See the Works

Portrait of Sir William Butts

Hans Holbein transfixed Tudor England with his exacting portraits of royal courtiers. Loyal subjects both, Sir William Butts and his wife Lady Margaret served respectively as the King’s doctor and lady-in-waiting to Princess Mary. Shakespeare even immortalized this royal physician in Henry VIII.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Holbein inspired the same acquisitive fervor as Rembrandt. Henry Clay Frick’s failed attempt to buy his masterpiece, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, provoked a public uproar in England, an event fictionalized by Henry James in The Outcry (1909). Gardner and Berenson had also failed in three separate efforts to capture Holbeins, but their eventual success in 1899 was sensational. As Berenson would quip, “Holbeins of any kind are hard to get, as you might recall...as good as unheard of are a pair of pendants.”

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Lady Margaret Butts (née Bacon)

Hans Holbein transfixed Tudor England with his exacting portraits of royal courtiers. Loyal subjects both, Sir William Butts and his wife Lady Margaret served respectively as the King’s doctor and lady-in-waiting to Princess Mary. Shakespeare even immortalized this royal physician in Henry VIII.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Holbein inspired the same acquisitive fervor as Rembrandt. Henry Clay Frick’s failed attempt to buy his masterpiece, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, provoked a public uproar in England, an event fictionalized by Henry James in The Outcry (1909). Gardner and Berenson had also failed in three separate efforts to capture Holbeins, but their eventual success in 1899 was sensational. As Berenson would quip, “Holbeins of any kind are hard to get, as you might recall...as good as unheard of are a pair of pendants.”

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Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel

Rubens was one of the most illustrious painters in the history of Western art. Perpetually on the road, he served four European rulers, including Charles I of England. Rubens painted this portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, at the height of his professional career. Because Arundel acquired art on a princely scale, he was given the nickname “the collector earl.”

Gardner herself paid a princely sum for this Rubens, making it her single most expensive acquisition after Titian’s Rape of Europa. Berenson, knowing that this painting would be another major addition to her collection, wrote to her, “you now have one of the great Titians; Arundel will be a match for it.”

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Self-Portrait, Age 23

Rembrandt produced more self-portraits than any other painter in the history of European art; more than eighty of them survive. In this image, the young Rembrandt evokes an extraordinary range of textures, from the gauzy silk of the scarf to the downy feather of the cap.

The demand for Rembrandt paintings in Gilded Age America surpassed that of any old master painter. Few collectors managed to acquire one, let alone four (when she purchased the Landscape with Obelisk, now attributed to Govaert Flinck, she believed it too was by Rembrandt). According to the museum’s first director Morris Carter, this was the first painting that Gardner purchased with “the intention of developing a real museum collection.” Having acquired this painting, which Bernard Berenson described as “one of the most precious pictures in existence,” all future purchases would need to match not only its extraordinary artistic quality but also its aristocratic provenance. Prior to its arrival in Boston, this painting belonged to several noteworthy English collectors, including the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and the 1st Earl of Dudley.

Learn more about how Gardner acquired this work in The Thrill of the Chase.

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Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee

This powerful rendering of a biblical story, Rembrandt’s only surviving seascape, was one of six works by the master acquired by Gardner. In addition to the Self-Portrait, Age 23 and a drawing (now considered a 17th century copy), she also acquired this painting, the portrait A Lady and Gentleman in Black, a landscape (now attributed to Govaert Flink), and an etched self-portrait—all four of which were stolen in 1990.

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Woman with a Rose

Like his teacher, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck dominated the art market across Europe, as aristocrats vied to have him paint their portrait. The identity of this sitter is unknown, but its exceptional quality and condition led Berenson to dub it “van Dyck’s ‘Mona Lisa’.” Gardner also valued this painting for its aristocratic provenance; previous owners included the 13th Duke of Osuna in Madrid.

Woman with a Rose by van Dyck and Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel by Rubens were acquired in close succession in 1897 and 1898, soon after Gardner decided to establish a public museum. Gardner collected these masterpieces with the future Dutch Room in mind, a strong indication that she considered northern European art as a necessary component of a public museum.

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The Concert

Although today regarded as one of the foremost Dutch Golden Age masters, Vermeer was largely unknown after his death. His “rediscovery” is primarily attributed to Théophile Thoré, an art critic who praised Dutch art for its quietly powerful celebration of domestic subjects and genre scenes, declaring it an authentic “art for the people.” Thoré also collected works of Dutch art, including this one.

Having recently inherited her father’s fortune, Gardner attended the auction of Thoré’s estate while on a trip to Paris in 1892. According to tradition, she did not bid on the painting herself but instead signaled an advisor with a handkerchief. Her strategy worked. Both the Louvre and the National Gallery, London stopped their bidding, believing they were raising the price by bidding against the other. She walked away with the prize, and in so doing built an international reputation for herself as an art collector almost overnight.

The Concert was stolen from the museum in 1990. It is one of only 36 known paintings by Vermeer, and is considered one of the most valuable stolen objects in the world—testament to the enduring belief that this painter’s works are masterpieces.

