Enfilade

From Rizzoli:

Toto Bergamo Rossi, with photographs by Matteo de Fina, an introduction by Count Marino Zorzi, and contributions by Diane von Furstenberg and Peter Marino, Venice and the Doges: Six Hundred Years of Architecture, Monuments, and Sculpture (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2023), 364 pages, ISBN: 978-0847899296, $135.

While Venice is better known for soft light and atmospheric painters, this elegant new volume transforms our understanding of Venetian sculpture and its place in the city’s artistic tradition. A feast for the eyes and an entertaining, erudite read, this book opens with an illustrated survey of the 120 doges who led the Venetian Republic before continuing with a detailed survey of the incredible array of sculptures and monuments that memorialize them. Although celebrated for painting and music, Venice has a sculptural tradition that was overshadowed by Florence and Rome. Based on new scholarship, this volume reveals the true magnificence of six centuries of Venetian sculpture. With the oldest works dating to the thirteenth century, these masterpieces fill the city’s churches and include pieces by great masters from the Lombardo family to Antonio Rizzo, Jacopo Sansovino, Alessandro Vittoria, and Baldassare Longhena. The sculptural marvels of Venice tell the story of a procession of doges—politicians, scholars, conquerors, merchants, and even a saint, Pietro Orseolo—over a thousand-year history. Engaging text highlights the adventurous, eventful, and sometimes glorious lives of these legendary figures, while the newly commissioned photography showcases the grandeur and beauty of a neglected aspect of Venice’s cultural history.

Francesco ‘Toto’ Bergamo Rossi has been the head of the Venetian Heritage Foundation since 2010. Matteo de Fina specializes in photographing art, interiors, and architecture. Count Marino Zorzi, former director of the Biblioteca Marciana, comes from one of the oldest Venetian families with a doge in their lineage. Diane von Furstenberg is a noted philanthropist and celebrated fashion designer, best known for the wrap dress, as well as founding her eponymous global luxury lifestyle brand. She is International Ambassador for the Venetian Heritage Foundation. Peter Marino, FAIA, is the principal of Peter Marino Architect PLLC, the New York–based architecture firm he founded in 1978. Known for his residential and retail work for the most iconic names in fashion and art, he is also Chairman of the Venetian Heritage Foundation and serves on the board of directors for International Committee of L’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs.

Franziska Kleine’s review of the book (in German) appeared at ArtHist.net earlier this month (16 May 2023). From Gebr. Mann Verlag:

Torsten Korte, Tiepolo und das Kostüm: Konstruktion von Geschichte im Historienbild (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2023), 332 pages, ISBN: 978-3786128922, €79.

Luxuriöse, fantasievolle Gewänder in Tiepolos Bildwelten des Rokoko

Giambattista Tiepolos Malerei ist reich an prächtigen, fantasievollen Gewändern, die zum besonderen Reiz seiner Bildwelten beitragen. In den historisierenden und orientalisierenden Gewändern drückt sich ein Blick des 18. Jahrhunderts auf Geschichte und kulturelle Identitäten aus, dem das Buch durch bildtheoretische Reflexionen nachgeht.

Die Anziehungskraft der Malerei von Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) beruht besonders auf der Darstellung von Kostümen. Die Helden und Heldinnen seiner Historienbilder sind in aufwendige, luxuriöse und fantasievolle Gewänder gekleidet. Dabei handelt sich keineswegs um dekoratives Beiwerk—vielmehr setzt Tiepolo historische und orientalisierende Kleider kenntnisreich ein und visualisiert dadurch komplexe Geschichtskonzepte. Anhand ausgewählter Hauptwerke des Künstlers wirft Torsten Korte einen neuen Blick auf diesen bisher kaum beachteten Aspekt. Seine theoretische Reflexion zur Gattung des Historienbildes reicht dabei über das 18. Jahrhundert hinaus.

Torsten Korte, Studium der Kunstgeschichte, Philosophie und Musikwissenschaft in Bonn und Venedig, Promotion an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Seit 2021 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz.

From Penguin Random House:

Celia Bell, The Disenchantment: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2023), 368 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0593317174, $28.

In 17th-century Paris, everyone has something to hide. The noblemen and women and writers consort with fortune tellers in the confines of their homes, servants practice witchcraft and black magic, and the titled poison family members to obtain inheritance. But for the Baroness Marie Catherine, the only thing she wishes to hide is how unhappy she is in her marriage, and the pleasures she seeks outside of it. When her husband is present, the Baroness spends her days tending to her children and telling them elaborate fairy tales, but when he’s gone, Marie Catherine indulges in a more liberated existence, one of forward-thinking discussions with female scholars in the salons of grand houses, and at the center of her freedom: Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti, the androgynous, self-assured countess who steals Marie Catherine’s heart and becomes her lover. Victoire possesses everything Marie Catherine does not—confidence in her love, and a brazen fearlessness in all that she’s willing to do for it. But when a shocking and unexpected murder occurs, Marie Catherine must escape. And what she discovers is the dark underbelly of a city full of people who have secrets they would kill to keep. The Disenchantment is a stunning debut that conjures an unexpected world of passion, crime, intrigue, and black magic.

Celia Bell has written short fiction for VQR, The White Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and Bomb Magazine. She is the winner of the 2018 VQR Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction and holds an MFA from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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From Macmillan (in September):

David Diop, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, Beyond the Door of No Return: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), ISBN: 978-0374606770, $27.

