Enfilade

New Book | The Material Culture of the Jacobites

Posted in books by Editor on April 3, 2014

From Cambridge UP:

Neil Guthrie, The Material Culture of the Jacobites (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 284 pages, ISBN: 978-1107041332, $95.

1107597021The Jacobites, adherents of the exiled King James II of England and VII of Scotland and his descendants, continue to command attention long after the end of realistic Jacobite hopes down to the present. Extraordinarily, the promotion of the Jacobite cause and adherence to it were recorded in a rich and highly miscellaneous store of objects, including medals, portraits, pin-cushions, glassware and dice-boxes. Interdisciplinary and highly illustrated, this book combines legal and art history to survey the extensive material culture associated with Jacobites and Jacobitism. Neil Guthrie considers the attractions and the risks of making, distributing and possessing ‘things of danger’; their imagery and inscriptions; and their place in a variety of contexts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, he explores the many complex reasons underlying the long-lasting fascination with the Jacobites.

Neil Guthrie is a lawyer by profession and has published articles on Jacobite material culture, law, and literary history, including “Johnson’s Touch-piece and the ‘Charge of Fame’: Personal and Public Aspects of the Medal in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in The Politics of Samuel Johnson (edited by H. Erskine-Hill and J. C. D. Clark, 2012).

C O N T E N T S

Introduction
1. ‘By things themselves’: the danger of Jacobite material culture
2. ‘Many emblems of sedition and treason’: patterns of Jacobite visual symbolism
3. ‘Their disloyal and wicked inscriptions’: the uses of texts on Jacobite objects
4. ‘Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis’: phases and varieties of Jacobite material culture
5. ‘Those who are fortunate enough to possess pictures and relics’: later uses of Jacobite material culture
Bibliography

Exhibition | Architectural Drawings of the Eighteenth Century

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on April 3, 2014

From the Museo di Roma:

Architectural Drawings of the Eighteenth Century / Disegni di architettura del Settecento 
Museo di Roma, 20 December 2013 — 30 June 2014

Lorenzo Possenti (Roma 1680/1690-1733) Progetti per la nuova chiesa di Sant’Andrea a Gallicano, 1731-1733 circa

Lorenzo Possenti, Progetti per la nuova chiesa di Sant’Andrea a Gallicano, ca. 1731–33

The drawings exhibited in the “Hall of graphics” were selected from the collection of the Museum of Rome and come mainly from the collection of Antonio Muñoz. They testify the various architectural structures in Rome during the eighteenth century, which have greatly contributed to the creation of the image of the city.

In addition to the projects for monumental works commissioned by the popes, such as the Trevi Fountain, the facade of St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls, there are those for minor works, such as small shrines, oratories, fountains and especially houses. A new type of building was conceived in this period: the apartment building, which helps to dramatically change the appearance of the city by marking its “gentrification.”

The designs, both by major architects (Ferdinando Fuga, Nicola Salvi) and other less well-known ones (Andrea Francesco Nicoletti, Girolamo Toma), are always very imaginative and extremely elegant from the point of view of graphics, especially those presenting the project to the potential buyer, the only means available to an artist to promote their work. Sketches, study sheets, design or academic drawings, and publications also allow to follow and better understand some important debates of the period relating to the “modern style” of the Roman Barocchetto opposed to the more austere “old style” or the difference between reproduction and imitation.

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