The Leeswood Tondo - Summary (Continued)
It would have been politic to keep the acquisition secret, even from succeeding generations of the family. Not only did the Commonwealth Commissioners pursue the missing pictures from the royal collection, but also, after the Restoration, Charles II and his brother James II continued the hunt for many years.
For over twenty years the lost pictures were actively pursued, and, when found, seized. A picture, as a pledge against a considerable loan which would not be repaid, would have been kept hidden while the investigations continued. Bounty hunters and informers - such as the Wynn's creditor Edward Bass - were used by the investigators, so that the fewer people, who knew of a secreted painting, the better. In a family with such myriad relations and connections as the Wynns, it would have been imprudent to share the knowledge with even the closest relative. The anonymity of The Tondo may have its origins in these circumstances.
This assumes that The Tondo was in the collection of Henrietta Maria. If this were the case then the painting's most probable route into London was either through Charles I's purchase of the Duke of Mantua's collection, or through the largesse of the Vatican.
Starting in 1636, a procession of gifts of pictures and other art-works arrived from the Vatican for the Queen in London. Many of these gifts are documented, but the scant descriptions of the paintings make identification difficult : it is known that many of them were of religious subjects by Italian Renaissance artists. The gifts were to bolster Henrietta Maria in her faith, and to persuade her to advance the cause of the Vatican to her husband. Cardinal Barberini, the co-ordinator of the Vatican's "persuasion through art", collected the work from all over Italy from public and private collections.
Excerpt from Dr Murdoch Lothian's PhD thesis 'The Methods Employed to Provenance and to Attribute Putative works by Raphael'