Skip to main content

Main image

An Allegory of Prudence:
Catalogue entry

Catalogue contents

About the catalogue

Entry details

Full title
An Allegory of Prudence
Artist
Titian
Inventory number
NG6376
Author
Sir Nicholas Penny

Catalogue entry

Titian and Workshop
NG 6376 
An Allegory of Prudence

, 2008

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II: Venice 1540–1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2008).

© The National Gallery, London

c. 1550–65, perhaps completed later

Oil on canvas, 75.5 × 68.4 cm

Support

The measurements given above are those of the stretcher. The original canvas is of a coarse, open tabby weave with thick and uneven threads: 12 threads to the centimetre in the warp (running vertically) and 10 in the weft. This canvas is lined on to a canvas of medium‐fine tabby weave.

The ragged edges of the original canvas are partly concealed by putty, but it is clear that they do not extend to the left edge of the lining canvas. Cusping is obvious at the upper and lower edges; it may also be discerned at the sides. There are old tacking‐holes (perhaps original) at the lower edge.

The nineteenth‐century deal stretcher with crossbars is stamped I PEEL/LINER. The name ‘Peel’ is not very distinct. A paper label, perhaps removed from an earlier stretcher, is attached to the crossbars. It is inscribed in black ink in what may be an early nineteenth‐century hand: ‘Pope Paul III / Emp Charles V / alphonso duke of Ferara / by / Titian’. There is also a label for the winter exhibition of 1950–1 at the Royal Academy: ‘no. 128’–property of ‘Francis Howard Esq. 19 Limeway Terrace, Dorking, Surrey’.

Materials and Technique

The canvas is prepared with a gesso ground. In all the paint samples taken a first layer of a pale warm brown colour has been found. This is likely to be a priming covering the entire surface.

The composition was extensively revised. X‐radiographs show that the image was originally bordered on three sides (and perhaps completely surrounded) by a painted frame with a sinuous contour (fig. 1). The frame was not exactly symmetrical and was painted with boldly swept lines: it may have been cancelled before it was finished. A sample taken from the right‐hand side of the painting revealed a thick layer of lead white which has been painted over. This might support the hypothesis that a fictive stone frame or cartouche was originally intended.

Changes were made to the face in the centre but there is no evidence that the features were much altered. On the other hand, the profile on the right was originally that of a bearded old man rather than a youth. On the left, another profile was painted over, and in old photographs this is visible to the right of the present profile.

The animal heads were clearly an afterthought. Some of the lower paint layers are apparent in relief: notably, the leafy fringe of a collar just above the wolf’s eyes, and a strong diagonal in the shadow to the left of the lion’s head. The X‐radiographs show broad and vigorous sweeps of paint apparently indicating the folds of a cloak. These pass through the lion’s head and overlap those of both the wolf and the dog. It is not clear whether these preliminary ideas were ever fully executed, and the leafy collar is hard to reconcile with the cloak.

Traces of what is probably vermilion are visible under the brown paint above the cap of the old man. They correspond to a rough patch in the X‐radiograph and may represent an earlier idea for a larger cap.

Red paint is also seen lower right, below the dog’s muzzle, and a sample confirms that it is present also just above the muzzle. This is composed of lead white and red lake and may be the colour intended for the cloak whose folds have been noted.

The red of the robe worn by the old man is composed of lead white, vermilion and red lake. The ruddy brown spots on the young man’s tunic consist of red iron‐earth pigment.

There is no good evidence for the claims made in a recent article that the ‘head of the old man was painted long after the other two’, that the inscription was covered over by the artist and exposed by a later restoration, and that the ‘original version’ represented the three ages of man.1 Indeed, it is by no means certain that there was an ‘original version’ in the sense of a finished picture which was later altered.

Conservation

After being acquired by the Gallery in April 1966 the painting was cleaned and restored in the following June. The abrasion at the edges and in the face of the old man, also the distracting pentimenti in the latter, were made less obtrusive.

Condition

The central face is in good condition. There is considerable abrasion elsewhere, especially in the face of the old man. Increased transparency has made for some distracting pentimenti.

Attribution and Dating

The painting was never, it seems, questioned as a work by Titian during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Had it been better known in the late nineteenth century, however, its reputation as such might not have survived the competitive scrutiny of the great connoisseurs of that period. It was published as a Titian by Hadeln in The Burlington Magazine for October 1924, after it had been included in a loan exhibition that summer at Agnew’s.2 Thereafter, it was accepted by most scholars (including Suida, Tietze, Valcanover, Pallucchini and Wethey).3 Berenson, however, in his Lists of 1957, described it as only in ‘great part’ by Titian,4 and he was surely right. Indeed, only the central head is of the quality one would expect, and the head of the young man, puffy and inexpressive, could not be by him. Nor are the animal heads worthy of the artist who painted the puppy in the Vendramin Family (see p. 212) or the hound in the full‐length portrait in the Gemäldegalerie, Kassel,5 to mention only two examples.

Nevertheless, the painting was believed to be ‘100% Titian’ by both Hendy, the director of the Gallery, and Gould, the curator, responsible for its acquisition in 1966.6 The [page 237][page 238]attribution provoked little protest at the time, except from Edgar Wind, who found the ‘literal symmetry’ to be ‘without parallel in Titian’s œuvre’ and wondered whether it might be the work of Cesare Vecelli.7 The most recent scholars to have published the painting seem to have no doubts as to its autograph status.8

The painting has generally been regarded as a late work, probably of the 1560s, but if the central face is considered in isolation there seems no good reason why it should not have been painted in the 1550s. It compares very well with the bearded head of the full‐length portrait in Kassel, which may date from the 1550s or 1560s.9 The rest of the painting is a different matter and a later date is suggested by the head of the young man, which resembles very closely the heads added by an assistant to Titian’s Vendramin Family (as discussed below). There are also similarities between the lion’s head and the giant carved lion masks on the pedestals of the statues in the late Pietà.10

Lighting from the right is generally rare in paintings made from life by right‐handed artists and is unusual in Titian’s portraiture. A notable exception is the portrait of the Doge Andrea Gritti in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which is designed to be seen from a distance and from below. It was obviously commissioned for a specific setting. The Allegory, also lit from the right, may also have played a part in the decoration of a particular room. Of the works for a specific setting recorded as by Titian by contemporary sources, the best candidate would be the paintings he is said to have made for the attic frieze of the Camerino of Gabriel Vendramin (see pp. 2256), where a heraldic composition and symbolic subject would certainly have been appropriate.

A Posthumous Pastiche?

One explanation of the very mixed quality of the painting would be that it was an unfinished head left in the workshop at Titian’s death and then later worked up by another artist. If it is accepted that the painting has (or purports to have) an autobiographical character, this explanation seems more likely. In any case we know that at least one pastiche picture of this kind was manufactured, the so‐called Titian and his Friends that was in the collection of Charles I and remains in the Royal Collection.11 The clumsy composition and inconsistent lighting of that picture make it inconceivable that it was Titian’s invention. The two flanking figures are copied from independent portraits by him: the self portrait in Berlin, and a portrait from the Kress Collection in San Francisco of a man who holds a letter inscribed ‘Di Titiano Vicellio singolare amico’. The central figure seems to represent Andrea de’ Franceschi, the chancellor of Venice, and is close to Titian’s portrait of him in the Detroit Institute of Art.12 Another painting possibly in this category is the strange composition known as Tiziano con l’amorosa (‘Titian and his sweetinge’ or ‘Titian with a courtesan’, as British travellers called it), which enjoyed considerable fame in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was in the Borghese collection. It looks like an unfinished portrait of a courtesan, perhaps of the 1530s, to which a caricature of the frail old Titian has been added.13 There was an understandable desire to find painted autobiographical evidence of one of the greatest old masters. Posthumous portraits of Titian were made by Pietro della Vecchia (1602/3–1678), which were soon taken for self portraits.14

It would be easier to place the National Gallery’s painting in the category of false autobiography if the face of the old man bore more of a resemblance to Titian. In addition, the central head does not seem likely to be a study for – or the start of – a portrait such as Titian would have kept in the studio. The almost tearful eyes and the absence of self‐possession in the expression make this unlikely. Moreover, the X‐radiographs, although clearly revealing that extensive changes were made, do suggest that a triple head was always intended. It may therefore be that Titian accepted the unusual commission for an emblematic painting of this kind, painted the central face and sketched in the other two, but then allowed an assistant or associate to modify and complete it. The youthful face closely resembles those of the children on the left‐hand side of the Vendramin Family. Since these were certainly completed within Titian’s lifetime it is surely likely that this painting also was.

Meaning

The interpretation of the painting, which had been established by the mid‐eighteenth century and seems to have survived unchallenged in the nineteenth, is discussed in a separate section below.

When the painting was first published by Detlev von Hadeln in The Burlington Magazine for October 1924 the subject was identified as the Three Ages of Man and the animal heads were proposed as a ‘symbolical expansion of the idea’, alluding to the ‘subtlety of old age, the vigour of manhood and probably the frivolity of youth’. Hadeln noted a pair of Venetian woodcuts in which a man of forty was associated with a lion and a man of fifty with a wolf, but conceded that in these the younger man was associated with a calf. And in fact in imagery of this sort the dog is associated with age, not youth. The other problem with this interpretation is that it does not explain the prominence of the Latin text, but this was not as visible in 1924 as it is today.

This takes the form of a superscription divided to correspond with the three heads. It reads: ex præte / rito above the old man; præsens prvden / ter agit above the central, middle‐aged man; and ni fvtvrv / actione de / tvrpet above the youth. Together, this may be translated as ‘Learning from Yesterday, Today acts prudently, lest by his action he spoil Tomorrow’. The syntactical oddities are designed to make each part of the sentence accord with the three faces represented below. The faces may thus be taken to symbolise not only the Three Ages of Man but the division of time into past, present and future. The centrality in the inscription of Prudence, Prudenter, accords with the idea that this Virtue both attended to past experience and anticipated the future. Some extra significance may be intended by the alliterations, abbreviations and divisions of the words.15

Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, then both Privatdozenten at the University of Hamburg, pointed this out in an article [page 239]which appeared in The Burlington Magazine two years after Hadeln’s.16 They further noted that personifications of Prudence were often given three heads or three faces in addition to the more usual attributes of mirror and serpent. Illustrations of Prudence with a triple face (vultus trifons) can be found in fourteenth‐century manuscript illumination,17 and an especially elegant example from the second half of the fifteenth century is the Florentine pietra serena relief in the Victoria and Albert Museum inscribed Prudenza (fig. 2).18

Fig. 1

X‐radiograph of NG 6376. © The National Gallery, London.

Panofsky and Saxl also suggested a source for the animal heads. Giovanni Pierio Valeriano in his Hieroglyphica published in Venice in 1556 proposed as an emblem of Prudence a serpent with three heads – dog, wolf and lion.19 The source for this monster was given elsewhere by Valeriano as the Hellenistic Egyptian statue of Serapis in the temple near Alexandria described by Macrobius in his Saturnalia (probably composed in the early fifth century)20 and explained as an embodiment of Time: the voracious wolf representing the [page 240]past which devours the memory of all things, the vigorous lion representing the present, the dog representing the future, bounding forward, ever full of deceitful hope.

Fig. 2

Style of Desiderio da Settignano, Prudence, 1470s. Stone, 38.4 × 26.7 cm. London, Victoria and Albert Museum. © V&A Images / V&A Museum.

