![Balthasar Gerbier - Het Gulden Cabinet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Balthasar_Gerbier_-_Het_Gulden_Cabinet.png)
Sir Balthazar Gerbier (23 February 1592, in N.S. – 1663), was an Anglo-Dutch courtier, diplomat, art advisor, miniaturist and architectural designer, in his own words fluent in "several languages" with "a good hand in writing, skill in sciences as mathematics, architecture, drawing, painting, contriving of scenes,
masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque ...
s, shows and entertainments for great Princes... as likewise for making of engines useful in war."
Biography
![Balthazar Gerbier dOuvilly - portrait of a gentleman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Balthazar_Gerbier_dOuvilly_-_portrait_of_a_gentleman.jpg)
Gerbier, the son of Anthony Gerbier,
[Colvin 1995.] was born in
Middelburg Middelburg may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions Europe
* Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands
** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...
, Zeeland, of a
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
family that had settled there. Dutch sources show that his family were cloth merchants although he claimed that his grandfather had been a "Baron Douvilly" and so signed himself on occasion.
As a designer of siege machinery he was recommended by
Maurice of Nassau
Maurice of Orange ( nl, Maurits van Oranje; 14 November 1567 – 23 April 1625) was '' stadtholder'' of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince ...
, later Prince of Orange, through whose efforts Gerbier arrived in London in 1616, in the train of the Dutch ambassador. In London he soon found a patron in
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628), was an English courtier, statesman, and patron of the arts. He was a favourite and possibly also a lover of King James I of England. Buckingham remained at the ...
for whom he found paintings and negotiated their purchase, acting in a sense as keeper of the Duke's collection, and for whom he painted miniatures and oversaw remodelling about 1625, at
York House in the Strand and at
New Hall, Essex (both since demolished). At York House and at New Hall, Gerbier was busy with architectural alterations for Buckingham, 1624-25. and ordered a wooden model of New Hall to be made for the Duke. At York House, a visit from
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings.
As the most notable archit ...
while the paving was being laid in the ''grande chambre'' reveals Gerbier's intense competitiveness with the Surveyor of the King's Works, whose apparent jealousy of what he saw at York House gave Gerbier undisguised delight.
With Buckingham and Prince Charles (the future Charles I), Gerbier was a member of the ill-fated diplomatic party that travelled to Madrid in connection with the
Spanish Match. In Madrid Gerbier painted a portrait of the Infanta that was returned to London for the approval of James I. On a similar mission in Paris in 1625 he met his fellow countryman, diplomatist and courtier,
Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...
, with whom he developed a close friendship; when Rubens went to London in 1629, it was with Gerbier that he lodged. Rubens' portrait of Gerbier's family is in the Royal Collection, Windsor. When Rubens died in 1640, Gerbier was in Antwerp and sent an inventory of his collection to Charles. The king inherited Gerbier after Buckingham's assassination (1628) and employed him as resident agent in Brussels, a difficult post (1631–1641) He is regarded as being a member of the "
Whitehall Group" a term used by Oliver Millar in a magazine article in 1956 and subsequently in a 1958 book. to describe those associated with Charles I who introduced a taste for Italian old masters to England.
While in Brussels as the English agent, Gerbier conspired with Flemish nobles to overthrow their Spanish governors and then sold the secret of the conspiracy to the King of Spain. King Charles never found out and Gerbier was knighted in 1638 and appointed Master of Ceremonies, in charges of the royal "shows and entertainments" but was disappointed not to receive
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings.
As the most notable archit ...
's post of Surveyor of the King's Works.
His court appointment put him in contact with the Lord Treasurer,
Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland
Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, KG (1 March 157713 March 1634/1635), was Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Lord Treasurer of England under James I and Charles I, being one of the most influential figures in the early years of Char ...
, for whom Gerbier advised on the construction of a house and garden at Putney Park, Roehampton, Surrey, which was demolished in the eighteenth century (Colvin). For the same patron he supervised the equestrian statue of Charles the First, now at Charing Cross.
A political feud soon led to Gerbier's replacement in 1641, followed by a couple of decades during the Civil War and the Commonwealth in which he improvised a living, ventured a banking scheme in France, made a gold-hunting venture to
Guiana
The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word ''Guayanas'' (''Las Guayanas''), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
* French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France
* ...
, kept a painting academy in
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is an area in the East End of London northeast of Charing Cross. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the common land, Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heat ...
, and allied himself to Cromwell and his republican government, with a profession of loyalty to the Parliamentarians in 1642-43 and a dedication to
Lord Fairfax
Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron
Lord Fairfax of Cameron is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. Despite holding a Scottish peerage, the Lords Fairfax of Cameron are members of an ancient Yorkshire family, of which the Fairfax baron ...
of a lecture on military architecture (1650),
In 1653 he published an account of the evil effects on sovereigns of wicked and pernicious favourites.
