Exhibition | The Recovery of Antiquity
Press release for the exhibition closing this weekend at the MMFA:
The Recovery of Antiquity: From the Renaissance to Neoclassicism in France and Italy
Le retour à l’antique: de la Renaissance au néoclassicisme, en France et en Italie
Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 12 January — 26 June 2016
Jean‑Baptiste Lallemand (1716–1803), Classical Ruins, gouache on paper mounted on cardboard. 61.1 × 44.6 cm (MMFA, Lady Davis Bequest)
In connection with the exhibition Pompeii (on view until September 5), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents The Recovery of Antiquity, revealing the keen interest of artists from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century for antiquities. This selection of graphic works from the Museum’s collection features over fifty prints and drawings, including several new acquisitions. It features works by French masters like François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Anne-Louis Girodet, as well as several Italian artists. Some of these works are being exhibited for the first time.
The discoveries in Rome at the turn of the sixteenth century of the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoön—the latter praised as a masterpiece by Pliny the Elder in the first century—occurred precisely when that city was emerging from its medieval conditions and becoming once again the international centre of art, culture, and political influence in Europe, with artists like Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo transforming and re-envisioning Rome at the forefront of a Christian humanism deeply rooted in its Imperial Roman artistic heritage. The rediscovery at this same period of Nero’s great villa at the heart of the city, the Domus Aurea, with some of its frescoed interior spaces intact, seemed to confirm this mission.
Charles Michel-Ange Challe (1718–1778), Interior View of an Ancient Temple with the Figure of a Goddess, ca. 1742–49 (MMFA, gift of Dr. Sean B. Murphy)
A distinct aesthetic appreciation of Greek art dates back to the latter fifteenth century, when the Venetian Empire encompassed the Greek peninsula and islands, as well as Crete and Cyprus. Collectors, especially Venetians, prized the more generalized and less veristic character of classical and Hellenistic Greek art. It reached an apogee in the mid-eighteenth century in Rome, when Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the celebrated aesthete and historian in Rome, elevated the artistic accomplishments of the Greeks above those of the Romans, creating animated controversy among other aestheticians and the artistic community. In counterpoint, Piranesi’s prints recorded in dramatic and inspiring terms the legacy of Roman Antiquity. It was precisely at this same moment, in 1748, that excavations were revealing to an enthralled public the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried in the cataclysm of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Two generations later, influenced by these archaeological discoveries, Napoleon adopted Roman imperial emblemata and styles to advance his own political and imperial ambitions.
From the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi after designs by Raphael to the spectacular eighteenth-century etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi exalting the still-visible remains of ancient Rome to the early nineteenth-century illustrations after designs by Anne- Louis Girodet for works written by ancient authors, we can see the constant reinterpretation and changing visions of different generations regarding their own interface with Antiquity.
Exhibition | Bountiful Invention: Drawings by Oppenord and Meissonnier
Press release (27 May 2016) for the exhibition now on view at Waddesdon:
Bountiful Invention: Drawings by Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672–1742) )
and Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750)
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, 8 June — 23 October 2016
Curated by Juliet Carey
Gilles-Marie Oppenord, Design for a headpiece or title-page, with the Arms of the Marquis de Torcy, ca. 1725 (Waddesdon: Rothschild Collection / National Trust; photo: Mike Fear)
An exhibition exploring the work of two of the most innovative draughtsmen and designers of the 18th century, including spectacular presentation sheets, as well as drawings for workshop use; designs for interiors, fountains and grottoes, both real and fantastical; and an important group of designs for churches and ritual objects.
Born during the reign of Louis XIV, at a time of unprecedented interest in drawing and extraordinary artistic innovation, Oppenord and Meissonnier are two of the greatest names associated the development of the distinctively French style that reached its peak in the reign of Louis XV, now known as Rococo.
This exhibition of 45 drawings, mostly from Waddesdon’s own collections acquired in Paris in the 19th century by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845–34), is complemented by two loans: a spectacular Meissonnier design for a projected church for the Order of the Holy Ghost from the V&A and a red chalk Oppenord from the Courtauld Gallery. The majority of these drawings have never previously been shown.
