Chapter 15
Chiffinch’s vivid record of the Salvator Mundi c. 1666 was to be the last clear sighting of Leonardo’s painting in the Royal Collection. Not long after its installation in the king’s closet, the painting was lost from view; it is not recorded in any extant subsequent royal inventory. It must, therefore, have left the Royal Collection at some time between the mid 1660s and the accession of James II in February 1685, after which date new inventories were taken. What happened to the Salvator Mundi after it hung in the Whitehall closet of Charles II, c. 1666? A number of possibilities present themselves.
The most prominent of these relates to the original owner of the Salvator Mundi. Henrietta Maria, now queen mother, returned to England in October 1660, where she was ceremonially received at Dover by Charles II, Prince Rupert, and the Prince of Orange.1 She would resume occupation of the properties of her jointure, including the Queen’s House, Greenwich, and Somerset House at Whitehall, which between 1661 and 1664 were refurbished at the queen’s own expense.2 While Thomas Beauchamp’s role in the recovery of the property of Charles II has long been recognized, Erin Griffey has recently highlighted his employment by the dowager queen in the recovery of her goods in 1660 and 1661, in which he was assisted by William Hawley.3 The repairs and building works at Somerset House, and the queen’s movements between Whitehall and her château at Colombes, where she died in 1669, occasioned the compilation of inventories by Henry Browne, keeper of the Wardrobe and Privy Lodgings at Somerset House. Browne was a royal servant during the reign of Charles I and continued as ‘housekeeper’ through the Interregnum, before reappointment at the Restoration in 1660.4 He was, like Beauchamp, well positioned to ascertain the whereabouts of former royal goods.
Browne’s administration of Henrietta Maria’s rich household goods and precious personal belongings details some of the paintings in her possession. In 1665, in failing health, the dowager queen travelled to France, taking with her many household goods from Somerset House, some newly made for the refurbished residence, some ‘discovered’ by Beauchamp and Hawley. This event occasioned Browne’s now-lost inventory of 1665, painstakingly reconstructed by Griffey from inventories of the queen’s belongings taken in 1669 and 1670.5 The post-mortem inventory of her property at Colombes, taken in 1669, records belongings that would be divided between the queen’s son Charles II, in England, and her daughter Henriette Anne, Duchesse d’Orléans, at Paris.6 The return of items from Colombes to Whitehall is further confirmed by the eyewitness account of John Evelyn, who saw Holbein’s Noli me tangere in the king’s private apartments in September 1680.7
Henriette Anne’s inventory of 1671 features property inherited from her mother.8 We cannot be entirely certain of the precise contents of the missing 1665 inventory and whether the 1669 and 1670 inventories represent the entirety of Henrietta Maria’s possessions at Colombes; Browne, in the 1670 list of goods returned to Somerset House, states that they are ‘but a small part of these things I sent to Her Majesty the Queene Mother into ffrance’.9 The possibility that the Salvator Mundi was taken to France and somehow escaped audit cannot be excluded, but it is unlikely, since the painting was included in the c. 1666–7 inventory of Charles II’s privy closet at Whitehall Palace, (although the precise date of this document has not been fully established). It does seem that, although Henrietta Maria possessed the painting before the Interregnum, it belonged to her son after the Restoration. The possibility that the king returned the painting to his mother, perhaps for her refurbished quarters at Somerset House, or even Greenwich, is tantalizing, but cannot be substantiated.
