COLLECTING IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND
Passion for collecting art travels to France--The Florentine
Republic and the fate of a statuette by Michelangelo--Italy
supplies antiques to France and other countries--The fair
of Frankfurt--A famous sale--In England the passion for
collecting art and curios may have originated in France.
While the passion in Italy for collections of art still goes on
enriching museums more through the impetus of the past than from a
genuine cult, and produces occasionally, together with many illustrious
patrons of contemporary art, some old type of collector fond of the
antique with the characteristic greed for all kinds of rarities,
France, and later almost every other nation of Europe, awakens to the
passion for art and curios. It is no longer a question of monarchs
and princes, as was the case in Italy, nobles and the bourgeois as
well come to the fore. Even at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
France may quote the names of Grolier and Robertet, both financiers
employed at Court, both lovers of fine things. The former is a
specialist in rare editions and fine bindings, the latter a keen-eyed,
eclectic collector, as may be gathered from the inventory of his
excellent collection kept in his castle of Bury.
It must be said, however, that Italy still remains a sort of El Dorado
of fine art and the inexhaustible mine to which collectors come for
their finds. The French had discovered this fact from the time they
came to Italy with Charles VIII. Later on Grolier visits Italy and
takes back with him some of its treasures. When he has no opportunity
to come to Italy himself, his friends and agents continue the search
for him; they know his taste and his speciality and are very alert
in the hunt for fine and rare editions. Robertet bargained with the
Florentine Republic to exchange his political influence for a statuette
by Michelangelo. The Republic had great interest in remaining friends
with the French monarch and accepted the bargain, and as the statuette
had been left unfinished by Michelangelo, who had moved to Rome by
this time, Benedetto da Rovezzano is charged to finish the work and
cast it. This statuette of a David was placed by Robertet in the _cour
d’honneur_ of his castle and afterwards, in the year 1633, removed
to the castle of Villeroy, and it is now lost. Only a design of this
statue, by the great Michelangelo, is now in the Louvre Museum, and
from this we can gather how the statue looked.
What was not bought was carried away from Italy after the fashion of
the old Roman conquerors. In the year 1527 a ship arrived at Valencia
loaded with artistic and valuable booty from the famous “Sack of
Rome.” Curiously enough, considering the age, the Spanish municipal
authorities of Valencia did not grant the vessel permission to unload
her cargo. This fact, quoted by Baron Davillier in his _Histoire des
faïences hispano-moresques_, is commented on by Edmond Bonnaffé, a
French collector of our times, thus: “I love to think that the captain
changed his course and found more hospitable municipalities on the
French coast.”
The rich artistic booty promised by Italy made it almost obligatory
for an orthodox French amateur to undertake a journey to Italy. It is
surprising that the _Voyages de Montaigne en Allemande et en Italie_,
1580-81, makes no allusion to this fad and contains very few comments
on art. However rich Montaigne’s work may be in valuable observations
on the life of the time, we should nevertheless have desired him to
have a touch of the art lover in him, a leaning to the artistic and
beautiful, and we would willingly have exchanged a few words with him
on the art and collections of art in the Italy of his day, instead of
his long, detailed descriptions of his cures and his eternal search for
medicinal springs, etc.
An important annual meeting, one that the true collector was likely
to visit, was the fair of Frankfurt. According to H. Estienne this
must have been one of the most frequented art markets of Europe.
Italy, says Estienne, contributed all kinds of antiques, faiences, old
medals, books and brocades; Germany furnished wrought iron and artistic
prints, Flanders sent tapestry, Milan its fine arms, Venice goods from
the East. Estienne also states that Spain used to send to this fair
American products, weapons, costumes, shells and silver-work.
It was not a market exclusively for the genuine, as copies and
imitations were to be found there for the economical or the foolish,
easily duped amateur. Above all there were those deplorable casts from
fine originals that have ever since deceived so many collectors and
which so enraged the good Palissy, who laments the fact and stigmatizes
it with the saying that it cheapens and offends sculpture, “_mespris en
la sculpture à cause de la meulerie_.”
This glimpse of the creation of a market of antique art and
bric-à-bracs of high quality would not be complete without some typical
sale of a famous collection. Among others that took place towards the
end of the sixteenth century, we may quote a notable one, the sale of
Claude Gouffier (“Seigneir de Boisy,” duc de Reannes and Grand-Écuyer
de France), an intelligent gentleman who, with his mother Hélène de
Hargest-Genlis, is responsible for one of the finest types of French
pottery, the faience d’Oiron. Besides spending considerable sums of
money on the factory of this ware, Gouffier was such a liberal patron
of art and artists that he ruined himself in the gratification of
his noble passion. At his death the creditors seized upon his rare
collections and _objets de virtu_ and put them up to auction. This
sale was not only the artistic event of the day but, perhaps, the
most important sale of the second half of the sixteenth century. All
Paris of the time seems to have been there. Plates, paintings, works
of art, bibelots, _toute la curiosité_, passed mercilessly under the
hammer of the auctioneer--which by the way was not a hammer, a
usage originating in England, but as a rule a _barguette_, a small
rod, with which the auctioneer struck a metal bowl. Nothing was spared
by the creditors, even the wearing apparel and furs of the deceased
were offered to the highest bidder. Of these, strange to say, the Duke
d’Aumule (Claude de Lorrain, third son of Claude, first Duc de Guise)
bought a second-hand _manteau de cerimonie_ with the evident intention
of wearing it at Court. By a curious coincidence, this sale took
place only twenty-five days after the tragic night of St. Bartholomew
(September, 18th, 1572), an event that did not prevent Catherine de
Médicis from appearing at the sale with her ladies-in-waiting, to
dispute with other buyers the spoils of the deceased gentleman.
