Exhibition | Real Time and Time of Reality: Clocks at the Pitti Palace
Opening this week at the Pitti Palace:
Real Time and Time of Reality: Clocks from the Pitti Palace
Tempo reale e tempo della realtà: Gli orologi di Palazzo Pitti dal XVII al XIX secolo
Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 13 September 2016 — 8 January 2017
Curated by Simonella Condemi and Enrico Colle
Amphora-shaped clock, made in Paris, 1810–20, gilt bronze (Florence: Museo Stibbert)
The exhibition will comprise a significant selection of roughly eighty clocks out of the almost two hundred pieces in the Palazzo Pitti’s collection, testifying to the passage of time for those whose daily lives were played out in the Florentine palace in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The selection of these singular objets d’art will allow visitors to admire the astonishing technical and artistic quality of these timepieces in the various different forms and formats in which they were produced, revealing their duality comprising, on the one hand, an often sophisticated and complex mechanism, and on the other, a case which started out life as a cover for the mechanism but which gradually turned into a work of art in its own right.
Additional information (in Italian) and images are available here»
Exhibition | The Four Continents: Florentine Tapestries
Florentine tapestry after cartoons by Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, The Continent of America, from a series of The Four Continents, ca. 1730s.
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Opening this month at the Pitti Palace:
The Four Continents: Florentine Tapestries after Drawings by Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani
I Quattro Continenti: Arazzi fiorentini su cartone di Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani
Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 27 September 2016 — 8 January 2017
Curated by Caterina Chiarelli and Daniele Rapino
On display will be four beautiful tapestries woven from cartoons by the painter Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani (1660–1731). It is one of the finest series realized by the Grand Ducal tapestry workshop, signed by the most skillful weavers of that time, among whom Vittorio Demignot (d. 1742), whose apprenticeship took place in Flanders. The Four Continents are represented with extravagant features and creative innovations that reflect the contemporary conception of cultural and historical identities of world lands. Comparable to the finest coeval French examples, their magnificent and elegant composition was largely appreciated: in particular, on the 20th of January 1739, they were used as decorative setup for the triumphal entry into Florence of the new Hapsburg-Lorraine Grand Duke, Francis II, and his wife Maria Teresa, future empress of Austria.
Call for Proposals | History of Collecting Seminars
From The Wallace Collection:
History of Collecting Seminars
The Wallace Collection, London, 2017
Proposals due by 12 September 2016
The seminar series was established as part of the Wallace Collection’s commitment to the research and study of the history of collections and collecting, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Paris and London. In 2017, as in previous years, we plan to organise a series of 10 seminars. We are keen to encourage contributions covering all aspects of the history of collecting, including:
• Formation and dispersal of collections
• Dealers, auctioneers and the art market
• Collectors
• Museums
• Inventory work
• Research resources
The seminars, which are normally held on the 4th Monday of every month during the calendar year, excluding August and December, act as a forum for the presentation and discussion of new research into the history of collecting. Seminars are open to curators, academics, historians, archivists and all those with an interest in the subject. Papers are generally 45–60 minutes long and all the seminars take place at the Wallace Collection between 5.30 and 7pm. If interested, please send a short text (500–750 words), including a brief CV, indicating any months when you would not be available to speak, by 12 September 2016. For more information and to submit a proposal, please contact: collection@wallacecollection.org.
Please note that we are able to contribute up to the following sums towards speakers’ travelling expenses on submission of receipts:
• Speakers within the UK – £ 80
• Speakers from Continental Europe – £ 140
• Speakers from outside Europe – £ 200
Remaining lectures in this year’s schedule include:
26 September: Silvia Davoli, Paul Mellon Centre Research Curator, Strawberry Hill House, The Horace Walpole Collection: Researching the Strawberry Hill Sale of 1842: A Real Baedeker’s Guide of Taste
31 October: Hannah Kinney, DPhil candidate, History of Art, University of Oxford: Con fiducia: Commissioning Copies of Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century Florence
28 November: Jessica Feather, Allen Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre: Collecting the Modern Aesthetic: Britain at the fin de siècle
All lectures start at 17:30 in the Lecture Theatre. Booking not required.
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