Fig. 3

Pietro Liberi, Age and Youth, c. 1640. Oil on canvas, 118 × 99 cm. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

For Macrobius, Serapis was identified with the sun and hence with Apollo. It is clear from Plutarch, who regarded Serapis as a variant of Pluto, that there was no consensus on this point.21 Such controversies, however, need not have had any relevance for Titian’s painting. The connection of the three animal heads with Serapis is mentioned again by Cartari in his Imagini de i Dei de gli Antichi published in Venice in 1571. But Macrobius’s description also had potential as a psychological drama, and in Giordano Bruno’s dialogues De gli Eroici Furori, dedicated to Philip Sidney and published in London in 1585, Maricondo, the pessimist, expresses his despair with reference to these animals – the alan, leon and can haunt him at morning, noon and dusk:
Con l’agro, con l’amaro, con il dolce
L’esperienza, i frutti, la speranza
Mi minacciò, m’affligono, mi molce.
L’età che vissi, che vivo, ch’avanza,
Mi fa tremante, mi scuote, mi folce
In absenza, presenza e lontanza.22
These six staccato lines may be very freely translated into the following four:
Experience is bitter, fruits are sour, hopes are sweet.
The first disturbs, the second disgust, the third assuage.
Stiff‐backed I must the unknown prospect meet
Though trembling to recall the past and battered by the present age.

In this extended sonnet (sonnetto codato) even the compensations of hope are false. Whatever the text adopted in the painting, the character of the central face is more suggestive of Maricondo’s anxieties than of a bland formula for sagacity. The text may have been in circulation before it was published or it may perhaps have been based on an earlier text.

In the following decade Cesare Ripa published his Iconologia which standardised for artists the visual embodiments and attributes of a large range of abstractions. In later editions of this volume Wise Counsel (Consiglio) is equipped with a model of the three animal heads as a ‘simbolo della prudenza’,23 and although this personification is not frequently found in art it was the subject of a painting by the Venetian Pietro Liberi (1614–1687) now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, in which a benevolent and a venerable old man, embraced by an eager youth, holds a book to indicate his wisdom, and a small model, rather like a chess piece, of the three animal heads to indicate prudence (fig. 3).24 The picture seems more optimistic, and must also have been much more accessible in its meaning, than Titian’s.

The problem that cannot be solved concerns Titian’s original intention. This, it seems, was not only to show a triple head without the animal heads, but to paint a triple head with a bearded face as the profile on the right. In this connection it is worth mentioning that there was a type of ancient cameo composed of several conjoined heads commonly [page 241]described as a ‘gryllos’ cameo. These were probably known by the mid‐sixteenth century and they seem to have inspired a remarkable drawing by Parmigianino in which profile bearded heads surround a younger, frontal, female one.25 A cameo of banded agate in the Hermitage, featuring four bearded male heads and four unbearded, presumably female, heads (fig. 5), is the most remarkable Renaissance exercise in this mode, but its exact date of manufacture is unknown. In other examples an animal head is joined to the human ones (fig. 4), and there are also examples consisting of conjoined animal heads alone.26 It may be that Titian’s painting originated as a design for such a cameo or was at least inspired by one in the possession of a Venetian collector of ancient gems, such as Gabriel Vendramin.

Fig. 4

Gryllos cameo. Banded onyx mounted in gold. Uncertain date, 2.95 × 1.95 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Milton Weil Collection. Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 5

Gryllos cameo. Dappled agate, with granulated gold border made for Catherine the Great. Before 1740, 2.5 × 2.2 cm. St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. © With permission from The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

The Painting as an Autobiographical Document

Panofsky, having (together with Saxl) identified the painting as an allegory of prudence in 1926, expanded on this in subsequent publications, citing, for example, the passage in Bruno quoted above, and he eventually developed a theory that the painting was a personal testament by the artist. This theory has obtained widespread support. It is based on the observation that the profile facing left bears some resemblance to Titian himself in old age, as depicted in the Prado self portrait. The central head he proposed as a portrait of Titian’s son Orazio (born 1525), and the youth as perhaps his young cousin Marco Vecellio (born 1545, died 1611), who also resided with the artist. He suggested that it commemorated legal and financial measures taken in connection with Titian’s estate: notably, the negotiations in the late 1560s for the transfer of the broker’s position in the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi (the sinecure granted him by the Venetian Republic).27

The relative ages of these three members of the artist’s family match the three heads fairly well, but the resemblance between the old man and Titian himself is not conclusive; furthermore, Titian’s eyes in his self portraits are grey, not brown. There can be no certainty that the central face is a portrait of Orazio, who seems in fact to have had a ruddy brown beard,28 and the identification of the youth as Marco Vecellio is entirely speculative.

The improbability of Panofsky’s identifications has been pointed out by Peter Meller,29 who proposed instead that the painting might include a portrait of Bernardino Tomitano, a professor of philosophy at Padua whose woodcut portrait published by Jacopo Filippo Tomasini in 1630 does bear a striking (but not a certain) resemblance to the central face here.

Cohen has recently proposed that the painting is an allegory ‘not of prudence but of sin’. Noting that sins were commonly personified as animals, she proposes that the animals here recall the leopard, lion and wolf (standing for Luxuria, Superbia and Avarizia) which impede Dante’s escape from the dark wood in the opening stanzas of the Inferno.30 This interpretation would only be tenable if the inscription could be ignored (she proposes that it belongs to an earlier version of the painting). Like Panofsky’s interpretation, it presupposes that the painting is some sort of personal message – for Cohen, indeed, a confession. The autobiographical emphasis would imply that the painting was entirely autograph, which is hard to believe. It is surely more likely that the painting was commissioned.

[page 242]

The Painting as Political Document

In the inventory of Crozat’s collection the painting was simply described as depicting three heads, but in the catalogue of the sale of the Duc de Tallard in Paris in 1756 Pierre Rémy, the expert responsible for the entries on the paintings, proposed that the central head was a portrait of Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, presumably on account of a slight similarity to the portrait by Titian (known also in numerous copies) of this notable patron of his.31 The old man was identified as Pope Julius II, presumably because of the cap and white beard and because the ferocious gaze suited the warrior pope’s reputation. The young man was identified more tentatively as the emperor – ‘on croit que c’est le portrait de Charles V, étant jeune’. If this theory was not Rémy’s, it may perhaps be attributed to Mariette, because we know that the latter supplied the equally ingenious but fanciful interpretation of another painting by Titian in the Tallard sale – that of the full‐length portrait in Kassel, which he proposed as a portrait of Dieudonné de Gozon.32

The painting was thus seen as a political allegory reflecting the dilemma of the dukes of Ferrara, who, in common with other Italian princes, had to decide whether to support the emperor or the pope. The lion symbolised the duke’s courage, the wolf the pope’s rapacity, the dog ‘la fidélité dans les engagements’, all of which rendered the painting ‘infiniment curieux & intéressant’. The fury of Julius II had, notoriously, threatened the survival of the duchy of Ferrara, although this was actually because of the duke’s allegiance with France. In Lucien Bonaparte’s sale the painting was catalogued as The Triple Mask‘the portraits of three of the leading characters of that period; viz. the Emperor Charles V, Pope Julius II, and Alfonso Grand [sic] Duke of Ferrara’.

Someone may have pointed out that Julius II died in 1513, six years before Charles V was elected emperor, because when the painting was exhibited at the British Institution ‘Julius II’ was changed to ‘Paul III’. This merely exchanged one problem for another because Alfonso I d’Este died in 1534, the year of Paul Ill’s election, but a date about then was obviously better suited to the style of the picture than one before 1513. The same title was used – perhaps merely for convenience – in the Carnarvon sale in 1918. The reference to Paul III may also suggest that someone was thinking of Titian’s unfinished portrait of Paul III with Alessandro and Ottavio Farnese at Capodimonte (fig. 3, p. 202),33 for there too we find men of three different ages, and in their relationship political tension and personal rivalry have long been detected.

There are many instances of a political interpretation being given to Italian Renaissance paintings.34 In the case of the Titian the interpretation must have been influenced by the use of animals in the eighteenth century to symbolise the great European political powers and by the emblematic devices of political caricature. It is not entirely anachronistic to suppose that political allegories could have been made in the Renaissance – there is, for example, a drawing by Amico Aspertini of King Louis XII of France stealing the tiara of Pope Julius II, whose purse is raided by King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and it involves animals as well: the Imperial eagle, the French cock, the dove of the Holy Ghost. And in 1512 the Bergamasks in Venice celebrated the expulsion of the French from their city by processing with a cock (for France) holding an eel (for Milan) in its mouth, impaled on a pike.35

A precondition for the acceptance of the political interpretation was a neglect, even among the learned, of Renaissance emblems. As Panofsky pointed out, Bernard de Montfaucon in his great compendium L’Antiquité expliquée seems even to have forgotten the passage in Macrobius on the animals of Serapis.36 And that Ripa was less frequently consulted is suggested by the fact that by 1765 the meaning of Pietro Liberi’s picture in Dresden had been forgotten.37

Function

When Hadeln published the Allegory in 1924 he suggested that it had been made as the cover for a portrait.38 The timpano – a stretched canvas cover for a painting – seems to have been a Venetian innovation, and was popular in northeast Italy from about 1520. A full discussion of the subject can be found in the first volume of my catalogue of sixteenth‐century Italian paintings.39

It seems likely that the Allegory was intended as some sort of cover, but no portrait has been identified as its pair – with the possible exception of Titian’s self portrait in the Prado (this idea, first published by Dülberg, has been repeated by others40). However, the Allegory is slightly smaller in size than its present stretcher and even if the canvas were originally slightly larger it could have been so only by a very small amount (see the account of the cusping and tacking‐edge given in the section on Support), which means that it would always have been too short to cover the Prado painting.

In addition, it may be remarked that although the Allegory does have some of the characteristics of a portrait cover – text, formality of design, cryptic and emblematic content – it seems odd to use a painting of heads as a cover, or as a sliding lid, or as a painted reverse for a portrait (and no examples are known). Covers were not only made for portraits, and Panofsky suggested that the painting may have served as the door of a cupboard in Titian’s own home.41

Previous Owners

No. 157 in the posthumous inventory, compiled on 30 May 1740, of the collection of Pierre Crozat was a painting on canvas measuring ‘deux pieds deux pouces et demy de haut sur deux pieds trois lignes de large’ and representing ‘trois têtes d’homme dont les trois phisionomies ont rapport aux trois animaux qui sont au‐dessous d’eux’.42 This must have been NG 6376. The measurements translate as 71.7 × 65.7 cm, which are somewhat smaller than those of the painting today, but it was on a different stretcher and was perhaps also partly concealed by its frame.

Pierre Crozat (1665–1740), known as ‘Crozat le Pauvre’ (to distinguish him from his brother Antoine, ‘Crozat le Riche’), was an immensely wealthy banker and one of the greatest collectors of the eighteenth century, indeed one of the most avid and discriminating of all collectors of drawings and prints and of engraved gems (he owned the gryllos cameo [page 243]discussed earlier, see p. 241, fig. 5). His collection of more than four hundred old master paintings seems mostly to have been formed before 1726. He is known to have visited Venice in 1715 and had many contacts with Venetian artists and dealers. But a Venetian picture of this kind could have found its way to northern Europe at an earlier date or indeed have been acquired in Rome, where Crozat went in 1714 to negotiate on behalf of the Duc d’Orléans (as discussed on p. 463) over the acquisition of the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. The painting was given a high valuation (2,000 livres) in the inventory of Crozat’s collection but many paintings were valued more highly (the version of Titian’s Danaë now in the Hermitage, for instance, at 12,000 livres).43

The painting is not mentioned in later catalogues and inventories of the Crozat collection, much of which was bought en bloc in 1770 by Catherine the Great. Instead, it found its way, with thirteen other paintings, into the collection of the last Duc de Tallard.44 Little is known about the formation of this collection, which also included paintings that had belonged to the Prince de Carignan (sold in 1742), the Maréchal d’Estrées (who died in 1737) and the Comte de Morville (who died in 1732), but it seems likely that it was developed greatly after the death in 1728 of the duke’s father, Marshal of France under Louis XIV and Ministre d’État under Louis XV.

