Note 22 — Chapter VII

It is curious that during all this period of great international anxiety and important negotiations, the talk about pictures is still constantly to be met with in the diplomatic correspondence. At one time, in June 1635, Suero de Quiñones wished to send two pictures as a present to King Charles. "I (Hopton) and King (Charles's) painter have seen them, and think they are good, particularly a Venus and Adonis of Luqueto. The other piece is by Tintoret. Suero de Quiñones is poor, but of quality. I know not why he should give his pictures away thus." But Quiñones, urged doubtless by poverty rather than his quality, did not give them away after all, and perhaps never intended to do so; for Hopton writes months afterwards: "Quiñones has played the knave, and sold his pictures." On another occasion (July of the same year), Hopton expresses his delight to Cottington that Labrador's paintings had come to hand at last. "The painter who made the landskips," he continues, "is now dead, and his pieces are much sought after and highly prized. I have a few of them and am using diligence to get some more, at your lordship's service. If the man had lived I think I had carried him with me to England; for he was grown much out of love with his own country, and was much my friend." MS. Notebook.