From The London Review of Books:
The Pastons of Norfolk were an accidentally remarkable family. The survival of their detailed correspondence – the first of its sort in English – means we know the 15th-century Pastons better than we know any medieval king or queen. The letters, first published in 1787, revealed a family on the make. Clement Paston, a yeoman farmer born at the end of the 14th century, set his son up as a lawyer. The lawyer bought land, and his son John inherited more, including Caister Castle, from his wife’s cousin, Sir John Fastolf. The Pastons always married well. They fought to maintain the Fastolf inheritance – in the courts against competing claimants but also with crossbows and poleaxes against the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. They came through the disorder of the 15th century intact, swore allegiance to Henry Tudor, gained security of property and found knighthoods, seats in Parliament and minor positions at court. In the 16th century another Clement, a sea captain and courtier, built a great fortune from what was more or less piracy. The reckless strain in the family alternated with the prudent. He married a rich widow and built Oxnead Hall, ten miles north of Norwich. Clement’s great-great-nephew, William, inherited it in 1632.
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Six years later William set out on a Grand Tour that would take in the German states, Italy, Athens, Constantinople and Cairo. He built up a magnificent collection, a ‘world of curiosityes’ according to his cousin Thomas Knyvett, which we know about from inventories and wills, and also from the strange, large painting called The Paston Treasure. Its date and artist are unknown but it was almost certainly painted around the time of William’s death in 1663 and commissioned either by him or his son Robert. Having existed in obscurity for centuries (on its donation to Norwich Castle Museum, the last owner warned: ‘the painting is very faded, of no artistic value, only curious from an archaeological point of view’), it is now the subject of a huge research project and accompanying exhibition.
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The painting is a salmagundi. It shows many fine objects from the Paston collection (some of which have been traced for the show), along with musical instruments and books. The flowers, fruit, lobster and swathe of red curtain are commonplaces of Dutch still life; its large and luxurious arrangement puts it in the tradition of pronkstilleven, or ‘ostentatious still lifes’.
Link to the rest at The London Review of Books
PG notes the use of a lovely word, salmagundi.
I love that word! I must find an excuse to use it in a novel. 🙂