Gilles-Marie Oppenord, Design for a Garden Fountain, ca. 1720–30; black ink on paper; 439 x 291mm (Waddesdon: Rothschild Collection / National Trust; photo: Mike Fear)
The drawings on display include experimental studies and highly finished presentation sheets, drawings for workshop use, others for student instruction, and copies made as part of the process of translating a design into print. There are designs for personal accessories such as gold boxes, furniture and interiors, for real and fantastical palaces, fountains and grottoes as well as an important group of ecclesiastical works. Many would go on to be realised in a variety of materials by builders, masons, carpenters, plasterers, goldsmiths, instrument makers, and other craftsmen; others exist only on paper. This exhibition demonstrates the breadth and variety of Oppenord’s and Meissonnier’s creativity and skill, both valued by collectors and connoisseurs even during the artists’ lifetimes. Prints of their drawings spread their ideas throughout Europe and further afield and were copied by other artists and designers long after their designs went out of fashion in France.
New Book | Condition: The Ageing of Art
From Paul Holberton:
Paul Taylor, Condition: The Ageing of Art (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372797, £30 / $45.
The paintings we see today in museums, galleries, churches, and temples are often much altered by the centuries. Pictures can split, rot, be eaten by woodworm, warp, blister, crack, cup, flake, darken, blanch, discolour, become too translucent, and disappear under a centuries-old varnish; and they can also suffer from the efforts of their owners to rectify these situations: they might be transferred, relined, ironed, abraded or repainted.
Anyone considering a work of art needs to establish at the outset how much it has changed since it was first made. This act of understanding is far from easy. We need to develop a knowledge of the physical and chemical processes which have brought paintings to their current state, in the hope that we can imagine their reversal. And we have to look as much as we can at a wide variety of paintings, so we can learn to distinguish those in a worse or better state of preservation; we have to try to understand what it is about a picture that differentiates good and bad condition. Theories of art history have been built on works whose appearance is made up of little more than repaint and decay, and the beginner needs to be warned about the many pitfalls dug by time for the unwary. This book is meant both for that beginner and for the qualified practitioner who might have missed a step along the way.
While there are many books on conservation and restoration, there is nothing which focuses specifically on condition. The plan here is to provide a hands-on introductory text, which can be used as a first orientation in the study of condition, and can remain as a basic reference work when the reader’s studies have progressed further. It should appeal to anyone with an interest in art.
Far too complex for their own good, European ‘Old Master’ pictures—by the likes of Cranach the Elder, Raphael, Leonardo, Poussin, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Turner, and Van Gogh—rely for their delicate effects on layers of fragile materials, all of which are subject to change and decay. No-one can enjoy them to the full without an understanding of how and what they may have survived, suffered, or lost in the journey through the years.
Paul Taylor is curator of the photographic collection at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and editor of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. He has written numerous articles and contributed to many books; he is the author of Dutch Flower Painting 1600–1720 (1995) and the editor of Pictorial Composition from Medieval to Modern Art (2000), The Iconography of Cylinder Seals (2006); Iconography without Texts (2008); and, most recently, Meditations on a Heritage: Papers on the Work and Legacy of Sir Ernst Gombrich (2014), also published by Paul Holberton publishing.
Film | La Mort de Louis XIV
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La Mort de Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra with Jean-Pierre Leaud, Patrick D’Assumcao, Marc Susini, Irene Silvagni, Bernard Belin, and Jacques Henric. Capricci Production, 112 minutes.
August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the King keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest King of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.
The agony of Louis XIV starts on August 9th 1715, and lasts until September 1st. It marks the end of a personal reign that lasted 72 years—the longest in French history. The of official diary of the Health of the King, which was held by its successive doctors, reveal that Louis XIV had a fragile health and almost died on numerous occasions: from syphilis at the age of five, from a maligned fever at thirty-five, from a fistula at forty-five, and from diabetes with gangrene complications at seventy. This time, at the start of August 1715, Louis XIV suffers from an embolism in his leg due to cardiac arrhythmia, which will start the gangrene.
The press kit is available as a PDF file here»
From Boyd van Hoeij’s review (19 May 2016) for The Hollywood Reporter:
The good news is that The Death of Louis XIV (La Mort de Louis XIV) isn’t only the ultra-arthouse director’s first feature in which he works with professional actors instead of amateurs, but it’s also by far Serra’s most accessible work to date. Buyers and programmers familiar with the auteur will of course understand this hardly puts the film, essentially a death-chamber piece, in Avengers territory, though commercial prospects are certainly better than usual.
