Exhibition | Enlightened Princesses
Press release (2 November 2016) for the exhibition:
Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2 February — 30 April 2017
Kensington Palace, London, June 22–November 12, 2017
Curated by Joanna Marschner
This exhibition will be the first to explore the instrumental roles played by Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719–1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (1744–1818) in the promotion of the arts, sciences, medicine, education, charity, trade, and industry in Britain over the course of the long eighteenth century. “The princesses had sweeping intellectual, social, cultural, and political interests, which helped to shape the courts in which they lived, and encouraged the era’s greatest philosophers, scientists, artists, and architects to develop important ideas that would guide ensuing generations. The palaces and royal gardens they inhabited served as incubators for enlightened conversation and experimentation, and functioned as platforms to project the latest cultural developments to an international audience. Their innovative contributions across disciplines held great signi cance centuries ago and continue to inform our lives,” said Amy Meyers, Director of the Yale Center for British Art, and organizing curator at the Center.
These three German princesses, who all married into the British royal family, played an important part in the shaping of their nation’s culture during a time of change that in its complexity and dynamism would presage our own age. “Until this point, their contributions have been little understood and it is the aim of this exhibition to demonstrate how they influenced the interests of their era in the most vibrant of ways and left a legacy that resonates in the world today,” said Joanna Marschner, Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, and lead curator of this exhibition. Caroline and Charlotte became queens consort to George II and George III respectively, while Princess Augusta never achieved this distinction but held the titles of Princess of Wales and Princess Dowager, and was mother to King George III.
Nearly three hundred magnificent objects have been drawn together from numerous public and private collections from across Britain, Europe, and the United States, including the Royal Collection Trust; Royal Society; British Museum; National Portrait Gallery, London; and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., as well as Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition will feature works by the most influential artists of the period, such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Allan Ramsay, Mary Delany, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, and Johan Joseph Zoffany, as well as craftsmen such as Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton, and architects such as William Kent and William Chambers.
A rich variety of objects will offer a glimpse into the princesses’ private lives, their courts, and their legacy. The exhibition will bring together state portraits of the royal women, musical manuscripts, elaborate court costume, botanical and anatomical renderings, the Princesses’ own scientific instruments, architectural drawings and garden designs, royal children’s artwork, rare books and manuscripts, and much more. The display also will include a work created by the artist Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA), for this exhibition. It is inspired by the meeting, in 1753, between Princess Augusta and Mrs. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the owner of a profitable slave plantation in South Carolina in the British colonies of North America. A letter written by Mrs. Pinckney to a friend, detailing the encounter, will be featured in the exhibition as a special loan from the collection of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of South Carolina. The dress worn by Mrs. Pinckney on this occasion, made of silk produced on her plantation, will be lent to the Yale Center for British Art from the Smithsonian Institution.
E X H I B I T I O N T H E M E S
The exhibition will be organized according to five basic themes. Grand oil portraits by Joseph Highmore of Queen Caroline of Ansbach (ca. 1735), Allan Ramsay of Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales (1769), and Johan Joseph Zoffany of Queen Charlotte (1771) will set the stage for the exhibition.
The Court as a Stage
In the world of the palaces, the royal court operated as a stage, not only in the literal sense for the performance of music, dance, and theater but also as a political and cultural arena in which the intricate power plays between and among monarch, consort, and courtier took place. In their furnishing of the spaces, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte constructed a visual statement of the authority of the Hanoverian dynasty–past, present, and future– under which the patronage of music and the arts would flourish. Yet at the same time they had to navigate the inherently political nature of public and private life (even family life) at court during a period that saw an information revolution, initiated by the mass circulation of newspapers, journals, and magazines providing commentary, debate, and critique. Art illustrative of this theme includes works by Hans Holbein the Younger, such as Lady Lister (ca. 1532–43), drawn together in celebration of the distinguished pedigree of royal ancestry, and displayed alongside images of the royal children, the future hope of the dynasty, represented by such works as a lively genre scene by Phillippe Mercier, ‘The Music Party’: Frederick, Prince of Wales with his Three Eldest Sisters (1733).
