Enfilade

Now available from Routledge:

Michael Yonan, Messerschmidt’s Character Heads: Maddening Sculpture and the Writing of Art History (New York: Routledge, 2018), 194 pages, ISBN: 978 113821 3432 (hardcover), $150 / ISBN: 978  131544  8404 (ebook), $55.

This book examines a famous series of sculptures by the German artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) known as his ‘Character Heads’. These are busts of human heads, highly unconventional for their time, representing strange, often inexplicable facial expressions. Scholars have struggled to explain these works of art. Some have said that Messerschmidt was insane, while others suggested that he tried to illustrate some sort of intellectual system. Michael Yonan argues that these sculptures are simultaneously explorations of art’s power and also critiques of the aesthetic limits that would be placed on that power.

Michael Yonan is associate professor of art history at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is a specialist in eighteenth-century European art and material culture.

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction

I  Writing the Artist’s Mind
Introduction to Part I
1  Nicolai’s Dreamer
2  Kris’s Psychotic

II  Writing the Artist’s Context
Introduction to Part II
3  Mesmer’s Acolyte
4  Lichtenberg’s Ally

III  Writing the Artist’s Project
Introduction to Part III
5  The Game of Making
6  The Envy of the Gods

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

From Yale UP:

Kate Retford, The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2017), 440 pages, ISBN: 978 030019 4807, $75.

Pioneered by William Hogarth (1697–1764) and his peers in the early eighteenth century, and then revitalized by Johan Zoffany (1733–1810), the conversation piece was an innovative mode of portraiture, depicting groups posed in landscape or domestic settings. These artists grappled with creating complex multi-figured compositions and intricate narratives, filling their paintings with representations of socially, nationally, and temporally precise customs. Paying particular attention to the vibrant (and at times fabricated) interior and exterior settings in these works, Kate Retford discusses the various ways that the conversation piece engaged with the rich material culture of Georgian Britain. The book also explores how these portraits served a wide array of interests and concerns among familial networks and larger social groups. From codifying performances of politeness to engaging in cross-cultural exchanges, the conversation piece was a complex and nuanced expression of a multifaceted society.

Kate Retford is senior lecturer in 18th- and early 19th-century art at Birkbeck, University of London.

Save

Save

Save

With the Bouverie family’s purchase of Longford Castle in 1717, the launch of the book coincides with the tercentenary of the family’s ownership of the house. From Unicorn Publishing:

Amelia Smith, Longford Castle: The Treasures and the Collectors (London: Unicorn Publishing, 2017), 208 pages, ISBN: 9781910787687, £40.

Longford Castle is a fine Elizabethan country house, home to a world-class collection of art built up in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Bouverie family and still owned today by their descendants. Until now, it has been relatively less known amongst the pantheon of English country houses. This book, richly illustrated and based on extensive scholarly research into the family archive, tells a comprehensive story of the collectors who amassed these treasures. It explores the acquisition and commission of works of art from Holbein’s Erasmus and The Ambassadors, to exquisite landscapes by Claude and Poussin, and family portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. It explores how Longford, an unusual triangular-shaped castle that inspired Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Disney’s The Princess Diaries, was decorated and furnished to house these works of fine art. The book brings the story up to the present day, with an introduction and conclusion by the current owner, the 9th Earl of Radnor, himself a keen collector of art, to celebrate this remarkable house and collection.

Amelia Smith grew up in Surrey and attended university in London. She recently completed a PhD on the Longford Castle art collections at Birkbeck College in collaboration with the National Gallery. Amelia Smith graduated in 2012 with a first class degree in History of Art from University College London, where she was awarded the Gombrich Prize and Zilkha Prize. She went on to gain an MA in Curating the Art Museum at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2013 and undertook a curatorial internship at the National Portrait Gallery, researching for the exhibition The Great War in Portraits (2014).