The film’s only exterior sequence comes at the very start, as the 76-year-old Louis XIV (French New Wave legend Jean-Pierre Leaud) surveys his famous gardens at Versailles, which were partially constructed during his 72-year reign. He’s in a proto-wheelchair because his leg already hurts and it certainly can’t be a coincidence that the monarch’s overlooking his estate in the twilight hours before retiring to the palace, a place he’ll only leave again a fortnight later, a dead man.
For almost the entire film that follows, Serra keeps the viewers inside the king’s bedroom, with practically no expeditions to even the adjacent room and corridors. The claustrophobic setting within what viewers presumably know is a vast expanse of real estate (which in turn was a tiny fleck of property within the Kingdom of France), is clearly meant to humanize the man who believed he ruled France by divine right but who, in his waning days and hours, looked just like millions of others on their deathbed. . .
The full review is available here»
Fake Furniture at Versailles?
When I first started thinking about what a reformatted newsletter for the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture might include, I began asking other HECAA members. An esteemed colleague answered immediately, “More gossip!”As much as I liked the response, I’m afraid there’s been very little gossip published here at Enfilade over the past seven years. Yet nothing seems to drive whisperings in the art world like a forgery scandal; and Paris is in the midst of one, with allegations that fake eighteenth-century furniture was sold to Versailles. That the story is receiving widespread coverage in the press and has become a proper legal matter, complete with press releases, probably suggests it’s moved on from the mere gossip stage. Sarah Cascone reported on the story for ArtNet News (10 June 2016), and here’s weekend coverage by Georgina Adam for the Financial Times (19 June 2016) . . . . –CH
Louis Delanois, Chair made for Madame du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV, ca. 1769 (Versailles)
A scandal over faked 18th-century French furniture has erupted in Paris, with a couple of eminent specialists under investigation for the alleged making and sale of counterfeit chairs, some of which were bought by Versailles.
One of those under investigation is Bill Pallot, who works for the venerable antique dealer Didier Aaron, which has spaces in Paris, London and New York. Pallot is an art historian, collector, lecturer at the Sorbonne and the author of numerous books on antique furniture, including the reference volume on 18th-century chairs. He is a sworn expert for law courts and a member of both the French antique dealers’ association the Syndicat National des Antiquaires and the Syndicat Français des Experts Professionnels. Both professional bodies have vowed to “take the necessary measures” if the accusations are proved.
The other suspect is Laurent Kraemer, co-director of Kraemer Gallery, a prominent 141-year-old family firm of antique dealers. A master craftsman in the Faubourg St Antoine, a district famed for making furniture of all sorts, supposedly produced the pieces in question.
At issue are six pieces now in Versailles, along with two others that were sold by Kraemer. These two chairs were apparently copied from genuine ones already in Versailles; in 2013 they were listed as national treasures by the authorities and export barred, but were ultimately not bought by the palace because of their hefty price: €1m each.
In a laconic press release, the French Ministry of Culture admitted that Versailles had spent €2.7m, between 2008 and 2012, on furniture that is “implicated” in an investigation by the French cultural police unit (OCBC). . .
The full article from the Financial Times is available here»
Lecture Programme for Art Antiques London, 2016
Art Antiques London
Albert Memorial West Lawn, Kesington Gardens, 24–30 June 2016
Albert Memorial and Kensington Gardens once again provide the stunning backdrop to one of London’s most exciting and glamorous art and antique fairs. Held in a beautiful bespoke pavilion opposite the Royal Albert Hall and close to the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Art Antiques London brings together leading international dealers and discerning visitors from all over the world, who can buy with confidence at this strictly vetted sumptuous summer showcase for the arts. The fair is complemented with a full lecture programme.