Cultures of Learning: Powerful Conversations
At the heart of their social circles, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte built relationships with leading cultural and intellectual figures of their age, including politicians, clergymen, natural philosophers, gardeners, architects, authors, playwrights, and composers. While each princess developed these connections in different ways and with different priorities, their interests often overlapped or had a common focus, such as in science, medicine, philanthropy, and especially maternity, the care of infants, and the commercial interests of the state in Britain and abroad. Their pursuits in this area are re ected in objects on display including an oil portrait by John Vanderbank of Sir Isaac Newton (1726); Thomas Gainsborough’s splendid grand manner portrait of his friend, the musician Carl Abel, later acquired by Queen Charlotte for whom he provided music; and Allan Ramsey’s beautifully nuanced portrait of Charlotte’s medical adviser, Dr. William Hunter.
Royal Women: Education, Charity, and Health
Attitudes regarding royal child-rearing changed rapidly over the lifetimes of Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte. There were shifts in methodology and focus in response to the evolving contemporary philosophies about childhood, sentimentality, and the freedom of the individual. The princesses were active contributors to the educational programs devised for their children, the future promise for the dynasty, and sought to draw them into worlds outside the palace walls. In their public roles as encouragers and protectors, the princesses sought involvement with ambitious and wide-reaching public philanthropic projects, organizations, and societies, especially those connected with health and social welfare. A precious silk satin baby robe (1762) belonging to George, Prince of Wales (later George IV), the eldest child of George III and Queen Charlotte, compares poignantly with tokens left by unmarried and impoverished mothers as they consigned their children to the Foundling Hospital. The hospital was a charity supported by all three of the princesses, which reflected their concern for progressive social change.
Political Gardening
Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte created and recast each other’s gardens, which were by turns political and social spaces, as well as private retreats. They drew in the products of empire; plants and animals were collected from many continents, not only for their beauty and rarity but also their economic value. Likewise, the development of the collections of animals and birds brought back from the exploration of these ‘new’ worlds were an important feature in the royal gardens. In the design of their gardens, the princesses explored contemporary garden philosophies and exercised their architectural ambitions. Many of their landscapes, which they invested with message, were made to
be shared, not just with the community of gardeners, philosophers, and scientists the princesses drew into their circle, but with a wider community of the middling sort, which allowed a new relationship between monarchy and subject to be brokered. The gardens served each princess well but each manifestation was different, reacting to a volatile commercial environment as well as a changing perception of the bonds between and among the dynasty, nationhood, and empire.
Over the course of the long eighteenth century these three royal women seized the opportunities of a dynamic age, and their determined and imaginative promotion of the arts, sciences, medicine, education, charity, trade, and industry, shaped not only society and politics of their own time but were the forbearers of much of the beliefs and policies that continue in modern British culture. A brilliant watercolor by Mark Catesby, The Painted Finch and the Loblolly Bay (ca. 1722–26), and an intricate cut-paper collage by Mary Delany, Cactus Grandi orus, melon thistle (1778), serve as evidence of the princesses’ interest in Britain’s widespread imperial range.
To Promote and Protect: The Princesses and the Wider World
In working to promote and encourage the arts and science, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte supported and championed national products and allowed their interest to be used by enterprising industrialists, which helped win hearts and minds for the new regime. The development of new industrial technologies enabled mass-produced consumer goods, ensuring for the first time the dissemination of the image of the British monarchy, in a way that today is recognized as a ‘brand’, for a domestic and international audience. In the furnishing of their homes and the development of their gardens, the princesses celebrated the fruits of empire. The first British incursions into the Americas began in the sixteenth century, burgeoned in the seventeenth century, and matured over the first half of the eighteenth century. Following the War of Independence, these efforts would be succeeded by increased colonial expansion (Caribbean, India, Africa, China, and Australasia). Masterpieces that reflect the imperatives of empire which helped to brand the character of the British monarchy internationally will include one of the Center’s treasured works, a painting by William Verelst, Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians (1734–35), and a painting by George Stubbs of a zebra belonging to Queen Charlotte (1763).
