New Book | Taste and the Antique
Forthcoming from Brepols:
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny / Eloisa Dodero and Adriano Aymonino, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900, revised and extended edition (Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2016), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1909400252, $130.
Taste and the Antique offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the reception and afterlife of the most famous ancient statues discovered in Rome and Italy from the Renaissance to the close of the nineteenth century. Before Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, sculptures like the Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere, or the Medici Venus set the taste of artists, connoisseurs, and the educated elites of the West for almost five centuries. Reproduced in every possible media for gardens and palaces throughout Europe, celebrated by poets and writers from Marino and Byron to Proust and Dickens, they served as sources of inspiration for artists as diverse as Michelangelo, Rubens, and Turner.
Originally published in 1981, Taste and the Antique was hailed by Ernst Gombrich as a thought-provoking work that met a “long-felt want.” Reprinted five times since with minor alterations, Haskell and Penny’s book has become a classic of art history that is still used as the standard reference by scholars and anyone interested in the reception of the classical tradition. This new edition offers a complete revision of the original text to incorporate updates and new information on the single statues and their context in the light of research undertaken in the field over the past three decades.
Note (added 7 May 2018) — It’s still forthcoming, with publication now expected in 2019.
Exhibition | Carlos III: Majestad y Ornato
The exhibition is one of several held to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of King Charles III of Spain:
Carlos III: Majestad y Ornato en los Escenarios del Rey Ilustrado
Palacio Real de Madrid, 6 December 2016 — 31 March 2017
Curated by María Pilar Benito García, Javier Jordán de Urríes, and José Luis Sancho Gaspar
El próximo 6 de diciembre, en el Palacio Real de Madrid, se abre al público la exposición Carlos III. Majestad y Ornato en los Escenarios del Rey Ilustrado, con la que se conmemora del tercer centenario de este monarca y que permanecerá abierta hasta el 31 de marzo de 2017.
Soberano ilustrado y, como tal, mecenas de las artes, el monarca constituye el referente más indiscutible en la fértil relación que han mantenido la Corona y la Cultura en España durante la Edad Moderna. Su gobierno, además de las grandes obras públicas que promovió, supuso la intervención estatal en aspectos estéticos a una escala amplia y variada. Pero sin duda donde con más claridad se perciben tales innovaciones es en el propio entorno del monarca, en el arte cortesano creado bajo su directo mecenazgo, y que pone en valor esta exposición.
Estas obras artísticas, que servían para la vida cotidiana del rey y su familia, estaban pensadas tanto para fines funcionales, como ornamentales y representativos: su calidad, su magnificencia y suntuosidad, su tono cosmopolita constituían toda una declaración de poder. Expresaban no sólo la majestad del rey, sino la de la vasta monarquía simbolizaba en su persona. En sus palacios –tanto el de Madrid como el de los cuatro sitios reales donde la corte pasaba cada estación del año- se expresaba esta alianza entre el poder y la ilustración mediante todas las bellas artes: la pintura con figuras como Giambattista Tiepolo, el ya mencionado Mengs y todos sus discípulos españoles, entre ellos el incipiente genio de Francisco de Goya; las artes decorativas merced a las Reales Fábricas de tapices, de porcelana y piedras duras, de cristales y de relojes, y a los talleres dirigidos por diseñadores como Mattia Gasparini.
Reconocibles aún en los palacios, pero en gran medida dispersas debido a la misma evolución de la vida cortesana y a los avatares históricos, las obras ornamentales creadas para expresar la magnificencia de Carlos III constituyen uno de los tesoros culturales de España. Patrimonio Nacional plantea aquí una nueva lectura de esta página esencial en el acervo estético español, presentando obras emblemáticas y programas decorativos que no podían verse de forma conjunta desde el siglo XVIII, así como otras obras no mostradas al público en los últimos años o procedentes de colecciones extranjeras de difícil acceso. Asimismo, será la primera vez que se muestre el Retrato de Carlos III, pintado por Mengs y regalado por el monarca al rey Federico V de Dinamarca, que nunca se ha expuesto en España.
Los comisarios de esta exposición son Dña. María Pilar Benito García, D. Javier Jordán de Urríes y D. José Luis Sancho Gaspar.
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The catalogue is available from ArtBooks.com:
Pilar Benito Garcia, et al., Carlos III: Majestad y Ornato en los Escenarios del Rey Ilustrado (Madrid: El Viso, 2016), 392 pages, ISBN: 9788471205216, $62.
