New Book | Arthur Shurcliff and the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape
Published by the University of Massachusetts Press in association with the Library of American Landscape History:
Elizabeth Hope Cushing, Arthur A. Shurcliff: Design, Preservation, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1625340399, $40.
In 1928 the landscape architect Arthur A. Shurcliff (1870–1957) began what became one of the most important examples of the American Colonial Revival landscape—Colonial Williamsburg, a project that stretched into the 1940s and included town and highway planning as well as residential and institutional gardens. Shurcliff graduated from MIT with a degree in engineering in 1894 but was drawn to landscape architecture. Because no formal programs existed at the time, on the advice of Frederick Law Olmsted and with the aid of his mentor, Charles Eliot, he went on to piece together courses at Harvard College, the Lawrence Scientific School, and the Bussey Institute, earning a second B.S. two years later. He then spent eight years working in the Olmsted office, acquiring a broad and sophisticated knowledge of the profession. Opening his own practice in 1904, Shurcliff emphasized his expertise in town planning, through the years preparing plans for towns surrounding Boston and for several industrial communities. He also designed recreational spaces in and around Boston, including significant aspects of the Franklin Park Zoo and the Charles River Esplanade, one of Shurcliff’s major projects in the region. In this richly illustrated biography, Elizabeth Hope Cushing shows how Shurcliff’s early years in Boston, his training, his early design and planning work, and his experience creating an Arts and Crafts–style summer compound in Ipswich led to Colonial Williamsburg, the largest commission of his career and his most significant contribution to American landscape architecture.
Elizabeth Hope Cushing is the author of numerous cultural landscape history reports and coauthor of Community by Design: The Olmsted Firm and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press / Library of American Landscape History, 2013).
New Book | Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum
From Yale UP:
Sigrid de Jong, Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum in Eighteenth-Century Architectural Experience and Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0300195750, $85.
The 18th-century rediscovery of the three archaic Greek-Doric temples in Paestum in southern Italy turned existing ideas on classical architecture upside down. The porous limestone temples with rough, heavy columns were entirely unlike the classical architecture travelers to the site were familiar with. Paestum, exceptional in the completeness of its ruins, came to fascinate architects, artists, writers, and tourists alike, who documented the site in drawings and texts. In Rediscovering Architecture, Sigrid de Jong analyzes extensive original source material, including letters, diaries, drawings, paintings, engravings, and published texts, which are attractively reproduced here. The book offers new insights on the explorations of the site, the diverse reactions to it, and their dramatic and enduring effect on architectural thought, as they influenced intellectual debates in England, France, and Italy during the long 18th century. This unique study of the experience of architecture reconstructs Paestum’s key role in the discourse on classical architecture and its historiography, primitivism, the sublime and the picturesque, and the growing importance of science and history in architectural thought.
Sigrid de Jong is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Leiden University.
Call for Papers | CAA 2016 Session, Eros and Enlightenment
An addition to the CAA 2016 sessions:
ASECS Panel on Eros and Enlightenment at the
104th Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Washington, D.C., 3–6 February 2016
Proposals due by 31 May 2015
Session Chairs:
Nina Dubin, University of Illinois at Chicago (dubin@uic.edu)
Hérica Valladares, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (herica.valladares@gmail.com)
What would it mean to consider the eighteenth century through the lens of its evolving discourse on love? The explosion of a novel-reading public; the Enlightenment’s often nervous inquiry into love’s place among the ‘moral sentiments’ and its status in relation to the equally unstable category of friendship; the expansion of epistolary culture and the attendant vogue for love letter pictures; the libertine conceptualization of love as a ‘commerce’; homoeroticism as a cultural leitmotif; the ubiquitous presence of Cupid, even in such unexpected contexts as financial literature; the fixation on ancient notions of eros, from Ovid’s persistently popular Ars Amatoria to the unearthed remains of erotic frescoes: these and other phenomena suggest that love played a central yet complicated role in period self-imaginings, in ways that iconographic accounts of the era’s visual arts have perhaps not fully registered. This ASECS-sponsored panel seeks papers on all aspects of visual and material culture that expand, challenge, and enliven our understanding of eros in the eighteenth century.
