Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and the Circulation of Gifts Between the English and Spanish Courts in 1604/5

The present article has been undertaken to show how the English and Spanish courts exploited portraiture and jewellery to advance both their political and dynastic aims in the context of the peace negotiations and celebrations of the new alliance that was signed in London (1604) and in Valladolid (1605). Thus the English and the Spanish monarchs indulged in a diplomatic interchange of miniatures and full-length royal portraits. In London, Queen Anna harnessed Isaac Oliver's ability as court painter; in Valladolid, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, court painter to King Philip III, was commissioned to paint the miniatures and the portraits of the Spanish monarchs as well as of the infanta Ana de Austria. The article, moreover, takes up the unresolved debate about the contested authorship of The Somerset House Conference, a memorial painting acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1882. The political settlement initiated by the archdukes in Brussels and concluded between England and Spain in 1603/4 was signed in Whitehall Chapel, London, on 19/29 August 1604, by the constable of Castile and King James I and was ratified in the Salon Grande of the Royal Palace in Valladolid, on 30 May/9 June 1605, by the earl of Nottingham and King Philip III.(1) The peace favored the resumption of the old cultural intercourse that had been forged by the dynastic policy of the early Tudor monarchs and had been flourishing until severed by Queen Elizabeth and her brother-in-law, Philip II.(2) Both courts in 1604 and 1605 put on brilliant shows of cultural self-representation with a view to strengthening the process of reconciliation. The prestige of painting played as important a role as the splendor of the court celebrations and the codified ritual of gift exchange. In 1601 the Spanish court had moved to Valladolid, and for the following five years the presence of the court and government transformed the town into the cultural center of Spain. Town and court, in honor of the English embassy, mounted festivities on an unprecedented scale during a period of three weeks in May/June 1605. Among the 560 English and Scottish retainers chosen to accompany the earl of Nottingham on his mission to Valladolid, a good many were qualified to respond to the cultural encounter and even to take up the challenge issued by the Spanish court mythographers to outdo the celebrations staged in London in August 1604. Besides the earl of Nottingham, patron of the Admiral's Men until 1603, I am thinking of Sir George Buc, deputy master of the Revels Office; of Dudley Carleton, on the threshold of a brilliant career as a diplomat and purchasing art agent; of the essayist Sir William Cornwallis, the son of the English ambassador to the Spanish court, Sir Charles Cornwallis; of the physician Robert Marbeck, the author of a discourse on the descent on Cadiz in 1596 that contains an anecdote about Richard Tarlton, "condemned to die in one of his prettie mearie commedies";(3) of the young art agent Thomas Coke; of Sir Robert Drury, the future patron of John Donne; and of Robert Treswell, who accompanied Nottingham in his capacity as Somerset herald and as authorized chronicler.(4) Thomas Coke, about to embark upon a career as art adviser to the earl of Shrewsbury and, after 1613, to the earl of Arundel, was well advised to join Nottingham's embassy, which promised to open up cultural sites hitherto inaccessible to the English. It was indeed part of Philip III's cultural strategy to impress the English courtiers with the arts as practiced and cultivated in Spain. The royal and aristocratic collections, rich in European paintings, in Italian and Flemish masterpieces, were all of a sudden within reach of Nottingham and his entourage. The Palacio Real in Valladolid and the suburban Palacio de la Ribera of the duke of Lerma treasured hundreds of paintings. Coke, I think, can claim to be the first art expert working for the English nobility who in 1605 must have seen some of those masterpieces by Titian, Veronese, and Correggio that, in 1623, whetted Prince Charles's desire in Madrid and Valladolid to add them to his own collection. …