Exhibition | Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français
From L’Officiel Galleries & Musées:
Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 27 November 2012 — 17 February 2013
Musée des Beaux-arts, Tours, 16 March — 27 May 2013
Musées Royaux des Beaux-arts de Belgique, Brussels, October 2013 — January 2014
L’exposition présentée par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours réunit 75 dessins italiens et français réalisés du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle et appartenant aux musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, à Bruxelles.
Certaines de ces œuvres n’ont jamais été présentées en France et proviennent de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (1837-1910), offerte à l’état belge en 1911. Ces dessins ont été créés à Florence, à Bologne, à Rome, à Venise et ont permis la réalisation de grands projets comme le Palazzo Vecchio à Florence.
Vous pourrez également découvrir des feuilles d’artistes français rendues à Jean Cousin, Claude Déruet, Laurent de La Hyre, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Watteau, Joseph Benoit Suvée.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Stefaan Hautekeete, ed., Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Milan: Silvana Edoriale, 2012), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-8836623716, $65.
Les Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique organisent depuis 2001 d’importantes expositions de dessins autour des chefs-d’œuvre de leur collection : Dessins de Rembrandt et ses élèves en 2005, Dessins du Siècle d’or hollandais en 2007. La troisième manifestation réunira les plus belles feuilles françaises et italiennes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, provenant essentiellement de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (Breda, 1837- Bruxelles, 1910) donnée à l’Etat belge en 1911.
Le musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, première institution française à être associée à ces projets, réunira les plus belles feuilles françaises et italiennes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, provenant essentiellement de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (Breda, 1837- Bruxelles, 1910) donnée à l’Etat belge en 1911. Le public tourangeau découvrira 75 feuilles exceptionnelles d’artistes italiens qui ont participé à la décoration de grands projets de décoration à Florence (Palazzo Vecchio), à Rome (salles du Vatican), à Venise….tels que Paolo Farinati, Giovanni Stradano, Frederico Zuccaro, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, dit Le Bernin, Tiepolo…. ainsi qu’une sélection française opérée par Pierre Rosenberg, où seront présents les grands noms de la peinture, Jean Cousin, Claude Déruet, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Watteau… A cette occasion, une vingtaine de dessins français et italiens de la collection du musée de Tours seront confrontés à ces œuvres, notamment ceux de François Boucher, Louis-François Cassas, Jean Cousin, Jacques-Louis David, Prospero Fontana, Augustin-Alphonse Gaudar de Laverdine, Claude Vignons, mais aussi les nouvelles découvertes : Baglione, Bolzoni..
New Book | The Wallace Collection Catalogues: Gold Boxes
From Paul Holberton:
Charles Truman, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Gold Boxes (London: Paul Holberton, 2013), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0900785948, £100.
The 18th-century gold snuffbox was the ultimate fashion accessory – beautifully made, exquisitely carved and very expensive, and, like fashion, its form and ornament changed according to the taste of the time. The skills of the goldsmith, the enameller, the lapidary and the miniaturist combined to form a piece – always different – for the most discerning clientele that Europe has ever known.
The Wallace Collection has some of the finest, and certainly some of the most famous, gold boxes in the world. Paris was the centre of taste in the 18th century and the collection contains a remarkable group of boxes by the greatest goldsmiths of the period: Jean Ducrollay, Pierre-François Drais and Louis Roucel. Somewhat surprisingly the Wallace Collection, which is noted for its French works or art, has some very important German boxes by Jean-Guillaume-Georges Kruger of Berlin, Johann Christian Neuber of
Dresden and Ignatius Peter Krafft of Hanau.
Charles Truman, who has catalogued the collection of gold boxes, is one of the leading authorities on the subject. In this book he discusses the history of snuff-taking and the development, manufacture and collecting of gold boxes, with a particular emphasis on the design sources from which the craftsmen repsonsible for these wonderful works of art took their inspiration. These 99 pieces in the catalogue represent a brilliant cross-section of the products of the European goldsmith from approximately 100 years from the late 1730s. This book will prove invaluable to collectors, academics and students interested in the 18th century.
Call for Papers | The Sites of Opera
From Calenda (published 17 April 2013) and Le Blog de l’ApAhAu (with thanks to Pierre-Henri Biger). . .
