Happy Birthday, Enfilade!
From the Editor
As Enfilade turns six, I continue to be amazed at the growth of the site—all because of you fabulous readers! This spring we passed the half-million hits threshold. A typical month brings in more than 10,000 visits, and over 1300 of you are subscribers. Thank you.
And so I’ll extend my usual annual pleas:
1) Buy an art book this week. In the world of academic art history publishing, several hundred books sold over a few days is stellar. It’s an important way to communicate that the eighteenth century is a thriving field with a vital, engaged audience.
2) Renew your HECAA membership. In the normal world $30 doesn’t really count as philanthropy. For a small academic society it does. And thanks to Michael Yonan’s indefatigable work with the IRS in securing HECAA’s 501c3 status, all donations are now tax deductible in the United States. So send in a contribution of $100 or $5. But donate something. We accept PayPal.
3) Finally, send in news you’d like to see reported! Years into this, and I’m not sure what surprises me more: how easy it is to know what’s going on in the field all over the world, or how difficult it is to know what’s going on in the field all over the world! I’m glad to post announcements about conferences, forthcoming books, journal articles, exhibitions, fellowship opportunities, &c. The postings readers most enjoy are inevitably original content, reports of interesting collections, house museums, resources, and the like. No reason to be shy.
Again, thanks to all of you and all the best!
Craig Hanson
Hermione Voyage 2015
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From the Hermione Voyage 2015 website:
Twenty years ago, a small group dreamed of reconstructing an exact replica of General Lafayette’s 18th-century ship called the Hermione. Today, the majestic vessel is the largest and most authentically built Tall Ship in the last 150 years. The Hermione has set sail in France, launching an adventure that comes to the USA in the summer of 2015 for an unprecedented voyage.
In April 2015, after a period of sea trials and training in 2014, the Hermione set sail for the USA. The journey started from the mouth of the River Charente, in Port des Barques, where Lafayette boarded on March 10th, 1780. The transatlantic crossing was expected to take 27 days in total, before making landfall at Yorktown, Virginia.
As the Hermione moves up the Eastern seaboard, it will be accompanied by a range of pier side activities. These include in some ports a traveling exhibition and a heritage village that will be accessible to the public. The Hermione Voyage 2015 is part of an expansive outreach program with cultural events, exhibitions, and educational programs that celebrate the trip and mark its progress. A robust digital activation for the voyage expands the reach of the project to millions of people.
Exhibition | Leipzig 1813, The Battle of the Nations
Leipzig marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of the Nations (19 October 1813) with a 1:1 scale panorama by Yadegar Asisi, depicting the city in the aftermath of the battle — Europe’s largest prior to World War I, with 90,000 dead and injured. From a press release:
Leipzig 1813, The Battle of the Nations: A Panorama by Yadegar Asisi
Leipzig Panometer, 3 August — December 2013
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Having opened on August 3, Yadegar Asisi’s monumental 360° panorama Leipzig 1813: Amidst the Confusion of the Battle of the Nations is now on display at the Panometer Leipzig. The world’s largest panorama, 3500 m² in size and on a scale of 1:1, shows us the city of Leipzig immediately following the Battle of the Nations, which took place on October 19, 1813. The visitor views the scene from the vantage point of the roof of the church of St. Thomas at the western border of the city, with an excellent view both of the city centre and of the surrounding areas, where the most violent battles took place.
It came as something of a surprise to Yadegar Asisi that he was to spend so much time – since 2009 – working so intensively on this theme. “Having grown up in Leipzig, the Battle of the Nations was present in the form of the monument but not in as far as the actual events were concerned“, says the artist. “For a long time it didn’t really mean anything to me, until I asked myself the question of what Leipzig was like in 1813 and what the battle meant to the city. I came to the conclusion that I would present this European event from the perspective of Leipzig and its citizens. Under no circumstances did I wish to create a battle panorama. In fact, it has turned out to be more of an anti-war panorama.”
Asisi presents Leipzig as it would have looked in 1813, complete with its architecture still relatively intact. The city is struggling to come to terms with the repercussions of the battle: 90,000 dead and injured, countless numbers of refugees from the burned-out villages in the surrounding areas. The crowds in the alleyways and squares are in turmoil as the victorious troops move in and the French take flight, leaving behind them hundreds of thousands of people in a state of despair.
The successful ten-year collaboration between Asisi and the composer Erik Babak, well known for his work in international film and television productions, again bears fruit in Leipzig 1813; the accompanying music features a chorus of 40 voices and passages from the poem “Abroad” by Heinrich Heine. The panoramic experience is rounded off with sound effects reflecting the era and the confusion of the scene.
