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Lot Essay
This is a late work by the long-lived artist Girolamo da Santa Croce, who was born near Bergamo in the early 1480s and died after 9 July 1556. The picture was catalogued in 1852 as by ‘G. Bellini’, evidently referring not to Giovanni Bellini but to his brother Gentile, who was widely known to have visited Constantinople to portray the sultan. The annotation on the photograph in the Berenson archive at I Tatti shows that he first classed it ‘with’ works by Brusasorci. It is not clear when the attribution to Girolamo da Santa Croce was first advanced. He, as a pupil of Gentile Bellini, must always have been interested in Turkish subjects. Bellini, in his will of 1507, left him a half share of the drawings he had made in Constantinople which had previously been lent to Pinturicchio. As Antonio Mazzotta observed, the picture is comparable in style with other late works by the artist, for example The Last Supper from the Bragadin Chapel in San Francesco della Vigna (private communication). Girolamo, who had adhered for so long to the Bellinesque tradition, must have found it necessary to respond in old age to the taste of Tintoretto and Veronese, among others.
In January 1454, some eight months after his conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (reigned 1444–46 and 1451–81) invested the philosopher and theologian Georgios Kourtesios Scholarios (c. 1400–c. 1473) as Patriarch of Constantinople, bestowing upon him the dikanikion and mantle. Taking the name Gennadius II, Scholarios had been an opponent of union with the Latin Church, though earlier in his career he had argued in its favour at the Council of Florence. He resigned after two years, although he resumed office briefly in 1463 and again in 1464–5. Mehmed selected him because his hostility to Rome served Ottoman interests in preventing any alliance between his Christian subjects and the Western princes. Gennadius in turn recognised the sultan's claim to the title Kayser-i Rûm, Emperor of the Romans, which Mehmed justified by right of conquest – a principle consistent with Byzantine imperial ideology, which held that control of Constantinople was the key legitimising factor for an emperor. Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, had died during the siege. To further consolidate his position, the sultan took into his personal service two young men of the Palaiologos family, reputed to be nephews of Constantine XI, though their precise identity remains uncertain. As the artist would have known, his master, Gentile Bellini, was sent to Constantinople in 1479 to portray the sultan. A number of Venetian families had commercial links with the city, and it is possible that the picture was commissioned by a member of one of these.
The 1852 sale catalogue states that the picture was owned by Ludovico Giovanni Manin (1725-1802), Doge of Venice from 1789 until the suppression of the republic by Bonaparte in 1797. In the seventeenth century, his family built up a substantial estate in the Friuli, subsequently building the most ambitious house in the area, the Villa Manin at Passariano, which Manin inherited. Ironically, Napoleon briefly occupied this in 1797. After his enforced abdication, Manin lived very quietly between the villa and the Palazzo Dolfin Manin. The villa was inherited by his nephew, Ludovico Leonardo (1771-1853), who was presumably one of the ‘heirs’ from whom the picture was secured by William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859).
Hamilton was educated at Harrow and St John’s, Cambridge. In 1799, he was selected as first private secretary to Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, for his forthcoming embassy to Constantinople. With the draftsman Tito Lusieri, he visited Naples and Rome to recruit artists and craftsmen to work in Greece for Elgin before reaching Constantinople. Sent in June 1801 by Elgin to Egypt after the defeat of Napoleon, Hamilton was responsible for securing for the British Museum the Rosetta Stone and other antiquities which the French had concealed in breach of terms of capitulation for which he himself had been responsible. He arrived in Greece just before Elgin himself returned to Constantinople and remained in Athens to oversee the despatch of the marbles he had been allowed to remove from the Acropolis at Athens. Subsequently, he took steps to rescue the cases of sculptures that were shipwrecked near Cerigo.
