MAZARIN AS A COLLECTOR
Collectors of the seventeenth century in France--Louis XIII
--Richelieu--Mazarin and his advisers--Louis XIV as an
art lover--Vaillant’s strange case--Sanson, the hangman,
collecting pictures--The second collection of Cardinal Mazarin
--Its partial destruction through the Cardinal’s nephew--The
_medailles insolentes_ under Louis XIV--Epigrams on collectors
--Duke of Orleans’ ill-fated collection.
We must now give our attention to France as the most prominent country
in all that concerns collections of art, because the same conditions
appear here that are vanishing from Italy. In the seventeenth century
Paris had a well-established market of antiquities, authentic and
spurious masterpieces, articles of virtu, etc.; there were also
collectors of all types, dealers and the whole assemblage of wise and
foolish, honest and dishonest, peculiar to the commerce when it finds
its proper market.
Broadly speaking, in the seventeenth century every Parisian seems to
have been a collector of something or other. Painting as a rule is
given the preference.
It is about this time that Italy, however rich through the daily
excavation of antique works of sculpture, no longer seemed to suffice
to the greedy demand of France. Peiresse sent his emissaries to Mount
Athos, Syria and Africa in search of finds, Tavernier, Thévenet,
Lucas, Chardin and Gallant scoured the world in quest of antiquities
and rarities both for themselves and for the King of France. Vaillant,
one of the most efficient of these hunters, went to the East, sent by
Louis XIV, who too has joined the ring of collectors and in a kingly
way played the rôle of art amateur. On his return journey Vaillant was
caught by pirates, but managing to escape embarked for Europe. On the
way to France the vessel for the second time met the corsairs. They
were seen in the distance and were expected to attack at any moment.
The ship was able to escape, but fearing to be caught again and of
losing the valuable collection of coins and medals he was bringing to
Europe, Vaillant swallowed twenty of the best pieces in order to save
them from any possible danger of being taken. This odd story, with
its consequences, is related in detail by M. Weiss in his _Biographie
Universelle_, with such French frankness as to forbid any attempt at
translation.
Besides monarchs, the princes, noblemen and simple middle class of
all conditions seemed to be collectors at this period. The passion
for collecting numbers names such as Richelieu and Mazarin, among
antiquaries, amateurs and dealers were Jabach and others. The number
and importance of art collections, as well as of intelligent art
lovers in France during the seventeenth century, can be gathered from
the many publications on this century. They are many, and most of the
contemporary ones are quite documentary and important for the number
of collectors they mention. We may quote among them the _Itinerarium
Galliæ_, 1612, by Just Zinzerling, a German signing himself Jodocus
Sincerus, Abraham Golnitz’s _Ulysses Belgico-Gallico_, a work written
in 1631 dealing with the collections of medals and painting that
the author found in France during his journey. There is also the
_Voyage pour l’instruction et la commodité tant des François que des
Étrangers_, printed in 1639 and reprinted by Verdier, with interesting
additions, in the year 1687. John Evelyn, the English diarist, visited
France in the year 1643 and gave an account of many collections of art
and their cabinets, which was partially republished in the _Voyage de
Lister_, in an edition of the year 1878. We can enumerate further the
_Traité des plus belles bibliothèques_, published for the first time
in 1644 by Père Louis-Jacob, the librarian of Cardinal de Retz and
of President Du Harlay; the _Liste anonyme des curieux des diverses
villes_, etc.
In these works thousands of names of collectors of art, whether
specialists or not, are mentioned, not only those residing in Paris but
in all towns of the provinces.
Collectomania was becoming epidemic!