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

From the National Gallery:

Longford Castle: Past and Present
National Gallery, London, Friday, 13 October 2017, 6pm

Join art historian Amelia Smith as she introduces her new book on Longford Castle, its treasures and its collectors, and also Lord Radnor, the castle’s owner, in discussion about his current art collecting. The evening begins with a short interview between Lord Radnor and Susanna Avery-Quash. Amelia Smith’s lecture will follow, and the event will end with a drinks reception, where you will have the opportunity to buy a copy of Smith’s book, signed by the author. The event is free, though tickets are required.

Longford Castle sits on the banks of the River Avon in Wiltshire and is home to a world-class collection including works by Holbein, Claude, Poussin, Gainsborough, and Reynolds. The National Gallery has a long-standing relationship with the Castle, having acquired and enjoyed works of art from its collection over the years. In recent years, visitors have enjoyed guided tours of the Castle, organised by the Gallery.

Save

Save

Save

From Liverpool UP: (with a book launch scheduled for Sunday, 8 October, at 5pm at Waterstone’s Birmingham).

Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick, John Baskerville: Art and Industry in the Enlightenment (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), 288 pages, ISBN: 978 17869 40643, £80.

This book is concerned with the eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist, and Enlightenment figure John Baskerville (1707–1775). Baskerville was a Birmingham inventor, entrepreneur, and artist with a worldwide reputation who made eighteenth-century Birmingham a city without typographic equal, by changing the course of type design. Baskerville not only designed one of the world’s most historically important typefaces; he also experimented with casting and setting type, improved the construction of the printing-press, developed a new kind of paper, and refined the quality of printing inks. His typographic experiments put him ahead of his time, had an international impact, and did much to enhance the printing and publishing industries of his day. Yet despite his importance, fame, and influence many aspects of Baskerville’s work and life remain unexplored and his contribution to the arts, industry, culture, and society of the Enlightenment are largely unrecognized. Moreover, recent scholarly research in archaeology, art and design, history, literary studies, and typography is leading to a fundamental reassessment of many aspects of Baskerville’s life and impact, including his birthplace, his work as an industrialist, the networks which sustained him, and the reception of his printing in Britain and overseas. The last major, but inadequate publication of Baskerville dates from 1975. Now, forty years on, the time is ripe for a new book. This interdisciplinary approach provides an original contribution to printing history, eighteenth-century studies, and the dissemination of ideas.

Caroline Archer-Parré is Professor of Typography at Birmingham City University, Director of the Centre for Printing History & Culture and Chairman of the Baskerville Society. She is the author of The Kynoch Press, 1876–1982: The Anatomy of a Printing House (British Library, 2000); Paris Underground (MBP, 2004); and Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art (MBP, 2003). Caroline is currently Co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project, ‘Letterpress Printing: past, present, future’.

Malcolm Dick is Director of the Centre for West Midlands History at the University of Birmingham. He directed two history projects in Birmingham between 2000 and 2004: the ‘Millennibrum Project’, which created a multi-media archive of post-1945 Birmingham history, and ‘Revolutionary Players’, which produced an online resource of the history of the West Midlands region. Malcolm has published books on Joseph Priestley, Matthew Boulton, and the history of Birmingham; he co-directs the Centre for Printing History & Culture.

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Timeline
Baskerville Family Tree

Introduction: John Baskerville: Art and Industry of the Enlightenment, Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick
1  The Topographies of a Typographer: Mapping John Baskerville since the Eighteenth Century, Malcolm Dick
2  Baskerville’s Birmingham: Printing and the EnglishUrban Renaissance, John Hinks
3  Place, Home and Workplace: Baskerville’s Birthplace and Buildings, George Demidowicz
4  John Baskerville: Japanner of ‘Tea Trays and other Household Goods’, Yvonne Jones
5  John Baskerville, William Hutton and their Social Networks, Susan Whyman
6  John Baskerville the Writing Master: Calligraphy and Type in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Ewan Clayton
7  A Reappraisal of Baskerville’s Greek Types, Gerry Leonidas
8  John Baskerville’s Decorated Papers, Barry McKay and Diana Patterson
9  The ‘Baskerville Bindings’, Aurélie Martin
10  After the ‘Perfect Book’: English Printers and their Use of Baskerville’s Type, 1767–90, Martin Killeen
11  The Cambridge Cult of the Baskerville Press, Caroline Archer-Parre

Appendix 1 The ‘Baskerville Bindings’
Appendix 2 Members of the Baskerville Club
Appendix 3 Comparative Bibliography

Further Reading
General Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index

From ArtBooks.com:

Dirk De Meyer, Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan Staircases: Showpiece and Utility (Gent: A&S Books, 2017), 128 pages, ISBN: 978 90767 14493, $48.

