Exhibition | Appropriate Dress Required
Le Magasin des modes, 1787. Dessin : Claude-Louis Desrais ; gravure : A.-B. Duhamel. 23e cahier, pl. II. Maciet MOD/2/35 Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs.
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Opening at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs:
Appropriate Dress Required: When Clothing Causes a Scandal
Tenue Correcte Exigée: Quand le Vêtement Fait Scandale
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1 December 2016 — 23 April 2017
Curated by Denis Bruna
The history of fashion is studded with a host of iconic inventions: rhinegraves, the robe volante, the robe chemise, the chemise à la grecque, women’s trousers, skirts for men, the female tuxedo, the miniskirt, the ‘baggy’ look, and jeans, to list only a few.
Although emblematic of the ephemerality of fashion, these garments all challenged the dress does of their era and were violently criticised and even banned when they first appeared. Because they were too short or too long, too tightfitting or too ample, too shameless or too covering, too feminine for a man, too masculine for a woman, these garments transgressed the established order. They were condemned for their form, which should neither deform the body nor accentuate its anatomy, the sexual identity of the garment and its wearer, and circumstances that dictated certain dress and forbade another.
With a selection of characteristic garments and fashion accessories, portraits, caricatures, advertisements, and a host of other objects, the exhibition explores this history of vestimentary liberties, and offences—highlighting dress codes and moral values from the 14th century to today, from the royal courts to the street and magazines.
New Book | A Golden Age of European Art
From Yale UP:
Edited by James Clifton and Melina Kervandjian with essays by Barbara Baert, Andrea Bayer, Anne Dunlop, Steven Ostrow, Lisa Pon, Martin Postle, and Arthur K. Wheelock, A Golden Age of European Art: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300207811, $65.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the acclaimed Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, this commemorative book presents masterpieces from the foundation’s collection. The works span more than 400 years, from the 16th through the early 20th century, and feature a range of media including paintings, prints, and printed books. After a comprehensive introduction to the foundation and its collection, essays by eight scholars present new scholarship on key works. The featured objects include an image of the Madonna and Child by the Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini; Richard Wilson’s iconic 18th-century composition The White Monk; printed materials in Venice that bridged Jewish and Christian cultures; and portraits by Paolo Veronese, Simon Vouet, and others. With more than 200 illustrations, this beautiful publication is a rich survey as well as a timely celebration of this exceptional collection.
James Clifton is director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and curator of Renaissance and Baroque painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Exhibition | Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia
Press release for the exhibition:
Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900
The Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, 4 November 2016 — 19 February 2017
Curated by Peter Lee
The Asian Civilisations Museum presents Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900, an exhibition that explores the unique heritage of Asian port cities and tells the story of how the global flow of people, goods, and ideas contributed to the evolution of multi-cultural societies in Singapore and other port cities in Asia today. The first in the world to explore the topic, Port Cities charts a lesser known era of globalisation, identifying linkages between cities across the Asian continent, from Goa and Bombay in India, to Batavia (Jakarta) and Manila in Southeast Asia, to Canton (Guangzhou) and Nagasaki in East Asia. It tell the stories of how specific people and objects adapted as they traveled across the seas from one port city to another and how communities in many of these port cities were thoroughly modern, blending the latest global trends with their own local traditions of craft and design to create entirely new forms of fashion, decorative arts, and ways of living.
Speaking on the exhibition, Director of the ACM and NHB Group Director, Museums, Kennie Ting said, “Port cities that have come before Singapore illustrate that globalisation and cosmopolitanism are not a modern phenomenon. There have been global trade networks since ancient times and certainly during the period from 1500 to 1900. These networks facilitated the development and evolution of multicultural societies in historic port cities leading up to Singapore. As the latest in a long line of cosmopolitan port cities in Asia, Singapore is in a good position to explore this topic because our history is precisely that of trade and connections across cultures.”
He added, “This special exhibition furthers the museum’s mission of exploring and presenting cross-cultural and hybrid forms of art, people, and cultures that have emerged at crossroads of civilisations in Asia. Focusing on ‘East-meets-West’ and ‘East-meets-East’ is crucial in that it allows us to better understand who we are as Singapore and as Singaporeans today. I hope that through this exhibition, Singaporeans and visitors get a deeper understanding of what makes Singapore tick and what it means to have lived and continue to live in a multicultural society grounded in trade.”
Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900 has been made possible through the strong relationships between ACM and many international partners. Over 180 objects from eight countries—Singapore, Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Indonesia, Belgium, the Philippines—and 22 acclaimed institutions and private collections around the world are on display to tell this lesser known history behind our pan-Asian networks. Many of these objects are being showcased for the first time in Singapore, including a collection of rare Chinese objects from 17th-century Batavia on loan from Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen in Switzerland, with whom ACM is partnering for the first time.
The exhibition presents three aspects related to the movement of people, goods and ideas in Asia— Divergence (Moving, Selling, Copying), Convergence (Owning, Collecting, Commissioning), and Integration (Contriving, Combining, Creating)—along with how these aspects shaped the development of port cities.
Peter Lee, guest curator at ACM and of the exhibition, shared, “We hope visitors will gain a new perspective of port cities through this fresh curatorial approach as we trace the stories of intensely globalised individuals and communities through lesser known networks. The Chettiar community, for example, were as globalised and multicultural then as they are today. They have been trading beyond their homeland for centuries, even building temples in Saigon more than two hundred years ago, when Pondicherry and Saigon became part of the French colonial empire.”
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Port Cities curator Peter Lee shares on the life of Cornelia van Nijenroode and how her story provides an insight to the dynamics of Asian port cities between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Painted in Batavia (Jakarta) by Jacob Jansz. Coeman, Portrait of Peter Cnoll and Cornelia van Nijenrode with Their Daughters and Malay Slaves dates to 1665 and is now part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum. It was also included in the exhibition Asia in Amsterdam (shown at the Rijksmuseum and the Peabody Essex Museum).
Journée d’études | Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
From Le Blog de L’ApAhAu
Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 30 November 2016
Cette journée d’étude souhaite s’interroger sur la survivance de certains motifs dans les programmes décoratifs de la période moderne. Il s’agirait de définir le motif décoratif de son invention jusqu’à ses usages les plus tardifs afin de proposer une réflexion sur la fonction du décor et ses modalités de réception. Cette réflexion portera à la fois sur l’invention du motif, c’est-à-dire sur sa naissance et ses conditions de création et la place qu’il occupe dans le système décoratif. Sera également abordée la question de la survie et de la récurrence du motif sous différentes formes et divers usages dans le décor intérieur qu’il soit public ou privé. Enfin la survivance d’un motif à travers les siècles nous amène à nous interroger sur sa réception et la fluctuation de sa valeur dans le temps.
Comité scientifique
Lucille Calderini, lucille.calderini@inha.fr
Bastien Coulon, blycoulon@gmail.com
Charlotte Rousset, charlotte_rousset@hotmail.com
P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Accueil des intervenants et mot d’introduction
10.00 Vie et résurgence d’un procédé visuel
• Tiphaine Gaumy (Université de Caen), Un pais ou les chapeaux n’ont point esté faicts pour couvrir la teste… : le salut, un motif décoratif plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît, 1550–1700
• Stéphanie Imbaud (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Les lambrequins dans les représentations armoriées du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
• Charlotte Rousset (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Vie et survie d’emblèmes au service d’une ornementation efficace : le cas de l’entrée royale de Marie de Médicis à Avignon en 1600
12.00 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Création et évolution d’un motif décoratif : le trophée
• Sébastien Bontemps (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Bnf), Célébrer Dieu, célébrer le Roi : le motif du trophée en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
• Chloé Perrot (Université Lille 3, Ecole du Louvre), Le trophée comme motif ornemental : composition, formes et évolution en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
15.15 Pause
15.30 Le motif décoratif en architecture
• Francisco Mamani Fuentes (ENS, Université de Grenade), L’arabesque et l’héritage andalou en Espagne et en Amérique latine pendant le XVI siècle
• Lucille Calderini (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Inha), La fontaine dans la gravure de Jean Lepautre: création et variation d’un motif au XVIIe siècle
• Michaël Decrossas (EPHE, Université catholique de l’ouest Angers), Regard de l’architecte sur le motif : la conception ornementale selon Pierre Vigné de Vigny (1690–1772)
17.00 Discussion et mot de conclusion
Call for Papers | Collecting Raphael
From H-ArtHist:
Collecting Raphael: Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino in the History of Collections
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, 12–14 October 2017
Proposals due by 31 December 2016
In view of the forthcoming 500th anniversary celebration of Raphael’s death (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, Urbino 1483 – Rome 1520), an international conference to focus on the reception of Raphael and the history of collections will draw together scholars of collecting and history of taste with curators of the main collections of Raphael’s paintings and drawings in both Italy and abroad. The conference, organised by Sybille Ebert-Schifferer and Claudia La Malfa, will be held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, in Rome in October 2017.
