It wasn't quite The Da Vinci Code, but rumours of a 'lost' portrait of Hugh O'Neill sent Flight of the Earls expert Hiram Morganon an artistic treasure hunt
In November of last year, after a lecture on the Flight of the Earls in Dundalk's County Museum, I was told by a local priest that the nearby St Patrick's Cathedral had an old painting, supposedly containing a portrait of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. When I rang the administrator of St Patrick's, Fr Gerry Campbell, he was somewhat mystified by an enthusiastic historian rattling on about some painting they had. Eventually he understood me and walked around to the painting. He described a dedicatory inscription by Arthur O'Neill and identified St Francis and St Brigid alongside the Virgin and Child - but not another bearded figure in bishop's garb. Could this mystery figure be Hugh O'Neill, who had so famously departed with the Flight of the Earls in 1607?
He promised me digital photographs and realised that my original informant had been Michael Murtagh, one of his predecessors, currently parish priest at Dunleer.
Downloading the images, I was amazed to discover an elaborate artwork. It was plainly a sacra conversazione: a Counter-Reformation style painting in which the saints are paying homage to the Madonna and Child. Fr Murtagh also relayed a note originally attached to the back of the painting. It read: "Facts relating to the O'Neill Madonna purchased by Fr Stokes from Sayers in Cork."
This altarpiece is definitely a 17th- century Italian work.
It was brought to Ireland by the late Sir Pope Hennessy, who was consul at Constantinople, and was sold later to an R Sayers of Cork. It has been in storage for more than 20 years. According to the best expert judgment, it was painted somewhere between 1635 and 1655. The painter is unknown.
THE LATIN INSCRIPTION is as follows: "Illustrissimus Dmus Arturis O Neill excellentissimi principis Hugonis Magni O Neill ex fratre nepos altare esthoc magnae matri poni curavit", which translates as "The Rt Hon Lord Arthur O'Neill, nephew on his brother's side of the most excellent chief the Great Hugh O'Neill, had this altar erected to the great Mother of God". It is signed J Stokes, Dundalk, October 19th, 1943.
So I had a full-scale mystery; an artistic and historical detective story on my hands. I wondered whether the painting's donor might have been trying to make a cult out of Hugh O'Neill. Some people had their patron saints painted with their own faces but these were usually their namesakes. However, when I forwarded the files to Dundalk native Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, I got short shrift: "Surely it can't be O'Neill; why would he be dressed like a bishop? He doesn't look all that much like O'Neill to me - there were a lot of pictures of old geezers with long noses and a beard!"
Then my UCC colleague, Damian Bracken, an expert on early Christian Ireland, checked out the old geezer. "That's St Patrick dressed as a Tridentine bishop." And he pointed out what was to him an obvious Patrician symbol: the bishop wasn't carrying a cross of Lorraine but a patriarchal cross. The Irish had claimed St Patrick as a patriarch of Christendom. I immediately rang Fr Campbell. "Is there anything resembling snakes around the bishop's feet?" He re-examined the painting. In the gloom underneath the bishop there was not only a snake but also a newt and a toad. It was indeed St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.
I was now on firmer ground. I knew that the Irish on the continent in the early 17th century had promoted St Patrick to establish Ireland's international Catholic reputation. First port of call was Thomas Messingham's book Florilegium Sanctorum Hiberniae (Paris, 1624). It contained stories of St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columbkille, plus engravings. You did not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that the painter of the O'Neill Madonna had used the same book. But he had depicted only two of Ireland's patron saints, inserting St Francis instead of St Columbkille. The explanation for Columbkille's omission was obvious - he was the patron of the O'Donnells, traditional rivals of the O'Neills. The O'Neills, based in the archdiocese of Armagh, associated themselves with the national saint.
But who was the donor - self- proclaimed "most illustrious lord Art O'Neill"? Given the supposed date of the painting and his description as the nephew of the Great O'Neill on his brother's side, this can be none other than Art Óg O'Neill, son of Art McBaron, Hugh O'Neill's half-brother. Art had accompanied his younger brother Owen Roe to Flanders, where they joined the Irish Regiment in the service of Spain in the years preceding the Flight of the Earls in 1607. Having risen through the ranks, he was killed at the siege of Barcelona alongside his cousin John O'Neill, third earl of Tyrone, in 1640.