The list of seventeenth-century collectors of art has the odd honour
of including the name of Charles Sanson, the hangman of Paris, and
great-grandfather of the celebrated Sanson, the executioner of the
_hautes œuvres_ at the time of the French Revolution. According
to information given by Grammont, who related to the French king
his adventure with Sanson, the man who had been nominated public
executioner in Paris by a decision of Parliament dated August 11th,
1688, possibly the first Sanson to enter the undesirable profession,
this man was not only a collector of paintings but also a specialist;
and logically so. Grammont relates how he was one day hunting for
paintings at the fair of Saint Germain, when he came across Sanson with
Forest, a painter and art dealer. The hangman was haggling over the
price of a few works he wished to add to his collection. One of the
canvasses represented a wife mercilessly scourging her husband, another
was the portrait of M. Tardieu, the deceased “Lieutenant Criminel,” a
man Sanson had known very well and to whom he owed a certain gratitude,
because, as he remarked to Grammont, when living he had made him hang
and torture so many people that his skill and efficiency were gained
through the work done in M. Tardieu’s time. A third painting he finally
decided to buy represented Japanese torturing several missionaries to
death. He candidly declared that “spectacles of this kind appeared
charming to him” and that he intended to hang the painting in his
bedroom.
A characteristic of the latter part of the seventeenth century is
not only the many sales of collections of art in France, England and
elsewhere, but the appearance for the first time of printed catalogues,
prepared either for the sale or as a simple illustrative document of
certain collections. The first printed catalogue of France bears the
title, _Roole des medailles et autre antiquitez du cabinet de Monsieur
Duperier, gentilhomme d’Aix_, and after this many collectors follow the
example. Even the learned Marolles is tempted to give to the public his
_Catalogue de livres d’estampes et de figures de taille douce_.
To complete the characteristics of the revived market of antiques and
articles of virtu in France, now exuberant in its various expressions,
we may note the advent of the so-called _amateur marchand_. The
“private dealer,” a gentleman with a collection who deals secretly
in antiques and at the same time plays the grand seigneur scorning
commerce, has been perfected since, and the modern one is perhaps more
intelligent, shrewder, more the grand seigneur, but less frank and
far more dangerous. It may be said, by the way, that the art critic
has not yet put in an appearance as a disguised dealer, the wardrobe
of the ambiguous trade not having yet supplied the mask. There was no
representative at this time of the type of Pietro Aretino--why not
call him one of this species--who in the sixteenth century extolled
paintings for artists in exchange for paintings and sold his literary
eulogies to princes and monarchs.
One of the most characteristic collectors of the epoch is, perhaps,
Mazarin, a merchant and intriguer on the one side, and on the other a
passionate collector and an epic type of the lover of art.
A brief sketch of his life and of the vicissitudes of his collections
of art are worth giving. Mazarin, in a way, so thoroughly impersonates
his time, that to portray him as a collector helps to throw light on
the _milieu_ in which he lived. History handed Mazarin down to us as a
politician and capital intriguer, etc., but only few know of him as a
lover of art.
As a collector Mazarin recalls the shrewdest kind of the old Roman
type. The times are changed and the old ways of Sulla and Mark Antony
no longer possible. Violence and proscription lists would not be
tolerated, but without the extreme methods of a Roman proconsul,
Mazarin possesses the cunning of a Verres. Like the latter he also
finds things by instinct and has the unbounded passion of a true
collector. We are uncertain at times whether Mazarin, who was without
doubt one of the most appreciative collectors of his day, possessed
that rare sixth sense that goes under the name of the collector’s
touch, but he was nevertheless a man of taste and an art lover of
unusual promptitude in the use of the ability of others. Like many a
genuine and greedy collector of Roman times, Mazarin was persistent and
obdurate in the carrying through of the most complex and discouraging
plans in order to secure objects for his collection. In Rome once he
saw a painting of Correggio, the _Sposalizio_. It belonged to Cardinal
Barberini, who had made up his mind never to part with the masterpiece.
To become possessed of it Mazarin made use of a ruse. He asked Anne of
Austria to demand the painting from Cardinal Barberini, knowing that
stubborn as the Cardinal might be he would not refuse a favour to the
Queen of France. In fact, Barberini came to Paris himself to present
the painting to Anne of Austria. The epilogue of this _mazarinade_
is related by Brienne as follows: “To do proper honour to the gift,
the Queen hung the picture in her bedroom in the presence of Cardinal
Barberini, but hardly had he left (_il n’eut pas le dos tourné_) than
she took the painting and gave it to Mazarin.” Brienne ends his account
with the observation that Mazarin “had conducted this lengthy intrigue
to get possession of a picture.” Considering that intriguing was second
nature with Mazarin we must say that Correggio’s _Sposalizio_ was worth
the trouble of such a _mazarinade_.
