Robert Peake the Elder
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
reign and for most of the reign of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
; and in 1607, serjeant-painter
Serjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
. Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller
Popular print
Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the 15th to 18th centuries, often with text as well as images. They were the first mass-media...
William Peake
William Peake
William Peake , painter and printseller, was the son of the painter Robert Peake the Elder, and father of the printseller and royalist army officer, Sir Robert Peake....
(c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake was a print-seller and royalist. A grandson of Robert Peake the elder, he was knighted in 1645 for his service as a member of the garrison of Basing House. He was exiled for refusing the oath of allegiance to the Protector Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration he was appointed...
(c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.
Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, and the miniature painter
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.
Early life and work
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
family in about 1551. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham, who lived at the sign of “The Key” in Goldsmith’s
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Row, Westcheap
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, to the Goldsmiths’ Company
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company, which has origins in the twelfth century, received a Royal Charter in 1327. It ranks fifth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies. Its motto is Justitia Virtutum Regina, Latin for Justice...
in London. He became a freeman
Livery Company
The Livery Companies are 108 trade associations in the City of London, almost all of which are known as the "Worshipful Company of" the relevant trade, craft or profession. The medieval Companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling,...
of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter. Peake’s training would have been similar to that of John de Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, who may have been pupils of the Flemish
Flemish painting
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighbouring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence...
artist Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere was a Flemish portrait painter, poet and writer.De Heere was a Protestant and became a refugee from the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, who tried to suppress Protestantism...
.
Peake is first heard of professionally in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain . According to art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele". Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland
Duke of Rutland
Earl of Rutland and Duke of Rutland are titles in the peerage of England, derived from Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. The Earl of Rutland was elevated to the status of Duke in 1703 and the titles were merged....
accounts at Belvoir
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle is a stately home in the English county of Leicestershire, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir . It is a Grade I listed building....
in the 1590s. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the “Military Commander”, shows Peake’s early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.
Painter to Prince Henry
In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer, Peake was appointed serjeant-painterSerjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I; sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. The serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake’s work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter.
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio’s
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments are listed by Sir David Murray
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont was a Scottish courtier, comptroller of Scotland and captain of the king's guard, known as Sir David Murray of Gospertie, then Lord Scone, and afterwards Viscount Stormont...
as disbursements to Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
from the Privy Purse
Privy Purse
The Privy Purse is the British Sovereign's remaining private income, mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster. This amounted to £13.3 million in net income for the year to 31 March 2009. The Duchy is a landed estate of approximately 46,000 acres held in trust for the Sovereign since 1399. It also has...
, to pay "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 (£ in ) for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 (£ in ) "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
was paid £5.10s.0d. (£ in ) for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray’s accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.
Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612; drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever, at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d" (£, £ and £ respectively in ). Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry’s funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter". For the occasion, he was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for a servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.
After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The accounts for 1616, which call Peake the prince’s painter, record that he was paid £35 (£ in ) for "three several pictures of his Highness". On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. (£ in ) by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Death
Peake died in 1619, probably in mid-October. Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148, put his death at around 1625, for example. The catalogue for The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1972, p. 89, suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on the 16th. The date of his burial is unknown because the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
later destroyed the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
had died in January; Queen Anne
Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
, Peake’s neighbour, in April or May. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".
Paintings
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian specialized in Roman baroque and English painting...
, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.
Procession Picture
.jpg)
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
, the eighteenth-century antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, called the painting "not well nor ill done".
Strong reveals that the procession was connected to the marriage of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester was an English aristocrat, inheriting the title Earl of Worcester from his father Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, in 1628. He was a prominent and financially important royalist....
, and Lady Anne Russell, one of the queen’s six maids of honour, on 16 June 1600. He identifies many of the individuals portrayed in the procession and shows that instead of a litter
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
, as was previously assumed, Queen Elizabeth is sitting on a wheeled cart or chariot. Strong also suggests that the landscape and castles in the background are not intended to be realistic. In accordance with Elizabethan stylistic conventions, they are emblematic, here representing the Welsh properties of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, KG, Earl Marshal was an English aristocrat. He was an important advisor to King James I, serving as Lord Privy Seal....
, to which his son Lord Herbert was the heir. The earl may have commissioned the picture to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Horse in 1601.
Peake clearly did not paint the queen, or indeed the courtiers, from life but from the "types" or standard portraits used by the workshops of the day. Portraits of the queen were subject to restrictions, and from about 1594 there seems to have been an official policy that she always be depicted as youthful. In 1594, the Privy council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen be found and destroyed, since they caused Elizabeth "great offence". The famous Ditchley portrait (c. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, was used as a type, sometimes called the "Mask of Youth" face-pattern, for the remainder of the reign. It is clear that Gheeraerts' portrait provided the pattern for the queen’s image in the procession picture. Other figures also show signs of being traced from patterns, leading to infelicities of perspective and proportion.
Full-length portraits
At the beginning of the 1590s, the full-length portrait came into vogue and artistic patrons among the nobles began to add galleries of such paintings to their homes as a form of cultural ostentation. Peake was one of those who met the demand. He was also among the earliest English painters to explore the full-length individual or group portrait with active figures placed in a natural landscape, a style of painting that became fashionable in England. As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.In 1603, he painted a double portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, of the prince and his boyhood friend John Harington, son of Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
(see above). The double portrait is set outdoors, a style introduced by Gheeraerts in the 1590s, and Peake's combination of figures with animals and landscape also foreshadows the genre of the sporting picture. The country location and recreational subject lend the painting an air of informality. The action is natural to the setting, a fenced deer-park with a castle and town in the distance. Harington holds a wounded stag by the antlers as Henry draws his sword to deliver the coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
. The prince wears at his belt a jewel of St George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
slaying the dragon, an allusion to his role as defender of the realm. His sword is an attribute of kingship, and the young noble kneels in his service. The stag is a fallow deer
Fallow Deer
The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...
, a non-native species kept at that time in royal parks for hunting. A variant of this painting in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
, painted c. 1605, features Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, in the place of John Harington and displays the Devereux arms.
In the same year, Peake also painted his first portrait of James I's only surviving daughter, Elizabeth
Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
. This work, like the double portrait, for which it might be a companion piece, appears to have been painted for the Harington family, who acted as Elizabeth's guardians from 1603 to 1608. In the background of Elizabeth's portrait is a hunting scene echoing that of the double portrait, and two ladies sit on an artificial mound of a type fashionable in garden design at the time.
Peake again painted Henry outdoors in about 1610. In this portrait, now at the Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...
, the prince looks hardly older than in the 1603 double portrait; but his left foot rests on a shield bearing the three-feathers device of the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, a title he did not hold until 1610. Henry is portrayed as a young man of action, about to draw a jewel-encrusted sword from its scabbard. The portrait was almost certainly sent to Savoy
Duchy of Savoy
From 1416 to 1847, the House of Savoy ruled the eponymous Duchy of Savoy . The Duchy was a state in the northern part of the Italian Peninsula, with some territories that are now in France. It was a continuation of the County of Savoy...
in connection with a marriage proposed in January 1611 between Henry and the Infanta Maria, daughter of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
.
James I's daughter Elizabeth was also a valuable marriage pawn. She too was offered to Savoy, as a bride for the Prince of Piedmont
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus I was the Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637. He was also titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He was also known as the Lion of Susa-Biography:...
, the heir of Charles Emanuel. The exchange of portraits as part of royal marriage proposals was the practice of the day and provided regular work for the royal painters and their workshops. Prince Henry commissioned portraits from Peake to send them to the various foreign courts with which marriage negotiations were underway. The prince’s accounts show, for example, that the two portraits Peake painted of him in arms in 1611–12 were "sent beyond the seas".
Father Time
Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, somewhat worse for wear, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device...
by the forelock. Art historian John Sheeran suggests this is a classical allusion that signifies opportunity. The old man carries Henry's lance and plumed helmet; and scholar Chris Caple points out that his pose is similar to that of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's figure of death in Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving, one of the three "master prints" of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The print portrays an armored Christian Knight riding through a narrow gorge flanked by a pig-snouted devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death holds an...
(1513). He also observes that the old man was painted later than other components of the painting, since the bricks of the wall show through his wings. When the painting was restored in 1985, the wall and the figure of time were revealed to modern eyes for the first time, having been painted over at some point in the seventeenth century by other hands than Peake's. The painting has also been cut down, the only original canvas edge being that on the left.
Lady Elizabeth Pope
Peake's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Pope may have been commissioned by her husband, Sir William Pope, to commemorate their marriage in 1615. Lady Elizabeth is portrayed with her hair loose, a symbol of bridal virginity. She wears a draped mantle—embroidered with seed pearls in a pattern of ostrich plumes—and a matching turbanTurban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
. The mantle knotted on one shoulder was worn in Jacobean court masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s, as the costume designs of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
indicate. The painting’s near-nudity, however, makes the depiction of an actual masque costume unlikely.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89. Loose hair and the classical draped mantle also figure in contemporary personifications of abstract concepts in masques and paintings. Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
art historian Ellen Chirelstein argues that Peake is portraying Lady Elizabeth as a personification of America, since her father, Sir Thomas Watson, was a major shareholder in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89.
