Montreal Acquires Rigaud’s Modello for Portrait of Louis XIV
Press release via Art Daily (31 May 2017). . .
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Modello for the Portrait of Louis XIV in Royal Ceremonial Robes, 1701, oil on canvas, 55 × 45 cm (Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal).
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has just acquired a remarkable work: the modello, or painted sketch, for the famous Portrait of Louis XIV in Royal Ceremonial Robes by Hyacinthe Rigaud (Musée du Louvre, Paris).
“We are pleased that we were able to acquire this iconic painting on the art market. It is the modello for one of the most famous portraits in the history of Western art,” said Nathalie Bondil, the MMFA’s Director General and Chief Curator. “Often copied and even imitated, the painting is the origin of a rich iconographic lineage in the history of state portraiture. It is an important addition to our collection of historical international art, since Louis XIV enabled New France to evolve from a trading outpost to a populated settlement.”
Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Senior Curator of Old Masters, had this to say about the work: “The canvas is in very good condition and has not been refixed. The exquisite execution succeeds in concentrating formidable power into a small format. The attention paid to the textures is admirable and is to some extent more impressive than the large final version: look attentively at the rendering of the ermine and the velvet and also the way in which the fleurs de lys, following the curves of the folds in the cloak bend and twist, catching the light, something that is not evident in the final version.”
“By representing the contact of the king’s skin with the regalia, the painter is accentuating his special status among men,” added Sylvain Cordier, Curator of Early Decorative Arts. “Louis XIV is the only one who can touch with his bare hands the sacred instruments that confirm his royalty: anyone looking at the painting was aware of this. In our world, awash in political images, it is exciting to look at the composition of an official portrait as emblematic as this one, which uses specific codes and a profusion of detail to depict his royal majesty and legitimacy as a ruler in the seventeenth century. We are the inheritors of this past, which also raised profound questions that led to the rise of democracy and citizenship. Today, as we view this ‘icon,’ it feels both familiar and distant.”
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The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal acquired the painting from Paris-based Galerie Éric Coatalem, which, as reported by Didier Rykner for La Tribune de l’Art (16 May 2017), displayed the painting at this year’s TEFAF in Maastricht.
Much more information is available from Ariane James-Sarazin’s essay “Le modello du portrait de Louis XIV en grand costume royal” for the online catalogue raisonné Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743). L’homme et son art (Editions Faton, added 2 March 2017 and updated 17 May 2017).
Exhibition | Casanova: The Seduction of Europe
From the Kimbell Art Museum and Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) . . .
Casanova: The Seduction of Europe / Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure, and Power
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 27 August — 31 December 2017
The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 10 February — 28 May 2018
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1 July — 8 October 2018
Jean-Marc Nattier, Portrait of Manon Balletti, 1757, oil on canvas, 54 × 47.5 cm (London: National Gallery). Balletti was the fiancée (1757–60) of Giacomo Casanova and then wife (1760–74) of the architect Jacques-François Blondel.
Casanova: The Seduction of Europe explores the 18th century across Europe through the eyes of one of its most colorful characters, Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798). Renowned in modern times for his amorous pursuits, Casanova lived not only in Italy, but in France and England, and his travels took him to the Ottoman Empire and to meet Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. Bringing together paintings, sculpture, works on paper, furnishings, porcelains, silver, and period costume, Casanova will bring this world to life. Following its display in Fort Worth, the exhibition will be on view at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Frederick Ilchman, Thomas Michie, C.D. Dickerson III, and Esther Bell, with texts by Meredith Chilton, Jeffrey Collins, Nina Dubin, Courtney Leigh Harris, James Johnson, Pamela Parmal, Malina Stefanovska, Susan Wager, and Michael Yonan, Casanova: The Seduction of Europe (Boston: MFA Publications, 2017), 344 pages, ISBN: 978 087846 8423, $45.
In 18th-century Europe, while the old order reveled in the luxurious excesses of the Rococo style and the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of revolution, the shapeshifting libertine Giacomo Casanova seduced his way across the continent. Although notorious for the scores of amorous conquests he recorded in his remarkably frank memoirs, Casanova was just as practiced at charming his way into the most elite social circles, through an inimitable mix of literary ambition, improvisational genius and outright fraud. In his travels across Europe and through every level of society from the theatrical demimonde to royal courts, he was also seduced by the visual splendors he encountered.
