 |
| Simon de Passe Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel 1616 engraving British Museum |
The portrait (below) copied to produce the engraved likeness above was painted around 1612-13 when Lord Arundel would have been in his early twenties. An attribution of that painting to the well-known Michiel van Miereveld has long been rejected, and there have been no new suggestions. Scholars cannot examine the panel because they don't know where it is – or if it has even survived since it was last recorded in the early twentieth century.
 |
| Anonymous Artist Thomas Howard, Early of Arundel ca. 1612-13 oil on panel location unknown |
-1619-oil-on-canvas-Ingestre-Hall-Staffordshire.jpg) |
| Anonymous Artist Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel 1619 oil on canvas Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire |
-Alte-Pinakothek-Munich.jpg) |
| Peter Paul Rubens Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel with Retinue 1620 oil on canvas Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
 |
| Peter Paul Rubens Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel ca. 1620 oil on canvas Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona |
 |
| Anthony van Dyck Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel 1620-21 oil on canvas Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
 |
| Daniel Mytens Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel before an Art Gallery at Arundel House in the Strand ca. 1618 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
Lady Arundel (above) with a partial view of one of the new-built art galleries at Arundel House. She participated most actively in the acquisition and display of paintings, it is said, taking less interest in the statues and carved gems that fascinated Arundel himself. Mytens painted him gesturing toward a display space for the ancient marbles he had exerted himself to obtain. Through court posts Arundel controlled both commercial and political agents traveling in the Mediterranean and charged the most trusted with scouring out and purchasing such rarities for him – in Italy, in Greece and especially on the Ionian coast of Turkey where there had as yet been little competition from other antiquity hunters.
 |
| Daniel Mytens Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel before an Art Gallery at Arundel House in the Stran ca. 1618 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
 |
| Peter Paul Rubens Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel ca. 1629-30 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
 |
| Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel and her daughter-in-law Lady Elizabeth Stuart ca. 1636 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
 |
| Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and his son Henry, Lord Maltravers ca. 1636 etching Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg |
 |
| Anthony van Dyck Earl and Countess of Arundel with Children and Grandchildren ca. 1631-32 drawing British Museum |
 |
| workshop of Anthony van Dyck Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel ca. 1639-40 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel 1646 etching Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
 |
| Philip Fruytiers adapted after Anthony van Dyck Grandchildren of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel presenting him with Arms to lead the Scottish Campaign 1639 oil on copper Arundel Castle, West Sussex |
The Earl and Countess are seated on a dais beneath a cloth of state. On the wall behind the family group two Holbein portraits from the Earl's collection can be identified. They represent two famous ancestors – the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (left) and his father, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (right). Both had withered under the elderly wrath of Henry VIII.
-Royal-Collection-Windsor.jpg) |
| Wenceslaus Hollar Equestrian Portrait of the Earl of Arundel leading the Scottish Campaign 1639 etching and letterpress (broadside) Royal Collection, Windsor |
When Charles I and the Scots Covenanters decided to go to war with each other in 1639, Lord Arundel was drawn in as well. His status as hereditary Earl-Marshal of England led the King to appoint him Lord-General of the Army, though Arundel was by then well over fifty and with no military experience. Hollar did his best, depicting the Earl in armour and on horseback in the center of a broadside promoting the King's cause (above). Charles himself (with little more military experience than Arundel) rode north as well, accompanying the army, but from first to last this expensive expedition accomplished nothing. The campaign itself was brief and inconclusive. Hostilities were, as the saying goes, renewed the next year. But by then Arundel evidently had found ways to opt out.
-Ashmolean-Museum-Oxford.jpg) |
| François Dieussart Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel 1637 marble Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
There is a story that Lord Arundel sent diplomatic inquiries to Gianlorenzo Bernini in Rome about the possibility of having his own portrait sculpted. He would have known the flamboyant marble bust of King Charles by Bernini displayed at court (later destroyed in a fire) which had been modeled not from life but from portraits by Van Dyck sent over to Rome. Arundel must have hoped for something similar, but the press of papal and royal commissions did not permit Bernini to accept. Instead he is supposed to have recommended his former pupil François Dieussart, whose impressive bust of Arundel has come to rest in Oxford alongside the best pieces from the Earl's sculpture collection.