facing the past
5 D34
Hieronimo Custodis (before 1589 – 1593)
Edward Talbot, 8th Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford (1561 – 1617) Oil on panel: 16 x 12 in. (42.5 x 32.5 cm.) Inscribed upper left ‘Ao No DNI. 1586’ and upper right ‘AETATIS SVAE 25’ Painted 1586 Provenance The Talbot and Savile families, Rufford Abbey, Nottingham; The Rufford Abbey Sale, Christie’s, 18 November 1938, lot 156 (as by ‘Zuccaro’), bought by Francis Howard (d.1955), thence by descent to Benjamin Guinness, 11 Carlton House Terrace, London; Sotheby’s, London, 8 November 1995, lot 21 (incorrectly identified as ‘Sir Henry Bromley’); Private collection, England. Exhibited Leeds, National Exhibition of Works of Art, 1868.
W
ith its vibrant palette and delicate detailed brushwork, painted on an unusually small-scale format, this extremely fine jewel-like Elizabethan panel portrait is comparable in its detail to a Hilliard or Oliver miniature. The painting is notable for having survived in a fine state of preservation – in particular the detailing of the costume and the head and hair where much of the original brushwork and subtle glazes remain intact. The sitter’s vivid pea green doublet is contrasted with the costly blue pigment of the background and the penetrating stare of Sir Edward’s arresting blue eyes. It can be attributed with some confidence to Hieronimo Custodis, and is an interesting addition to this rare artist’s oeuvre.1 Custodis was a protestant émigré from Antwerp who had fled to England after the capture of the city by the Duke of Parma in 1585. His dated works are from 1589 until his death in 1593 and include the ravishingly beautiful portrait of Elizabeth Brydges at Woburn Abbey.2 1. The attribution has recently been confirmed by Sir Roy Strong. 2. See Strong, The English Icon, Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, London, 1969. p.197, no.149. 3. See Strong, The English Icon, ibid., p.198.
Edward Talbot was born at Sheffield Castle and baptised on 25 February 1561, the son of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, and his first wife Lady Gertrude Manners (daughter of the 1st Earl of Rutland). He attended Magdalen College in Oxford, where he matriculated in June 1579, aged eighteen. He then travelled abroad before his marriage to Jane, daughter and co-heir of Cuthbert, 7th Baron Ogle. At the date of this portrait, Talbot was a Member of Parliament for Northumberland, serving from 1584 – 1587, and also a member of the Council of Wales. In 1616, a year before his own death, he succeeded his brother Gilbert as the 8th Earl of Shrewsbury. He is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, where his wife Jane erected a large alabaster and marble monument to him by the sculptor William Wright. When Edward Talbot died in 1617, childless and without an heir, the title passed to his nearest male relative, George Talbot of Grafton. However, the family estates were divided, some passing to the daughters of Edward’s brother Gilbert. In 1626, the Rufford estate, including the contents of the house, was sold to Sir George Savile, whose first wife, Lady Mary, was the younger sister of Gilbert and Edward. Rufford Abbey became the main Savile family seat after the Civil War, until its sale in the 1930s. By the time of the Sotheby’s sale in 1995, the sitter was erroneously identified as Sir Henry Bromley, based on a tenuous resemblance to a portrait by Custodis dated 1587.3 The correct identification is further supported by comparison to another portrait of Edward that also descended at Rufford Abbey
Isaac Oliver, Self-portrait, c.1590 © National Portrait Gallery, London 20