Where did he erect this altarpiece? The inclusion of St Francis in the painting, and the close connections between the Franciscan Friars and their compatriots in the Spanish forces, point to an obvious place - the Irish Franciscan college of St Anthony's, Louvain. It was one of the powerhouses of the Irish Counter-Reformation. The Italianate nature of the painting might make the Irish Franciscan College of St Isidore in Rome an alternative - the more so because Art O'Neill's coat of arms, topped with a crown, mirrors that on the O'Neill grave in San Pietro in Montorio. Indeed, this Franciscan church, where the earls are buried, is itself a possibility. Nevertheless, it could still be the work of an Italian artist or an Italian-trained artist working in the Spanish Netherlands.
The painting was brought to Ireland by the Pope-Hennessys, a prominent Cork Catholic family. Maj Gen Ladislaus Pope-Hennessy (1875-1942), the one seemingly credited in the accompanying note as having acquired the painting, served in Mesopotamia and on the Western Front in the first World War, and was an early proponent of dominion status for Ireland. After their house, Rostellan Castle, was burned in the War of Independence, the Pope-Hennessys departed for London. Presumably the painting was put in storage and later sold off when Ladislaus died. It was bought from R Sayers,according to Fred Rosehill, one of Cork's remaining Jewish inhabitants, an antiques dealer on MacCurtain Street.
When I finally managed to see the painting in Dundalk in the company of Fr Campbell and Fr Murtagh, I was astonished by its size. It was bigger than expected - about one-and-a-half metres wide and two metres high - but plainly no Caravaggio. The Madonna and Child were well-executed but St Brigid and St Francis were standard fare. St Patrick, however, stood out brilliantly. From Fr Murtagh, I discovered more about Fr John Stokes, the redoubtable figure who ran the parish between 1935 and 1950.
BACK IN CORK I discussed the painting with art historian Flavio Boggi, who lectures on the Italian Renaissance. He was sure it was Italian, possibly of the Emilian school. Clearly Fr Stokes had bought well in purchasing the O'Neill Madonna. But why did he decide to acquire it in the first place? Besides the obvious wish of the administrator of St Patrick's Cathedral to buy a painting of the saint, there may be another reason. Stokes's interest might have been Hugh O'Neill; Seán O'Faolain's popular biography, The Great O'Neill, was published in 1942. Its frontispiece was an image entitled Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Despite this caption, O'Faolain only refers to this as a putative portrait of O'Neill in his preface. Remarkably, this grainy black-and-white image is very similar to the face of the bishop - except the negative has been flipped.
Interestingly, Maj Gen Ladislaus Pope-Hennessy's son, John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy (1913-94), had joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1938, and would eventually become one of its most famous directors. Since the O'Faolain image of O'Neill is not extant in the museum, he himself must have been the source. If this is the case, it must also indicate that the bishop in the altarpiece was already associated with O'Neill. How such an identification came about is strange, because the bishop appears different from the "True Effigy" of O'Neill published in Rome in 1680.
Though contemporary propagandists advocating O'Neill's cause tried to associate his struggle with the prophecies of St Patrick, whether or not St Patrick in this painting has been given the face of Hugh O'Neill will remain a matter of conjecture.
Clearly Dundalk has a baroque masterpiece in its midst, albeit in need of cleaning, conservation and further research. It is not a first-class painting signed by a recognised Italian master of the 17th century. But its worth does not lie in aesthetics.
Its real significance, its true importance, is in terms of Irish heritage. It connects us to the many Irish men and women who, during the plantations and persecutions in Ireland, carved out military, religious and commercial roles for themselves in Counter-Reformation Europe. In particular, it connects us to the O'Neills, the Irish Colleges, and has with some sort of serendipity made its reappearance in the year we are commemorating the Flight of the Earls.
Hiram Morgan is a lecturer at the department of history in UCC