Sir John Donne - Calais and The Continent

Calais and The Continent

He was probably the Jehan Don present at the extravagantly celebrated wedding in Bruges in 1468 of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. He may well have accompanied Edward in his Burgundian exile in 1470-1, as Hastings did. Much later, he was present when the widowed Margaret (his "true friend") met her brother at what is now Syon House in 1480.

In 1468 he is described as "out of Calais", England's outpost in France, and this connection continued for the rest of his career; Hastings was "lieutenant of Calais" or governor, and his brother-in-law Donne his deputy. He owned a house there, and was a member of the Calais council in 1471, involved in negotiations in 1472, and recorded as there in 1475 and several later years. By 1483 he was Deputy of the Tower of Risban, an outlying fort, and before 1497 Lieutenant of the Castle. It may well have been his main base for much of his career; it remained under Yorkist control throughout Edward IV's exile.

The Donne Triptych by Hans Memling would presumably have been made in Bruges, and is believed to date from the 1470s. Many sources still date it to 1468, because they were only aware of Donne's visit to Bruges for the wedding in that year, and because when the donor was first identified as Donne in 1840, the writer (JG Nichols) wrongly stated that he was killed in the Battle of Edgecote in 1469. The National Gallery now favours a date in the late 1470s, perhaps 1478, the date on a later copy, which is plausible, and may have been on the lost original frame. The donors are identifiable as the Donnes by their coat-of-arms (Donne impaling Hastings), which appears several times in the painting.

The portrait of Lady Donne was first painted with a younger, more generalized face, then overpainted, also by Memling, with the present thinner face. This may suggest Memling only saw her when the painting was well underway, and changed his picture to her actual features.

Apart from the Memling, there are two surviving Flemish illuminated manuscripts commissioned by Donne in the British Library, plus a second-hand one (BL MS Royal 15 D iv) that was a gift from the two Duchesses of Burgundy (the widowed Margaret and her stepdaughter Mary) with the inscriptions: "For yet not har that ys on of yor treu frendes Margarete of Yorke" ("Forget not her that is one of your true friends, Margarete of York), and "Prenez moy ajames pour vre bonne amie Marie D. de bourg.ne" ("Take me forever for your good friend, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy"). This was formerly in the Old Royal Library, probably having been presented to Henry VIII by one of Donne's sons. He commissioned an important manuscript of about 1480, the Louthe Hours, now in Louvain, which has a miniature of him kneeling in armour with his guardian angel.

Several of Donne's close associates: Edward, Hastings, the two Duchesses of Burgundy and others, were important patrons of Flemish art in various forms, and there a number of indications that Donne supervised the progress of the triptych carefully, and requested changes.