Assessment
.jpg)
Francis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
, in his Palladis Tamia, included Peake on a list of the best English artists. In 1612, Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
wrote in The Gentleman's Exercise that his "good friend Mr Peake", along with Marcus Gheeraerts, was outstanding "for oil colours". Ellis Waterhouse suggested that the genre of elaborate costume pieces was as much a decorative as a plastic art. He notes that these works, the "enamelled brilliance" of which has become apparent through cleaning, are unique in European art and deserve respect. They were produced chiefly by the workshops of Peake, Gheeraerts the Younger, and De Critz. Sheeran detects the influence of Hilliard’s brightly patterned and coloured miniatures in Peake’s work and places Peake firmly in the "iconic tradition of late Elizabethan painting".
Sheeran believes that Peake's creativity waned into conservatism, his talent "dampened by mass production". He describes Peake's Cambridge portrait, Prince Charles, as Duke of York as poorly drawn, with a lifeless pose, in a stereotyped composition that "confirms the artist's reliance on a much repeated formula in his later years". Art historian and curator Karen Hearn, on the other hand, praises the work as "magnificent" and draws attention to the naturalistically rendered note pinned to the curtain. Peake painted the portrait to mark Charles’s visit to Cambridge on 3 and 4 March 1613, during which he was awarded an M.A.—four months after the death of his brother. Depicting Prince Charles wearing the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
and Lesser George, Peake here reverts to a more formal, traditional style of portraiture. The note pinned to a curtain of cloth of gold
Cloth of gold
Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...
, painted in trompe-l'œil fashion, commemorates Charles’s visit in Latin. X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s of the portrait reveal that Peake painted it over another portrait. Pentimenti
Pentimento
A pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting...
, or signs of alteration, can be detected: for example, Charles’s right hand originally rested on his waist.
Gallery
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
reign and for most of the reign of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
; and in 1607, serjeant-painter
Serjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
. Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller
Popular print
Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the 15th to 18th centuries, often with text as well as images. They were the first mass-media...
William Peake
William Peake
William Peake , painter and printseller, was the son of the painter Robert Peake the Elder, and father of the printseller and royalist army officer, Sir Robert Peake....
(c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake was a print-seller and royalist. A grandson of Robert Peake the elder, he was knighted in 1645 for his service as a member of the garrison of Basing House. He was exiled for refusing the oath of allegiance to the Protector Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration he was appointed...
(c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.
Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, and the miniature painter
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.
Early life and work
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
family in about 1551. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham, who lived at the sign of “The Key” in Goldsmith’s
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Row, Westcheap
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, to the Goldsmiths’ Company
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company, which has origins in the twelfth century, received a Royal Charter in 1327. It ranks fifth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies. Its motto is Justitia Virtutum Regina, Latin for Justice...
in London. He became a freeman
Livery Company
The Livery Companies are 108 trade associations in the City of London, almost all of which are known as the "Worshipful Company of" the relevant trade, craft or profession. The medieval Companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling,...
of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter. Peake’s training would have been similar to that of John de Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, who may have been pupils of the Flemish
Flemish painting
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighbouring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence...
artist Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere was a Flemish portrait painter, poet and writer.De Heere was a Protestant and became a refugee from the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, who tried to suppress Protestantism...
.
Peake is first heard of professionally in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain . According to art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele". Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland
Duke of Rutland
Earl of Rutland and Duke of Rutland are titles in the peerage of England, derived from Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. The Earl of Rutland was elevated to the status of Duke in 1703 and the titles were merged....
accounts at Belvoir
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle is a stately home in the English county of Leicestershire, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir . It is a Grade I listed building....
in the 1590s. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the “Military Commander”, shows Peake’s early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.
Painter to Prince Henry
In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer, Peake was appointed serjeant-painterSerjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I; sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. The serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake’s work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter.
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio’s
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments are listed by Sir David Murray
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont was a Scottish courtier, comptroller of Scotland and captain of the king's guard, known as Sir David Murray of Gospertie, then Lord Scone, and afterwards Viscount Stormont...
as disbursements to Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
from the Privy Purse
Privy Purse
The Privy Purse is the British Sovereign's remaining private income, mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster. This amounted to £13.3 million in net income for the year to 31 March 2009. The Duchy is a landed estate of approximately 46,000 acres held in trust for the Sovereign since 1399. It also has...
, to pay "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 (£ in ) for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 (£ in ) "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
was paid £5.10s.0d. (£ in ) for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray’s accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.
Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612; drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever, at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d" (£, £ and £ respectively in ). Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry’s funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter". For the occasion, he was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for a servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.
After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The accounts for 1616, which call Peake the prince’s painter, record that he was paid £35 (£ in ) for "three several pictures of his Highness". On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. (£ in ) by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Death
Peake died in 1619, probably in mid-October. Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148, put his death at around 1625, for example. The catalogue for The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1972, p. 89, suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on the 16th. The date of his burial is unknown because the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
later destroyed the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
had died in January; Queen Anne
Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
, Peake’s neighbour, in April or May. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".
Paintings
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian specialized in Roman baroque and English painting...
, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.
Procession Picture
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
, the eighteenth-century antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, called the painting "not well nor ill done".
Strong reveals that the procession was connected to the marriage of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester was an English aristocrat, inheriting the title Earl of Worcester from his father Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, in 1628. He was a prominent and financially important royalist....
, and Lady Anne Russell, one of the queen’s six maids of honour, on 16 June 1600. He identifies many of the individuals portrayed in the procession and shows that instead of a litter
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
, as was previously assumed, Queen Elizabeth is sitting on a wheeled cart or chariot. Strong also suggests that the landscape and castles in the background are not intended to be realistic. In accordance with Elizabethan stylistic conventions, they are emblematic, here representing the Welsh properties of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, KG, Earl Marshal was an English aristocrat. He was an important advisor to King James I, serving as Lord Privy Seal....
, to which his son Lord Herbert was the heir. The earl may have commissioned the picture to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Horse in 1601.
Peake clearly did not paint the queen, or indeed the courtiers, from life but from the "types" or standard portraits used by the workshops of the day. Portraits of the queen were subject to restrictions, and from about 1594 there seems to have been an official policy that she always be depicted as youthful. In 1594, the Privy council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen be found and destroyed, since they caused Elizabeth "great offence". The famous Ditchley portrait (c. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, was used as a type, sometimes called the "Mask of Youth" face-pattern, for the remainder of the reign. It is clear that Gheeraerts' portrait provided the pattern for the queen’s image in the procession picture. Other figures also show signs of being traced from patterns, leading to infelicities of perspective and proportion.
Full-length portraits
At the beginning of the 1590s, the full-length portrait came into vogue and artistic patrons among the nobles began to add galleries of such paintings to their homes as a form of cultural ostentation. Peake was one of those who met the demand. He was also among the earliest English painters to explore the full-length individual or group portrait with active figures placed in a natural landscape, a style of painting that became fashionable in England. As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.In 1603, he painted a double portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, of the prince and his boyhood friend John Harington, son of Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
(see above). The double portrait is set outdoors, a style introduced by Gheeraerts in the 1590s, and Peake's combination of figures with animals and landscape also foreshadows the genre of the sporting picture. The country location and recreational subject lend the painting an air of informality. The action is natural to the setting, a fenced deer-park with a castle and town in the distance. Harington holds a wounded stag by the antlers as Henry draws his sword to deliver the coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
. The prince wears at his belt a jewel of St George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
slaying the dragon, an allusion to his role as defender of the realm. His sword is an attribute of kingship, and the young noble kneels in his service. The stag is a fallow deer
Fallow Deer
The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...
, a non-native species kept at that time in royal parks for hunting. A variant of this painting in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
, painted c. 1605, features Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, in the place of John Harington and displays the Devereux arms.
In the same year, Peake also painted his first portrait of James I's only surviving daughter, Elizabeth
Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
. This work, like the double portrait, for which it might be a companion piece, appears to have been painted for the Harington family, who acted as Elizabeth's guardians from 1603 to 1608. In the background of Elizabeth's portrait is a hunting scene echoing that of the double portrait, and two ladies sit on an artificial mound of a type fashionable in garden design at the time.
Peake again painted Henry outdoors in about 1610. In this portrait, now at the Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...
, the prince looks hardly older than in the 1603 double portrait; but his left foot rests on a shield bearing the three-feathers device of the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, a title he did not hold until 1610. Henry is portrayed as a young man of action, about to draw a jewel-encrusted sword from its scabbard. The portrait was almost certainly sent to Savoy
Duchy of Savoy
From 1416 to 1847, the House of Savoy ruled the eponymous Duchy of Savoy . The Duchy was a state in the northern part of the Italian Peninsula, with some territories that are now in France. It was a continuation of the County of Savoy...
in connection with a marriage proposed in January 1611 between Henry and the Infanta Maria, daughter of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
.
James I's daughter Elizabeth was also a valuable marriage pawn. She too was offered to Savoy, as a bride for the Prince of Piedmont
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus I was the Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637. He was also titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He was also known as the Lion of Susa-Biography:...
