Coke, Thomas
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- Coke, Thomas
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(1697 - 1759), e. s. of Edward Coke of Holkham; suc. fa. 1707; educ. Turin Acad.; m. 1718 Ldy. Margaret Tufton, dau. of 6th E. of Thanet (she became Bs. de Clifford 1734); MP 1722 - 8; KB 1725; cr. B. Lovel 1728, and E. of Leicester 1744; FRS 1735.
1713 - 17 [dep. England 21 Aug. 1712] Mont Cenis (4 Nov. 1713), Turin (6 - 22 Nov.), Genoa (24 Nov. - 3 Dec.), Pisa (7 Dec.), Florence (18 - 26 Dec. 1713), Venice (1 - 29 Jan. 1714), Rome (7 Feb. - 8 Mar.), Naples (10 - 22 Mar.), Rome (24 Mar. - 6 Jun.), Siena (8 Jun.), Florence (10 Jun. - 2 Jul.), Bologna (4 - 15 Jul.), Forli (16 Jul.), Ravenna (18 Jul.), Ferrara (20 Jul.), Padua, Venice (22 Jul. - ), Padua (8 Aug.), Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Reggio, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Cremona, Milan, Pavia, Turin (3 Dec. 1714 - Mar. 1715), Milan (Mar.), Turin (Mar. - 12 Apr.) [France, Switzerland Germany, Apr. - Dec. 1715] Sicily (Jan. - Feb. 1716), [Malta] Amalfi, Capri, Naples (by 28 Apr. - 31 May 1716), Rome (2 Jun. - 12 Sep.), Florence (15 Sep. - 27 Oct.), Bologna (29 Oct. - 6 Nov.), Modena (7 - 14 Nov.), Reggio (14 Nov.), Parma (18 Nov. - 23 Dec.), Reggio (23 Dec.), Modena (24 Dec.), Bologna (26 Dec. 1716 - 1 Jan. 1717), Rome (8 Jan. - 5 Apr.), Florence (13 Apr. - 1 May), Bologna (1 - 5 May), Venice (May - 10 Jun.), Padua, Trento (14 Jun. 1717) [Vienna; Dover 13 May 1718]
'He grows tall, is plump, and looks fresh and vigorous', wrote his guardian in 1711; 'his passions are strong and violent, and should be early regulated, civilised and softened'.1 The following year, at the age of fifteen, Thomas Coke embarked on a comprehensive tour of Europe, in the course of which his interests in painting, sculpture, rare books, manuscripts and architecture grew rapidly; Dr Thomas Hobart was his tutor and Edward Jarret his valet.2 Jarret's account books at Holkham remain the most detailed of any British traveller's expenses in Italy in the eighteenth century and also furnish a detailed itinerary.3
Already Coke could write from Rome (24 May 1714), aged sixteen, that he had become 'a perfect virtuoso, and a great lover of pictures'. He had bought four small Pietro da Cortonas, commissioned a painting from Andrea Procaccini, (presumably the Tarquin and Lucretia at Holkham) and had sat to John Alexander, the Scot (1 Jun. 1714); his expenditure in Rome on pictures, mostly unspecified, amounted to some 4,500 pauls. He began his long association with William Kent, with whom he left Rome on 6 June 1714 travelling up through Florence (where a payment was made to 'Signr fogini the statuary'), Bologna and Padua to arrive in Venice on 22 July. There Coke sat to Rosalba Carriera (payment on 17 August; the portrait now untraced); there were also payments to Henry Trench, the history painter, on 9 and 24 August 1714, and Kent was paid 750 livres for pictures he had bought. On 8 August there was an excursion to Padua where Kent left Coke and set off for Parma. Hobart and Coke went in a leisurely fashion through Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Modena and Parma, to Turin where they arrived on 3 December. The thought of entering the Academy unsettled Coke. He did not like it, the manner of riding was poor, though the fencing master was 'the only one that is tolerable here', but, he wrote, 'I have bought several of the most valuable authors that have writ in Italian or about the country' and he reflected that 'certainly one of the greatest ornaments to a gentleman or his family is a fine Library' (3 Jan. 1715). He attended the Academy until April 1715.