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Saturday, 25 June 2016, 11.30–12.30
Elisabetta Dal Carlo (Curator, The Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice), “Geminiano Cozzi, His Manufactory, and Its Porcelain”
During the eighteenth century, the Serenissima Repubblica was the only State which boasted no less than four porcelain factories, and it is remarkable that none of them had been founded by public decree, but by private initiative. The manufactory founded by Geminiano Cozzi in 1763 achieved a great success in Venice and was active until 1812. The factory was located in San Giobbe, Canaregio and followed a strict trade policy in order to exclude foreign imports in the Venetian market. The lecture will present the story of the manufactory, its huge production of high quality porcelain decorated with rich and brilliant colours, and will focus on the finest pieces featuring all the Venetian charm.
Almost 250 years later, Venice has dedicated a fascinating exhibition to this extraordinary entrepreneur which explores the long activity of the factory and recognizes its rightful place among other European manufactures. The exhibition is the first retrospective on the Cozzi manufactory and offers the public more than 600 items on view, an important collection from national and international museums, enriched by rare pieces from private collections that have never been displayed before. It takes place in Venice, Ca’Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento veneziano from March 18th to July 12th 2016.
Elisabetta Dal Carlo is an art historian, a scholar of decorative arts between baroque and neoclassical styles and a specialist in eighteenth-century ceramics. Curator, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. She graduated in History of Art at Ca’Foscari University in Venice, and she obtained her Ph.D. in History of Art at Siena University. She lectured in Italy and abroad (London and Paris) on the art of porcelain and she edited some catalogues of decorative arts collections and various publications on Venetian and Veneto art history.
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Saturday, 25 June 2016, 3.00–4.00
Suzanne Findlen Hood (Curator of Ceramics and Glass, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), “Ceramic Treasures from the Colonial Williamsburg Collection”
Colonial Williamsburg’s collections illuminate our understanding of colonial Virginia and the larger Anglo-American world. In addition to objects of everyday life, Williamsburg has also collected the finest British and American arts. Explore the treasures of Colonial Williamsburg’s ceramics collection from porcelain produced by Chelsea, Bow, and Worcester to exceptional English delft. From a first edition Portland vase, to seventeenth-century German stoneware, Williamsburg’s collection is full of masterpieces that illustrate that teapots and plates are more than just dishes. This lecture will reacquaint you with some old friends and introduce you to some of Colonial Williamsburg’s lesser known strengths. With two museums and more than eighty eighteenth-century buildings, ‘collecting colonial’ in the twenty-first century offers a world of variety.
Suzanne Findlen Hood is the curator of ceramics and glass at Colonial Williamsburg. She has had the privilege of working at Colonial Williamsburg since 2002. Ms. Hood holds a B.A. in history from Wheaton College in Massachusetts and an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and the University of Delaware. Prior to coming to Colonial Williamsburg, Ms. Hood was employed at The Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her research has focused on ceramics owned and used in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America with a particular emphasis on archaeological ceramics, Chinese export porcelain, salt-glazed stoneware, and British pottery. Ms. Hood is co-author with Janine Skerry of Salt-glazed Stoneware in Early America, winner of the American Ceramic Circle Book Award for 2009. Her most recent exhibition, China of the Most Fashionable Sort: Chinese Export Porcelain in Colonial America, is currently on view at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
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Monday, 27 June 2016, 11.30–12.30
Rosalind Sword (BA Cantab, Author and Lecturer), “Coloured Worcester Porcelain of The First Period: The H.R. Marshall Collection at The Ashmolean Museum”
To celebrate the publication of the new Worcester catalogue of the H.R. Marshall Collection at the Ashmolean Museum in August, Rosalind Sword will talk about the highlights of the Marshall collection. Drawing on Marshall’s own papers, the speaker will give further insights into how this amazing, academic, and encyclopaedic collection was formed. Highlights to be discussed will include a rare garniture of five vases decorated by James Giles with naturalistic birds, the ‘Grubbe’ tea jar also by Giles (its partner is in the Museum of Royal Worcester), O’Neale Vases and dishes, a Duvivier signed and decorated teapot, a teapot from the Theatrical Service, and an amazing pair of candlesticks in under-glaze blue. Particular attention will be paid to rare items from the first ten years of the factory such as a Wigornia type cream boat, a large jug decorated with the Stag Hunt pattern, a cylindrical vase with European Figures possibly decorated by O’Neale, tall vases, and many covetable small bottles and dishes of different shapes and decoration. Examples of other items of great interest to Marshall will also be discussed such as comparative or prototype pieces from other factories and armorial porcelain not featured in depth in his own book. This unparalleled 20th-century collection, now re-displayed for the 21st century viewer in the Ashmolean, is an amazing insight into this extraordinary Worcester collection.