Please email a title, abstract (1–2 pages, double-spaced) and brief CV (1–2 pages) to the panel chairs by May 31.
Call for Papers | Visual Print Culture in Europe, 1500–1850
From the University of Warwick:
Visual Print Culture in Europe, 1500–1850: Techniques, Genres, Imagery, and Markets
University of Warwick at Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Venice, 5–6 December 2015
Proposals due by 1 June 2015
Under Napoleon’s Empire we find London acting as a hub for printing caricatures of Napoleon in a range of languages, and with a number of distinctive styles. The print Die Universalmonarchie (pictured to the right) claims, for example, to have been published by Boydell & Co. in London in 1815, but the Boydells were based at Cheapside, not—as the print states—at Pall Mall (once the location of the late Josiah Boydell’s famous Shakespeare Gallery). The publication information would seem to be spurious, and the British Museum suggests that it was likely published in Paris. Is this print, then, German, French, or even possibly English? Who exactly is its market? How far is its imagery tailored to a particular ‘national’ audience and in what ways might it be distinctively comprehensible to such an audience? Besides London, what other European hubs were important, at what moments and why?
Visual Print Culture in Europe 1500–1850 aims to draw together scholars with a range of disciplinary skills to discuss the methods, representational forms, and distribution of and audience for visual print media in Europe between 1500 and 1850. Its seeks to de-nationalize the study of visual print culture, and to explore the extent to which interactions between engravers and printers, artists and consumers in Europe, and a range of common representational practices produced a genuinely European visual print culture—with local modulations, but nonetheless with a common core.
Papers can draw on a range of disciplinary backgrounds in exploring the exchange of techniques and processes, the analysis of imagery, and the identification of markets, and in analysing the conditions under which particular generic forms crossed or failed to cross national boundaries. Although the emphasis is on European visual print culture, the impact of that culture on, and its interaction with, the wider world is also of interest. The conference language will be English. The conference may be able to provide some financial assistance to those whose home institutions are unable to support their attendance, especially postgraduate students.
The conference organisers—acting under the European History Research Centre—are Mark Philp (History, EHRC Director, Warwick mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk), Kate Astbury (French Studies, Warwick), Mark Knights (History, Warwick), and David Taylor (English, Warwick). Proposals for papers should be submitted to t.smith.2@warwick.ac.uk by June 1st 2015, but please feel free to contact Mark Philp in advance with any queries.
Display | Canaletto’s ‘Regatta on the Grand Canal’
Canaletto, A Regatta on the Grand Canal, ca. 1740
(London: National Gallery)
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Compton Verney press release for the display now on view at the Victoria Art Gallery:
Canaletto’s A Regatta on the Grand Canal
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, 7 March — 3 May 2015
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 9 May — 21 June 2015
Sunderland Museums and Winter Gardens, 11 July — 13 September 2015
Canaletto’s masterpiece A Regatta on the Grand Canal (about 1740) is on loan from the National Gallery to promote the understanding, knowledge and appreciation of Old Master paintings to as wide an audience as possible. This large-scale work depicts the annual carnival regatta in Venice. Some of the figures in the foreground wear the bauta, a costume of white mask and black cape which was typically worn during the carnival. The painting shows the one-oared light gondola race. The arms of the Doge Alvise Pisani, who ruled from 1735 to 1741, are visible on the macchina della regatta or floating pavilion on the left, from which coloured flags were presented to the winners. The painting is a companion piece to Canaletto’s Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day of the same date.
The Masterpiece Tour is part of the National Gallery’s commitment to promote the understanding, knowledge and appreciation of Old Master paintings to as wide an audience as possible. This opportunity to bring hugely popular National Gallery paintings to the public’s doorstep is made possible by the generous support of Christie’s.
