Charles Allston Collins (1828-1873). Berengaria's Alarm for the safety of her husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, awakened by the sight of his girdle for sale at Rome (The Pedlar). 1850. Oil on canvas. 40 x 49 1/2 inches (101.2 x 125.7 cm). Collection of Manchester Art Galleries, accession no. 1896.1. Purchased from Harry H. Martyne, 1896. Image courtesy of Manchester Art Gallery via the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivitives licence. [Click on all the images to enlarge them.]
Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan
Collins exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1850, no. 535, accompanied by these words in the catalogue:
Berengaria's alarm for the safety of her husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, awakened by the sight of his girdle offered for sale at Rome. "The Provencal traditions, declare that here Berengaria first took the alarm that some disaster had happened to her lord, from seeing a belt of jewels offered for sale which she knew had been in his possession when she parted from him." The Queen was accompanied by Joanna (sister of Richard I) and the Princess of Cyprus.
Queen Berengaria had sailed separately from her husband when she departed from Acre on her own return from the Holy Land. She spent the winter of 1192-93 in Rome because of her fear of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Following Richard's participation in the Third Crusade he left to sail for home on 9 October 1192. His ship was wrecked near Aquileia in northern Italy, which forced Richard, disguised as a Templar, to take a perilous overland route through central Europe in order to get back to England. He was captured near Vienna by Leopold of Austria, whom Richard had made an enemy of during the crusade. Richard was kept a prisoner at Dürnstein Castle. His captivity eventually became known in England but not his exact whereabouts. Pope Celestine III subsequently excommunicated King Leopold because detention of a crusader was contrary to public law. On 28 March 1193 Richard was handed over to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, who imprisoned him in Trifels Castle in the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany. The Emperor demanded 150,000 marks for Richard's release and finally on 4 February 1194, following payment of the ransom, Richard was freed. Berengaria was not reunited with her husband, however, until the end of 1195.
Collins's treatment of this subject is based on the passage that was included in the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue that was taken from Volume One, page 308, of Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, published in three volumes from 1840-48. Strickland makes no mention, however, of a pedlar showing the girdle to Berengaria as shown in Collin's painting so this was obviously his own invention.
The Pedlar was the first painting Collins executed under the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism and he began it in 1849. William Holman Hunt recalled in his memoir of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: "Collins has sent in his year's labour in a picture of Berengaria seeing the Girdle of Richard offered for Sale In Rome. Under the influence of Millais he had in this work discarded his early manner, and striven to carry out our principles" (Hunt, Vol. I, 201). Malcolm Warner saw the influence of Millais in this work: "The medieval costumes and setting, high colour key, attention to detail and use of symbolism are reminiscent of [Millais'] Isabella. On the other hand, there is a smooth prettiness about the female figures which is typical of more conventional British artists of the time" (80). Allen Staley felt, in fact, that Collins was doing little more than to caricature Millais: "His Berengaria's Alarm for the Safety of Her Husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850, is a weak reflection of Millais' Isabella of 1849" (14).
Julian Treuherz also remarked on the painting's debt to Millais and mentioned Collins's use of typological symbolism:
Berengaria's Alarm for the Safety of Her Husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, Awakened by the Sight of His Girdle Offered for Sale at Rome is the original, though rather cumbersome title of The Pedlar. In the Brotherhood, Collins was a follower and not a leader: his work owes much to Millais, who brought him into the circle. His style suddenly changed from academic dullness to Pre-Raphaelite sharpness and brightness, but his use of the mannered linear style has a static and lifeless quality, lacking the intensity and brilliance of Millais. Nevertheless, The Pedlar is an attractive picture: the main figures are clearly (perhaps too clearly) modelled and highly finished, and the background is full of quaint details such as the artist's signature made to appear part of the stool, the tapestry of the story of Joseph, the scroll also referring to Joseph, the embroidery, and the illuminated manuscript of the Gospels. Joseph is included deliberately, for, like Richard Coeur de Lion, he was recognized in his absence by his clothing, and the story of Joseph and his brothers is sometimes thought to be a prefiguration in the Old Testament of the story of Christ in the New. Florentine art is recalled by Collins's playful interest in the perspective of the tiled floor, the arcade, and the hedges in the garden. Pre-Raphaelite Paintings, 31, 33]
Details. Left to right: (a) The pedlar's donkey. (b) The illuminated manuscripts on the floor. (c) The tapestry showing Jacob being shown Joseph's blood-stained coat.