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Monday, 27 June 2016, 5.15–6.30
“Face to Face: Dame Rosalind Savill in Conversation with Richard, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry”
In this conversation Dame Rosalind and the 10th Duke of Buccleuch will discuss the extraordinary task of preserving and presenting four most wonderful houses and their sumptuous art treasures in the United Kingdom: Boughton House (The English Versailles), Drumlanrig Castle, Bowhill and Dalkeith Palace in Scotland. His legacy will not simply be one of stewardship and scholarship but also creating innovative exciting landscape projects.
Dame Rosalind Savill DBE, FBA, FSA, Curator Emeritus, The Wallace Collection, London, became a Museum Assistant in the Ceramics Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1973, moving to the Wallace Collection in 1974. There she worked for thirty-seven years, becoming an Assistant Director in 1979 and Director in 1992, and retired in 2011. Her major publication is The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, 3 vols, 1988, which won her the National Art-Collection Fund prize for Scholarship in 1990; she has written numerous articles and papers, chiefly on Sèvres porcelain. In 1990 she became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, in 2000 she was awarded a CBE for Services to the Study of Ceramics, in 2006 she became a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2009 she was awarded a DBE for Services to the Arts. She has Visiting Professorships from the University of Buckingham and the University of the Arts London, won the European Woman of Achievement Award (Arts and Media) 2005 and was a Member of the Conseil d’Administration at Sèvres Cité de la Céramique. Currently her Trusteeships include: the Royal Collection Trust, the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust and The Wallace Collection Foundation. Dame Rosalind is also President of the French Porcelain Society and of the Academic Committee at Waddesdon Manor.
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Tuesday, 28 June 2016, 11.00–5.00
“The English Ceramics Circle: Study Day | A Taste for the Antique, The Neo-classical Style, and Ceramics in England, ca. 1770–1800″
• Matthew Martin (Curator, NG Victoria), Introduction
• Oliver Fairclough (Hon. Research Fellow, N M Wales), ‘A Very Masterly Stile’: The British Taste for Sèvres Porcelain, 1760–1790
• James Lomax (F.S.A., Emeritus Curator of Collections at Temple Newsam House), The Neo-classical Style and Ceramics at Temple Newsam
• Diana Edwards (porcelain researcher and author), Dry-bodied Pottery
• Leslie Grigsby (Senior Curator of Ceramics and Glass, Winterthur), Some Neo-classical Sources
• Roger Massey (porcelain researcher and author), Derby Bisque Figures
• Patricia Ferguson (ceramics advisor to the National Trust), Vases and Garnitures
• Nicholas Panes (porcelain researcher and author), Bristol Porcelain
Tickets (including a three-course dinner) £110 ECC members. £135 non-ECC members; lectures only £70 ECC members, £85 non-ECC members. For further information please visit the English Ceramics Circle website. Booking information is available here.
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Wednesday, 29 June 2016, 11.30–12.30
Sally Kevill-Davies (Independent writer and researcher), “Chelsea ‘Hans Sloane’ Botanical Porcelain: Visions of Arcadia and America in the English Landscape Garden”
Marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot (‘Capability’) Brown (1716–1783), this lecture examines the influx of unknown American trees and shrubs into England during the first decades of the eighteenth century. This was initiated largely by Peter Collinson (1694–1768), a London cloth merchant with a passion for botany, in response to the Enlightenment interest in the natural world, and the desire by English aristocrats to find trees and shrubs with which to adorn their estates in the new fashion for landscape gardening. Through his American contacts Collinson was put in touch with John Bartram (1699–1777), a Pennsylvania farmer, whom he paid to go on hazardous expeditions into virgin territory in search of new plants. These were shipped across the Atlantic, and were eagerly cultivated by London nurserymen, Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden, and Collinson himself, for distribution to the aristocracy for their fashionable landscape gardens. Many of the plants were painted by Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–1770) and later engraved, and these images were copied onto porcelain at Nicholas Sprimont’s Chelsea porcelain factory during the 1750s. Thus, the sensational new plants of the American wilderness and of the landscape garden were, for a few years, pictured at the tables of elite Society.”
