Enfilade

Francesco Guardi, Venice: The Rialto Bridge with the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, ca.1764, oil on canvas, 120 × 204 cm
(Private collection)

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The long 18th century in the June issue of The Burlington:

The Burlington Magazine 167 (June 2025)

e d i t o r i a l

• “American Gothic,” p. 531.
There are many excoriating ways in which the current administration in Washington might be described; a number of them are perhaps too impolite to appear in a decorous journal such as this. The necessity of restraint does not, however, mean we should refrain from expressing a view on the provocative actions of the new United States government. They are not merely a matter of political theatre that feeds the news cycles, but also a corrosive force that is undermining many valued cultural institutions and having a direct and negative impact on the lives of tens of millions of people.

l e t t e r

• David Wilson, “More on Lorenzo Bartolini’s The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz,” pp. 532–34.
Response to the article in the February issue by Lucy Wood and Timothy Stevens, “The Elder Sisters of The Campbell Sisters: William Gordon Cumming’s Patronage of Lorenzo Bartolini.”

a r t i c l e s

Joshua Reynolds, Elizabeth Percy, Countess (later Duchess) of Northumberland, 1757, oil on canvas, 240 × 148.6 cm. (Collection of the Duke of Northumberland, Syon House, London).

• Justus Lange and Martin Spies, “Two Royal Portraits by Reynolds Rediscovered in Kassel,” pp. 564–71.
Two paintings in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, are here identified as portraits by Joshua Reynolds of Princess Amelia, second daughter of George II, and her brother William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Both were gifts from the sitters to their sister Mary, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, a provenance that sheds new light on the cultural links between England and the landgraviate in the mid-eighteenth century.

• Giovanna Perini Folesani, “An Unpublished Letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds,” pp. 575–78.
in the historical archive of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, there is an autograph letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds dated 20th May 1785 that was sent from London. . . . The text is in impeccable Italian, suggesting that Reynolds copied a translation made by a native speaker. . . .

• Francis Russell, “Guardi and the English Tourist: A Postscript,” pp. 578–83.
Some three decades ago this writer sought to demonstrate in this Magazine that the early evolution of Francesco Guardi (1712–93) as a vedutista could be followed in a number of pictures supplied to English patrons who were in Venice from the late 1750s. Other pieces of the jigsaw now fall into place. . . .

r e v i e w s

• Christoph Martin Vogtherr, Review of Schönbrunn: Die Kaiserliche Sommerresidenz, edited by Elfriede Iby and Anna Mader-Kratky (Kral Verlag, 2023), pp. 614–16.

• Steven Brindle, Review of Christopher Tadgell, Architecture in the Indian Subcontinent: From the Mauryas to the Mughals (Routledge, 2024), pp. 620–21.

• Stephen Lloyd, Review of ‘What Would You Like?’ Collecting Art for the Nation: An Account by a Director of Collections, edited by Magnus Olausson and Eva-Lena Karlsson (Nationalmuseum Stockholm, 2024), pp. 627–28.