Exhibition | Romantic Shakespeare
Now on view in Saint-Omer:
Shakespeare Romantique: Füssli, Delacroix, Chassériau
Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer, 24 May — 30 August 2017
Curated by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Marie-Lys Marguerite, and Roman Saffré
In May 2017, the musée de l’hôtel Sandelin presents a new exhibition organized as part of a prestigious partnership with the musée du Louvre and the musée national Eugène-Delacroix. The exhibition will present some 70 exceptional works. These painters, printmakers, and sculptors built a collective imagination around the parts of an author who was particularly inspirational for them throughout the 19th century, the great English playwright Shakespeare. Fuseli, Delacroix, Chassériau, Moreau, Préault, and Doré were able to recreate in their creations the feelings, the strangeness, and the morality of Shakespearean tragedies. Their works still influence the staging of Shakespeare’s plays.
In 1824, Stendhal wrote: “All the great writers were romantics of their time.” In fact, the 19th century was marked by a renewed interest in the great literary frescoes past Dante, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Racine become essential sources of inspiration for the romantic authors, but also for painters, who then have a special relationship to the art of staging.
Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth, 1784, 221 × 160 cm (Paris: Louvre).
The early 19th century saw the birth of a true rediscovery of Shakespeare in France. The feelings of strangeness and morality in each of Shakespearean tragedies influence painters, printmakers and sculptors to create some art of emotion and narrative. The exhibition aims to show the the creation of a collective imagination that gave rise to the plays of Shakespeare. These designs still influence the staging of the texts of the English playwright. Works presented in the exhibition come mainly from the collections of the Louvre, the Musée national Eugène-Delacroix, the d’Orsay Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Curators
Dominique de Font-Réaulx, General Curator of Heritage and Director of Eugene Delacroix Museum
Marie-Lys Margaret, Heritage curator and director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Arras
Romain Saffré, Heritage curator and director of museums Saint-Omer
New Book | Baroque Seville: Sacred Art in a Century of Crisis
The focus rests on the 1660s and 70s—with plenty, nonetheless, relevant for the eighteenth century. –CH.
From Penn State UP:
Amanda Wunder, Baroque Seville: Sacred Art in a Century of Crisis (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2017), 232 pages, ISBN: 978 02710 76645, $85.
Baroque art flourished in seventeenth-century Seville during a tumultuous period of economic decline, social conflict, and natural disasters. This volume explores the patronage that fueled this frenzy of religious artistic and architectural activity and the lasting effects it had on the city and its citizens.
Amanda Wunder investigates the great public projects of sacred artwork that were originally conceived as medios divinos—divine solutions to the problems that plagued Seville. These commissions included new polychromed wooden sculptures and richly embroidered clothing for venerable old images, gilded altarpieces and monumental paintings for church interiors, elaborate ephemeral decorations and festival books by which to remember them, and the gut renovation or rebuilding of major churches that had stood for hundreds of years. Meant to revive the city spiritually, these works also had a profound real-world impact. Participation in the production of sacred artworks elevated the social standing of the artists who made them and the devout benefactors who commissioned them, and encouraged laypeople to rally around pious causes. Using a diverse range of textual and visual sources, Wunder provides a compelling look at the complex visual world of seventeenth-century Seville and the artistic collaborations that involved all levels of society in the attempt at its revitalization.
Amanda Wunder is Associate Professor of History at Lehman College and of Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Currency, Weights, and Measures
Introduction
1 The Art of Disillusionment: The Patronage of Mateo Vázquez de Leca
2 The Piety of Powerful Neighbors: The Renovation of Santa María la Blanca
3 A Temporary Triumph: The Seville Cathedral’s Festival for San Fernando
4 The Nobility of Charity: The Church and Hospital of the Santa Caridad
5 The Phoenix of Seville: Rebuilding the Church of San Salvador
Conclusion
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Enfilade 
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