Sally Kevill-Davies started her ceramic career as a specialist at Sotheby’s, where she worked for nine years. She also worked on re-cataloguing the English porcelain at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and organised an exhibition of Chelsea porcelain for the Chelsea Festival, 1999. She wrote the catalogue, Sir Hans Sloane’s Plants on Chelsea Porcelain for an exhibition in June 2015.
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Wednesday, 29 June 2016, 3.00–4.00
Katharina Hantschmann (Curator for Ceramics at the Bavarian National Museum, Munich and The Ernst Schneider Collection of Meissen Porcelain, Lustheim Castle), “Chinese and Meissen Porcelain of the Bavarian Elector Karl Albrecht: An Exercise in Propaganda”
When in 1740 the German Emperor Karl VI died without a male heir, it was the only time in modern history that a member of the Habsburg family was not elected emperor but one of the other German electors, the Bavarian ruler Karl Albrecht (1697–1745). He substantiated his claim to the title of emperor by detailing familial relationships dating back to the sixteenth century. His dynastic ambitions are reflected in the prestigious and magnificent developments he made to the Munich court decades before, such as commissioning the building of the Reiche Zimmer (‘rich apartment’) in 1730. Also his acquisitions and presentations of exceptional Chinese and Meissen porcelain services bear witness to the elector’s aspirations. A unique service magnificently etched with Augsburg gold decoration on Chinese and Meissen porcelain was probably displayed on a buffet on festive occasions. The Bavarian electors were also early owners of Meissen porcelain, such as four early tea services with Chinese scenes, two presently displayed in the Munich Residenz on tiered silver stands. Was all this an exercise in propaganda? The speaker will explore these aspirations.
Katharina Hantschmann MA, PhD: Curator of Ceramics at the Bavarian National Museum, Munich and The Ernst Schneider Collection of Meissen Porcelain, Lustheim Castle from 1984.
Exhibition | Geminiano Cozzi and His Porcelain
Now on view at Ca’ Rezzonico:
Geminiano Cozzi and His Porcelain / Geminiano Cozzi e le Sue Porcellane
Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Venice, 9 March – 12 July 2016
Curated by Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich
Porcelain is perhaps the material that best embodies the spirit and aesthetic of the eighteenth century: glossy and light, it naturally lends itself to the creation of objects characterised by elegant, flowing lines. For long kept a secret by Chinese manufacturers, it was re-created in Europe in the second decade of the eighteenth century at the Saxon court of Augustus the Strong and from there gradually spread across the continent, despite desperate attempts to hide the formula. During the eighteenth century, the Venetian Republic was the only state to have no less than four porcelain factories, all of them opened by private initiative. One of these was that of Geminiano Cozzi (1728–1798), born in Modena but Venetian by choice. It is to his extraordinary activity as an entrepreneur ante litteram that the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is now dedicating the first ever retrospective, 250 years after the privilege granted to him by the Republic in 1765 (and which marks the real birth of the Cozzi manufacture).
It is no coincidence that the exhibition should be presented in the pòrtego on the first floor of Ca’ Rezzonico, the Museo del Settecento Veneziano, a venue that in terms of its form and history is the best-suited to celebrating one of the most fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century art. Curated by Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich, the exhibition features over six hundred pieces from Italian and foreign museums, including the few items to have a firm date and the many still in private collections and hitherto difficult of access to the public and to scholars, a circumstance that has not helped the fortune critique of Cozzi: only today is his work as artist and manufacture being being its due recognition within the European scene. Unfolding in a development that is both chronological and thematic, the exhibition shows the evolution of Cozzi’s manufacture and of the types of decoration and various items, highlighting on the one hand one of the most fascinating art-historical events of the eighteenth century, and on the other by presenting an overview of a manufacturing activity of the period that includes items of surprising modernity.