Raphael’s works have enjoyed an uninterrupted fortuna in the history of collecting. His fame has fueled collectors’ passions for centuries, which in turn has contributed to his fortuna, never challenged through the changing cultural and artistic periods. His works were considered symbols of power by those popes, princes and nobles who owned them, eventually becoming the identity matrix of many important European museums in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the conference is to explore the various mechanisms that have contributed to this phenomenon. Suggested topics include: the role of the great collectors of Raphael between the 16th and the 19th centuries, including the Gonzaga and Borghese families, Christina of Sweden, Charles I of England, Louis XIV of France, and the Kings of Spain; the function of antiquarians and art dealers, such as Daniel Nijs, Pierre Crozat, Pierre-Jean Mariette, and John Julius Angerstein, in the diffusion of Raphael’s works and copies in 17th- and 18th-century collections in Italy and abroad; the part played by figures like Filippo Baldinucci for the Uffizi, Everhard Jabach for the Louvre, and Sir Joshua Reynolds for collections in England; the influence of academies in the diffusion of the master’s oeuvre through collections of drawings and reproduction prints in the Age of the Grand Tour; the relationship between art historians and collectors, and the role of early biographers like Johann David Passavant, Bernard Berenson, Oskar Fischel, in the creation of the 19th- and 20th-century museums; the issue of connoisseurship from the 17th century on and the problem of originals, workshop productions, copies and fakes.
Please send an abstract of 250 words and a CV to c.lamalfa@aur.edu and to albl@biblhertz.it by December 31th 2016.
Exhibition | 350 Years of Creativity
Now on view at the French Academy in Rome:
350 Years of Creativity: The Artists of the French Academy in Rome from Louis XIV to the Present
350 ans de création: Les artistes de l’Académie de France à Rome de Louis XIV à nos jours
Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici, 14 October 2016 — 15 January 2017
Curated by Jérôme Delaplanche
Founded by Louis XIV in 1666, the Academy is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year with a special series of events retracing its history. This exhibition is one of the program’s high points and is accompanied by two others in Rome, organized by the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and focusing on their relationships with the French Academy. 350 Years of Creativity is a chance for the visitor to discover the creative output of artists at the Academy—both residents and directors—during their stays in Rome. It includes over a hundred works dating from 1666 to the present day, by artists including Fragonard, David, Ingres, Berlioz, Garnier, Carpeaux, Debussy, and Balthus. In the course of a fascinating journey through three and half centuries of French art, visitors are offered a closer look at the Academy and its successive generations of creators.
350 Years of Creativity illustrates the high points of the Academy’s long life with works by its leading artists presented under the following headings: the ancient and modern quest for the ideal; the discovery of picturesque reality; the relationship with the body and the nude; the significance of the move to the Villa Médicis; eclecticism and the value of originality; new life for tradition; and the Academy as a center for creative experiment. The exhibition itinerary brings together paintings, drawings, statues, prints, musical scores, and archival material as testimony to the sheer artistic variety the institution has produced. Some of these works come from the Academy’s own collection, notably portraits by residents and the plaster statues. The exhibition closes with a video of works created by residents over the last few decades. For the visitor all this adds up to an opportunity to survey the history of French art from 1666 to 2016.
350 Years of Creativity will also be accompanied by other events—screenings, encounters, concerts—presented at the Villa Médicis as part of the series ‘Thursdays at the Villa: Art Matters’. It will conclude with a symposium on 11–13 January 2017 with the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, titled Art Academies: Heritage and Contemporary Art Issues.
Jerome Delaplanche, ed., 350 anni di creatività: Gli artisti dell’Accademia di Francia a Roma da Luigi XIV ai nostri giorni (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2016), 224 pages, ISBN: 978 8899765101 (Italian), ISBN: 978 8899765088 (French), 35€.
Doctoral Study Day | In Situ / Ex Situ
From H-ArtHist (25 November 2016). . .