This volume accompanies the first major art exhibition outside Europe to lavishly recreate Casanova’s visual world, from his birthplace of Venice, city of masquerades, to the cultural capitals of Paris and London and the outposts of Eastern Europe. Summoning up the people he met and the cityscapes, highways, salons, theaters, masked balls, boudoirs, gambling halls and dining rooms he frequented, it provides a survey of important works of 18th-century European art by masters such as Canaletto, Fragonard, Boucher, Houdon, and Hogarth, along with exquisite decorative arts objects. Twelve essays by prominent scholars illuminate multiple facets of Casanova’s world as reflected in the arts of his time, providing a fascinating grand tour of Europe conducted by a quintessential figure of the 18th century as well as a splendid visual display of the spirit of the age.
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Note (added 20 August 2018) — This article might be of interest for anyone thinking about the exhibition and its reception within our own political/cultural context: Cynthia Durcanin, “Casanova as Case Study: How Should Art Museums Present Problematic Aspects of the Past?,” ArtNews (13 August 2018). As noted in the essay: “The MFA also changed the show’s title from the Legion of Honor’s, removing the word ‘seduction’ so that it became ‘Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure and Power in the 18th Century’.” According to Katie Getchell, the chief brand officer and deputy director of the MFA Boston, “It’s an important nuance. The show is not about Casanova—it’s about Europe in Casanova’s time.”
Call for Donations | Mary D. Sheriff Research and Travel Award
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture are pleased to announce the establishment of a research and travel award to honor the late Mary D. Sheriff.
The Sheriff Research and Travel Award will offer research and travel support to doctoral candidates, early career scholars and contingent faculty working on feminist topics in eighteenth-century art history and visual culture, and will be awarded every two years (starting in 2018).
We would like to invite donations to the fund, which will be invested and managed by ASECS. Donations are tax-deductible. Once your contribution is received, ASECS will send a letter for tax purposes, acknowledging your gift to this non-profit organization.
Contributions can be made by check (made out to ASECS, with a note that it is for the Sheriff Award); or by credit card (mail in credit card number, expiration and security code), and should be sent by June 19, 2017 to the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies:
ASECS
PO Box 7867
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27109
Checks can also be sent any time to: Melissa Hyde, School of Art and Art History, PO Box 115801, University of Florida, Gainesville FL 32611. Please contact Melissa if you have questions, mlhyde@ymail.com.
Workshop | Transplanted Places: Garden Design
From H-ArtHist:
Transplanted Places: Garden Design and Shifting Cultural Geographies, 1650–1800
Museum of Asian Art, Berlin (Dahlem), 22–24 June 2017
Organized by Joachim Rees and Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch
Please register by 15 June 2017 via email: Arbeitsbereich-Rees@geschkult.fu-berlin.de. Additional information is available here.
T H U R S D A Y , 2 2 J U N E 2 0 1 7
18:00 Welcome from Joachim Rees and Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch
18:10 Keynote Address
• Hans von Trotha (Berlin), A Garden is a Garden is a Garden: Reestablishing a Discourse on the Art of Gardening in the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
F R I D A Y , 2 3 J U N E 2 0 1 7
9:30 Travelling, Collecting, Gardening
Chair: Klaas Ruitenbeek (Berlin)
• Marianne Klemun (Vienna), Connecting Spaces: Mobile Meanings of Plants
• Lianming Wang (Heidelberg), Exotic Plants and Transplanted Spaces in Eighteenth-Century Beijing
• Stefan Schweizer (Düsseldorf), Mountains, Rivers, Monuments: Landscape and Territory as Symbolic Features in Early Modern European Gardens
13:00 Lunch
14:30 Gardens and the Geography of Opposition and Dissent
Chair: Sebastian Fitzner (Berlin)
• Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch (Berlin), Veins and Bones: Garden Landscape as Representation of the Cosmic Organism
• Jongsang Sung (Seoul), Garden as a Secluded Paradise: Seventeenth-Century Joseon Scholar Kosan Yoon Seondo’s Garden
• Franziska Bub (Berlin), The Wörlitz Landscape Garden: A Place of Opposition and Retreat in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
• Joachim Rees (Berlin), Colonies Lost and Regained: Landscape Gardening and Contested ‘Colonial Fantasies’ in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany
S A T U R D A Y , 2 4 J U N E 2 0 1 7
9:00 Gardens and the Aesthetics of Itinerancy
Chair: Gert Gröning (Berlin)
• Wybe Kuitert (Seoul), Raising Children: The Garden and Japan Perceptions of Constantijn Huygens
• Anna Ananieva (London), Curiosity for the East: Imagination and Knowledge of Chinese Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
• Yoonjung Seo (Berlin), King Chongjo (r. 1776–1800) and His Political Ambition Represented in the Royal Garden: Focusing on the Gatherings at the Jade Stream in Ch’angdok Palace
• Sheng-Ching Chang (Taipei), The Enlightenment of Prussia through the Far East: From the Planning of the Royal Gardens of Potsdam to Nineteenth-Century Urban Greening
13:30 Lunch
S U N D A Y , 2 5 J U N E 2 0 1 7
Excursion to Berlin-Marzahn: Gardens of the World | Gärten der Welt
New Book | Penser le « petit » de l’Antiquité au premier XXe siècle
Addressing textual approaches and practices of artistic miniaturization from antiquity to the nineteenth century, this volume presents essays that grew out of a colloquium on the subject in October 2015. Available from Les libraires ensemble:
Sophie Duhem, Estelle Galbois et Anne Perrin Khelissa, eds., Penser le « petit » de l’Antiquité au premier XXe siècle: Approches textuelles et pratiques de la miniaturisation artistique (Lyon: Fage, 2017), 224 pages, ISBN: 978 284975 4306, 25€.