The highly anticipated new novel by David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.

Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman’s name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée—a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade—to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart. Written with sensitivity and narrative flair, David Diop’s Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal’s oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.

David Diop was born in Paris and was raised in Senegal. He is the head of the Arts, Languages, and Literature Department at the University of Pau, where his research includes such topics as eighteenth-century French literature and European representations of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black, was awarded the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction.
Sam Taylor has written for The Guardian, Financial Times, Vogue, and Esquire; he has translated such works as the award-winning HHhH by Laurent Binet and the internationally-bestselling The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker.

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From Penguin Random House:

Tania James, Loot (New York: Knopf, 2023), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0593535974, $28.

Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to build a giant tiger automaton for Tipu’s sons, a gift to commemorate their return from British captivity. His fate—and the fate of the wooden tiger he helps create—will mirror the vicissitudes of nations and dynasties ravaged by war across India and Europe. Working alongside the legendary French clockmaker Lucien du Leze, Abbas hones his craft, learns French, and meets Jehanne, the daughter of a French expatriate. When Du Leze is finally permitted to return home to Rouen, he invites Abbas to come along as his apprentice. But by the time Abbas travels to Europe, Tipu’s palace has been looted by British forces, and the tiger automaton has disappeared. To prove himself, Abbas must retrieve the tiger from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered art.

Tania James is the author of three works of fiction, most recently the novel The Tusk That Did the Damage (Knopf), which was named a Best Book of 2015 by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, and NPR, and shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Financial Times Oppenheimer Award. Her short stories have appeared in One Story, The New Yorker, Granta, Freeman’s Anthology, Oxford American, and other venues. James is an associate professor of creative writing at George Mason University and lives in Washington, DC.

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From Simon & Schuster:

Neil Jordan, The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small: A Novel (Pegasus Books, 2023) 352 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1639364534, $27.

From Academy Award-winning film director Neil Jordan comes an artful reimagining of an extraordinary friendship spanning the revolutionary tumult of the eighteenth century.

South Carolina, 1781: the American Revolution. An enslaved man escaping to his freedom saves the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a British army officer and the younger son of one of Ireland’s grandest families. The tale that unfolds is narrated by Tony Small, the formerly enslaved man who becomes Fitzgerald’s companion—and best friend. While details of Lord Edward’s life are well documented, little is known of Tony Small, who is at the heart of this moving novel. In this gripping narrative, his character considers the ironies of empire, captivity, and freedom, mapping Lord Edward’s journey from being a loyal subject of the British Empire to becoming a leader of the disastrous Irish rebellion of 1798. This powerful new work of fiction brings Neil Jordan’s inimitable storytelling ability to the revolutions that shaped the eighteenth century—in America, France, and, finally, in Ireland.

Neil Jordan is an award-winning Irish film director, screenwriter, and novelist. His first book, Night in Tunisia, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He is the winner of an Academy Award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish PEN Award, a BAFTA, and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Jordan’s films include Interview with the Vampire, Angel, The Crying Game, Michael Collins, The End of the Affair, and The Butcher Boy. He lives in Dublin.

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From Penguin Random House:

Stephanie Marie Thornton, Her Lost Words: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (New York: Berkley Press, 2023), 448 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0593198421, $17.

1792. As a child, Mary Wollstonecraft longed to disappear during her father’s violent rages. Instead, she transforms herself into the radical author of the landmark volume A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she dares to propose that women are equal to men. From conservative England to the blood-drenched streets of revolutionary France, Mary refuses to bow to society’s conventions and instead supports herself with her pen until an illicit love affair challenges her every belief about romance and marriage. When she gives birth to a daughter and is stricken with childbed fever, Mary fears it will be her many critics who recount her life’s extraordinary odyssey…

1818. The daughter of infamous political philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, passionate Mary Shelley learned to read by tracing the letters of her mother’s tombstone. As a young woman, she desperately misses her mother’s guidance, especially following her scandalous elopement with dashing poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary struggles to balance an ever-complicated marriage with motherhood while nursing twin hopes that she might write something of her own one day and also discover the truth of her mother’s unconventional life. Mary’s journey will unlock her mother’s secrets, all while leading to her own destiny as the groundbreaking author of Frankenstein.

A riveting and inspiring novel about a firebrand feminist, her visionary daughter, and the many ways their words transformed our world.

Stephanie Marie Thornton is a high school history teacher and lives in Alaska with her husband and daughter.

From Routledge:

Isabelle Baudino, Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain (New York: Routledge, 2023), 202 pages, ISBN: 978-1032153643, $160.

Extending the scholarly discussion of visual history, this book examines eighteenth-century engraved book illustrations in order to outline the genealogy of the modern visualisation of the past in Britain. This study is based on a body of more than a hundred engraved historical plates designed in the second half of the eighteenth century in Britain and published in more than a dozen pictorial histories. Focusing on these previously unstudied engravings, this work contributes to the study of eighteenth-century visual culture and is informed by current interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of visual and book studies. Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain is about the urge to envision the past and about the establishment of the new relationship between visual media, visuality, and history in eighteenth-century Britain.

Isabelle Baudino is Senior Lecturer at the École normale supérieure de Lyon, France.

C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1  Picturing History
2  Reinventing the Past
3  The Historical Genre
4  Visual History as a New Language

Appendix
Select Bibliography
Index