Our knowledge of Tallard’s collection derives chiefly from the elegantly printed, detailed catalogue of his posthumous sale which took place in Paris over a period of ten days between 23 March and 3 April 1756. There were 204 paintings, most of them Italian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a collection in the taste of Rome, and indeed of the Palais Royal, distinguished from those formed by other rich collectors of that period in Paris, almost all of which were, as the author of the introduction to the catalogue observed, filled with ‘ces petits Tableaux Flamands et Hollandois’. The notable Dutch and Flemish pictures that were included in Tallard’s collection were not small; they included Rembrandt’s Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume and Rubens’s Watering Place, both now in the National Gallery (NG 4930 and NG 4815); the collection also included Style of Murillo NG 1286, Poussin NG 39 and (as a Dürer) the Master of Saint Giles NG 4681.

The Duc de Tallard’s cabinet was noted also for the elegance of its arrangement (there was nothing, the introduction to the catalogue claimed, of the confusion of a shop), with sculpture in bronze and marble, fine furniture and porcelain supporting and punctuating the display of paintings, all of which were in ‘riches bordures du dernier gout’.45

The Allegory, lot 84, was, as explained above, given a long entry expanding on its historical significance. It fetched 660 livres, a fairly high price – slightly more than Rembrandt’s portrait of Saskia, considerably more than Veronese’s Finding of Moses, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and far more than Giorgione’s Virgin and Child, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, but less than three rare pieces of Chinese porcelain of olive colour, and much less than a Cleopatra by Guido Reni or a pair of famous pastels by Rosalba Carriera purchased on behalf of ‘Madame La Dauphine’, who presented them to the king of Poland for the collection in Dresden.46

The buyer of the Allegory was marked in a copy of the catalogue in the National Gallery as Menabuoni, who was also recorded as the purchaser of a tondo of the Virgin and Child by the young Raphael, a Magdalen by Feti, a Temptation of Saint Anthony by Annibale Carracci, a pair of Bassanos and a portrait by Mor.47 The Chevalier Menabuoni’s cabinet in the Hôtel de Limoges in the Rue des Vieux Augustins was described in the year following the sale by Dézallier d’Argenville, who adds the information that Menabuoni was a member of the ‘Académie des Arcades de Rome’. This was repeated by Hébert in 1766 in his Dictionnaire pittoresque et historique.48 The collection was ‘fort curieux en Tableaux, Bronzes, Estampes, Médailles, Pierres gravées, &c’. The only old master paintings listed were those which Menabuoni had purchased in 1756, but he also owned a ‘cerf couché de grandeur naturelle’ painted by Oudry, which he is likely to have acquired at an earlier date. In addition, he owned drawings and ‘études’ by Oudry.49 Illuminated manuscripts are also mentioned, and a sequence of five hundred portraits of famous men drawn very carefully (‘dessinés très‐proprement’) from portraits in the Uffizi. This hints at a connection with Florence where the Feti and the Annibale Carracci seem to have been exhibited in 1767.50 Menabuoni is mentioned as a resident of Florence by the Antiquario Fiorentino in 1771. And it is in Florence that the collection of Giovanni Gasparo Menabuoni (also apparently previously known as Menabuoi) was sold or offered for sale ‘Chez M. Vincent Gotti’ in 1786 with a catalogue raisonné. Since the Titian is not included we may presume that it had been sold in either France or Florence.51

The painting next emerges in the collection of Lucien Bonaparte, the Emperor Napoleon’s brother. It is not included in the list of Lucien’s pictures compiled shortly after his arrival in Rome in 1804, nor is it included among the etchings after his paintings made in Rome but published by him in London in 1812.52 This suggests either that it was a relatively late arrival in the collection or that it was not considered an especially valuable item. Since it was sent to London and catalogued by Buchanan at the end of 1814 as a ‘chef‐d’œuvre, painted at the best time of Titian’,53 it is unlikely to have been acquired in Rome, because works in this category were not allowed to be exported. Many of Lucien’s paintings, however, came from Florence and that seems the most likely source. The painting was offered for sale in London on 16 May 1816 as no. 167 and was bought in at 250 guineas. It was illustrated in the Galerie des tableaux du prince Lucien Bonaparte, which seems to have been published in 1822, preparatory to the Paris sale held between 25 December 1823 and 15 January 1824, where it was no. 28. It is not clear what sort of sale this was or whether the annotations indicate the offering price, the reserve price or the sale price, but 8,000 francs is written next to no. 28 in the copy now in the Louvre. Its purchaser must have been Samuel Woodburn, who subsequently offered the painting for sale in March 1826.54

[page 244]

NG 6376 was bought from Woodburn in 1826, or soon afterwards, for, or by, George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784–1860), scholarly diplomat and statesman, then known as ‘Athenian Aberdeen’ on account of his travels, much later First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister (1852–5), and more than anyone responsible for ensuring that Eastlake became director of the National Gallery.55 He certainly owned the painting by 1828, when he lent it to the British Institution’s exhibition. Aberdeen’s taste in pictures was probably fairly conventional56 but he was certainly attracted by historical portraiture and historical subjects, and not averse to riddles and peculiarities. He bought, for 500 guineas, the portrait of Anton Francesco degli Albizzi by Sebastiano del Piombo, which was sold by Robert Heathcote at Phillips on 5 April 1805 (lot 52, ‘the portrait of Lorenzo di Medici, the Outline by Michael Angelo … a most astonishing performance. Such magnificence could only be produced by the joint efforts of these two celebrated artists, by whom painting is here carried to the zenith of perfection’),57 and he owned the great Van Dyck portrait of Paola Adorno, Marchesa di Brignole Sale, now in the Frick Collection, New York (in his day believed to be of the Duchess of Savoy).58 Among other pictures that he is recorded as purchasing are The Doge and Court of Venice returning from the Ceremony of Wedding the Adriatic attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto (for 100 guineas at Richard Westall’s sale on 9 March 1813)59 and Interior of the Inquisition (for £10 4s. at Jones’s auction house, Dublin, 14 May 1812).60 This last is one of the few old master paintings to remain at his Scottish seat, Haddo House (now National Trust for Scotland). He also owned the very curious picture of a ‘wild boy’ then attributed to Veronese.61 Of the paintings that remained with the family until quite recently, the two most distinguished were an Adoration of the Shepherds by Veronese now on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,62 and the Butcher’s Shop by Annibale Carracci now in the Kimbell Art Gallery, Fort Worth.63

Presumably Lord Aberdeen kept the Titian in London, at least in 1828, when it was lent to the British Institution. It may have been transferred to Haddo in the middle of the century. It passed in succession to the 5th Earl (d. 1864), the 6th Earl (d. 1870) and the 7th (later created 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Tamair), who lent it in 1883 to the exhibition in Edinburgh of Old Masters and Scottish National Portraits. There it was noted by the Chronique des Arts as ‘un des plus beaux morceaux de peinture de toute l’exposition’,64 but it seems not to have been known to any of the connoisseurs who might have inspected the picture in London. It was still in the family’s possession on 2 October 1901 but its sale seems already to have been discussed.65

The 7th Earl was appointed Lord‐Lieutenant and Governor‐General of Ireland in 1886. He was Governor‐General of the Dominion of Canada from 1893 to 1898 and Viceroy of Ireland 1905–15. But high office brought him few rewards, and his philanthropic and other ventures, as well as his wife’s charities, seem to have been extravagant. They coincided with the agricultural depression and when he died in 1934 the family estate in Scotland had shrunk to 15,000 acres, from the 75,000 he had inherited.66 It is not clear when the Titian was sold but the painting was in any case the property of Alfred de Rothschild by 1917.

An account of ‘Mr Alfred’, a Trustee of the National Gallery, will be found in an appendix (pp. 472–5). The painting was sold shortly after his death by his principal heir, the Countess of Carnarvon (rumoured to have been his illegitimate daughter), at Christie’s on 31 May 1918 as lot 157. It was purchased by ‘Roberts’ for 28 guineas (£29 8s.). Roberts was acting for Francis Howard of Dorking, Surrey (or so we must deduce from the ‘F. Howard’ written beneath the name Roberts in the National Gallery’s copy of the catalogue). Francis Garraway Howard (1874–1954), known as ‘Tudie’, who had been responsible for organising loan exhibitions at prominent London galleries between 1909 and 1914,67 was an American‐born socialite and philanderer remarkable for his good looks. He became director of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1912 and moved to the Grafton Gallery in 1921. In addition to dealing and collecting for himself, he acted as adviser for Benjamin Guinness and acquired many of the Elizabethan portraits at Ditchley Park. He was the father of Brian Howard (1905–1958), the minor poet and flamboyant homosexual.68 He was certainly fortunate to acquire NG 6376 for such a low sum. The Aberdeens knew that the painting was of value, for it was insured, according to an inventory of 1899, for £2,000.69 It was, it would seem, not a painting to Rothschild’s taste. Perhaps he acquired it as an investment or as part of a group, and it was taken straight from store to the saleroom after his death. It was, however, careless to let it sell at such a low price.

The painting was borrowed for an exhibition at Agnew’s in the summer of 1924, and the firm’s books reveal that it was valued, presumably for insurance, at £9,000.70 Howard died in 1954 and his collection of pictures – old masters and historical portraits – was sold at Christie’s on 25 November 1955. There were 55 old masters and 66 historical portraits. The Titian, lot 44, was by far the most valuable item in the first category (or in the second, to which it also had some claim to belong). It was bought by Legatt for 11,000 guineas (£11,550) together with an American partner, probably David Koetser. The National Gallery’s Board of Trustees had authorised the director to bid, but the condition of the painting caused him some anxiety and it was also thought unwise to compete in the saleroom against what was rumoured to be determined opposition.71 In February 1958 an application to export the picture from London to Switzerland was made, with a valuation of £20,000. An objection was made on account of the interest expressed in it by the National Gallery of Scotland and the application was withdrawn. In February 1966 another application was made, this time with a valuation of 2,100,000 Swiss francs (then equivalent to about £173,000). In April 1966 the painting was presented to the Gallery by David and Betty Koetser. David Maurits Koetser was the son of Henry Koetser, an art dealer who had moved to London in 1923. After working in London, at first in partnership with his brothers and then independently, David Koetser moved to New York in 1939. In 1966 he decided to [page 245]retire to Switzerland for reasons of health and the presentation of this picture was connected with this reconsideration of his professional position. He soon resumed dealing, based in Zurich. The collection of old master paintings that he owned together with his wife was formed into a foundation in their name, and was loaned, and eventually bequeathed, to the Kunsthaus in that city.72

Provenance

See above for a full account. Pierre Crozat before his death in 1740; Duc de Tallard before his death in 1756; lot 84 in the Duc de Tallard’s posthumous sale, 23 March–3 April 1756, where bought by Giovanni Gasparo Menabuoni of Paris and Florence; Lucien Bonaparte by 1814; no. 28 in Bonaparte’s sale of 25 December 1823–15 January 1824, Paris; with Samuel Woodburn in London by March 1826; the 4th Earl of Aberdeen before 1828; by descent to the 7th Earl; still his property in 1901; Alfred de Rothschild, by 1917; on his death on 31 January 1918 inherited by Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, by whom sold at Christie’s on 31 May 1918, lot 157, where bought by ‘Roberts’ for Francis Howard. Howard’s posthumous sale 25 November 1955 (lot 44), where bought by Legatt. Presented in April 1966 by David and Betsy Koetser.