As a collector of art, bric-à-brac and precious things generally,
Cardinal Mazarin had an unusually lucky career. Contrary to the rule
that exacts a very high price for experience in collecting, Mazarin
seems to have been favoured by fortune from the very first; as for
scruples, if they are known to a few connoisseurs he knew none.
He was scarcely known. His profession--if his occupation may be so
called--was to move between Rome and Paris, to play to a certain
extent the part of a courier between the two cities, the _navette_
(weaver’s shuttle) between the Roman State and its intriguers in Paris.
During this period of his life Mazarin used to land in the French
capital at the house of the Chavignys, where he often arrived “covered
all over with dirt” (_tout crotté_).
Passing Monferrato on one of his journeys he bought a rosary, the beads
of which were supposed to be glass, but were in fact precious stones,
emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds. The rosary Mazarin bought for
a mere song was sold in Paris for ten thousand ducats.
His reputation as an excellent bric-à-brac hunter, with a fine eye
for works of art, reached Richelieu and this secured to Mazarin the
protection of the omnipotent Cardinal; the rest is known.
Mazarin really remained a “private dealer” all his life, a fact that
his opponents could not forget. More than one _mazarinade_ alludes to
the Cardinal’s dealings.
Even when writing to potentates or diplomats on the most important
political schemes, Mazarin never lost sight of his hobby. In his letter
to Cardinal Grimaldi on the importance of watching our “affairs in
Italy” he reminds him, by the way, to be on the look out for good books
and good paintings, etc.
Through a well-organized network of agents and political friends he
received objects for his collection almost daily. Chiefly from Rome,
Florence and other cities of Italy, statues, paintings, furniture
arrived in a continual stream at the Cardinal’s palace. His library
numbered twelve thousand volumes in a very short time.
The _Fronde_, however, is no longer satisfied with gibing the Cardinal
with _mazarinades_ on his buying of books without being able to read
them. His opponents, antagonistic to the Cardinal’s policy, finally
rose up boldly against him. Mazarin was obliged to fly from Paris. By a
decree of Parliament his goods were seized and sold. Whatever criticism
may be passed on the Cardinal’s shady policy, the destruction of his
collection and library is an unpardonable sin and an artistic loss.
Mazarin does not seem to have been discouraged by this unexpected
_contretemps_. Learning that Jabach was going to London to be present
at the sale of the collection of Charles I, he asked him to buy
paintings for him, and through this friend was able to secure for a new
gallery the Venus by Titian, the Antiope and the Marsyas by Correggio,
the Deluge by Carracci, as well as tapestries of inestimable value.
Two years later Mazarin triumphantly entered Paris again, was
reinstated in his former power, and started a new library, while
reconstituting his dispersed gallery; and when he died his collection
contained, according to an inventory of the year 1661, 546 pictures,
of which 283 were of the Italian school, 77 German or Dutch, 77 French
and 109 of various schools. The Italian school included names such
as Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Tintoretto, Solario, Guido Reni, the
Carracci, Domenichino, Bassano, Albani, etc.
Many of these works are now in the Louvre Museum and nearly all his
statues, 350 in number, have also passed to the Louvre and are now kept
in the _Galérie des Antiques_.
The inventory also informs us that the Cardinal left twenty-one
cabinets, some in ebony, others veneered with tortoise-shell and ivory,
and a large quantity of marble tables and Venetian glass, chandeliers
in rock crystal, and irons in silver or gilded.
