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Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' PortraitAuthor(s): Malcolm ValeSource: The English Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 415 (Apr., 1990), pp. 337-354Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/570845.
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Notes and Documents
CardinalHenry
Beaufort
and the
'Albergati'Portrait
IN I904 W.
H.
J.
Weale identified
a famous
portrait,
attributed to
Jan
van
Eyck,
for the
first
time. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna,
and Weale described
it
as
follows:
it is a portraitof a fine old ecclesiastic .. Bareheaded, e wears a loose
crimsonrobe edged
at
the neck and
arm
openings
with
white
fur ... the
person's
head is turnedto
the
right,
his
vigorous
and
closely-shaven ace,
seen
in
three-quarter rofile
with
light
falling directly upon it,
is full of
expression.
There
is
quite
a charm about
the little brownish
eyes
which
seem to be looking out
from beneath he eyebrows
with
a
keen
scrutinising
glance,while a pleasantplayful
smilehoversabout
he mouth.1
Seeplate)
Weale
went on to
identify
the
sitter as
Niccolo
Albergati,
Cardinal-
priest of the church of Santa Croce
in
Jerusalem at Rome,
born
in
I375,
created Cardinal by Pope Martin V in
I426,
and who died in
I443.2
Weale's identification
rested
upon documentary evidence,
but
this was not contemporary
with
the painting.
It had first been
published
in I 883, when an edition of the inventory
of Archduke Leopold William
of
Austria's picture collection,
dated
I4
July I659,
was
printed
in the
Viennese
Jahrbuch
der Kunstsammlungen
des
allerh6chsten Kaiser-
hauses.
Among
the 88o
Flemish,
Dutch and German
paintings
owned
by
this voracious
seventeenth-century collector,
there was listed
acertainportraitn oil-paintupon woodof the Cardinal f (the)Holy Cross
(des Cardinalsvon Santa Cruce) n a half-greenand half-gilded rame,
2
spans high
and
i
span 6 fingers broad.
Originalby Jan van Eyck, who
first
discovered ilpaint.3
Weale's
contribution to the identification and dating of the painting
followed a
period
of
uncertainty
and confusion
-
in
the i86o catalogue
of
the Belvedere (where it was then hung) the portrait had been des-
cribed
as a
representation
of
Jodocus
Vijdt, donor of the Ghent altar-
piece, at a more advanced age,4 and
in
I898
doubts were still being
i.
W. H.
J.
Weale,
'Portraits
by John
van
Eyck
in
the Vienna
Gallery',
Burlington
Magazine,
v(
904),
I 90.
2.
Ibid., pp. I9
I-2;
also W. H.
J.
Weale
&
M.
Brockwell,
The Van
Eycks
and
their
Art
(London,
I9I2),
pp.
I03-7.
3. A.
Berger
(ed.), 'Inventar
der
Kunstsammlung
des
Erzherzogs
Leopold
Wilhelm von
Oester-
reich. Nach
der
Originalhandschrift
...',
Jahrbuch der
Kunstsammlungen
des
allerhochsten Kaiser-
hauses,
i,
II
(I883),
p.
cxxi.
4.
Weale,
art.
cit.,
p.
I03.
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338
CARDINAL HENRY
BEAUFORT
April
The
'Albergati'
Portrait
(Photo:
Kunsthistorisches
Museum,
Vienna)
cast
upon
the
correctness
of the
ascription.'
But
the
I907
catalogue
listed
it
as a
portrait
of
the 'Cardinal
of
St Cross' and
accepted
Weale's
identification
of
the sitter
as
Albergati.2
Weale's
work,
which
followed
hard
upon
the
great
exhibition
of
Early
Flemish
paintings
held at
Bruges
in
I902,3
has
left
a firm
imprint upon
Van
Eyck
as well
as
Memling
i.
Ibid.,
p.
IQ4;
J.
Kaemmerer,
Hubert
undjan
van
Eyck
(Bielefeld,
Leipzig,
I898),
p.
172.
2.
Katalog der
Gemildegalerie
(Wien,
i
963),
ii.
55-6,
no.
i
6o.
3. See W.
H. J.
Weale
(ed.),
Exposition
des
primitifsflamands et
d'art
ancien:
Bruges, Iere
section:
Tableaux
(Bruges,
1902),
passim; for
the impact of
the
exhibition,
see
J.
Huizinga,
'My
Path to
History',
in
Dutch
Civilisation in
the
Seventeenth
century and
Other
Essays, ed.
P. Geyl
&
F.
W.
Hugenholtz
(London,
1968),
pp.
266-7.
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I990
AND
THE
'ALBERGATI' PORTRAIT
339
scholarship, and it
is
perhaps
time for a review of
some of his
attributions
and
interpretations.
There is a second representation of the Vienna portrait's sitter in
a
well-known
silverpoint
drawing,
now in
the
Kupferstichkabinett
at
Dresden, to
which the artist
has added
colouring
notes
in
Nether-
landish.
1
These tell us
nothing
about the
identity
of
the
sitter,
and
are
similar in kind to
the
colouring
indications
added
by
Holbein to
his drawings
of Tudor
courtiers.2
This
Van
Eyck
drawing
entered
the
Dresden collection
before
I765,
and
in
the
I896
catalogue
of
Old
Master
drawings there it was described as a
'portrait
of an
aged man',
although the
possibility
of its identification with
the
'Cardinal of
Santa
Cruce' was also suggested.3 Since then, despite some art-historians'
doubts, both the
Vienna
portrait
and the Dresden
drawing
have
been
normally
accepted as
representing
the same
man,
and Weale's
article
in
the
Burlington
Magazine
for
I904
has been the
foundation
upon
which
all
subsequent work
has been built.
A
major exception
to
this
rule
of
art-historical
unanimity
was,
nevertheless,
made in
I955
by
Professor
Roberto Weiss in the
pages
of
the
Burlington
Magazine.4
Arguing
from
contemporary (and
near-contemporary)
biographies
of
Albergati,
to
which
I
shall
shortly
return,
he
concluded that
the sitter
was not, and could not be, CardinalAlbergati. He suggestedanalterna-
tive
candidate who
has not to
my
knowledge
commanded
any
support.
The
question
had
now been
reopened, however, and in
I963 the
Dutch
art-historian
Bruyn published an
essay
on
'Two
portraits
of
cardinals
by Jan
van Eyck' in
which he
proposed yet another
candidate.5 We
are
thus
presented with
a
major
work of
fifteenth-century
portraiture,
in
which the
hand of Jan
van Eyck is
clearly
visible;
but
there has
not yet
been an
attempt
to solve
the
problem of its
identification by
reviewing
as
full a
range
of
contemporary and
later
evidence
as possible.
I cannot claim to have solved thatproblem, and
would not wish
to give
the false
impression that
proof of
identification
is a matter
for
dogma-
tism.
Yet the
questions
which one
may
justifiably ask
about this
paint-
ing, and
its
associated
drawing, may
lead to a
reconsideration
of its
place
in
J
an
van Eyck's
development
as a
portraitist
and in
the sequence
of
his
works. If
my
speculations
are
not
entirely
rejected, we
may
be
able to
add
one more
Englishman to the
list of
those who
are
known
i.
K. Woermann, Handzeichnungen Alter Meisterim KoniglichenKupferstichkabinetzu Dresden
(Munich,
1896), p.
i & pl.
I.
2.
For
a
transcription of
the
colouring
notes,
see
A.
Ampe, 'Taal en
Herkomst
van
Jan van
Eyck',
Wetenschappelijke
Tijdingen
(1971),
p. 83.
Weale's
transcription in
art. cit.
(I904),
pp.