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This year Compton Verney and Bath’s Holburne Museum are also hosting a major exhibition addressing the Venetian artist: Canaletto: Celebrating Britain.
Exhibition | Canaletto: Celebrating Britain
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), London: The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards the City
(Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014)
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News of this exhibition appeared here at Enfilade in January, but the posting addressed only the Kendal venue (where it will have a slightly different title). Here’s the expanded version:
Press release from Compton Verney:
Canaletto: Celebrating Britain
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 14 March — 7 June 2015
Holburne Museum, Bath, 27 June — 4 October 2015
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, 22 October 2015 — 14 February 2016
This is the first time that these magnificent paintings and drawings by Canaletto have been brought together to provide an overview of Canaletto’s work created between 1746 and 1755, whilst he was visiting Britain. During his nine-year stay in Britain he documented not just traditional or established views and landmarks but also his (and his patrons’) latest achievements in architecture and engineering. The depictions of these new building works and projects, whether couched in Palladian, Baroque or Gothic styles, celebrate the new-found wealth and assurance of the British nation, reflecting contemporary developments in popular culture such as the rediscovery of Shakespeare; the success of Handel’s Messiah and the cult of King Alfred—which in turn spawned Arne’s immortal Rule Britannia.
Set into context, by 1750 the first generation of Palladian architects and patrons (Burlington, Campbell and Kent) were dead, and the nation was ready for a more liberal attitude to architectural design. Britain itself was a more stable and confident place than it had been even thirty years before. During the recent War of the Austrian Succession, the nation had held onto its new colonial gains and had succeeded in forcing Spain to open up South America to its traders. The economy was booming and the Jacobite threat had evaporated. Accordingly, a new, more confident generation, profiting from the ‘Georgian Revolution’ and increasingly assured by Britain’s status as a major world power, was prepared to be less regimented by Palladian rules and more eclectic in its architectural patronage seeking cultural inspiration not just from the Mediterranean but also from their own history.
This new found confidence signalled through the architecture of Baroque masters such as Wren (at St Paul’s and St Mary’s, Warwick), Hawksmoor (at Westminster Abbey’s west towers) and the Gothic revival marks Britain out as the new Venice, which was the real subject of Canaletto’s great canvases on display in this exhibition.
Information regarding programming at Compton Verney is included in the press release.
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From Paul Holberton:
Steven Parissien, Pat Hardy, Jacqueline Riding and Oliver Cox, Celebrating Britain: Canaletto, Hogarth, and Patriotism (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372780, £25.
By 1750 Britain was—as Jacqueline Riding shows—at peace with her traditional enemy, France, and had finally extinguished the threat from the Catholic Jacobites. The art of William Hogarth—particularly his great canvas O The Roast Beef of Old England of 1749—duly reflected this new sense of security and pride in being British. The economy was booming. Trade was expanding. And newly-confident Britons were no longer looking to Italy or France for their cultural exemplars, particularly in the field of architectural design.
It was the ferment of activity, the eclectic building boom which underlines Britain’s wealth and optimism and which marks the nation out as the new Venice, which is the real subject of Canaletto’s great canvases. Almost all of Canaletto’s views focused on a new architectural commission or a recent urban development, and were specifically designed to celebrate the latest achievements of British architecture and engineering. The Italian master was not alone. The vigorous and infectious patriotism of his works mirrored emerging nationalistic trends in popular culture during the 1740s, a decade which witnessed the canonization of William Shakespeare as a British hero, the creation of Handel’s Messiah and Arne’s immortal Rule Britannia, and, as Oliver Cox shows, the propagation of the nationalistic cult of King Alfred—and, more bizarrely, of the ‘flying king’ Bladud in Bath.
