elements which later, in a closer and more intimate integration, composed the Fete Galanteof Watteau. Such a picture as this, showing an important historic and festive occasion, of such interest for the history of costume, architecture, the stage, as well as of painting, is almost unique in English
painting.

Blackfriarsin I60o, of which two versions exist,14 and which also, curiously enough, was once called nearest parallel, and although it is separated from our Kenilworth panel by a period of over a quarter of a century, it is possible that this too is a work of Marcus Gheraerts senior.
14 See WalpoleSociety,op. cit.

The picture of Queen Elizabeth's Visit to

Queen Elizabeth's Visit to Hunsdon House, affords the

THE

EARLY

GAGINI

OF DEVELOPMENT DOMENICO BY W. R. VALENTINER

The general style of the relief, however (which can be dated about the middle of the fifteenth century) is quite un-Florentine. No Florentine sculptor of this period would have gone so far in pictorial tendency as to let a mass of irregularoverhanging rocks cover parts of the lower border, or to place some of the angels with widespread wings actually outside of the framework. Our artist was as much interested in the effect of flickering light and shade passing over the forms as in the individual plastic form itself. He was inclined to dissolve the outlines of his figures, as may be seen in the two amorini holding the coat-of-arms in front, or in the chorus of angels surrounding God the Father. In the use of drill holes in the hair of his figures, and in the representation of fleeting movement in the wind-shakentree tops, he even seems to tend toward an impressionistic style of sculpture. The sharp, pointed forms of certain details, like the angel wings with their upturned S-like curves, the prettily designed feet with slim toes, the flowing ends of garments or the cloudbank, show the connection of this relief with late Gothic art, as does also the geiheralverticality of the composition.

had been a puzzle to students of Italian sculpture long before it was acquired by Mr. Samuel H. Kress in New York, when it was still in the Henry Harris collection in London, from which it passed into the possession of Count Contini Bonacossi in Florence. There it was attributed to Benedetto da Maiano whose name it still bears. In subject matter the composition has indeed Florentine elements, and the design of the buildings in lowest relief in the background is hardly imaginable without the precedent reliefs.' of Donatello's stiacciato
1 Also the coat-of-arms seems to indicate the execution of the relief in Florence. The excellent connoisseur of heraldry, A. van de Put, although he did not come to any definite decision, wrote me regarding the subject: " The cross in quarters 2 and 3 appears to be of the " flory " or " florency " variety. . . The cross botonry in quarters I, 4 is not uncommon, and had there been no quarters 2, 3, would have suggested Gaddi of Florence. . . . The whole aspect of the shield is Florentine except for the discordant note there is another curious feature-middle struck by the coronet.... distance centre shows what looks like a Medici coat of the variety Robbia Heraldry, Fig. 104. No doubt it is seen in MARQUAND: not the same, but what did the artist mean by this particular gadget ?"

representing the Nativity [PLATE I, A]

HE delicately executed marble relief

76