The precious stones were valued at 387,014 francs, the silver of the
chapel at 25,995, the plates in silver, gold or gilded (761 pieces) at
347,972, etc. The same inventory also notes 411 fine pieces of tapestry
estimated at 632,000, perhaps what a single piece of the best would
cost nowadays, but an enormous sum considering the time. There were
also 46 Persian rugs of unusual length, 21 complete “ameublements” in
velvet, satin, gold embroidered silk, etc.
The library included 50,000 volumes and 400 manuscripts.
[Illustration:
_Photo]_ _[Alinari_
THE SPINARIO.
A cherished Roman subject of the imitators of the XVth and XVIth
Centuries. Several museums have similar imitations. There is a fine
original in Naples Museum.]
Brienne, who was a collector himself on a smaller scale, and who filled
at the time the position of secretary to the Cardinal, relates
with a certain pathos the last moments of this frantic art collector,
and how during his last illness he grieved to leave his cherished
masterpieces.
“I was walking,” says Brienne, “in the small gallery in which is the
woollen tapestry representing Scipio--the Cardinal did not possess a
finer one. By the noise of his slippers I heard him coming, shuffling
along like a suffering man or a convalescent. I hid myself behind
the tapestry and heard him say, ‘I must leave all this!’ Being very
weak he stopped at every step, leaning first to one side and then to
the other; gazing at the various objects of his collection, and in a
voice that came from his heart, he kept on repeating ‘I must leave all
this!’ Then turning his head to another side--‘and also that! What
trouble I had to buy all these things. How can I leave them without
regret?--I shall not be able to see them where I am going.’ I gave
a sigh, I could not help it, and he heard me. ‘Who is there?’ ‘It is
I, Monseigneur----’ ‘Come here,’ he said to me in a doleful tone. He
was nude, only covered with his _robe de chambre de camelot_ lined
with _petit-gris_. He said, ‘Give me your hand, I am so weak; I can
hardly bear it----’ Then returning to his first idea, ‘Do you see,
my friend, that fine painting by Correggio, that Venus by Titian and
that incomparable Deluge by Carracci--I know that you too love and
understand painting. Alas, my dear friend, I must leave all this.
Good-bye, dear paintings that I have loved so much, that have cost me
so high a price!’” (Brienne, _Memoires_, II, XIV).
These three paintings, Correggio’s Sposalizio, Titian’s Venus, and
Carracci’s work, are now in the Louvre Museum.
“_Que j’ai tant aimés et qui m’ont tant couté!_” The second part of the
sad exclamation would indeed seem to belong to this shrewd adventurer,
but those not knowing to what lengths the passion for collecting can
go, would hardly imagine that a man of Mazarin’s temperament could
love, really love, anything on earth but power and intrigue.
As a most remarkable contrast to this passionate love for beautiful
things, Destiny ordained that the greater part of the Cardinal’s
statues and paintings should fall into the hands of his nephew and
heir, Armand-Charles de la Porte, Duc de la Meilleraye, the husband
of Mazarin’s niece, Hortense Mancini. This nephew, who on becoming
the Cardinal’s heir was allowed to take his uncle’s name and titles,
was bigoted to the last degree. Idiotically deprived of all artistic
sense he thought it his duty to destroy the art collection, to purge
the world of the offence offered to morality by nude sculpture, to rid
society of the Cardinal’s paintings with their shocking mythological
subjects. Saint-Evremont relates how this fanatic iconoclast left his
mansion at Vincennes one day with the deliberate intention to destroy
the fine gallery left to him by the Cardinal, and how on his arrival in
Paris he entered the place where it was kept and taking a hammer out
of a mason’s hand proceeded to smash statue after statue and destroy
paintings. But the statues and works of art were altogether too many
to be destroyed single-handed, so he armed half a dozen servants with
hammers and ordered them to help him in his artistic hecatomb. It was
indeed fortunate that upon the Cardinal’s death Louis XIV made up his
mind to buy some of the best paintings, and that some of the statues
had also been taken away from this strange curator of Mazarin’s museum,
or there would be very little left to-day of one of the most famous
collections of Paris. Some of the statues now in the Louvre still show
this fanatic nobleman’s abuse of the hammer, more especially the one
bearing the title “Le Génie du repos eternel.”
