Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [49]
It was this outstanding debt that Carleton spent much of his time pursuing during his 1618 trip to London. When he paid visits to the Earl of Arundel to talk business, he was still trying to sort out the unhappy affair of the Venice artworks. And when he visited to talk art business, Constantijn Huygens senior and Jacob de Gheyn went too. De Gheyn was well-qualified to draw attention to the most remarkable acquisitions in these aristocratic collections, and to explain their felicities in composition and style to his companion. These visits were precious opportunities for Constantijn to be instructed in the finer points of artistic taste, in the presence of some of the most magnificent examples of Italianate art to be encountered anywhere in Europe.
So Huygens reported to his father that he had seen the Earl of Arundel’s collection of paintings and classical statues in their elegantly classical, purpose-built gallery at Arundel House on the Thames. He judged the recently acquired ‘Arundel marbles’ ‘choses admirables en vérité’. He also told him that he had been given a guided tour of Prince Henry’s fabulous collection of Italian paintings at St James’s Palace, down the road from Whitehall. The charismatic Crown Prince Henry, regarded by many as the golden prospect of the Stuarts, had died tragically young in 1612, and among his cultural legacies was his carefully compiled art collection. The private tour was in all likelihood conducted by Henry’s Dutch keeper of his collection, Abraham Van der Doort, soon to be appointed keeper of the future Charles I’s collection (a deathbed promise of Charles to Henry).
The Earl and Countess of Arundel already knew the Huygens family, from Princess Elizabeth’s progress through The Hague on her way to Heidelberg in 1613.36 Arundel (accompanied by Inigo Jones, Toby Matthew and George Gage) had left the royal party at Strasbourg, and travelled on to Italy in search of art treasures for his collection. In autumn 1613 he was entertained in Venice by Carleton, who went along on a series of guided tours of galleries, churches and monuments with the visitors. ‘Such activity was clearly unusual for the ambassador since, when he gave formal thanks on the Earl’s behalf for the hospitality the Arundels had received, he admitted that “I who have been here three years, may say that until now I had not seen Venice.”’37 When Carleton arrived in The Hague in 1615, Christiaan Huygens senior had already been recommended to him by Arundel as an expert guide to Dutch art, and besides, the two were neighbours on the Voorhout – one of The Hague’s smartest streets. On Huygens’s recommendation, Carleton visited Rubens’s Antwerp studio (or at least his agent George Gage did) during his first year in the United Provinces. By 1617 he was trying to buy a hunting scene by Rubens.38
According to Constantijn senior’s letters home, he and Jacob de Gheyn spent a considerable amount of time at Arundel House, where de Gheyn drew some of Arundel’s antique statues. In fact, the two men’s continued presence in the Arundel galleries marked the end of Carleton’s attempt to strike a deal with Arundel to give him works of art in place of the money owing. Huygens told his father that he and de Gheyn were particularly impressed by the Dutch artist Daniel Mytens’s newly painted companion portraits of the Earl of Arundel and his wife Althea seated in front of their artistic treasures. It seems Carleton had tried unsuccessfully to acquire these two works from Arundel just before he left England. We have the following letter from Mytens himself to Carleton in August 1618, written just after Carleton’s departure for The Hague:
I send you by this bearer that picture or portrait of the Ld. Of Arundel and his Lady, together in a small forme, it is covered up in a small case. I have donne my indeavor to perswaide his Lordship to send your honor those great picteures,