Drawings

A drawing in the Uffizi Galleries of an old man with a book and an owl, wearing a heart on a chain, which has been attributed to Titian by some scholars (including Hadeln in his study of Titian’s drawings), evidently represents Good Counsel (as recognised by Caldwell in 197373) and has thus been connected with the National Gallery’s painting; but the attribution (as acknowledged by Tietze in 194474) is not well founded, nor is there any real connection between the appearance of the old man in the drawing and the old man in NG 6376.

Exhibitions

London 1828, British Institution ; Edinburgh 1883, Old Masters and Scottish National Portraits (335); London 1924, Agnew’s ; London 1950–1, Royal Academy Loan Exhibition (209); London 2003, National Gallery (34); Madrid 2003, Museo Nacional del Prado.

The painting is in a carved and gilt wood frame with a prominent oak‐leaf wreath moulding with hollows at either side, pearls at the sight edge, and leaves on a back ogee moulding. The wreath runs from a ribboned centre on each side. The frame, probably Italian and of the late sixteenth or seventeenth century, came from the Gallery’s stock. It was reduced (by cutting at the ribbons) to fit the painting, and toned to the instructions of Philip Hendy soon after the painting was acquired by the Gallery in 1966.75

Appendix
Triple Heads in Renaissance Venice and Padua

A likely source for Titian’s painting as it was completed must, as mentioned above, be Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica of 1556. It has also been suggested that the artist may have been inspired by the woodcut illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the allegorical romance published by the Aldine Press in Venice in 1499. A triple human head occurs in the illustration of a herm facing page y, and a triple animal head occurs in the illustration on the opposite page – both are shown carried in procession in succeeding illustrations (pp. y I verso and y II recto). Artists certainly used the Hypnerotomachia (Garofalo’s Pagan Sacrifice, NG 3928, is a case in point) and that Titian may have referred to it when painting this Allegory is suggested by the leafy collar in the X‐radiograph, which, as Madlyn Kahr pointed out, resembles the leaves in the woodcut.76 This connection is uncertain, however, for the heads on the herm are all of the same age, and the animal heads are not distinctly characterised, thus the Hypnerotomachia would have been at best a supplementary source.

The Saturnalia of Macrobius was familiar to Renaissance scholars and the account of the triple‐headed attribute of Serapis which it contained was influential in many different ways, chiefly, perhaps, because it was adopted by Petrarch in his Latin epic Africa.77 But in Petrarch the animal with three heads is an emblem of Time. It probably also had this general significance when it was combined with Fortuna on the reverse of Giovanni Zacchi’s medal of Andrea Gritti in 1536.78 Before Valeriano we cannot assume that the connection with Prudence would have been made, nor in fact can we be certain that the triple face or triple head (vultus trifons or tricipitium) was invariably the emblem of Prudence.

It is important to emphasise this because Manfredo Tafuri, in a brilliant and influential account of Venice in this period, has proposed that the popularity of triple heads in Venetian art reflects ideals widely shared by the Venetian patriciate.79 But there seems no good reason why these ideals should not have been given explicit rather than cryptic expression. Moreover, there is little real consistency between the images cited, and in some cases other interpretations of their meaning are more likely.

The three best‐known examples of the use of such heads in Venice are the triple boy’s head in the centre of the highest of the marble steps of the Virgin’s throne in the altarpiece by Fra Antonio di Negroponte of the mid‐fifteenth century in S. Francesco della Vigna; the miniature triple head on the ledge of the portrait of a young man attributed to Giorgione and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and the helms crested with three heads supported by the spears held by soldiers dressed all’antica which are carved in high relief at either end of the second floor (the higher of the two piani nobili) of the Palazzo Trevisan in Canonica (between S. Marco and S. Zaccaria) built in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The first of these examples features three identical faces and may in fact be a Trinitarian symbol (such as is certainly the case with the three heads in the tympanum of the Tabernacolo della Mercanzia in Orsanmichele in Florence, also cited by Tafuri as an emblem of Prudence). Also, it seems odd to consider these three heads in isolation when other, similar, single heads of children occur elsewhere on the throne – heads that would be difficult to associate with Prudence. In [page 246]the case of the Palazzo Trevisan carvings, the device must surely have been adopted as a reference to the family name.80

Fig. 6

Triple head. Detail of the pilaster from the façade of the Palazzo Vendramin, Venice. © Photo: Francesco Turio Böhm, Venice.

For the purpose of the Allegory of Prudence the most intriguing of the earlier triple heads in Venice are those that were carved, in the early sixteenth century, in the Istrian stone pilasters which flank the main entrance of Palazzo Vendramin at S. Fosca (fig. 6). Whereas Tafuri asserted that these heads (like those on Palazzo Trevisan) represented the Three Ages of Man – something earlier denied by Arasse – it must be admitted that the bearded head does not look old, and the difference between the other two is not marked.

There was also an ‘imagine plastica di una figura tricipite’ on the façade of the Dondi palace in Padua. One is also incorporated on the façade of Alvise Cornaro’s Odeo – in this case certainly derived from the woodcut in Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica (Valeriano was close to Cornaro).81

For Tafuri the idea of the tricipitium is also reflected in other artistic representations of the Three Ages of Man, notably Giorgione’s Three Philosophers, and other striking representations of the Three Ages were made in Venice during this period, notably the warriors of three generations who support Doge Alvise Mocenigo’s sarcophagus, carved by Pietro Lombardo for SS. Giovanni e Paolo in the 1490s, and the frontal head of a young man, perhaps representing Saint John, between a pair of profile busts, apparently of Christ and an older bald and white‐bearded apostle, in the panel by Giovanni Agostino da Lodi in the Accademia. This last painting may well be relevant for the form, if not the meaning, of Titian’s painting.82

Notes

1. Cohen 2000, pp. 51–2, 62, 69. (Back to text.)

3. Suida 1935, p. 89; Tietze 1936, I, p. 293, plate 249; Valcanover 1960, II, p. 49, plate 120; Pallucchini 1969, p. 317; Wethey 1971, pp. 145–6, no. 107. (Back to text.)

4. Berenson 1957, p. 187. (Back to text.)

5. Wethey 1971, p. 73, no. 1; Valcanover et al. 1990, p. 290, no. 46 (entry by Jürgen M. Lehmann). (Back to text.)

6. Report addressed to the Board of Trustees, dated 3 March 1966. (Back to text.)

7. Wind 1967, pp. 260–1, note 4. (Back to text.)

8. Pedrocco 2001, p. 281 (entry by Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel); Humfrey 2004, p. 176, no. 64. (Back to text.)

9. Wethey 1971, p. 73, no. 1 (as the Duke of Atri); Valcanover et al. 1990, p. 290, no. 46 (entry by Jürgen M. Lehmann). (Back to text.)

10. Wethey 1969, pp. 122–3, no. 86, plate 136; Valcanover et al. 1990, pp. 373–5, no. 77 (entry by Giovanna Nepi Scirè). (Back to text.)

11. Shearman 1983, pp. 268–71, no. 294. (Back to text.)

12. Wethey 1971, p. 100, no. 34, plate 63 (Detroit); pp. 102–3, no. 39, plate 91 (San Francisco); pp. 143–4, no. 104, plate 209 (Berlin). (Back to text.)

13. The Morrison Collection, Sudeley Castle (currently in store). Wethey 1971, pp. 181–2, no. X 102. Hume (1829, p. 69) knew the painting only from a print and believed it to represent Titian and his wife. An intelligent explanation of this picture was supplied by Jameson (1846, pp. 51–2) when it was in the Morrison house in Harley Street, London. She believed it to be a portrait of his daughter, Lavinia, left unfinished by Titian at her death, and that ‘the head of Titian, the too significant action, the death’s head in the casket, and the Latin inscription’ were added later. Waagen (1857, p. 110) agreed that it was partly by a ‘scholar’. A related painting in the Hermitage, La Seduzione, is attributed to Cariani (Pallucchini and Rossi 1983, p. 122, no. 40). (Back to text.)

14. Aikema 1990, pp. 28, 143, nos 173, 174; Wethey 1971, p. 180, nos X 93, X 94. (Back to text.)

15. See especially Lebenstejn 1973, also Arasse 1984, p. 296. (Back to text.)

16. Panofsky and Saxl 1926, pp. 177–81. The article originated as a letter responding to an enquiry by Campbell Dodgson, who translated it and submitted it to The Burlington Magazine. (Back to text.)

17. Sherman 1996, p. 127, fig. 34a. (Back to text.)

18. Pope‐Hennessy 1964, I, pp. 145–6, no. 121; III, fig. 140. (Back to text.)

19. Valeriano 1556, XXXII, fol. 229r [De tricipitio]. (Back to text.)

20. Macrobius, I, XX, as quoted by Panofsky 1930, p. 6, note 1. (Back to text.)

21. De Iside et Osiride, 28 and 78. (Back to text.)

22. Bruno 1585, II, chapter 1. (Back to text.)

23. Okayama (1992, p. 48) indicates that the emblem is common to illustrations of Consiglio in Italian, Dutch and Flemish editions of the Iconologia in the seventeenth century, but in fact the first illustrated edition, the Italian edition of 1603, does not include it. (Back to text.)

[page 247]

24. Weber 1995, pp. 151–7. Then considered as a studio replica, it is now classed as an autograph work (Marx 2005, II, p. 331, no. 1050, gallery no. 530). (Back to text.)

25. The drawing, in the Fondazione Horne, Florence, was in the Arundel Collection. Popham 1971, I, p. 78, no. 130; III, pl. 423. (Back to text.)

26. For the eight heads see Kagan and Neverov 2001, p. 178, no. 373/191. Inv. No. K2762. This cameo was purchased by Catherine the Great together with the gem cabinet of the Duc d’Orléans and was previously in the Crozat collection. It was first published in Crozat’s collection in 1741 as no. 1312, then by Arnaud and Coquille in 1784, II, p. 64. For the cameo of three heads and a ram see Kris 1932, fig. 16 on plate XXV and p. 29 (now Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 39.22.33). There is a replica of this cameo in the British Museum. For a cameo of three animal heads see Arnaud and Coquille 1784, II, pp. 171–4 and pl. 65. This is also in the Hermitage. (Back to text.)

27. Panofsky 1930, pp. 1–35 (esp. pp. 1–8; Panofsky 1955, pp. 149–51; Panofsky 1970, pp. 181–205. (Back to text.)

28. The point about Titian’s eyes was made in a letter to the director of the National Gallery by Hans Buhr, 24 July 1987. For Orazio’s beard see the remarkable wax portrait medallion in Humfrey 2004, pp. 368–9, no. 202 (entry by Godfrey Evans). Humfrey writes (p. 176) that ‘it may be plausibly argued that the central figure [in the painting] is compatible’ with the portrait in the wax. In fact the difference is such as to provide a conclusive case against Panofsky’s interpretation. Charles Hope points out to me that the wax appears to be derived from the medal by Ardenti rather than the other way around, but it may still have been made with a knowledge of the colour of Orazio’s beard. (Back to text.)