As Pat Hardy explains, the presence of a significant group of artists working in London prior to Canaletto’s arrival, led by Samuel Scott, along with the strength of existing artistic practices and traditions and the vibrant print market for maps and surveys of London, suggests that the impact of the arrival of Canaletto was more complicated than may have previously been perceived. At the same time, Canaletto’s legacy survived throughout the eighteenth century, in the hands of native artists such as William Marlow.
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Press release (November 2014) from Abbot Hall:
Abbot Hall was built in the Palladian style just three years after Canaletto left England for the last time. In 1746, by then in his late 40s, he first arrived for a prolonged stay in London. He was to remain for most of the following 10 years.
Already a well established artist, his work had proved very popular with aristocratic Englishmen doing their Grand Tour of Europe. In the 1720s, having started his career as a theatrical scene painter, Canaletto started painting his distinctive views of Venice, frequently featuring the many major churches designed for it by Palladio. One of his clients was Joseph Smith, an English merchant banker who lived in Venice for 70 years, for 16 of which he was the British consul there. Smith bought many Canaletto works for himself, and also helped arrange commissions from wealthy English collectors—by the late 1720s his works were already in the collections of Goodwood, Chatsworth, Woburn and of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Smith himself owned by far the largest collection of works, including 52 oil paintings and over 140 drawings, which he eventually sold to George III in 1762 for £10,000—half the sum the latter paid the previous year for Buckingham Palace.
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), Portrait of Canaletto with St Paul’s in the Background at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust Images/Hamilton Kerr Inst/Chris Titmus)
Canaletto came to London as an indirect result of the War of the Austrian Succession, which started in 1741. This had made continental travelling difficult for his wealthy English patrons, severely reducing his income. He therefore decided to move himself to London, setting up his studio near Golden Square. He arrived a month after Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil, and at the beginning of a period of unprecedented domestic peace and prosperity, which saw London turning into the world’s richest and largest city.
Although the bulk of the works with English subjects were of London scenes, with the Thames a frequent presence, he was also a regular visitor to the countryside, often at the invitation of his rich patrons, and painted several views of Warwick Castle, as well as of Alnwick, Badminton, Eton and Walton.
The rapid change of London’s architecture during his time here is also documented. In The Old Horse Guards from St James’ Park of 1749, he caught the Horse Guards Parade ground, complete with parading soldiers, as well as men peeing against the wall of Downing Street, and dozens of people promenading, showing the artist’s interest in depicting scenes of daily life. Within a couple of years, from almost exactly the same spot, he was back painting the new Horse Guards parade, the one that is still there today—it can be dated very precisely to 1752–53, as the clock tower still has scaffolding on it, while the south wing had yet to be constructed.
Canaletto is often accused of depicting London whilst using bright Venetian lighting. However, in both his pictures of the Horse Guards, the light is soft and diffused. In A View of Walton Bridge the sky is even more typically ‘English’—and un-Venetian—with the sun competing with storm clouds brewing overhead. The picture also includes a portrait of Thomas Hollis, who commissioned 5 works from Canaletto, as well as a rare self-portrait of the artist, shown painting the scene. The bridge was regarded at the time as an advanced feat of engineering. The contrasting stately bulk of Westminster Bridge and the views from it was evidently something that fascinated Canaletto, who clearly would have agreed with Wordsworth’s later opinion that “earth hath not anything to show more fair.” The bridge was under construction during his time here, and he painted and sketched it repeatedly. In one of the pictures from the Royal Collection, he frames a view of the Thames, St Paul’s and the City as if he had drawn the scene from under one of the new arches of the bridge, while others show it still under construction.
It is easy to forget that Canaletto continued to paint Venetian scenes throughout his time in London. Worked up from his sketches, or done from memory, these provided him with a significant proportion of his income whilst in London, as his more conservative patrons demanded work that they were familiar with, rather than venturing into the new views that the artist was confronting. For example, his Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day, showing the state barge after the annual ‘marriage’ of Venice with the sea—which, when it sold for $20,000,000 in 2005, was briefly his most expensive painting sold at auction—was painted in London in 1754.