The development of the art of porcelain in the eighteenth century in the Venetian Republic was undertaken by figures who were controversial, stubborn and fascinating. One of these was the Giovanni Vezzi, goldsmith and merchant, who in 1720 started his own production in Venice. Another was Nathaniel Friederich Hewelcke, a Saxon merchant who emigrated in 1757 from Meissen because of the closure of the factory during the Seven Years War; he requested and obtained a twenty-year privilege to manufacture “Saxon porcelain of any and all types” in Venice. And aside from the aforementioned Geminiano Cozzi, we might also mention Giovanni Battista Antonibon, who in 1762 started production in Nove (VI) thirty years after obtaining the privilege from the Serenissima’ “Savi della Mercanzia” for the production of high-quality majolica quality for twenty years without having to pay taxes (1732). Their destiny, however, despite the qualitatively extraordinary work, was not so lucky: after a few years, Vezzi and Hewelcke were obliged to abandon their businesses because of debts, and only Antonibon in Nove and Cozzi in Venice were able to establish long-lasting businesses, despite encountering difficulties on the way.
Marcella Ansaldi and Alberto Craievich, Geminiano Cozzi e le Sue Porcellane (Crocetta del Montello: Antiga Edizioni, 2016), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-8897784890, $72.
Tom Stammers on Jean-Charles Davillier
Thomas Stammers | Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: A Paragon
and Historian of Taste in Nineteenth-Century France
The Wallace Collection, London, 25 June 2016
The French Porcelain Society is delighted to announce this year’s Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue Memorial Lecture to be presented by Dr. Thomas Stammers, Durham University, entitled “Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: A Paragon and Historian of Taste in Nineteenth-Century France.”
Baron Jean-Charles Davillier (1823–83) was a pioneering figure in the Second Empire, not simply through his forays into neglected fields—such as Spanish decorative arts—but also through the self-consciousness and erudition he brought to the study of collecting. His landmark publications on the celebrated cabinets and sales of the old regime demonstrate how nineteenth-century amateurs situated themselves in a lineage stretching back, across the revolution, to the ancien régime. This paper situates Davillier within the context of French mid-century collecting, characterized by its expanding geographical reach and heightened emphasis on selection and discernment. It will consider his methods and sources as an historian, and relate his scholarship to both other nascent attempts to write the history of collecting, and to wider cultural politics, not least the violent events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. It will conclude by considering Davillier the patriot, and the controversy that engulfed the donation of his collections to the Louvre and to Sèvres in 1883. Davillier’s career and research are central for understanding how French porcelain was revered as both an aesthetic and technical marvel, and also as an historical document.
Tom Stammers is a cultural historian of France from the Revolution down to the end of the nineteenth century.
The free lecture will be held at The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, W1U 3BN, on Saturday 25 June 2016 at 7:00–8:00pm. To reserve a place, please email fpsmailing@gmail.com.
At Auction | Chinese Export ‘Lady Washington States China’ Plate
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Martha Washington’s Birthday was last Monday (13 June 1731). A plate from her tea service sold earlier in the month at Grogan and Company:
A rare Chinese export ‘Lady Washington States China’ plate led the Grogan & Company’s June 5 auction in Boston. Capturing the attention of public institutions and private collectors alike, the ‘Lady Washington States China’ plate soared above its $25,000–50,000 pre-sale estimate when it fetched $244,000 in The June Auction (Sale 154, Lot 37). The plate is an example from Martha Washington’s porcelain tea service of approximately 40 pieces, presented to her in April 1796 by the Dutch trader Andreas van Braam Houckgeest. Designed for Mrs. Washington by van Braam himself, the service celebrated the nascent United States of America through the decorative motif repeated on each piece. Today, fewer than 20 pieces of the remarkable service remain.
Call for Nominations | SAH Publication Awards, 2017
From H-ArtHist:
The Society of Architectural Historians Publication Awards
Nominations due by 1 August 2016
The Society of Architectural Historians is accepting nominations for its 2017 Publication Awards. The program includes five awards that will be presented at the Society’s 2017 Annual International Conference (Glasgow, June 7–11). The deadline to submit is Monday, August 1, 2016.
• Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award Presented for distinguished scholarship by a North American author in the history of architecture
• Philip Johnson Exhibition Catalogue Award Presented for excellence in published exhibition catalogues
• Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award Presented for an outstanding publication devoted to historical issues in the preservation field
• Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award Presented for distinguished scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design
• Spiro Kostof Book Award Presented for work that focuses on urbanism and architecture and provides the greatest contribution to our understanding of historical development and change
Learn more and download a nomination form at the SAH website.
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