19 1-2
is
incomplete
and
apparently
inaccurate.
For
Holbein's
colouring
indications see
C.
Glaser, Hans
Holbein,
Zeichnungen
(Basel,
1924),
pls. 64,
68.
3.
Woermann,
op. cit.,
pp.
1,
Xi.
4.
R.
Weiss,
'Jan
van
Eyck's
Albergati
portrait',
Burlington
Magazine,
xcvii
(I9S), 145-7.
S.
J.
Bruyn,
'Twee
Kardinaalsportretten
in het
werk
van Jan
van
Eyck',
Album
Discipulorum
J.
G.
van
Gelder
(Utrecht,
1963),
pp.
17-30. His
article s
dismissed in
the
Katalog der
Gemaldegalerie,
ii.
56.
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340
CARDINAL
HENRY
BEAUFORT
April
to have been portrayed by early Flemish painters.
Edward Grimston,
esquire, sat
to
Petrus Christus
in
I446,1
and
Sir
John Donne's triptych
of C.
480
has already been the subject of a scholarly inquiry which
led to a reappraisal of the complete
corpus
of
Memling's work.2 They
may have been preceded by
an
Englishman
who,
like
them,
was fre-
quently about his master's (and his own)
business
in
the
Burgundian
Low Countries.
The so-called 'Albergati' portrait
is
normallyplaced early
in the chro-
nological sequence
of
Jan
van
Eyck's surviving
portraits.
Between the
representations of the two donors
on the
outer
panels
of the Ghent
altar-piece, completed by 6 May 1432,3
and the
portrait
of the
painter's
wife Margaret, finished on
17
June
1439,4
nine identified portraits
by Jan
van
Eyck
survive. Some
of
these,
for
example
the
two
panels
associated with
Nicholas
Rolin
(c.I435)
and
Canon
George
van
der
Paele (anuary
I436),
are donor
portraits,
not those
of
independent
sitters, but there has
been
little
dispute
among
art-historians
about
the position of 'Albergati'
in this
corpus.
It
is,
wrote Baldass
in
I952,
'the earliest
independent portrait by Jan
van
Eyck';
it is associated
with
the
'only known draft
sketch
for a
painting'
by
the
artist;
and
it represents 'one of the last Netherlandish examples
of a type evolved
during the fourteenth century'.5 The emphasis upon an early date
and
a
preliminary drawing
is
noteworthy.
Contingent knowledge
of
the proposed sitter's career has perhaps had
the
effect
of
unconsciously
swaying Baldass' stylistic judgement
a
little.
It is
known that Cardinal
Niccolo
Albergati
was
at
Ghent, negotiating
for
an
Anglo-French
peace,
on
3 and4 November
143 i,
and that between
8
and
i i
December
of
that year he was at Bruges.6 Baldass
and
Millard Meiss both agreed
that the Dresden drawing
must
therefore
date from
I43 i, one year
beforethe completion of the Ghent altarpiece,and that it forms a necess-
ary stage
in
the production
of
the
Vienna
portrait.7
Albergati's short
visits to Ghent and Bruges
-
the centres
of
Jan van Eyck's activities
-
made the
taking
of
a sketch
imperative,
and
it
was from the colouring
notes on
the Dresden drawing that Jan painted
the final portrait, proba-
bly after May
1432.
Yet the making
of
a preliminary drawing was
not
an exceptional practice among fifteenth-century
portraitists, occa-
sioned by brief personal contact with the sitter. Jean Fouquet's sketch
i. See M. J.
Friedlander,
From Van
Eyck
to
Brueghel
(London,
i956),
pl.
2S; P. H. Schabacker,
Petrus Christus
(Utrecht, 1974), pp.
83-5.
2. K. B.
McFarlane, Hans Memling
(Oxford,
1
97
1),
pp-
'-'i.
3. See E. Dhanens, The
Ghent Altarpiece (London,
1973),
pp. 26-3
1.
4. Bruges, Groeninge Museum; see
A. Janssens de
Bisthoven & R. A. Parmentier (eds.),
Les
PrimitifsFlamands, Bruges (Antwerp,
I
9
i),
pp.
3
-5.
S.
L.
Baldass,
Jan
van
Eyck (London, 1952),
p.
69.
6.
Weale,
art.
cit., (1904),
p.
I9I.
7. Baldass, op. cit., p. 69; M. Meiss 'Nicholas
Albergati
and the Chronology of Jan van Eyck's
portraits',
Burlington Magazine,
xciv
(1952),
I37.
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I990
AND THE
'ALBERGATI' PORTRAIT
34I
of Guillaume
Jouvenel des Ursins
(Berlin),
which
preceded
his
Louvre
portrait of the
Chancellor
of
France,1 suggests
that the habit
was
not confined to the representationof travellingcardinals, busily engaged
in their
work of diplomatic mediation.
If
Baldass' and Meiss' arguments
for an
early
date
for
the
'Albergati'
portrait are
accepted,
this would mean
that it
precedes
the
so-called
Timotheos picture (National
Gallery),
dated on
its original
frame to
iO
October
I432.2
Stylistically, however, the
'Albergati' portrait
seems
to
represent
an advance
upon
the Timotheos. In terms of
psycho-
logical
intensity
and sheer
painterly technique,
there
seems little
to
rule
out
a
laterdate of
I436
or
even
I439.
The
portrait
would therefore
driftbetween
I43i
and
I439
if
it
were not for the knownfactsabout
Albergati's diplomatic activity.
In
I435
he
presided,
with
the Cardinal
of
Cyprus,
at
the
great congress
of
Arras,
and there
is,
of
course,
no reason
why Jan
van
Eyck
should not
have
painted
him on
that
occasion.3 He was never in
Bruges during
that
year,
but
this
would
not prevent the artist from
taking
his likeness
during
his residence
at
Arras. But once
it
is cut
adrift
from
the historical
mooring provided
by Albergati's career,
the
portrait
floats
unsatisfactorily
in
the dated
corpusof
Jan
van
Eyck's
work.
Have
we therefore any need
to doubt the
current identification of
the Vienna
portrait's subject as
the
Cardinal-priest
of
St Cross? If the
facts of
Albergati's diplomatic
career have tended to
over-influence
art-historians
in
their dating, attribution and choice of
subject,
can
other
facts
be brought
into
play which might carry
equal,
if
not
greater,
conviction?
First,
the
objections
raised
by
Professor Weiss to
received
views of the
picture
must
be considered.
These derive
almost
entirely
from
one type of source
-
the
writings
of
Albergati's
contemporaries
about his mode of life. There is a uniform emphasis in their accounts
upon
his
austerity,
and
Poggio, Jacopo Zeno, Vespasiano da Bisticci
and
St
Antoninus
of
Florence
agreed
that this
Cardinal had no truck
with
worldly pomp and show.4 Poggio's funerary
oration upon the
Cardinal of St
Cross tells us that 'nulla
pompa,
nulli
fastus, nullae
opes
impedimento fuere quo minus se per omnem
vitam purum
i.
See 0. Pacht,
'Jean
Fouquet: a study
of
his
Style', Journal
of
the
Warburgand
Courtauld
Institutes, iv
(1940-i),
85-Io2; G. Ring, A Century of FrenchPainting, 1400-1500 (London,
1949),
pls.
71, 72.
For
Rogier van
der Weyden's
probable
use of
drawings in
his working
practice
as
a
portraitist,
see L. Campbell,
'Portrait art in
the work of
Rogier
van der
Weyden',
Rogier van
der Weyden.
Roger de
le Pasture,
Exhibition
Catalogue
(Brussels,
I979),
p.
62.