The complex figuration in the architectural design was the greatest challenge facing Asisi during his work on Leipzig 1813. Troops numbering around 600,000 soldiers, with over 90,000 dead and injured, all had to find their places in and around Leipzig, which had only 35,000 inhabitants at the time. For this purpose alone, it was necessary to stage four lavish photo shootings with several hundred extras in costume, saddle horses, teams of horses and traps. Scenes featuring soldiers, citizens of Leipzig, marketeers, refugees, the wounded and the dead, were re-enacted and coordinated as though a film were being made. To this end, Asisi’s expert advisor Helmut Börner smoothed the way for a cooperation with the “Verband Jahrfeier Völkerschlacht b. Leipzig 1813 e.V.”.
An encounter with the novelist Sabine Ebert led to a piece of special media interaction. Details from the panorama Leipzig 1813 can be discovered in Sabine Ebert’s most recent work 1813 – Kriegsfeuer (1813 – Warfire), just as scenes from the book can be found in Yadegar Asisi’s panorama. For example, the author is depicted in the panorama wearing the same clothes as one of her protagonists on the cover of the book.
The accompanying exhibition introduces the free city of Leipzig on the evening before the battle on an emotional and intuitive level. It leads visitors around the outside circumference of the panorama, presenting Leipzig as a town famous for its trade, learning, publishing and music, before the greatest battle there had ever been breaks out outside its gates. A “making-of” film will be shown in the auditorium, explaining how the complex circular picture was created and documenting the milestones of its production, which covered a period of almost five years.
An extensive mediation programme, including various guided tours, lectures and special events, is scheduled in connection with the panorama. This programme is designed to bring visitors into closer contact with life as it was at the time of the battle, 200 years ago.
Additional information is available here»
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For those of you interested in panoramas generally, see the website of the International Panorama Council. The organization’s conference takes place in November:
2013 International Panorama Conference
Switzerland, 22–24 November 2013
The conference days will include visits to Bourbaki Panorama Lucerne, Alpineum Museum with its Alpine Dioramas and to Glacier Garden Museum with its optical spectacles. On November 25 a post-conference program rounds up the panoramic experience in the beautiful city of Lucerne and includes a trip to Einsiedeln to visit the Crucifixion of Christ Panorama.
Marking the 225th Anniversary of Gainsborough’s Death
When Valerie Hedquist, who’s finishing a book on the reception history of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, recently pointed out to me that today will mark the 225th anniversary of Gainsborough’s death, I was happy to invite her to contribute a posting, even happier that she agreed. And thus here, for a brief moment, she leads us alongside the painter’s coffin towards Kew . . . –CH
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Born in 1727, Thomas Gainsborough fell ill in April 1788 and died of cancer several months later on Saturday, 2 August — 225 years ago today.
According to newspaper accounts, his death brought together “some of the most brilliant characters of the age.” Among the fifteen “few select friends” named in the obituary notice of the Whitehall Evening Post was Jonathan Buttall, regarded until recently as the subject of The Blue Boy. Along with men with connections to art, music, and theater, Buttall joined the procession of black-shrouded mourners traveling with the Gainsborough one last time as they accompanied his casket from the artist’s Pall Mall home westward to his burial plot at the Kew Green churchyard of St. Anne’s. While these individuals lived and worked in diverse London neighborhoods, their residences mostly concentrated in and around the artistic center of Soho, in contrast to the upscale West End, where Gainsborough had resided since 1774.
Who were these mourners? The surgeon and anatomist John Hunter and his neighbor, Sir Joshua; Thomas Linley and the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan; the American Benjamin West and the Swedish-born Scot, Sir William Chambers; the ‘father of English watercolour’ Paul Sandby; the wax portraitist Isaac Gosset and the stipple engraver Francesco Bartolozzi; the miniaturists Samuel Cotes and Jeremiah Meyer; the brother-in-law of the critic and newspaper publisher Sir Henry Bate Dudley, William Pearce; and Gainsborough’s nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, who, according to recent work by Susan Sloman, may be the actual sitter for Blue Boy.* Writing in his diary, Joseph Farington claimed it was Pearce at the artist’s bedside when he spoke his last words: “Vandyck was right.”
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* The most complete argument is made in Susan Sloman, “Gainsborough’s Blue Boy,” The Burlington Magazine 155 (April 2013): 231-37. Also see, Sloman, “ ’A Divine Countenance’: Gainsborough’s Portrait of His Nephew Rediscovered,” The Burlington Magazine 146 (May 2004), 319-22; and Sloman, in the exhibition catalogue Van Dyck in Britain, ed. by Karen Hearn (London: Tate Publishing, 2009).
