Enfilade

From The University of Chicago Press:

Matthew C. Hunter, Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0226390253, $50.

Painting with Fire shows how experiments with chemicals known to change visibly over the course of time transformed British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century—and how they can alter our conceptions of photography today. As early as the 1670s, experimental philosophers at the Royal Society of London had studied the visual effects of dynamic combustibles. By the 1770s, chemical volatility became central to the ambitious paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, premier portraitist and first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts. Valued by some critics for changing in time (and thus, for prompting intellectual reflection on the nature of time), Reynolds’s unstable chemistry also prompted new techniques of chemical replication among Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and other leading industrialists. In turn, those replicas of chemically decaying academic paintings were rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century and claimed as origin points in the history of photography.

Tracing the long arc of chemically produced and reproduced art from the 1670s through the 1860s, the book reconsiders early photography by situating it in relationship to Reynolds’s replicated paintings and the literal engines of British industry. By following the chemicals, Painting with Fire remaps familiar stories about academic painting and pictorial experiment amid the industrialization of chemical knowledge.

Matthew C. Hunter is associate professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

C O N T E N T S

Introduction: Slow-Motion Mobiles
1  ‘Pictures . . . in time petrify’d’
2  Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Nice Chymistry’ in the 1770s
3  ‘Rend’rd Imortal”: The Work of Art in an Age of Chemical Reproduction
4  Space, Time, and Chemistry: Making Enlightenment ‘Photography’ in the 1860s
Conclusion: Art History in/as an Age of Combustion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Brill:

Eloisa Dodero, Ancient Marbles in Naples in the Eighteenth Century: Findings, Collections, Dispersals (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 630 pages, ISBN: 978-9004362857, €139 / $167.

In Ancient Marbles in Naples in the Eighteenth Century Eloisa Dodero aims at documenting the history of numerous private collections formed in Naples during the 18th century, with particular concern for the ‘Neapolitan marbles’ and the circumstances of their dispersal. Research has thus made it possible to formulate a synthesis of the collecting dynamics of Naples in the 18th century, to define the interest of the great European collectors, especially British, in the antiquities of the city and its territory and to draw up a catalogue which for the first time brings together the nucleus of sculptures reported in the Neapolitan collections or coming from irregular excavations, most of which shared the destiny of dispersal, in some cases here traced in definitive fashion.

Eloisa Dodero is curator archaeologist at the Capitoline Museums, Rome. She is involved in the publication of the Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo (Brepols) and in a new, revised edition of Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture (Brepols).

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1  The Collections of Antiquities in Naples in the 18th Century: A Changing Scenario

2  Sources for a Knowledge of the Neapolitan Collections of Antiquities in the 18th Century
• The Descrizioni of Naples and the Travel Literature in the 17th and 18th Century
• Erudite Works, Epigraphic Sylloges and Corpora
• The Correspondence of Antiquarians
• Catalogues of Collections
• Private Archives, Inventories and Auction Catalogues
• The Evidence Offered by the Paintings
• The Townley Archive, the Townley Drawings and the Topham Collection of Drawings

3  Collections of Antiquities in Naples between the End of the 17th and the Closing Years of the 18th Century
• Sculptures as Furniture: Ancient Marbles in Old Palaces and Stately Homes
• The Leading Collectors
• Small Collections of Vases, Inscriptions, Coins, Gems
• Wunderkammern in Naples
• The Collections of the Religious Orders
• The Collections of the Foreigners

4  The Channels of Dispersal of the Neapolitan Marbles from the Viceregal Period to the End of the 18th Century
• The Spanish Viceroyalty and the Austrian Viceroyalty
• The Age of the Bourbons
• Marbles of Neapolitan Origin in 18th-Century British Collections

Conclusions

Catalogue – Part 1: Ancient Marbles in 18th-Century Neapolitan Collection

Sculptures as Furniture: Ancient Marbles in Old Palaces and Stately Homes
• Palazzo Carafa di Colubrano (cat. no. 1–43)
• Villa Mazza (cat. no. 44–50)
• Palazzo Firrao (cat. no. 51–52)
• Palazzo Cellamare (cat. no. 53–64)
• The Gaetani d’Aragona, Dukes of Laurenzano (cat. no. 65–71)

The Leading Collectors
• Giuseppe Valletta (cat. no. 72–122)
• Felice Maria Mastrilli (cat. no. 123–133)
• Giovanni Battista Carafa Duke di Noja (cat. no. 134–138)

Small Collections of Vases, Inscriptions, Coins, Gems
• Ferdinando Galiani (cat. no. 139–140)

Wunderkammern in Naples
• Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (cat. no. 141–145)

The Collections of the Foreigners
• Sir William Hamilton (cat. no. 146–200)
• Vinzenz von Rainer zu Harbach (cat. no. 201–202)

Catalogue – Part 2: Sculptures Found in Naples and Its Surroundings Between the 17th and the 18th Century

Pimentel’s Excavations at Cuma (cat. no. 203–217)

The Dispersal
• Berlin (cat. no. 218–222)
• Paris (cat. no. 223–224)
• Saint Petersburg (cat. no. 225)
• Rome (cat. no. 226–233)

Hadrawa’s Excavations in Capri (cat. no. 234–240)

Neapolitan Marbles in British Collections
• Wilton House
• Other Collections Assembled in the First Half of the 18th Century (cat. no. 241)
• Charles Townley Collection (cat. no. 242–252)
• Lyde Browne Collection (cat. no. 251–253)
• Henry Blundell Collection (cat. no. 254–255)
• Thomas Hope Collection (cat. no. 256)

Archival Sources
Bibliography
Index of Sculptures by Location
General Index

On 1 November 1755, Lisbon was devastated by a massive earthquake. From PHP:

Angela Delaforce, The Lost Library of the King of Portugal (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1912168156, £45.

The destruction on the morning of All Saints Day 1755 of the heart of the city of Lisbon by an earthquake, tidal wave and the urban fires that followed was a tragedy that divides the 18th century in Portugal. One casualty on that fatal morning was the Royal Library, one of the most magnificent libraries in Europe at the time. The Lost Library of the King of Portugal tells the story of the lost library—its creation, collection, and significance.

This 18th-century library was founded by the Bragança monarch Dom João V shortly after he came to the throne in 1706 and was housed at the heart of the royal palace, the Paço da Ribeira, in Lisbon. The king’s abiding ambition was to create one of Europe’s great court libraries, and, at the time of his death in 1750, it was reputed to be one of the most magnificent libraries in Europe. The Royal Library was also composed of a Cabinet of Prints and Drawings, medals and scientific instruments as well as a Cabinet of Natural History with specimens from across Portugal’s global empire.

This documented study describes the creation of the library, its cultural significance in 18th-century Portugal, the acquisition of single volumes as well as entire libraries from across Europe, and the role in this of Portugal’s most talented diplomats. It includes the collection of manuscripts from the celebrated library of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and the unpublished correspondence exchanged during the negotiations between London and Lisbon. Throughout his reign, the devout Dom João V set out to conjure up his own vision of Rome and the papal court he never saw. Two chapters are devoted to Italy—one to the talented archaeologist Francesco Bianchini at the papal court, including the unpublished correspondence between him and his royal patron Dom João V, as well as the guides to Rome and art and architecture at the ducal courts of northern Italy, both commissioned by the king.

When the library was destroyed in 1 November 1755 by the earthquake, tidal wave, and the fires that followed, only a few books, manuscripts, and albums of prints were saved, and the author traces their final journey with the royal family and court to Brazil on the eve of the invasion by Napoleon’s army in November 1806.