2.
See M. Davies,
National
Gallery
Catalogues.
Early Netherlandish
School
(London, 1968),
pp.
54-5.
3.
J. G.
Dickinson,
The
Congressof Arras 1435.
A
Study
in
Medieval
Diplomacy
(Oxford,
1955),
pp.
78-84,
11
2-13.
4.
See
Poggii
Florentini
Opera (Basel, I
5
38),
pp.
261-9;
Acta
Sanctorum,Maii, ii
(Antwerp, i68o),
469-77 (Zeno);
Vespasiano
da Bisticci, Vite di
Uomini
Illustre del
Secolo
xv, ed. P.
d'Ancona
&
E.
Aeschlimann
(Milan, 1951),
pp.
75-7,
transl.
as
Princes, Popes
and
Prelates.
The
Vespasiano
Memoirs, (ed. New
York, 1963),
pp.
I23-5;
cf Weiss,
art. cit., pp.
145-6.
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342
CARDINAL HENRY
BEAUFORT
April
immaculatumque preberet'. He had entered religion as a Carthusian,
and it was his strict observance of that order's rule, even after his
elevation to the bishopric of Bologna and thence to the Sacred College,
that so impressed his contemporaries. Jacopo Zeno asserted that
'Carthusiae
regulam
etiam ad
extremum
inviolate
servavit . .
.',
and
Vespasiano took up the
theme
in
his
Lives
of
Famous
Men, writing
that 'he had long been
a monk of the
Certosa
and had never broken
any of its rules'.2 He was
'of the most
saintly
life and
costume; wearing
always
the
Carthusian habit,
with a cloak
(cappa) just
as
the brothers
do,
down to
the
ground;
he
always slept
on a straw
palliasse, fully
dressed,
as do
the
brothers,
and
never ate meat either in health
or
sickness'.3 If Vespasiano was right (and he derived his information
from
Albergati's secretary,
the future
Pope
Nicholas
V)
then the
figure
in
Van
Eyck's portrait,
dressed
in a
fine red
robe
edged
with
white
fur,
is
unlikely
to be
the
austere Carthusian
Cardinal. He could
not
have worn that dress without infringing
the
rule
of
his
order.
The
Statuta
Nova
confirmed
by
the
Carthusian
Chapter
General in
I368
laid down that the monks were to wear habits
of
'thick,
coarse
country
cloth',
and
were
forbidden
garments
trimmed
with
fur. 'We
prohibit
the furs of foxes and
all
wild animals
(bestis silvestribus)
and
tunics
of
fustian or buckram', declared
one article of
the
statutes,
and the
use of
tapestries
and 'curious
pictures' (picture curiose)
was also for-
bidden.4
To
what use would the ascetic
Albergati
have
put
a
portrait
of
himself, even granting
that he
actually
commissioned one?
His
biographers
take
pains
to tell their readers that the
Cardinal's
external
appearance
reflected his
inner
purity
and
rigour
of
life. He
never wore linen
clothing,
wrote
Poggio,
but used
habitually
to
endure
a
hair-shirt,
even
during
his
many
and severe illnesses.5
Vespasiano
tells the story, repeated in the Acta Sanctorum,of his refusal to drink
a
prescribed beaker of he-goat's blood
as a
remedy
for
the stone, from
which
he
suffered
after the
Council
of
Florence-Ferrara
n
1438.6 His
refusal
was prompted by his strict observance of a Carthusian vow
never to eat meat, and because he knew that there was in any case
no cure for
his complaint.
He
was gravely
ill
during the Arras negotia-
tions of
I435,
and when the stone was removed from his body during
an
autopsy it was found to be 'as big as a goose's egg'.7 It was cherished
as
a
relic
by
the Florentine
Charterhouse where Albergati was buried
i. Poggii...
Opera,
p.
265.
2. Acta
Sanctorum,
Maii,
ii.
476;
Vespasiano,
op.
cit., p.77;
see also
P.
de
Toth,
II
beato Cardinale
Nicolo Albergati e
i
suoi
tempil,
1375-1444 (2 vols., Viterbo,
I934),
pp.
18-64
for
Albergati's
life
as a
Carthusian.
3.
Vespasiano, op. cit.,
p.
75.
4.
Statuta ordinis Cartusiensis
a
domino
Hugoni
priore
Cartusieedita
(Basel,
i
5
IO),
fr. r
4.
S.
Poggii...
Opera,
p.
268.
6.
Vespasiano, op.
cit., p. 77;
Acta
Sanctorum,
Mail,
ii.
488.
7. Ibid., p. 489;
Vespasiano,
op.
cit.,
p.
77.
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
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I990
AND
THE 'ALBERGATI' PORTRAIT
343
in I443,
and Vespasiano
claimed to have held it in his own hand.'
Albergati's
tomb
there is
unfortunately
of no
help
in the identification
of the Vienna portrait for it carries no effigy, and is a characteristically
plain marble slab inset
with a
cardinal's
hat and
a
cross.
An
inscription
recalls the salient points
of his career
-
his election
to the see of
Bologna,
'petente populo Bononiensi',
his
legations,
and his
singular way
of
life.2 The only
near-contemporary
work of
art
which
may
record
his features
is a
polyptych by
the brothers
Vivarini,
which
was commis-
sioned
after his death
by Albergati's secretary
in
I450
when he
had
become
Pope
Nicholas
V.3
It was
intended as a
memorial
to the
Cardinal,
and was set
up
in the
Charterhouse
of his native
Bologna.
On one panel of the altarpiece a figure dressed in a Carthusian habit
beneath his
episcopal cope appears,
and this has been identified as
Albergati.4
The rather emaciated
face of this
figure
bears
no
resemb-
lance to the face
in the Vienna
portrait.
Yet its dress would be
quite
consistent with what is
known of
Albergati's
external
appearance.
Such
evidence as
we
possess seems, then,
to
militate
consistently
against Weale's assertion of I904, which
has
received
the
support of
art-historians
from Friedlinder
to
Panofsky.
If
Albergati
did commis-
sion
the Vienna
portrait
at some time
during
his
diplomatic
missions
to France and the Burgundian lands between October
I43
i
and Sep-
tember
I435,
this act might be thought somewhat out of
character.
An
alternative
explanation might
be
proposed. The portrait could have
been ordered
by
someone
else,
either for
subsequent presentation
to
the
Cardinal,
or as a memorial to
Albergati's piety, or to his
diplomatic
achievement
-
or to both. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy,
might
have
wished to commemorate the Cardinal's mediation between
France
and
Burgundy
at
Arras
in
I435. He, or one of
his
entourage,
might
have
commissioned the portrait, and this explanation was favoured
by
Weale.5
He
proposed
a
date
in
I43I,
however,
at
the
time of
Albergati's first diplomatic mission to Flanders. The Duke, he
argued,
sent
letters
to
the Flemish towns ordering them to receive the Cardinal
with the
honours due to him, and referred to the municipal
archives
of
Ghent
and Lille as a source. Weale then speculated, quite
without
warrant, that 'one of the letters sent to Bruges was probably
addressed
to
Jan
van
Eyck bidding him paint a portrait of the Cardinal'.6
It
is, moreover, rather difficult to see why Philip the Good should
have
wanted Albergati's portrait in
I43I
or
I432
because, as even the Cardi-
nal's most fervent admirers had to admit, the negotiations of
those
I. Ibid., p.
77.
2.
P. de Toth, op.
cit.,
ii. 492, & pI.
facing p. 496 for Albergati's
tomb.
3. Ibid., pp.
479-81 &
pl.
facing p.
480. For another reproduction of the
Vivarini
polyptych
see Weiss, art. cit.,
p. 146.
