The tell-tale art
LRIGHT, so you’re a rich 17th century gentleperson with a London town house and a country seat stuffed with treasures, either inherited from previous generations or souvenirs brought back after making the Grand Tour.
In Rome, antiquaries and dealers were on hand to advise and assist in the purchase of marble statues, their prices based on whether or not the purchaser was a tourist, while once home, coins, medals, ceramics and paintings of the English “milordi” posing among Roman ruins added prestige to a soirée or house party.
It was collecting on a grand scale with entire rooms given over to remarkable assemblages of objects.
Some of the treasures appear in inventories of great houses, but few have been chronicled so diligently as those illustrated in the above painting.
Titled The Paston Treasure, the huge oil on canvas – it measures eight feet (247.5cm) wide – painted by an unknown artist in about 1663, will be at the centre of an important exhibition, which opens next month.
A visually stunning work, it dazzles with a lavish display of gold and silver, exotic objects, musical instruments, fruits and flowers, a lobster, a monkey and a parrot, portraits of a young girl and an African youth, cryptic subject matter that has puzzled art scholars.
Miraculously, five of the objects recorded in the painting still survive and have been tracked down and loaned to the exhibition. They come from distinguished national and international public and private collections and will remain on show for the duration of the exhibition.
They include a pair of silver-gilt flagons, a strombus shell cup, two unique nautilus cups and a mother of pearl perfume flask, brought together and displayed alongside musical instruments, rare timepieces, a globe, jewels, paintings and sculptures, all representative of the legendary Paston collection.
Prestigious international lenders include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Chicago Institute of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the
This painting now in a private collection, is attributed to the “Master of The Paston Treasure”. Royal Collection and many others.
Commissioned to promote the family’s wealth and sophisticated artistic taste, the painting represents a fraction of what was once owned by the famous Paston family of Norfolk, whose country seat was Oxnead Hall outside Norwich.
At its zenith, the collection ran to hundreds of spectacular works of art. Sadly, however, the painting proves
Pair of silver gilt flagons by an unknown English maker, circa 1597/98, eerily prophetic. Motifs such as flowers, fruit, a guttering candle, music, and notably clocks and an hourglass symbolise time, vanity, and death. Flowers and fruit bloom then wither. Music and clocks stop. All things end in death.
Within a century, the family, once among the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the county, had over-reached itself and was bankrupt. By the 1730s, the male line had died out and their magnificent Oxnead Hall had fallen into disuse.
The first known records of the Paston family date to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. William Paston (1528–1610) was knighted in 1578 and founded Paston Grammar School in North Walsham, where the young Horatio Nelson was educated.
Sir William was succeeded by his son Christopher and his grandson, another William (d. 1663), was created a baronet in 1642. William toured extensively through Europe between 1638 and 1639 venturing as far as Jerusalem, acquiring treasures.
William’s son Robert (1631–1683), who was a member of parliament from 1661 to 1673, inherited the title and was created Earl of Yarmouth in 1679.
It was Robert’s daughter Margaret who is most likely portrayed in the painting. Against her parents’ wishes, she eloped with the Italian ambassador. Robert’s son William (1652– 1732), the second earl, married a daughter of Charles II.
With his death and no male heir, the Paston titles became extinct, however, and the land and the Paston treasures were sold off. Who commissioned the Paston painting and whose work it is are unknown. The artist was clearly accomplished. Its style and genre are very much in the Low Countries mode, meaning the artist was probably Dutch. Research suggests a date for the picture no later than the first half of the 1660s.