, the heir of Charles Emanuel. The exchange of portraits as part of royal marriage proposals was the practice of the day and provided regular work for the royal painters and their workshops. Prince Henry commissioned portraits from Peake to send them to the various foreign courts with which marriage negotiations were underway. The prince’s accounts show, for example, that the two portraits Peake painted of him in arms in 1611–12 were "sent beyond the seas".
Father Time
Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, somewhat worse for wear, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device...
by the forelock. Art historian John Sheeran suggests this is a classical allusion that signifies opportunity. The old man carries Henry's lance and plumed helmet; and scholar Chris Caple points out that his pose is similar to that of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's figure of death in Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving, one of the three "master prints" of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The print portrays an armored Christian Knight riding through a narrow gorge flanked by a pig-snouted devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death holds an...
(1513). He also observes that the old man was painted later than other components of the painting, since the bricks of the wall show through his wings. When the painting was restored in 1985, the wall and the figure of time were revealed to modern eyes for the first time, having been painted over at some point in the seventeenth century by other hands than Peake's. The painting has also been cut down, the only original canvas edge being that on the left.
Lady Elizabeth Pope
Peake's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Pope may have been commissioned by her husband, Sir William Pope, to commemorate their marriage in 1615. Lady Elizabeth is portrayed with her hair loose, a symbol of bridal virginity. She wears a draped mantle—embroidered with seed pearls in a pattern of ostrich plumes—and a matching turbanTurban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
. The mantle knotted on one shoulder was worn in Jacobean court masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s, as the costume designs of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
indicate. The painting’s near-nudity, however, makes the depiction of an actual masque costume unlikely.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89. Loose hair and the classical draped mantle also figure in contemporary personifications of abstract concepts in masques and paintings. Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
art historian Ellen Chirelstein argues that Peake is portraying Lady Elizabeth as a personification of America, since her father, Sir Thomas Watson, was a major shareholder in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89.
Assessment
Francis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
, in his Palladis Tamia, included Peake on a list of the best English artists. In 1612, Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
wrote in The Gentleman's Exercise that his "good friend Mr Peake", along with Marcus Gheeraerts, was outstanding "for oil colours". Ellis Waterhouse suggested that the genre of elaborate costume pieces was as much a decorative as a plastic art. He notes that these works, the "enamelled brilliance" of which has become apparent through cleaning, are unique in European art and deserve respect. They were produced chiefly by the workshops of Peake, Gheeraerts the Younger, and De Critz. Sheeran detects the influence of Hilliard’s brightly patterned and coloured miniatures in Peake’s work and places Peake firmly in the "iconic tradition of late Elizabethan painting".
Sheeran believes that Peake's creativity waned into conservatism, his talent "dampened by mass production". He describes Peake's Cambridge portrait, Prince Charles, as Duke of York as poorly drawn, with a lifeless pose, in a stereotyped composition that "confirms the artist's reliance on a much repeated formula in his later years". Art historian and curator Karen Hearn, on the other hand, praises the work as "magnificent" and draws attention to the naturalistically rendered note pinned to the curtain. Peake painted the portrait to mark Charles’s visit to Cambridge on 3 and 4 March 1613, during which he was awarded an M.A.—four months after the death of his brother. Depicting Prince Charles wearing the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
and Lesser George, Peake here reverts to a more formal, traditional style of portraiture. The note pinned to a curtain of cloth of gold
Cloth of gold
Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...
, painted in trompe-l'œil fashion, commemorates Charles’s visit in Latin. X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s of the portrait reveal that Peake painted it over another portrait. Pentimenti
Pentimento
A pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting...
, or signs of alteration, can be detected: for example, Charles’s right hand originally rested on his waist.
Gallery
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
reign and for most of the reign of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
; and in 1607, serjeant-painter
Serjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
. Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller
Popular print
Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the 15th to 18th centuries, often with text as well as images. They were the first mass-media...
William Peake
William Peake
William Peake , painter and printseller, was the son of the painter Robert Peake the Elder, and father of the printseller and royalist army officer, Sir Robert Peake....
(c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake was a print-seller and royalist. A grandson of Robert Peake the elder, he was knighted in 1645 for his service as a member of the garrison of Basing House. He was exiled for refusing the oath of allegiance to the Protector Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration he was appointed...
(c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.
Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, and the miniature painter
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.
Early life and work
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
family in about 1551. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham, who lived at the sign of “The Key” in Goldsmith’s
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Row, Westcheap
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, to the Goldsmiths’ Company
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company, which has origins in the twelfth century, received a Royal Charter in 1327. It ranks fifth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies. Its motto is Justitia Virtutum Regina, Latin for Justice...
in London. He became a freeman
Livery Company
The Livery Companies are 108 trade associations in the City of London, almost all of which are known as the "Worshipful Company of" the relevant trade, craft or profession. The medieval Companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling,...
of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter. Peake’s training would have been similar to that of John de Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, who may have been pupils of the Flemish
Flemish painting
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighbouring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence...
artist Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere was a Flemish portrait painter, poet and writer.De Heere was a Protestant and became a refugee from the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, who tried to suppress Protestantism...
.
Peake is first heard of professionally in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain . According to art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele". Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland
Duke of Rutland
Earl of Rutland and Duke of Rutland are titles in the peerage of England, derived from Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. The Earl of Rutland was elevated to the status of Duke in 1703 and the titles were merged....
accounts at Belvoir
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle is a stately home in the English county of Leicestershire, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir . It is a Grade I listed building....
in the 1590s. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the “Military Commander”, shows Peake’s early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.
Painter to Prince Henry
In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer, Peake was appointed serjeant-painterSerjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I; sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. The serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake’s work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter.
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio’s
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments are listed by Sir David Murray
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont was a Scottish courtier, comptroller of Scotland and captain of the king's guard, known as Sir David Murray of Gospertie, then Lord Scone, and afterwards Viscount Stormont...
as disbursements to Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
from the Privy Purse
Privy Purse
The Privy Purse is the British Sovereign's remaining private income, mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster. This amounted to £13.3 million in net income for the year to 31 March 2009. The Duchy is a landed estate of approximately 46,000 acres held in trust for the Sovereign since 1399. It also has...
, to pay "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 (£ in ) for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 (£ in ) "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
was paid £5.10s.0d. (£ in ) for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray’s accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.
Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612; drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever, at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d" (£, £ and £ respectively in ). Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry’s funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter". For the occasion, he was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for a servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.
After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The accounts for 1616, which call Peake the prince’s painter, record that he was paid £35 (£ in ) for "three several pictures of his Highness". On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. (£ in ) by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Death
Peake died in 1619, probably in mid-October. Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148, put his death at around 1625, for example. The catalogue for The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1972, p. 89, suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on the 16th. The date of his burial is unknown because the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
later destroyed the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
had died in January; Queen Anne
Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
, Peake’s neighbour, in April or May. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".
Paintings
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian specialized in Roman baroque and English painting...
, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.
Procession Picture
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
, the eighteenth-century antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, called the painting "not well nor ill done".
Strong reveals that the procession was connected to the marriage of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester was an English aristocrat, inheriting the title Earl of Worcester from his father Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, in 1628. He was a prominent and financially important royalist....
, and Lady Anne Russell, one of the queen’s six maids of honour, on 16 June 1600. He identifies many of the individuals portrayed in the procession and shows that instead of a litter
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
, as was previously assumed, Queen Elizabeth is sitting on a wheeled cart or chariot. Strong also suggests that the landscape and castles in the background are not intended to be realistic. In accordance with Elizabethan stylistic conventions, they are emblematic, here representing the Welsh properties of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, KG, Earl Marshal was an English aristocrat. He was an important advisor to King James I, serving as Lord Privy Seal....
, to which his son Lord Herbert was the heir. The earl may have commissioned the picture to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Horse in 1601.
Peake clearly did not paint the queen, or indeed the courtiers, from life but from the "types" or standard portraits used by the workshops of the day. Portraits of the queen were subject to restrictions, and from about 1594 there seems to have been an official policy that she always be depicted as youthful. In 1594, the Privy council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen be found and destroyed, since they caused Elizabeth "great offence". The famous Ditchley portrait (c. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, was used as a type, sometimes called the "Mask of Youth" face-pattern, for the remainder of the reign. It is clear that Gheeraerts' portrait provided the pattern for the queen’s image in the procession picture. Other figures also show signs of being traced from patterns, leading to infelicities of perspective and proportion.
Full-length portraits
At the beginning of the 1590s, the full-length portrait came into vogue and artistic patrons among the nobles began to add galleries of such paintings to their homes as a form of cultural ostentation. Peake was one of those who met the demand. He was also among the earliest English painters to explore the full-length individual or group portrait with active figures placed in a natural landscape, a style of painting that became fashionable in England. As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.In 1603, he painted a double portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, of the prince and his boyhood friend John Harington, son of Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
(see above). The double portrait is set outdoors, a style introduced by Gheeraerts in the 1590s, and Peake's combination of figures with animals and landscape also foreshadows the genre of the sporting picture. The country location and recreational subject lend the painting an air of informality. The action is natural to the setting, a fenced deer-park with a castle and town in the distance. Harington holds a wounded stag by the antlers as Henry draws his sword to deliver the coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
. The prince wears at his belt a jewel of St George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
slaying the dragon, an allusion to his role as defender of the realm. His sword is an attribute of kingship, and the young noble kneels in his service. The stag is a fallow deer
Fallow Deer
The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...
