Perhaps the greatest art collector of his time: Archbishop Perrenot de Granvelle loved gardens and carpets

His unconditional loyalty to King Philip II of Spain was disastrous for his later reputation. After all, who still knows Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586), cardinal and grand seigneur in 16th-century Europe, with beautiful palaces in Brussels, Mechelen and Besançon? After the start of the uprising in the Netherlands against Spanish authority, Granvelle was no longer insecure about his life there, and he mainly operated from Rome, Naples and Madrid. Yet he has continued to live on as a refined art collector, even in Northern Europe. The exhibition in his former residence in Mechelen, the Hof van Busleyden city palace, bears witness to this with approximately 85 beautiful works of art and luxury objects from collections in Belgium, France and Austria, among others.

Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle was a son of the influential statesman Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle and followed in his footsteps as a secretary and diplomat in the service of the Habsburg monarchs Charles V and Philip II. In addition to his political activities, Granvelle followed an ecclesiastical career that made him a bishop at the age of 21 and later a cardinal. He emerged as a true Renaissance scholar and lover of art and antiquities.

Shiny black costume

The great international state he led is reflected in two works by leading European portraitists that open the exhibition. One was made in 1549 by Anthonis Mor, and shows Granvelle in a shiny black costume as an ambitious 32-year-old. The other was painted by Scipione Pulzone some thirty years later in Rome: Granvelle here is an arrived prelate, with a now long gray beard and dressed in a purple cardinal’s robe.

Objects such as books and prints, medals and carved stones, and a rare nautilus shell transformed with silver-gilt components into a drinking bowl in the shape of a chicken, illustrate Granvelle’s scientific and artistic interests. But no matter how beautiful they often are, it is not always clear whether the objects actually come from his own collection. It would also have been impossible to do justice in a single exhibition hall (even a large one) to the nature and extent of the collection of the man who was perhaps the most active private collector of his time.

The exhibition therefore makes the fortunate choice to emphasize one particular aspect of Granvelle’s interest, or actually two: his interest in tapestries and, relatedly, that in gardens.

Tapestries

Of the various monumental tapestries he owned, one is in Hof van Busleyden’s own collection: an impressive bird’s-eye view of the war actions during the conquest of Tunis under Charles V. The enormous weaving (365 x 575 cm) now has was exceptionally joined by four almost equally large and precious carpets that are today kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Woven with wool and silk in the Brussels workshop of Willem de Pannemaker (1564), they have a decorative edge with Granvelle’s cardinal’s coat of arms at the top.

Most likely they were made especially for the gallery of his representative city palace in Brussels. The carpets, spectacular in size and detail, always show an imaginative, openwork column architecture in strong perspective; they are placed in raked gardens, with accurately depicted flowers and fruits, birds and other, sometimes exotic, animals. The performances therefore fit in almost seamlessly with the real courtyard of the palace, which was overlooked by the windows of the gallery where they hung.

Specialized treatises and garden statues, such as a lifelike lying deer made of wood with real antlers on the skull, testify to Granvelle’s interest in all aspects of garden art. He himself was never able to enjoy the sophisticated spectacle in his Brussels palace. Even before completing his carpets, he had permanently fled the Netherlands.

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