Sir Robert Southwell (c.1506-1559) judge and politician

  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand
  • About the artist
    As a young man Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, a native of Haarlem, was travelling from Haarlem to Seville when he was shipwrecked near Lisbon. Local inhabitants planned to kill survivors of the wreck, thinking them to be pirates. However, Vroom showed them small religious paintings, which he had intended to sell in Seville and the Portuguese decided the party were Christian and spared them. Vroom later lived at Setúbal, where he painted sea pieces. He had earlier spent two years in Rome and also knew Spain and France. He travelled to England, where he was commissioned by the Lord Admiral (the Earl of Nottingham) to make cartoons for tapestries of the Spanish Armada campaign of 1588. These were destroyed in the Houses of Parliament fire of 1834.
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  • Details
    Title
    Sir Robert Southwell (c.1506-1559) judge and politician
    Date
    Medium
    Engraving
    Acquisition
    Origin uncertain
    Provenance
    Discovered in Royal Courts of Justice 1994
    GAC number
    17174