Exhibition | The Taste of Diderot
This upcoming exhibition at the Musée Fabre de Montpellier marks the 300th anniversary of Diderot’s birth (5 October 1713); today, incidentally, is the anniversary of his death (31 July 1784). From the museum’s programme brochure:
Le Goût de Diderot
Musée Fabre de Montpellier, 5 October 2013 — 12 January 2014
Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, 7 February — 1 June 2014
Le goût est sourd à la prière. Ce que Malherbe a dit de la mort,
je le dirais presque de la critique; tout est soumis à sa loi.
Diderot, Préface du Salon de 1765
Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion et Galatée, 1761, marbre ©RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski
Le musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération et la Fondation de l’Hermitage de Lausanne s’associent pour célébrer le tricentenaire de la naissance de Denis Diderot (1713–1784), une figure majeure des Lumières françaises.
Philosophe, romancier, dramaturge, encyclopédiste, Diderot a également joué un rôle pionnier dans le domaine des arts, en rédigeant à partir de 1759, pour la Correspondance littéraire, les comptes rendus des expositions publiques de peinture et de sculpture que l’Académie royale organisait tous les deux ans dans le Salon carré du Louvre. Ces textes serviront et servent encore de modèle et de référence à la critique d’art.
A travers une sélection de peintures (Boucher, Chardin, Vien, Greuze, Vernet, David…), de sculptures (Pigalle, Falconet, Houdon…), de dessins et de gravures, l’exposition propose un aperçu de ce qu’était l’art au temps des Lumières auquel Diderot fut confronté, et de la manière dont il développa et exerça son goût propre. Sa culture visuelle, plastique, architecturale se développe progressivement, ses Salons deviennent au cours des années 1760 la rubrique fétiche de la Correspondance littéraire. Dans les années 1770, il est sollicité comme courtier par Catherine II lors des grandes ventes des collections privées françaises. Goethe lit ses Essais sur la peinture en Allemagne, ses idées esthétiques et sa dramaturgie influencent de façon décisive le courant Sturm und Drang.
Mais ce qu’on retiendra surtout, ce sont les mises en relation audacieuses qu’il propose, où genres, modes, médiums se rencontrent : Greuze avec Boucher, le vrai faux moral et le faux vrai libertin ; Deshays et Doyen avec Homère, Vien et Falconet avec Anacréon, pour que le peintre soit aussi un poète ; Vernet le paysagiste avec les verres et les fruits de Chardin, pour la magie de l’art. L’exposition proposera au spectateur de faire l’expérience de ces rencontres, guidé par la verve inimitable de Diderot.
Note (added 31 March 2014) — The original posting failed to note the mounting of the exhibition in Lausanne.
Happy Birthday, Sir Joshua!
Joshua Reynolds, Self-portrait, ca. 1747–49 (London: National
Portrait Gallery). Image from Wikimedia Commons
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To mark the birthday of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), who would turn 290 today, I draw readers’ attention to this blog posting from the material culture seminar series organized by CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. Katy Barrett summarizes presentations made by Matthew Hunter and Mark Hallett on June 11, each of whom addressed Reynolds’s output under the larger rubric of ‘painted things’. Audio is available here»
The Slave Owner, the Cook, His Sister, and Her Lover
Published last September, Craughwell’s book underscores Jefferson’s complicated attitudes and debts to slavery. On, this, the day of the United State’s birth and Jefferson’s death, that strikes me as useful. It’s certainly fascinating to see the American introduction of macaroni and cheese as part of a trans-Atlantic story involving both Europe and Africa. Happy Independence Day. –CH
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From Quirk Books:
Thomas J. Craughwell, Thomas Jefferson’s Crème Brûlée: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2012), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1594745782, $20.
This culinary biography recounts the 1784 deal that Thomas Jefferson struck with his slaves, James Hemings [brother of Sally Hemings]. The founding father was traveling to Paris and wanted to bring James along “for a particular purpose”— to master the art of French cooking. In exchange for James’s cooperation, Jefferson would grant his freedom.
Thus began one of the strangest partnerships in United States history. As Hemings apprenticed under master French chefs, Jefferson studied the cultivation of French crops (especially grapes for winemaking) so the might be replicated in American agriculture. The two men returned home with such marvels as pasta, French fries, Champagne, macaroni and cheese, crème brûlée, and a host of other treats. This narrative history tells the story of their remarkable adventure—and even includes a few of their favorite recipes.
