Spanish Nobility and Art the

Spanish Nobility and Art The Spanish Nobility and the Golden Age of Art The Spanish nobility was very interested in art collecting. Philip II, "an extraordinary patron and connoisseur," (Brown 2) for example, possessed almost the entire collection of Hieronymus Bosch, a great favorite of the sixteenth century king. This paper will examine why Spanish nobility cultivated such an interest, and will explore the significance that certain works and artists had for collectors such as the Count of Monterrey, the Marquis of Leganes, and Don Luis de Haro.

As Jonathan Brown states, "Works of art produced in other parts of Europe abounded in the Iberian peninsula, adorning palaces, country houses, and, of course, ecclesiastical institutions of every sort" (1). This was the Golden Age of art in Spain, when trade and travel helped take painting out of the medieval world, through the door of the Renaissance, and into the modern world.

The Golden Age elevated painting to a whole new level of apprenticeship, and introduced the professional, non-anonymous painter to the world; a tradesman who could mix and mingle with the highest levels of aristocracy and nobility, because of having received an education that was rooted in acquired skill, mythological studies, and humanism. Philip II reigned from 1556 to 1598, and during that near half-century, he imported an incredible amount of talent from "Italy and Flanders, who introduced current styles into Castile and trained a new generation of native artists" (Brown 2).

The Golden Age of art in Spain consisted "primarily of religious subjects, portraiture, and still lifes. Mythological subjects, genre scenes, and landscapes also appeared in collections, but were usually painted in Italy or Flanders" (Collins 234). Since the king's court was in Madrid, the city became the central location for new and important works of art. Yet, other towns in Madrid also offered patronage, as Toledo did to El Greco, "a painter who did not conform to the prevailing taste in Castile and failed to find favor with the king" (2).

Indeed, Spain's love affair with art would continue into the next century, which would turn out to be "a remarkable epoch for the arts in Spain. The names of Velazquez, Murillo, Ribera, and Zurbaran epitomize the period's high level of artistic achievement" (Enggass and Brown 159). The seventeenth century, in fact, saw Don Luis de Haro advising king Philip IV to such an extent that "Don Luis de Haro's French contemporaries made no mistake about his control of the Spanish state" (Brown, Elliott 90).

Such was significant because Don Luis himself was a master collector and a patron of the arts (a fact which reflected Spain's obsession with the medium). "Don Luis was said to have brought an important group of Flemish pictures as a gift for Philip IV in the early 1630s" (Brown, Elliott 91), and he had been collecting paintings from elsewhere, such as Venice at around the same time.

The fact that "the key to power lay, as always, in gaining the ear of the king," (Elliott 85) may have some part in the relationship between Philip IV's love of art and Don Luis'. To find favor with the king -- or have sway with him -- why wouldn't one cultivate an interest in that which interested the king? Such is exactly what Don Luis did -- and he became one in the circle of collectors that made up the Spanish nobility in the Golden Age of art.

Yet Don Luis is "on everyone's list of the most important collectors and connoisseurs of the Golden Age...[for his] activity in acquiring masterpieces from the almoneda of Charles I, the deposed and executed former king of England" (Brown, Elliott 92). The story behind Don Luis' acquisition is based on the fact that, like Philip II, Philip IV took painting and art very seriously. "Great masterpieces had been an essential part of the trappings of Habsburg royalty for four generations" (Brown, Elliot 95).

Don Luis presented to Philip IV works by Mantegna, Tintoretto, Titian, Parmigianino and Ribera. All the same, Don Luis' purchases often ended up in the Escorial. "After the Alcazar and Buen Retiro collections, the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial represented the most important repository of art within the royal domain" (Brown, Elliott 98). It had been Philip's plan that his remains should lay in the Escorial and that for this reason, it should be adorned with only "the most beautiful pictures that could be obtained" (Brown, Elliott 98).

Such was the context that saw Don Luis bringing the English pictures for decoration of the sacristy where the king was to requiescat in pace. Meanwhile, Don Luis' own collection was growing in size and secularity, with an increase in imported products from the Flemish school. Yet he was not alone in the acquirement of great works of art.

"Almost every commentator on Spanish collecting in the Golden Age has noted the attempt of several collectors, including the Marquis of Leganes, the Count-Duke of Benavente, and Don Luis de Haro, to incorporate the gems of their art collections into the mayorazgo of their estates" (Brown, Elliott 103). Such collectors made sure that their collections would remain fixed to the family title, "like the land from which the title derived its name" (Brown, Elliott 103).

