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1 of 253523 objects
John of Gaunt c.1617-1622
Engraving | 17.8 x 11.4 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 680469
George Yate (active 1618)
John of Gaunt c.1617-1622
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An engraving of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Half length portrait with beard, long hair, coronet, armour, and embroidered robes, holding a sword in right hand. Within an oval border bearing Latin inscription, with further English inscription below First state. This print is lettered around the portrait: "ILLVSTRISSMVS: PRINCEPS IOHANNES GANDAVIENSIS DVX LANCASTRIÆ"; outside the oval at the lower right: "GY Sc"; along the bottom: "The most renowmed Prince John of: / Gaunt, … / … Liue- / tenant of Aquitaine. He died 1399. // Are to be sold by Roger Daniell at the Angell in Lombard streete".
During the late 1610s and 1620s, publisher Compton Holland oversaw the production of a series of portraits for publication in what came to be known as the Baziliologia. The first frontispiece dated 1618 presents the full title as : Baziliologia, a Booke of Kings, beeing the true and lively effigies of all our English kings from the Conquest untill this present with their severall coats of armes, impreses and devises and a brief chronologie of their lives and deaths.
No copy of the 1618 edition is known, and after Holland's death in 1628 a second edition was published with text by William Martyn, the plates were later acquired by Thomas Geele, who published a third edition in 1630. Holland's octavo portraits were engraved by the pre-eminent engravers working in England, and their work came to epitomise and dominate portrait print publication for decades. Throughout successive editions, more portraits were added to the series. The Royal Collection holds a series of 238 prints linked to the Baziliologia, see RCINs 680452-680690.
The print formed part of an album of portrait prints assembled by Cassiano and his younger brother Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo in Rome. Described in an early nineteenth-century inventory of prints in George III's library as Heads of English illustrious Personages, the album was dismantled later in the nineteenth century and incorporated into the sequences of British portrait prints in the collection.
For more information see Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, 3 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017, part of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 1458.
Provenance
From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-22 October 1657); inherited by his brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo (1606-1689); sold by Carlo Antonio's grandson to Clement XI, 1703; acquired by Cardinal Alessandro Albani by 1714, from whom purchased by George III in 1762
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Creator(s)
(engraver)(print seller)(collector)Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Engraving
Measurements
17.8 x 11.4 cm (sheet of paper)
Category
Object type(s)
