ABSTRACT
Handel had died aged seventy-four on 14 April 1759 after an extraordinary career, one that allowed him little time to indulge his interests outside music. Yet his art collection was a substantial one, and sheds some light on his tastes, his social ambitions and the milieu in which he moved. Handel's collection was sold on the second day of Langford's auction, 28 February 1760, following the dispersal of the property of the artist John ['Jack'] Ellys. The pictures formed the most substantial part of the collection. One painting can be plausibly related to a particular, surviving work: a Narcissus in a landscape by Pier Francesco Mola, which could have been the picture now in Oxford. But as with Handel's paintings, it is worth remarking that Handel apparently possessed no topographical prints depicting either his native Germany or the town of Halle, his place of birth, although they may have featured on the eight maps on rollers that were sold together.
