An Anglo-Flemish artist, active in 1613

This masterful portrait - unique in its extraordinary composition - of a multi-talented man at the beginning of his career, is unprecedented in its virtuosity within the context of English painting at this time, and opens a window upon the culture and connoisseurship of an individual at the vanguard of artistic expression in Jacobean England. As yet the attribution remains an enigma, however this intriguing portrait was clearly painted by a highly accomplished artist, who moved in the same artistic circle as his sitter, and with whom Lanier closely collaborated in fashioning this important image.

Nicholas Lanier was twenty-five when he decided, for the very first time, to have his portrait painted sometime during the calendar year 1613, the date on the panel, which then ran from 25 March 1613 to 24 March 1614. Sitting for his portrait was to become a fixation for Lanier, for we are looking at the features of a man who was to sit for Van Dyck, William Dobson, Jan Lievens, Guido Reni and possibly even Rembrandt, as well as leaving us with a self-portrait.[1] Each picture reflects an obsession with self-fashioning and the fact that one of them was engraved shows that he wished his image to be multiplied. The buoyant, handsome young man we see here plucking his lute and singing for posterity was not as yet Master of the King’s Musick, nor the connoisseur-companion of kings. Instead, he was only one of a small body of musicians in the service of William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury with an annual salary of £20 a year. The portrait, however, is a monument to aspirations, and one which fully demands contributions from a wide range of the scholars who during the last few years have re-drawn the cultural landscape of Jacobean England (for which, see the Weiss Gallery’s publication Nicholas Lanier – A Portrait Revealed).

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The most prominent of Lanier's talents - as revealed in the portrait - is music, understandably enough. This is demonstrated by the lute that he plays and the inscription on the cartellino that lies on the table in front of him - ‘VT RElevet MIserum FAtum SOLitosque LAbores’. The context for this is evidently linked to Lanier’s musical identity because it is based upon the Guidonian six-note musical scale (the precursor to the modern do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, te, do). Although Guido’s foundations of music theory had been the mainstay of music theory throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods, emphasis on this element is important in reaffirming the classical traditions that Lanier was exploring as a musician in his development of the declamatory ayre and recitative style in England. Therefore, the learned reader is educated about the nature of the music being performed by the sitter in the painting.

The second aspect of his virtuosity is his interest in sculpture, as revealed by the small version of a famous Praxitelean statue of Mercury (often identified as Antinous) placed on the table to the right. The statuette is presented to us as an object of virtue, and should be understood less as a reference to the practice of art, or to Antinous as an historical personage (the face is virtually unreadable), but more as a general allusion to Lanier's knowledge of the arts of Italy, both ancient and modern.

The third aspect of the characterisation of Lanier's virtuosity in this portrait is his knowledge of painting itself, as shown by the two framed works on the wall at upper right. One of these, The Liberation of St. Peter, was contributed by Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger, as we know from the signature and date (which suggest it was perhaps added as an afterthought, since he was surely not responsible for the portrait itself). The date of 1613 also sets this as the first recorded painting by Steenwyck in England. Steenwyck would go on to become one of the most sought-after perspectival artists of his day. Given Lanier was deeply involved with masque music – both as a composer, performer and a set designer, collaborating for example with Inigo Jones that very year in Thomas Campion’s Somerset Masque to celebrate the marriage of Robert Carr and Lady Frances Howard, the Steenwyck with its clear use of perspective, a modern pictorial concept, can be seen as a reflection of this interest. On 27 December 1613, Lanier played the role of ‘Eternity’ in the masque, and although the text of the song, ‘Bring away this sacred tree’, was by Campion, both the music and its performance were by Lanier. Might this be the very song Lanier performs in silence to the viewer of the present portrait?

The other framed picture represents an artist before his easel, painting a portrait, and therefore in the act of making a work of art, a parallel of sorts to Lanier's performance on the lute in the foreground. This is an elegant visual allusion to the larger depiction of Lanier within which it is contained and at which we look. It follows that this becomes reality and the picture within the picture is the illusion, itself containing another visual fiction on the easel. It is probable that the small picture refers to the personalities involved with the larger portrait, connecting the various elements and memorialising Lanier’s inclusion within a painter’s studio fraternity. Sir Roy Strong has suggested the possibility that the painter depicted sitting at an easel on which rests an oval portrait of a young man with an open-necked shirt may be the miniaturist Isaac Oliver, Lanier’s brother-in-law, or more likely Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, who was Isaac Oliver’s brother-in-law by his first marriage, and who in an engraving by Wenceslas Hollar after a self-portrait of 1627 is shown with a similar moustache and beard, although such an identification can never arise above the speculative.

Various attributions for the portrait itself have been suggested by academics in our recent publication (ibid.), among the canon of names Isaac Oliver (Sir Roy Strong) and Abraham van Blijenberch (Dr. Duncan Thomson). Given the sophistication of handling, the technique (discussed at length by Katherine Ara who undertook the restoration of the picture), the prevailing theory is that it is almost certainly a Flemish hand, though working in England. Many questions remain and may continue to remain unanswerable or enigmatic. For example, we know nothing of the painting’s early history after Lanier’s death, and its provenance is only secure from the end of the nineteenth century when it was recorded in the possession of an Irish antiquarian and historian.

