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Marvell's Gallery of Art*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Charles H. Hinnant
Charles H. Hinnant*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

In his biography of Andrew Marvell, Pierre Legouis observed that in 'The Gallery’ Marvell effected a considerable change in the wellknown theme of the image engraved on the lover's heart. ‘That a lover's heart contains his mistress's picture had already been said, among others, by Donne and Carew; but Marvell renovates the hackneyed metaphor by enlarging it. His imagination reveals itself spacious without strain.' Although Legouis pays tribute to the visual quality of Marvell's imagination, he, like other critics, has hardly explored the question to what extent ‘The Gallery’ is indebted for inspiration to pictorial tradition. 'The Gallery’ is particularly significant in this respect, for it is the most explicit illustration in Marvell's poetry of Horace's phrase ut pictura poesis,interpreted for many centuries as an affirmation of the parallelism between the two arts, and of the saying attributed by Plutarch to Simonides: 'painting is mute poetry, poetry a speaking picture.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1971 , pp. 26 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1971

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References

1 Andrew Marvell, Poet, Puritan, Patriot (Oxford, 1965), p. 31.

2 The importance of Renaissance and baroque art for an understanding of the pictorial qualities of'The Gallery’ is recognized in Hagstrum, Jean H., The Sister Arts, The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago, 1958), pp. 114–117 Google Scholar. Little attention, however, has been given to the poem in the major critical studies of Marvell's poetry. It is mentioned briefly in Bradbrook, M. C. and Lloyd Thomas, M. G., Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1940), p. 29 Google Scholar; Leishman, J. B., The Art of Marvell's Poetry (London, 1966), pp. 36–37 Google Scholar. The most extended discussion of the poem, and the most recent, occurs in Toliver, Harold E., Marvell's Ironic Vision (New Haven and London, 1965), pp. 173–177 Google Scholar. Toliver's analysis, though valuable, does not examine the analogy between the arts. In ‘Some Notes on Marvell's Sources,’ N&Q (Apr. 1957), pp. 170- 172, L. N. Wall suggests the picture gallery in Lovelace's Amyntor's Grove as a possible source for MarveU's ‘The Gallery.’ It is just as possible, however, to suppose that Lovelace's rather vague and generalized passage depends upon MarveU's poem for its source.

3 Quotations from ‘The Gallery’ and other poems of Marvell in my text will be to the edition of H. M. Margoliouth, M.A., Oxford, 1927.

4 Thomas and Bradbrook believe that the poem can be dated around 1648-49 (p. 29). Margoliouth, on the other hand, conjectures that the poem, because of its reference to the Whitehall collection in the past tense, might have been written after 1650, the year in which the bulk of Charles I's acquisitions were sold. See also, Leishman, p. 37.

5 For a discussion of the activities of the Whitehall group, see Whinney, Margaret and Millar, Oliver, English Art, 1625-1714 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 1–7 Google Scholar. The gallery is a prominent feature of the domestic architecture of the era. See Jourdain, Margaret, English Decoration and Furniture in the Early Renaissance, 1500-1660 (London, 1924), p. 5 Google Scholar. In The Elements of Architecture (1624), Sir Henry Wotton draws attention to ‘Pinacotheciae … certain Repositories for workes of rarity in Picture or other Arts, by the Italians called Studioli’ (London, 1924), p. 5.

6 After his death, Fairfax's collection was sold to the family of Ralph Thoresby, the Leed's antiquarian, and an indication of itsnature may be found in Thoresby's description of his museum, Ducatus Leodiensus (Leeds, 1816).

7 For a discussion of the subject-portrait, see Janson, H. W., ‘A Mythological Portrait of the Emperor Charles V, The Worcester Art Museum Annual, I (1935-36), 27–31 Google Scholar; Pope-Hennessy, John W., The Portrait in the Renaissance (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, Ch. 5, ‘Image and Emblem,’ pp. 205-257.

8 See, for instance, a self-portrait of the artist as Paris (Wallace Collection); Lady Venetia Digby as Prudence (Windsor); Catherina, wife of Earl Rivers, with her son as Cupid bearing flowers (Althorp House); nos. 169, 311, 405, Schaeffer, Emil, Van Dyck, Des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1909).Google Scholar

9 On Honthorst's Apollo and Diana, see Richard Judson, J., Gerrit Van Honthorst (The Hague, 1959), pp. 112–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Cited by Wittkower, Rudolf, Born under Saturn (New York, 1963), pp. 160 Google Scholar, 161, no. 48.