Les lieux de l’opéra (XVIIe-XXIe siècle)
Opéra-comique, Paris, 21-23 November 2013
Proposals due by 15 May 2013
Alors que l’on observe depuis plusieurs années un rapprochement entre musicologues et historiens pour aborder la dimension spatiale et sociale des lieux de musique, les lieux de l’opéra n’ont guère fait l’objet d’une approche interdisciplinaire. Observés sous un angle unique, le plus souvent celui de l’architecture monumentale occupant une place à part dans l’espace urbain, ces lieux de spectacle méritent pourtant d’être abordés de façon plurielle. Ils doivent faire l’objet d’une réflexion prenant en compte la complexité des problématiques liées à ces espaces particuliers, qui sont eux-mêmes multiples. Destinés à accueillir des manifestations liant musique et théâtre, ils se prêtent également au jeu de la sociabilité aristocratique dans un premier temps, puis bourgeoise et, dans une certaine mesure, populaire. Intrinsèquement liés à la ville, ces lieux peuvent aussi être ceux offerts par une villa vénitienne, un manoir anglais ou un théâtre de verdure, reconsidérant l’image d’un espace perçu a priori comme essentiellement urbain. De même, si l’opéra est une forme lyrique traditionnellement représentée dans des lieux clos, de nombreuses expériences ont montré, dès le xviie siècle, qu’il pouvait s’épanouir en plein air, ce qui pose la question des rapports entre forme musicale et lieu d’exécution. Une étude des lieux de l’opéra permettra également de mener une réflexion sur la mutation des pratiques culturelles et sociales de la musique entre les XVIIe et XXe siècles, mutation en partie liée à la transformation des espaces qui hébergent et structurent l’activité musicale. (more…)
Exhibition | Trapani Coral
From the exhibition:
I Grandi Capolavori del Corallo: I Coralli di Trapani del XVII e XVIII Secolo
Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Catania, Sicily, 3 March — 5 May 2013
Museo Pepoli, Trapani, Sicily, 18 May — 30 June 2013
Il Museo Pepoli di Trapani ospiterà una grande mostra sui coralli trapanesi realizzati dai maestri artigiani della citt siciliana tra il XVII e XVIII secolo. Simbolo della bellezza e perfezione del creato, materia prima con l’oro per meravigliosi oggetti di culto, arredi sacri e profani, il corallo al centro di una grande mostra. Esposti per la prima volta capolavori provenienti da collezioni pubbliche e private che testimoniano come la lavorazione di questo straordinario materiale, in Sicilia e in particolare a Trapani, sia assurta a vera e propria arte.
In mostra oltre 120 preziosi manufatti di inestimabile valore selezionati con grande attenzione: gioielli e arredi sacri (calici, ostensori, crocifissi, reliquiari, rosari e presepi) e ancora calamai, saliere e raffinatissimi elementi darredo come specchiere, cornici, tavoli da gioco, scrigni e monumentali stipi destinati a case principesche e regge.
Si tratta di oggetti di grande valore artistico, realizzati con materiali pregiati per essere donati, tra il 500 e il 600, a principi e regnanti. Naturalia e Mirabilia erano esposti nelle Wunderkammer settecentesche, le cos dette stanze delle meraviglie, dove lappassionato collezionista raccoglieva oggetti della natura arricchendoli con materiali preziosi finemente cesellati in base allestro dellartista, filigrana d oro e d argento, splendidi oggetti destinati al godimento di pochi eletti nelle proprie dimore, piccoli musei ante litteram.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Valeria Patrizia Li Vigni Tusa, Maria Concetta Di Natale, Vincenzo Abbate, I grandi capolavori del Corallo: I coralli di Trapani del XVII e XVIII secolo (Milan: Silvana, 2013), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-8836625888, $65.
Il catalogo presenta ai lettori una rassegna di capolavori in corallo provenienti dalla Sicilia, regione dove la realizzazione di meravigliosi manufatti in questo materiale ha raggiunto nei secoli l’apice della bellezza e della maestria artigianale. Il corallo ha visto fiorire intorno a sè infinite credenze popolari, legate soprattutto alla sua forma e al suo intenso colore: carico di valenze apotropaiche, usato in passato anche in medicina, il corallo è soprattutto simbolo della bellezza e perfezione del Creato e per questo divenne la materia prima, insieme con l’oro, per la produzione di meravigliosi oggetti di culto e arredi sacri. Fra le opere qui documentate, tutte realizzate con il corallo raccolto a Trapani, lungo i fondali delle Egadi e intorno all’isola di Tabarca, spiccano sia gioielli, sia ostensori, crocifissi, reliquari, presepi, nonché elementi di raffinato arredo: specchiere, tavoli da gioco, cornici, scrigni, fino a monumentali trumeaux destinati a case principesche. Queste opere testimoniano la ricchezza e la qualità di alcune collezioni considerate fondamentali nel settore, ovvero quelle della Banca di Novara, del Museo Pepoli di Trapani, della Fondazione Whitaker e del Museo Diocesano di Monreale, qui documentate insieme a singoli pezzi di inestimabile valore apparteneti a raccolte private italiane e straniere.