Abram Barkshian reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal (14 September 2012).
Exhibition | Anton Graff: Faces of an Era
The exhibition opened last weekend on the two-hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death (22 June 1813). From the Museum Oskar Reinhart:
Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche
Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur, 22 June — 29 September 2013
National Gallery in Berlin, 25 October 2013 — 23 February 2014
Anton Graff, who was born in Winterthur, was the most important portrait painter in the German-speaking world around 1800. He influenced the image of the bourgeoisie and nobility and the image of poets and thinkers on the brink of Modernism like no other. When he died in 1813, he left behind around 1800 portraits depicting a panorama of transitioning European society.
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of his death, the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur and the National Gallery in Berlin are honouring the work of Anton Graff in a comprehensive exhibition for the first time in 50 years. After a first stop at the Museum Oskar Reinhart from 22 June to 29 September 2013, the exhibition will be able to be seen in the National Gallery in Berlin between 25 October 2013 and 23 February 2014. The exhibition and the richly illustrated catalogue, which will be published by the Munich-based Hirmer Publishers, came about thanks to the cooperation of both institutions.
Marc Fehlmann and Birgit Verwiebe, eds., Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2013), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-3777420509, 40€.
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From Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie:
Bis in das Innere der Seele“ zu schauen, darin bestand, den Worten des Philosophen Johann Georg Sulzer zufolge, die Meisterschaft des großen Porträtisten Anton Graff. Der überaus produktive Künstler zählt zu den herausragenden Bildnismalern des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts. Sein größtes Verdienst war, die Berühmtheiten seiner Epoche zu porträtieren. Ihm ist das Panorama des deutschen Geistes zu danken, das die Bildnisse der bedeutendsten Dichter und Denker umfasst, wie etwa Lessing, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Sulzer, Wieland, Gellert, Herder und Schiller.
Anton Graff, Self-portrait with the Green Eye-shade, 1813 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie)
Graff wurde 1736 in Winterthur geboren und nahm dort seinen ersten Kunstunterricht. In Augsburg, Ansbach und Regensburg bildete er sich weiter. 1766 – 30jährig – wurde er in Dresden kurfürstlich-sächsischer Hofmaler und Mitglied der Akademie. Regelmäßig führten ihn Reisen nach Berlin, Leipzig und in die Schweiz. Gegen Ende seines Lebens wurde Graff gleichsam zu einer Symbolfigur für den Kreis junger Romantiker in Dresden. 1813, mit 76 Jahren, starb der Maler.
Graff hat seine Zeitgenossen nicht im Gestus der Repräsentation festgehalten. Vielmehr lag ihm daran, das Wesen des Einzelnen auszuloten, seine Individualität zu entdecken, seine seelischen und geistigen Qualitäten wiederzugeben. Auch heute noch spricht die innere Gestimmtheit der aufgeklärten geistigen Elite in Deutschland unmittelbar aus Graffs meisterhaften Werken. Mit Bildnissen von Königen und Fürsten, vom aufstrebenden Bürgertum, von Staatsmännern, Gelehrten, Künstlern, Kaufleuten, Geistlichen schuf er eine Galerie der deutschen Gesellschaft an der Schwelle zur Moderne.
Ein halbes Jahrhundert hat es keine Ausstellung zum Werk Graffs gegeben. Nun, anlässlich des 200. Todestages, wird sein Werk wieder umfassend präsentiert.
Die Retrospektive „Anton Graff. Gesichter einer Epoche“ entstand in Kooperation mit dem Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur. Dort sind rund 80 Werke vom 22. Juni bis 29. September 2013 zu sehen. In der Alten Nationalgalerie Berlin wird die Ausstellung anschließend in erweiterter Form mit rund 140 Werken vom 25. Oktober 2013 bis 23. Februar 2014 gezeigt.
Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival
Thanks to Emma Barker for noting this upcoming festival with events taking place across London:
Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival
London, 8-21 April 2013
Christ Church, Spitalfields, London
2013 is the year of two significant anniversaries in the intertwined history of the Spitalfields district in London and the silk weaving industry created by Huguenots (French Protestant refugees who fled Catholic France from the 16th century). It is the 250th anniversary of the death of Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690-1763), an outstanding English textile designer who played an important part in the story of the Spitalfields silk weavers. It is also the 415th anniversary of the signing of the Edict of Nantes, on 13th April 1598. This decree by Henry IV of France served as a guarantee to the Protestant Huguenots that their rights to worship would be respected. However, it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685 with the result that large numbers of French protestants fled to England to escape persecution. Over twenty thousand settled in Spitalfields where there was already an established weaving community.
