page_title: John Michael Wright
section_title: Antiquarian for Leopold of Austria
hierarchical_section_title: John Michael Wright / Rome and the Netherlands / Antiquarian for Leopold of Austria
context_page_description: John Michael Wright was a portrait painter in the Baroque style. Described variously as English and Scottish, Wright trained in Edinburgh under the Scots painter George Jamesone, and acquired a considerable reputation as an artist and scholar during a long sojourn in Rome. There he was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca, and was associated with some of the leading artists of his generation. He was engaged by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, to acquire artworks in Oliver Cromwell's England in 1655. He took up permanent residence in England from 1656, and served as court painter before and after the English Restoration. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he was a favourite of the restored Stuart court, a client of both Charles II and James II, and was a witness to many of the political maneuverings of the era. In the final years of the Stuart monarchy he returned to Rome as part of an embassy to Pope Innocent XI.
  Wright is currently rated as one of the leading indigenous British painters of his generation, largely for the distinctive realism in his portraiture.
context_section_description: In 1654, after a decade in Rome, Wright travelled to Brussels where his abilities were recognised by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria then governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Leopold employed him not as an artist, but as an advisor on antiquities. As the younger brother of the Emperor Ferdinand III and cousin of Philip IV of Spain, the Archduke had the wherewithal to amass a large collection of paintings and antiquities. Moreover, in the spring of 1655, the Archduke was enjoying a period of cordial relations with Oliver Cromwell, then Lord Protector of England. (Indeed, the two had been exchanging gifts of horses, and Leopold had provided Cromwell with choice tapestries and other artefacts for the refurbishment of the Palace of Whitehall. Cromwell also received an embassy from the Habsburgs congratulating him on his new office.) 
  Since the execution of Charles I in 1649, Leopold had been purchasing artworks from the royal collections and those of various aristocrats, and, against this background, commissioned Wright to travel to London and acquire further specimens. A passport was issued to him as "'Juan Miguel Rita, pintor Ingles, qua va a Inglaterra a procurar pinturas, medalas, antiguedades, y otras costa señaladas, que le hemosencargado..." to allow him to travel to England. The passport is dated 22 May 1655, and signed by the Archduke at Brussels, indicating that Wright had left Italy for Flanders by this time. (The addition of the saint's name, John, probably marks his conversion to Roman Catholicism at some time prior.)
  As one on an official mission, Wright would probably have offered greetings to Leopold's ambassador extraordinary in London, the Marqués de Lede, and to Alonso de Cárdenas, the regular Habsburg ambassador, who had also been engaged since 1649 in art procurement for the Spanish Monarch. The lack of records means that the timing and duration of this visit remain uncertain. However, de Lede left in late June, and de Cárdenas a few weeks later – as relations between Cromwell and the Habsburgs deteriorated – so Wright probably arrived back in Flanders, with any acquisitions he had made, just in time to learn of the Archduke's impending departure – and that of his huge art collection – from Brussels in the autumn of 1655.
  
  However, after the relocation of his patron to Vienna, Wright again visited London. On 9 April 1656 he passed through Dover, and the register of visitors indicates: 
  Michael Wright Englishman landed at Dover the 9th present out of the Pacquet boat from Dunkerque and came to London on the 12th and lodgeth at the house of Mrs Johnston in Weldstreet in the parish of Gyles in the fields in Middlesex and saith that having exercised the Art of Picture drawing in France & Italy & other parts the greatest part of his life, he intendeth shortly to returne to Italy where he left his family
   Perhaps tactfully, the record glosses Wright's employment in Flanders, (euphemistically referred to as "other parts") as England and the Habsburgs were now at open war, and it fails to mention his membership of the Accademia di San Luca, which would have identified him as a Roman Catholic.
caption: Archduke Leopold's Gallery in Brussels, for which Wright collected (painting by David Teniers the Younger c. 1650).[14]
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