For the remainder of the year he was in Switzerland, Germany and France, but he wished to spend 'one more winter in Italy, to confirm myself in the language and the virtuosoship of that Country'. In December 1715 he sailed from Marseilles to Palermo, to find Sicily preparing for war with the Turks; in March 1716 he was in Malta. The next month he was back on the Italian mainland in Naples.
In Naples Coke commissioned two pictures from Solimena and he again met Kent who had also been buying pictures and drawings for him (Coke paid for Kent's lodgings in Naples). They travelled together to Rome where Luigi Garzi was commissioned to paint a Cincinnatus (1 July) and Tomasso Chiari a Sophonisba and Massimissa (15 July); he bought a view of the Colosseum by Vanvitelli on 17 July (he acquired seven Italian views by him in all), and 'a book of the drawings of Rafael' on 29 August. Sebastiano Conca, to whom payments were made in 1716 and 1717, was commissioned to paint the huge Vision of Aeneas in the Elysian Fields, in which Coke appears as Virgil with a lyre. 'Signor Giacomo', the architecture master took Coke to see Vignola's Caprarola palace. On 11 September, just before he left, he paid 65 crowns for 'a Bust of Luci Verius and for a basso', his first recorded purchases of sculpture - and on the same day he paid for silver bowls to be presented to the painters Vanvitelli and Luti (with whom he had the closest dealings). The Lucius Antonius, and a Diana which Coke bought from the Casa Consiglieri, were two of the finest pieces of classical sculpture to leave Rome in the eighteenth century, and it was alleged that Coke was briefly imprisoned for having exported the Diana.4 Coke began to pay Biscioni, Prefect of the Laurentian Library, for 'ye Collation of manuscripts and drawings of Antiquitys and for ye edition of Livy', and Kent was paid for more drawings he had bought.
The remainder of the year was passed in northern Italy. On 1 January 1717 they set out from Bologna to spend the next three months in Rome. 'Sigr Cuc, Sigr Dr Ruberti maggiordomo, Monsu Giaret Camre' stayed in rooms near the Piazza di Spagna.5 Coke sat to Francesco Trevisani (Holkham), and Trench was paid 'on Account of his Drawing'. 'Signor Giacomo' was paid for 'the plans of the palace of Farnese' and for 'teaching my master Architect[ure]' on 15 March.
It was now apparent that Coke intended to build on a grand scale on his return to England. He continued to acquire ancient statuary and four boxes of statues and several pictures were sent from Rome. In Florence in April 1717 there were further payments to Biscioni for the Livy and in Padua he bought manuscripts from the library of S.Giovanni di Verdara. Biscioni introduced Coke to Apostolo Zeno, Bernardo Trevisani's librarian in Venice, from whom he bought more manuscripts. Joseph Smith of Williams & Smith, acting as Coke's agent in Venice, laid out over 7,000 Venetian livres for these purchases in Padua and Venice.6
Coke left Italy in June 1717, for Vienna, Prague, Dresden and Paris. He returned to England on 13 May 1718, within a month of his coming of age, but his collecting in Italy was to continue through agents. William Kent was sent £;200 on 25 June 1718 for pictures and antiquities bought in Rome; thirty years later Matthew Brettingham was buying a great deal of statuary in Rome for Lord Leicester (as Thomas Coke had become).
1. James, Coke, 174. 2. See Moore 1985, 33 - 9, 115 - 21; James, Coke, 179 - 93, 201 - 8. 3. Coke accts.MSS. 4. Haskell and Penny, 62. Michaelis, 59. 5. AVR SA, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. 6. F. Vivian, Consul Smith Collection, 12.