29. Meller 1980, p. 324. (Back to text.)

30. Cohen 2000, especially pp. 56–7. Her theory was first advanced in an earlier article on animals in Titian’s paintings (1998, p. 197). (Back to text.)

31. Rémy 1756, lot 84. For the portrait of Alfonso see Wethey 1971, pp. 94–5, no. 26, plate 40 (but this is not the original, as he supposes). (Back to text.)

32. Mariette 1720, X, p. 329. Wethey 1971, p. 73, no. 1. (Back to text.)

33. Wethey 1971, pp. 125–6, no. 76. (Back to text.)

34. For example, Walpole 1747, p. 75, proposing that Bordone’s Augustus and the Sibyl represented the Emperor Charles V praying to the Virgin for forgiveness for the Sack of Rome. (Back to text.)

35. For Aspertini see Faietti and Scaglietti Kelescian 1995, pp. 264–7. For the Bergamasks see Sanuto 1879–1903, XIII, 1886, col. 455 (8 February 1511, modern 1512). (Back to text.)

36. Panofsky 1970, p. 196, note 43. (Back to text.)

37. Weber 1995, p. 151. (Back to text.)

38. Hadeln 1924. The theory is repeated by Suida (1935, p. 89). (Back to text.)

39. Penny 2004, pp. 99–101. (Back to text.)

40. Dülberg 1990, pp. 52–3, 296. (Back to text.)

41. Panofsky 1970, p. 202. (Back to text.)

42. Stuffmann 1968, p. 76. (Back to text.)

43. Ibid. , pp. 11–35. Also Cornaro exhibition 1980, p. 200, no. 7, entry by Gunter Schweikhart. (Back to text.)

44. ‘Tallart’ in Biographie Universelle but ‘Tallard’ in the sale catalogue and most early sources. The thirteen Crozat pictures are identified in his sale catalogue (Tallard 1756). (Back to text.)

45. Tallard 1756, introduction p. 3; Avantpropos, p. iv. (Back to text.)

46. The Rembrandt (lot 156) sold for 602 livres; the Veronese (lot 107) for 400; the Giorgione (lot 88) for 200; the porcelain (lot 1040) for 820; the Reni (lot 61) for 1,520; and the Rosalba (lot 117) for 2,800. Huge prices were also paid by the king of Prussia (notably 7,500 livres for Rubens’s Adoration). (Back to text.)

47. Lots 14, 27, 54, 95, 135; copies of the catalogue recorded in the Getty Research Institute mark these as acquired by M. de Versure or M. de la Versure but in some cases as acquired by Menabuoni (spelled variously), bidding for him. (Back to text.)

48. Dézallier d’Argenville 1757, p. 206; Hébert 1766, I, pp. 84–5. (Back to text.)

49. Opperman 1977, I, pp. 490–1, no. P355. (Back to text.)

50. Antiquario Fiorentino 1776. (Back to text.)

51. Gotti also offered a collection of 77 paintings formed to ‘illustrate the entire history of Tuscan art’. This collection was still on offer in 1793, when the catalogue of 1786 was reissued. It is not clear if the collection was still connected with Menabuoni, whose son’s natural history collection and chemistry laboratory are cited in a guide of that year (Anon. 1793, pp. 277–8). (Back to text.)

52. Edelein‐Badie 1997, p. 279, no. 263. (Back to text.)

53. Buchanan 1824, II, pp. 277–8. He mentions the price of 500 guineas. (Back to text.)

54. Information kindly communicated by Burton Fredericksen. (Back to text.)

55. Robertson 1978, pp. 139–40, for Aberdeen and Eastlake. For a brief survey of Aberdeen and his connection with the arts generally see Smith 2003. (Back to text.)

56. Evidence for his taste in paintings is not easy to find but notebooks survive for his continental tour of November 1802–February 1803 (British Library Add. MS 43335 and 43336). Raphael’s portrait of Leo X, which he saw in the Louvre, he considered to be ‘the finest in the world’ (43335, fol. 39v) and he was especially struck by the works of Veronese, Rubens and Luca Giordano in Genoa (43336, fols 60–62). (Back to text.)

57. Now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, nos 61–79. See Howard 1988, pp. 457–9. Also Farington 1978–98, VI, 1979, pp. 2211, 2246, 2278. (Back to text.)

58. Frick Collection 14.1.43. (Back to text.)

59. Phillips, London, 9 March 1813, lot 84. Sold Christie’s, London, 29 May 1849. (Back to text.)

60. Said to be from Lord Bristol’s collection, lot 10. (Back to text.)

61. Sold at Sotheby’s in the 1940s. For some years in the collection of Arnold Haskell. Now at the Château de Blois, attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola. (Back to text.)

62. Humfrey 2004, pp. 116–17, no. 58. In July 1861 the 5th Earl offered this painting to the National Gallery together with the portrait of Cardinal Pucci then attributed to Raphael (now acknowledged as by Parmigianino and on loan to the National Gallery), for £1,000 each (Board Minutes, IV, pp. 255–6). The portrait, later sold to his kinsman, the Marquess of Abercorn (as was the ‘Duchess of Savoy’ by Van Dyck), had belonged to the brother of the 4th Earl, Sir Robert Gordon (1791–1847), when it was exhibited at the British Institution in 1837. (Back to text.)

63. Malafarina 1976, p. 88, no. 5 (when still in the Aberdeen collection). Sold by the National Trust for Scotland on behalf of the Haddo House endowment, Christie’s, London, 7 July 1978, p. 138. (Back to text.)

64. ‘C’ 1883, p. 252. (Back to text.)

65. Letter of 2 October 1901 from the 7th Countess cited by Smith 2003, p. 49. (Back to text.)

66. Gordon 1985, p. 196. (Back to text.)

67. He was Honorary Secretary for the National Loan Exhibition at the Grafton Gallery 1909–10 and organiser and catalogue author of the National Loan Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery 1913–14. (Back to text.)

68. For Howard generally see Lancaster 1968, pp. 6–12. (Back to text.)

69. Haddo House estate archives. (Back to text.)

70. Microfilm of ‘Property Received’ books, vol. for 1923–34, fol. 21, stock no. 781c. (Back to text.)

71. Memorandum of 25 November 1955, minute 197. Also NG 1/13, Minutes of the meetings of the Board of Trustees, pp. 258 and 269. (Back to text.)

73. Caldwell 1973, pp. 319–22. (Back to text.)

74. Tietze 1944, p. 315. (Back to text.)

75. Annual Report for January 1965–December 1966, p. 124. (Back to text.)

76. Kahr 1966, p. 125. (Back to text.)

77. Book III, lines 162ff. (Back to text.)

78. Habich 1922, pl. LXXXV, 5. (Back to text.)

79. Tafuri 1995, pp. 10–13, plates 11–13. (Back to text.)

80. There is a similar trio, perhaps a pasticcio, in a palace corbel in Campiello S. Maria Nova, Venice. (Back to text.)

81. Puppi 1980, pp. 199–200, Stucco (7), entry by Gunter Schweikhart. (Back to text.)

82. Pointed out to me by Jacqui McComish, Moschini Marconi 1955, p. 170, no. 190. (Back to text.)

Appendix of Collectors’ Biographies

Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836), son of a Jewish banker in Frankfurt, arrived in Manchester from Germany in 1799 and soon moved to London, where he transformed the financial operations of Europe and established the most powerful banking dynasty in the modern world, with branches in Germany, France and Britain. His British grandchildren were fully accepted in the uppermost echelons of society and were at ease in the royal enclosure at Ascot and the smoking room at Sandringham.1 Alfred Charles de Rothschild, known as ‘Mr Alfred’, was the fourth child and second son of Nathan’s son Baron Lionel de Rothschild (1808–1879). His elder brother, Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1840–1915), known as ‘Natty’ among his friends, was created Baron Rothschild of Tring in 1885 (his father had been a baron, but of the Austrian Empire). Both brothers had been friends of the Prince of Wales when they were up at Cambridge and remained on close terms with him. Their cousin Hannah (1851–1890) married Lord Rosebery, who was prime minister in 1894–5.

Alfred was active in politics and a champion of the Unionist cause in the late 1880s, in which, as also in financial affairs, he followed his brother’s lead. Owing to his declining health he refused re‐election as director of the Bank of England in 1890 (he had been the first member of the Jewish faith to be entrusted with the management of that institution) but he did agree to serve as a trustee of both the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection, taking up the former appointment on 30 May 1892. His eligibility is likely to have been apparent since the summer of 1884, when he had helped the National Gallery’s trustees in their negotiations with the Duke of Marlborough.2 Charles Holmes, who became director of the Gallery shortly before Alfred’s death, recalled that he was respected ‘for his wealth, his masterful temper and his collection of pictures, from which they [the other trustees] optimistically imagined that the Gallery would receive some very considerable benefit’.3

The expectation of such a benefit had not in fact been obviously misplaced. Alfred was a friendly rival of his cousin and brother‐in‐law Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898), the builder of Waddesdon, who bequeathed his great collection of objets d’art (partly inherited from his father, Baron Anselm (1803–1874)) to the British Museum.4 Furthermore, Lord Rothschild (Alfred’s brother ‘Natty’) was one of the three wealthy individuals who stepped forward in 1890 to secure from Lord Radnor a Moroni (NG 1316), a ‘Velazquez’ (NG 1315, now attributed to Mazo) and Holbein’s Ambassadors for the Gallery, certainly with Alfred’s agreement and perhaps at his prompting.5 Alfred himself made contributions towards the cost of acquiring the great portraits of Jacob Trip and Margaretha de Geer by Rembrandt (NG 1674 and 1675) in 1899,6 and the Gossaert Adoration of the Kings (NG 2790) in 1911.7 It is likely that he encouraged the bequest by the Misses Cohen of John Samuel’s collection8 and perhaps also that of Lady Lindsay.9 He himself bequeathed to the Gallery only one painting from his great collection, Reynolds’s full‐length portrait of Lady Bamfylde (now in Tate Britain), and although this must have been a disappointment the painting was an example of a type of portrait that was far more admired then than is the case today.10

Because of his position in high society and in the world of finance Alfred was almost certainly well informed about families which might be obliged to sell, or at least consider selling, their paintings. In any case, he and other members of his family were often offered paintings (Lord Darnley’s Allegories by Veronese, for example – see p. 424) far in advance of the National Gallery. But I have found no evidence that he ever shared information of this kind with the director or his fellow trustees, and it is unlikely that he would have felt any obligation to do so. Just as the Marquess of Lansdowne (created a trustee in 1894) and the Earl Brownlow (created one in 1897) were not embarrassed by the fact that they were engaged in the selling of major old master paintings while serving as trustees of the Gallery, so Alfred did not feel inhibited about buying such paintings for himself when he was one. Both Alfred and Lord Lansdowne had a very conservative vision of the National Gallery, regarding it as an institution to be protected rather than developed. They were inclined to regard the director as little more than a head clerk whose aspirations needed to be crushed and whose initiatives needed to be curbed. Alfred had a low opinion of Poynter and no confidence in Holroyd and did much to destroy the morale of both men and the health of the latter. His contacts with Agnew’s and, through them, with Fairfax Murray enabled him to save the Gallery from acquiring a fake in the winter of 1908.11 But most of his interventions were less fortunate.