Eighteenth-century Neapolitan staircases present a shift from the traditional, monumental Baroque palace stairs towards the staircase serving four, five, or more levels of apartments of different social standing. While prefiguring stairs in modern apartment buildings, they solve issues of aristocratic etiquette as well as practical plan arrangements. They are showpiece and utility in one. At times grand and imposing, at times cramped in tapered courtyards, these staircases are numerous and disparate in form. Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan Staircases: Showpiece and Utility documents seven sets of stairs by Neapolitan architects such as Ferdinando Sanfelice. It is the outcome of a master seminar in Architectural History at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of Ghent University.

Klein’s magnum opus was first published in Hungarian in 2011. It’s recently been translated into English. From the Central European Press:

Rudolf Klein, Synagogues In Hungary, 1782–1918 (Budapest: Terc Press, 2017), 800 pages, ISBN: 978 615544 5088, $120 / €106 / £92.

This is the first comprehensive study that systematically covers all synagogues in Hungary from the Edict of Tolerance by Joseph II to the end of World War I. Unlike prior attempts, dealing only with post-World-War-II Hungary, the geographical range of this study includes historic Hungary, including the Austro-Hungarian successor states. The study presents the architecture of Hungarian synagogues chronologically, giving special attention to the boom of synagogue architecture and art from 1867 to 1918, a time also called ‘the modern Jewish Renaissance’. The greatest contribution of this book is the innovative matrix method, which the author applies to determine the basic types of synagogues by using eight basic criteria. The book also deals with the problem of urban context, the position of the synagogue in the city and its immediate environment. There are two detailed case studies addressing how communities built their synagogues and how these were received by the general public. A theoretical summary tries to determine the role of post-emancipation period synagogues in general architectural history.

Rudolf Klein is Professor of modern architectural history, Szent István University, Miklós Ybl Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Budapest.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Scheduled for November publication from Cambridge UP:

Paola Bianchi and Karin Wolfe, eds., Turin and the British in the Age of the Grand Tour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 506 pages, ISBN: 978  110714  7706, $135.

The Duchy of Savoy first claimed royal status in the seventeenth century, but only in 1713 was Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy (1666–1732), crowned King of Sicily. The events of the Peace of Utrecht (1713) sanctioned the decades-long project, the Duchy had pursued through the convoluted maze of political relationships between foreign powers. Of these, the British Kingdom was one of their most assiduous advocates, because of complimentary dynastic, political, cultural and commercial interests.

A notable stream of British diplomats and visitors to the Sabaudian capital engaged in an extraordinary and reciprocal exchange with the Turinese during this fertile period. The flow of travellers, a number of whom were British emissaries and envoys posted to the court, coincided, in part, with the itineraries of the international Grand Tour which transformed the capital into a gateway to Italy, resulting in a conflagration of cultural cosmopolitanism in early modern Europe.

Paola Bianchi teaches Early Modern History at the Università della Valle d’Aosta. She has researched and written on the journeys of various English travellers who came to Italy in the eighteenth century to be presented at the Savoy court and to be part of Piedmont society. Her publications include Onore e mestiere: Le riforme militari nel Piemonte del Settecento (2002); Cuneo in età moderna: Città e stato nel Piemonte d’antico regime (with A. Merlotti) (2002); Sotto diverse bandiere: L’internazionale militare nello stato sabaudo d’antico regime (2012); L’affermarsi della corte sabauda: Dinastie, poteri, élites in Piemonte e Savoia fra tardo Medioevo e prima età moderna (with L.C. Gentile) (2006); Le strategie dell’apparenza: Cerimoniali, politica e società alla corte dei Savoia in età moderna (with A. Merlotti) (2010); and Storia degli Stati sabaudi, 1416–1848 (with A. Merlotti) (2017).