If Charles II did not give the painting to his mother, did he give it to another member of his family? As heir to the throne, the king’s brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II (reigned 1685–8), is an obvious candidate. The four inventories of his collection taken before and after accession to the throne provide important documentation, although the precise dating of the three principal inventories is complicated by events surrounding the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of November/December 1688, and the accession of King William III and Queen Mary. An extensive inventory of the furnishings and paintings in properties belonging to the Duke of York at Whitehall, St James’s, Culford Hall, Richmond, Newmarket, and the duke’s yacht, dated November 1674—that is, during the reign of Charles II—record only one painting of Christ: ‘Pictures in the Office; Pictures in the green Mohaire Clossett at Whitehall’; ‘No. 32 Our Saviour in a brasse guyel [gilt] frame’.10 The laconic description gives no indication of the iconography. Until recently, no royal inventory was known to date from 1685, the year of the death of Charles II and the accession of James II to the throne. After 1685, James’s art collection at his principal residence while Duke of York—St James’ Palace—was integrated with the late king’s. Andrew Barclay has recently added to the number of manuscript inventories of the collection of James II, publishing an important discovery made in Glasgow University Library (MS Hunter 238), and untangling the dating of the two inventories taken in 1688 at the king’s flight to France.11 Barclay shows that parts of MS Hunter 238 ‘date from the earliest months of James II’s reign and so can now be recognized as recording the state of the collection at Whitehall as it was at the time of Charles II’s death in February 1685.’12 This inventory is therefore vital to the determination of the location of Leonardo’s painting between c. 1665 and 1685. It does not feature the Salvator Mundi.
Barclay points out that an inventory of the paintings at Whitehall must have been carried out before building work instituted by the new king began in the spring of 1685.13 A campaign of demolition of the Tudor royal apartments prompted the removal of paintings to store in the Banqueting House; some were cleaned and repaired at this time.14 It is possible that Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi was removed from the King’s closet at Whitehall at this instance and placed into store, or given into the hands of a picture restorer, possibly Parry Walton, who in 1679 was appointed Surveyor and Keeper of the King’s Pictures, and acted as cleanser of pictures at the court of James II. He died in 1702.15
The building work explains the compilation of another extant inventory of the collection of James II, since construction of the new privy gallery was completed by December 1687.16 On 1 February 1688, the Lord Chamberlain, John Sheffield, 3rd Earl of Mulgrave, ordered William Chiffinch to take an inventory of the Royal Collection. As we will see, Sheffield may have played a role in the fate of the Salvator Mundi. Chiffinch’s ‘perfect Inventory of all his Pictures and Statues whatsoever’ from ‘all His Ma.ts pallaces’, compiled between February and March 1688, was then copied into a larger royal household inventory, c. 1688.17 This manuscript formed the basis for the publication prepared by George Vertue and published by William Bathoe in 1758 as A Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures, & c. belonging to King James the Second.18 Another inventory, preserved in the Surveyor’s Office at St James’ Palace, is believed to date from the reign of King William III, that is, after December 1688.19 Barclay considers that this theory is probably correct, but notes that the inventory is a copy of an earlier one dating to the reign of James II.20 Nevertheless, none of these inventories feature an item corresponding to a Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. They relate to locations associated with the king; it is probable that a portion of the Royal Collection was located in properties of the queen’s jointure, for which documentation does not survive.
In December 1688, James II and his second wife, Queen Mary Beatrice of Modena, fled to France; no inventory was made of the paintings at Whitehall between 1688 and 1698, the date of the fire that destroyed almost the entire palace.21 The 1700 inventory of the collection of William III at Kensington House (now Palace) itemizes the Herodias and the (infant) Christ and St John, attributing both to ‘Leonardo del Vinci’.22 William III moved paintings between the royal households in London, and sent a group of thirty-five paintings from England to the Palace of Het Loo in Holland, where they remained after the king’s death, passing into the Dutch royal collection. None of the inventories or documents associated with William III’s collection, and its movements between England and Holland, make any mention of a painting corresponding to a Salvator Mundi by Leonardo.23
Third Party, Fire, or Theft?
Most commentators, noting the depletion of the Royal Collection in the early eighteenth century, have assumed that the fire in Whitehall in 1698 destroyed much of the collection reassembled and amassed by Charles II: ‘It was fire, and not republican fury that ignominiously robbed the royal collection of many of its finest pieces.’24 Barclay considers that, due to the fire, the 1688 inventory ‘would quickly have been reduced to no more than an antiquarian curiosity’.25 Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts tell a different story, but these are usually disregarded as unreliable hearsay. One such eyewitness is the antiquarian and engraver George Vertue (1684–1756), who suggested more colourful reasons for the depletion of the collection.