In 1894, two years after Alfred’s appointment as a trustee, Burton retired as director. There had been general [page 473]dissatisfaction with Burton’s performance during the 1890s and it was natural in these circumstances to question the nature of the director’s authority, but the ‘Rosebery minute’, which removed most of the director’s powers, was a fatal step, making almost impossible any ‘definite policy of purchase or for arresting the unhappy exodus of works of art’.12 The wiser trustees were opposed to the minute13 and it was believed that Alfred was responsible for it both because he had been highly critical of Burton and because he had easy access to Lord Rosebery’s ear.14

In 1897 Alfred declared Holbein’s Christina of Denmark (NG 2475) to be unworthy of the National Gallery15 – luckily its acquisition was made possible by an anonymous private donation to the National Art Collections Fund. In 1904 he opposed the purchase of Titian’s Portrait of a Man with a Quilted Sleeve (NG 1944).16 The frustrations of attempting to persuade the trustees even to consider this acquisition led to Poynter’s resignation. In 1908 Alfred professed himself to be ‘astonished beyond words’ by the plan to pledge money granted to the Gallery in advance for A Family Group in a Landscape by Hals (NG 2285), which he regarded as an ‘extremely coarse specimen of the master’.17 His indignation led him to threaten to reveal his dissent to the newspapers; and, presumably to counter any such action, the senior trustee, George Howard, Lord Carlisle (appointed in 1881), felt obliged to obtain an exact record of his poor attendance at meetings.18 In 1914 Alfred stopped the acquisition of Titian’s Death of Actaeon (catalogued here).19 In 1916 he objected to the acquisition of Masaccio’s Virgin and Child (NG 3046).20 In the same year he expressed his view that the Gallery should be closed for the duration of the war. In the following year he reiterated his conviction that it was ‘not the right moment’ to purchase paintings.21

Alfred de Rothschild seems to have been a fastidious aesthete. The privately printed catalogue of his collection published in 1884 includes photographs of the exquisitely arranged rooms in his London house, 1 Seamore Place (fig. 11). A famous Greuze (Le Baiser envoyé) was hung above a Riesener secrétaire, with mounts by Gouthière embellished with a large enamel plaque copied from Boucher. The Louis XV table was also inlaid with porcelain, and a set of gros bleu Sèvres vases adorned the chimneypiece. A famous Teniers hung below an Aelbert Cuyp, an Isack van Ostade above a Wouwermans.22 The arrangements must have changed soon afterwards, when he completed the furnishing of his country house, Halton, in the vale of Aylesbury. In this skilfully modified version of Mansart’s Château de Maisons23 all the French paintings (‘with the exception of the two famous Greuzes, a charming little Watteau and four small but delicious Fragonards’24) would be ‘cunningly framed’ in the white and gold panelling.25 Exquisite blooms adorned the tables inside as well as the view from every window. These were furnished by an army of sixty gardeners, who also maintained the winter garden (where Alfred himself conducted a Hungarian band) in perfect order and at a constant temperature.26 The experience of creating and managing such a place may have proved useful for his work at the Wallace Collection. Alfred was given credit for the decision to display the collection in Hertford House,27 and his ‘judgment and aptitude for hanging pictures’ and arranging everything for public viewing was commended by his colleagues.28 In Trafalgar Square he was not able to intervene in this manner. The ‘despot’ of the Board of Trustees29 attended meetings infrequently and intervened negatively.

Fig. 11

J. Thomson, photograph of a room in 1 Seamore Place, London, published 1884. © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art Getty Research Institute

The catalogue of Alfred’s collection compiled by Charles Davis in 1884 contains a text of no interest but superb photographs by J. Thomson of Grosvenor Street. These are of special value because the paintings are illustrated in their frames, the latter being mostly imitations of French mid‐eighteenth‐century style. The first volume includes 212 paintings, many inherited from Alfred’s ‘dearly beloved father’, although those which belong to this category are not indicated.30 The second volume records the ‘Sèvres china, furniture, metal work and objets de vitrine, many of them also inherited – ivory tankards, rock crystal vases, French enamels, some noted Pallissy ware,31 and the once‐famous ‘Orpheus Cup’.32

The paintings fall into three distinct categories, all of which had been for some time favoured by his family: French eighteenth‐century pastoral and gallant pictures (Lancret, Boucher, Greuze), English portraits of the late eighteenth century (Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney) and the sort of Dutch seventeenth‐century painting that had been most admired in eighteenth‐century France – landscapes, of course, but also David Teniers’s marvellous painting on copper of elegant company, then known as The Marriage of the Artist (private collection); Metsu’s Duet (Le Corsage Bleu), now in the Bearstead Bearsted Collection at Upton House; and De Hooch’s A Dutch Courtyard, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington).33 The collecting of porcelain and exquisite goldsmiths’ work was also by then traditional in Alfred’s family but I have found little evidence that he continued to collect much in these areas after the publication of his catalogue,34 [page 474]whereas he certainly increased his collection of paintings, buying some of his grandest portraits by Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney at the Earl of Lonsdale’s sale in 1887, for example, and in 1907 acquiring, in league with Agnew’s, the Ashburton collection, from which he extracted masterpieces for himself (including Metsu’s Woman Seated Drawing, NG 5225).35

Among his fellow trustees at the National Gallery were John P. Heseltine, whose interests as a collector embraced both medieval and modern art, and Lord Carlisle, who was himself an amateur painter of distinction. Had Alfred shared their interest in contemporary art he would perhaps have shown more respect for Poynter and Holroyd, both of whom were successful artists of real stature. The keenest collector on the Board apart from himself was Robert (known as Robin) Benson but his passion was for Italian Renaissance paintings, of which Alfred owned very few.36 Alfred had no interest in exploring novel areas of aesthetic experience such as Duccio and the early Sienese painters (collected by Benson) or El Greco (an interest of Heseltine), to say nothing of icons, Buddhist sculpture, ancient Asian ceramics or post‐Impressionism. In 1906 The Burlington Magazine lamented the paralysis afflicting the National Gallery on account of the ‘insane’ insistence on unanimity among the trustees, which made it impossible to acquire anything that did not conform to a certain trustee’s ‘preference for art of what may be called the glorified chocolate box type’.37

To the readers of Les Arts and The Connoisseur – less adventurous journals (also recently founded) – Alfred’s taste was entirely admirable.38 And, if it was old‐fashioned, it was not about to go out of favour. In 1918, when Alfred died, the army was encamped in the grounds of Halton, and soon afterwards the house was occupied by the Royal Air Force, but its careful imitation of the French eighteenth century, tactfully modified by modern amenities,39 was already being copied in the houses of Joseph Duveen’s American clients, who were also eager to furnish such houses with Riesener commodes and Sèvres vases and paintings by Romney, Lancret and de Hooch.

Alfred bequeathed some of his paintings to his family, and one Reynolds, as has been mentioned, went to the National Gallery; but the large majority of his collection was inherited by Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, the daughter of Mrs Wombwell, formerly Mlle Marie Boyer, an actress rumoured to have been Alfred’s mistress. In his will he had expressed the hope that they would be regarded as heirlooms, but three months after his death she disposed of 27 paintings (including Titian’s Allegory of Prudence catalogued here, together with much more highly prized works by English, French and Dutch masters), and she sold another 58 at Christie’s on 22 May 1925.40 Other works were sold to dealers, among them Joseph Duveen, who secured from her in 1924 the de Hooch for Andrew Mellon and one of Romney’s most famous pictures of Emma Hart and two of Gainsborough’s most splendid full‐length female portraits for Henry Huntington.41

Alfred’s most important legacy to the National Gallery was indirect and unintended. The most deplorable aspect of the ‘Rosebery minute’ was the fact that in bestowing new power on the trustees it imposed no obligations on them. Alfred’s notoriously poor attendance and his preference for denunciation over debate must have helped prompt Lord Asquith’s minute of 1916 by which trustees were appointed for seven years rather than for life.42 The next generation of trustees showed a new degree of commitment and enterprise, as is described elsewhere in this catalogue in the complicated story of how Titian’s Vendramin Family (and with it the Wilton Diptych) was secured for the national collection.

Notes

1. For the family generally see Ferguson 1998. (Back to text.)

2. National Gallery Archive 7/63/1884. See also the letters of Sir William Gregory to Howard (later Lord Carlisle) of 17 June and of Harding to Gregory of 27 June 1884, Castle Howard Muniments J22/78. (Back to text.)

5. In the official records the donation was made by Lord Rothschild (see Penny 2003, p. 212) but it is interesting that Erskine (1902, p. 71) wrote that Alfred ‘helped, with a substantial donation from his firm, Messrs. Rothschild’. (Back to text.)

6. National Gallery Archive 7/232/1899. (Back to text.)

7. Ibid. 7/397/1911 (£500). (Back to text.)

8. Penny 2004, pp. 390–2. (Back to text.)

9. See pp. 198–9. (Back to text.)

10. Mannings 2000, I, p. 71, no. 104; II, plate 83 and fig. 1179. Alfred specified that it should not go to the Tate Gallery but it did, in 1949. (Back to text.)

11. Holmes 1936, p. 232. Letters from Heseltine to Carlisle of 16 December and 31 December 1908 and 4 January 1909 refer to this incident, Castle Howard Muniments J22/78. (Back to text.)

12. Holmes and Collins Baker 1924, pp. 65–6, 68, 70; Holmes 1936, p. 232. (Back to text.)

13. See especially Carlisle’s draft letter to Rosebery of 22 April 1894 concerning the minute which he considered to be ‘seriously disadvantageous to the best interests of the gallery’. Castle Howard Muniments J22/78. (Back to text.)

14. Holmes 1936, p. 232. (Back to text.)

15. National Gallery Archive 7/209/1897. (Back to text.)

16. Ibid. 7/288/1904. (Back to text.)

17. Ibid. 7/347/1908. (Back to text.)

18. Castle Howard Muniments J22/78, letter to Carlisle from Hawes Turner (the Keeper) of 18 August 1908 providing the information that Alfred had attended 19 of the 58 board meetings held since he was created a trustee. (Back to text.)

19. See p. 276. (Back to text.)

20. National Gallery Archive 26/101, letter to Holroyd of 8 February 1916. (Back to text.)

21. Ibid. , letter to Holroyd of 3 July 1917. (Back to text.)

22. Davis 1884, I, no. 51 (Greuze); II, no. 98 (secrétaire); no. 101 (table); I, no. 29 (Teniers), no. 12 (Cuyp), no. 42 (Wouwermans) and no. 25 (Isack van Ostade). (Back to text.)

23. The architect was William R. Rogers, a partner of William Cubitt and Co. Drawings were published in The Architect on 17 November, 1 December, 22 December 1893, pp. 312, 344, 390, and on 12 January and 9 February 1894, pp. 32 and 96. (Back to text.)

24. Erskine 1902, p. 71. (Back to text.)

25. The character of the interior is described by Warwick 1931, pp. 89–91. (Back to text.)

26. For the gardeners see Field 1973 and for the band and other details see Parrott 1968. (Back to text.)

27. Erskine 1902, p. 71. (Back to text.)

28. The opinion of Bertie Mitford and Murray Scott concerning Alfred’s taste is quoted by Edward Hamilton in his diary on 5 April 1900 (Thornton 2001, pp. 211–12, note 116). (Back to text.)

29. Holmes (1936, p. 224) uses this expression, one which he is not likely to have invented. (Back to text.)

30. A full account of the division of Lionel’s estate agreed upon in 1882, together with a list of all the paintings involved, is said to be in the archive of N.M. Rothschild. (Back to text.)

