Republican relish ... Jerry Brotton's book
Jerry Brotton's The Sale of the Late King's Goods has made a bigger splash than most art history books, generating controversy as well as getting shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Brotton believes the Royal Collection is a disgrace, limiting access to works that are our property; and he's right. Yet the originality of his book lies in its challenge to the conservatism of art scholarship, a discipline dominated by a cabal of Christian bigots, fawning lickspittles, and would-be courtiers who have misrepresented the story of European high art in their obsession with "patrons", who imposed elite taste on unquestioning artists apparently unable to think for themselves.
Caravaggio, according to art historians, was a pious servant of Counter-Reformation faith whose sexuality is of no significance; Michelangelo was not a political man despite fighting in a revolutionary war; there is even a school that sees Goya as a good courtier whose satirical portraits of the Spanish royal family cannot possibly be anything but slavish.
Art in the past supposedly "cannot" have been anything but courtly, religious, and obedient, because it was paid for by monarchs and the church.
Brotton's book in contrast tells the story of how Cromwell's Commonwealth sold Charles I's collection after executing this art-loving king - and tells it with republican glee.
Everyone knows the cavaliers were stylish aristos and the Roundheads were art-hating, church-trashing Puritans - weren't they? And yet when the late king's goods went on sale, Protestant colonels bought Renaissance masterpieces. Brotton argues that in creating a market in the Old Masters, it was the Commonwealth that created a middle class appetite for art in Britain.
In assembling his great collection Charles wasn't even showing a particularly original sensibility, he claims, but merely conforming to the pattern of a European monarch. This may not be fair. After all, Charles managed to be portrayed by Bernini, employ Van Dyck and Rubens, lure Caravaggio's most brilliant followers Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio to London, and commission the architect Inigo Jones.
The cultural splendour of his reign was real - but so was the creativity of the republic whose supporters included Milton.
Brotton blows away a lot of cobwebs in writing the history of Baroque art, and does so without the usual sucking-up.