Symposium | Textile Translations
From the conference website:
Textile Translations: Intermedia Processes of Textile Transfer in the Arts
University of Zurich, 6-7 June 2013
Organised by Anika Reineke and Anne Röhl (ERC-Project “Textile – An Iconology of the Textile in Art and Architecture,” University of Zurich)
Processes of transfer and translation are crucial to the production and fashioning of textile materials: In the production of textiles, images taken from other media are submitted to the structure of warp and weft or translated into loops, stitches and knots. Thus, every textile technique requires translations and alterations of the original draft, even if the relation of the transferred subject or pattern to the media varies according to the technique: In the case of a woven image or a textile print, image and support are inseparable, though an embroidered motif, however, can be clearly distinguished from its backdrop. Translations into the textile and vice versa inevitably entail variation, mutation and adaptation. In this way translation processes leave traces inscribed in the particular object.
Because of the variety of manufacturing processes and their flexibility and malleability as material, technique, medium and metaphor, textiles provide a number of starting points for future research on processes of transfer. The symposium Textile Translations seeks to investigate these. In doing so, it is not the intent to focus on the alleged hierarchy of the original and the copy – or a comparison of before and after – but rather on the process of translation and its effects and implications. In this regard, textiles can be positioned at the beginning and end of such processes, or even due to their flexibility and adaptability, embody transitory conversion. Focusing on the process as the ‘inbetween’, the interactions of textiles and other media are the main concern of the symposium.
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T H U R S D A Y , 6 J U N E
14:00 Anika Reineke and Anne Röhl (University of Zurich), Welcome and Introduction
I. Appropriation of Textile Crafts
Chair: Merel van Tilburg (University of Geneva)
14:15 Leena Crasemann (Freie Universität Berlin), Sewing. Unravelling. Cutting. Of Sewn Everyday Things and Textile Art Objects
14:45 Sara Martinetti (EHESS/INHA, Paris), The Fabricated Image. Pictorial and Textile Situations in the Work of
Robert Gober
15:15 Discussion
15:30 Caroline Schopp (University of Chicago) “…draw him from behind”. The Roth-Wiener Tapestry Collaboration,
1974–1998
16:00 Discussion
16:15 Coffee
II. Textile Transfer
Chair: Anne Röhl (University of Zurich)
16:45 Kathrin Fehringer (University of Erfurt), Textile Handarbeit als Raumkonstitutiv: Das Bild des ‚hortus conclusus’ in Flauberts Madame Bovary
17:15 Johanna Függer (University of Vienna), Hanna(h) Höchs Stickerei der Avantgarde
17:45 Discussion
F R I D A Y , 7 J U N E
9:30 Coffee and Welcome
III. Translations of Motifs, Patterns, and Objects
Chair: Anika Reineke, Tristan Weddigen (University of Zurich)
9:45 Vera-Simone Schulz (KHI, Florenz), Text(ile)s Translated. Woven Words in 14th-Century Italian Painting
10:15 Ariane Koller (University of Berne), Gewirkte Wissenschaft – Kartographierte Geschichte. Intermediale
Transferprozesse zwischen Tapisserien und Karten
10:45 Discussion
11:00 Coffee
11:15 Liza Oliver (Northwestern University, Chicago), Don Quixote in 18th-Century India. Translation and Migration of Indian ‘Kalamkari’ Textile Designs for France
11:45 Karin Westphal-Erikson (University of Copenhagen), Porous ‘Paintings’ – Asger Jorn’s Textile Art in between Painting and Architecture
12:15 Discussion
13:00 Closing remarks
Exhibition | Revisiting the Picture Gallery of Frederick the Great
From the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (SPSG):
The Most Beautiful Gallery: Revisiting the Picture Gallery of Frederick the Great
Sanssouci, Picture Gallery, Potsdam, 9 May — 31 October 2013
As for the gallery, after St. Peter’s in Rome, it is undisputedly the most beautiful thing there is in the world. –Marquis d’Argens to Frederick the Great, 1761
The Picture Gallery in Sanssouci Park ranks among the first and most magnificent buildings in Europe to be erected specifically for an art collection. Together with the paintings and sculptures selected by Frederick the Great, the building, adorned with portrayals of the arts and precious materials, constitutes a unique overall work of art. As a fitting expression of connoisseurship and education, at the same time it pointed to the importance of the Kingdom of Prussia. 250 years after it was first opened, visitors are now being invited to view through the eyes of Frederick this ‘queen’ of all gallery beauties.
