Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [82]
In other words, the Duarte ‘shop’ offered facilities for providing the agreed purchase price for an item for which a sale was being negotiated – in this case, an elaborate jewel – in the form of other expensive goods for which the Duartes were competent to provide a valuation. They thus performed a particular service for those with disposable income who liked to follow fashion. Last year’s piece of jewellery could be traded for a number of fashionable works of art (the Raphael was unusual in being a match for Don Emmanuel’s ring).
One area of court culture over which Constantijn Huygens exerted particularly strong influence because it was close to his own heart was music – both instrumental and for voices. An enthusiastic composer and performer himself (although, unfortunately, very few of his many known compositions survive), Huygens remained actively involved in music in the Low Countries throughout his entire life, absorbing influences from England, France and Italy and reshaping them into a quintessentially Dutch style and sentiment. He was also responsible for identifying, and helping the careers of, individual talented performers, just as he did those of talented painters. After William II’s death in 1650, he clearly used his position as an influential and well-connected music connoisseur and practitioner in the same way as he did that in fine art, to sustain the cultural reputation of the house of Orange during its period of exclusion from public office.
In 1648, Sir Constantijn got wind of the fact that a young French singer, Anne de la Barre, daughter of the French court organist, who had already gained a considerable reputation in Paris, had been invited to travel to the court of Queen Christina of Sweden to perform (accompanied on various instruments by at least one of her younger siblings). In July, Huygens wrote to Anne, to persuade her to break her journey at the Stadholder’s court in Holland:
I beg you to accept this invitation to relax for a couple of weeks at my home, which is not perhaps the least convenient or least well-appointed at The Hague. There you would find lutes, theorbos, viols, spinets, clavichords and organs to divert you – almost as many as you could be provided with in the whole of Sweden.16
To encourage her to take up his invitation, Huygens enclosed a copy of his own recently published book of psalm settings and airs for soprano voice, Pathodia Sacra et Profana. Anne and her father, court organist to the French King, replied immediately (in separate letters). Anne had already performed several of Huygens’s new songs, to general acclaim. ‘I believe that you understand perfectly all the languages you compose in,’ she adds, ‘judging from the beautifully expressive use of words, which I have tried hard to express in my performances.’17
More pragmatically, Anne’s father asked Huygens to put in a word with the Prince and Princess of Orange, in the hope that they too might invite Anne to sing for them:
We passionately desire to visit The Hague, in order to converse with someone of your merit and discernment … I make this request because, as my children have tried to acquire the Science of music, all that remains is for them to find some prince whom they may please, who will reward their endeavours. The Queen of England [Henrietta Maria] and the Prince of Wales [the future Charles II], who have heard us, bestowed on us as much honour as one could wish for. The said Queen [in exile] hoped to be back in power in England, so that she could bring us there.18
Anne’s planned trip to Sweden in 1648 did not take place, and in the meantime, disaster struck Huygens in the form of the death of his Orange