After Titian, 'The Trinity ('La Gloria')', late 17th century?
About the work
Overview
This is a copy of Titian’s large canvas known as ‘La Gloria’ (The Glory) or The Trinity. Titian’s painting was commissioned by Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1551, and is now in the Prado, Madrid.
The Emperor and Empress with their son Prince Philip and his sisters kneel in their burial shrouds before God the Father and Christ for the Last Judgement. The dove of the Holy Ghost appears in the heavens in a blaze of light.
The large biblical figures in the foreground include the Prophet Ezekiel on an eagle, Moses with the tablets of the Law, Noah holding up the ark and King David clutching his harp. John the Baptist stands behind the Virgin Mary in her cloak of ultramarine blue. The Imperial family are accompanied by an escort of angels and other mortals including Adam and Eve, and the elderly Titian himself.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- The Trinity ('La Gloria')
- Artist
- After Titian
- Artist dates
- active about 1506; died 1576
- Date made
- late 17th century?
- Medium and support
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 131.6 × 100 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bought, 1926
- Inventory number
- NG4222
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
- Previous owners
Provenance
An entry dated 23 January 1819 under the heading ‘VIRTU’ in the commonplace book compiled by the banker, poet and collector Samuel Rogers records a story told him by the ‘Danish Minister’ in London, ‘Mr. D. Bourke’, at Cassiobury (the seat of the Earl of Exeter, in Hertfordshire, where, presumably, both were guests) concerning NG 4222, which Rogers had bought, probably quite recently. Comte Edmond de Bourke had served as minister in Madrid between 1801 and 1811 where he had invested in a large scale in paintings driven onto the market by the French occupation. NG 4222 was said to have hung in the billiard room of a ‘low tavern’ in the city and the players used to strike their cues against it when they lost. The landlord of the tavern was arrested for a murder and condemned to the galleys, and the painting was auctioned, along with all the tavern furnishings, at the jail. It was sold for a dollar to a man who rolled it up and carried it away. Soon afterwards he sold it for five dollars to a friend who expressed curiosity about the roll. Rumours of the picture’s merit began to circulate and eventually the Danish minister bought it, unseen, for 70 guineas. George Augustus Wallis (1770–1847), an English painter turned dealer then active in Spain as an agent for William Buchanan, persuaded the minister to part with it in exchange for a Murillo in ‘about 1808’, according to Mrs Jameson, who must have heard about this transaction from Rogers. Wallis still had the painting for sale when Bourke arrived in London in 1811, but the price was 600 guineas so he declined to buy it back. It is probably the painting that was offered to Thomas Penrice by George Yates in January 1814 and it was indeed from ‘Mr Yates, a picture-dealer in Oxendon St Haymarket’, that Rogers bought it for 160 guineas, ‘giving another picture as part of the purchase money’. It is not impossible that the painting really did come from a Madrid tavern, but low-life provenances of this kind are sometimes used to discourage enquiries about a picture’s true origins and, given the huge number of stolen paintings on the market in Spain in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the reasons for discouraging such enquiries were obvious.
It is worth noting that Rogers had a penchant for small versions of large paintings which the relatively confined space of his London house must have encouraged. He believed that he owned Tintoretto’s original sketch for Saint Mark rescuing a Slave. He owned Rubens’s reduced and modified copy (NG 278) after one of Mantegna’s Triumphs and what was then believed to be Rubens’s modello for his Horrors of War (NG 279).
The Trinity was lot 725 in the posthumous sale of Rogers’s collection at Christie’s, London, on 2–3 May 1856, where it was bought for £283 10s. by Lord Harry Vane, later 4th Duke of Cleveland (succeeding his brothers, the second and third dukes), who probably removed it soon afterwards to his new home at Battle Abbey. It was in his posthumous sale on 8 March 1902, as lot 37, where it was bought for 55 guineas (£57 15s.) by Sir William Corry, Bt (1859–1926), director of the Cunard Steamship Company. It was sold with the contents of Corry’s home, Claremont, Esher, on 25–28 October 1926 as lot 285 and bought by ‘Mears’ for Colnaghi’s. From them it was acquired by the National Gallery in December. The purchase was made with the aid of the Lewis Fund.
Additional information
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Nicholas Penny, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings’, vol. 2, ‘Venice 1540–1600’, London 2008; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Bibliography
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1833J.D. Passavant, 'Besuch bei dem Banquier und Dichter Herrn Rogers', in Kunstreise durch England und Belgien, nebst einem Bericht über den Bau des Domthurms zu Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 1833
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1836J.D. Passavant, Tour of a German Artist in England, London 1836
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1837G.F. Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler in England und Paris, vol. 1, Berlin 1837
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1844A.M. Jameson, Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London: Containing Accurate Catalogues, Arranged Alphabetically, for Immediate Reference, Each Preceded by an Historical & Critical Introduction […], London 1844
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1845T. Penrice, Letters Addressed to the Late Thomas Penrice, Esq., while Engaged in Forming His Collection of Pictures, 1808-1814, ed. J. Penrice, Yarmouth 1845
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1854G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], vol. 2, trans. E. Eastlake, London 1854
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1857G. Scharf, Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Collected at Manchester in 1857, London 1857
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1872Royal Academy of Arts, Exhibition of the Works of the Old Masters (exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, 1872), London 1872
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1877J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, Titian: His Life and Times, London 1877
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1907R. Davies, 'An Inventory of the Duke of Buckingham's Pictures, etc., at York House in 1635', The Burlington Magazine, X/48, 1907, pp. 376-82
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1927C. Holmes, 'A Preparatory Version of Titian's "Trinity"', The Burlington Magazine, L/287, 1927, pp. 53-9
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1934L. Mayer, 'Anotaciones a algunos cuadros del Museo del Prado', Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, 42, 1934, pp. 291-9
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1936H. Tietze, Titian: Leben und Werk, 2 vols, Vienna 1936
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1959Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Venetian School, London 1959
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1959C. Gould, The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1959
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1959D. Frey, 'Das religiöse Erlebnis bei Tizian. Zur Darstkllung des Übersinnlichen in der Malerei des 16. Jahrhunderts', Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, I, 1959, pp. 218-61
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1967R. Longhi, Saggi e ricerche, 1925-1928, Florence 1967
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1969H.E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian: The Religious Paintings, 3 vols, London 1969
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1975C. Gould, Delaroche and Gautier: Gautier's Views on the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' and on other Compositions by Delaroche, London 1975
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1987Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
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2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
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2005G. Finaldi, '"La Gloria" de Tiziano', in J.Á. Lopera (ed.), Tiziano y el legado veneciano (Conference publication Museo del Prado, 2004-2005), Barcelona 2005, pp. 115-25
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2008Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, 2, Venice, 1540-1600, London 2008
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
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