C R E D I T S A N D P U B L I C A T I O N
Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World is a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art. Lead curator Joanna Marschner, Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, is assisted by Samantha Howard, Curatorial Assistant. The organizing curator at the Center, Amy Meyers, Director, is assisted by Lisa Ford, Assistant Director of Research; Glenn Adamson, Senior Research Associate; and Tyler Griffith, Postdoctoral Research Associate. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication of the same title, a beautifully illustrated catalogue of works edited by Joanna Marschner, with the assistance of David Bindman and Lisa Ford. Co-published with Historic Royal Palaces in association with Yale University Press, this book will feature contributions by an international team of scholars.
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The catalogue is scheduled for March publication from Yale UP:
Joanna Marschner, ed., with David Bindman and Lisa Ford, Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2017), 592 pages, ISBN: 978 0300 217100, $85.
Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719–1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (1744–1818) were three German princesses who became Queens Consort—or, in the case of Augusta, Queen in Waiting, Regent, and Princess Dowager—of Great Britain, and were linked by their early years at European princely courts, their curiosity, aspirations, and an investment in Enlightenment thought. This sumptuously illustrated book considers the ways these powerful, intelligent women left enduring marks on British culture through a wide range of activities: the promotion of the court as a dynamic forum of the Hanoverian regime; the enrichment of the royal collection of art; the advancement of science and industry; and the creation of gardens and menageries. Objects included range from spectacular state portraits to pedagogical toys to plant and animal specimens, and reveal how the new and novel intermingled with the traditional.
New Book | Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection
From Philip Wilson:
James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016), 304 pages, ISBN: 978 1781 300428, £50 / $90.
This book is a comprehensive, well illustrated guide to one of the most important collections of 18th-century silver in Europe, extending to nearly a thousand individual pieces, being of the highest quality, style, and exuberance of form and surviving virtually intact along with extensive and previously untapped archival evidence of its commissioning and use. The book analyses the silver from stylistic and technical perspectives and uses it to shed light on the patronage, fashion, and diplomatic, political and social history of the period. It also casts new light on the Herveys, one of England’s most famous and eccentric aristocratic families.
James Rothwell studied art history at Warwick University and gained a master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has worked for the National Trust since 1995 and is the organisation’s adviser on silver, carrying out extensive research on the collections and guiding displays, interpretation, and acquisitions. He has published numerous articles on the subject and is the co-author of Country House Silver from Dunham Massey (2006). In collaboration with the Goldsmiths’ Company, he has overseen a ground-breaking series of exhibitions of works by contemporary silversmiths in National Trust houses.
New Book | Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting
From Philip Wilson:
Patricia Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016), 192 pages, ISBN: 978 1781 300435, £45 / $75.
The aim of this publication is to introduce the rich and varied ceramics in the National Trust’s vast and encyclopaedic collection, numbering approximately 75,000 artefacts, housed in 250 historic properties in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. One hundred key pieces have been selected from this rich treasure trove, each contributing to our knowledge of ceramic patronage and history, revealing the very personal stories of ownership, display, taste, and consumption. The selection includes the following Continental wares: ‘Red-figure’ wares, Italian armorial tablewares, Dutch Delft from the Greek A factory (owned by Adrianus Kocx), Chinese Kraak ware and Dehua ware, Japanese Kakiemon-style and Imari-style tablewares and garnitures, Meissen table sculpture by Johann Joachim Kandler and tablewares attributed to Adam Friedrich von Lowenfinck, along with Castelli fayence from the Grue workshop. There are wares from the following porcelain manufactories: Doccia, Vienna, Vincennes, Sevres, Dihl, and Feulliet. English pottery and porcelain includes delftware, salt-glazed stoneware, creamware, Wedgwood Black Basalt and Etruscan ware, Chelsea, Bow, Worcester and Derby porcelain, Minton China, De Morgan, and Martin ware. And from the Americas, Pueblo ware. Many pieces are published for the first time, sometimes illustrated in their original interiors. Collectively, the selection surveys patterns of ceramic collecting by the British aristocracy and gentry over a four-hundred-year period.
