08 | October | 2023

Exhibition | Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on October 8, 2023

Gaspar van Wittel, known as Vanvitelli, The ‘Casino’ of Cardinal Annibale Albani on the Via Aurelia, 1719, oil on canvas, 74 × 135 cm
(Private Collection, United Kingdom)

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From the press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition:

Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome
Nicholas Hall Gallery, New York, 6 October — 30 November 2023

This fall, Nicholas Hall presents Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome, organized in association with the Milanese Galleria Carlo Orsi. Presented at the Upper East Side gallery in New York, the exhibition celebrates the legacy of esteemed American scholar, connoisseur, and artist Anthony M. Clark (1923–1976), who would have turned 100 this year.

Pompeo Batoni, Saint Louis Gonzaga, ca. 1744, oil on canvas, oval, in an 18th-century frame, 81 × 67 cm (Private Collection, NY).

Considered one of the most influential and admired museum professionals of his generation, Clark made a profound impact on American collecting trends in the 1950s and 1960s through his taste for art made in 18th-century Rome, especially the paintings of the Pompeo Batoni. The exhibition brings together more than 60 works by artists who lived in or traveled to Rome in the 18th century, along with a selection of Clark’s personal notebooks and a portrait photograph on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

After graduating from Harvard, Clark began his career in 1955 at the Rhode Island School of Design before going on to prominent curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, of which he later became director. He also taught art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and at Williams College, Williamstown. During his tenure at Mia and The Met, Clark made significant acquisitions for the institutions and organized world-class exhibitions as a pioneering American scholar of 18th-century Rome.

The Hub of the World brings to light the fundamental role Clark played in the revival of interest among American museums in collecting work from this period. Clark deeply believed in the importance of Roman Settecento painting, drawing, and sculpture, and this passion is brilliantly reflected in his scholarship and writings. As a curator, he consistently created a historic context for art by showing sculpture and decorative arts alongside paintings and drawings at a time when it was customary to maintain a ‘hierarchy’ of the arts by studying and displaying the mediums separately.

Domenico Corvi, The Liberation of Saint Peter, 1770, oil on canvas, 63 × 49 cm (Private Collection, Paris).

Tragically Clark succumbed to a heart attack at age 53 while jogging in his favorite city, where, at the time, he was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Born in Philadelphia, Clark worked closely with curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art over the course of his career; and, in 2000, the PMA—in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—mounted The Splendor of 18th-Century Rome, which was dedicated to his memory.

In the words of Nicholas Hall: “Anthony Clark was a larger-than-life character who changed the way we look at Old Masters. He rescued the art of 18th-century Rome from obscurity by dint of his own personal enthusiasm and brilliant scholarship. He had enormous personal charm: the son of the owner of two works in the exhibition remembers how, as a boy, he enjoyed Clark’s visits to see his parents. Clark, an avid ornithologist, later bequeathed to him a stuffed Green Woodpecker. Our exhibition is an homage to a great scholar, a tastemaker, and a dedicated museum professional.”

Hub of the World highlights the richness of the culture of 18th-century Rome with its extraordinary mixture of patronage, from popes and cardinals, to Roman aristocrats and visiting foreigners—including the German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from whom the exhibition borrows its title. Goethe deemed Rome the “hub of the world,” writing that “the entire history of the world is linked up with this city.” Hall and Orsi have gathered a diverse selection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts that will provide a rare opportunity to experience the cosmopolitan appeal of 18th-century Rome.

Hubert Robert, Colonnade and Gardens at the Villa Medici, 1759, oil on canvas, 75 × 64 cm (Assadour O. Tavitian Trust).

Headlining the exhibition is View of the Villa Medici by Hubert Robert (1733–1808), painted in 1759 during the artist’s transformative time in Rome and on loan from the Assadour O. Tavitian Trust. A recent discovery, the exceptional work has rarely been on view to the public—previously only exhibited in the U.S. briefly at the National Gallery of Art. Other works on view include the Hemp Harvest in Caserta, executed by Jackob Philipp Hackert for the King of Naples; a portrait of the Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico by Anton Raphael Mengs that remained in the sitter’s family until the last decade; a unique view of the Villa Albani by Vanvitelli, recorded in the inventory of Cardinal Albani; a pair of oil on coppers by Angelika Kauffmann based on James Thomson’s pastoral poetry that newly resurfaced from a private Kenyan collection; a caricature painting by Joshua Reynolds, recently discovered at the estate where it has hung for over two centuries; A Vestal by Jacques-Louis David painted in Rome; a harbor scene painted on copper by Claude Joseph Vernet; Anton von Maron’s Portrait of Two English Gentlemen before the Arch of Constantine; the Rockingham Silenus, a 1st-century sculpture reworked by the celebrated Roman sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi; a set of candelabras in the form of Antonius-Osirus by Luigi Valadier; and a console table designed by Antonio Asprucci, made for the Egyptian Room of the Palazzo Borghese. The exhibition pays tribute to Clark as an expert on Pompeo Batoni, as represented by a painting of Saint Louis Gonzaga and its preparatory drawing in red chalk, among several other works. Once belonging to Clark, a painting of the artist Paolo de Matteis by Pier Leone Ghezzi will also be showcased.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Nicholas Hall and Galleria Carlo Orsi will publish a fully illustrated catalogue with original essays by Italian art experts and renowned historians Edgar Peters Bowron, Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios, Melissa Beck Lemke, and J. Patrice Marandel.