The monarchs of this time bought paintings, statues and fine things,
sharing enthusiasm with private citizens. However, they played their
part well and the attitude of the art lover gave them a finishing
touch. Yet in less dangerous and despotic an age the pen of a Molière
might have tried its caustic ability on some of these types. Louis XIII
is, after all, but a mild art lover, at least so he appears by the side
of Marie de Médicis who learned the part of Mæcenas at the court of
Tuscany. He collects arms and had a _cabinet_ of choice weapons, among
other curios, his _grosse Vitri_, a carbine of rare merit left him by
Vitri. We know of this collection of Louis XIII because it is recorded
that when Concini, the Florentine intriguer whom Marie de Médicis
had created Maréchal d’Ancre, was killed in the court of the Louvre,
“the king, who was in his _cabinet des armes_, heard the noise of the
pistols.” Anne of Austria, his wife, one of the few women to detest
roses and who could not even bear to see this magnificent Queen of
Flowers painted in a picture, had a passion for fine book-bindings, and
Monsieur Gaston d’Orléans sported medals and also rare books.
As for Louis XIV, the best-staged king of his time, he was apparently
ready to buy anything that would add magnificence to his court and be
in keeping with his rôle of Roi Soleil.
Notwithstanding his more or less decorative magnificence, however,
this monarch was at times a hard bargainer, and like Isabella d’Este,
knew how to take advantage of needy or impecunious clients. His
transactions with Jabach to buy from him the finest art collection in
France are scandalous, nor can these transactions be solely attributed
to Colbert, who was for a long time the go-between in this affair.
Jabach was a German by birth and Parisian by election, a rich banker,
the director of the _Compagnie des Indes Orientales_, intelligent and a
most passioned art collector. With great care and expense he had formed
the finest collection of his time. Later, through business reverses,
his unbounded liberality to artists and the extravagant prices he paid
for his masterpieces, Jabach finally found himself forced to part
with his collection, and entered into negotiations with Louis XIV
who knew its immense value. Dealings dragged on for a long time, and
every day Jabach was more pressed by his creditors. Notwithstanding
his necessitous condition he rebelled at the absurd price offered and
wrote to Colbert to beg the king to treat him “as a Christian, and
not as a Moor.” Finally Louis XIV, the Roi Soleil, though in this
affair a planet certainly that did not shine in generosity, gained his
point and for the absurdly paltry sum of 200,000 livres became the
owner of the renowned Jabach collection, composed of no fewer than 101
paintings, a great many of them masterpieces, and 5542 drawings. It is
sufficient to say that in this Jabach collection were works by Leonardo
da Vinci, the Saint John, the “Concert champêtre” by Giorgione--one
of the few authentic works of this master--the Entombment of Christ,
the Pilgrims of Emmaus and the Mistress of Titian by Titian, all of
which now belong to the Louvre Museum.
With a king who played the connoisseur and collected objects of art and
virtu, no gentleman of the French court would acknowledge indifference
towards art, or be without a certain hobby of his own, collecting some
one thing in particular, being in fact what is generally defined as a
specialist.
Speaking of “La Mode” in his _Les Charactères_, La Bruyère lashes the
collecting craze of his time without mercy. His Chapter XIII treats
of fads and fashions, and in it he tells of the ridiculous freaks of
collectors and cleverly points out how utterly deprived of genuine
meaning were the artistic pursuits of such amateurs.
Nevertheless, with its good sides and its bad, the epidemic spread, and
not only in France, but in other countries as well. We will, however,
confine our study of this epoch to France as for the purposes of this
brief résumé of the collecting craze France was ahead of the other
countries, and thus by the side of the wise and genuine lover of art,
possessed all the other degrees of Collectomania.
Though conforming to fashion, every one has his own views on the
matter, so that there are dreamers and speculators on all kinds of
antiques, but painting is given the preference.