4. Ibid., p. 146,
n.II.
S.
Weale,
art.
cit.
(1904),
p.
191.
6. Ibid p. 191.
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
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I990 AND
THE
'ALBERGATI PORTRAIT
345
to wear the collar and pendant
of
the order
every day.1 Subsequent
portraits
of
members
of the order
depict
them
wearing
that
insignia,
whereas the Vienna portrait shows no trace whatever of a collar of
flints-and-steels
with
the
fleece as
a
pendant.2
It is
thus
fairly
unlikely
that
Guillaume
III
de Vienne could
have been
painted
by Jan
van
Eyck
before
I430,
and
very
unlikely
that he should have been
shown,
collar-
less,
after his election
to the order.
In
any
case,
it
appears
from
docu-
mentary
sources
that
he
was
normally
known as
the
'seigneur
de
St
Georges'
rather than 'de
Ste
Croix'.3
We must therefore treat
this
hypothesis
with
very great
caution.
If
Cardinal Niccolo
Albergati
is
not
the
subject
of
this
portrait,
then
who is? The qualifications to be held by any candidate for this distinc-
tion can
be briefly rehearsed.
He must
be
a man
aged
between about
55
and
65
who had the
opportunity (or
opportunities)
to
be
painted
by Jan
van
Eyck
as an
independent sitter,
not
as a
donor,
between
I432 and the painter's death in
I44I.
His
mode
of
life and known
manner of
dress
must
not
rule out his
appearance
clothed, by choice,
in
fine red cloth
edged
with
fur, and,
if
possible, his representation
in the
portrait
must not clash with other records of
his features.
The
candidate
put
forward
by
Bruyn
in
I963
was
Henry
Beaufort
(also
born in
I375),
Cardinal-priest
of St
Eusebius,
and
Cardinal-bishop
of
Winchester.4
Bruyn's reasoning
was based
upon
one
source,
but
there
are other
sources
which
might
be
brought to bear on the
problem.
As
we have seen, a central prop of the argument
for Albergati
was
the
documentary evidence for his visits to Ghent
and Bruges in
November and December
I43I.5 Yet
in an
article
published in
I955,
Jean
Duverger presented evidence
(without comment) from the
munici-
pal accounts of
Bruges
for
the
reception
of
Cardinal Beaufort in
the
town.6
There are entries in the accounts for February
I432
which
record
gifts of herbs,
spices and candles to 'the Cardinal of
England'
and
which refer to the payment of expenses
incurred by one of
the
town's
councillors who
entertained the
Cardinal in his house, from
I. See
C. A.
J.
Armstrong,
'Had
the
Burgundian
government
a
policy
for
the
nobility?',
in
J. S.
Bromley & E.
H.
Kossman
(eds.),
Britain
and
the
Netherlands,
ii
(1962),
25;
the
statutes
are
described
by
Reiffenberg,
op. cit., pp.xxxi-xxxii.
For
a
text, see
Bibliotheque
Royale,
Brussels,
MS 11.6288, fos.
1-14.
2.
See
L.
Campbell, 'Rogier
van der
Weyden's
portrait
of
a
knight of
the
Golden Fleece:
the
identity of
the
sitter',
Bulletin
des Musees
Royaux
des
Beaux-Arts de
Belgique, xxi
(1972),
7-16.
3.
See,
e.g., H.
Vander
Linden, Itineraires de
Philippe
le
Bon,
duc de
Bourgogne,
et de
Charles,
comte de
Charolais (1419-67)
(Brussels,
1940), p.
117 for Guillaume
de
Vienne,
called
'monsieur
de
St
Georges'
on
i6
Feb. 1434;
also
AOGV, Reg.I, fo.6'
('seigneur de St
Georges');
fo.27'
('Messire
Guillaume de
Vienne, seigneur de
St
George et de
Sainte
Croix').
4.
Bruyn,
art. cit.,
pp. 17-19.
The
most recent study
of
Beaufort's career
s G. L.
Harriss,
Cardinal
Beaufort
(Oxford,
1988).
S.
See
supra,
p.
340,
Weale,
art.
cit.
(1904),
p.
191
6.
J.
Duverger, 'Brugse
Schilders
ten
tijde van Jan
van
Eyck',
Miscellanea
Erwin
Panofsky
(Brus-
sels,
I
.)
P-
iS.
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
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346
CARDINAL HENRY BEAUFORT
April
which a procession through the town was viewed.' This is a valuable
source
of
information for Beaufort's movements on the Continent after
he had officiated at the French coronation of Henry VI at Paris on
i
6
December
I43 I.
His stay
at
Bruges
was
short,
for from
mid-February
to
mid-May
I432
he
was
at
Ghent,
where
on 6
May
he acted as
sponsor
(or godfather)
for the
infant
Josse,
first-born son of
Philip
the Good
and
Isabella of Portugal, at baptism.2
The Duke was at
Dijon
on
that
day, but
a
substantial part
of his court was at Ghent to witness
the
ceremony.3 They may
also have witnessed
a
second event that
took place on exactly the
same
day (6 May I432)
in
the church
of
St
John
-
the
unveiling
and dedication
of the Ghent
altarpiece.4
If
Beaufort saw the Van Eycks' work at that time, he might well have
wished for his own portrait to be painted by Jan,
and there
is,
of
course, a
possibility
that the Dresden
drawing might
have
resulted
from that occasion.
The
portrait could
have been intended as a
gift
to his Burgundian hosts,
or
even
to
his godson.
But there were
many
other
opportunities
which
presented
themselves
on
which
he
could
have been drawn and painted by Jan
van
Eyck. He is known to have
been
in
Bruges from
8 to
i0 March
and on
23
March
I428;
on
7 January
I430
for
Philip
the Good's
marriage celebrations;
and
he
spent April
and May
I433
entirely in the Low Countries.5 His diplomatic missions
of
August-September
I435
to Arras and
of
August-September I439
to
Oye
and
Gravelines,
whence
maritime
Flanders
was
easily accessible,
are well-known.6 There were
in
fact
many
more
occasions
in his
career
than in
that of Cardinal Albergati
when
he might have been
portrayed
by
a
Flemish artist.
Our knowledge
of
Henry
Beaufort's mode of life would
not immedia-
tely disqualify
him
as
a
candidate
for
a Van Eyck portrait.
Poggio, elo-
quent upon Albergati's rigour, had first-hand experienceof Beaufort's
splendour.
He visited
England
in
I429 and,
wrote
Vespasiano, 'had
many
marvellous tales to tell about the wealth of
that
land, especially
concerning
the old
Cardinal
who had directed the
government of
the
i. Ibid., p. i
i
i,
citing
Algemeen Rijksarchief, Brussel,
Rekenkamer reg. 32486,
fo.63',
69'(munici-
pal
accounts for Bruges,
2
Sept.
I43
I-I Sept.
I432).
2. Monstrelet,
Chronique, ed. L. Douet
d'Arcq,
v
(Societe
de
i'Histoire de
France,
Paris,
I86i),
49-50:
'En ce
Temps,
le xivt
'our d'avril, la duchesse de
Bourgongne
s'accoucha
d'un filz en la
ville de Gand, le quel fut leve par le cardinal de Wincestre, Anglois, et les comtes de St Pol et
de
Ligney, freres ..
.'. See
Harriss, op. cit.,
P.
2
I
6.
3. Vander
Linden, op. cit., p. Ioo.
4.
Dhanens, op. Cit.,
p.
48.
S.
Vander Linden, op. cit.,
pp.
62,
68. For
Beaufort's movements in
the Low
Countries between
March
I427 and
May
I433,
see L. B.
