The Sale of the Late King's Goods

Brotton has taken on a cracking good story, confidently snaking through the complicated politics of seventeenth-century European art-dealership, from Venice and the Low Countries to the Escorial and back into the side-streets of turbulent London and the thousand-odd rooms of Whitehall Palace. He beds this vast mass of convoluted activity with its great cast of characters from de Critz to Van Dyck – its rivalries, frauds, enthusiasms, bankruptcies, brinkmanship and U-turns – deeply into the political, social and artistic context of the time. This is no pillow book: that Brotton maintains his authorial grip on both the grand sweep and the elaborate detail while controlling the drive of his multi-layered narrative is a superb achievementKate Colquhoun, Daily Telegraph

Provocative . . . admirably researched and compellingly narratedMiranda Seymour, Sunday Times

Jerry Brotton, a young historian with an enviable command of the secondary literature, both historical and art-historical, and a good understanding of the way objects and works of art assume ideological significance, has told the amazing story of Charles I’s collection and its subsequent sale in fullCharles Saumarez Smith, Literary Review

Jerry Brotton holds a magnifying glass to the amassing of the royal collection and its later dispersal . . . bustles with fascinating detailHistory Today