, a non-native species kept at that time in royal parks for hunting. A variant of this painting in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
, painted c. 1605, features Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, in the place of John Harington and displays the Devereux arms.
In the same year, Peake also painted his first portrait of James I's only surviving daughter, Elizabeth
Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
. This work, like the double portrait, for which it might be a companion piece, appears to have been painted for the Harington family, who acted as Elizabeth's guardians from 1603 to 1608. In the background of Elizabeth's portrait is a hunting scene echoing that of the double portrait, and two ladies sit on an artificial mound of a type fashionable in garden design at the time.
Peake again painted Henry outdoors in about 1610. In this portrait, now at the Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...
, the prince looks hardly older than in the 1603 double portrait; but his left foot rests on a shield bearing the three-feathers device of the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, a title he did not hold until 1610. Henry is portrayed as a young man of action, about to draw a jewel-encrusted sword from its scabbard. The portrait was almost certainly sent to Savoy
Duchy of Savoy
From 1416 to 1847, the House of Savoy ruled the eponymous Duchy of Savoy . The Duchy was a state in the northern part of the Italian Peninsula, with some territories that are now in France. It was a continuation of the County of Savoy...
in connection with a marriage proposed in January 1611 between Henry and the Infanta Maria, daughter of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
.
James I's daughter Elizabeth was also a valuable marriage pawn. She too was offered to Savoy, as a bride for the Prince of Piedmont
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus I was the Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637. He was also titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He was also known as the Lion of Susa-Biography:...
, the heir of Charles Emanuel. The exchange of portraits as part of royal marriage proposals was the practice of the day and provided regular work for the royal painters and their workshops. Prince Henry commissioned portraits from Peake to send them to the various foreign courts with which marriage negotiations were underway. The prince’s accounts show, for example, that the two portraits Peake painted of him in arms in 1611–12 were "sent beyond the seas".
Father Time
Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, somewhat worse for wear, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device...
by the forelock. Art historian John Sheeran suggests this is a classical allusion that signifies opportunity. The old man carries Henry's lance and plumed helmet; and scholar Chris Caple points out that his pose is similar to that of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's figure of death in Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving, one of the three "master prints" of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The print portrays an armored Christian Knight riding through a narrow gorge flanked by a pig-snouted devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death holds an...
(1513). He also observes that the old man was painted later than other components of the painting, since the bricks of the wall show through his wings. When the painting was restored in 1985, the wall and the figure of time were revealed to modern eyes for the first time, having been painted over at some point in the seventeenth century by other hands than Peake's. The painting has also been cut down, the only original canvas edge being that on the left.
Lady Elizabeth Pope
Peake's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Pope may have been commissioned by her husband, Sir William Pope, to commemorate their marriage in 1615. Lady Elizabeth is portrayed with her hair loose, a symbol of bridal virginity. She wears a draped mantle—embroidered with seed pearls in a pattern of ostrich plumes—and a matching turbanTurban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
. The mantle knotted on one shoulder was worn in Jacobean court masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s, as the costume designs of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
indicate. The painting’s near-nudity, however, makes the depiction of an actual masque costume unlikely.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89. Loose hair and the classical draped mantle also figure in contemporary personifications of abstract concepts in masques and paintings. Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
art historian Ellen Chirelstein argues that Peake is portraying Lady Elizabeth as a personification of America, since her father, Sir Thomas Watson, was a major shareholder in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89.
Assessment
Francis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
, in his Palladis Tamia, included Peake on a list of the best English artists. In 1612, Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
wrote in The Gentleman's Exercise that his "good friend Mr Peake", along with Marcus Gheeraerts, was outstanding "for oil colours". Ellis Waterhouse suggested that the genre of elaborate costume pieces was as much a decorative as a plastic art. He notes that these works, the "enamelled brilliance" of which has become apparent through cleaning, are unique in European art and deserve respect. They were produced chiefly by the workshops of Peake, Gheeraerts the Younger, and De Critz. Sheeran detects the influence of Hilliard’s brightly patterned and coloured miniatures in Peake’s work and places Peake firmly in the "iconic tradition of late Elizabethan painting".
Sheeran believes that Peake's creativity waned into conservatism, his talent "dampened by mass production". He describes Peake's Cambridge portrait, Prince Charles, as Duke of York as poorly drawn, with a lifeless pose, in a stereotyped composition that "confirms the artist's reliance on a much repeated formula in his later years". Art historian and curator Karen Hearn, on the other hand, praises the work as "magnificent" and draws attention to the naturalistically rendered note pinned to the curtain. Peake painted the portrait to mark Charles’s visit to Cambridge on 3 and 4 March 1613, during which he was awarded an M.A.—four months after the death of his brother. Depicting Prince Charles wearing the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
and Lesser George, Peake here reverts to a more formal, traditional style of portraiture. The note pinned to a curtain of cloth of gold
Cloth of gold
Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...
, painted in trompe-l'œil fashion, commemorates Charles’s visit in Latin. X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s of the portrait reveal that Peake painted it over another portrait. Pentimenti
Pentimento
A pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting...
, or signs of alteration, can be detected: for example, Charles’s right hand originally rested on his waist.
Gallery
File:Anne Knollys) by Robert Peake.jpg|Portrait of Anne Knollys
Anne Knollys
Anne West, Lady De La Warr was a lady at the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England.-Biography:...
, 1582. Attributed to Robert Peake by the Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
File:Unknown Gentleman Robert Peake v.2.jpg|Unknown Gentleman, c. 1585–90. Inscribed with the Lumley cartellino, centre left
File:Frances Walsingham.jpg| Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex
Frances Walsingham
Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 14. Her second husband was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's...
, and her son Robert, later 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, 1594
File:Eliz bohemia 2.jpg|The first known portrait of Princess Elizabeth, 1603—possibly a companion piece to Peake's double portrait of the same year
File:Charles I as Duke of York and Albany Robert Peake.jpg| After Prince Henry's death in 1612, Peake moved on to the household of his brother, the future Charles I of England, portrayed here in the robes of the Order of the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
, c. 1611–12.
File:Lady Anne Pope Robert Peake c 1615 Tate.jpg|Lady Anne Pope, sister-in-law of Elizabeth Pope, 1615. Her dress is patterned with carnations, roses and strawberries; the cherries on the tree symbolise virtue.
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
reign and for most of the reign of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
; and in 1607, serjeant-painter
Serjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
.Strong, Roy C. "Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions, 1: Robert Peake the Elder", The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine is a monthly academic journal that covers the fine and decorative arts. It is the longest running art journal in the English language and it is a charitable organisation since 1986. It was established in 1903 by a group of art historians and connoisseurs which included Roger...
, Vol. 105, No. 719 (February 1963), 53–57 (retrieved 12 January 2008). Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller
Popular print
Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the 15th to 18th centuries, often with text as well as images. They were the first mass-media...
William Peake
William Peake
William Peake , painter and printseller, was the son of the painter Robert Peake the Elder, and father of the printseller and royalist army officer, Sir Robert Peake....
(c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake was a print-seller and royalist. A grandson of Robert Peake the elder, he was knighted in 1645 for his service as a member of the garrison of Basing House. He was exiled for refusing the oath of allegiance to the Protector Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration he was appointed...
(c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.In the accounts for Prince Henry's funeral, Robert Peake is called "Mr Peake the elder painter" and William Peake "Mr Peake the younger painter". Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 155.
• Peake’s grandson Sir Robert Peake (sometimes wrongly called his son) was knighted by King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
during the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. The Parliamentarians captured him after their siege of Basing House
Siege of Basing House
The siege of Basing House near Basingstoke in Hampshire, was a Parliamentarian victory late in the First English Civil War. Whereas the title of the event may suggest a single siege, there were in fact three major engagements...
, which was under his command. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 221.
Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, and the miniature painter
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time."There is nothing like them in contemporary European painting". Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 41. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.
Early life and work
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
family in about 1551. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham, who lived at the sign of “The Key” in Goldsmith’s
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Row, Westcheap
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
"The Key" would have been a sign, identifying Woodham's shop and house, as was usual before street-numbering.. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, to the Goldsmiths’ Company
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company, which has origins in the twelfth century, received a Royal Charter in 1327. It ranks fifth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies. Its motto is Justitia Virtutum Regina, Latin for Justice...
in London.It was once assumed that Peake was much younger than Hilliard: in 1969, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
called him Hilliard’s “most important follower among the younger generation” (The English Icon, 19). Edmond, "New Light on Jacobean Painters", 74. He became a freeman
Livery Company
The Livery Companies are 108 trade associations in the City of London, almost all of which are known as the "Worshipful Company of" the relevant trade, craft or profession. The medieval Companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling,...
of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. Peake’s training would have been similar to that of John de Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, who may have been pupils of the Flemish
Flemish painting
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighbouring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence...
artist Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere was a Flemish portrait painter, poet and writer.De Heere was a Protestant and became a refugee from the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, who tried to suppress Protestantism...
.
Peake is first heard of professionally in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain Weiss (2001 and 2006) judges Peake's earliest attributed works to be the portraits of Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton
Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton
Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton was a baron in the Peerage of England, remembered mainly for his memoir of his father, and for participating in the last defence of Calais.-Life:...