First, according to Vertue, Charles II bestowed works of art on his many mistresses. He related how the king obtained the limnings commissioned from Peter Oliver by Charles I from the painter’s widow some years after the Restoration in return for an annuity, but ‘some years after this, it happened that some of the new favourite court mistresses beg’d some of these pictures the King giving some to one, & some to another. This news coming to Mrs. Olivers ears she said if she thought the King wou’d have given them to such whores bastards or Strumpets, the King shoud never have had them. Which some how or other being told to the King, her salary was stop’d and never after payd her.’26 Charles II’s favourite, Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond (a.k.a. ‘La Belle Stuart’), owned a collection ‘consisting of many original drawings by P. del Vaga, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, with miniatures and limnings by Hilliard, J. & P. Oliver, Hoskins and Cooper’, which was sold at Whitehall after her death, according to an advertisement in the London Gazette of 17 November 1702.27 It seems that the Royal Collection was for Charles II a handy trove of love-tokens.
After Charles II died in 1685, his widow, the dowager queen, Catherine of Braganza, remained in reluctant occupation of Somerset House during the three-year reign of King James II. Vertue gives an account of the removal of royal paintings at that time: ‘There was a few pictures sent over to Portugal from Somersett House when Queen Katharine intended first to go there to live the rest of her dayes- after ye death of the King (Ch. 2d)- but she was prevaild with to continue here a few years longer till she saw King Willm. Settled- and she unlikely to be much at ease under his Government- its reported the Ld Chamberlain then in office objected against the carrying away of any of those pictures but after viewing them- he was prevaild to accept of one he liked best.’28 There is no further description of the painting he chose. Catherine of Braganza expressed her wish to leave England before 1687 but did not return to Portugal until 1692.
The 1688 inventory of James II’s collection details paintings on loan to the dowager queen;29 there is no extant separate inventory of Catherine of Braganza’s picture collection. Pictures may have been sent to her brother Pedro II, and perhaps also to her sisters-in-law, Marie Francisca of Savoy and Maria Sofia of Neuberg, after the death of Charles II; she may have taken some to furnish her own Portuguese properties after she left England. There are references to there being some religious pictures at the palace she built herself at Bemposta; the Ribeira palace was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.30 Queen Catherine retained her own Lord Chamberlain, Louis Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham (1641–1709).31 Duras was the sixth son of a French nobleman, the Marquis de Duras; he moved to England in the 1660s, entering the service of the Duke of York. He was appointed to the post of Lord Chamberlain to Queen Catherine in September 1680, continuing until her death in 1705. He remained in London, managing the queen’s affairs, when she returned to Portugal. ‘To Feversham the queen-dowager, on her departure for Portugal at the end of March 1692, confided the care of Somerset House, an office which gained for him the nickname of king-dowager.’32 Feversham would have been entrusted with the remaining paintings in the dowager queen’s collection; therefore, it is possible he was the Lord Chamberlain to whom Vertue attributed the act of bribery.33
Vertue disagreed that the 1698 fire was the cause of the losses from the Royal Collection, pointing instead to theft at points of administrative vacuum: ‘its evident from the inventorys that many pictures & statues got into the possession of Noblemen, and others that were of the Royal Collection—at first [i.e. during the Civil War and the Interregnum] and many more at or about the revolution [1688]—besides those statues lost at the fire of Whitehall. For pictures there was none lost at the burning of the palace the proper officers having carefully removed all and are still in possession of the Crown.’34 Furthermore, he made allegations about the identity of one of the thieves: the aforementioned John Sheffield, 3rd Earl of Mulgrave (and from 1703 Duke of Buckingham and Normanby), whom James II appointed Lord Chamberlain in 1686. Discussing the collection of paintings at Buckingham House, in St James’ Park, which Sheffield built 1703–5, Vertue singled out the erotic portrait of one of Charles I’s mistresses by Lely: ‘Nell guin naked leaning on a bed. with her Child. by Sir Peter Lilly. This picture was painted at the express command of K. Charles 2d. nay he came to Sr Peter Lillys house to see it painted when she was naked on purpose. Afterwards this picture was a Court. Where the Duke of Buckingham took it from, (when K. James went away) as many others did the like.’35 The picture, the first portrait in England of a royal mistress in the nude, was discreetly hidden behind a sliding panel painted by Danckers, probably a landscape depicting a royal property, as can be ascertained from its description in the James II (1688) inventory: ‘By Danekers. Being the slideing piece before Madam Gwynn’s Picture naked, with a Cupid. Sr Peter Lilly.’36 Vertue asserts that Sheffield took this picture at around the same time that James II first went into exile, throwing the Great Seal of England into the Thames as he fled London. There was an administrative vacuum of seventeen days before William III arrived and was sworn in.37
Sheffield had rapidly switched his allegiance from the James II, having been denied his request of a marquisate in mid December 1688; perhaps he made other opportunistic ‘acquisitions’ at that turbulent time. If we doubt Vertue’s assertions, we should remember that they were not entirely based on hearsay, his mother had been a servant in the household of the Duke of York (the future James II), and both of his parents were in service at the exiled court of James II.38
Buckingham House: A Mortgage, an Auction, and the Salvator Mundi.