“Pictures are bullion,” writes the fat Coulanges to his cold-blooded
and well-behaved cousin, Mme. de Sévigné, “you can sell them at twice
their price whenever you like.” In fact during one of his journeys
to Italy, Coulanges, who had caught the collecting fever, made a
considerable sum of money in buying and selling pictures, so much money
that it spoilt his taste for, as a chroniclist says, “The treasure,
which he saw piled up at the Hotel de Guise awoke in him more expensive
tastes.” His wife, Marie-Angelique du Gue-Bagnol, collected _raretés
curieuses_. Mme. de Sévigné tells us of her delight when she saw in her
cousin’s house a looking-glass that had been owned by Queen Marguerite.
At this epoch the art and curio market comprised all sorts of odd
characters and, as might be expected, the subject gave ample food to
writers and chroniclers for skits. La Bruyère is not alone in making
sport of the obsessed art collector and crazy curio-hunter. From
Molière to the Italian Goldoni the antiquary and his victim are capital
subjects. Poetry also contributes its sarcasm. In France some of the
minor and justly obscure poets are very useful in the reconstruction of
our _milieu_. There are even chronicles written in verse.
For instance, Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV, goes to see
Caterine Henriette Bellier de Beauvais, the first lady of the
bedchamber of the queen dowager Anne of Austria, a lady who is
evidently collecting art. The poetical chronicle at once informs the
public that:--
Mercredi, notre auguste Reine
Fut chez madame de Beauvais
Pour de son aimable palais
Voir les merveilles étonnantes
Et raretés surprenantes....
We will spare the reader the description of the collection given in a
sort of litany of praise, a sequence of lines like the following:--
Tant de belles orfevreries
Tant d’éclatantes pierreries
* * * * *
Tant de vases si précieux,
Tant de bustes et tant d’images, etc.
Le Maisel Prieur des Roches is crazy for books, and like a true
bibliomaniac he never reads his books, which are generally bought for
the title, etc. This of course is more than enough for his introduction
into one of these rhyming chronicles, called _Rymaille_:--
Les livres Des Roches en belle couverture,
Mais leur Maistre n’en donne Science ny Lecture.
Paintings being given the preference, they are also the cherished
subject for verse. Impassioned specialists who collect the works of a
single artist and spend a lifetime in doing it are a capital subject.
There is also an Arcadia among art collectors, worthy of the eighteenth
century, a regular Arcadia with pseudo-names, etc. One of these rhymed
chronicles records the various names assumed by the collectors and
amateurs of the Arcadia. As we have said, many of these collectors of
paintings are specialists possessed of the hobby of collecting the
works of a single master. Poussin is at one time the most fashionable,
and while the Poussinists are among the most impassioned in proclaiming
the merits of their artist, there are also other “ists.” Gamarre, Sieur
de Creze, lieutenant des chasses, is apparently at the head of the
Poussinists. His Arcadian name is Pantolme.
The widow of Lescot--the jeweller who was one of Mazarin’s advisers and
was sent by the Cardinal to Spain in search of fine things--collects
paintings, but happens to be a Rubenist. However, in due time she
is converted by Pantolme (Gamarre) to the Poussinist persuasion and
deserts the Flemish art of Rubens and starts a new collection as a
Poussinist. She is called Irene in the _Banquet des Curieux_.
It would take long to go over all the pleasantries of the curio-hunters
of this time. Bizot, named Lubin in the _Banquet des Curieux_, is a
type of collector we have already introduced:--
Lubin, amateur d’antiquailles,
De livres anciens et de vielles médailles,
Philosophe sans jugement,
Curieux sans raisonnement,...
* * * * *
Other odd characters have escaped record in rhyme. A Sieur Basin de
Limeville of Blois is a well-known collector of medals. He spent his
whole life in buying nothing but medals. Yet no one ever saw his
collection; as soon as they were bought the medals were put away in his
cabinet, declares an informant of the time. His cabinet is provided
with an iron door and a lock with a key of most complex make. At his
death the heir tried to open the door but the key refused to open,
there being some special handling beside the difficulty of the lock.