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The Chariot of Venus

Painter to King Louis XV, François Boucher defined artistic tastes at the French court. He is best known for mythological paintings like this one, the compositions of which reached audiences far and wide through tapestry, porcelain, and print.

Gardner purchased this painting from Wildenstein and Co., venerable dealers of French art. She paid a fraction of the price of her most expensive Italian paintings. Gardner collected few Rococo works; perhaps she sought to fill the void in her collection with this one. It was installed in the Little Salon by 1912, along with a second painting of similar style and an embroidery made from Boucher’s designs, an apparent homage to the French master.

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The Death and Assumption of the Virgin

Fra Angelico’s technical and compositional innovations paved the way for a more modern manner of painting in Florence, and he found favor with important patrons, including two popes. This panel is the third in a set of four reliquaries, or containers for holy relics, depicting episodes from the Virgin’s life.

Nineteenth-century enthusiasts dubbed this Dominican painter “Fra Angelico” (the angelic friar) for the spiritual content and lyrical quality of his work. Most of his paintings in the United States are the surviving fragments of larger works, but this one is nearly intact and was greatly admired in Boston. Gardner’s friend the American painter John La Farge, whose works can be found in the Blue Room, once reminded her that even Robert Langton Douglas, a British art critic and director of the National Gallery of Ireland, praised Gardner’s Fra Angelico in his writings.

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Christ Disputing in the Temple

In 1463, Giovanni di Paolo, a master painter from Siena, was selected to decorate the Pope’s newly finished church in Pienza. He excelled at narrative subjects, and this painting—from the predella, or lowest register, of a large altarpiece—is one of his finest surviving examples. Isabella and her peers, like Philip Lehman, whose distinguished collection is now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, prized early Renaissance paintings from Siena for their exquisite details and jewel-like finishes. When Berenson recommended this one, he observed that Giovanni di Paolo is “all the rage now because the collectors not only of paintings, but of objets d’art are after him, and paying long prices for him.”

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Hercules

Piero della Francesca wrote three treatises on geometry and painted for the ruling elite of Italy, earning the nickname: “monarch” of painting. His experimental techniques pushed the boundaries of the fresco medium. Painted on the wall of his family palace, Hercules is one of the earliest known works of art made by an artist for himself.

This was Piero’s first work to enter an American collection, and with this acquisition Gardner initiated a fad for Piero amongst the few collectors who could afford such extravagant prices. Helen Clay Frick, Robert Sterling Clark, and the Robert and Philip Lehman followed in her footsteps.

Learn more about this work in The End Justifies the Means.

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Seated Scribe

Gentile Bellini served as state painter to the Republic of Venice. In 1479, they sent him to Mehmet II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Bellini drew several individuals he encountered in Constantinople, but only this sheet is finished with color and gold, suggesting that it may have been intended for the sultan himself.

Gardner purchased this rare work in 1907 with the help of Anders Zorn, leaving her usual art advisor Bernard Berenson seething with envy. Proud of the purchase, Gardner later collected the publications which documented the drawing’s discovery by Swedish collector, scholar, and dealer Fredrik R. Martin in Constantinople around 1905.

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Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John and Six Female Saints

Andrea Mantegna rose to fame at the Renaissance court of Isabella d’Este. Antiquity fuelled both their imaginations, and he gave form to her humanist ideas with his brush, reinterpreting standard Christian subjects in new ways. Mantegna signed this devotional painting for either Isabella d’Este herself, or an equally esteemed patron.

Gardner fashioned herself as a latter-day Isabella d’Este. A painting by her idol’s court artist lent this historical fiction new meaning. That Gardner did not acquire it from Bernard Berenson led the young art historian to opine, “But, oh, I do wish you had not bought it without consulting me.” Instead, Richard Norton pursued the painting for Gardner in Rome. Delighted by the picture, he inscribed on the reverse of the photograph he sent to Gardner: "first look at the draperies of the women on the left! And then the two little kids!"

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Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Not satisfied with a single Raphael painting, Isabella Stewart Gardner waited just two years before purchasing her second work by the artist. This small panel, exquisitely preserved with luminous colors, was painted as part of a narrative predella, or lower register of an altarpiece, for a convent of Franciscan nuns in Perugia, Italy. In the early seventeenth century, the predella was separated from the rest of the altarpiece, and both parts began their journey through the art world.

Gardner acquired her fragment in 1900, while J.P. Morgan purchased largest part of the same altarpiece one year later.

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Count Tommaso Inghirami

Nearly five centuries after his death, Raphael’s fame is undiminished. Crowned “prince of painters” by Giorgio Vasari, he inspired other artists for centuries to come. Count Tommaso Inghirami served Pope Julius II as librarian. Raphael knew Inghirami well, which may partially explain the nuanced vitality of the portrait.