In 1763 Buckingham House was sold to King George III; it is known today as Buckingham Palace. The collection of paintings was auctioned by Prestage on 24 and 25 February 1763. The catalogue of the 1763 Buckingham House sale includes Lely’s erotic painting of Nell Gywn (lot 19) and also a ‘Head of Our Saviour’ attributed to ‘L. DA. VINCI’, (lot 53). Could this be Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi? The iconography suggests a bust of Christ. The item sold for £2 10s., a low price, but commensurate with those achieved for pieces attributed to Correggio, Andrea del Sarto, and Annibale Caracci at the same sale.39 The piece was described as a ‘picture’, not a drawing or limning. The identity of the buyer was not recorded, although, such was the repute of the collection, that, according to marginalia in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie copy of the sale catalogue, Stephen Slaughter (the Irish portrait painter and Surveyor of the King George III’s Pictures) bought some pieces at this sale on behalf of Horace Walpole.40
How did this painting arrive in the Buckingham collection? Assuming it remained in the Royal Collection in 1688, perhaps in store, or in a closet of the queen, largely inaccessible, according to the established precedent of Henrietta Maria, did Sheffield steal it? As (outgoing) Lord Chamberlain, he was responsible for the royal inventories and would have known where particular works were located. Since two Lords Chamberlain were in post in 1688, the identity of the individual who reputedly bribed Catherine of Braganza is uncertain; did Vertue refer to Buckingham or Feversham? Buckingham, an art collector, poet, builder, and ‘operator’, seems a more likely candidate.
There may, however, be an innocent explanation for the presence of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi in the Buckingham collection: John Sheffield’s third wife was Lady Catherine Darnley, the illegitimate daughter of James II and Catharine Sedley; it is possible that she may have received the painting as a gift from her father ahead of his exile in 1688. Van Dyck’s The Five Eldest Children of Charles I was apparently acquired by George III in 1765 from the descendants of Catherine Sedley; the painting was formerly in the collection of James II.41 It is feasible that some paintings descended to Katherine Darnley from her father, the king. Sir Oliver Millar, in the 1978 exhibition catalogue entry of Lely’s portrait of Nell Gwynn and her son, noted the painting’s former presence at Buckingham House, indicating an inventory of 1746 preserved in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.42 At my request, the Surveyor’s Office generously instituted a search for this document and turned up a cache of long-forgotten inventories and documents relating to the collection at Buckingham House. These comprise an inventory taken in 1721, at John Sheffield’s death,43 a mortgage document of 14 May 1746 between the duke’s heir, Charles Sheffield Esq., and John, Earl of Orrery, secured against ‘the pictures, limnings, bustos and statues’, and witnessed at the chambers of ‘S. Burroughs’ in Chancery Lane.44 No trace of the Salvator Mundi has yet been found in these documents or other accounts of the collection at Buckingham House.45 Bainbrigg Buckeridge, who was employed in some curatorial capacity by the Duke of Buckingham, published a panegyric account of the collection, To the Duke of Buckingham, upon his House and Collection of Pictures in St James’s Park (1704), but again, the painting does not feature. This most elusive of paintings may have belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, since it was included in the 1763 Buckingham auction, but, until that date it was unrecorded in their possession, and thereafter it melts back into the mist.