VHP 000-000-000-407-L

List of paintings written in French for sale abroad from the collection of the 1st Duke of Hamilton c.1649

This Hamilton inventory of paintings is unusual. Not only is it written in French, in an italic hand with elegant flourishes, but it is written by an author with some knowledge of art, with the paintings listed by order of painter. It must have been written after 1649 as Charles 1 is referred to as the deceased king (Page 8 [line 4] - au feu Roy de la grand Bretagne).

The listing by painter with each picture's dimensions indicates that this might be a list of Hamilton paintings for sale abroad. The order of entry, the attributions and the dimensions of the paintings are the same as those on the Bartolommeo della Nave list of paintings for sale (M4/10) indicating that this list (or a copy) must have been available to the author.

It could be concluded that this inventory may be a list of paintings for sale, perhaps drawn up on behalf of the 1st Duke's brother William, Earl of Lanark who had fled to Holland in February 1649 a month before his brother's execution. A painting by the Antwerp artist David Teniers of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's collection in Brussels (1651) shows many of the 1st Duke of Hamilton's paintings, with paintings such as The Three philosophers by Giorgione and St Margaret after Raphael - both pictures on this list - taking pride of place.

• Klara Garas, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 'Die Entstehung der Galerie des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm' xxvii (1967), pp139-180

The letters u and v are interchangeable in this document, as are i and j. In the measurements of the paintings, 'h' stands for 'en hauteur', the height of the picture, and 'la' for 'en largeur', its width; 'pa' is the abbreviation for 'palmes', meaning palms, in other words, hand's breadths. 'Quarree' is the modern 'carre' which means square.