Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory (12 page)

During the meal Huygens was presented to the King by his host, who drew particular attention to the young man’s virtuosity on the lute (Constantijn may have been invited to provide the background music while the royal party ate). According to Constantijn, writing proudly to his parents to keep them informed of his linguistic progress and social successes overseas, James was so delighted by his playing that he insisted that Caron must have Constantijn entertain him on the lute at length on a future occasion, at Bagshot, the grace-and-favour hunting lodge given by James to Caron for his use during his residence in England.
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That later occasion (towards the end of September 1618) made such an impression on the young and impressionable Constantijn that he committed it to verse in a poem entitled ‘Being about to sing to the lute in the presence of the King of Britain’:

Thrice the greatest among Kings lends a majestic ear;
Grant, O skilful Thalia, more than my usual strains…
Kingly glory, I admit, dazzles the eye.
In the Divine presence the tongue stiffens and is numb.
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‘But shall he who speaks the Batavian [Dutch] language despair of pleasing the English Gods?’ Huygens concludes, with youthful enthusiasm. The question was a rhetorical one.

On that second occasion also, James engaged the charming young Dutchman in private, informal conversation. Although at the very moment they were talking together, the Dutch Stadholder Maurits of Nassau was in the process of effecting a very public coup in the United Provinces to take control of the States General (a power play in which Constantijn’s father, as secretary to the governing council of the States General, was necessarily heavily involved), the exchange consisted entirely of
politesse
and social banter. Still, Huygens was well pleased to have made a good impression on the English monarch. When, heady with excitement at his proximity to the monarch, he was dismissed from the royal presence, he felt ‘delighted with the excellent success of my humble affairs’.
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Constantijn’s father, Christiaan Huygens senior (to whom Constantijn was dutifully writing almost daily), must have been particularly gratified that it was Constantijn’s musical talents which had brought him to the attention of the English King. His son had begun lessons on the ‘English viol’, with an English music teacher, when he was barely six years old, the beginning of a systematic training in elegance to equip him for a career in the service of one of Holland’s great dynastic families (the career of a ‘courtier’). Unaccompanied solo performance on the viol – known as playing ‘lyraway’ – was a peculiarly English speciality in the early seventeenth century. In fact, it was as a solo instrument as much as in consorts that the viol became established as the performance instrument of the English (the lute was similarly regarded as particularly ‘French’). Huygens had met and been greatly impressed by one of the pioneers of the English style of viol-playing at The Hague in 1613.
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Constantijn, who had shown early musical promise (his mother discovered that he could hold a tune when he sang a psalm melody back to her faultlessly at the age of two), had later been encouraged to perfect his skills in the company of members of the household of the English Ambassador at The Hague. Sir Henry Wotton, during his brief period as English Resident Ambassador at The Hague in 1614–15, was a neighbour, living just across the street from the Huygenses. As Constantijn’s proficiency increased on the viol, harpsichord, lute and theorbo, and he added a pleasing voice, his virtuosity gained him admission to the most select circles at The Hague – on a number of occasions he played for Frederik Hendrik’s mother, widow of William the Silent, Louise de Coligny. Thus by the time he was invited to play for James he was accustomed to performing in public, with élan, in front of discerning audiences.
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By the time he performed for King James, too, his was a specifically international, Anglo-Dutch musical expertise. He had absorbed the notational practices, playing techniques and even choices of accompanying instruments from his English and Anglo-Dutch teachers and fellow musicians. His playing was flexible and adaptable, and made him much in demand as a participant in any music occasion, whether in London or The Hague. We might indeed wonder whether the ‘lute’ on which he is supposed to have played, acquitting himself well enough to attract the admiration of the King of England himself, might actually have been a theorbo (close cousin to the lute), his preferred accompaniment for his singing.
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Apart from Constantijn Huygens’s personal delight at being allowed to demonstrate his musical prowess to the King, what most impressed him on this first English trip were the guided tours of several private art galleries, including that of his host. The Huygens family were notable art-lovers and connoisseurs. The artistic skills of all members of this talented family were not confined to music. Parents and children were also accomplished practitioners of pen-and-ink sketching and watercolours. Constantijn’s mother came from the distinguished family of artists the Hoefnagels, and Constantijn (who had been trained by his uncle, Jacob Hoefnagel), and later his own children, sketched and painted with exceptional skill.

Furthermore, Huygens had the good fortune to have as travelling companion on this visit a young contemporary, Jacob de Gheyn junior, the son of more neighbours of the Huygenses in the élite residential district of The Hague. Jacob de Gheyn senior (Jacob de Gheyn II) was a renowned Dutch painter of portraits and still-lifes, and the younger Jacob would later become an artist of international standing himself. He was certainly in a position to inform young Constantijn of the importance of the works of art they had the good fortune to be able to view in the collections of prominent figures in the English court circle.

The official reason for Sir Dudley Carleton, the English Resident at The Hague’s visit to England in 1618 was to take instruction on how to handle the sensitive situation in the United Provinces, where the Dutch Stadholder was attempting to seize additional powers from the Raad of the United Provinces by force. Less officially, though, the trip was undertaken in order to sort out Carleton’s personal financial affairs.

To start with, there were his ambassadorial financial difficulties – significant sums were owing to him as arrears in his stipend (ambassadors invariably found the monarch slow in reimbursing them). To this end his wife had arrived at their London residence in Westminster two months before him, to begin lobbying for the release of monies owing to them. There were also Carleton’s continuing efforts to secure a senior position back in the English court, with more significant financial rewards.