Radford, Henry
Beaufort (London,
I908),
pp.
I47-5 I, i65-7,
I93-2I7; G. A. Holmes,
'Cardinal Beaufort and
the crusade against
the Hussites',
ante, lxxxviii
(973),
722,
726-8;
Harriss,
op.
cit.,
pp.
I9I-2I7, 225-9.
6.
See Dickinson, op. cit.,
pp.34-40;
N.
H. Nicolas (ed.),
Proceedings and
Ordinances of the
Privy
Council
(London,
I834-7), v.
335-87;
C. T.
Allmand, 'The Anglo-French
negotiations of
I439',
Bulletin of
the Institute
of
Historical
Research,
xl
(I967),
I-33;
Harriss, op. cit., pp.
247-52,
296-305.
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
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I990 AND THE
'ALBERGATI
PORTRAIT
347
kingdom for
many years'.1
His
gold
and silver
plate
was
immensely
valuable and
the Italian merchant
banker
Antonio
dei
Pazzi was
said
to have seen two rooms hung with the richest cloth, one stacked with
Beaufort's silver
vessels,
the other with his
gold
and
silver-gilt plate.
The
tour of this Aladdin's cave ended
with a
viewing
of a
'sumptuous
chamber'
containing
seven chests full of
plate
and
jewels.2
It
would
be
tedious to dwell further
upon
Beaufort's
wealth
-
that
subject
has
already been taken
in hand
by
others.3 For our
purposes,
the
travel-
lers' tales of fabulous wealth can
only point
a
contrast. We are
clearly
at the
other end
of the
ecclesiastical
spectrum
from that in
which Alber-
gati moved.
Henry
Beaufort was
accompanied
to the
congress
of
Arras
in August and early September
I435
by an entourage of soo persons;
Albergati
arrived as
Cardinal-legate
of the Roman
church with a mere
so
in
his retinue.4 The
Venetian chronicler
Antonio
Morosini com-
mented in
February
I
43
I
on the
tiny
following
with
which
Albergati
travelled on his
journey
to arbitrate
Anglo-French
differences.5 Cardi-
nal Henry
Beaufort
may
have achieved
a
certain
tranquillity
during
his last
years, but
he
could
hardly
be
singled
out as
an
exponent
of
apostolic
poverty
and
humility.
He was
perhaps
unusual
among
his
contemporaries,
however,
because there is
a
contemporary
record of
his sense of
humour. On
IOJuly
I439, during
the
Anglo-French
nego-
tiations at
Oye, near
Calais,
rival
prophecies by
a
holy
hermit
and
by
St
Bridget
of
Sweden
were
cited across the
conference chamber.
Beaufort,
perhaps exasperated
by the
proceedings,
then
did
something
which
tends to be rather rare in
medieval
diplomatic documents
-
he
made a joke.
He said
that 'a marriagebetween
the hermit
and St Bridget
would
be a
very good
thing', alluding
perhaps to the
saint's own advo-
cacy
of a
marriage
alliance between
England and
France.6
Weale's
remarkabout the 'pleasant playful smile'7 which he thought he could
see
hovering
about the
mouth
in
the Vienna
portrait and Dresden
draw-
ing might be
taken into
account here.
Beaufort's sudden
flash of humour
would sit
rather
uncomfortably upon the lips
of
CardinalAlbergati.
Yet
Professor
Weiss'
most fundamental
objection to
the identification
with
Albergati was
knowledge not of his
wit (or lack of it)
but of
his
dress.
There is,
moreover, a
certain amount of
evidence
for the
costume
worn
by Cardinal
Beaufort on those
public
occasions in which
he
participated. The
Chronicles
of London record
that at
Beaufort's
i.
Vespasiano, op.
Cit.,
p.
292.
2.
Ibid., pp.
29I-2.
3.
See,
for
example, K. B.
McFarlane,
'At the
Deathbed of
Cardinal
Beaufort',
in R.
W.
Hunt,
W.
A. Pantin
& R.
W.
Southern
(eds.),
Essays in
Medieval
History
presented
to F. M.
Powicke
(Oxford, 1948),
pp.
405-28.
4.
Dickinson, op.
cit.,
pp. 103-4.
S.
Antonio
Morosini,
Chronique, ed. G.
Lefevre-Pontalis, iii
(Paris,
1901), 344-7.
6. See
C. T.
Allmand,
'Documents
relating to the
Anglo-French
negotiations of
1439',
Camden
Miscellany,
xxiv
(London,
1972), ii6.
7.
Weale, art. cit.
(1904), p.
I90.
EHRAprgo
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CARDINAL HENRY
BEAUFORT April
receipt of his red hat at Calais on 25
March
I427,
'ther
was putte
upon the bisshop a
cardynall(s) habyte of skarlette
furredwith puredd'
(Julius BII
version).1
Another version (Cleopatra CIV) tells us that
'when
the
bysshope
hadde don the masse and
whas
unrevessed, their
was
don upon hym an abite
in maner of a
ffrerys coope
of
ffyne
scarlett
ffurred with
puryd'.2
The Brut
repeats
this
description
word for
word,
but adds that the
cope
was 'furrid
with
purid
werke'.3
A
garment
trimmed or edged with 'puryd' was one in which the fur was so cut
down that
only
one
colour
(e.g.
white or
grey)
remained.4
On another
occasion of public
ceremony,
Beaufort entered
London on
i
September
I428
wearing, according to Amundesham's Annales
.. .
Sancti
Albani,
a 'cope of crimson velvet called 'crymesyne' with sleeves which covered
the palfrey on which he
rode
from
the
ears
to the
crupper, and a hood
like
a scholastic cape
(capae scholasticae)
furred with
miniver'.5
Yet
the
most interesting
description
of Beaufort's
attire is given
by
William
Gregory, later mayor of London, in his
account
of the
coronation
of the
seven-year-old
Henry
VI
at
Westminster on
6
November
I429.6
Beaufort had
returned from his anti-Hussite
crusading
activities for
the occasion, and on
the very same
day,
declared the
Brut,
'came
fro
byonde
the
see to his coronacion and
feste'.7
Gregory
described
the
order of
procession
from the
Abbey
to
Westminster Hall, led
by
the
new knights of the
Bath and the other
lords: 'thenne came the chancelor
with
hys crosse
bareheddyd;
and
aftyr hym
came the
cardenelle with
hys
crosse
in
hys abyte lyke a chanon yn a
garment
of
rede
chamelett,
furryd wythe whyte
menyver
...
.'8
The
cloth known
as
'chamelett'
or
'camelot'
in
the fifteenth
century
was
a
wool-based
serge or repp,
which had a smooth nap or pile and was not
considered to be
a coarse
or
inferior material.9 It
would not be unlike the cloth in
which
the
subject of the Vienna portrait is dressed. The cappa clausa
-
a cloak
or
cape
sewn
up
in front for
common outdoor use
-
which is there
represented, would
correspond with
Gregory's account
-
indeed, it
is
even
furred with white
miniver.
A
garment which
bears such close
similarities to
those described
by
the witnesses of
ceremonies in which
Beaufort took part
may lend some
support to what is no more than
i. C. L.
Kingsford
(ed.),
Chronicles of
London
(Oxford,
I9?5),
p.
95.
2.
Ibid., p. 131.
3.
F. W. D. Bries (ed.), The Brut or the Chroniclesof England, ii (London, Early English Text
Society, I908),
434.
4.
M[iddle] E[nglish]
D[ictionary]
(Oxford,
1974),
p.
489;
S[horter]
O[xford]
E[nglish]
Dfictionary]
(Oxford,
1970),
ii.