The Picture Gallery was finished in 1763, and the cabinet was hung with paintings in 1764. Many of the masterpieces – for example, by Peter Paul Rubens and Carlo Maratta as well as by sculptors such as Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne and Louis-Claude Vassé – still hang here today. The collection of more than 180 paintings and sculptures has undergone powerful changes since its founding, however. The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg is now re-introducing the Gallery in a way that corresponds to the original furnishing concept of its royal builder.
For the first time since 1830, antique sculptures, on loan from the Collection of Antiquities and the Sculpture Collection at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as well as the Muzeum Narodowe in Poznan, are coming to Sanssouci, where they may be admired in the Gallery once again. Among the pieces is the famous statuette of the Girl Playing Knucklebones. The Frederician manner of hanging paintings has been visualized in a photograph presentation. Particularly distinctive is the new hanging of the paintings in the small cabinet: With the return of works in 2010 that were long thought to be war losses, a closer approximation to the historical wall-to-wall hanging has been achieved. Thus, it is now possible to experience the overwhelming gallery rooms in a completely new manner as architecture, painting, and sculpture engage with one another in a unique dialogue.
Catalogue: Die Schönste der Welt: Eine Wiederbegegnung mit der Bildergalerie Friedrichs des Großen (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2013), 144 pages, ISBN 978-342207184, €15.
Additional information is available at ArtDaily»
Forthcoming Book | The Museum of the Horse
From Prestel:
Philip Jodidio, ed., The Museum of the Horse (London: Prestel, 2013), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-3791352985, £30 / $50.
One of France’s most visited monuments, the Château de Chantilly features gardens by André Le Nôtre, a world-renowned art collection and impressive stables, which were the center of eighteenth-century French equestrian culture and transformed into a captivating museum in 1982. Now, under the auspices of the Aga Khan and the Foundation for the Safeguarding and Development of the Domain of Chantilly, the Museum of the Horse has undergone an extensive renovation. In addition to detailing the contents of the museum’s galleries, this beautifully illustrated volume explores the important role that Chantilly has played in horse racing and hunting. It takes readers on a tour of the historic stables and surrounding grounds and, in personal essays, looks at the close ties between horse and rider through the centuries.
Philip Jodidio is the author of more than 75 books on architecture.
Exhibition | Raynal: Un regard vers l’Amérique
From the Bibliothèque Mazarine:
Raynal: Un regard vers l’Amérique
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, 13 June – 15 September 2013
Curated by Gilles Bancarel and Patrick Latour
Le nom de Guillaume-Thomas Raynal reste attaché à son œuvre majeure, l’Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. Cette compilation à visée encyclopédique, l’un des grands succès de librairie de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, suscita autant de critiques que d’éloges de la part de ses contemporains. Elle apparaît comme pleinement représentative d’un paysage éditorial marqué par l’évolution du simple récit de voyage vers la réflexion philosophique sur le rôle de l’Europe dans le monde, particulièrement sur le continent américain.
Le tricentenaire de la naissance de l’abbé Raynal (1713-1796) est l’occasion de mettre en valeur la singularité du regard porté par un homme des Lumières sur l’Amérique, regard plongé dans l’actualité du moment – la guerre d’Indépendance dont il se fait le chroniqueur – mais aussi annonciateur des profondes transformations politiques et sociales qu’engagera la Révolution française, notamment l’abolition de l’esclavage. Ce regard est aussi le reflet des lectures multiples dont s’est nourri un auteur qui n’a lui-même jamais
traversé l’Atlantique.
Autour de différentes éditions de l’Histoire philosophique des deux Indes, l’exposition présente les ouvrages emblématiques de la riche production livresque consacrée, du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, au Nouveau Monde : récits de la découverte et des premiers établissements, relations de colons ou observations de voyageurs. La guerre d’Indépendance, la condition des esclaves dans les colonies européennes, la diffusion et la réception des thèses de Raynal y sont appréhendées par les témoignages, manuscrits ou imprimés, des penseurs des Lumières. Livres rares, journaux, documents d’archives ou simples brochures illustrent ainsi la place éminente occupée depuis 1492 par l’Amérique dans le débat d’idée européen et l’imaginaire collectif.
