Brooke, Jonas Langford
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- Brooke, Jonas Langford
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(c.1758 - 84), 1st surv. s. of Peter Brooke of Mere, Ches.; Magd. Oxf. 1777; suc. fa. 1783; d. Milan.
1783 - 4 [dep. London 16 Aug. 1783] Turin (21 Nov.), Genoa, Modena, Florence (9 - 30 Dec.), Pisa (31 Dec. 1783), Rome (8 - 15 Jan. 1784), Naples (16 Jan. - Feb.), Rome (Feb. - 1 May), Spoleto, Foligno, Loreto, Florence (8 - 11 May), Bologna (by 12 May), Venice (18 May - 1 Jun.), Padua, Vicenza, Verona (2 Jun.), Brescia, Bergamo, Milan (5 Jun. - d. 19 Jul.)
Brooke went on a tour of France and Italy with Dr John Parkinson, whose prolix journal furnishes a detailed account of their itinerary (Parkinson jnl.MSS). Brooke did not survive his journey, dying of a fever in Milan in July 1783, eight months after they had entered Italy. They were in Italy at the same time as the Berry family and Brooke's old college friend, Sir James Graham and his tutor Thomas Brand (c.1751 - 1814), all of whom they met frequently in Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan.
In Florence they attended a reception given by Horace Mann and Lord Cowper in honour of the King of Sweden. In Rome they called on Thomas Jenkins, who induced Lady Elizabeth Foster to introduce them to Cardinal de Bernis, and they were entertained at the Barberini Palace. In Naples they were shown antiquities by James Clark and entertained by Lord Tylney. On their return to Rome they studied the palaces and antiquities under the direction of James Byres, whose arduous course was spread over five weeks from 4 March to 7 April. On 17 March, for example, Parkinson described how, with a large party of English people, they visited Cardinal Zelada whose house was 'fill'd from one end to another with curiosities but ... there seemed to be a great deal of trash', and then went on to the Temple of Minerva, Mars the Avenger, the Arcade beneath the Quirinal and Trajan's pillar; and on 23 March they visited the churches of S.Atanasio, S.Maria sopra Minerva, the Gesu, S.Maria in Aquiro, S. Bartolommeo all' Isola, S.Cecilia, S.Francesco a Ripa, S.Calisto and the Farnese Palace. Parkinson visited Batoni in February or March 1784 but found his painting rooms 'stank so abominably that it was impossible to remain in it for any time'. In June 1784 Brooke was at the Auberge Imperiale in Milan,1 already mortally ill, and Parkinson's journal ends with Brooke's death on 19 July.
Brooke had bought and commissioned a number of works of art in Italy. In Naples two views by Pietro Fabris, in Rome a mosaic picture which cost £;50, a chimneypiece and two tables of alabaster, and in Venice on 28 May 1784 he 'sat to Mr [H.D.] Hamilton for his Picture', which has been identified as the portrait sold in 1994 (though this could also be Graham, see below). Brooke had previously been encouraged by Philip Metcalfe to look at the work of English artists who 'take the lead in Rome', particularly Jacob More and James Durno.2 In 1785 More wrote that he had had a commission 'to paint two Picturs ... for one Mr Brook a Young Gentleman who lately died. I have received a letter from his relations Countermanding the Order'.3 Brooke's purchases were sent back to England from Leghorn after his death; the shipping agent telling Brooke's sister, Elizabeth, apropos of the Borghese Graces (who originally supported an alabaster urn) that 'no man's urn deserves better to be supported by the Graces than his'.4
Several of Brooke's acquisitions appeared in the Mere Hall sale in 1994 (Christie's, 23 May): two landscapes by Jacob More, a copy of the Venus de Medici by Innocenzo Spinazzi (dated 1784), a copy of the Borghese Graces in white marble, a pair of marble Campana urns, a set of six Neapolitan views by della Gatta, and H.D. Hamilton's portrait of his friend Sir James Graham, showing him leaning on Brooke's tomb.
1. Berry Jnls., 1:126. 2. Quoted by F. Russell, Christie's sale cat., 23 May 1994, 130. 3. Ibid., lot 239. 4. Ibid., lot 114.