Patricia F. Ferguson is an external adviser on ceramics to The National Trust, having researched their collections since 2003, and is a consulting curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She has an MA from SOAS, University of London, where she studied Chinese, Japanese, and Safavid ceramics. At the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, she re-displayed the European galleries, curated Containers of Beauty: The Art of Floral Display and Your Presence Is Requested: The Art of Dining in Eighteenth-Century Europe, and was author of Cobalt Treasures: The Robert Murray Bell and Ann Walker Bell Collection of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain (2003).
Exhibition | Wooden Sculptures, Busts, Reliquaries, and Shrines
Now on view at Pinacoteca Giovanni Züst:
Sculptures, Busts, Reliquaries, and Shrines from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
Legni Preziosi: Sculture, Busti, Reliquiari e Tabernacoli dal Medioevo al Settecento
Pinacoteca Giovanni Züst, Rancate, Switzerland, 16 October 2016 — 22 January 2017
Curated by Edoardo Villata
La mostra presenta una carrellata di sculture in legno dal XII al XVIII secolo— Madonne, Crocifissi, Compianti, busti, polittici scolpiti e persino un Presepe—provenienti da musei, chiese e monasteri del territorio ticinese, dove questi autentici capolavori sono stati oggetto di devozione e ammirazione per secoli. L’allestimento è stato curato da Mario Botta, che ha studiato, a titolo completamente gratuito, ogni dettaglio, affinché il visitatore sia immerso in un’atmosfera suggestiva e solenne, in cui la sacralità delle immagini esposte risulta pienamente valorizzata.
Edoardo Villata, Legni Preziosi: Sculture, busti, reliquiari e tabernacoli dal Medioevo al Settecento nel Cantone Ticino (Milan: Silvana, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978 8836 634767, $55.
The Burlington Magazine, December 2016
The eighteenth century in The Burlington (the issue is dedicated to ‘Art in Britain’):
The Burlington Magazine 158 (December 2016)
A R T I C L E S
• Lydia Hamlett, “Pandora at Petworth House: New Light on the Work and Patronage of Louis Laguerre,” pp. 950–55.
• Jennifer Melville, “Lady Forbes of Monymusk: A Rediscovered Portrait by Joshua Reynolds,” pp. 956–60.
• Brendan Cassidy, “A Portrait by Gavin Hamilton: Sir John Henderson of Fordell,” pp. 961–63.
• Alex Kidson, “David Solkin’s Art in Britain, 1660–1815 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015),” pp. 964–67.
L E T T E R S
• Peter Lindfield, “A Further Allusion to Strawberry Hill at Lee Priory, Kent,” p. 979.
• Nicholas Penny, “Hugh Honour,” p. 979.
R E V I E W S
• Susanna Avery-Quash, Review of Lucilla Burn, The Fitzwilliam Museum: A History (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016), p. 980.
• Greg Smith, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Tim Barringer and Oliver Fairclough, Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape (Giles, 2014), pp. 981–82.
• Barry Bergdoll, Review of Stefan Koppelkamm, The Imaginary Orient: Exotic Buildings of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Europe (Axel Munges, 2015), p. 982.
• Giles Waterfield, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Victoria Avery, Melissa Calaresu, and Mary Laven, eds., Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2015), p. 988.
• Malcolm Bull, Review of the exhibition In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura (Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, 2016; Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2017; The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 2017), pp. 1006–07.
S U P P L E M E N T
• Tim Knox, “Recent Acquisitions (2012–16) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,” pp. 1017–28.
The Rumbold Desk, by an unknown craftsman from Vizagapatam, Southern India, ca. 1750–60, rosewood inlaid with ivory, silver handles, 76 × 113 × 62 cm. Accepted in Lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2016 (M.3–2016). This Anglo-Indian desk has been on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge since 2012 and is one of the finest of a very small group of similar desks made for British patrons in India at Vizagapatam (near Madras), a centre for the manufacture of such luxurious ivory-inlaid furniture. It belonged to Sir Thomas Rumbold, 1st baronet (1736–91), a British administrator in India, who amassed a great fortune in the service of the East India Company and served as Governor of Madras from 1777 to 1780.