I622:
'pured'. Beaufort is known
to have
received
a
livery
of 'a fur
of
pured
menyver' as
chaplain to
the Garter
(Hants
Record
Office,
Bishop's Reg. 12,
fo.
SSv).
S. SeeJ.
Amundesham, Annales . ..
SanctiAlbani
(London,
Rolls
Series, I870-I),
pp. 26,
28.
6.
J.
Gairdner
(ed.),
Historical Collections
of
a
Citizen
of
London in
the
Fifteenth
Century (Camden
Society,
London, I876),
p.
i65.
7. The Brut,
p.
437;
Radford, op.
cit., p. 176.
8.
Historical
Collections ...
of London,
p.
i
68.
9. See
SOED, i.
254:
'Camlet';
F. Piponnier,
Costume et Vie
Sociale. La
cour
dAnjou,
xive-xve
siecle
(Paris/The
Hague,
1970),
p.
38I: 'Camelot,
Chamelot'; MED, p.
I II:
'Chamlit'.
EHRAprgo
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
14/19
I990
AND THE
'ALBERGATI' PORTRAIT
349
a
conjecture. That a man
such as he should have
chosen to
be
portrayed
in
such a
manner is
no cause for
surprise.1
What is cause for a certain surprise is the lack of any distinguishing
insignia or
emblem,
especially
of an
heraldic
kind,
on
the Vienna
por-
trait.
Beaufort's arms (or
anyone
else's for
that
matter)
are nowhere
to
be
found,
and
there is
no
reference to a red
hat. The
picture
may
not, however,
be
complete
as it
stands
today.
Although X-ray
pho-
tography
has not
revealed
any
under-painting,
there is
evidence of
eigh-
teenth-century
over-painting
towards the
edges,
and it is
known that
the four
corners of the
picture
were sawn off
C.
I
720
but
restored before
I783.2 This means that its
original
frame
must have
perished
at
some
time before
I720.
Now the inventory of Leopold William's collection
indicates the
dimensions of
the
painting
as it was in
i659.
If
the late
nineteenth-century
editor of that
document was
right
in
his calculation
of
equivalents, the Vienna
portrait has been
cut down
since
i659
by
about 7
cm.
in
height
and
about
io
cm.
in
width.3 The
original
panel
might then
have
included
a
coat-of-arms or
some other
distinguishing
device. That
we can never
know. Nor can the
portrait be
fruitfully
compared
with
other
surviving
pictorial
representations
of Cardinal
Beaufort. Such books
as are left from his
library
contain
no
illuminated
likenesses of him either
as a donor or
recipient.4 His
effigy upon
his tomb in
Winchester cathedral is of little
help,
because it is a
seven-
teenth-century
replacement of the
original
destroyed
during
the
Civil
War. The
earliest
illustration that I
have
yet
found is an
engraving
'delineated from
the
original
in
i665',
and
the
only portion
of
the
fifteenth-century
inscription
which has
survived
Puritan
desecration
carries
the
appropriate
words:
'I
should tremble
did I
not know
thy
mercies
. The
effigy is a
figure
of a
Cardinal in
late
seventeenth-
century style, and from it a stained-glasshead of Beaufort in the buttery
windows of
Queen's
College,
Oxford
is clearly
derived.6
This is not
medieval
glass, and
forms
part of a
window
given in the
seventeenth
century
by
a
post-Restoration
Provost. But
there are
two other
contem-
porary (or
near-contemporary) sources
for the
Cardinal's
features: the
I. E.
Bishop,
Liturgica
Historica
(Oxford, I9I8),
p.
266.
2. See
Baldass, op.
cit., p.
280; Katalog
der
Gemaldegalerie,
ii.
S.
3.
'Inventar ...
Leopold
Wilhelm
von
Oesterreich',
pp.
lxxxv,
cxxi,
no.
I09.
4.
See New College, Oxford, MS B
34;
Bodleian Library, MS Bodley,
II7;
cf G. Voigt, Die
Wiederbelebung
des
classischen
Alterthums,
ii
(Berlin, I896),
254.
A
search
of his
surviving
register
as
Bishop of
Winchester
(Hants.
Record
Office,
Bishop's Reg.
12)
produced no
information about
Beaufort's
books
or
any
paintings
in his
possession. His
will,
printed
by J.
Nichols, A
Collection
of
Royal
Wills
(London, 1780),
pp.
321-4I, refers
to
'ymaginibus
meis' of
the Virgin
and the
angel
Gabriel, 2
missals
and a
breviary (p.
324).
I
have not
found
any
reference to
paintings
commissioned
by
Beaufort.
S.
F.
Sandford, A
Genealogical
History
of the
Kings and
Queens
of
England
and
Monarchs of
Great
Britain
(London,
1707),
pp.
261-2
and
plate.
6.
See R.
N.
Quirk,
'The
Tomb
of
Cardinal
Beaufort',
Winchester
Cathedral
Record, xxiii
(I954),
6-I0;
Royal
Commission
on
Historic
Monuments,
England,
An
Inventory
of the
Historical
Monu-
ments in
the
City of
Oxford
(London,
1939),
p.
99.
Sandford,
op.
cit.,
p.
260.
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
15/19
350
CARDINAL HENRY BEAUFORT April
statue set into a niche on the tower of the
Hospital of St Cross at
Winchester,
and the corbel-like bust
of a
Cardinal discovered among
the remains of his episcopal palace of Bishop's Waltham.1
Beaufort's association with the 'house of noble poverty' dedicated
to
St Cross
at
Winchester
is
very
well-documented.
Founded
by Henry
of Blois
in
II36,
it
was
virtually
re-founded
and
re-built
by
Beaufort
between I
420
and
his death on
I
I April
I
447.2
Building
works
appar-
ently began
with the
chimneys
of the brothers' houses and ended
with
Beaufort's tower, hall and chapel. On the
north
side of the
tower,
a niche houses a statue of the Cardinal, kneeling, wearing
his red
hat,
which is said to be contemporary
with the
building
itself.
Although
no building or fabric accounts survive, it seems reasonable to assume
that the statue was intended for the niche, that it was
in
position by
I446-7 and that the empty
niches
to its left contained
sculptures
of
the Virgin, and, perhaps,
of
Henry
of Blois.3
Unfortunately,
the face
of
Beaufort's statue is so badly damaged
and eroded
through exposure
to the elements
that all one
can say
about
it is that the
residual heavy
features would not
conflict
with those recorded
by Jan
van
Eyck's
Vienna portrait. Beyond that,
one cannot
at
present go.
But the evi-
dence from
Bishop's
Waltham
is better
preserved
and
accordingly
more
helpful.
Beaufort was
engaged
in major
building
works there between
I427
and
I447,
beginning
a new
programme
of work
in
I437.
The
bust of a
Cardinal
found
among
the remains of the
palace may
have
been
a
corbel
to
support
a
vaulting
rib
in
the
chapel
or
gatehouse.
It shows
a
figure wearing a be-tasselled
red
hat,
with one hand
placed
on its
left
breast.
The features of the
effigy,
with its broad
face, slightly pro-
truding lower lip and sharply arched eyebrows
would also not conflict
with the physiognomy of the sitter
in the Vienna portrait. It is difficult
to assign it a precise date. But the evidence suggests a date eitherwithin
Beaufort's
lifetime,
or at a later
stage
of
the fifteenth century, perhaps
during
a
further
campaign
of
works at
Bishop's
Waltham in the
I490S.4
Yet this
inquiry, unsatisfactory so far, does
not
end there. The seven-
teenth
century may
have been
responsible
for the destruction of Beau-
fort's tomb-effigy but it also saw the production of a record of the
Vienna
portrait
as it
was when it entered
the
collection
of the
Archduke
i. See W. T.