The man who had made the key was dead and the case was so hopeless that
the heir was forced to enter Sieur de Limeville’s cabinet through an
opening in the wall. Inside the cabinet there was found among a mass of
cobwebs a dirty sack filled with the precious medals, the collection to
which the deceased had given his whole life.
La Bruyère tells of a man who spent all his years hunting for a bad
etching of Callot. He knew the work was the poorest ever done by the
artist, that it was not worth the trouble, but he nevertheless gave his
whole time and activity to the search for that etching because it was
the only work of Callot that he did not possess.
Jacob Spoon, a doctor of medicine and an intelligent but odd individual
who died in the year 1685, declares that in his native city of Lyons
every one is collecting something or other. Then, and perhaps as a
physician he was in a position to know, he says that collecting is a
disease, contagious though not fatal.
There is no need of special documents to say that faking must have
worked with a certain ease in such a world. Brienne tells us that when
Cardinal Mazarin received objects from Italy, Jabach and Magnard were
charged to examine them and very often more than one piece of faking
was discovered, very successful counterfeits (_Memoires de Brienne_,
Chap. IX).
There is no instance to my knowledge of any sentence passed by tribunal
upon fakers at this time when everything seems to have been decided by
the almighty, power of Louis XIV or the ever-ready Parliament.
Yet the police of Louis XIV seem to have one interest in the collecting
of art. They must watch that the books, prints and paintings,
etc., offered for sale contain nothing immoral or what we should
call nowadays subversive. By this duty the police of Louis XIV
become specialists, going in chiefly for medals. In the year 1696
Pontchartrain wrote to M. de la Reynie “to send a man to watch the sale
of Abbé Bizot and be on the look out for the _médailles insolentes_ of
the said _cabinet_.” After other injunctions, he then adds: “It is His
Majesty’s wish that the medals incurring suppression should be put into
a sack, this to be sealed and taken to the mint....”
It is clear from this that over and above interest in bad coins and
faked medals the police of the _Roi Soleil_ were on the look out for a
particular historical coin bearing some unfriendly allusion to the King
of France, and their earnest efforts to suppress it had naturally made
it so rare that it kindled the ambition of numismatists and collectors
at large.
The eighteenth century might be called the period of sales of art
collections. Everywhere auctions were held of well-known collections;
in Holland alone we can register 185 catalogues of art sales from 1700
to 1750. This may be called a sort of record, however, as France in the
same period of time counts only thirty catalogues. Following the art
sales in Paris we find that from 1751 to 1760 an average of four sale
catalogues a year is reached. From 1761 to 1770 the average increases
to thirteen; from 1771 to 1775 to twenty-eight, and from 1776 to 1785
to forty-two each year. This is the climax; at this point art sales
were social functions and the auction room a place where society met.
Collections are dispersed and new ones formed, and the transference of
masterpieces from one collection to another through the auction room
acquires unusual rapidity. Such a state of affairs inspires Thibaudeau
with the following reflection. (Thibaudeau. _Préface du Trésor de la
Curiosité._)
“It is like a game of shuttlecock in which the bourgeoisie and nobility
throw masterpieces to each other and with such swiftness that one
really does not know to whom they belong.”
The eighteenth century, from the very beginning, numbers collectors
such as Crozat, who had a palace in Rue Richelieu and a collection
of 19,000 drawings, 400 paintings and 1400 cameos, etc., Comtesse
de Verrue and Baudelet. The Duke of Orleans’ gallery includes 478
paintings, of which three were by Leonardo da Vinci, 15 by Raphael, 31
by Titian, 19 by Paul Veronese, 10 by Correggio, 12 by Poussin, and
many others of the Dutch, Spanish and other schools.
This collection of the Duke of Orleans, one of the finest in France
after that of Cardinal Mazarin, seems to have been pursued by the
same ill-luck as the latter. The Regent’s son, with deplorable
prudery, destroyed all the paintings with nude figures; as for the
rest of the collection, it was sold later to some English amateurs by
Philippe-Egalité.