Enfilade

The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:

Print Quarterly 41.1 (March 2024)

a r t i c l e s

• Przemysław Wątroba, “Jacques Rigaud’s Drawings in Warsaw of the Residences of Louis XIV,” pp. 23–32.
“In the collection of the last king of Poland, Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732–98), kept in the Print Room of the University of Warsaw Library, there is a renowned volume titled Recueil choisi des plus belles vues des palais et maisons royales de Paris et des environs containing a series of 106 engravings by Jacques Rigaud (1681–1754). . . . A set eight hitherto unpublished drawings by Rigaud [also in Warsaw and] formerly kept in Portfolio 174 are here presented as designs” for eight of the prints (23, 25).

n o t e s  a n d  r e v i e w s

Seven Creamware Plates, ca. 1808–36, diameters 20–23 cm, transfer-printed with various scenes, clockwise from top: Defoe’s Robinson, Choisy factory; Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Montereau factory; Perrault’s Fairies, Montereau factory; Fontaine’s Fable of the Fox and Grapes, Sèvres factory; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Judgement of Midas, Choisy factory; Chateaubriand’s Atala Found with Chactus by Father Aubry, Choisy factory; and at centre, Cottin’s Matilda Saved by Malek Adhel, Choisy factory (Germany, Peter-Christian Wegner Collection).

• Marzia Faietti, Review of Heather Madar, ed., Prints as Agents of Global Exchange: 1500–1800 (Amsterdam UP, 2021), pp. 37–39.

• Sheila McTighe, Review of Francesco Ceretti and Roberta D’Adda, eds., Immaginario Ceruti: Le stampe nel laboratorio del pittore (Skira, 2023), pp. 42–43. This catalogue accompanied an exhibition that explored the work of the painter Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767) and his reliance on printed images. “A complementary show of Ceruti’s paintings, Miseria & Nobiltà: Giacomo Ceruti nell’Europa del Settecento was also held in 2023 at the Museo Santa Giulia in Brescia, followed by a reduced version at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles during the second half of that year, Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye” (42).

• Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Review of Rebecca Whiteley, Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (University of Chicago Press, 2023), pp. 43–45.

• Antony Griffiths, Review of Chiara Travisonni with Luca Fiorentino and Andrea Muzzi, Pietro Giacomo Palmieri (Edifir, 2023), pp. 45–46. This monograph on the draughtsman and printmaker, Pietro Giacomo Palmieri (1737–1804), “will become the definitive source of information” for the artist and his work (46).

• Patricia Ferguson, Review of Peter-Christian Wegner, Literatur auf französischen Steingut-Tellern des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Georg Olms, 2022), pp. 46–47. Wegner addresses the popularity of subjects drawn from French literature for transfer-printed ceramics, starting in 1808. “While we await a larger in-depth survey of this engaging material, Wegner’s publication is a huge contribution to its appreciation” (46).

• Elizabeth Savage, Review of Christien Melzer and Georg Josef Dietz, Holzschnitt: 1400 bis heute (Hatje Cantz, 2022), pp. 48–50. This is the catalogue for an exhibition that “featured more than 100 prints from the Kupferstichkabinett [in Berlin], as well as what was effectively the first large-scale display of woodblocks from its enormous yet relatively little-known collection” (50).

Johann Christoph Weigel, Sheet for Découpage with Figures on Cloudlike Landscapes and a Fantastical Bird, c. 1700–25, from album Inventions Chinoises V, handcoloured engraving, 216 x 151 mm (Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett).

• Brief notice of Katy Barrett, Looking for Longitude: A Cultural History (Liverpool UP, 2022), p. 76. Rather than a retelling of the familiar story of accurately calculating longitude, this book “is a remarkably well-researched account of the ways in which this long-running sage impacted on many areas of public discourse, thought, and imagery” (76).

• Emanuele Lugli, Review of Miriam Vogelaar, The Mokken Collection: Books and Manuscripts on Fencing before 1800 (MMIT Publishing, 2020), pp. 88–92.

• Nadine Orenstein, Review of Maureen Warren, ed., Paper Knives, Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, 2022), 92–96. “Never have these prints been so lavishly presented. The beautifully produced catalogue, winner of the 2023 IFPDA Book Award, exceptionally allocates plenty of space to the images. It allows the reader to see entire works along with accompanying text and provides space for multi-plate productions” (93).

• Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Review of Cordula Bischoff and Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, eds, La Chine: Die China-Sammlung Des 18. Jahrhunderts Im Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinett (Sandstein Verlag, 2021), 97–103. This “is the catalogue of an exhibition at the Dresden State Museum devoted to the Chinese works on paper and European chinoiserie prints acquired by the Saxon Electors before 1750” (97). It “was an ambitious project that took many years to come to fruition and required collaboration between colleagues in different disciplines with different working languages” (102).