Warren, St
Cross
Hospital
near Winchester:
ts History and
Buildings (Winchester/
London,
I899),
p. i8, and pl. facing p. i8; Harriss, op. cit.,
p.
369, n.
75-
I
am grateful to Dr
J. N. Hare for furtherinformation on the
Bishop's Waltham sculpture.
2. See W.
Dugdale, Monasticon, vi,
II
(London, I830),
pp.
721-4; Victoria
County History,
Hants
and Isle of Wight (London, 1903), ii- I95-6; V.
66-7. Beaufort was exhorted
by
a
Carthusian
monk
of Sheen to
console and aid the poor 'dum
tempus
habetur et
in
potestate
vestra sunt
remedia ...
ut redimere possetur peccata vestra ... ': (MS
Bodley
II 7, fo.
i
8'). Also
G.
Belfield, 'Cardinal Beau-
fort's almshouse of
noble poverty at St
Cross, Winchester,'
Proc.
Hants.
Field
Club and Arch.
Soc., xxxviii
(I982),
79-91.
3.
Radford, op. cit., p. 293.
I
am indebted to
Mrs
Barbara
CarpenterTurner, Honorary Archivist
of St
Cross
Hospital, for information concerning the muniments of the
Hospital.
4. See
Harriss, op. cit.,
pp.
368-9 and Plate ii. The
building history
of
the episcopal palace will
be fully
discussed by Dr J. N. Hare in a forthcoming work.
EHRAprgo
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
16/19
I990
AND THE
'ALBERGATI' PORTRAIT
35I
Leopold William of
Austria. Few of the
scholars who have
so far
studied
the
painting
have yet
exploited evidence
for the
post-fifteenth-century
history of the work and its 'fortune' before
i659.
Its inclusion, promi-
nently
displayed,
in
David Teniers the
Younger's picture
of a
Gallery
or
Cabinet
d'Amateur
(London,
Seilern
Collection),
helps
to
confirm
the date
and manner of its
entry
into the
archducal
collection.1
This
can
now be
established as
S
April
I648,
according
to an
annotation
by
the
Antwerp
art
collector
and dealer
Peeter
Stevens
in
his
copy
of
Carel van
Mander's
Schilder-Boek
(i6
i8).2
Stevens
wrote:
Also in
PeeterStevens'
possession,
a fine
portrait
by Jan
van
Eyck
dated
1438
and representinghe cardinalof SantaCroce,who at thattime was
sent
by the
Pope
to
Bruges
to
make
peace
between Duke
Philip
and
the
Dauphin
of
France n thematter f
his father's eath.
This s now
the
property
of
Archduke
Leopold,
who
purchased
t
on
S AprilI
648.3
If the
portrait was
indeed dated
I438,
it
was most
unlikely
to
be a
representation
of
'the
Cardinal of Santa
Croce'
because
Albergati was
at no
time at
Bruges,
or
anywhere
else
in
the Low
Countries,
during
that
year.
But
Stevens' statement that
he sold the
picture
to the
Arch-
duke in
I648
is a
valuable
addition to the
corpus
of
evidence
relating
to its
subsequent
history. Teniers'
Gallery or
Cabinet
d'Amateur
pic-
ture
may indeed
represent
its
purchase,
possibly by
Teniers
himself
(as
Leopold
William's
picture curator from
I647
onwards) in
Peeter
Stevens'
Constkamer
in
April
I648.4
Stevens
was
probably the
source
for
the
identification of
the Vienna
portrait in
the
i659
inventory of
Leopold William's
collection
and he is
therefore
our
earliest
authority
for
the
sitter's
identity.
But his
erroneous
dating
of
Albergati's diploma-
tic
activity
and his
substitution of
Bruges
for Arras
as its
location
arouses
suspicion. He may simply be retailing an existing tradition (or myth)
which had
attached itself
to
the
picture,
possibly
stemming from
a
misreading
of an
inscription on
its
original
frame.
If the
recorded
date
was
I438 then
there
would be
much firmer
grounds
for
iden-
tifying the
sitter as
Cardinal
Beaufort
rather than
Cardinal
Albergati.
Beaufort
was at
Gravelines
and
Calais in
December
I43 8.5
The
evidence of
Stevens'
annotation
must
therefore
be treated
with
great
i.
See J.
Denuce, De
Antwerpsche
'Konstkamers'
Inventarissen
van
Kunstverzamelingen
te
Antwerpen in
de
W6en
17'
Eeuwen,
ii
(Antwerp,
1932), pl.
I3;
S.
Speth-Holterhoff,
Les
Peintres
Flamandsde
Cabinets
dAmateurs
au xvii
siecle
(Brussels,
1957),
pp.
129-30.
2.
See J.
Briels,
'Amator
Pictoriae
Artis.
De
Antwerpse
Kunstverzamelaar
Peeter
Stevens
(i590-i668)
en zijn
Constkamer',
Jaarboek van
het
Koninklijk Museum
voor
Schone
Kunsten,
Antwerp
(I980),
pp.
137-226,
esp.
pp. i8o-6, 21
1.
3.
Translated
in
E.
Dhanens,
HubertandJan
van
Eyck
(New
York,
i985),
pp.
286-7.
4.
Speth-Holterhoff,
op.
cit.,
pp.
132-4;
Denuce,
op. cit.,
i.
3-8.
For a
reproduction
of
Teniers'
picture,
see
Dhanens,
op.
cit.,
fig.
177,
captioned as
'Peeter
Stevens'
'constkamer'
at
Antwerp'.
S.
Harriss,
op.
cit., pp.
286,
296.
EHR
Apr
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
17/19
352 CARDINAL
HENRY
BEAUFORT April
caution and the view that the
Vienna portrait's
identification as
Albergati 'can
no
longer be disputed' seems
premature and over-
confident.'
On the other
hand,
the
descriptions
of
I648
and
i659
which
refer
to the sitter as 'the
Cardinal
of
St
Cross' continue to furnish the
evidence
upon which
all
arguments
seeking
to rule out other
identifications
ulti-
mately rest. Henry Beaufort never bore the
title
of
Cardinal-priest
of Santa
Croce
in
Jerusalem
at
Rome.
Yet a
possible explanation
of
the
association of
this title with the
picture
may
lie in the
story
of
yet
another
fifteenth-century
painting
of a Cardinal.
The attribution of a
panel
of
StJerome
in his
Study,
now
at
Detroit,
dated
I442,
has been the subject of dispute.2 Is this by Jan van Eyck
or Petrus Christus? Professor
Panofsky argued
that the
picture
was
begun by
Van
Eyck
before
his
death
in
I44I
and was
completed
by
the far less gifted Petrus Christus.3
Be
that as it
may,
an address
inscribed on a
letter,
which lies on the Saint's
desk, runs as follows:
'Reverendissimo in Christo
patri
et
domino,
domino
Jeronimo,
tituli
Sancte Crucis inJherusalem
presbytero
cardinali'.
Although
the histori-
cal
Jerome
was
not,
and could not have
been,
a
Cardinal,
Dominican
legend awarded
him a red hat but
either attributed no title to
him,
or gavehim that of St Anastasia.
4
He is nowhere known as the
Cardinal
of St
Cross.
Why
then should the artist
of
the
Detroit
panel so entitle
him on the
letter which
lies
before
him?