From Tanagra statuettes to the automata of the industrial age, there are many material manifestations of the ancient fascination with shapes, images, and tiny objects. Examples abound: carved micro-architectures of Gothic buildings, small engravings by Stefano della Bella or Sébastien Leclerc, eighteenth-century objects of vertu, and the Lilliputian creatures of children’s literature. Rare, however, are the historical sources that allow us to understand their cultural foundations. While the written sources usually consider the ‘small’ only in relationship to the ‘big’, the analysis of the consumption of these objects reveals a set of practical, symbolic, and artistic skills such as manoeuvrability, mobility, economy, poverty, preciousness, thoroughness, prettiness, and strangeness. Too often, the dominant sources focus on the size of the objects, diminishing other considerations. At times, miniaturization reduces the scale of a given object, while at other times it may be an independent creation governed by specific criteria. Whatever the case, miniaturization is based on a set of justifications, usages, and judgments that this conference aims to clarify.
C O N T E N T S
Essais introductifs
Sophie Duhem, Estelle Galbois, Anne Perrin Khelissa, Le « petit » : un concept opératoire pour penser l’art et son récit
Jean-Marie Guillouët, Une perspective préalable depuis le Moyen Âge : la question des échelles de l’œuvre
Partie 1 : Technique, esthétiques et fonctions du changement d’échelle
• Jan Blanc, Valeurs et enjeux théoriques du ‘petit’ à l’époque moderne
• Véronique Sarrazin, Le « format Collombat », ou comment le petit format d’un modeste livret est devenu une référence de goût et de commodité au xviiie siècle
• Tamara Préaud, Petits bibelots ou vraies sculptures ? L’exemple de Vincennes-Sèvres au xviiie siècle
• Cyril Lécosse, Stratégie de distinction chez les « pygmées de l’art » : peindre la miniature en grand autour de 1800
• Élodie Voillot, Un musée dans chaque foyer. Les réductions de sculptures, du grand art au petit bibelot, 1839–1900
Partie 2 : Luxe, préciosités et réceptions de l’objet minuscule
• Alice Delage, La microarchitecture dans l’orfèvrerie florentine : la Renaissance du « petit »
• Françoise Gilbert, Le sonnet 465 du « Parnasso espanol » : un petit bijou de la main de Quevedo
• Anne Perrin Khelissa, Menace sur le « grand » art. Le peuple des magots et des statuettes en porcelaine au Siècle des Lumières
• Michel Sandras, « La miette de Cellini / Vaut le bloc de Michel-Ange ». Petites formes et artisanat du style, 1830–1890
Partie 3 : Souvenir, circulations et pouvoirs mémoriels de l’objet miniature
• Rori Bloom, « Voilà mon portrait que je vous donne » : la boîte à portrait dans la littérature précieuse
• Manuel Charpy, Réductions, miniatures et fragments. La religion du souvenir et du passé dans les espaces intimes au xixe siècle
• Manuel Royo, « Voir le grand dans le petit », enjeux mémoriels de la maquette d’architecture : le cas de Rome à la fin du xixe siècle et au début du xx e siècle
• Claire Barbillon, Le paradoxe de la monumentalité en format réduit : la statuaire monumentale publique et la carte postale
Partie 4 : Poésie, images et représentations du « petit » monde
• François Ripoll, « Si parua licet componere magnis » (Georg., IV, 176) : la dialectique du « grand » et du « petit » dans les chants III et IV des Géorgiques de Virgile
• Vincent Robert-Nicoud, Grand débat sur le « petit » monde : l’homme microcosme de Rabelais à Scève
• Sarah Grandin, « Cironalité universelle » : taille, échelle et perspective dans L’Autre monde de Cyrano
• Nathalie Rizzoni, « Les Petits toure lourirette / Valent bien les grands » : les enfants sur les scènes de théâtre en France au premier xviiie siècle
Présentation des auteurs
2017 AAMC Awards Announced
Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Portal of Valenciennes, ca. 1710–11, oil on canvas, 32.5 × 40.5 cm (New York: The Frick Collection, purchased with funds from the bequest of Arthemise Redpath, 91.1.173 / photo: Michael Bodycomb).