, and Humphrey Wingfield, dated 1587, following Strong's English Icon of 1969. The portrait of Anne Knollys attributed to Peake in the Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
, however, bears Peake's characteristic inscription and is dated 1582.. According to art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele".Strong, English Icon, 225. Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland
Duke of Rutland
Earl of Rutland and Duke of Rutland are titles in the peerage of England, derived from Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. The Earl of Rutland was elevated to the status of Duke in 1703 and the titles were merged....
accounts at Belvoir
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle is a stately home in the English county of Leicestershire, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir . It is a Grade I listed building....
in the 1590s. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the “Military Commander”, shows Peake’s early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.
Painter to Prince Henry
In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer,Fryer had been serjeant-painter since 1595. Peake was appointed serjeant-painterSerjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I; sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. The serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake’s work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter.
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio’s
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments are listed by Sir David Murray
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont was a Scottish courtier, comptroller of Scotland and captain of the king's guard, known as Sir David Murray of Gospertie, then Lord Scone, and afterwards Viscount Stormont...
as disbursements to Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
from the Privy Purse
Privy Purse
The Privy Purse is the British Sovereign's remaining private income, mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster. This amounted to £13.3 million in net income for the year to 31 March 2009. The Duchy is a landed estate of approximately 46,000 acres held in trust for the Sovereign since 1399. It also has...
, to pay "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 (£ in ) for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 (£ in ) "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
was paid £5.10s.0d. (£ in ) for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray’s accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. In April 1509, the prince paid £8 for tennis balls (£ in ), in May £7.10s.0d. (£ in ), and in June £8.14s.0d (£ in ).
Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612; drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever,Letter writer John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (letter writer)
John Chamberlain was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and...
(1553–1628) recorded: "It was verily thought that the disease was no other than the ordinary ague that had reigned and raged all over England. . . . The extremity of the disease seemed to lie in his head, for remedy whereof they shaved him and applied warm cocks and pigeons newly killed, but with no success". Letter to Dudley Carleton
Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester
Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester was an English art collector, diplomat and Secretary of State.-Early life:He was the second son of Antony Carleton of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, and of Jocosa, daughter of John Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire...
, 12 November 1612. Chamberlain Letters, 67–68.
• Historian Alan Stewart notes that latter-day experts have suggested enteric fever, typhoid fever, or porphyria
Porphyria
Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme bio-synthetic pathway . They are broadly classified as acute porphyrias and cutaneous porphyrias, based on the site of the overproduction and accumulation of the porphyrins...
, but that poison was the most popular explanation at the time. Stewart, Cradle King, 248. at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d"Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 154. The relatively high price for the two pictures of the prince in arms (armour) may have been due to the use of gold or silver on the details. (£, £ and £ respectively in ). Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry’s funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter". For the occasion, he was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for a servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 155.
After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The accounts for 1616, which call Peake the prince’s painter, record that he was paid £35 (£ in ) for "three several pictures of his Highness".Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 174. On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. (£ in ) by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Death
Peake died in 1619, probably in mid-October. Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148, put his death at around 1625, for example. The catalogue for The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1972, p. 89, suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on the 16th.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170, 212. The date of his burial is unknown because the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
later destroyed the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
.Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74. Artist William Larkin’s
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
records were burned at the same time. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
had died in January; Queen Anne
Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
, Peake’s neighbour, in April or May.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".Quoted by Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74.
Paintings
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian specialized in Roman baroque and English painting...
, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 42–3.
Procession Picture
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
, the eighteenth-century antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, called the painting "not well nor ill done".Vertue's Notebooks, quoted by Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 20.
Strong reveals that the procession was connected to the marriage of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester was an English aristocrat, inheriting the title Earl of Worcester from his father Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, in 1628. He was a prominent and financially important royalist....
, and Lady Anne Russell, one of the queen’s six maids of honour, on 16 June 1600.Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 23–30. He identifies many of the individuals portrayed in the procession and shows that instead of a litter
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
, as was previously assumed, Queen Elizabeth is sitting on a wheeled cart or chariot. Strong also suggests that the landscape and castles in the background are not intended to be realistic. In accordance with Elizabethan stylistic conventions, they are emblematic, here representing the Welsh properties of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, KG, Earl Marshal was an English aristocrat. He was an important advisor to King James I, serving as Lord Privy Seal....
, to which his son Lord Herbert was the heir.Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 41. The castles alluded to are Chepstow
Chepstow Castle
Chepstow Castle , located in Chepstow, Monmouthshire in Wales, on top of cliffs overlooking the River Wye, is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain...
and Raglan
Raglan Castle
Raglan Castle is a late medieval castle located just north of the village of Raglan in the county of Monmouthshire in south east Wales. The modern castle dates from between the 15th and early 17th-centuries, when the successive ruling families of the Herberts and the Somersets created a luxurious,...
on the Welsh borders. The earl may have commissioned the picture to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Horse in 1601.For a detailed analysis, see Strong, “The Queen: Eliza Triumphans”, in The Cult of Elizabeth, 17–55.
Peake clearly did not paint the queen, or indeed the courtiers, from life but from the "types" or standard portraits used by the workshops of the day. Portraits of the queen were subject to restrictions, and from about 1594 there seems to have been an official policy that she always be depicted as youthful. In 1594, the Privy council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen be found and destroyed, since they caused Elizabeth "great offence".Strong, Gloriana, 147.
• Haigh, Elizabeth I, 153–54. The famous Ditchley portrait (c. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, was used as a type, sometimes called the "Mask of Youth" face-pattern, for the remainder of the reign. It is clear that Gheeraerts' portrait provided the pattern for the queen’s image in the procession picture.Strong, Gloriana, 148. Other figures also show signs of being traced from patterns, leading to infelicities of perspective and proportion.Strong, Gloriana, 155.
Full-length portraits
At the beginning of the 1590s, the full-length portrait came into vogue and artistic patrons among the nobles began to add galleries of such paintings to their homes as a form of cultural ostentation. Peake was one of those who met the demand. He was also among the earliest English painters to explore the full-length individual or group portrait with active figures placed in a natural landscape, a style of painting that became fashionable in England. As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.In 1603, he painted a double portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, of the prince and his boyhood friend John Harington, son of Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
(see above). The double portrait is set outdoors, a style introduced by Gheeraerts in the 1590s, and Peake's combination of figures with animals and landscape also foreshadows the genre of the sporting picture. The country location and recreational subject lend the painting an air of informality. The action is natural to the setting, a fenced deer-park with a castle and town in the distance. Harington holds a wounded stag by the antlers as Henry draws his sword to deliver the coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
. The prince wears at his belt a jewel of St George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
slaying the dragon, an allusion to his role as defender of the realm. His sword is an attribute of kingship, and the young noble kneels in his service.Kitson, British Painting, 1600–1800, 13.
• Strong English Icon, 234. The stag is a fallow deer
Fallow Deer
The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...
, a non-native species kept at that time in royal parks for hunting. A variant of this painting in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
, painted c. 1605, features Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, in the place of John Harington and displays the Devereux arms.Strong, English Icon, 246.The coats-of-arms of the principals shown hanging from branches may reflect knowledge of the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
, who frequently used this motif, and painted portraits of Saxon
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
and Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
princes hunting.
In the same year, Peake also painted his first portrait of James I's only surviving daughter, Elizabeth
Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
. This work, like the double portrait, for which it might be a companion piece, appears to have been painted for the Harington family, who acted as Elizabeth's guardians from 1603 to 1608.Hearn, Dynasties, 185. It was the custom for royal children to be raised in the homes of noble families. Elizabeth lived with the Harington family at Coombe Abbey
Coombe Abbey
Coombe Abbey is a hotel which has been developed from an historic grade I listed building and former country house. It is located roughly midway between Coventry and Brinklow in the countryside of Warwickshire, England...
, near Coventry. Lord Harington died at Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...
in 1613 on his way back from escorting her to Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
with her new husband Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
. Lady Harington attended Elizabeth at Heidelberg from 1616 almost until her own death in 1618. In the background of Elizabeth's portrait is a hunting scene echoing that of the double portrait, and two ladies sit on an artificial mound of a type fashionable in garden design at the time.Hearn, Dynasties, 185.
Peake again painted Henry outdoors in about 1610. In this portrait, now at the Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...
, the prince looks hardly older than in the 1603 double portrait; but his left foot rests on a shield bearing the three-feathers device of the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, a title he did not hold until 1610. Henry is portrayed as a young man of action, about to draw a jewel-encrusted sword from its scabbard. The portrait was almost certainly sent to Savoy
Duchy of Savoy
From 1416 to 1847, the House of Savoy ruled the eponymous Duchy of Savoy . The Duchy was a state in the northern part of the Italian Peninsula, with some territories that are now in France. It was a continuation of the County of Savoy...
in connection with a marriage proposed in January 1611 between Henry and the Infanta Maria, daughter of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
.Hearn, Dynasties, 187–88. Maria never married; she entered a Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
convent in 1629.
James I's daughter Elizabeth was also a valuable marriage pawn. She too was offered to Savoy, as a bride for the Prince of Piedmont
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus I was the Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637. He was also titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He was also known as the Lion of Susa-Biography:...