31. Davis 1884, II, nos 151–4. (Back to text.)

32. Ibid. , II, no. 149. (Back to text.)

33. For the Teniers, as it was then interpreted, see Erskine 1902, pp. 73–4. See Klinge and Lüdke 2005, pp. 268–71, no. 85 (entry by Lüdke). For the Metsu see Gore 1964, pp. 34–5, no. 120, and Laing 1995, pp. 178–9, no. 65. The de Hooch is NGA 1937.1.56, Andrew Mellon Collection. It was sold to Mellon by Duveen in 1924. (Back to text.)

34. In this connection, the donation of a silver Tucher cup to his brother‐in‐law Ferdinand is perhaps significant (Thornton 2001, pp. 193–4). (Back to text.)

35. Prévost‐Marcilhacy 1995, p. 164, describes the Ashburton purchase. In Agnew 1967, p. 46, the 61 paintings are simply said to have been bought by Agnew’s. See Maclaren and Brown 1991, I, 260, for the provenance of the Metsu, which was presented to the Gallery by Lord Rothermere in 1940. Among the trustees Heseltine at least was aware of Alfred’s involvement. He informed Carlisle of it in a letter of 22 October 1907, Castle Howard Muniments J22/78. (Back to text.)

36. In Davis’s catalogue of 1884 there were only two Italian pictures, nos 79 and 80, attributed to (and perhaps copies of) Domenichino and Reni. In addition to Titian’s Allegory of Prudence, [page 475]catalogued here, Alfred owned the Toilet of Venus (now Courtauld Institute, London), then attributed to Veronese (sold at Christie’s on 31 May 1918, lot 158, by Lady Carnarvon), also the Giovanni Bellini Portrait of a Gentleman (now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington) and a Botticelli Virgin and Child recently on the art market (sold Christie’s on 22 May 1922, lot 58, by Lady Carnarvon). (Back to text.)

37. The leader appeared in the special issue of June–August 1906 (II, pp. 5–7). This may be the earliest use of ‘chocolate‐box’ to disparage a type of taste, an expression that remained popular for a century. The author was probably C.J. Holmes. (Back to text.)

39. The electric lighting was admired at both Halton (see Warwick 1931, p. 90) and Seamore Place (see, for instance, Erskine 1902, p. 71, for picture lights, and p. 79 for cabinets ‘lighted from within by electricity’). (Back to text.)

40. The suggestion has been made that Lady Carnarvon’s sales were precipitated by the unexpected death of the 5th Earl (the Egyptian archaeologist) in 1923 but this is not entirely plausible. That Alfred was her father is sometimes denied. (Back to text.)

41. See Asleson 2001, pp. 100–4, no. 16, and pp. 146–50, no. 25, for Gainsborough’s portraits of Elizabeth Beaufoy and Henrietta Read; and ibid. , pp. 424–7, no. 92, for Romney’s Emma Hart. (Back to text.)


List of archive references cited

  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: Earl of Carlisle, letter to Lord Rosebery, 22 April 1894
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: Sir William Henry Gregory, letter to George Howard (later the Earl of Carlisle), 17 June 1884
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: Harding, letter to Sir William Henry Gregory, 27 June 1884
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: John P. Heseltine, letter to the Earl of Carlisle, 22 October 1907
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: John P. Heseltine, letter to the Earl of Carlisle, 16 December 1908
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: John P. Heseltine, letter to the Earl of Carlisle, 31 December 1908
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: John P. Heseltine, letter to the Earl of Carlisle, 4 January 1909
  • Castle Howard, Muniments, J22/78: Hawes Harison Turner, letter to the Earl of Carlisle, 18 August 1908
  • Haddo House, estate archives: inventory, 1889
  • London, Agnew’s: Microfilm of ‘Property Received’ books, vol. for 1923–34
  • London, British Library, Add. MS 43335
  • London, British Library, Add. MS 43336

List of references cited

Agnew 1967
reference not found
Aikema 1990
AikemaBernardPietro della Vecchia and the heritage of the Renaissance in VeniceFlorence 1990
Anon. 1793
Anon., Guida al Forestiero per osservare con metodo le rarità e bellezze della città di FirenzeFlorence 1793
Arasse 1984
ArasseDaniel, ‘Titien et son allégorie de la Prudence: un peintre et des motifs’, in Interpretazioni Veneziane: Studi in storia dell’arte in onori di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David RosandVenice 1984, 291–310
The Architect 17 November 1893
The Architect, 17 November 1893
The Architect 1 December 1983
The Architect, 1 December 1983
The Architect 22 December 1893
The Architect, 22 December 1893
The Architect 12 January 1894
The Architect,  12 January 1894
The Architect 9 February 1894
The Architect, 9 February 1894
Arnaud and Coquille 1780–4
ArnaudFrançois and Henri CoquilleDescription des principales pierres gravées du cabinet de S.A.S. Monseigneur le duc d’Orléans (the second volume’s colophon has the date 1785; Arnaud seems to have only helped with the text of the first volume), 2 volsParis 1780–4
Asleson 2001
AslesonRobynBritish Paintings at the HuntingtonNew Haven 2001
Avery‐Quash 2011b
Avery‐QuashSusanna, ed., ‘The Travel Notebooks of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake’, The Walpole Society2 vols, centenary edition, 2011, 73
Berenson 1957
BerensonBernardItalian Pictures of the Renaissance: The Venetian School (Gordon 2011 refers to vol. 1 only), 2 volsLondon 1957
Bruno 1585
BrunoGiordanoDe gli Eroici FuroriLondon 1585
Buchanan 1824
BuchananWilliamMemoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation of Pictures by the Great Masters into England since the French Revolution2 volsLondon 1824
Burlington Magazine 1906
[leading article]’, Burlington Magazine, June–August 1906, IIspecial issue5–7
Caldwell 1973
CaldwellJoan, ‘An allegory of Good Counsel by Titian’, Commentari, October–December 1973, n.s.XXIV319–22
Cartari 1571
CartariImagini de i Dei de gli AntichiVenice 1571
Cohen 1998
CohenSimona, ‘Animals in the paintings of Titian, a key to hidden meanings’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, November 1998, CXXXII193–213
Cohen 2000
CohenSimona, ‘Titian’s London Allegory and the three beasts of his Selva Oscura’, Renaissance Studies, 2000, XIV146–69
Davis 1884
DavisCharlesA Description of the Works of Art forming the Collection of Alfred de RothschildLondon 1884
De Nolhac 1903
De NolhacPierre, ‘Some pictures by Boucher in Mr Alfred de Rothschild’s collection, London’, Les Arts, July 1903, no. 1910–11
Dézallier d’Argenville 1749/1757/1765
[Dézallier d’ArgenvilleAntoine‐Nicolas] (‘M.D.’), Voyage pittoresque de Paris ou Indication de tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau dans cette grande Ville en Peinture, Sculpture, & ArchitectureParis 1749 (revised edn, 1752; 3rd edn, Paris 1757; 4th edn, Paris 1765)
Dülberg 1990
DülbergAngelicaPrivatporträts: Geschichte und Ikonologie einer Gattung im 15. Und 16. Jahrhundert (Ph.D. diss., 1985, Cologne), Berlin 1990
Edelein‐Badie 1997
Edelein‐BadieBéatriceLa collection de tableaux de Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de CaninoParis 1997
Erskine 1902
ErskineSteuartMrs, ‘The Collection of Mr Alfred De Rothschild’, Connoisseur, May 1902, III71–9
Faietti and Scaglietti Kelescian 1995
FaiettiMarzia and Daniela Scaglietti KelescianAmico AspertiniModena 1995
Farington 1978–98
FaringtonJosephThe Diary of Joseph Farington, eds Kenneth GarlickAngus Macintyre and Kathryn Caveindex compiled by Evelyn Newby (vols I–VI ed. Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre; vols VII–XVI ed. Kathryn Cave), 16 volsNew Haven and London 1978–98
Ferguson 1998
FergusonNiallThe House of Rothschild: the World’s banker, 1849–1999London 1998
Field 1973
FieldErnest, ‘Gardening Memories at Halton’, Country Life, 11 October 1973, 1062–4
Gordon 1985
GordonArchie[5th Marquess of Aberdeen]A Wild Flight of GordonsLondon 1985
Gore 1964
GoreR. St JohnUpton House: The Bearsted Collection: PicturesLondon, National Trust, 1964
Habich 1922
HabichGeorgDie Medaillen der italienischen RenaissanceStuttgart and Berlin 1922
Hadeln 1924
HadelnDetlev von, in Burlington Magazine, October 1924
Hébert 1766
HébertDictionnaire pittoresque et historique2 volsParis 1756
Holmes 1936
HolmesC.J.Self and Partners (Mostly Self): Being the Reminiscences of C.J. HolmesLondon 1936
Holmes and Collins Baker 1924
HolmesCharles J. and Henry Charles Collins BakerThe Making of the National Gallery, 1824–1924London 1924
Howard 1988
HowardElizabeth, ‘New evidence on the Italian provenance of a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo’, Burlington Magazine, June 1988, CXXX457–9
Hume 1829
HumeAbrahamNotices of the Life and Works of TitianLondon 1829
Humfrey 2004
HumfreyPeterTimothy CliffordAidan Weston‐Lewis and Michael BuryThe Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections (exh. cat. National Galleries of Scotland, 2004), Edinburgh 2004
Jameson 1846
JamesonAnnaMemoirs and Essays Illustrative of Art, Literature and Social MoralsLondon 1846
Joannides and Dunkerton 2007
JoannidesPaul and Jill Dunkerton, ‘“A Boy with a Bird” in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2007, 2836–57
Kagan and Neverov 2001
KaganJulia and Oleg NeverovLe Destin d’une collection: 500 pierres gravées du cabinet du duc d’OrléansSt Petersburg 2001
Kahr 1966
KahrMadlyn, ‘Titian, the “Hypnerotomachia poliphili” woodcuts and antiquity’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, 1966, LXVII119–27
Klinge and Lüdke 2005
KlingeMargret and Dietmar LüdkeDavid Teniers der Jüngere 1610–1690 (exh. cat. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, 2005–6), Karlsruhe 2005
Kris 1932
KrisErnstCatalogue of postclassical cameos in the Milton Weil collectionVienna 1932
Laing 1995
LaingAlastairIn Trust for the Nation: Paintings from National Trust Houses (exh. cat. National Gallery, London), London 1995
Lancaster 1968
LancasterMarie‐Jaqueline, ed., Brian Howard: Portrait of a FailureLondon 1968
Lebenstejn 1973
LebenstejnJ.C., ‘Un tableau de Titien, un essai de Panofsky’, Critique, 1973, nos 315–16821–43
MacLaren and Brown 1991
MacLarenNeilrevised and expanded by Christopher BrownNational Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School 1600–19002 vols, revised and expanded edn, London 1991
Macrobius
MacrobiusSaturnalia
Malafarina 1976
MalafarinaGianfrancoL’Opera Completa di Annibale CarracciMilan 1976
Mannings 2000
ManningsDavidSir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings2 volsNew Haven and London 2000
Mariette 1720
MariettePierre‐JeanAbecedarioParis 1720
Marx 2005
MarxHarald, ed., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden: illustrierter Katalog (the catalogue is by Elisabeth Hipp), 2 volsCologne 2005
Meller 1980
MellerPeter, ‘Il lessico ritrattistico di Tiziano’, in Tiziano e Venezia (papers of the Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Venice, 27 September–1 October 1976), 2 volsVicenza 1980, 325–35
Montfaucon 1719
MontfauconBernard deL’Antiquité expliquéeParis 1719
Moschini Marconi 1955
Moschini MarconiSandra, ed., Gallerie dell’accademia di Venezia: I. Opere d’arte dei secoli XIV e XVRome 1955
National GalleryAnnual Report for January 1965–December 1966London 1966
Okayama 1992
OkayamaYassuThe Ripa Index: Personifications and their attributes in five editions of the IconologiaDoornspijk 1992
Opperman 1977
OppermanHal N.Jean‐Baptiste Oudry (PhD thesis, 1972), 2 volsNew York and London 1977
Pallucchini 1969
PallucchiniRodolfoTiziano2 volsFlorence 1969
Pallucchini and Rossi 1983
PallucchiniRodolfo and Paolo RossiGiovanni CarianiBergamo 1983
Panofsky 1930
PanofskyErwinHercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren KunstLeipzig and Berlin 1930
Panofsky 1955
PanofskyErwinThe Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, 4th edn, Princeton 1955
Panofsky 1970
PanofskyErwinMeaning in the Visual ArtsNew York 1955 (Harmondsworth 1970)
Panofsky and Saxl 1926
PanofskyErwin and Fritz Saxl, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Burlington Magazine, October 1926, XLIX177–81
Parrott 1968
ParrottHayward, ‘Household in the Grand Manner’, Country Life, 5 December 1968, 1466–7
Pedrocco 2001
PedroccoFilippoTitian: the Complete PaintingsLondon 2001
Penny 1998
PennyNicholas, ‘Un’introduzione ai taccuini di Sir Charles Eastlake’, in Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle: Conoscitore e conservatore, ed. Anna Chiara Tommasi (papers from the Convegno held in 1997 at Legnago, Verona), Venice 1998, 277–89
Penny 2003
reference not found
Penny 2004
PennyNicholasNational Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth‐Century Italian Paintings, Volume I, Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and CremonaLondon 2004
Pope‐Hennessy 1964
Pope‐HennessyJ.assisted by R. LightbownCatalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum3 volsLondon 1964
Popham 1971
PophamArthur E.Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino3 volsNew Haven and London 1971
Prévost‐Marcilhacy 1995
Prévost‐MarcilhacyPaulineLes Rothschild, bâtisseurs et mécènesParis 1995
Puppi 1980
PuppiLionello, ed., Alvise Cornaro e il suo tempo (exh. cat. Loggia and Odeo Cornaro, also Sala del Palazzo della Ragione, Padua 1980), Padua 1980
Rémy 1756
RémyPierreCatalogue raisonné des tableaux, sculptures … desseins et estampes … Qui composent le Cabinet de feu Monsieur le Duc de TallardParis 23 March–13 May 1756
Robertson 1978
RobertsonDavidSir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art WorldPrinceton 1978
Sanuto 1879–1903
Sanuto (often spelt Sanudo)MarinoI diarii di Marino Sanuto, eds Nicolò BarozziGuglielmo BerchetRinaldo Fulin and Federico Stefani58 volsVenice 1879–1903
Shearman 1983
ShearmanJohnThe Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the QueenCambridge 1983
Sherman 1996
ShermanClaire RichterImagining AristotleLos Angeles 1996
Simon 2007
SimonJacobBritish Picture Framemakers 1600–1950 (National Portrait Gallery online dictionary), https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/conservation/directory-of-british-framemakers/, accessed 21 May 2024, 1st edn, 2007
Smith 2003
SmithClaire, ‘The 4th Earl of Aberdeen as a Collector of Italian Old Masters’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, 2003, VIII47–52
Stuffmann 1968
StuffmannMargret, ‘Les tableaux de la collection de Pierre Crozat’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, 1968, LXXII11–143
Suida 1935
SuidaWilhelmLe TitienParis 1935
Tafuri 1995
TafuriManfredoVenezia e il RinascimentoTurin 1995
Thornton 2001
ThorntonDora, ‘From Waddesdon to the British Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections, 2001, XIIIno. 2191–213
Tietze 1936
TietzeHansTizian: Leben und Werk2 volsVienna 1936
Tietze 1944
TietzeHansThe Drawings of the Venetian PaintersNew York 1944
Valcanover 1960
ValcanoverFrancescoTutta la pittura di Tiziano2 volsMilan 1960
Valcanover et al. 1990
ValcanoverFrancesco, ed., Tiziano (exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1990), Venice 1990
Valeriano 1556
ValerianoGiovanni PierioHieroglyphicaVenice 1556
Villars 1902
VillarsPaul, ‘La collection de M. Alfred de Rothschild’, Les Arts, March 1902, no. 215–23
Waagen 1854–7
WaagenGustav FriedrichTreasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss., &c. &c.ed. and trans. Lady E. Eastlake3 volsLondon 1854 (Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great BritainLondon 1857, supplement (vol. 4))
Waddingham 1987
WaddinghamMalcolm R., ‘Introduction’, in The Paintings of the Betty and David M. Koetser FoundationZurich 1987
Walpole 1747
WalpoleHoraceAedes WalpolianaeLondon 1747
Warwick 1931
WarwickFrancesCountess ofAfterthoughtsLondon 1931
Weber 1995
WeberGregor, ‘Vom Rätsel einer Hieroglyphe zum “Guten Rat” von Pietro Liberi’, Dresdener Kunstblätter, 1995, 5151–7
Wethey 1969–75
WetheyHarold E.The Paintings of Titian (1. The Religious Paintings, 1969; 2. The Portraits, 1971; 3. The Mythological and Historical Paintings, 1975), 3 volsLondon 1969–75
Wind 1967
WindEdgarPagan Mysteries in the RenaissanceHarmondsworth 1967