One of the conspicuous buyers at this auction was a Florentine living
in Paris, Luigi Ghiacceti, called by the Frenchmen _le seigneur
d’Adjacet_ or _d’Adjoute_. Beside “_ung harnois d’homme d’armes
complect, gravé et dorré à moresque_” he bought many other things, the
portrait of Henry II and also “sixty pictures painted in oils.” This
Florentine was not only an esteemed collector of his time, but a man
of taste who had built one of the finest mansions in Paris, which he
showed to visitors, together with his fine museum, “for a sou,” so says
Sauval, the chronicler quoted above.
While France appears to have been the first country to follow Italy
in the artistic movement, about this time, as we have said, all
European nations had more or less perfected their taste and acquired
the love for art collecting. The English invasion of France is perhaps
responsible for the awakening of this passion in England. Warton
(_Hist. of Poetry_, II, 254) is of the opinion that after the battle
of Cressy (1346) the victorious army brought home such treasures that
there was not a family in England, modest though it might be, that did
not own some part of the precious booty, furniture, furs, silk stuffs,
tapestries, silver and gold works, etc., the pillage of the French
cities.
More than two centuries later, part of this artistic booty may have
come back to France. Gilles Corrozet tells us that on the Mégisserie,
the quay constructed by Francis I, where artistic sales usually took
place, “in the year one thousand five hundred and fifty, in the month
of August, there were publicly sold in the Mégisserie several images,
altar-pieces, paintings and other church ornaments, which had been
brought and saved from the churches of England.”
Imitation and faking do not seem to find suitable patrons at this time.
Collectors are cold and methodical, and a well-established commerce
in antiques, an abundance of objects offered for sale, seem to have
precluded a demand for other fakes than those of the past, and a few
clumsy imitations. The imitations of this period are hardly convincing.
Restorers of the antique were without skill, which fact plainly tells
that their patrons were not excessively particular. They were satisfied
with a Roman bust, repaired by a sculptor who does not give himself the
trouble to disguise his own art.
About the time of which we are speaking, that is to say when the merits
and demerits of the sixteenth century had delineated themselves and had
reached the summit of the curve that anticipates decline, the work of
Michelangelo, Raphael and a few others--if there were any others of
that calibre--produced their natural effect. To be a sculptor meant
to copy all the defects of Michelangelo, to indulge in over-ripe forms,
turgid muscles and exuberance in general; to be a painter did not
mean so much servility because Raphael’s influence was less extended,
but very few escaped imitating or recalling the painting of the fine
master of Urbino, more especially as the public was naturally attached
to Raphaelite traditions. This was so much the case that not only was
Giulio Romano accepted, and a legion of other painters who aimed more
or less successfully to imitate Raphael, but later the honour that
should have belonged to Raphael was given to Sogliani simply because he
had deceived the public by his craft and virtuosity, winning the name
of Raphael reincarnated. In our opinion, part of the energy that was
keenly given in olden times to the imitation of the antique was now
bestowed on “faking.”
It is true that France was coming to the fore about the middle of
the sixteenth century with indisputable superiority in art, while
Italy turns to inevitable decadence. France had had a “school of
Fontainebleau” disposed to exercise the tyranny of genius, but Rosso
was not Raphael, and the Italian influence, though of great benefit
to the French school, was, after all, a mere passing incident in
the course of art in that country. Yet it is surprising that even
in France, at a moment when the mania for collecting art was on the
increase, the collector does not seem to have been either victimized or
annoyed by faking.
It must be said though, with Edmond Bonnaffé, that “the French buyers
were regarded somewhat as novices, and everyone did his best to exploit
them.”
The French art lover, with all his progress and enlightenment, was
at this time naive, and easily exploited by trickery. It is easy to
imagine that if faking did not become as rampant as before, it must
have been because it did not pay as formerly.
Yet H. Estienne remarks on this subject:
“To-day the world is full of buyers of old lumber (_antiquailles_), at
whose expense many rogues are prospering. For so little do they know
how to distinguish the antique from the modern, that no sooner do they
hear the word which so often makes them dip their fingers into their
purse, etc.”
By this remark, even without other documents, one is entitled to
conclude that even at this period, which seems to have been less
given than the others to imitation and faking, victims existed and
were ready, like the novice or the unwise to-day, to pay fancy prices
supported by a name.
Although ranking second in the movement of art--France, England
and Germany have risen up and improved their taste, indulging in the
true patronage of art--Italy is still the inexhaustible source of
antiques, in spite of the fact that the decadence afflicting the
country had destroyed the real love of art in the collector. Italian
villas and palaces are replete with paintings, the best often in
garrets, the bad art of the time in full honour in the important
rooms. The Barocco, with its gorgeous errors and few merits, is about
to prepare the funeral of Italian art. The seventeenth century is
approaching.