Ruskin had a particular down on Canaletto. It is, however, unclear quite how familiar the ascerbic critic was with genuine works by the Venetian. As a hugely popular artist, his work was widely forged and copied both during his lifetime and afterwards. It is possible that Ruskin was sometimes writing about Canaletto pupils and assistants, when he thought he was writing about Canaletto himself. In “Notes on the Louvre”, writing about a picture of the Salute and the entrance to the Grand Canal, he said that it is “cold and utterly lifeless—truth is made contemptible” and that “boats and water he could not paint at all.” The picture has since been re-attributed to Canaletto’s pupil Michele Marieschi. Similarly the “bad landscape” he saw in Turin is almost certainly a work by Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto’s nephew. Writing about Canaletto’s “vacancy and falsehood” in Modern Painters, he refers to a painting in the Palazzo Manfrin—Augustus Hare, who visited it at about the same time, noted that the palazzo “has a picture gallery which is open daily, but contains nothing worth seeing, all the good pictures having been sold.” It is unclear which work Ruskin was referring to when he said that Canaletto’s depiction of architecture was “less to be trusted in its renderings of details than the rudest and most ignorant painter of the 13th century.” Certainly that is not the view of most modern critics of most properly authenticated works by Canaletto, but Ruskin was never one to allow the facts to affect his pet prejudices.
Exhibition | Treasured Possessions
Unidentified English maker, Trompe l’oeil folding fan, 1757
(Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum)
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Assiduous readers of Enfilade may recall my fascination with puzzle jugs. And so in the spirit of April Foolishness, it’s the object from the exhibition I’m especially excited about—at least for today. There are more serious sorts of things from the eighteenth century also included (samples of which are available here), and the catalogue looks wonderful. -CH
From The Fitzwilliam:
Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
The Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, 24 March — 6 September 2015
A dazzling journey through the decorative arts: from the hand-crafted luxuries of the Renaissance to the first stirrings of mass commerce in the Enlightenment. Each of the 300 beautiful and engaging objects was once a treasured possession, revealing the personal tastes and aspirations of its owner, and preserving precious memories. Witness the impact of global trade on European tastes: the lust for goods imported from the East, the revolutions caused by New World products like chocolate and sugar. European shoppers were lured by dazzling colours, intricate designs, constant technological innovation and the glamour of the exotic.
This show is all about desire and possession. It explores how beautiful, curious and engaging objects were made, marketed, acquired, personalized and valued. Some objects shown here are undoubtedly masterpieces: works of dazzling design and innovative skill, long-prized as highlights of the Museum’s collection; others are more ordinary. The purpose of this exhibition is to move beyond conventional appraisals of artistic or monetary worth to appreciate how objects were crafted and what they were made from, and how possessions took on changing meanings for individual owners.
The Renaissance to the Enlightenment period is a long one (about 1400 to about 1800), which saw profound changes in the production and availability of goods. Over this time, we can chart the emergence of new luxuries and technological innovations, the importation and imitation of foreign artefacts such as porcelain or calico, the domestication of new world substances like chocolate or tobacco, and the first stirrings of mass production that
would transform the European home.
The objects in this new material world created new visual realities, and changed how people felt about themselves and others. Despite the rapid increase in the availability of non-essential goods, objects from this period were often charged with emotional significance and inscribed with sentimental value. Some of the things on display are named and dated so as to commemorate an important event such as a marriage or a death. Others show signs of persistent wear and tear and deliberate mending. There are home-made items, painstakingly created and handed down from one generation to the next. And there are showy pieces which flaunt the tastes, aspirations and fantasies of their past owners. Of course, we cannot always reconstruct the hidden history of an object; many of these treasures still hold their secrets tight.