, the heir of Charles Emanuel. The exchange of portraits as part of royal marriage proposals was the practice of the day and provided regular work for the royal painters and their workshops. Prince Henry commissioned portraits from Peake to send them to the various foreign courts with which marriage negotiations were underway. The prince’s accounts show, for example, that the two portraits Peake painted of him in arms in 1611–12 were "sent beyond the seas".Hearn, Dynasties, 188.
• Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 154.
Father Time
Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, somewhat worse for wear, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device...
by the forelock. Art historian John Sheeran suggests this is a classical allusion that signifies opportunity. The old man carries Henry's lance and plumed helmet; and scholar Chris Caple points out that his pose is similar to that of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's figure of death in Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving, one of the three "master prints" of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The print portrays an armored Christian Knight riding through a narrow gorge flanked by a pig-snouted devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death holds an...
(1513).Caple, Objects, 88–91.
• Knight, Death and the Devil, by Albrecht Dürer, 1513 He also observes that the old man was painted later than other components of the painting, since the bricks of the wall show through his wings. When the painting was restored in 1985, the wall and the figure of time were revealed to modern eyes for the first time, having been painted over at some point in the seventeenth century by other hands than Peake's. The painting has also been cut down, the only original canvas edge being that on the left.Caple, Objects, 88–91.
• Unrestored version of Henry, Prince of Wales, on Horseback
Lady Elizabeth Pope
Peake's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Pope may have been commissioned by her husband, Sir William Pope, to commemorate their marriage in 1615. Lady Elizabeth is portrayed with her hair loose, a symbol of bridal virginity.Brides of the time are often described as appearing "in their hair". For example, John ChamberlainJohn Chamberlain (letter writer)
John Chamberlain was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and...
wrote to Alice Carleton that Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset
Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset
Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset was an English noblewoman who was the central figure in a famous scandal and murder during the reign of King James I...
, was "married in her hair" to her second husband Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, , was a politician, and favourite of King James I of England.-Background:Robert Kerr was born in Wrington, Somerset, England the younger son of Sir Thomas Kerr of Ferniehurst, Scotland by his second wife, Janet, sister of Walter Scott of Buccleuch...
, having recently divorced her first husband, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, on the grounds of his impotence. Letter to Alice Carleton, 13 December 1613. Chamberlain Letters, 116.
• See also Stewart, Cradle King, 113. She wears a draped mantle—embroidered with seed pearls in a pattern of ostrich plumes—and a matching turban
Turban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
. The mantle knotted on one shoulder was worn in Jacobean court masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s, as the costume designs of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
indicate. The painting’s near-nudity, however, makes the depiction of an actual masque costume unlikely.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89. Loose hair and the classical draped mantle also figure in contemporary personifications of abstract concepts in masques and paintings. Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
art historian Ellen Chirelstein argues that Peake is portraying Lady Elizabeth as a personification of America, since her father, Sir Thomas Watson, was a major shareholder in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
.Chirelstein, "Lady Elizabeth Pope: The Heraldic Body", in Renaissance Bodies, 36–59.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89.
Assessment
Francis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
, in his Palladis Tamia, included Peake on a list of the best English artists. In 1612, Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
wrote in The Gentleman's Exercise that his "good friend Mr Peake", along with Marcus Gheeraerts, was outstanding "for oil colours".He also judged that Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver were "inferior to none in Christendom for the countenance in small" (miniature portraits). Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 168. Ellis Waterhouse suggested that the genre of elaborate costume pieces was as much a decorative as a plastic art. He notes that these works, the "enamelled brilliance" of which has become apparent through cleaning, are unique in European art and deserve respect. They were produced chiefly by the workshops of Peake, Gheeraerts the Younger, and De Critz. Sheeran detects the influence of Hilliard’s brightly patterned and coloured miniatures in Peake’s work and places Peake firmly in the "iconic tradition of late Elizabethan painting".
Sheeran believes that Peake's creativity waned into conservatism, his talent "dampened by mass production". He describes Peake's Cambridge portrait, Prince Charles, as Duke of York as poorly drawn, with a lifeless pose, in a stereotyped composition that "confirms the artist's reliance on a much repeated formula in his later years". Art historian and curator Karen Hearn, on the other hand, praises the work as "magnificent" and draws attention to the naturalistically rendered note pinned to the curtain. Peake painted the portrait to mark Charles’s visit to Cambridge on 3 and 4 March 1613, during which he was awarded an M.A.—four months after the death of his brother.Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74. Depicting Prince Charles wearing the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
and Lesser George, Peake here reverts to a more formal, traditional style of portraiture.Hearn calls it "a return to the frozen grandeur of mainstream continental court portraiture". Hearn, Dynasties, 188. The note pinned to a curtain of cloth of gold
Cloth of gold
Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...
, painted in trompe-l'œil fashion, commemorates Charles’s visit in Latin.The Latin inscription translates: "Charles, we the Muses, since you deigned to agree to both, have both welcomed you as our guest and painted you in humble duty. Visiting the University in the tenth year of his father's reign over England, on 4 March, he was enrolled in the ranks of the Masters and admitted in this Senate House by Valentine Carey Vice-Chancellor". Hearn, Dynasties, 188. X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s of the portrait reveal that Peake painted it over another portrait. Pentimenti
Pentimento
A pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting...
, or signs of alteration, can be detected: for example, Charles’s right hand originally rested on his waist.
Gallery
File:Anne Knollys) by Robert Peake.jpg|Portrait of Anne Knollys
Anne Knollys
Anne West, Lady De La Warr was a lady at the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England.-Biography:...
, 1582. Attributed to Robert Peake by the Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
File:Unknown Gentleman Robert Peake v.2.jpg|Unknown Gentleman, c. 1585–90. Inscribed with the Lumley cartellino, centre leftFor attribution history, see discussion in A Noble Visage: a Catalogue of Early Portraiture 1545–1660, Weiss Gallery, 2001.
File:Frances Walsingham.jpg| Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex
Frances Walsingham
Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 14. Her second husband was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's...
, and her son Robert, later 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, 1594Recorded in Strong, English Icon, 1969, as "Unknown Woman and Child". Auctioned in 1990 as "Portrait of Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and her son, 1594" (retrieved 8 February 2009).
File:Eliz bohemia 2.jpg|The first known portrait of Princess Elizabeth, 1603—possibly a companion piece to Peake's double portrait of the same yearHearn, Dynasties, 185. The portrait was probably commissioned by Elizabeth's guardian, Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
, as a pendent to Peake's double portrait of her brother, Prince Henry, with Lord Harington's son John.
File:Charles I as Duke of York and Albany Robert Peake.jpg| After Prince Henry's death in 1612, Peake moved on to the household of his brother, the future Charles I of England, portrayed here in the robes of the Order of the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
, c. 1611–12.
File:Lady Anne Pope Robert Peake c 1615 Tate.jpg|Lady Anne Pope, sister-in-law of Elizabeth Pope, 1615. Her dress is patterned with carnations, roses and strawberries; the cherries on the tree symbolise virtue.
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
reign and for most of the reign of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
; and in 1607, serjeant-painter
Serjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
.Strong, Roy C. "Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions, 1: Robert Peake the Elder", The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine is a monthly academic journal that covers the fine and decorative arts. It is the longest running art journal in the English language and it is a charitable organisation since 1986. It was established in 1903 by a group of art historians and connoisseurs which included Roger...
, Vol. 105, No. 719 (February 1963), 53–57 (retrieved 12 January 2008). Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller
Popular print
Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the 15th to 18th centuries, often with text as well as images. They were the first mass-media...
William Peake
William Peake
William Peake , painter and printseller, was the son of the painter Robert Peake the Elder, and father of the printseller and royalist army officer, Sir Robert Peake....
(c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake
Sir Robert Peake was a print-seller and royalist. A grandson of Robert Peake the elder, he was knighted in 1645 for his service as a member of the garrison of Basing House. He was exiled for refusing the oath of allegiance to the Protector Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration he was appointed...
(c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.In the accounts for Prince Henry's funeral, Robert Peake is called "Mr Peake the elder painter" and William Peake "Mr Peake the younger painter". Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 155.
• Peake’s grandson Sir Robert Peake (sometimes wrongly called his son) was knighted by King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
during the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. The Parliamentarians captured him after their siege of Basing House
Siege of Basing House
The siege of Basing House near Basingstoke in Hampshire, was a Parliamentarian victory late in the First English Civil War. Whereas the title of the event may suggest a single siege, there were in fact three major engagements...
, which was under his command. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 221.
Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, and the miniature painter
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time."There is nothing like them in contemporary European painting". Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 41. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.
