page_title: Lumley inventories
section_title: History of the Lumley collections
hierarchical_section_title: Lumley inventories / History of the Lumley collections
context_page_description: The Lumley inventories are a group of inventories documenting the extensive collections of paintings, books, sculptures, silver and furniture accumulated by John, 1st Baron Lumley. The most celebrated of these, a manuscript volume which incorporates a considerable amount of heraldic and genealogical material as well as the inventory itself, is sometimes known as the "Red Velvet Book", and sometimes simply as "the Lumley Inventory". It is often dated to 1590, although it is in reality a more complex composite volume including material dating from 1586 to 1595. Further inventories were drawn up for purposes of probate on Lord Lumley's death in 1609; and others when parts of the collection were sold in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
context_section_description: The Lumley Inventories demonstrate Lumley's passion for collecting portraits. His collection was the largest in Elizabethan England and was housed in three of his residences – his house on Tower Hill as well as Lumley Castle and Nonsuch Palace. The collection included portraits of 196 contemporary sitters, and (unlike most inventories of the period) often named the painter.
  The nucleus of the collection was acquired from his father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, 19th Earl of Arundel. A dozen or so pictures from the collection of the Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester were incorporated into the Lumley collection. The collection included a portrait of Lady Jane Grey which may subsequently have become part of the Northwick Park Collection, although it was said to be of Catherine Parr.
  Lord Lumley was the uncle of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, a prominent connoisseur in the early 17th century. Arundel inherited some of Lumley's collection of paintings, including the portrait of the Duchess of Milan, now in the National Gallery. However, a considerable portion of the collection went to Lumley Castle and remained there, eventually being inherited by the Earls of Scarbrough. The Lumley collection of paintings was largely dispersed in sales that took place in 1785 and 1807. Many works from the inventories can be recognised by distinctive cartellini (trompe-l'œil representations of inscribed labels) added to some – but not all – of the paintings. An example of the cartellino can be seen on the portrait of Edward VI, after Holbein.
  The bulk of Lumley's library passed on his death as a gift to Henry, Prince of Wales, and in due course to the British Museum (now the British Library) in 1757.
caption: Portrait of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, by William Segar, showing the Lumley cartellino, now in the National Gallery of Ireland
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