The satire of Pope, ‘where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre,’ has done much to lower the reputation of Verrio in the history of art. In reality the faults of taste in his decorative paintings are characteristic of the age in which he lived rather than of the artist himself. He was employed by Charles II to graft into England upon the new italianised architecture of Wren, Vanbrugh, and other architects, the gaudy decorations which had been brought into such prominence and fashion in France, especially at Versailles. In his earlier paintings at Windsor Verrio's designs were infinitely superior to those at Hampton Court, by which in this day he is principally known. The paintings at Hampton Court show a tasteless exuberance and confused medley of subject. On the other hand Verrio was a master of his art, and his decorative paintings, like those of his successors, Laguerre, Streater, and Thornhill, have remained in a fair state of preservation when more modern works of a similarly ambitious nature have entirely perished. He frequently introduced portraits into his paintings, sometimes with a satirical intent (cf. PECK, bk. vi. p. 41). His own portrait is at Althorp.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum; Law's History of Hampton Court Palace; Evelyn's Diary; Bryan's Dict. of Painters, ed. Graves and Armstrong; Pyne's Royal Residences; Cunningham's History of London, ed. Wheatley.]
VERSTEGEN, RICHARD (fl. 1565-1620), antiquary. [See Rowlands, Richard.]
VERTUE, GEORGE (1684–1756), engraver and antiquary, was born, of Roman catholic parents, in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in 1684. His father is said to have been a tailor. He was apprenticed to a Frenchman who was at the time one of the chief heraldic engravers in London, but who shortly afterwards became bankrupt and returned to France. Vertue then worked for seven years with Michael Van der Gucht [q. v.], and in 1709 established himself independently. Being recommended to Sir Godfrey Kneller [q. v.], he was employed by him to engrave some of his portraits; and when that painter instituted an academy in 1711, Vertue became a member, and drew there assiduously. A portrait of Archbishop Tillotson, after Kneller, for which he received a commission from Lord Somers, and a head of George I, which he produced immediately after the accession of that monarch, confirmed his reputation; and throughout his career he had constant employment as an engraver of portraits, his plates of that class, many of them frontispieces to books, numbering over five hundred. They are all faithful transcripts of the originals, and many of them have considerable artistic merit. In 1730 he issued a set of ‘Twelve Heads of Poets;’ and when the brothers Knapton projected their folio edition of Rapin's ‘History of England,’ published in 1736, they engaged him to execute the plates, and upon these he was occupied for three years. For the same publishers he engraved some of the portraits in Birch's ‘Heads of Illustrious Persons;’ but in this work he was superseded by Houbraken, whose more brilliant but less truthful productions were preferred to his. From an early period Vertue was ardently devoted to antiquarian research, and by his incessant and conscientious labours in this field he has earned enduring fame. Obtaining the patronage of the Earl of Oxford, Lord Coleraine, and other noblemen of similar tastes, he travelled in their company through many parts of England, visiting the great country houses and other places of interest, and making careful notes and drawings of everything of artistic and antiquarian value that he met with, and his engravings of these subjects are almost as numerous as his portraits. On the revival of the Society of Antiquaries in 1717 he became a member, and was appointed its official engraver, in which capacity he executed nearly all the plates published in ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ down to 1756, including the portrait of Richard II at Westminster, the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and a view of Waltham Cross. From 1723 to 1751, all the Oxford Almanacs, with one or two exceptions, were designed, and engraved by Vertue, who introduced views of the colleges and incidents connected with their foundation. In 1740 he commenced his valuable series of nine ‘Historic Prints’ from paintings of the Tudor period, which included the ‘Visit of Queen Elizabeth to Blackfriars’ (miscalled the ‘Procession to Hunsdon House’); ‘Henry VII and his Queen, with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour;’ ‘The Cenotaph of Lord Darnley;’ and ‘Edward VI granting a Charter to Bridewell Hospital.’ The original copperplates of these were purchased after his death by the Society of Antiquaries, and republished by them in 1776; they were again reprinted more recently. In 1741 Vertue lost his great patron, the Earl of Oxford; but he found others in the Duchess of Portland, the Duke of Norfolk (for whom he engraved the large plate of the Earl of Arundel and his family, after Van Dyck),
