Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [51]
By the late 1640s, Sir Constantijn Huygens occupied an unrivalled position in cultivated circles in the Dutch Republic, as arbiter of taste in all things cultural, from music and poetry to art and architecture. His position as a privileged intermediary between the élites of England and the Low Countries had been further strengthened in 1641 by Frederik Hendrik’s son William’s marriage to Charles I’s daughter Mary. Upon the death of Frederik Hendrik in 1647, William became Stadholder, and Huygens his secretary. Huygens’s absolute fluency in English, as well as his extensive knowledge of England and its customs and practices, made him invaluable to this Anglo–Dutch court, locked in diplomatic negotiations with the English royal family and its supporters throughout the English Civil Wars (1642–49).43
In his early experiences in England, we watch the moulding – socially, politically and culturally – of the young Sir Constantijn Huygens, and the beginnings of the considerable influence he came to wield in the formation of opinion and taste over the course of the seventeenth century, between English and Dutch court circles. By mid-century his approval was vital to young international artists and musicians on the make, his personal recommendation ensuring their enthusiastic reception at court and in salons across Europe.
And, of course, the point of greatest interest to us here is that these formative encounters with fine art and music in the most prestigious of contemporary court settings were strenuously Anglo–Dutch. Agents, procurers, patrons and collectors apparently move (and move their expensive purchases) between and among circles of like-minded individuals who operate in London, The Hague and Antwerp. The ‘Englishness’ of Sir Dudley Carleton’s opinions regarding Italian and Dutch paintings, and ancient statuary, is shaped and coloured by Dutch and Italian Protestant facilitators to his purchases, and by the involvement of Pieter Paul Rubens – the most internationally famous of Flemish painters at the time – in determining their value and desirability.
So, as we watch Sir Constantijn Huygens tirelessly intervening to facilitate access of appropriately talented musicians and artists to the courts of the Dowager Princess of Orange, the Prince of Orange and the Winter Queen at The Hague, his shaping over time of ‘Dutch’ taste cannot in fact be separated from the English influences that shaped him, and which he in turn continued to contribute to shaping himself.
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Auction, Exchange, Traffic and Trickle-Down: Dutch Influence on English Art
The execution of Charles I in London on 30 January 1649, and the death from smallpox of Prince William II at The Hague in November 1650, coincidentally brought both Orange and Stuart aspirations in art and culture, as they manifested themselves in the public domain, together with their long- and short-term political ambitions, to an abrupt halt.
The mirrored dynastic disasters for the Orange and Stuart élites are well conveyed by the wording of the legislation passed in May 1651 by the States General in the Dutch Republic, at the request of Oliver Cromwell’s ‘brotherly’ republican administration in England, prohibiting Prince William’s young widow, Princess Mary Stuart, from offering sanctuary to, or harbouring in any way, her exiled brothers or their followers:
We propound, that no rebel or declared enemy of the commonwealth of England shall be received into or be suffered to abide in any of the castles, towns, ports, creeks, or other places privileged or not privileged, which the Prince of Orange, Princess Mary the relict of William late Prince of Orange, or any other person, of what degree soever, have or hereafter shall have or possess by any title whatsoever within the dominions