Come and spend the day in Spitalfield, take a walk and browse around the Market, call in at Christ Church Spitalfields, the finest Baroque church in the country; visit Dennis Severs’ House, drop into the Town House
for coffee and delicious cakes. There is so much to see
and do — you will not be disappointed.
Silk panel, 1748-50 Spitalfields silk (The Museum of London)
Programme of Events
Supported by the Huguenot Society and the Spitalfields Trust
Between 8th and 21st April 2013, a series of activities to commemorate these two anniversaries will take place at different venues in Spitalfields. The celebratory programme will include
Daily Walks – The Immigrants’ Story, Historic Spitalfields, The Silk Weavers of Spitalfields
Talks by experts at the Bishopsgate Institute, Guildhall Library, V&A Museum, London Metropolitan Archives & The Natural History Museum
• Thanksgiving Service on Thursday 11th April at Christ Church, Spitalfields
• Extended opening hours for Dennis Severs’ House
• At Home With Anna Maria: a fundraising soirée on 16th April in Fournier Street with Clare Browne, curator of European textiles at the V&A and Dan Cruickshank
• Tours of Sandys Row Synagogue and Bisopsgate Institute
• The Big Weave: Saturday 13th April, which is an arts & crafts fair in Spitalfields Market. Stitches in Time will be hosting weaving workshops
The Popol Vuh: An Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Copy
With the December 21st solstice marking the end of a 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan ‘Long Count’ calendar, a posting on the oldest copy of the Mayan sacred text, the Popol Vuh, seems appropriate. The manuscript was produced in 1701-03 and is now part of the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago.
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From The Newberry:
Title page, Popol Vuh. 1701-03 (Chicago: The Newberry Library, Vault Ayer MS 1515)
The Popol Vuh, which has been translated as Book of the Council, Book of the Community, Book of the People, and The Sacred Book, is the creation account of the Quiché Mayan people. It contains stories of the cosmologies, origins, traditions, and spiritual history of the Mayan people. It is considered by many Mayans as their equivalent to the Christian Bible and is held in deep reverence by them. In an effort to make it more widely available and reduce non-essential handling of the text, an important digitization project is underway and almost complete. It includes the complete conservation of the manuscript.
The Newberry’s manuscript of the Popol Vuh is one of the most widely known and possibly the earliest surviving copy. Quiché nobility probably wrote the original manuscript of the Popol Vuh in the mid-sixteenth century, in the Quiché language, using Latin orthography. The Newberry’s Popol Vuh was most likely copied from this original manuscript (now lost) in 1701-03, in the Guatemalan town of Chichicastenango, by Dominican Father Francisco Ximenez. His copy includes the Quiché text and a Spanish translation in side-by-side columns. In addition to the Popol Vuh, the manuscript also contains a Cakchikel-Quiché-Tzutuhil grammar, Christian devotional instructions, and answers to doctrinal questions and other material by Ximenez.
Conservation preparation and treatment are major components of the Popol Vuh digital project. With increased handling of the delicate manuscript during the filming and scanning process, it is absolutely critical to stabilize the paper and inks. A multi-disciplinary group of curators, librarians, conservators, and other experts reviewed the Popol Vuh’s condition and created the following procedure to provide appropriate conservation of the document.
The group decided that the binding, which was not original, should be removed and the ink checked under a microscope and stabilized. Removal of the binding included: separation of the covers from the text, cleaning the glue and paper linings from the spine, cutting the sewing threads, and separating the pages. By removing the old binding, the pages laid flat for filming. After the text was digitized, the manuscript was mended, page-by-page. Mending rejoins tears and strengthens any weak areas of the page, such as loss from insects, moisture damage, or wear from use. After additional consultation, a new binding style was chosen that was sympathetic to the Popol Vuh’s history, and a custom fitted enclosure created to house the Popol Vuh.
The new electronic versions of the Popol Vuh make the manuscript more accessible to a larger number of readers. In order to preserve the item for future generations of researchers, access to the actual sacred text of the Popol Vuh is available by appointment only. To make an appointment, please contact John Brady, Director of Reader Services, at bradyj@newberry.org.
Visitors to the Newberry may access the new electronic versions of the Popol Vuh in the Reference Center on the third floor. Ohio State University has recently released a digital version of the Popol Vuh. In addition, Brigham Young University’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Texts (formerly the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts) produced a DVD-ROM of the Popol-Vuh. This DVD is available for use in the 3rd floor reference area and is also for sale in the Newberry Bookstore. A facsimile of the work is also available in the Reference Center.
More information is available here»
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