I. A New World of Goods
The Renaissance witnessed an explosion of goods. Lists of household possessions, carefully recorded by scribes and preserved to this day, give a sense of the accumulated clutter in prosperous homes. Such inventories describe elaborate dinner services, glassware, furniture, linen, clothes, jewellery, ornaments and books. Equally striking is the presence of highly specialized items, such as hand-warmers or flower vases, often created to be beautiful as well as functional.
The great variety of objects in European homes testifies to new expectations of comfort, convenience, pleasure and taste. Here we find the new world of goods that Europeans discovered throughout the period: the age before industrialization and mass production, when non-essential commodities nevertheless became widely available across the social spectrum. While local craftsmen honed their skills to produce the innovative and intricate objects demanded by their clients, exotic foreign goods also entered the market. In turn, high-quality objects made at home were influenced, formally and stylistically, by global imports. The treasures displayed in this section give a taste of this astonishing period of innovation and experimentation.
II. Desiring and Acquiring Things
Trade card of James Wade, “Tea, Coffee, Chocolate and Snuff Seller”, Bristol, 1754 (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam)
The Renaissance to Enlightenment period is often seen as an age of acquisitiveness, when Europeans tasted the pleasures of shopping for the first time. The reality of that experience was, however, a far cry from the sanitized world of today’s supermarkets and department stores. Buying and selling were activities subject to stern moral judgment and anxiety; fears of cheating and deception abound in literary accounts. Nor was it necessary to go to a shop in order to shop. Some of the treasured possessions exhibited here were commissioned directly from the maker; others were acquired from street vendors or markets.
In the eighteenth century, shopping became more than simply acquiring goods. It was a pastime and leisure activity, especially for the rising middling classes. Shops appeared in many British and continental European cities. They replaced market stalls and itinerant pedlars, offering a new experience for consumers increasingly allured by the goods displayed in their windows. At the same time, street sellers were the subjects of printed illustrations and expensive porcelain figures. Shopkeepers were also at the forefront of marketing innovation. They advertised their wares and services in newspapers and through trade cards and bill heads on customer receipts.
III. The Irresistible
Puzzle jug, English, probably London (either Lambeth Pottery or Rotherhithe Pottery), 1686. Tin-glazed earthenware, with pierced body containing a two-headed bird (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam).
Antonio de Pereda’s painting Still Life with an Ebony Chest shows a mid-seventeenth-century Spanish vision of the irresistible: ebony from Africa, porcelain from China, chocolate and sugar from America, and lustreware from Valencia. The value of these enticing commodities lay not only with their rarity but also with their potential to generate pleasure. While ongoing anxieties about luxury and consumption did not disappear, Pereda’s image offers a meditation on the joys of living in ‘the here and now’.
The irresistible was inextricably linked to the expansion of Europe and the idea of the exotic, which changed constantly in response to the exploration of ‘new’ worlds. The Medici court in early Renaissance Florence desired the colourful and stylized designs of Iznik pottery and was, later on, the first European connoisseur of Chinese porcelain. Contact with America not only brought chocolate and sugar but also encouraged a new interest in the natural wonders of the New World. By the end of the eighteenth century, tobacco, chocolate, tea and coffee had all been ‘domesticated’ by Europeans. New objects, new behaviours and new social spaces were created for and
by the consumption of these novel stimulants.
IV. The Fashionable Body
Pair of shoes, English, c.1700–30. Yellow silk taffeta, bound with ribbon; floss silk embroidery in French knots, tied with ribbon. Design of scrolling stems with leaves and flowers (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam)
The visual arts often dominate our sense of the Renaissance. Yet this cultural movement became visible to many through a new world of fashion. Tailoring was transformed by new materials and refined techniques of cutting and sewing, as well as by the demand for a tighter fit, particularly for men’s clothing. Enterprising merchants created larger markets for fashion innovations and ‘chic’ accessories. Artistic representations of the clothed body proliferated as never before. Mirrors enticed people to experiment with their appearance, as they caught sight of their reflections in looking-glasses on walls, or in small portable mirrors designed to be carried on the body.