Early life and work
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
family in about 1551. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham, who lived at the sign of “The Key” in Goldsmith’s
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Row, Westcheap
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
"The Key" would have been a sign, identifying Woodham's shop and house, as was usual before street-numbering.. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, to the Goldsmiths’ Company
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company, which has origins in the twelfth century, received a Royal Charter in 1327. It ranks fifth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies. Its motto is Justitia Virtutum Regina, Latin for Justice...
in London.It was once assumed that Peake was much younger than Hilliard: in 1969, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
called him Hilliard’s “most important follower among the younger generation” (The English Icon, 19). Edmond, "New Light on Jacobean Painters", 74. He became a freeman
Livery Company
The Livery Companies are 108 trade associations in the City of London, almost all of which are known as the "Worshipful Company of" the relevant trade, craft or profession. The medieval Companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling,...
of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. Peake’s training would have been similar to that of John de Critz
John de Critz
John de Critz or John Decritz was one of a number of painters of Flemish and Dutch origin active at the English royal court during the reigns of James I of England and Charles I of England...
and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, who may have been pupils of the Flemish
Flemish painting
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighbouring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence...
artist Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere
Lucas de Heere was a Flemish portrait painter, poet and writer.De Heere was a Protestant and became a refugee from the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, who tried to suppress Protestantism...
.
Peake is first heard of professionally in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain Weiss (2001 and 2006) judges Peake's earliest attributed works to be the portraits of Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton
Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton
Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton was a baron in the Peerage of England, remembered mainly for his memoir of his father, and for participating in the last defence of Calais.-Life:...
, and Humphrey Wingfield, dated 1587, following Strong's English Icon of 1969. The portrait of Anne Knollys attributed to Peake in the Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
, however, bears Peake's characteristic inscription and is dated 1582.. According to art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele".Strong, English Icon, 225. Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland
Duke of Rutland
Earl of Rutland and Duke of Rutland are titles in the peerage of England, derived from Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. The Earl of Rutland was elevated to the status of Duke in 1703 and the titles were merged....
accounts at Belvoir
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle is a stately home in the English county of Leicestershire, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir . It is a Grade I listed building....
in the 1590s. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the “Military Commander”, shows Peake’s early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.
Painter to Prince Henry
In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer,Fryer had been serjeant-painter since 1595. Peake was appointed serjeant-painterSerjeant Painter
The Serjeant Painter was an honorable and lucrative position with the British monarchy. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £ 1,000 in a good year by the 18th century...
to King James I; sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. The serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake’s work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter.
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio’s
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments are listed by Sir David Murray
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont
David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont was a Scottish courtier, comptroller of Scotland and captain of the king's guard, known as Sir David Murray of Gospertie, then Lord Scone, and afterwards Viscount Stormont...
as disbursements to Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
from the Privy Purse
Privy Purse
The Privy Purse is the British Sovereign's remaining private income, mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster. This amounted to £13.3 million in net income for the year to 31 March 2009. The Duchy is a landed estate of approximately 46,000 acres held in trust for the Sovereign since 1399. It also has...
, to pay "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 (£ in ) for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 (£ in ) "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver was a French-born English portrait miniature painter.-Life and work:Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France...
was paid £5.10s.0d. (£ in ) for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray’s accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. In April 1509, the prince paid £8 for tennis balls (£ in ), in May £7.10s.0d. (£ in ), and in June £8.14s.0d (£ in ).
Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612; drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever,Letter writer John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (letter writer)
John Chamberlain was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and...
(1553–1628) recorded: "It was verily thought that the disease was no other than the ordinary ague that had reigned and raged all over England. . . . The extremity of the disease seemed to lie in his head, for remedy whereof they shaved him and applied warm cocks and pigeons newly killed, but with no success". Letter to Dudley Carleton
Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester
Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester was an English art collector, diplomat and Secretary of State.-Early life:He was the second son of Antony Carleton of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, and of Jocosa, daughter of John Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire...
, 12 November 1612. Chamberlain Letters, 67–68.
• Historian Alan Stewart notes that latter-day experts have suggested enteric fever, typhoid fever, or porphyria
Porphyria
Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme bio-synthetic pathway . They are broadly classified as acute porphyrias and cutaneous porphyrias, based on the site of the overproduction and accumulation of the porphyrins...
, but that poison was the most popular explanation at the time. Stewart, Cradle King, 248. at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d"Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 154. The relatively high price for the two pictures of the prince in arms (armour) may have been due to the use of gold or silver on the details. (£, £ and £ respectively in ). Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry’s funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter". For the occasion, he was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for a servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 155.
After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The accounts for 1616, which call Peake the prince’s painter, record that he was paid £35 (£ in ) for "three several pictures of his Highness".Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 174. On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. (£ in ) by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Death
Peake died in 1619, probably in mid-October. Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148, put his death at around 1625, for example. The catalogue for The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1972, p. 89, suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on the 16th.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170, 212. The date of his burial is unknown because the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
later destroyed the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
.Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74. Artist William Larkin’s
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
records were burned at the same time. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
had died in January; Queen Anne
Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin
William Larkin
William Larkin was an English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I of England which capture in brilliant detail the opulent layering of textiles, embroidery, lace, and jewellery characteristic of fashion in the Jacobean...
, Peake’s neighbour, in April or May.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London...
considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".Quoted by Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74.
Paintings
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian specialized in Roman baroque and English painting...
, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 42–3.
Procession Picture
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
, the eighteenth-century antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, called the painting "not well nor ill done".Vertue's Notebooks, quoted by Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 20.
Strong reveals that the procession was connected to the marriage of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester
Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester was an English aristocrat, inheriting the title Earl of Worcester from his father Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, in 1628. He was a prominent and financially important royalist....
, and Lady Anne Russell, one of the queen’s six maids of honour, on 16 June 1600.Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 23–30. He identifies many of the individuals portrayed in the procession and shows that instead of a litter
Litter (vehicle)
The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...
, as was previously assumed, Queen Elizabeth is sitting on a wheeled cart or chariot. Strong also suggests that the landscape and castles in the background are not intended to be realistic. In accordance with Elizabethan stylistic conventions, they are emblematic, here representing the Welsh properties of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester
Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, KG, Earl Marshal was an English aristocrat. He was an important advisor to King James I, serving as Lord Privy Seal....
, to which his son Lord Herbert was the heir.Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 41. The castles alluded to are Chepstow
Chepstow Castle
Chepstow Castle , located in Chepstow, Monmouthshire in Wales, on top of cliffs overlooking the River Wye, is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain...
and Raglan
Raglan Castle
Raglan Castle is a late medieval castle located just north of the village of Raglan in the county of Monmouthshire in south east Wales. The modern castle dates from between the 15th and early 17th-centuries, when the successive ruling families of the Herberts and the Somersets created a luxurious,...
on the Welsh borders. The earl may have commissioned the picture to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Horse in 1601.For a detailed analysis, see Strong, “The Queen: Eliza Triumphans”, in The Cult of Elizabeth, 17–55.
Peake clearly did not paint the queen, or indeed the courtiers, from life but from the "types" or standard portraits used by the workshops of the day. Portraits of the queen were subject to restrictions, and from about 1594 there seems to have been an official policy that she always be depicted as youthful. In 1594, the Privy council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen be found and destroyed, since they caused Elizabeth "great offence".Strong, Gloriana, 147.
• Haigh, Elizabeth I, 153–54. The famous Ditchley portrait (c. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, was used as a type, sometimes called the "Mask of Youth" face-pattern, for the remainder of the reign. It is clear that Gheeraerts' portrait provided the pattern for the queen’s image in the procession picture.Strong, Gloriana, 148. Other figures also show signs of being traced from patterns, leading to infelicities of perspective and proportion.Strong, Gloriana, 155.
Full-length portraits
At the beginning of the 1590s, the full-length portrait came into vogue and artistic patrons among the nobles began to add galleries of such paintings to their homes as a form of cultural ostentation. Peake was one of those who met the demand. He was also among the earliest English painters to explore the full-length individual or group portrait with active figures placed in a natural landscape, a style of painting that became fashionable in England. As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.In 1603, he painted a double portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, of the prince and his boyhood friend John Harington, son of Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
(see above). The double portrait is set outdoors, a style introduced by Gheeraerts in the 1590s, and Peake's combination of figures with animals and landscape also foreshadows the genre of the sporting picture. The country location and recreational subject lend the painting an air of informality. The action is natural to the setting, a fenced deer-park with a castle and town in the distance. Harington holds a wounded stag by the antlers as Henry draws his sword to deliver the coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
. The prince wears at his belt a jewel of St George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
slaying the dragon, an allusion to his role as defender of the realm. His sword is an attribute of kingship, and the young noble kneels in his service.Kitson, British Painting, 1600–1800, 13.
• Strong English Icon, 234. The stag is a fallow deer
Fallow Deer
The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...
, a non-native species kept at that time in royal parks for hunting. A variant of this painting in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
, painted c. 1605, features Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, in the place of John Harington and displays the Devereux arms.Strong, English Icon, 246.The coats-of-arms of the principals shown hanging from branches may reflect knowledge of the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
, who frequently used this motif, and painted portraits of Saxon
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
and Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
princes hunting.
In the same year, Peake also painted his first portrait of James I's only surviving daughter, Elizabeth
Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
. This work, like the double portrait, for which it might be a companion piece, appears to have been painted for the Harington family, who acted as Elizabeth's guardians from 1603 to 1608.Hearn, Dynasties, 185. It was the custom for royal children to be raised in the homes of noble families. Elizabeth lived with the Harington family at Coombe Abbey
Coombe Abbey
Coombe Abbey is a hotel which has been developed from an historic grade I listed building and former country house. It is located roughly midway between Coventry and Brinklow in the countryside of Warwickshire, England...