In Collins's painting Richard's wife, Berengaria of Navarre, and two ladies-in-waiting who are likely Joanna the sister of King Richard I and the Princess of Cyprus, are shown in a large medieval hall. Berengaria has been working on her embroidery at a table in the centre of the room. She is embroidering a lion design, an obvious symbol of her husband. She is standing and gazing at an old pedlar dressed in black, who kneels before her and offers to sell her an elaborately decorated belt from his box of wares. The queen obviously becomes alarmed when she recognizes it as having belonged to her husband and fears he may have been killed during his return from the crusade. A scroll and medieval manuscripts litter the colourful intricate tiled floor in the right foreground. Treuherz has identified the source of "the book open at a highly coloured and elaborately painted full page miniature" as having been taken from the first page of the Gospel of St John from the twelfth-century Arnstein Bible in the British Museum (Pre-Raphaelite Papers, 156). The background consists of a series of elegantly decorated arches through which can be seen the hedges of a garden. To the left a young servant boy holds the pedlar's donkey. To the right are two tapestries inscribed "Ye hystory of Joseph" relating to the Old Testament story of Joseph. One of these relates to his father Jacob being presented with Joseph's bloodstained coat of many colours. The typological symbolism depicted in the tapestry is well discussed by George P. Landow. Collins obviously chose this Biblical subject for a reason, with the despair of Jacob on seeing his son's bloodied coat echoing the anguish of Berengaria on seeing her husband's belt, both concerned over the possible death of their loved one.
Another critic, Saad Mohammed KadhumAl-Mailiky, found that "The grouping of the figures (one stooping, one kneeling) around the strong horizontal lines of the table, which is being used as a workbench, and the distant vistas, are actually quite similar to Millais's controversial Christ in the House of His Parents (18). Millais' painting was also shown at the Royal Academy of 1850 and Collins would have watched its genesis and have been very familiar with it. While Millais' painting proved to be highly contentious at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1850, Collins's painting did not. The critic for The Art Journal merely damned it with faint praise by finding nothing offensive in it: "No. 535 Berengaria's alarm for the safety of her husband Richard Coeur de Lion, awakened by the sight of his Girdle offered for Sale at Rome, C. Collins. This is another of these works painted in imitation of the productions of the early Florentine school. It is not a subject for nude display, there is therefore nothing offensive in it" (175).
Links to Related Material
Bibliography
Al-Maliky, Saad Mohammed Kadhum. "Charles Allston Collins's Paintings of 1850s." University of Basrah, College of Education for Human Sciences, Department of English, 17-19. https://faculty.uobasrah.edu.iq/uploads/publications/1709056417.pdf
Berengaria's Alarm for the Safety of Her Husband, Richard Coeur de Lion,.... Art UK. Web. 13 September 2024.
Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Two Volumes. London: MacMillan and Co. Ltd., 1905.
Maas, Rupert. "The life of Charles Allston Collins (1828-73): and his painting The Devout Childhood of St Elizabeth of Hungary." The British Art Journal XV, No. 3, (Spring 2015): 38-39.
Richard I of England Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England#Explanatory_notes.
Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal XII (1 June 1850): 165-78.
Treuherz, Julian. "The Pre-Raphaelites and Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts." Pre-Raphaelite Papers. Eited by Leslie Parris. London: The Tate Gallery / Allen Lane, 1984, 153-69.
_____. Pre-Raphaelite Paintings from the Manchester City Art Gallery. London: Lund Humphries, 1980. 13, 31 & 33.
Warner, Malcolm. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publications/Penguin Books, 1984, cat. 27, 79-80.
Last modified (commentary added) 13 September 2024