11 The tradition of verbal tapestry paintings is discussed by Bush, Douglas, Mythology and the Renaissance in English Poetry, rev. ed. (New York, 1963), pp. 80 Google Scholar, 104, 109.

12 Hagstrum, p. 114; Mirollo, James V., The Poet of the Marvelous, Giambattista Marino (New York and London, 1963), p. 248.Google Scholar

13 2d ed. (Rome, 1964), p. 120, nos. 34, 33.

14 de Tervarent, Guy, Attributs et Symboles Dans L'Art Profane, 1450-1660, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1959)Google Scholar.

15 Cited by Freeman, Rosemary, English Emblem Books (London, 1948), p. 73.Google Scholar

16 L'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1910), p. 148; quoted from Tervarent, pp. 273, 274.

17 The Fairie Queen I.xi.51. Quotations from Spenser's poetry in my text are to the edition of R. E. Neil Dodge (Cambridge, 1908).

18 Quoted from Elizabethan Lyrics, ed. Ault, Norman (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

19 The Arundel Inventory of 1655, no. 353, repr. in Hervey, M. F. S., The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (Cambridge and New York, 1921), pp. 473ffGoogle Scholar.

20 Tervarent, op. cit., pp. 104, 105, 324, 325.

21 Juvenal, 6, 535ff; Ovid, Amores 1.8.

22 Studies in Iconology (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1962), pp. 216-218. In Marvell's ‘The Unfortunate Lover,’ composed about the same time as ‘The Gallery,’ the lover is adrift on a stormy sea, where he is attacked by a marine bird the cormorant, rather than the vulture:

A num'rous fleet of Corm'rants black,

That sail'd insulting o're the Wrack

And as one Corm'rant fed him, still

Another on his Heart did bill. (11. 27-28, 35-36)

23 On the background of my discussion of the sea-born Venus, see Dempsey, Charles, ‘Poussin's “Marine Venus” at Philadelphia: a Re-Identification Accepted,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVIII (1965), 338–343 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The attribution of Poussin's painting has been the subject of a series of notes in the JWCI. Besides Dempsey, see Frank Somner, ‘Poussin's “Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite“: A Re-Identification,’ XXIV (1961), 323-327; Michael Levey, ‘Poussin's “Neptune and Amphitrite” at Philadelphia: A Re-Identification Rejected,’ XXVI (1963), 359-360; Dempsey, Charles, ‘The Textual Sources of Poussin's Marine Venus in Philadelphia,’ XXVIII (1965), 438–442 Google Scholar; Somner, Frank H., ‘Quaestiones disputatae: Poussin's Venus at Philadelphia,’ XXXI (1968), 440–444.Google Scholar

24 ‘For you, Goddess, the winds flee, and at your coming the clouds flee the sky.’ Ed. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, 1953), 11. 7-8. Quoted from Somner, op. cit., p. 326.

25 The metaphoric possibilities of ambergris were also to attract Pope later in the Epistle to Burlington:

In heaps … a stink it lies,

But well-dispers'd, is Incense to the Skies. (11. 233-236)

26 Judson, , op. cit., ‘Catalogue Raisonne,’ nos. 133–145.Google Scholar

27 Millar, , Tudor, Stuart and Georgian Pictures, nos. 180 Google Scholar, 183; Stokes, Hugh, Sir Anthony Van Dyck (London, 1905), no. 35.Google Scholar

28 New York (Metropolitan), Leningrad, and London (Duke of Buccleuch). See firedius, A., The Paintings of Rembrandt (Vienna, 1936)Google Scholar, nos. 114, 102, 103.

29 Held, Julius S., ‘Flora, Goddess and Courtesan,’ Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky (New York, 1961), p. 212 Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 207, 208.

31 ‘She nodded assent, and at the motion of her tresses the flowers dropped down.’ Trans. Sir James Frazier, 5 vols. (London, 1929), 1, 271.

32 Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London, 1958), pp. 101, 102. It may be a coincidence but even the name of Marvell's mistress Chlora, bears a close resemblance to Ovid's Chloris.