New Book | Claudio Francesco Beaumont
From ArtBooks.com:
Luca Fiorentino, Claudio Francesco Beaumont: L’Album di Disegni del Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Madama a Torino (Florence: Centro Di, 2016), 288 pages, ISBN: 978 8870 385380, €40 / $75.
Questo studio di Luca Fiorentino analizza L’Album di Disegni di Claudio Francesco Beaumont (1694–1766), artista piemontese che divenne primo pittore della corte sabauda. L’Album, composto da 309 disegni (non tutti di mano di Beaumont), entro nelle collezioni comunali del Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino nel 1931, dopo essere stato conservato dall’autore stesso e in seguito dalla sua famiglia. La ricerca è suddivisa in due sezioni: il saggio critico e il catalogo, composto da schede dettagliate e redatte secondo i moderni parametri scientifici.
Exhibition | Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement
Now on view at The Grolier Club:
‘A True Friend of the Cause’: Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement
The Grolier Club, New York, 7 December 2016 — 4 February 2017
Curated by Olga Anna Duhl and Diane Windham Shaw
Although the Marquis de Lafayette is popularly known as ‘America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman’ in the current Broadway musical Hamilton, his role as an ardent abolitionist has not received the same kind of attention as his contributions to the American Revolution. The groundbreaking exhibition A True Friend of the Cause: Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement, on view at the Grolier Club from December 7, 2016 to February 4, 2017, is designed to offer a more comprehensive look at the man who was a ‘hero of two worlds’. While Lafayette’s contributions in the areas of politics, diplomacy, and the military have received renewed scholarly and public recognition, his abolitionist activities are not widely known, nor have they been adequately explored in any major exhibition or publication in the last twenty-five years. This exhibition brings into focus Lafayette’s sustained efforts in France, the United States, and South America on behalf of the abolition of slavery.
Co-curators Olga Anna Duhl, Oliver Edwin Williams Professor of Languages, and Diane Windham Shaw, Director of Special Collections and College Archivist, Skillman Library, Lafayette College, offer a comprehensive view of Lafayette’s activities. Drawn from Lafayette College’s rich collections of 18th- and 19th-century rare books, manuscripts, paintings, prints, and objects—some of which are on public view for the first time—the approximately 130 works in the exhibition also include loans from Cornell University and the New-York Historical Society.
The Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) fought in the American War of Independence; was a friend to the Native Americans; defended the rights of French Protestants and Jews during the French Revolution; supported the national emancipation movements of the people of Poland, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and South America; and promoted the ideas and causes of women. Most significantly, he remained throughout his life a fervent advocate of the abolition of slavery and the African slave trade, earning the recognition of prominent British abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, as “a true friend of the cause.” Early on, Lafayette learned that the ideals of liberty and equality during the revolutionary era hardly benefited all members of society. In fact, one of the most daunting paradoxes of that era, which became a source of reflection and action for him, was the incompatibility between the national independence of the newly formed United States and the practice of slavery and slave trade.
The exhibition traces Lafayette’s first encounters with slaves on the South Carolina coast upon his arrival in America in 1777. Highlights of his role in service with the Continental Army are revealed in his letters to his mentor, George Washington, written from Valley Forge, Newport, and Virginia during the Yorktown Campaign, where Lafayette writes of the intelligence gathered by one of his spies, James, an enslaved African American. On view is a highly significant letter written by Lafayette to Washington requesting his partnership in a venture to free slaves. Stunning French prints of the American Revolution are included, as is an influential portrait, Lafayette at Yorktown, by Jean-Baptiste Le Paon.
The impact of abolitionist ideas on Lafayette is represented by the Marquis de Condorcet’s seminal work of 1781, Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nègres, and writings of British abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp. Lafayette’s decision to move forward on his own by purchasing property in French Guiana to carry out his experiment in gradual emancipation is documented by an extraordinary group of documents on loan from the Cornell University Library. Included among them is a list of the enslaved who were selected to work on the property. Maps, prints, and early travel volumes recreate the image of this South American colony.