Panofsky suggested
that
the
picture
was
commissioned
by
Albergati,
and made
much of the
appear-
ance of a
painting
of St
Jerome,
attributed to
Jan van Eyck, in
the
Medici
Collection
in
I492.5
The
inventory
of
that
collection, made
at
Lorenzo's death, refers to 'a small
Flemish
painting
of
St Jerome
in his study,
with a small
cupboard containing books in
perspective,
and a lion at his feet, a work of Master John of Bruges, done in oil
with a
cover'.6
It
is impossible to
tell whether
this was the Detroit
panel.
That it
should be found in an Italian
collection in the late
fifteenth
century
does not
necessarily
connect
it
with Albergati
-
the
Medici
I.
Dhanens, op.
cit., p. 284;
Briels, art.
cit., pp. i8o-i.
2. E. Panofsky,
'A letter to St
Jerome: a note on
the
relationship
between
Petrus Christus
&
Jan
van
Eyck', in Studies in
Art and
Literature
... .for Belle da
Costa
Greene, ed. D.
Miner
(Princeton,
1954), pp. 102-8.
3.
Ibid.,
p. 103; cf.
Ingvar
Bergstrom,
'Medicina, Fons et
Scrinium. A Study in
Van
Eyckian
Symbolism and its
Influence in Italian
Art',
Konsthistorick
Tidshrift,xxvi (1957),
1-20;
E. C. Hall,
'Cardinal
Albergati,
St Jerome
and
the
Detroit
Van
Eyck', Art
Quarterly,
xxxi
(1968), 2-34; idem,
'More
about the Detroit
Van
Eyck:
the
astrolabe,
the
Congress of
Arras and
Cardinal
Albergati',
ibid.,
xxxiv
(I971),
I80-201.
4.
Panofsky, art. cit.,
pp.
i06-7; see also P.
Monceaux, St Jerome.
The
Early Years
(London,
1933),
pp.v-vi; and, most
recently, J. N. D.
Kelly,
Jerome, His Life,
Writings, and
Controversies
(London,
1975),
pp.
83,
334-
S.
Panofsky, art. cit.,
pp.
I07-8; Bergstrom,
art.
cit.,
pp.
2-3.
For
the Medici
inventory
of
1492
see E.
Muntz, Les collectionsdes
Medicis au
xV'
siecle
(Paris/London,
i888), pp. 58-95.
6.
Ibid.,
p.
78.
EHRAprgo
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
18/19
I990
AND
THE 'ALBERGATI PORTRAIT
353
bank,
after
all,
had a branch
at
Bruges.1
A
Netherlandish MS
illumina-
tion
of
C.I455,
closely derived
from the
painting,
may
mean that
it
was still in the Low Countries at that time.2 Panofsky's notion that
the
picture
is a
'witty compliment'
to
Albergati, greeting
him as a
'lineal successor
of St Jerome'
imposes
a certain
strain on one's
credu-
lity.3 The only examples
of a
near-contemporary
Cardinal
represented
as St Jerome
that
I
have
discovered
so far are two
panels,
dated
I
525
and
I527,
painted
by
Lucas Cranach
the Elder.4
Here,
Cardinal
Albrecht
of Brandenburg,
Archbishop
of
Mainz,
sits in his
study
sur-
rounded by
the apparatus
of
scholarship.
Given the
paucity
of fifteenth-
century
evidence
for this
iconographical
tradition,
one must
clearly
view Panofsky's theory with caution. Professor Weiss suggested that
the
artist
of the Detroit panel simply gave
his
Jerome
'the
only
Cardi-
nal's title
that
he
knew'.5
If
Petrus Christus
or
van
Eyck
were hard
up for a
formal title to
give
St
Jerome,
then
they might
be
forgiven
for
awarding
him
that
held by Albergati.
But this
certainly
need not
imply the
automatic identification
of
Jerome
with the CarthusianCardi-
nal of
St Cross.
It was well-known
that
Jerome
had
lived at Rome
between
382
and
385
as
secretary
to
Pope
Damasus L.6 The titular
church of Santa Croce
in
Gerusalemme,
at
Rome,
which
a
Flemish
artistof the
I430S
and
40S
would perhapshaveknown as a result of
Albergati's
missions as
papal
legate, provided
a
sound and authentic
enough address
for aletterto StJerome.
A
fifteenth-century
manuscript
illumination
in
the Walters
Art Gallery
shows Augustine (who was
thought to
have corresponded
with
Jerome)
in his study, addressing
a letter to
'Jheronimo
presbytero'.7
If
the
letter
in
the
Detroit panel
is derived from this kind
of
iconographical
tradition, the artist simply
needed a Roman titular church
for his Jerome.
There was one to hand
in Albergati's well-known title.
An
alternative explanation
for the association
of the title 'von Santa
Cruce'
with
Jan
van
Eyck's
Vienna
portrait
might be proposed. Pro-
fessor
Weiss posited the existence
of an original frame for the
portrait
which
may
have borne an inscription including
the words
'de Sancta
i. For Flemish
paintings in
Italy in the fifteenth century
see A.
Warburg, 'Flandrische Kunst
und
Florentinische
Fruhrenaissance.
Studien' and
'Flandrische und Florentinische
Kunst im
Kreise
des Lorenzo
Medici um 1480', Gesammelte
Schriften,
i
(Leipzig/Berlin,
1932),
i85-206,
207-12;
L. Campbell, 'The Art Market in the Southern Netherlands in the fifteenth century', Burlington
Magazine,
cxviii (
976), 189, 197.
2.
Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore, MS 721, fo.277v;
Panofsky, art. cit., p. 102
and fig.
5i.
3.
Ibid., p.
107.
4.
Hessisches Landesmuseum,
Darmstadt.
See
F.
Back, Verzeichnis der
Gemalde
(Darmstadt,
1914), pp-
53-4, no.
71.
Also F.
Thone, Lucas
Cranach der Altere
(K6nigstein im Taunus,
I965),
pl.
6i; and for a representation
of Albrecht of
Brandenburg as St Jerome
in a landscape
see W.
Schade, Die
Materfamilie Cranach (Dresden,
1974),
pl.
142,
p.
84.
S.
Weiss,
art.
cit.,
p.
147.
6.
See Kelly, op.
cit., pp.
82-4,
333-4;J. Steinmann, St
jerome
(London,
i'pg),
pp. I I
I-i
5.
7.
Walters Art
Gallery, MS 304,
fo. 59; Panofsky, art. cit., p.
io6, fig.
So.
EHRAprgo
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8/10/2019 Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the 'Albergati' Portrait
19/19
354
CARDINAL HENRY
BEAUFORT
April
Cruce'.'
If we are going
to
move into the
world of hypothetical
picture-frames,
then an
association
with St
Cross might evoke
rather
different resonances in English ears. An inscription, or simply an oral
tradition,
which
referred to the
sitter as
a founder
of the hospital
of
St Cross might
equally
well
be
proposed.
Although
no conclusive
evidence
has yet been
discovered
to
substantiate
Beaufort's
claim,
Albergati seems
by contrast
an
even less likely
candidate. There
is
no direct
contemporary
evidence
to support
him;
he has a title,
associated
with
the
picture
in the seventeenth
century,
behind him;
but little else.
If
the face which
looks out
from
Jan
van
Eyck's portrait
with
its 'keen
scrutinising
glance'
is that
of
a
Cardinal-diplomat,
art-
historians may simply have chosen the wrong Cardinal. It would not
be too difficult
to see
in it
the face
of a
statesman
and financier whose
business
brought
him
so
often to
the
Burgundian
lands.
StJohn's
College, Oxford
MALCOLM VALE
I. Weiss, art. cit., p.
147:
'dominus de Sancta Cruce' is
the title which Weiss
proposed.
EHR Apr
go