|
The Orleans Collection was a very important collection of over 500 paintings formed by the French prince of the blood Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, mostly acquired between about 1700 and his death in 1723.〔Louis-François Dubois de Saint-Gelais, 1727. ''Description des tableaux du Palais Royal avec la vie des peintres à la tête de leurs ouvrages'', Preface. Reprinted 1737 and 1972 (Geneva). The descriptions are online at the (Getty Provenance Index ) - choose Archival documents, and search with Orleans Collection in "Owner's name".〕 Apart from the great royal-become-national collections of Europe it is arguably the greatest private collection of Western art, especially Italian, ever assembled, and probably the most famous,〔Watson, 202, and Penny, 461 and Reitlinger, 26〕 helped by the fact that most of the collection has been accessible to the public since it was formed, whether in Paris, or subsequently in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere. The core of the collection was formed by 123 paintings from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden, which itself had a core assembled from the war booty of the sacks by Swedish troops of Munich in 1632 and Prague in 1648 during the Thirty Years War.〔Penny, 463〕 After the French Revolution the collection was sold by Louis Philippe d'Orléans, ''Philippe Égalité'', and most of it acquired by an aristocratic English consortium led by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. Much of the collection has been dispersed, but significant groups remain intact, having passed by inheritance.〔Penny gives a concise history of the collection in a few thousand words, with special reference to the paintings in the National Gallery. Watson covers the history from Prague to London in 175 pages; his book is the history of the Frick Veronese. From their bibliographies, there do not appear to be any full listings in English of the collections of Rudolf, Christina or the Dukes of Orléans, still less ones with current locations.〕 One such group is the Sutherland Loan or Bridgewater Loan, including sixteen works from the Orleans Collection,〔Penny, 466〕 in the National Gallery of Scotland, and another is at Castle Howard, Yorkshire. There are twenty-five paintings formerly in the collection now in the National Gallery, London, which have arrived there by a number of different routes.〔Penny, 461 lists 25, though for example the National Gallery catalogue for the Flemish School (Martin, 1970) lists other Orléans provenances that are not certain in the "Index of Previous Owners". There are also, in 2008, at least two further ex-Orleans paintings on loan to the National Gallery, a Guercino and the Gentileschi ''Finding of Moses'', for which see below.〕 The collection is of central interest for the history of collecting, and of public access to art. It figured in two of the periods when art collections were most subject to disruption and dispersal: the mid-17th century and the period after the French Revolution.〔Watson discusses both periods in "Interludes" at the end of his Parts 2 and 5. Reitlinger's Chapter 2 deals with the latter period.〕 ==Rudolf and Christina== The paintings looted from Prague Castle had mostly been amassed by the obsessive collector Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612), whose own bulk purchases had included the famous collection of Emperor Charles V's leading minister Cardinal Granvelle (1517–86), which he had forced Granvelle's nephew and heir to sell to him. Granvelle had been the "greatest private collector of his time, the friend and patron of Titian and Leoni and many other artists",〔Trevor-Roper, 112. One Granvelle painting that seems to have made the full Prague-Stockholm-Paris-London journey is a version of the Correggio variously called ''The School of Love'', ''The Education of Cupid'' or ''Venus with Mercury and Cupid'', of which the prime version is now in the National Gallery. The prime version was bought by Charles I, then by the King of Spain in 1650, returning to England only in 1815 via the collections of Manuel de Godoy and Joachim Murat.〕 including his protégé Antonis Mor. The Swedes only skimmed the cream of the Habsburg collection, as the works now in Vienna, Madrid and Prague show.〔A stray Veronese of Rudolf's, overlooked since his time, turned up in the castle in 1962.〕 Most of the booty remained in Sweden after Christina's departure for exile: she only took about 70 to 80 paintings with her, including about 25 portraits of her friends and family, and some 50 paintings, mostly Italian, from the Prague loot, as well as statues, jewels, 72 tapestries, and various other works of art. She was concerned that the royal collections would be claimed by her successor, and prudently sent them ahead to Antwerp in a ship before she abdicated.〔Watson, 127-9〕 Christina greatly expanded her collection during her exile in Rome, for example adding the five small Raphael predella panels from the Colonna Altarpiece, including the ''Agony in the Garden'' now reunited with the main panel in New York, which were bought from a convent near Rome.〔Watson, 158. The other panels are now in London: two at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the other National Gallery.〕 She was apparently given Titian's Death of Actaeon by the greatest collector of the age, Archduke Leopold William of Austria, Viceroy in Brussels - she received many such gifts from Catholic royalty after her conversion,〔Penny, 255. It is clearly shown in one of the Tenier's views of Leopold's galleries. Leopold's collection is now part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.〕 and gave some generous gifts herself, notably Albrecht Dürer's panels of ''Adam'' and ''Eve'' to Philip IV of Spain (now Prado). On her death she left her collection to Cardinal Decio Azzolino, who himself died within a year, leaving the collection to his nephew, who sold it to Don Livio Odescalchi, commander of the Papal army,〔Watson,168-9; Odescalchi was the nephew of Pope Innocent XI, though in fact his money was inherited and his career greatly improved after his uncle's death.〕 at which point it contained 275 paintings, 140 of them Italian.〔Watson, 170〕 The year after Odescalchi's death in 1713, his heirs began protracted negotiations with the great French connoisseur and collector Pierre Crozat, acting as intermediary for Philippe, duc d'Orléans. The sale was finally concluded and the paintings delivered in 1721.〔Penny, 462-3, and (Metropolitan )〕 The French experts complained that Christina had cut down several paintings to fit her ceilings,〔Penny, 462〕 and had over-restored some of the best works, especially the Correggios, implicating Carlo Maratti.〔Watson, 196-7〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Orleans Collection」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|