Lafayette’s complicated story during the French Revolution includes his membership in the French Society of the Friends of Blacks. Publications of the Society are on view, as are printed versions of landmark French documents— the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), the French Constitution (1791), and the decree abolishing slavery in the French colonies (1794). Lafayette’s hasty departure from France in 1792 to avoid the guillotine is documented by the beautiful sword that was taken from him when he was arrested and imprisoned by the Austrians, which stands as a symbol of his personal experience with captivity. Lafayette’s return to a quiet life in France in 1800 found him still passionately committed to the antislavery movement, rejoicing when England outlawed the slave trade in 1807. Commemorative volumes and prints celebrate that milestone.
Lafayette’s last visit to America in 1824–25 was an extravagant moment in the nation’s history. The exhibition includes some of the spectacular souvenirs that were made to commemorate his visit—china, textiles, and even a clothes brush with the bristles dyed to spell “Lafayette 1825.” Lafayette’s emphasis on greeting all Americans is highlighted, including his visit to the African Free School in New York City, where he received a welcome address by an eleven-year-old student. Calligraphed and delivered by the student himself, James McCune Smith, who went on to become one of America’s first black physicians and a noted abolitionist, this text is a loan from the New-York Historical Society Library. The Farewell Tour section also documents Lafayette’s friendship with fellow antislavery advocate, Frances Wright, and his support of her gradual emancipation project “Nashoba” near Memphis, Tennessee.
Also included are letters from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall, and letters from Lafayette to Albert Gallatin, William H. Crawford, Joel Poincett, and others. Even after his death in 1834, his influence continued, particularly in America, where abolitionists, both black and white, continued to cite his example. Finally, the exhibit includes special items chosen to remind us of the human face of slavery—manumission papers of a woman and a man freed by their Quaker owners; the pension records of an African American Revolutionary soldier from Connecticut; and the first American printing of the Brooks engraving of slaves tightly packed on board a slave ship. Despite the changing fortunes and conflicting reviews of his career, Lafayette has remained a compelling figure in world history, and the interest in his contributions shows no sign of diminishing.
Lunchtime Guided Tours with the Curators
December 7 and 14, January 11 and 18, and February 1, 1–2pm
Roundtable Discussion: Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement
24 January 2017, 2–3:30pm
With co-curators and moderators Olga Anna Duhl and Diane Windham Shaw and featuring panelists Laura Auricchio (The New School), François Furstenberg (Johns Hopkins University), and John Stauffer (Harvard University). Reception to follow.
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The catalogue is available from Oak Knoll Press:
Olga Ann Duhl and Diane Windham Shaw, ‘A True Friend of the Cause’: Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement (New York: The Grolier Club and Lafayette College, 2016), 76 pages, ISBN: 978 160583 0650, $40.
New Book | Venice and Drawing, 1500–1800
From Yale UP:
Catherine Whistler, Venice and Drawing, 1500–1800: Theory, Practice, and Collecting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 380 pages, ISBN: 978 0300 187731, $65.
From the time of Titian and Tintoretto to that of Canaletto and Tiepolo, drawing was an important part of artistic practice and was highly valued in Venice. This exciting new study overturns traditional views on the significance of drawing in Venice, as an art and an act, from the Renaissance to the age of the Grand Tour. Gathering together the separate strands of theory, artistic practice, and collecting, Catherine Whistler highlights the interactions and tensions between a developing literary discourse and the practices of making and collecting graphic art. Her analysis challenges the conventional definition of Venetian art purely in terms of color, demonstrating that 16th-century Venetian artists and writers had a highly developed sense of the role and importance of disegno and drawing in art. The book’s generous illustrations support these striking arguments, as well as conveying the great variety, interest, and beauty of the drawings themselves.
Catherine Whistler is senior curator of European art, Ashmolean Museum, and a fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford.
