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| Titian Nymph & Shepherd ca. 1570-75 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
This very late and magical painting by Titian, now in Vienna, did not belong to Charles I of England. It belonged instead to one of the art-collecting courtiers within his orbit, and that explains how it came to be in London during the early 17th century. Because its owner was on the wrong side in the Civil War of the 1640s, the Nymph & Shepherd experienced the same traumatic dislocations as befell the king's pictures, dispersed among profiteers and flogged across Europe.
Leonardo's St. John the Baptist – as well as all the other pictures ranged below – did belong to Charles. Every one of them was seized and sold out of England after his execution.
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| Leonardo da Vinci St John the Baptist ca. 1513-16 Louvre |
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| Guido Reni Nessus Abducting Dejanira ca. 1617-21 Louvre |
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| Correggio Allegory of Vice ca. 1528-30 Louvre |
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| Correggio Allegory of Virtue ca. 1528-30 Louvre |
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| Caravaggio The Death of the Virgin ca. 1602 Louvre |
The group of former English royal paintings now at the Louvre (those above among them) fell into the ready hands of Cardinal Mazarin, while the paintings now in Vienna (below) drifted, after various convolutions, into the orbit of Holy Roman Emperors.
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| Anthony van Dyck Portrait of Nicolas Lanier 1632 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Domenico Fetti Hero Mourning Leander 1621-22 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Domenico Fetti Perseus Rescuing Andromeda c. 1620-22 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Those in the last group were also sold out of England by Cromwell's people during the 1650s, eventually reaching separate, out-of-the-way destinations. This kind of cultural plunder never delivers the promised benefits and always brings a retributive curse with it, but nobody ever is able to remember those facts.
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| Peter Paul Rubens Daniel in the Lions' Den ca. 1614-16 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Titian Pope Alexander VI presenting Jacopo Pesaro to St Peter ca. 1513 Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp |
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| Anthony van Dyck Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria 1632 Archbishop's Gallery, Kroměříž |