Whitehall — Edition Insights

The Banqueting House as Architectural Centerpiece

Loftie devotes considerable attention to Inigo Jones's Banqueting House, the only surviving building of the Whitehall complex. He reproduces detailed engravings from Kent's Inigo Jones, including sections and elevations, and discusses the building's design in relation to Jones's unrealized plans for a full palace rebuilding. The text notes that Jones produced at least two designs, one with a waterside front and another recorded in Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus. Loftie's analysis is technical but accessible, pointing out classical details such as the pyramidal dial installed in the Privy Garden in 1669. He also uses the Banqueting House as a chronological anchor, tracing its use from royal entertainments through the execution of Charles I, which he calls "the great tragedy which gave Whitehall a world-wide celebrity."

The Dispersal of the Royal Collection

A substantial portion of the excerpts concerns the fate of Charles I's art collection after the Civil War. Loftie catalogs specific paintings—a Raphael Madonna fetching £800, Correggio's "Mercury teaching Cupid" sold for £800, Rubens's "Peace and War" presented to Charles but later valued at only £100—and traces their movements through European collections. He notes that sales ceased in 1653, the year of Cromwell's inauguration as Protector, and credits Cromwell's taste with saving Mantegna's and Raphael's cartoons. The narrative follows post-Restoration efforts to recover the dispersed works, including a legal dispute with Van Leemput over a Van Dyck portrait. This section demonstrates Loftie's method of using auction records and inventories to reconstruct the palace's material culture.

Daily Life and Ceremonial at Court

Drawing on a 1637 painting by Van Bassen showing Charles I and his queen dining in public, Loftie describes the elaborate service: 86 tables daily, with the king's table offering 28 dishes and the queen's 24. He quotes Mr. Law's catalogue of Hampton Court pictures to detail the hall's decoration, including a raised daïs for spectators and wine cooling in brass bowls. The excerpt also mentions the custom of royalty dining in public, a practice that made the palace a stage for royal display. Loftie supplements this with references to Hentzner's travel account and the funeral of Henry VIII, weaving together visual and textual sources to evoke the sensory environment of the court.

Readers should approach Loftie's text as a work of Victorian architectural history that combines topographical survey with art-historical detective work. The illustrations—including Kip's 1724 panorama and Vertue's plan of 1680—are integral to his argument, so consulting them alongside the text is essential. Loftie's focus on the Banqueting House as a surviving fragment of a lost complex gives the book a elegiac quality, while his detailed treatment of the art collection offers a case study in how political upheaval reshapes cultural patrimony.

The rain slid down the window as I lingered over Loftie’s account of Charles I’s dispersed art, imagining those canvases carted off to auction rooms. That loss felt so tangible, a world dismantled piece by piece. Later, idly, I found myself thinking of faces in crowds, and reached instead for Pictures by Gavarni — Edition Insights. Different century, different medium, yet the same quiet ache of fleeting moments caught and gone.