[Gerbier, Balthazar (1653), Les effects pernicieux de meschants favoris et grands ministres d'Estat Es provinces Belgiques, en Lorraine, Germanie, France, Italie, Espagne, & Angleterre., The Hague]
In 1660 he published ''A sommary description manifesting that greater profits are to bee done in the hott then in the could
icparts off the coast off America . . .'' Here he advocated the
enslavement
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
of
Africans as a means of increasing profits for investors as a) slaves are cheaper to maintain, and b) Africans work twice as hard as Christians. To the point that it is "not Christian-like to use rational creatures in that quality" he argues firstly that Africans brought directly from Africa had already been enslaved by other Africans, and had thus lived under the "Slavery off the Devil". Furthermore, he argues, by being introduced to the society of Christians their lives are improved as they are changed "as from brutes into rationals“.
With the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
, his suit for reinstatement as Master of Ceremonies was turned away, and he had to retreat into anonymity when the designs for the temporary triumphal arches for
Charles II's coronation were engraved; Colvin notes that J. Ogilvie's ''Relation of His Majestie's entertainment passing through the City of London to his coronation with a description of the triumphal arches'' (1661, 2nd ed. 1662) credits the design of the arches to Peter Mills "and another Person, who desir's to have his name concealed", whom Colvin surmises to have been the disgraced Gerbier, who refers to them in his ''Brief Discourse'' (1662). Colvin notes similarities with Rubens' designs for the
royal entry of the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp, 1635 (published 1642), with which Gerbier would have been familiar.
In the 1660s Gerbier's necessities induced him to advertise himself by publishing some essays on architecture: ''A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building'' (1662) and ''Counsel and Advise to all Builders'' (1663). He was commissioned to rebuild
Hampstead Marshall
Hamstead Marshall (also spelt Hampstead Marshall) is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the England, English county of Berkshire. The village is located within the North Wessex Downs. The population of this civil parish at t ...
, Berkshire, for
William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven (1608–1697), but died there, with the structure still in the works: the ''
piano nobile
The ''piano nobile'' (Italian for "noble floor" or "noble level", also sometimes referred to by the corresponding French term, ''bel étage'') is the principal floor of a palazzo. This floor contains the main reception and bedrooms of the hou ...
'' had not yet been begun. It was completed by Captain
William Winde
Captain William Winde (c.1645–1722) was an English gentleman architect, whose Royalist military career, resulting in fortifications and topographical surveys but lack of preferment, and his later career, following the Glorious Revolution, as ...
, but suffered a disastrous fire in 1718 (Colvin).
Publications
*
*
*
Notes
References
* Jane Campbell. 2019. "Sir Balthazar Gerbier’s Utopian Dreams of the New World, 1649–1660." in ''Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin Americ''a. Routledge.
*
Howard Colvin
Sir Howard Montagu Colvin (15 October 1919 – 27 December 2007) was a British architectural historian who produced two of the most outstanding works of scholarship in his field: ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840' ...
, ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840'' 4th ed. (Yale University Press, 2008).
*
Edward Croft-Murray
Major Edward Croft-Murray (1 September 1907 – 18 September 1980) was a British antiquarian, an expert on British art, and Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum from 1954 to 1973.
He was educated at Lancing Co ...
and Paul Hulton, ''Catalogue of British Drawings in the British Museum,'' 1960, pp 328–30.
* Lita-Rose Betcherman, "The York House Collection and its Keeper," ''Apollo'' (London, October 1970)
* Lita-Rose Betcherman. Buckingham's Man: Balthazar Gerbier, A Renaissance Man in 17th Century England
*
Edward Chaney
Edward Chaney (born 1951) is a British cultural historian. He is Professor Emeritus at Solent University and Honorary Professor at University College London (School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) – Centre for Early Modern ...
, entry in the ''Grove Dictionary of Art''.
*
Edward Chaney
Edward Chaney (born 1951) is a British cultural historian. He is Professor Emeritus at Solent University and Honorary Professor at University College London (School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) – Centre for Early Modern ...
, "Notes towards a Biography of Sir Balthazar Gerbier", in E. Chaney, ''The Evolution of the Grand Tour'', 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2000).
*
Filippo Baldinucci's
Artists in biographies by Filippo Baldinucci
Filippo Baldinucci's ''Notizie de' Professori del Disegno, Da Cimabue in qua, Secolo V. dal 1610. al 1670. Distinto in Decennali'' (or ''Notice of the Professors of Design, from Cimabue to now, from 1610–1670'') was a major art biography of Baroq ...
, 1610–1670, p. 19
Google books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerbier, Balthasar
1592 births
1663 deaths
English artists
People from Middelburg, Zeeland
Dutch Golden Age painters
Dutch male painters
Ambassadors of England to the Habsburg Netherlands
Knights Bachelor
17th-century Dutch architects