According to that family’s tradition, the painting was acquired in Florence (as a Van Dyck) in the 1770’s, though the inventory that mentions this has since been lost. This information was recorded in 1939 in a letter of expertise written in London by Gustav Glück, the eminent Austrian art historian and the then former Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. As a testament to its quality, he considered the painting to be by the youthful Van Dyck, though at this time the sitter’s identity remained unknown. He also noted that a lute player by Van Dyck of about the same size was recorded in the collection of the Blondel de Gagny in 1776: ‘Ant. van Dyck. Un jeune homme qui joue du lutte, vu de trois-quarts, jusqu’aux genoux. Trente-six pouces sur vingt-neuf…900 liv’. However, that painting was on canvas, and our Lanier was painted on panel. We can only ever guess at the path this exceptional painting has taken since its nascence, however, as a highly personal image, it is likely to have remained in Lanier’s possession during his life-time. At his death, Lanier bequeathed his chattels to his wife, including several pictures, perhaps this being one of them.

After her death, however, they did not remain in the family, and thus our picture could have lost its identification for a time, and been set on an unknown path until recent history. Lanier belonged to a family which was part of that network of foreign professionals which provided the Tudor and early Stuarts courts with several generations of musicians, composers, painters and miniaturists. His grandfather was another Nicholas, a Huguenot, a French court musician who had come to England in the 1560s and who was to die only the year before this portrait was painted. His son, John, a sackbut player at court, was, in 1585, to marry Frances Galliardello, daughter of another musician in royal service. Nicholas the younger was born in the year of the Armada, and by the age of sixteen joined the Cecil household in 1605 as an apprentice in the musical establishment of the 2nd Earl’s father, Robert Cecil, chief minister of James I. Two years later Lanier graduated to being a fully qualified singer and player of the viol, lute and flute. He was also tutor in music to the young lord in whose service he now was and indeed continued to be until well into the year 1614. Only two years later, on 12 January 1616, Nicholas Lanier was appointed as a singer and lutenist to a vacancy in the King’s Musick, the present portrait becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy of Lanier’s ambition.

Public recognition came in May 1625 with the first documented appearance (in the funeral procession of James I) of the Master of the Musique, who although unnamed was undoubtedly Lanier, the first to hold the title. He was thirty-seven years old. Lanier was given little time in which to establish his authority as Master. The funeral of King James took place on 7 May 1625, but it was scarcely over before he found himself being entrusted with a mission of huge responsibility; his instructions were to proceed at once to Italy, where he was to search out and acquire paintings for the royal collection, which the new King Charles was determined to enlarge and develop to a status befitting the British crown. Lanier spoke Italian fluently (his mother was Italian), and as a musician he was ideally placed to carry out a secret mission. Diplomatic letters prepared the way for him, and his first goal was Venice, where he arrived in the summer of 1625. From Venice Lanier then visited the legendary art collection of Ferdinando, Duke of Mantua, which was well-known by repute to be amongst the finest in Europe. In Rome, he bought an impressive tally of over thirty paintings by artists such as Guercino, Palma Vecchio and Sebastiano del Piombo. Lanier and the paintings were back in England by April 1626 and he resumed his musical duties at court, but the death of Duke Ferdinando in October 1626 precipitated an opportunity for Lanier to return to Venice in June 1627 and open negotiations to acquire the collection for King Charles I.[2]

Lanier’s stature as an innovator and composer at this time was as great as his reputation as a performer and connoisseur of the arts. In 1628, the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, who although reviled in the country at large, was deeply mourned by King Charles, is thought to have inspired Lanier’s most celebrated composition, a dramatic setting for solo voice, in the new stylo recitativo, of a poem (perhaps by himself) on the tragic Greek legend of Hero and Leander. It shows him at the highest peak of his expressive powers, and whilst inevitably owing something to Italian influence, notably that of Monteverdi (whom he may well have met in Venice), demonstrates a high level of originality. It was much admired, especially by King Charles, who, according to Roger North, ‘was exceedingly pleased with this pathetic song and caused Lanier to sing it to a consort attendance, while he stood next with his hand upon his shoulder’.

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 Lanier followed the king and court to Oxford, where he painted a rather sombre self-portrait reflecting the spirit of the times. By 1645 he had left England for mainland Europe, although over the next fifteen years he travelled on several occasions to and from home on special licence, in the capacity of an art dealer and collector. He was present on six occasions at the celebrated sale of the late king’s goods (1649-50) and for £10 bought his own portrait by Van Dyck. He followed the exiled court of Charles II to its various temporary homes in Paris, Cologne, Brussels and Bruges, and continued to provide music for it. At the Restoration in 1660 Lanier was immediately re-instated in his old post as Master of the Musick, despite advancing age and infirmity. Our last glimpse of him is at another of Samuel Pepys’s parties, on 3 January 1666, though what part he took in that cheerful event is not related. He died a few weeks later, and his funeral took place on 24 February at East Greenwich.

[1] Sir Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of Lanier is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; William Dobson’s Portrait of the Artist with Sir Charles Cotterell and Nicholas Lanier is in a Private Collection; Guido Reni’s drawing of Lanier, c. 1626-30 is in Los Angeles County Museum of Art; a portrait of Lanier by Jan Lievens is known by an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman; and his self-portrait is now in the collection of the Faculty of Music, Oxford University.

[2] It was at this time that Lanier was drawn by Guido Reni. As a connoisseur, Lanier was amongst the first to recognise the importance of drawings as artworks in their own right, collecting them on his travels both for himself and on behalf of discerning patrons such as Lord Arundel. He is also credited with stamping the drawings with distinctive star-shaped marks, apparently using differently-shaped stars to indicate different collectors (although the precise significance of these stars still presents something of an art historical problem).