The 1852 cataloguer must have mistaken the date of the sale of the picture by the Manin heirs, as Venice was under French occupation in 1801 and it was not until after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 that it was possible for British subjects to travel in northern Italy. When he returned from Constantinople, Elgin decided to do so through Italy and France: he was there on the renewal of war in 1803 and, as a result, was detained for several years. Hamilton returned separately, possibly by way of Italy in 1803. He clearly loved Italy, and his role as a diplomat enabled him in 1815, mindful no doubt of the attempted deception over the Rosetta Stone, to suggest that the return of the works of art borne off by the French from Italy and elsewhere should be one of the terms of the Treaty of Paris arranged after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. The sculptor Antonio Canova superintended the process and became a friend of Hamilton, to whom in 1816 he gave a portrait of Vesalius attributed to Titian. Hamilton acquired pictures that had been in the Belloni and Tanzi collections in Milan and that of the Marcolini at Bologna. He was Minister to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1822-5 and a trustee of the British Museum, where he was a staunch supporter of the celebrated librarian Anthony, born Antonio, Panizzi, from 1838 until 1858. An occasional lender to the British Institution, he succeeded Lawrence as Secretary of the Society of Dilettanti in 1830. Hamilton's pictures were presumably kept first in his house, No. 23 Grosvenor Street, and subsequently at No. 12 Bolton Row, from where those sold in 1852 were consigned. The sale in 1852 included 33 lots, but it is not known whether others were retained. Given its subject, this picture may have been of specific interest to Hamilton, who had worked in both Constantinople and Egypt, publishing his account of the latter, Ægyptica, in 1809.
At the 1852 sale the dealer Anthony was probably acting for John Rushout, 2nd Lord Northwick (1770-1859), one of the outstanding collectors of the time, who kept it not at Northwick Park but with the bulk of his collection at Thirlestaine House in nearby Cheltenham. He had a remarkable assemblage of early Italian pictures, which included a ‘portrait’ of an Ottoman prince also given to Bellini (Private Collection), which he had bought from the dealer John Smith and which remained at Northwick until 1966.
In 1859 this picture was purchased by another outstanding connoisseur, Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th of Balcarres (1812-1880). Like Hamilton, he too was seriously interested both in the Levant and Italy, publishing Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land in 1838 and his Sketches of the History of Christian Art in 1847. His remarkable collection of early Italian pictures was complemented by a prodigious library, and his interest in both was maintained by his successors. His son James, 26th Earl of Crawford (1847-1913), added to the library, then partly placed at Haigh Hall near Wigan, and was a trustee of the British Museum and had a significant influence on the foundation of the National Art-Collections Fund; his son David, 27th Earl (1871-1940), published a monograph on Donatello in 1903 and later served as a trustee of the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; while his son David, 28th Earl (1900-1975), who with his friend Kenneth Clark prepared the memorial catalogue of the great exhibition of Italian art held at the Royal Academy in 1930, served in turn as chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery, the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland, and as a trustee of the British Museum, and was chairman of both the National Trust and the National Art-Collections Fund, spearheading in the latter capacity the campaign to secure Leonardo’s Burlington House cartoon for the National Gallery. He gave this picture to his son, Patrick Lindsay, who was keenly aware of the contribution his ancestors had made to artistic causes in this country.
In January 1454, some eight months after his conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (reigned 1444–46 and 1451–81) invested the philosopher and theologian Georgios Kourtesios Scholarios (c. 1400–c. 1473) as Patriarch of Constantinople, bestowing upon him the dikanikion and mantle. Taking the name Gennadius II, Scholarios had been an opponent of union with the Latin Church, though earlier in his career he had argued in its favour at the Council of Florence. He resigned after two years, although he resumed office briefly in 1463 and again in 1464–5. Mehmed selected him because his hostility to Rome served Ottoman interests in preventing any alliance between his Christian subjects and the Western princes. Gennadius in turn recognised the sultan's claim to the title Kayser-i Rûm, Emperor of the Romans, which Mehmed justified by right of conquest – a principle consistent with Byzantine imperial ideology, which held that control of Constantinople was the key legitimising factor for an emperor. Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, had died during the siege. To further consolidate his position, the sultan took into his personal service two young men of the Palaiologos family, reputed to be nephews of Constantine XI, though their precise identity remains uncertain. As the artist would have known, his master, Gentile Bellini, was sent to Constantinople in 1479 to portray the sultan. A number of Venetian families had commercial links with the city, and it is possible that the picture was commissioned by a member of one of these.
The 1852 sale catalogue states that the picture was owned by Ludovico Giovanni Manin (1725-1802), Doge of Venice from 1789 until the suppression of the republic by Bonaparte in 1797. In the seventeenth century, his family built up a substantial estate in the Friuli, subsequently building the most ambitious house in the area, the Villa Manin at Passariano, which Manin inherited. Ironically, Napoleon briefly occupied this in 1797. After his enforced abdication, Manin lived very quietly between the villa and the Palazzo Dolfin Manin. The villa was inherited by his nephew, Ludovico Leonardo (1771-1853), who was presumably one of the ‘heirs’ from whom the picture was secured by William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859).