In Situ / Ex Situ — The Art of Exhibiting Art: Relationships between Art and Architecture in Their Spatial Context / L’arte di esporre l’arte: relazioni nel contesto spaziale tra arte e architettura
Rome Art History Network (RAHN), 27–28 April 2017
Proposals due by 15 December 2016
The fifth international doctoral study day of the Rome Art History Network—organised in partnership with the University of Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Museo di Roma di Palazzo Braschi—proposes a theoretical and methodological reflection upon the relationships and strategies of installing art and architecture, both inside and outside their original spatial contexts. It is evident that the work of art always relate to the surrounding spaces. Indeed, the strategies and methods of exhibiting works in situ / ex situ are at the heart of contemporary art-historical debates. But how does the manipulation of the original spatial context alter the perception of a work of art, or the organic nature of an architectural system? How does a given layout highlight specific characteristics of an artwork? What new meanings does an object assume, following its contextual switch? Are traditional concepts of historiographical concepts still valid for current issues of museology or museography? Does an object’s de-contextualization potentially ‘save’ the art in critical cases, or does it always imply an alteration of its original meanings? The study day aims to encourage an interdisciplinary and cross-temporal debate on the issue of location and spatial relationship between the works of art and architecture and the reciprocal exchanges between these artistic domains.
Proposals may include, but are not limited to, topics about
• The role of spatial contexts in the display of and the relationship between the works of art
• How the alteration of spatial context affects of in situ / ex-situ works
• Relationships between art and architecture in the exhibitions/museographical or museological cases
• Gesamtkunstwerke, site-specific works of art, mise en scéne projects, or visual theme concepts
• Dispositio of a museum/architectural/urban system
The call for papers is open to art and architectural history graduate students of Italian and foreign academic institutions. We encourage candidates to submit 20-minute talks that, through case studies and theoretical observations, focus on the methodologies and key themes listed above. The study day (27–28 April 2017) will be held both in Italian and English, and we welcome submissions in both languages. The organization cannot cover any travel or residence costs. Proposals, in the form of an abstract (max. 400 words), should be sent, together with a short CV (max. one page), by 15 December 2016 to romearthistorynetwork@gmail.com.
Organized by
Alina Aggujaro (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institut for the History of Art / Sapienza, Università di Roma)
Dario Beccarini (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenaghen / Università degli Studi di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’ )
Coordination by
Ariane Varela Braga (Coordinator Rome Art History Network / Universität Zürich)
Previous Editions
• Now or (n)ever — I tempi dell’opera: temi, teorie e metodi nella storia dell’arte (28–29 April 2016)
• Tra assenza e presenza: opere perdute e frammentarie (19–20 March 2015)
• Sopravvalutata, sacrosanta, scandalosa? La figura dell’artista nella storia dell’arte oggi (3–4 April 2014)
• La storia dell’arte tra scienza e dilettantismo: Metodi e percorsi (24 April 2012)
Conference | More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images
From Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre:
More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s
University of Warwick, 4 March 2017
For Italy, the ‘long seventeenth century’ was a period of considerable financial challenges. This was especially evident on the book market. Nevertheless, thanks to new techniques and formats that mutually related text and images within the same publication, innovative genres were born that were marketed towards both ends of the audience spectrum, from the learned to the illiterate.
More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s aims to investigate the ways in which the consolidation of the book and print trade influenced the development of such new book genres from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The new commercial items, moreover, contributed to the spread of cultural phenomena, for instance the Grand Tour through its souvenir prints that were sometimes incorporated in atlases. This one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine these matters by focusing on the products, audiences, and professionals involved. By doing so, it sets out to lay the foundations for a shared history of printed products and markets in the early modern period. The conference promotes a multidisciplinary perspective, bridging the gaps between art history, history of the book, and other disciplines such as intellectual history and communication studies.