This new type of consumption and aesthetic appreciation depended on the assemblage of a panoply of wearable goods from clothing and armour to accessories like hats, hair-pieces, feathers, toothpicks, rings, gloves, purses and shoes, which brought self-display to life. The tiny honestone portrait from the 1520s shows a woman at the height of fashion with a bonnet perched on her head. In turn, the earthenware male figure of 1606 sports an expensive modish slashed suit with belt, buttons and a flamboyant feathered hat. Even the style of facial hair could codify people and establish identities.
V. At Home and On Display
As Renaissance shoppers acquired more ‘stuff’, even ordinary homes became places of display, and new types of furniture evolved to store and show off the family treasures. During the period covered by this exhibition, traditional chests were replaced with front-opening cupboards, dressers and sideboards—versatile props on which ornamental items could be positioned. Meanwhile, cabinets containing small drawers allowed collectors to order their most precious objects, keep them safe under lock and key, and then draw them out to show selected visitors.
By the eighteenth century, technological changes, the expansion of global trade networks, and the growth of European markets had broadened the opportunities for buying and displaying goods in the home to a much wider group of people. Tea services were laid out and admired on sideboards, inkstands on desks, vases on mantelpieces, and scent-bottles and patch boxes on dressers. A whole range of ornamental porcelain items was available as well as equally coveted imitations in cheaper earthenware. The sub-division of interiors into specialized spaces resulted in new kinds of furniture such as the tea-table or secrétaire (‘writing desk for ladies’) used both to display fashionable objects and to hide its owner’s secrets.
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The catalogue is published by Philip Wilson:
Victoria Avery, Melissa Calaresu, Mary Laven, eds., Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2015), 288 pages, hardback, ISBN: 978-1781300336, £40 / paperback £25.
This book is all about possession. It explores the significance of beautiful and engaging objects—chosen, acquired, personalised and treasured—to the people who once owned them. With over 300 works discussed, the book takes us on a dazzling visual adventure through the decorative arts, from Renaissance luxuries wrought in glass, bronze and maiolica to the elaborate tablewares and personal adornments available to shoppers in the Age of Enlightenment. En route the authors consider the impact of global trade on European habits and expectations: the glamour of the exotic, as witnessed in the lust for objects imported from the East, the ubiquity of New World products like chocolate and sugar, and the obsession with Chinoiserie decoration. They ask what decorative objects meant to their owners before the age of industrial mass production, and explore how technological innovation and the proliferation of goods from the sixteenth century onwards transformed the attitude of Europeans to their personal possessions.
Victoria Avery, FSA is Keeper of Applied Arts at The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. She has published extensively on Italian Renaissance sculpture, and was awarded the Premio Salimbeni 2012 for her monograph, Vulcan’s Forge in Venus’ City: The Story of Bronze in Venice, 1350–1650 (2011).
Melissa Calaresu is the Neil McKendrick Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She has written on the Grand Tour, autobiographical writing, urban space, political reform and, most recently the making and eating of ice cream in eighteenth-century Naples.
Mary Laven is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. She has written extensively about aspects of religion in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy and is now working on ‘Domestic Devotions’, an interdisciplinary, collaborative project, funded by the European Research Council.
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From The Fitzwilliam:
Treasured Possessions Conference
St John’s College, Divinity School, Cambridge, 11 May 2015
Join scholars, curators and conservators for this day long event inspired by objects that once lay close to their owner’s hearts. Learn about the historical context of the exhibition, and the opportunity it provided for collaboration between curators, academics and makers. Key speakers include Peter Burke, Ludmilla Jordanova, Giorgio Riello and Evelyn Welch. The day closes with an early evening private view of the exhibition and drinks reception.
Monday, 11 May 2015, 9:00–17:00. Free but booking essential, tel: 01223 332904 or email: education@fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk.
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