Orleans Collection - Collection in Paris

Collection in Paris

The Orleans collection was housed in the magnificent setting of the Palais-Royal, the Paris seat of the Dukes of Orléans. Only 15 paintings in the printed catalogue of 1727 had been inherited by Philippe II from his father, Philippe de France, Duke of Orléans, Monsieur (1640–1701); the "collection" as catalogued was by no means all the art owned by the Dukes, but recorded only that part kept together in the Palais-Royal for public viewing. He also inherited small but high quality collections from Henrietta Anne Stuart, his father's first wife, in 1701 and his father's lover, the Chevalier de Lorraine in 1702.

According to Reitlinger, his most active phase of collecting began in about 1715, the year he became Regent on the death of his uncle Louis XIV, after which he no doubt acquired an extra edge in negotiations. He also began to be presented with many paintings, most notably the three Titian poesies now in Boston and shared by Edinburgh and London, which were given by Philip V of Spain to the French ambassador, the Duc de Gramont, who in turn presented them to the Regent.

Christina's collection only joined Philippe's shortly before the end of his life and most of the other works were bought in France, like the Sebastiano del Piombo Raising of Lazarus, with some from the Netherlands or Italy, like the Nicolas Poussin set of the Seven Sacraments, bought from a Dutch collection by Cardinal Dubois in 1716. Other sources included the heirs of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, and Cardinal Dubois, with an especially important group from Colbert's heir the Marquis de Seignelay, and others from the Dukes of Noailles, Gramont, Vendôme and other French collectors.

The paintings were housed in two suites of large rooms running side-by-side down the west or library wing of the palace, with the smaller Dutch and Flemish works in smaller rooms. The gallery suites of rooms still retained much of their original furniture, porcelain and wall-decorations from their use by Phillippe's father as grand reception rooms and according to a visitor in 1765 it was "impossible to imagine anything more richly furnished or decorated with more art and taste". Rearrangements had been made to accommodate the paintings; connoisseurs particularly praised the Galerie à la Lanterne, with its even, sunless top light diffused from the cupola overhead. For most of the 18th century it was easy to visit the collection, and very many people did so, helped by the printed catalogue of 1727, republished in 1737, Description des Tableaux du Palais Royal. This contained 495 paintings, though some continued to be added, and a few disposed of.

Paintings were hung, not by 'schools' or by subject but in order to maximise their effects in juxtaposition, in the 'mixed school' manner espoused by Pierre Crozat for his grand private collection in his Parisian hôtel; the mixture on a wall of erotic and religious subjects was disapproved of by some visitors. The collection was most notable for Italian paintings of the High and Late Renaissance, especially Venetian works. The collection included no fewer than five of the poesies painted for Philip II of Spain, of which two are now shared between Edinburgh and London, two always in London (Wallace Collection and National Gallery), and one in Boston. A series of four mythological allegories by Veronese are now divided between the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the Frick Collection (with two, one illustrated above) and Metropolitan Museum in New York. Another Veronese series, the four Allegories of Love now in the National Gallery, hung as overdoors in the central salon, which also held the larger Veronese series, three of the Titian poesies and Correggios.

The collection included (on the contemporary attributions) 28 Titians, most now regarded as workshop pieces but including several of his finest works, 12 Raphaels, 16 Guido Renis, 16 Veroneses, 12 Tintorettos, 25 paintings by Annibale Carracci and 7 by Lodovico Caracci, 3 major Correggios plus ten no longer accepted as by him, and 3 Caravaggios. Attributions no longer accepted, and probably regarded as dubious even then were 2 Michelangelos, and 3 Leonardos. There were few works from the 15th century, except for a Giovanni Bellini. The collection reflected the general contemporary confusion outside Spain as to what the works of the great Velázquez actually looked like; the works attributed to him were of high quality but by other artists such as Orazio Gentileschi.

French works, of which the catalogued collection included relatively few, included a set of the Seven Sacraments and 5 other works by Poussin. There were paintings by Philippe de Champaigne now in the Wallace Collection and Metropolitan Museum, and a Eustache Le Sueur which turned up in 1997 over a door in the Naval & Military Club and is now in the National Gallery. The Flemish works were dominated by Rubens with 19 paintings, including a group of 12 studies now widely dispersed, van Dyck with 10 works and David Teniers with 9. The Dutch paintings included 6 Rembrandts, 7 works by Caspar Netscher (one now Wallace Collection) and 3 by Frans van Mieris (one now National Gallery) that were more highly regarded then than they are now. There were 3 Gerrit Dous and 4 Wouwermans.

Philippe's son Louis d'Orléans, religious and somewhat neurotic, attacked with a knife one of the most famous works, Correggio's Leda and the Swan, now in Berlin, and ordered the painter Charles-Antoine Coypel to cut up all three of the great Correggio mythological works in the presence of his chaplain, which Coypel did, but saving and repairing the pieces. The Leda went to Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Danäe to Venice, where it was stolen and eventually sold to the English consul at Leghorn, and Jupiter and Io went to the Imperial collection in Vienna. Some of the Flemish paintings were sold at auction in Paris, June 1727.

Beginning in 1785, a series of 352 engravings of the paintings were published on a subscription basis, until the series was abandoned during the Terror, by which time the paintings themselves had been sold. It was finally published in book form in 1806. These prints have greatly reduced the uncertainty that accompanies the identity of works in most dispersed former collections. There had already been many prints of the collection; the Seven Sacraments were especially popular among the middle classes of Paris in the 1720s.