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Chapter I CulturesofCollecting in Early Modern England Collecting was a vital social practice during the early modern period because it served as a point of convergencefor awide range of cultural forces. Severaldistinct modes of collectingflourished in Stuart England, variously interacting and merging to create new, hybrid forms of the collection.The early modern English collector could thus inhabit a correspondingly diverse range of subject positions. The history of the collection of John ~radescant the elder affords a case study of the complex and changing web of social meanings which collectors created and negotiated in seventeenthcentury England. To analyze the Tradescant collection, however, we first need to consider some of the multifaceted earlymodern modes of collecting which shaped it. The CollectionasAristocraticDisplay The medieval esteem for "magnificence" as a hallmark of noble virtue continued to underwrite courtly culture during the seventeenth century, entailing the display of aristocratic wealth through extravagant hospitality. At the courts of James I and Charles I, the monarchs' lavish provision of banquets, jewels, precious metals, and rich clothing amidst a throng of similarly ostentatious courtiers demonstrated the Stuarts' princely power and status in this time-honored fashi0n.l However, afterJames made peace with Spain in 1604, new forms of aristocratic material display began to emerge in England. As they gained more knowledge of princely culture on the Continent from diplomats and travelers, members of the English elite began to emulate the European fashion for art collecting.Charles I literally imported the European model of the princely gallery to England when he bought a significant portion of the famous collection of paintings and sculpture amassed by the Gonzaga court at Mantua. When the Gonzaga collection became available for nearlyE16,ooo in 1627,wars with Spain and C U L T U R E S O F C O L L E C T I N G I7 France had left Charles so strapped for funds that he had mortgaged his jewels, and he was warned that such a costly block purchase of art could prevent him from financing Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rh6; but Charles bought the Gonzaga collection n~netheless.~ Throughout his reign Charles also purchased smaller collections, received gifts from diplomats and courtiers, and commissioned art works such as portraits by Van Dyck and the Rubens ceiling for the Banqueting House. The palace of Whitehall alone came to contain "a substantial proportion of the finest collection of pictures ever assembled" in Britain, including works attributed to Titian, Correggio, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Giulio roman^.^ Charles thus established himself as one of the great collectors of art in seventeenth-century Europe. The art collection as an exhibition of elite status was qualitatively different from the traditional material display of "magnificence." In 1610 Lord Roos visited the Continent and approvingly reported that Spanish palaces were full of paintings rather than people: for Lord Roos, such princely collections of art objects replaced the aristocratic entourage as a symbol of political power.4 To some extent, art works displayed their owner's elite status simply on the basis of the objects' price tags: likejewels or plate, valuable paintings bespoke their owner's wealth, especially if a large collection of art works had been assembled. Compared to objects fashioned from gems or precious metals, however, the pictures gathered by princely collectors were inexpensi~e.~ Although paintings were not composed of intrinsically valuable raw materials, theywere considered desirable markers of status because they embodied a kind of knowledge that transformed them into high culture: their value was understood in cultural rather than financial terms. Initially, pictures were esteemed strictly for their subject matter rather than their aesthetic quality or attribution, and collectors sought to acquire the painted images of famous historical figures: Charles I, for example, had a series of portraits ostensibly representing the monarchs of England since the time of Edward 111, as well as pictures of other members of the British royal family and various ruling houses of E ~ r o p e . ~ In the latter half of the sixteenth century, this emphasis on the iconography of portraiture was complemented by a new concept of the artist as genius which was promulgated by writers such as Vasari. The ability to understand and appreciate "great" artists came to be considered a sign of erudition and refinement, and by the seventeenth century Europe was being swept by "a veritable picture-mania with huge collections formed by voracious collectors" as "a powerful symbiosiswas achieved between the cultural prestige of painting and the...

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