David Teniers the Younger - Archduke Leopold William in his Gallery at Brussels - Google Art Project

Bartolomeo della Nave (? – 1636) was a Venetian merchant and art collector. Della Nave was born in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

and acquired a large art collection, that later was spread to prominent collections. Many of the artworks in his collection are known from an inventory dated 1636, which is often also assumed to be his year of death; with others this is uncertain, as they were bought in Venice for Hamilton, but their previous ownership by della Nave is only a strong presumption. Many of the paintings in his collection are still together today and form a part of the collection of the

Kunsthistorisches Museum The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. Their provenance records show "1636 Slg. Bartolomeo della Nave, Venedig; 1638-1649 Slg. Hamilton; Slg. Leopold Wilhelm", whereby the intermediary owners are shown to be

James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, KG, PC (19 June 1606 – 9 March 1649), known as The 3rd Marquess of Hamilton from March 1625 until April 1643, was a Scottish nobleman and influential political and military leader during the Thirty Year ...

(d. 1649) and the

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (5 January 1614 – 20 November 1662), younger brother of Emperor Ferdinand III, was an Austrian soldier, administrator and patron of the arts. He held a number of military commands, with limited success, and ...

(d. 1662). Most of della Nave's collection was bought for Hamilton (then still a Marquess) in 1636–38; he was one of the great collectors of the period in Britain. Hamilton's brother-in-law,

Basil Feilding, 2nd Earl of Denbigh Basil Feilding, 2nd Earl of Denbigh (c. 160828 November 1675) was a diplomat, politician and parliamentarian army officer during the English Civil War. He was the eldest son of William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh and Susan Feilding, Countess o ...

(as he later became) was English ambassador to Venice, and helped to arrange the purchase. Hamilton, who was a Royalist commander in the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

, was executed in 1649 after losing the Battle of Preston to

Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...

. Most of his collection was bought that year by

, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647 to 1656. Many can be seen in the gallery paintings of his collection by

David Teniers the Younger David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II (bapt. 15 December 1610 – 25 April 1690) was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile arti ...

, in reduced copies by him, and in ''

Theatrum Pictorium ''Theatrum Pictorium'', or ''Theatre of Painting'', is a short-hand name of a book published in the 1660s by David Teniers the Younger for his employer, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. It was a catalog of 243 Italian paintings in the Ar ...

'', the printed catalogue of the best Italian paintings, with engravings after the Teniers copies. At his death in 1662 Archduke Leopold bequeathed his collection to his nephew, the

Emperor Leopold I Leopold I (Leopold Ignaz Joseph Balthasar Franz Felician; hu, I. Lipót; 9 June 1640 – 5 May 1705) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. The second son of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, by his first wife, Maria An ...

. The imperial collection of paintings mostly reached the Kunsthistorisches Museum by stages, at a range of dates. One painting that did not reach Vienna was ''

The Death of Actaeon ''The Death of Actaeon'' is a late work by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, painted in oil on canvas from about 1559 to his death in 1576 and now in the National Gallery in London. It is very probably one of the two paintings the artist st ...

'' by Titian (

National Gallery, London The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

), which the archduke gave to Queen

Christina of Sweden Christina ( sv, Kristina, 18 December ( New Style) 1626 – 19 April 1689), a member of the House of Vasa, was Queen of Sweden in her own right from 1632 until her abdication in 1654. She succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus upon his death ...

about 1656, when she was staying in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

.Penny, 253 The collection included many portraits by

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

and others, but none of the sitters have been identified as Della Nave himself.

Notes

References

Nave, Bartolomeo della - merchant, collector
in

Grove Art Online ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

* Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): ''The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II, Venice 1540–1600'', 2008, National Gallery Publications Ltd, {{DEFAULTSORT:Nave, Bartolomeo della 1636 deaths Republic of Venice merchants Italian art collectors 17th-century Venetian people