Karin Wolfe is a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. Her research focuses on topics in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian history, including art, architecture, patronage, and collecting, as well as the history of cardinals and the Grand Tour. Her publications include Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome (edited with D. R. Marshall and S. Russell, 2011). She is presently completing a monograph on Francesco Trevisani, Francesco Trevisani (1656–1746): A Universal Painter, Catalogue Raisonné.

C O N T E N T S

List of figures
Contributors

Preface and Acknowledgements, Christopher J. Smith and Andrea Merlotti
Foreword, Martin Postle
Introduction, Paola Bianchi and Karin Wolfe

Part I | Britain in Turin: Politics and Culture at the Savoy Court
1  England and Savoy: Dynastic Intimacy and Cultural Relations under the Early Stuarts, Toby Osborne
2  Marriage Proposals: Seventeenth-Century Stuart–Savoy Matrimonial Prospects and Politics, Andrea Pennini
3  The Court of Turin and the English Succession, 1712–20, Edward Corp
4  The British Diplomatic Presence in Turin: Diplomatic Culture and British Elite Identity, 1688–1789/98, Christopher Storrs

Part II | Turin: Gateway to Grand Tour Society
5  The British at the Turin Royal Academy: Cosmopolitanism and Religious Pragmatism, Paola Bianchi
6  Thomas Coke in Turin and the Turin Royal Academy, Andrew Moore
7  ‘Never a More Favorable Reception than in the Present Juncture’: British Residents and Travellers in and about Turin, 1747–48, Edoardo Piccoli
8  The British and Freemasonry in Eighteenth-Century Turin, Andrea Merlotti

Part III | Torino Britannica: Diplomacy and Cultural Brokerage
9  John Molesworth: British Envoy and Cultural Intermediary in Turin, Karin Wolfe
10  Silver from London and Turin: Diplomacy by Display and George Hervey, Earl of Bristol, Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Savoy, 1755–58, James Rothwell
11  The ‘Savoyard’: The painter Domenico Duprà and His British Sitters, Jonathan Yarker
12  The Culture of Confession: The Sardinian Chapel in London in the Eighteenth Century, Paola Cozzo

Part IV | Turin and Britain: Architectural Crossroads
13  Architects and Kings in Grand Tour Europe, Tomasso Manfredi
14  A Homage from Turin: Filippo Juvarra’s Sketches for Lord Burlington, Cristina Ruggero
15  Crossing Borders: The Pioneering Role of the Architect-Engineer Giovanni Battista Borra between Piedmont and Britain, Olga Zoller

Part V | Britain and Turin: Chinoiserie as an International Aesthetic
16  Chinoiserie in Piedmont: An International Language of Diplomacy and Modernity, Christopher M. S. Johns
17  ‘Alla China’: The Reception of International Decorative Models in Piedmont, Cristina Mossetti
18  The British Garden in Piedmont in the Late Eighteenth Century: Variations on the Picturesque, the Anglo-Chinese, and the Landscape Garden, Paolo Cornaglia

Part VI | Turin in Britain: Cultural Exchange in Grand Tour Europe
19  A Plurality of Pluras: The Plura Family of Sculptors between Turin and Britain, Alastair Laing
20  ‘A Memorable Era in the Instrumental Music of This Kingdom’: Piedmontese Musicians in London in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century, Annarita Colturato
21  The British Baretti: Didactics and Criticism, Cristina Bracchi
22  Vittorio Alfieri and the ‘English Republic’: Reflections on an Elective Affinity, Francesca Fedi

Appendices
A  British Diplomats and Visitors to Turin in the Eighteenth Century, Christopher Storrs
Sabaudian Diplomats to London in the Eighteenth Century, Andrea Merlotti
B  British Attendees at the Turin Royal Academy, Paola Bianchi
C  Letters from the Molesworth–Galilei Correspondence, 1721–25, Karin Wolfe

References
Index

Save