According to Henry James, Raphael’s work was “semi-sacred”. While many American collectors failed to acquire authentic examples in a market flooded with copies, this portrait, purchased in 1898, was the first Raphael to reach the United States. Of special importance to Gardner, this painting was the only one to receive a lengthy entry in her handwritten catalogue, The Paintings of Fenway Court, in 1917.

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Procession of Pope Sylvester I

Multi-colored chalk drawings of the Renaissance are rare. This is one of only two that survive by Raphael. It is a preparatory drawing for a fresco cycle commissioned by Pope Julius II to adorn the Vatican (Stanza dell’Eliodoro).

This drawing, the third of her three Raphaels, suggests Gardner’s determination to acquire his best available works and demonstrates her interest in his creative process.

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Pietà

Monumental works of architecture, sculpture, and painting assured Michelangelo’s fame. He poured the same ingenuity into this small sheet, one of a select group of drawings made as finished works of art for esteemed friends. Michelangelo gave this one to the poet Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara.

The pedigree of this drawing no doubt appealed to Gardner, who identified with powerful female collectors. Like the queen of Fenway Court, Michelangelo’s patron Colonna had no surviving children and a strong faith. The Dante quotation, in which Beatrice deplores how few appreciate the sacrifices of martyrs, offered another point of interest. Before 1915, Gardner displayed the drawing in her Long Gallery, a room which doubles as a chapel with a consecrated altar and a library. There, Gardner could study this intimate devotional image near her manuscript copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as a letter penned by Vittoria Colonna herself, which Gardner acquired in 1908.

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Study for a Figure in The Resurrection

The son of a butcher, Bronzino’s artistic talents propelled him from poverty to an illustrious life at court. As official painter to Duke Cosimo I of Florence, his dazzling portraits and altarpieces united meticulous brushwork and precise draftsmanship. This preparatory sketch, drawn from life, studies one soldier for an image of The Resurrection, an altarpiece in Florence.

Gardner valued it not only as a Bronzino, but also as part of the extraordinary collection of drawings assembled by the English portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds. Curiously, although Gardner managed to acquire many exceptional drawings, they were seemingly not an enduring interest of hers. All of the drawing’s featured in this show were acquired at a single sale in 1902.

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Virgin and Child with Saints George and Martin

Painter to the King of Aragon, Francesc Comes worked on the island of Majorca. Lavish detail and the unusual format of this painting point to its historic importance. The donor kneeling in prayer next to the Virgin may even be the king himself.

Gardner acquired this painting in 1901, believing it to be the work of a Northern Italian painter. Strong links between Renaissance Italy and Aragon probably account for the stylistic similarities between paintings from the two geographically disparate locations. Gardner probably first saw the painting in 1897, years before she purchased it, when she visited the gallery of the Parisian collector Émile Gavet, from whom she acquired several works of Gothic art.

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Saint Michael Archangel

A leading painter in Barcelona, Pedro García Benabarre produced the high altarpiece for a church in the Catalan city of Lérida. Gardner’s enormous painting constituted only one side panel of this colossal retablo, a set of monumental devotional images behind the altar.

Like contemporary critics, Gardner recognized Saint Michael as a one of the best examples of fifteenth-century Spanish painting in the United States. Paul Sachs, Associate Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, owned this picture in 1916. According to tradition, Gardner gave a dinner in his honor at which she threatened Sachs with a knife in the very room where she intended to hang the painting, persuading him to sell. “Don’t you agree your painting would go very well over the fireplace?” she urged.

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Saint Engracia

Bartolomé Bermejo painted some of the most important altarpieces in the Kingdom of Aragon. Many are destroyed or dispersed. This central fragment of a retablo, a towering series of devotional images behind an altar, was made for the church of San Francisco in Daroca, near Zaragoza; it reveals Bermejo’s mastery of delicate oil glazes, and masterful depiction of varied textures, from voided velvet mantels to inlaid wood furnishings.

Like many paintings in this exhibition, Saint Engracia remained in Europe after purchase due to the high cost of import duties. In 1908, a friend of Gardner’s shipped it to the United States with her “household goods.” After this subterfuge was discovered by authorities, a scandal ensued, requiring Gardner to testify in court and pay a fine.

Learn more about this work in Seeing Is Believing.

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A Doctor of Law

Following a spectacular debut in Madrid, Zurbarán returned to Seville and dominated the market for religious paintings. His portraits are extremely rare. The full-length format of this one conveys the lofty status of its subject, possibly Juan de la Lanza on the occasion of his appointment as Chair of the Law Faculty at the University of Sigüenza.

Seventeenth-century Spanish art captivated American collectors and artists, and Gardner went to great lengths to acquire this portrait. After seeing it at the Ehrich Galleries in New York, she “made an offer, just out of pure love!” As part of her negotiation, Gardner invited Louis Ehrich for a private tour of Fenway Court. Enchanted, Ehrich confessed in a follow up letter to remaining “under the spell of your enchanted palace… as to the ‘Zurburan’… Other parties - as I informed you – are interested, but I would prefer it to go to you .” Archer Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, was among the rival collectors who lamented their loss of this painting.

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