Yet, unlike other collectors, Don Luis was very conservative, acquiring only works of art whose reputation had been certified in the public eye -- names that were recognizable and pieces that were prized by many. Like many other Spanish collectors, he was not drawn to the more radical manifestations of the baroque.

He did collect tenebrist works...but tenebrism was old-fashioned by 1647, not to mention by 1661...The collectors in Don Luis' circle had read Vasari, and they considered the High Renaissance to be the standard against which contemporary artists were to be judged. (Brown, Elliott 104) Thus, Don Luis preferred Italian art and Italian-style art (Van Dyck, for example, as opposed to Rubens). "Haro, like other aristocrats, modeled himself after the king and thus preferred the sixteenth-century Venetians, especially Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto" (Brown 176).

And Leganes was no different -- for his collection "emulated that of the king" (Brown 175). The Count of Monterrey held similar tastes (and had stayed in Italy for almost a decade, which greatly helped develop them). Monterrey was another connoisseur, who facilitated the king's acquirement of fine works of art. "Monterrey's artistic interests were stimulated by his stay in Italy from 1628 to 1637, when he served successively as ambassador to the Holy See and viceroy of Naples...When he moved to Naples in 1631, he became a prominent patron" (Brown 175).

He commissioned several works while in Italy, incorporating the Italian masters into his own collection -- most by Ribera, who was even paid to decorate Monterrey's chapel in Salamanca. "Monterrey returned to Madrid in 1638, bringing his personal collection and, in addition, two great pictures for the king, Titian's Bacchanal of the Andrians and the Worship of Venus" (Brown 175). The price of collecting was a factor in what made up many collections.

The cheapest pictures were small, anonymous works worth less than one hundred reales, or about nine ducats...In Monterrey's collection, the most valuable was Venus, Mars, and Mercury given to Pordenone and assessed at 8,100 reales...In general, 5,500 reales was considered a substantial price, and so it was in an economy in which a well-to-do person received an annual income of 5,000 ducats and a royal painter earned a salary of 240 per year.

For great noblemen, with extensive lands, numerous offices, and annual incomes in excess of 100,000 ducats, this price was affordable, although even their collections were studded with small, cheap landscapes, still lifes, and devotional paintings. (Brown 177) Estate sales allowed pictures to enter the market in Spain. But as Brown notes, "It was a sign of the rising importance and value of pictures that many of the major aristocratic collections were...incorporated into the permanent patrimony of the title" (177).

Don Luis and Leganes both did so, making sure that their collections would not wind up in the market after their deaths, but would remain a part of the family title. While Spanish religious doctrine was specifically Roman Catholic and adamant about keeping art and faith intertwined, many private collections featured the pagan mythologies that were in vogue throughout the Renaissance. The king's collection was such a one, containing pagan narratives in paintings by Titian and Rubens.

Brown notes that "once the fashion for Flemish landscapes or Italian mythologies had been established, there was no stopping it" (178). Such imported works were even a boon to local Spanish artists who were rarely allowed the opportunity to travel abroad and see the works and styles of other artists of other nationalities; to see the current trends and techniques, and to develop their own works.

"The hundreds, if not thousands of paintings in Madrid, many of them superlative masterpieces, enabled the local practitioners to gain a wide acquaintance with foreign art, which would catalyze the formation of new styles of painting in Madrid and Seville" (Brown 178). Spanish collections were, in fact, a national enterprise. "Collections were assembled all over the Iberian peninsula on the basis of objects acquired throughout Italy, in the Low Countries, in England, from the Americas, and even from India and the Philippines" (Brown, Elliott 104).

Madrid became the art center of Spain "because the Spanish collectors of the Golden Age...managed to inculcate in their society, and, more importantly, in their heirs, a sense of the value of art objects" (Brown, Elliott 104). Elsewhere in Europe, art collections have been subject to various misfortunes, seizures, sales, dispersals, etc. Yet, Spain is unique in its attachment to the works of art collected by its patrons during the Golden Age. "In spite of palace fires, Napoleonic rapacity, dynastic struggles, and tremendous social changes, the collected art remained.

Even when dispersed, the best pieces often went to the king. The contrast between the collections of Charles I of England and Philip IV of Spain could not be greater" (Brown, Elliott 105). Noblemen like Don Luis de Haro, the Count of Monterrey, and the Marquis of Leganes were integral in establishing the epoch of great art collections in Spain. Starting with Philip II, whose.