Hamilton was educated at Harrow and St John’s, Cambridge. In 1799, he was selected as first private secretary to Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, for his forthcoming embassy to Constantinople. With the draftsman Tito Lusieri, he visited Naples and Rome to recruit artists and craftsmen to work in Greece for Elgin before reaching Constantinople. Sent in June 1801 by Elgin to Egypt after the defeat of Napoleon, Hamilton was responsible for securing for the British Museum the Rosetta Stone and other antiquities which the French had concealed in breach of terms of capitulation for which he himself had been responsible. He arrived in Greece just before Elgin himself returned to Constantinople and remained in Athens to oversee the despatch of the marbles he had been allowed to remove from the Acropolis at Athens. Subsequently, he took steps to rescue the cases of sculptures that were shipwrecked near Cerigo.
The 1852 cataloguer must have mistaken the date of the sale of the picture by the Manin heirs, as Venice was under French occupation in 1801 and it was not until after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 that it was possible for British subjects to travel in northern Italy. When he returned from Constantinople, Elgin decided to do so through Italy and France: he was there on the renewal of war in 1803 and, as a result, was detained for several years. Hamilton returned separately, possibly by way of Italy in 1803. He clearly loved Italy, and his role as a diplomat enabled him in 1815, mindful no doubt of the attempted deception over the Rosetta Stone, to suggest that the return of the works of art borne off by the French from Italy and elsewhere should be one of the terms of the Treaty of Paris arranged after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. The sculptor Antonio Canova superintended the process and became a friend of Hamilton, to whom in 1816 he gave a portrait of Vesalius attributed to Titian. Hamilton acquired pictures that had been in the Belloni and Tanzi collections in Milan and that of the Marcolini at Bologna. He was Minister to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1822-5 and a trustee of the British Museum, where he was a staunch supporter of the celebrated librarian Anthony, born Antonio, Panizzi, from 1838 until 1858. An occasional lender to the British Institution, he succeeded Lawrence as Secretary of the Society of Dilettanti in 1830. Hamilton's pictures were presumably kept first in his house, No. 23 Grosvenor Street, and subsequently at No. 12 Bolton Row, from where those sold in 1852 were consigned. The sale in 1852 included 33 lots, but it is not known whether others were retained. Given its subject, this picture may have been of specific interest to Hamilton, who had worked in both Constantinople and Egypt, publishing his account of the latter, Ægyptica, in 1809.
At the 1852 sale the dealer Anthony was probably acting for John Rushout, 2nd Lord Northwick (1770-1859), one of the outstanding collectors of the time, who kept it not at Northwick Park but with the bulk of his collection at Thirlestaine House in nearby Cheltenham. He had a remarkable assemblage of early Italian pictures, which included a ‘portrait’ of an Ottoman prince also given to Bellini (Private Collection), which he had bought from the dealer John Smith and which remained at Northwick until 1966.
In 1859 this picture was purchased by another outstanding connoisseur, Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th of Balcarres (1812-1880). Like Hamilton, he too was seriously interested both in the Levant and Italy, publishing Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land in 1838 and his Sketches of the History of Christian Art in 1847. His remarkable collection of early Italian pictures was complemented by a prodigious library, and his interest in both was maintained by his successors. His son James, 26th Earl of Crawford (1847-1913), added to the library, then partly placed at Haigh Hall near Wigan, and was a trustee of the British Museum and had a significant influence on the foundation of the National Art-Collections Fund; his son David, 27th Earl (1871-1940), published a monograph on Donatello in 1903 and later served as a trustee of the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; while his son David, 28th Earl (1900-1975), who with his friend Kenneth Clark prepared the memorial catalogue of the great exhibition of Italian art held at the Royal Academy in 1930, served in turn as chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery, the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland, and as a trustee of the British Museum, and was chairman of both the National Trust and the National Art-Collections Fund, spearheading in the latter capacity the campaign to secure Leonardo’s Burlington House cartoon for the National Gallery. He gave this picture to his son, Patrick Lindsay, who was keenly aware of the contribution his ancestors had made to artistic causes in this country.