Enfilade

From Brill:

Malcolm Baker and Inge Reist, eds., Sculpture Collections in Europe and the United States, 1500–1930: Variety and Ambiguity (Leiden: Brill, 2021), ISBN: 978-9004458468,  €62 / $75.

Exploring the variety of forms taken by collections of sculpture, this volume presents new research by twelve internationally recognized scholars. The essays delve into the motivations of different collectors, the modes of display, and the aesthetics of viewing sculpture, bringing to light much new archival material. The book underscores the ambiguous nature of sculpture collections, variously understood as decorative components of interiors or gardens, as objects of desire in cabinets of curiosity, or as autonomous works of art in private and public collections. Emphasizing the collections and the ways in which these were viewed and described, this book addresses a significant but neglected aspect of art collecting and contributes to the literature on this branch of art and cultural history.

This book evolved from the symposium Sculpture Collecting and Display, 1600–2000, organized by the Center for the History of Collecting and held at The Frick Collection, 19–20 May 2017. The book and symposium were made possible through the generous support of the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation. The book is published in association with The Frick Collection.

Malcolm Baker is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of California, Riverside. As both a curator and a university teacher, he has written widely on the history of sculpture; his most recent book is The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain.

Inge Jackson Reist is Founding Director (now Emerita) of the Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection. Reist’s edited and authored publications focus on Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and the history of art collecting.

C O N T E N T S

Foreword by Malcolm Baker and Inge Reist
Illustrations
Contributors

Malcolm Baker, Variety and Ambiguity: What Do We Mean by a ‘Sculpture Collection’?

Part 1. Sculpture in the Kunstkammer: Contexts, Formation, and Dispersal
1  Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Sculpture Collecting and the Kunstkammer
2  Jeremy Warren, The Collecting of Small Bronze Sculptures in Late Renaissance Italy: The Canonici Collection
3  Malcolm Baker, Shifting Perceptions and Changing Frameworks: The Case of Francis van Bossuit and the Place of Small-Scale Sculpture in Ivory in the Sculpture Collection

Part 2. Garden Sculptures as Collections
4  Julius Bryant, Gentlemen Prefer Bronze: Garden Sculpture and Sculpture Gardens in Britain, 1720–1860
5  Betsy Rosasco, The Sculpture Gardens of Versailles, Marly, and Dresden: Magnificence and Its Limits

Part 3. The Sculpture Gallery and Dedicated Spaces for Sculpture
6  Anne-Lise Desmas, The ‘Gallerie du S.r Girardon Sculpteur Ordinaire du Roy’
7  Michael Yonan, Porcelain as Sculpture: Medium, Materiality, and the Categories of Eighteenth-Century Collecting
8  Alison Yarrington, Art and Nature: The Country House Sculpture Gallery in the Post-Napoleonic Period

Part 4. The Changing Place of Sculpture in the Public Museum
9  Alex Potts, The Public Art Gallery as Arena for Modern Sculpture
10  Andrew McClellan and Marietta Cambareri, Displaying Deceit: Alceo Dossena’s Tomb of Maria Catharina Sabello at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
11  Alan Phipps Darr, The Legacy of William Valentiner in Shaping the Display and Collecting of European Sculpture in American Museums, 1900–Present: Case Studies

Bibliography
Index