Lord Arundel's Collections

Wenceslaus Hollar
The Creation Robe of an Earl -The Lord of Arundell
ca. 1652-62
etching
National Portrait Gallery, London

Leonardo da Vinci
Grotesque Head of an Old Woman
ca. 1489-90
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Roman Empire
Funerary Inscription
2nd century AD
marble
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ancient Hellenistic Culture
Inscription
2nd century AD
marble
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
British Museum

Ancient Greek Culture
The Parian Marble
264-263 BC
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

"The Parian Marble (otherwise known as the Parian Chronicle or the Marmor Parium) is the earliest extant example of a Greek chronological table.  The compiler's name is lost, but he covers the period from the accession of King Cecrops in Athens in, according to him, 1581/0 BC to 264/3 BC, doubtless the date of composition and of the inscription itself.  For over a hundred of those thirteen hundred years, he found events to record of a very varied nature.  He dates Deucalion's flood to 1528/7, the invention of corn by Demeter to 1409-8 and the fall of Troy to 1209-8.  He dates Hesiod one generation earlier than Homer, in the late tenth century.  As he nears his own day, his account becomes fuller, but his chronology is not always accurate and the reasons for his choice of events are not always clear.  The Oxford fragment cover the years 895-355 BC."

"The Parian Marble was acquired in Smyrna by Arundel's agent William Petty in 1626 from under the nose of the agent of the Provençal scholar Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc, who had hoped to be the first to publish such an important document.  In the event, the first study was that of John Selden, in his Marmora Arundelliana of 1628-29, which brought Arundel great acclaim throughout educated Europe.  The top half was lost in the seventeenth century, having been used as a hearthstone."

[NB: that means used as a hearthstone after its arrival as a rare object of scholarship to be cherished and protected at the premier university in the land]

– Michael Vickers, The Arundel and Pomfret Marbles (Ashmolean Museum, 2006)

follower of Hans Holbein the Younger
Design for Lidded Goblet (top)
ca. 1550
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection, as by Holbein)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Wenceslaus Hollar
after Hans Holbein the Younger
Design for Lidded Goblet
1645
etching
British Museum

Albrecht Dürer
Designs for Pendant Jewels: St George and St Christopher
ca. 1515
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Wenceslaus Hollar after Albrecht Dürer
Design for Pendant Jewel: St George
1642
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar after Albrecht Dürer
Design for Pendant Jewel: St Christopher
1642
etching
British Museum

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Woman and Children
(design for ornamental panel)
ca. 1527-29
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
British Museum

Hendrik van der Borcht after Parmigianino
Two Studies
1638
etching
British Museum

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Allegorical Figure of Justice
before 1540
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hendrik van der Borcht after Parmigianino
Allegorical Figure of Justice
1637
etching
British Museum

Filippino Lippi
Dancing Putto
ca. 1493-97
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Cornelis van Dalen
Thomas Parr
"the Olde, Old, very Olde Man"
1635
engraving
British Museum

"Old Parr" was one of Lord Arundel's tenants who claimed to have been born in 1483, which made him 152 years old in 1635.  Arundel took the aged man into his household as a natural wonder, later making a point of presenting him to King Charles I.