Continent Allegories in the Baroque Age: A Research Database
An introduction to the Erdteilallegorien im Barockzeitalter project and database:
Continent Allegories in the Baroque Age: A Research Database
By Marion Romberg, of the Austrian Research Project Erdteilallegorien im
Barockzeitalter in the University of Vienna’s Department of History
During the late Renaissance—around 1570—humanists developed a new ‘shorthand’ way of representing the world at a single glance: personifications of the four continents Europe, Asia, Africa and America. While the continent allegory as an iconic type had already been invented in antiquity, humanists and their artists adapted the concept by creating the four- continent scheme and standardized the attributes characterizing the continents. During the next 230 years until ca. 1800, this iconic scheme became a huge success story. All known media were employed to bring the four continent allegories into the public and into people’s homes. Within this prolonged history of personifications of the continents, the peak was reached in the Late Baroque, and especially the 18th century. As a pictorial language they were interwoven with texts, dogmas, narratives and stereotypes. Thus the project team find himself asking: What did continent allegories actually mean to people living in the Baroque age?
Notably—though not exclusively—this question is the topic of a research project on continent allegories carried out between 2012 and 2016. The project team approached the subject in a new and systematic fashion. First, a clearly defined geographic area consisting of the greater part of Southern Holy Roman Empire from Freiburg in the Breisgau to the eastern frontier of Lower Austria including Vienna was chosen; the northern limit of the study area is constituted by the Main River, the southern one by South Tyrol. Secondly, the project studied continent allegories in immovable media like fresco, stucco and sculptures within abbeys, palaces, parks and gardens, townhouses and—most importantly—in churches. The systematic survey conducted by the project team identified 407 instances of continent allegories in the south of the Holy Roman Empire. To facilitate the systematic and detailed analysis of all identified instances of continent allegories, a database was developed and is now open access: continentallegories.univie.ac.at. This database allows the use of the collection of sources for various research interests: iconography and iconology, reception of aesthetics, cultural history, social history, history of identity, history of science, etc.
Further results of this research project can be found in the in English published anthology The Language of Continent Allegories in Baroque Central Europe (Stuttgart, 2016) and in the doctoral thesis by Marion Romberg “Die Welt im Dienst der Konfession. Erdteilallegorien in Dorfkirchen auf dem Gebiet des Fürstbistums Augsburg im 18. Jahrhundert“ (Stuttgart, 2017).
Project Team, 2012–16
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schmale, University of Vienna, www.wolfgangschmale.eu
Dr. Marion Romberg, University of Vienna, www.marionromberg.eu
Dr. Josef Köstlbauer, University of Bremen, josef.koestlbauer@univie.ac.at
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Wolfgang Schmale, Marion Romberg, and Josef Kostlbauer, eds., The Language of Continent Allegories in Baroque Central Europe (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016), 240 pages, ISBN 978 3515 114578, 52€ / $78.
The iconography of the four continents dates back to 16th and early 17th centuries, at a time when Europe’s vision of the world was changed dramatically by discovery and conquest of the New World. Its peak of dissemination was reached in the 18th century. The late Baroque claims a special role for two reasons: first is the large number of reproductions and applications during this period, and the second is the multifaceted significance these allegories enjoyed. They could be inserted into religious and liturgical settings as well as into political language or that of the history of civilization and mankind. ‘Language’ in this sense means that the continent allegories were less the object of an art historical interpretation than being considered a formative part of religious, liturgical, political, historical, and other discourses. As pictorial language they were interwoven with text, dogmas, narratives, and stereotypes. Thus the authors of this volume inquire what the allegories of the four continents actually meant to people living in the Baroque age.
Cover image: Continent Allegories by Johann Baptist Enderle in the parish church St. Martin in Schwabmühlhausen (Germany) of 1759 (detail).
New Book | Bibliothèques, décors, XVIIe–XIXe siècle
From Éditions des Cendres and available from ArtBooks.com:
Frédéric Barbier, Andrea De Pasquale, István Monok, eds., Bibliothèques, décors, XVIIe–XIXe siècle (Paris, Éditions des Cendres, 2016), 306 pages, ISBN 978 2867 422546, $63.