, near Coventry. Lord Harington died at Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...
in 1613 on his way back from escorting her to Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
with her new husband Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
. Lady Harington attended Elizabeth at Heidelberg from 1616 almost until her own death in 1618. In the background of Elizabeth's portrait is a hunting scene echoing that of the double portrait, and two ladies sit on an artificial mound of a type fashionable in garden design at the time.Hearn, Dynasties, 185.
Peake again painted Henry outdoors in about 1610. In this portrait, now at the Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin
Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...
, the prince looks hardly older than in the 1603 double portrait; but his left foot rests on a shield bearing the three-feathers device of the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, a title he did not hold until 1610. Henry is portrayed as a young man of action, about to draw a jewel-encrusted sword from its scabbard. The portrait was almost certainly sent to Savoy
Duchy of Savoy
From 1416 to 1847, the House of Savoy ruled the eponymous Duchy of Savoy . The Duchy was a state in the northern part of the Italian Peninsula, with some territories that are now in France. It was a continuation of the County of Savoy...
in connection with a marriage proposed in January 1611 between Henry and the Infanta Maria, daughter of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
.Hearn, Dynasties, 187–88. Maria never married; she entered a Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
convent in 1629.
James I's daughter Elizabeth was also a valuable marriage pawn. She too was offered to Savoy, as a bride for the Prince of Piedmont
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus I was the Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637. He was also titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He was also known as the Lion of Susa-Biography:...
, the heir of Charles Emanuel. The exchange of portraits as part of royal marriage proposals was the practice of the day and provided regular work for the royal painters and their workshops. Prince Henry commissioned portraits from Peake to send them to the various foreign courts with which marriage negotiations were underway. The prince’s accounts show, for example, that the two portraits Peake painted of him in arms in 1611–12 were "sent beyond the seas".Hearn, Dynasties, 188.
• Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 154.
Father Time
Father Time is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, somewhat worse for wear, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device...
by the forelock. Art historian John Sheeran suggests this is a classical allusion that signifies opportunity. The old man carries Henry's lance and plumed helmet; and scholar Chris Caple points out that his pose is similar to that of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's figure of death in Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving, one of the three "master prints" of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The print portrays an armored Christian Knight riding through a narrow gorge flanked by a pig-snouted devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death holds an...
(1513).Caple, Objects, 88–91.
• Knight, Death and the Devil, by Albrecht Dürer, 1513 He also observes that the old man was painted later than other components of the painting, since the bricks of the wall show through his wings. When the painting was restored in 1985, the wall and the figure of time were revealed to modern eyes for the first time, having been painted over at some point in the seventeenth century by other hands than Peake's. The painting has also been cut down, the only original canvas edge being that on the left.Caple, Objects, 88–91.
• Unrestored version of Henry, Prince of Wales, on Horseback
Lady Elizabeth Pope
Peake's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Pope may have been commissioned by her husband, Sir William Pope, to commemorate their marriage in 1615. Lady Elizabeth is portrayed with her hair loose, a symbol of bridal virginity.Brides of the time are often described as appearing "in their hair". For example, John ChamberlainJohn Chamberlain (letter writer)
John Chamberlain was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and...
wrote to Alice Carleton that Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset
Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset
Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset was an English noblewoman who was the central figure in a famous scandal and murder during the reign of King James I...
, was "married in her hair" to her second husband Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, , was a politician, and favourite of King James I of England.-Background:Robert Kerr was born in Wrington, Somerset, England the younger son of Sir Thomas Kerr of Ferniehurst, Scotland by his second wife, Janet, sister of Walter Scott of Buccleuch...
, having recently divorced her first husband, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, on the grounds of his impotence. Letter to Alice Carleton, 13 December 1613. Chamberlain Letters, 116.
• See also Stewart, Cradle King, 113. She wears a draped mantle—embroidered with seed pearls in a pattern of ostrich plumes—and a matching turban
Turban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
. The mantle knotted on one shoulder was worn in Jacobean court masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
s, as the costume designs of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
indicate. The painting’s near-nudity, however, makes the depiction of an actual masque costume unlikely.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89. Loose hair and the classical draped mantle also figure in contemporary personifications of abstract concepts in masques and paintings. Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
art historian Ellen Chirelstein argues that Peake is portraying Lady Elizabeth as a personification of America, since her father, Sir Thomas Watson, was a major shareholder in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
.Chirelstein, "Lady Elizabeth Pope: The Heraldic Body", in Renaissance Bodies, 36–59.• Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, 89.
Assessment
Francis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
, in his Palladis Tamia, included Peake on a list of the best English artists. In 1612, Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham
Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
wrote in The Gentleman's Exercise that his "good friend Mr Peake", along with Marcus Gheeraerts, was outstanding "for oil colours".He also judged that Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver were "inferior to none in Christendom for the countenance in small" (miniature portraits). Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 168. Ellis Waterhouse suggested that the genre of elaborate costume pieces was as much a decorative as a plastic art. He notes that these works, the "enamelled brilliance" of which has become apparent through cleaning, are unique in European art and deserve respect. They were produced chiefly by the workshops of Peake, Gheeraerts the Younger, and De Critz. Sheeran detects the influence of Hilliard’s brightly patterned and coloured miniatures in Peake’s work and places Peake firmly in the "iconic tradition of late Elizabethan painting".
Sheeran believes that Peake's creativity waned into conservatism, his talent "dampened by mass production". He describes Peake's Cambridge portrait, Prince Charles, as Duke of York as poorly drawn, with a lifeless pose, in a stereotyped composition that "confirms the artist's reliance on a much repeated formula in his later years". Art historian and curator Karen Hearn, on the other hand, praises the work as "magnificent" and draws attention to the naturalistically rendered note pinned to the curtain. Peake painted the portrait to mark Charles’s visit to Cambridge on 3 and 4 March 1613, during which he was awarded an M.A.—four months after the death of his brother.Edmond, “New Light on Jacobean Painters”, 74. Depicting Prince Charles wearing the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
and Lesser George, Peake here reverts to a more formal, traditional style of portraiture.Hearn calls it "a return to the frozen grandeur of mainstream continental court portraiture". Hearn, Dynasties, 188. The note pinned to a curtain of cloth of gold
Cloth of gold
Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...
, painted in trompe-l'œil fashion, commemorates Charles’s visit in Latin.The Latin inscription translates: "Charles, we the Muses, since you deigned to agree to both, have both welcomed you as our guest and painted you in humble duty. Visiting the University in the tenth year of his father's reign over England, on 4 March, he was enrolled in the ranks of the Masters and admitted in this Senate House by Valentine Carey Vice-Chancellor". Hearn, Dynasties, 188. X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s of the portrait reveal that Peake painted it over another portrait. Pentimenti
Pentimento
A pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting...
, or signs of alteration, can be detected: for example, Charles’s right hand originally rested on his waist.
Gallery
File:Anne Knollys) by Robert Peake.jpg|Portrait of Anne Knollys
Anne Knollys
Anne West, Lady De La Warr was a lady at the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England.-Biography:...
, 1582. Attributed to Robert Peake by the Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
File:Unknown Gentleman Robert Peake v.2.jpg|Unknown Gentleman, c. 1585–90. Inscribed with the Lumley cartellino, centre leftFor attribution history, see discussion in A Noble Visage: a Catalogue of Early Portraiture 1545–1660, Weiss Gallery, 2001.
File:Frances Walsingham.jpg| Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex
Frances Walsingham
Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 14. Her second husband was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's...
, and her son Robert, later 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads...
, 1594Recorded in Strong, English Icon, 1969, as "Unknown Woman and Child". Auctioned in 1990 as "Portrait of Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and her son, 1594" (retrieved 8 February 2009).
File:Eliz bohemia 2.jpg|The first known portrait of Princess Elizabeth, 1603—possibly a companion piece to Peake's double portrait of the same yearHearn, Dynasties, 185. The portrait was probably commissioned by Elizabeth's guardian, Lord Harington of Exton
John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton
John Harington was an English courtier and politician.-Life:He was the son of James Harington and was knighted in 1584...
, as a pendent to Peake's double portrait of her brother, Prince Henry, with Lord Harington's son John.
File:Charles I as Duke of York and Albany Robert Peake.jpg| After Prince Henry's death in 1612, Peake moved on to the household of his brother, the future Charles I of England, portrayed here in the robes of the Order of the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
, c. 1611–12.
File:Lady Anne Pope Robert Peake c 1615 Tate.jpg|Lady Anne Pope, sister-in-law of Elizabeth Pope, 1615. Her dress is patterned with carnations, roses and strawberries; the cherries on the tree symbolise virtue.Gallery notes, Tate Britain (retrieved 29 January 2008).
File:Elizabeth_Poulett_by_Robert_Peake.jpg| Elizabeth Poulett, 1616. The sitter wears a jewelled and feathered caul
Caul (headgear)
A caul is a historical headress worn by women that covers tied-up hair. A fancy caul could be made of satin, velvet, fine silk or brocade, although a simple caul would commonly be made of white linen or cotton. The caul could be covered by a crespine or a mesh net to secure it from falling off.It...
, a type of indoor headdress. The spot on her face is a fashionable patch of velvet or silk, glued to her skin.Gallery notes, Berger Collection (retrieved 29 January 2008).