Lord Arundel's Collections

Bernardino Licinio
Portrait of a Young Man caressing a Skull
ca. 1520
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection as by Giorgione)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jacopo Bassano
Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1550
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Correggio (Antonio Allegri)
Head of Christ
ca. 1525-30
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

attributed to Albert van Ouwater
Portrait of a Donor
(altarpiece fragment)
ca. 1460
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hans Holbein the Younger
Allegory of Passion
ca. 1532-36
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Sebastiano del Piombo
Portrait of Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries
ca. 1510-12
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection as by Raphael)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Giuliano Bugiardini after Raphael
Pope Leo X de' Medici with Cardinals
Giulio de' Medici and Innocenzo Cybo
ca. 1519-20
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection as by Raphael)
Galleria Corsini, Rome

Master of the Youth of St Rumbold
St Rumbold taking leave of his Parents
ca. 1490
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Master of the Youth of St Rumbold
Enthronement of St Rumbold as Bishop of Dublin
ca. 1490
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

attributed to Titian
Virgin and Child with St Agnes and young St John the Baptist
ca. 1525-35
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Titian
The Flaying of Marsyas
ca. 1570-76
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Kroměříž Archdiocesan Museum, Czech Republic

Paolo Veronese
The Twelve Apostles
(fragment)
ca. 1575
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Kroměříž Archdiocesan Museum, Czech Republic

Paolo Veronese
Christ and the Centurion
ca. 1571
oil on canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian (detail)
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian (detail)
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), remembered as the Collector Earl by the few who care to remember, was a high-ranking courtier to James I and then to his son Charles I.  Arundel's rank would under ordinary circumstances have been higher – his grandfather was second cousin to Queen Elizabeth.  But exactly because of their nearness to the crown, the Howards suffered under the Tudors and were only beginning to recover under the Stuarts.  Their dukedom of Norfolk had been revoked.  James offered it back to Arundel if he would accept precedence behind the new-made dukes of Buckingham and Hamilton (James's favorites).  Arundel could not bend his neck that low.  The dukedom of Norfolk was ultimately returned to one of Arundel's grandsons – after both a Revolution and a Restoration. 

The Collector Earl was the first nobleman to render art collecting really fashionable in England.  Young Charles I and the new-made young dukes of Buckingham and Hamilton all three caught the contagion from the older Arundel and all three built up marvelous collections of paintings to rival his.  Unlike Arundel, who favored Renaissance work, the three younger men tended to buy modern art – late Mannerist and early Baroque.  Once obtained, paintings also continued to change hands among the four courtly collectors.  Yet all four collections had ceased to exist by the middle of the century, broken up and dispersed in the aftermath of deaths and political disasters.  

There is no surviving inventory of Arundel's art collections at their height, installed in special-built galleries at Arundel House on the Strand in London during the 1620s and 1630s.  In the early 1640s, fleeing Cromwell's revolution, Lady Arundel sailed to the Low Countries, taking with her many of the most valued paintings, drawings and antique gems.  Partial inventories have survived of what she carried out of the country, though she reportedly began to sell pieces off almost immediately.  The inventories have since been studied by scholars, collectors and museum-staff to trace surviving paintings – such as those reproduced above – and it is known that few ever returned to Britain.

Estranged from his wife, estranged from the world, Arundel exiled himself to Italy, where he died a few years later.  His then-famous collection of Greek and Roman sculpture, the first of its kind in England and nearest to his own heart, had of necessity been left behind at Arundel House.  There will be more to say about the subsequent fortunes of those sculptures.