(Eventually, in 1628, his persistent efforts to secure preferment, and to end his expensive peripatetic life as an English Resident Ambassador around Europe, were rewarded when he was appointed Secretary of State to Charles I – three years after his young protégé Constantijn Huygens senior became First Secretary to Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, across the water in the northern Netherlands.)

But there was an even more pressing personal reason for Carleton’s presence at the English court, one which explains why priceless works of art should have been at the very forefront of the Ambassador’s mind, and therefore prominent in the day-to-day activities of his accompanying Dutch party. In early February 1615, just before Carleton had been recalled from his post as Resident English Ambassador to Venice to take up the English Residency at The Hague, he had borrowed an embarrassingly large sum of money from the Protestant merchant banker of Italian extraction Philip Burlamachi (whose banking activities were largely based in London and Antwerp) to allow him to purchase a magnificent private collection of Italian paintings and antiquities. Carleton had stood personal guarantor for the safe arrival of the precious consignment – should anything happen to it before delivery, he would be responsible for repaying the bankers.

Carleton referred to the affair of the Venetian art purchase as a ‘mischance’, and such it became shortly after it was made. The collection he had acquired was indeed a fine one, consisting of Italian paintings by known ‘masters’, among them Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese and Bassano, and over ninety fine antique statues of various types and sizes, acquired via the agency of the Flemish dealer and fixer Daniel Nys (or Nice). It was Carleton’s intention to offer this pre-eminent collection to James I’s leading favourite, the Earl of Somerset – a significant art collector, who might be expected to jump at the chance of such an acquisition, and reward Carleton handsomely, over and above the purchase price.

Building up a notable private collection of Italian art, and displaying it in a purpose-built gallery, was much in vogue at the English court in the early decades of the seventeenth century.
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Carleton’s hope was that by making this important art acquisition (purchased as a complete collection from the estate of a deceased or financially embarrassed collector), he would attract Somerset’s attention and gratitude, and thereby secure the lucrative promotion he desired for himself at the English court. The paintings were shipped from Venice to London on 25 April 1615. The antiquities followed shortly afterwards, by separate shipment.

By the time the paintings and the twenty-nine cases of sculpture arrived in London, however, the Earl of Somerset had been disgraced, and was no longer in any position to concern himself with art acquisitions. In fact, even as Carleton was undertaking the purchase in Venice, at home, Somerset was already under suspicion, with his wife Frances, of conspiring to murder Sir Thomas Overbury. The couple were arrested on 17 October 1615, tried, imprisoned and permanently barred from royal favour.

Somerset’s personal possessions were immediately confiscated by the Crown, and there was some danger that Carleton’s newly arrived artworks, just unpacked, and sitting in Somerset’s quarters at Whitehall, would be seized by the King and added to his own collection, even though technically they still belonged to Carleton. Carleton – by now in post at The Hague – hurriedly arranged for the paintings to be identified as technically his, and offered for sale in London. Entering the ‘Bowling ally’ in Somerset’s apartments, Carleton’s agents marked his pictures with a cross, excluding them from the inventory of possessions seized by the King. While Carleton looked for another buyer, the pictures were moved to the home of a merchant who handled Daniel Nys’ accounts in London. Disposing of the paintings turned out to be a comparatively straightforward matter. Not only was the Earl of Arundel a leading collector, but he had been personally involved in advising Carleton over the original Venetian purchase – these were works of art entirely to his own taste. Arundel agreed to take possession of almost all the paintings. On 9 April 1616, two years before the visit on which Constantijn Huygens senior accompanied him, Carleton’s agent informed Carleton:

The L. Arundel is nowe returned & this day I gave my attendance on him, who I perceaved is passing desirous to deale for the halfe of them [the paintings], telling me that my L. Danvers undertooke to take the other halfe.

On 25 May 1616, Carleton was notified by his agent in London that ‘My L: of Arundell is content to take all the pictures (I would he were of the same mind for the Statues) to himself.’

Carleton’s agent was right to be anxious: it proved much more difficult to dispose of the sculptures. In spite of the full inventory which accompanied them, the individual pieces were less obviously ‘collectible’ than the high-quality paintings by recognised Italian masters. Many of the figures and reliefs were bulky and unwieldy to deal with, particularly from a distance, as Carleton was obliged to do. There was also the vexed issue of authentication. In the case of the paintings, Arundel had relied on his trusted expert Inigo Jones to scrutinise each one and give an opinion of its value (artistic and financial). And although, in spite of all this, Arundel might have been expected to take an interest in the sculptures as well as the paintings, this prospect had been scotched part-way through the longdistance negotiations, when Arundel was presented with another outstanding collection of antique statuary as a gift at precisely that moment – the superb collection which later came to be known as the ‘Arundel marbles’.

Eventually Carleton gave up trying to offload the antiquities in London, and had them all packed up again and sent back to him at The Hague, where he and his agents began casting around for another interested party to purchase them.

The idea of offering the sculpture collection to the great Flemish artist Pieter Paul Rubens may have come from Arundel or from Constantijn Huygens’s father, Christiaan senior, or both.
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In August 1617, Carleton’s agent George Gage wrote to him from Antwerp concerning the statues:
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[He] understands he has received divers antique heads and statues out of Italy, wishes to know if they were bot [bought] of Daniel Nice, shd much like to see them, especially if any Statues as large as life.
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Gage was aware that Carleton had successfully effected a transaction with Rubens earlier that year, exchanging a Rubens hunting scene for a chain of diamonds.
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Now he believed that Rubens might be interested in exchanging Carleton’s collection of antiquities for a significant number of the famous artist’s own fashionable and highly desirable paintings.
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