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P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Registration and coffee
10.10 Welcome and introduction
10.20 Session 1: Understanding Techniques and Genres
Chair: Rosa Salzberg (University of Warwick)
• Angela McShane (RCA/V&A), Keynote Lecture
• Liz Miller (V&A), Libri et Stampe in Rame’: A Bound Volume of Antonio Lafreri’s Architectural and Ornament Publications
• Loretta Vandi (Scuola del libro, Urbino), Handy and Cheap: Giovanni Baleni Printer and Seller of Chap-books in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence and Lucca
• Floriana Giallombardo (University of Palermo), The Venetian Musei by Paolo Boccone (1697): The Illustrated Natural Book and the Social Production of Natural Knowledge
12.10 Lunch
13.10 Session 2: Tracing Networks
Chair: Max Engammare (Institut de l’Historie de la Réformation, University of Geneva)
• Marika Keblusek (Leiden University), Keynote Lecture
• Ingeborg van Vugt (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa/Amsterdam University), Books beyond Borders? The Circulation of Prohibited Books in the Epistolary Network of Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714)
• Huub van der Linden (École Française de Rome/University College Roosevelt), The Private Exchange of Printed Ephemera between Bologna and Rome around 1700
• Nina Lamal (University of St Andrews), Challenges and Opportunities: Printing and Marketing the First Italian Newspapers
15.00 Tea and coffee
15.30 Session 3: Evolving Markets and Audiences
Chair: Ingrid de Smet (University of Warwick)
• Julia Martins (The Warburg Institute), Illustrating Alchemical Recipes: Books of Secrets and the Case of I Secreti della Signora Isabella Cortese in Early Modern Italy
• Domenico Ciccarello (University of Palermo), Baroque Imagery and Literary Genres in Sicily: An Overview across Print Books with Illustrations
• Flavia Bruni (Sapienza University/University of St Andrews) ‘Becoming Peripheral: The Decline of the Italian Book Market in the Seventeenth Century’
16.45 Roundtable and closing remarks
17.15 Wine reception and buffet
The Burlington Magazine, November 2016
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 158 (November 2016)
A R T I C L E S
• Lucia Simonato, “A New Work by Domenico Guidi: The Bust of Cardinal Gianfrancesco Albani,” pp. 885–90.
• Bent Sørensen, “The Parisian Career of Jacques François Saly, 1749–53,” pp. 891–99.
L E T T E R
• Kim Legate, “More on Chippendale at Hestercombe House,” p. 904.
R E V I E W S
• Anthony Geraghty, Review of Owen Hopkins, From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (Rekation Books, 2015), p. 907–08.
• Tessa Murdoch, Review of Malcolm Baker, The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), p. 908.
• Martin Postle, Review of James Ayres, Art, Artisans, and Apprentices: Apprentice Painters and Sculptors in the Early Modern British Tradition (Oxbow Books, 2014), p. 909.
• Loyd Grossman, Review of Susan Rather, The American School: Artists and Status in the Late-Colonial and Early National Era (Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 909–10.
• François Quiviger, Review of Andrea Daninos, Una Rivoluzione di Cera: Francesco Orso e e i «cabinets de figures» in Francia (Officina Libraria, 2016), pp. 911–12.
• Philip Ward-Jackson, Review of Vanessa Brett, Bertrand’s Toyshop in Bath: Luxury Retailing, 1685–1765 (Oblong Creative, 2014), p. 912.
• Jamie Mulherron, Review of the exhibition Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793 (Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, 2016), pp. 921–23.
• Jeremy Warren, Review of the exhibition Splendida Minima (Tesoro dei Granduchi, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 2016), pp. 923–24. [Includes the eighteenth-century reception of these small-scale sculptures.]
New Book | The Neapolitan Crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago
Distributed by Yale University Press:
Sylvain Bellenger, Carmine Romano, and Jesse Rosenberg, with a preface by Riccardo Muti, The Neapolitan Crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2016), 176 pages, ISBN: 978 0300222357, $40.
The 18th-century Neapolitan crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago, which contains over 200 figures arranged in a panorama of street life, represents the pinnacle of a rich artistic heritage. This luxurious catalogue is the first to study the crèche in the context of art and music history. Essays explore the Neapolitan crèche tradition and examine the design of Chicago’s example with reference to other important crèches in Europe and the United States. Entries on individual figures identify the characters and types they represent, as well as their social and historical meaning and religious significance. Other entries address groups of figures, animals, and cultural themes present in the creche. Together the essays and entries highlight the astonishing realism and potent symbolism of these figures, which range from heavenly angels and the Holy Family around the manger to street vendors and revelers feasting, drinking, and dancing in a tavern. Nativity scene.
Sylvain Bellenger is director of the Museo de Capodimonte, Naples; Carmine Romano is a PhD student at Paris-Sorbonne University; and Jesse Rosenberg is clinical associate professor, musicology, at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.
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