List of exhibitions cited

Edinburgh 1883
Edinburgh, Old Masters and Scottish National Portraits Exhibition, 1883
London 1828
London, British Institution, 1828
London 1909–10
London, Grafton Gallery, The National Loan Exhibition, 1909–10
London 1913–14
London, Grosvenor Gallery, Second National Loan Exhibition: Woman and Child in Art, 1913–14
London 1924
London, Agnew’s, Old Masters, 1924
London 1950–1
London, Royal Academy, Loan Exhibition, 1950–1
London 2003
London, National Gallery, 2003
Madrid 2003
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003

The Organisation of the Catalogue

Artists are listed alphabetically and separate works by the same artists are ordered chronologically (rather than by date of accession). The division of an artist’s work between catalogues has been avoided in the past, but Titian presents a special problem. His work from before 1540 has been left for another volume and his later productions are presented here together with works by rivals, followers, pupils and imitators.

I have included one painting which seems to be a pastiche made soon after Titian’s death (A Concert, NG 3) and another which is a copy of one of his compositions, probably made later than 1600 (The Trinity, NG 4222), but not A Boy with a Bird (NG 933), which has often been taken for a seventeenth‐century imitation of Titian. The light cloud of drapery around the upper arm and the outlining of the fingers recall Titian’s Noli me tangere (NG 270) of c. 1515. It may be an excerpt from a painting of Venus and Adonis, a composition discussed in this catalogue (pp. 274–91), but if so must, as Paul Joannides has proposed, be an early version. Arguments in favour of the autograph status of this curious morsel are presented by Joannides and Jill Dunkerton in volume 28 of the National Gallery Technical Bulletin.

A good case could easily be made for including works by Rottenhammer, Elsheimer and El Greco, all of whom painted in Venice and were formed, or at least reformed, as artists by that experience. But readers will expect to find their work in other catalogues and it is unlikely that my colleagues would have consented to their appropriation. It may therefore seem inconsistent to have included The Conversion of Mary Magdalene (NG 1241) which is probably by Pedro Campaña, who was Netherlandish by birth and worked for many years in Spain. He was probably only briefly resident in Venice, but this painting was commissioned by a Venetian patrician both as a record of his family and as a record of a fresco in a Venetian church, so it seemed wrong to omit it.

As in the first volume of the sixteenth‐century Italian paintings, the entries, which are more discursive than was formerly the case in the Gallery’s catalogues, have been divided into sections with titles intended to help readers select the topic that interests them. Much material concerning previous owners is supplied and much on the circumstances of the work’s acquisition, but a succinct, factual summary of provenance is also supplied separately for ease of consultation.

The information on picture frames provided in the first volume attracted more comment in print than any other feature of that book. Here I have also drawn attention both to old frames of distinction and to frames made for the National Gallery. The reader should note that Jacob Simon at the National Portrait Gallery has created an online directory of framemakers which includes all the craftsmen mentioned here as employed by, or as suppliers to, the National Gallery.

An account of the conservators employed by the Gallery to varnish, line, clean, repair and retouch before the establishment of the Gallery’s own Conservation Department is incorporated in the introduction to the first volume (Penny 2004, pp. xiv–xv). A great deal of information about the conservation of the National Gallery’s paintings is provided and I have tried to relate the conservation history to the provenance, identifying not only nineteenth‐century restorers but also, sometimes, those from earlier centuries.

A question‐mark is used to indicate a doubt as to the authorship of a painting in preference to the formula of ‘Attributed to’ or ‘Ascribed to’. Comprehensive listing of references made in recent art‐historical literature has not been attempted. References in the notes are abbreviations of entries in the bibliography. I have tried to identify the actual authors of exhibition catalogues and of anonymous guides.

A Note on Manuscript Material Cited

References are made in the notes to manuscript material (chiefly letters) studied in British family papers – for example, those of the Earls of Carlisle and of the Dukes of Hamilton – and also to material studied in public and church archives in Venice – for example, confraternity manuscripts in the care of the parish of S. Trovaso, the parish records kept in S. Silvestro, and wills, inventories and financial records in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (here abbreviated to ASV). Most frequent reference, however, is made to the Archive of the National Gallery itself: the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Trustees, with the associated papers, the Gallery accounts, the diary and other papers of Ralph Nicholson Wornum, and above all the notebooks or travel diaries kept by Sir Charles Eastlake on his continental tours between 1852 and 1864 (there is also one for 1830). Since there is more than one notebook for each annual tour, the number of the notebook cited is given in parentheses – thus ‘MS notebook 1864 (2)’ for the second in 1864. I have published an account of Eastlake’s methods and motives for compiling these notebooks in ‘Un’introduzione ai taccuini di Sir Charles Eastlake’ in Anna Chiara Tommasi, ed., Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle: Conoscitore e conservatore (papers from the Convegno held in 1997 at Legnago, Verona), Venice 1998, pp. 277–89. They are currently being transcribed and edited by Susanna Avery‐Quash for publication by the Walpole Society.

About this version

Version 1, generated from files NP_2008__16.xml dated 06/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Structural mark-up applied to skeleton document in full; entry for NG294 reintegrated into main document; entries for NG16, NG26, NG224, NG277, NG674, NG1318 & NG1324-NG1326, NG1883-NG1884, NG3948, NG4452, NG6376, NG6420 and NG6490 prepared for publication; entries for NG16, NG26, NG224, NG277, NG294, NG674, NG1318 & NG1324-NG1326, NG1883-NG1884, NG3948, NG4452, NG6376, NG6420 and NG6490 proofread and corrected.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EA5-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E8K-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style
Penny, Nicholas. “NG 6376, An Allegory of Prudence”. 2008, online version 1, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EA5-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style
Penny, Nicholas (2008) NG 6376, An Allegory of Prudence. Online version 1, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EA5-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 19 March 2025).
MHRA style
Penny, Nicholas, NG 6376, An Allegory of Prudence (National Gallery, 2008; online version 1, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EA5-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 19 March 2025]