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Congratulations to Aaron Wile! His essay “Watteau and the Inner Life of War”—from the catalogue Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France , published in conjunction with the exhibition that Wile also curated for The Frick Collection—was awarded the 2017 Prize for ‘Best Article, Essay, or Extended Catalogue Entry’ from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).
A full list of awards is available here»
Humanities Commons
For many of us, summer means catching up on one’s scholarly profiles: filing activity reports, updating CVs, reformatting personal websites, and uploading academic papers. Now you have a new set of options with a new platform: Humanities Commons, a nonprofit, open-access network, built with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
As described on the ‘About’ page for HC:
Humanities Commons was designed by scholarly societies in the humanities to serve the needs of humanists as they engage in teaching and research that benefit the larger community. Unlike other social and academic communities, Humanities Commons is open-access, open-source, and nonprofit. It is focused on providing a space to discuss, share, and store cutting-edge research and innovative pedagogy—not on generating profits from users’ intellectual and personal data.
The network also features an open-access repository, the Commons Open Repository Exchange. CORE allows users to preserve their research and increase its reach by sharing it across disciplinary, institutional, and geographic boundaries. Developed in partnership with Columbia University’s Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, CORE is underwritten by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities.
In December, Inside Higher Ed noted the launch of the beta version.
In a March posting for ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College & Research Libraries, Lily Troia interviewed Nicky Agate, Head of Digital Initiatives in the Office of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association. The posting provides a useful introduction to Humanities Commons and how it differs from commercial services such as Academia.edu.
CAA is one of four societies currently participating, and the hub, CAA Commons, is scheduled for release in the coming weeks (months?). In the meantime (and at least at this point, it’s not obvious what additional features might be available with CAA Commons), anyone is invited to register, establish a profile, create a website (in cooperation with WordPress), upload papers, and start setting up groups. Groups can be public, private, or hidden. More information is available from the Guides and FAQ sections.
–Craig Hanson
New Book | Miniatur-Geschichten: Indian Painting at Dresden
Published by Sandstein Verlag and distributed in the U.S. by ISD:
Monica Juneja and Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, eds., Miniatur-Geschichten: Die Sammlung indischer Malerei im Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinett (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2017), 256 pages, ISBN: 978 39549 82714, $28.
Two collections, hitherto all but unknown, of Indian painting from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which are part of the Dresden Copper Plate Cabinet, are the focus of these miniature stories. An inventory of the art collections of the Saxon Elector August the Strong, drawn up in 1738, lists a number of albums with portraits of Indian rulers and princes. In 1848, this collection was enlarged by a donation of 78 works, more diverse in terms of subject matter, from the estate of the German linguist and Indologist August Wilhelm Schlegel.
The catalog offers a representative selection of the Dresden inventory which was enriched by the recent donation of a Shahnama manuscript from Kashmir. The exhibition presents this inventory in the context of loans from Mumbai, London, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Eleven essays in German and English discuss the background of, and provide insights into, the fascinating world of Indian painting.