The Historical Journal, March 2013
From The Historical Journal:
David Gilks, “Attitudes to the Displacement of Cultural Property in the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon,” The Historical Journal 56 (March 2013): 113-43.
Abstract: The French state expropriated an enormous quantity of cultural property from across Europe during the Wars of the Revolution and Napoleon, but much was returned in 1815 after the fall of the Empire. This article examines contemporary attitudes to the displacement of works of art, antiquities, scientific specimens, and rare books. The seizures were controversial: since they occurred at a time when plundering the vanquished was already considered questionable behaviour, they attracted opposition and needed to be justified. The article identifies the resulting repertoire of attitudes, arguing that this repertoire evolved with changing circumstances and was more varied than hitherto maintained. By situating this repertoire in a larger historical context, the article also reassesses the extent to which attitudes were derivative and innovative. It contends that the disputation as a whole did not amount to a decisive rupture in the treatment of foreign cultural property during wartime, but that it was nevertheless remarkable in two respects: concepts from hitherto unrelated subjects were applied to considerations about cultural property; and the perceived conditions under which cultural property could be legitimately transferred were revised.
Exhibition | Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands
From the Manchester Art Gallery:
Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands, 1600-1800
Manchester Art Gallery, 24 May 2013 — 23 May 2014
Curated by Henrietta Ward
Aelbert Cuyp, River Scene with a View of Dordrecht, oil on panel (Manchester Art Gallery)
Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands, 1600-1800 is a new exhibition which brings together over 50 paintings from Manchester City Galleries’ exceptional 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and Flemish collection, one of the most important in the country. It includes exquisite paintings of everyday life, portraiture, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes by Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, Jacob van Ruisdael and many more. Some of these paintings have not been on display for tens of years, while others have benefited from recent conservation treatment.
For the first time these paintings will be juxtaposed with works by major contemporary artists such as Mat Collishaw’s Last Meal on Death Row, Texas series, sculptures of gnawed apples by Gavin Turk, and Rob and Nick Carter’s homage to Ambrosius Bosschaert: Transforming Still Life Painting. Alongside the seascapes will be Bachelor Machines Part I, a film by 2013 Northern Art Prize nominee Rosalind Nashashibi that focuses on the lives of an all-male crew on board the Gran Bretagna, a modern-day cargo vessel. This exhibition has been curated by Henrietta Ward, The National Gallery Curatorial Trainee supported by the Art Fund.
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From Hettie Ward’s blog for the exhibition, Manchester’s Dutch and Flemish Collection:
February’s Painting of the Month — Innocent Nostalgia or Outright Fraud?
Willem van Mieris, Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear,
16 x 12.5 cm (Manchester City Galleries)
This month’s painting is an extension of my previous post which looked at the fineness that can be found in Dutch paintings, particularly the fijnschilders, such as Willem van Mieris (1662-1747). We have 2 works by Willem van Mieris in the collection: Interior with a Cavalier and Lady and the Painting of the Month: Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear, which both came to the Gallery through the Assheton Bennett bequest. Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear is miniscule and only measures 16 x 12.5 cm (27 x 23.4cm framed) and is so intricately painted that you can’t make out a single brushstoke.
The painting is a portrait of the artist’s mother, Cunera van der Cock, but it is actually a copy of a painting by his father, Frans van Mieris (1635-1681). The original is in the collection of Worcester Art Museum, USA, along with its companion piece A Soldier Smoking a Pipe, or self-portrait of the artist. The Worcester pair dates to 1662 and both measure 14 x 11cm. You can see them here. Willem van Mieris also made a copy of the companion piece, now in a private collection.
Willem’s painting is an incredibly good copy, and whilst the initial reaction is to dismiss Manchester’s version as being just that, there is actually a lot more to it which touches on elements of fraud — to a certain extent — and brings into question the whole value of a fake. It is with great thanks to the recent research of the art historian and academic Junko Aono that this painting can be reassessed and valued in terms of the 18th-century revival of the Dutch Golden Age, and turns it from being an interesting copy to a fascinating bit of history. Much of what I have learnt about this painting has come from her article ‘Reproducing the Golden Age: Copies after Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’ in Oud Holland Vol. 121, 2008, no. 1, and I urge you to read it yourselves if you can get hold of a copy. . . .
Read Ward’s full posting here»
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