La chronologie est spécifique au domaine : dans la seconde moitié du xvie et au début du xviie siècle, la bibliothèque abandonne le mobilier traditionnel des pupitres pour prendre la forme moderne d’une grande salle de travail dont les murs sont tapissés de livres. Ce modèle deviendra à son tour de moins en moins adapté, jusqu’à ce que, face à l’accroissement de la production imprimée qui se produit au xixe siècle, le principe des magasins de stockage des livres se développe et l’organisation interne de la bibliothèque se modifie. Au fil de cet espace de temps des xviie–xixe siècles, les grands courants artistiques se succèdent, du baroque au classicisme puis au néo-classique, et jusqu’à l’émergence de l’architecture industrielle.
Parallèlement, l’institution de la bibliothèque garde une charge symbolique élevée, mise en scène par le biais du décor. On connaît les somptueuses bibliothèques baroques du monde catholique, de la péninsule Ibérique à l’Allemagne méridionale, à l’Europe centrale, ou encore à l’Italie. Pourtant, d’autres modèles de décor se rencontrent, qu’il s’agisse de la France (à la Bibliothèque Mazarine) ou encore de la géographie de la Réforme protestante. À côté des exemples les plus célèbres, y compris celui de la Hofbibliothek de Vienne, les contributions présentent un certain nombre de bibliothèques historiques largement méconnues jusqu’à aujourd’hui, notamment en Europe centrale et orientale (Alba Iulia), mais aussi en Italie (avec le Palais Borromini à Rome).
Ce travail transdisciplinaire réunit les meilleurs spécialistes européens, confrontant les leçons de l’histoire générale avec celles de l’histoire de l’art, de l’histoire des idées et de l’histoire du livre et des bibliothèques. Un ouvrage placé sous la direction de Frédéric Barbier, István Monok & Andrea De Pasquale qui ont réuni à leurs côtés une équipe internationale de spécialistes de l’histoire des bibliothèques et du livre / Ample iconographie, bibliographie et index.
T A B L E D E M A T I È R E S
• Frédéric Barbier, Bibliothèques, décors, XVIIe–XXIe siècle
• Frédéric Barbier, Illustrer, persuader, servir: le décor des bibliothèques, 1627–1851
• Elmar Mittler, Kunst oder Propaganda? Bibliothekarische Ausstattungsprogramme als Spiegel kultureller Entwicklungen und Kontroversen in Renaissance, Gegenreformation, Aufklärung und Klassizismus
• Hans Petschar, Der Pruncksaal der Österreichichen Nationalbibliothek : zur Semiotik eines barocken Denkraumes
• Andreas Gamerith, Klosterbibliotheken des Wiener Umlandes: alte und neue Motive
• Michaela Seferisová Loudová, Ikonographie der Klosterbibliotheken in Tschechien, 1770–1790
• Szabolcs Serfözö, Barocke Deckenmalereien in klosterbibliotheken des Paulinerordens in Mitteleuropa
• Anna Jávor, Bücher und Fresken: die künstlerische Ausstattung von Barockbibliothecken in Ungarn
• János Jernyei-Kiss, Die Welt der Bücher auf einem Deckenbild: Franz Sigrists Darstellung der Wissenschaften im Festsaal des Lyzeums in Erlau
• Doina Hendre Biró, Le décor de la Bibliothèque et de l’Observatoire astronomique fondés par le comte Ignác Batthyány, évêque de Transylvanie, à la fin du XVIIIe siècle
• Yann Sordet, D’un palais (1643) l’autre (1648): les bibliothèque(s) Mazarine(s) et leur décor
• Fiammetta Sabba, I Saloni librari Borrominiani fra architettura e decoro
• Andrea De Pasquale, L’histoire du livre dans le décor des bibliothèques d’Italie au XIXe siècle
• Jean-Michel Leniaud, L’invention du programme d’une bibliothèque, 1780–1930
• Alfredo Serrai, I vasi o saloni librari. Ermeneutica della iconografia bibliotecaria
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