1/2/07 - History of Art - Collections

Collecting is as old as civilisation itself - Augustus and Vasari were known to be collectors of art. Vasari collected drawings of various styles, which he talked about in his manuscript. He was a collector as well as a designer.

Thomas Howard was a collector who focused on fusing many styles of periods together, especially classical juxtaposed with modern art. He acquired a pen and ink drawing of Dieussart by Rubens, for example. Note that collecting art is not the same as patronage. For example, the National Gallery of Scotland collects art, but that is not the same as the National Portrait Gallery, which commissions portraits of Scotsmen and women.

Arenbul imported classical works from Asia Minor. He persuaded Van Dyck to draw inspiration from this collection to paint his portrait. In 1628 Arenbul paid for a Parian chronicle, an early Greek inscription which caused a sensation. Rubens bought a copy and was fascinated by it. Not it is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Lord Arenbul could not read Latin but he still collected Latin works; Junius was attracted to the 'academy' at Arenbul House. He produced the first production of Saxon language and was a paid scholar who worked for Arenbul in return for heightening Arenbul's reputation. The variety of his collection is astonishing. His collection includes the Bust of Faustina as well as an ancient gem, of which Arenbul had a large collection. It is not known whose taste these items satisfied; he sent agents to travel abroad for him, and only visited Italy once himself.

Such scholarly items as a device for measuring distance in architecture were included in his collection alongside works of art by Julio Romano and Van der Borcht. Arenbul also bought a Sebastiano painting from Antwerp five years after seeing it.

Rubens' Venus was in the collection. Her figure is based on a famous Roman prototype. It seems that within the collection, only a remote exercise of taste is evident, as Arenbul was relying on the judgement and unskilled drawings on his agents. Agents were very important for collections: once Charles I bought an entire statue collection on the advice of his agent.

Arenbul especially loved portraits by Holbein. Arenbul's ancestors had been Holbein's patrons, so Arenbul was actually honouring his ancestors by collecting such works of Holbein's. In one room there was a total of thirty-five Holbein portraits, and one of them was copied at his request.

It was not until the 1820s that collections began to open to the public (the National Gallery in London was the first), and before this only the royal family and their workers saw the collections of monarchs. In Arenbul's time, collecting was a private affair.