C O N T E N T S
Dank
Förderer
Grußwort
Vorwort
E S S A Y S
with English summaries / mit deutschen Zusammenfassungen
• Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, Berührungspunkte: Werke indischer Malerei im Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinett
• Monica Juneja, Sehen, Begehren, Sammeln: Ästhetische Wahrnehmungen in den frühmodernen Bildkulturen Südasiens
• Vandana Prapanna, The Collections of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai
• Dipanwita Donde, Portraiture in Mughal Manuscripts: Re-Mapping the Portrait of Akbar between 1600 and 1700
• Ursula Weekes, Medallion Portraits in India and Europe
• Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, Indian Miniatures for Europe: The Dutch Market in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• Dirk Syndram, Der »Thron des Großmoguls«: Ein königlicher Traum vom Fernen Osten
• Roger Paulin, August Wilhelm Schlegel und Indien
• Jürgen Hanneder, August Wilhelm Schlegel als Indienforscher
• Olaf Simon, »… wie du hier sehen kannst«: Kunsttechnologische Untersuchungen und Restaurierung der indischen Bestände des Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinetts
• Neha Berlia, From Timur to the Marathas: Dynasties of India as Represented in Late 17th- to Early 18th-Century Portrait Albums in European Collections
K A T A L O G
Sammlungsgeschichten. Heucher 1738 – Schlegel 1848
Blicke in die Welt indischer Malerei
Darbar und darshan. Porträtkunst und höfische Repräsentation
Prinzessinnen, Asketen, Helden. Genreszenen und Illustrationen
Zur Praxis der Miniaturmalerei
Die Gegenstandswelt der indischen Malerei
Aus den Rüstkammern indischer Fürstenhöfe
Aus dīwān, mardāna und zenāna
Götterbilder und Gebetsketten
Zahlungsmittel im Mogulreich
Kultureller Austausch
Motiv-Wanderungen zwischen Indien und Europa
Berichte und Reisebeschreibungen der Barockzeit
August Wilhelm Schlegel. Indologe und Sammler
Literatur
Personenregister
Bildnachweis
Abkürzungen
Impressum
Symposium | Reportage and Representation
Giovanni Paolo Panini, King Charles III Visiting Pope Benedict XIV at the Coffee House of the Palazzo del Quirinale, 1746, 124 × 174 cm
(Naples: Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte)
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I’m dreadfully sorry to be late with this announcement (the event is just now wrapping up at The Getty), but I imagine the schedule is still useful for those of us not there to appreciate what a good day it must have been. –CH
Reportage and Representation: View Painting as Historical Witness
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 28 May 2017
On the occasion of the exhibition Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe (on view at the Getty Center May 9–July 30, 2017), this scholarly symposium investigates the artistic framework and historical context of eighteenth-century view paintings recording contemporary events.
P R O G R A M
9:00 Registration and coffee
9:30 Welcome from Richard Rand (J. Paul Getty Museum)
9:45 Session 1: Princes, Popes, and Ambassadors
Moderator: Davide Gasparotto (J. Paul Getty Museum)
• Alberto Craievich (Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice), Regattas in Venice, 1680–1791
• Christopher Johns (Vanderbilt University, Nashville), Papal Diplomacy and Public Spectacle from Clement XII to Pius VI
• Stéphane Loire (Musée du Louvre, Paris), Giovanni Paolo Panini as a Witness of Public Life in Rome for the French Ambassadors
• Susan Tipton (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich), Ambassadors on Stage in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Paintings of Diplomatic Ceremonies and Their Original Settings
12:30 Lunch
2:00 Session 2: Constructing Reality
Moderator: Louis Marchesano (Getty Research Institute)
• Edgar Peters Bowron (formerly The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Bernardo Bellotto’s Historical Views of Dresden, Vienna, and Warsaw
• David Marshall (University of Melbourne), Staging Rome: Giovanni Paolo Panini as Vedutista and Designer
3:00 Coffee break
3:30 Session 3: Patronage and the Market
Moderator: Jeffrey Collins (Bard Graduate Center, New York City)
• Francis Russell (Christie’s, London), Venetian Vedutisti and English Buyers: Some Connections and Footnotes
• Charles Beddington (London), Meeting Demand in Canaletto’s Venice
• Respondent: Jeffrey Collins (Bard Graduate Center, New York City)
R E L A T E D L E C T U R E
From Public Spectacle to Public Sphere: New Anthropologies of the Enlightenment
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 27 May 2017
Larry Wolff, professor of history at New York University, considers how the baroque public spectacle—so essential to the rituals of the court and the church—began to give way in the eighteenth century to more informal and participatory forms of sociability and discussion, as reflected in eighteenth-century paintings of public occasion. Saturday, May 27, 5:00pm.
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, 2017–2020
From the National Gallery of Art in Washington:
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2017–2020
Applications due by 30 June 2017
The National Gallery of Art is pleased to announce a postdoctoral curatorial fellowship for 2017–2020 funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This is a two-year fellowship with the possibility of renewal for a third year. The fellowship provides curatorial training and supports scholarly research related to the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The fellow is fully integrated into a specific curatorial department with duties, privileges, and status equivalent to those of an assistant curator. Time is divided between specific projects and general curatorial work within the department, including research on the collection and new acquisitions, work on the presentation of the collection, participation in aspects of special exhibition projects, and opportunities to give public lectures. The fellow will plan and complete a project in consultation with the supervising curator.
Consideration is given to candidates working in fields represented by the Gallery’s permanent collection of European and American art. Placements are available in the departments of old master prints, sculpture and decorative arts, American paintings, modern and contemporary art, and photographs. The doctoral degree in art history (or the equivalent in countries outside the United States) must be or have been officially conferred within five years (preferably three years) of the start date of the fellowship. Applicants from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. This is an international program.
More information is available here»
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