To commemorate the 300th anniversary of the birth of King Charles III (1716–1788), Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage) has organised a show especially focused on studying the courtly art created under his direct patronage at Madrid’s Palacio Real. The catalogue assembles the complete renovation of all of the Royal Sites promoted by Charles III. The works that adorned the Royal Chamber, the mural paintings that decorated the archs of the royal palaces, as well as the most delicate works elaborated by the royal ateliers of workwood, bronze, and embroidery can be admired.
New Book | The Restoration of Paintings in Paris, 1750–1815
Scheduled for February release from The Getty:
Noémie Étienne, The Restoration of Paintings in Paris, 1750–1815: Practice, Discourse, Materiality (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2017), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-1606065167, $70.
The decades following the 1973 publication of Alessandro Conti’s Storia del Restauro have seen considerable scholarly interest in the development of restoration in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. A number of technical treatises and biographies of restorers have offered insight into restoration practice. The Restoration of Paintings in Paris, 1750–1815, however, is the first book to situate this work within the broader historical and philosophical contexts of the time. Drawing on previously unpublished primary material from archives in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Venice, Noemie Etienne combines art history with anthropology and sociology to survey the waning decades of the Ancien Régime and early post- Revolution France. Initial chapters present the diversity of restoration practice, encompassing not only royal institutions and the Louvre museum but also private art dealers, artists, and craftsmen, and examine questions of trade secrecy and the changing role of the restorer. Following chapters address the influence of restoration and exhibition on the aesthetic understanding of paintings as material objects. The book closes with a discussion of the institutional and political uses of restoration, along with an art historical consideration of such key concepts as authenticity, originality, and stability of artworks, emphasizing the multilayered dimension of paintings by such important artists as Titian and Raphael. There is also a useful dictionary of the main restorers active in France between 1750 and 1815.
Noémie Étienne is currently a fellow at the Getty Research Institute. Beginning in September 2016 she will be a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor of Art History at the University of Bern.
2016 Berger Prize for British Art History
Giles Waterfield’s book The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre, 2015), is the winner of the 2016 William MB Berger Prize for Art History. Alex Kidson’s catalogue raisonné of George Romney’s paintings was included on the ‘short list’. The ‘long list’ of 45 books includes 20 titles relevant for eighteenth-century studies. From The British Art Journal:
• Adriano Aymonino and Anne Varick Lauder, Drawn From the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2015), 231 pages, ISBN: 978-0-957339897, £35.
• Christopher Baker, Duncan Bull, William Hauptman, Neil Jeffares, Aileen Ribeiro, MaryAnne Stevens, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–1789) (London: The Royal Academy of Arts and National Gallery of Scotland, 2015), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-1910350201, £27.
• Layla Bloom, Nicholas Grindle, et al., George Morland: Art, Traffic and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Leeds: The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, 2015), 99 pages, ISBN: 978-1874331544, £12.
• Oliver Bradbury, Sir John Soane’s Influence on Architecture from 1791: A Continuing Legacy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 480 pages, ISBN: 978-1472409102, £95.
• Mary Clark, The Dublin Civic Portrait Collection: Patronage, Politics and Patriotism, 1603–2013 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1846825842, £35.
• Tim Clayton and Sheila O’Connell, Bonaparte and the British: Prints and Propaganda in the Age of Napoleon (London: British Museum Press, 2015), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0714126937, £25.
• Joan Coutu, Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-Century England (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0773545434, £72.
• Lucy Davies and Mark Hallett, Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (London: Paul Holberton Publishing for The Wallace Collection, 2015), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-0900785757, £30.
• Loyd Grossman, Benjamin West and the Struggle To Be Modern (London: Merrell Publishers, 2015), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1858946412, £35.
• E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce, and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: The Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 424 pages, ISBN: 978-1409447740, £80.
• Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd, Roman Splendour / English Arcadia: The English Taste for Pietre Dure and the Sixtus Cabinet at Stourhead (London: Philip Wilson Publishing, 2015), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1781300244, £45.
• Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), 960 pages, ISBN: 978-0300209693, £180.
• William Laffan and Christopher Monkhouse, with the assistance of Leslie Fitzpatrick, Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840 (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Art Institute of Chicago, 2015), ISBN: 978-0300210606, £30.
• Stephen Lloyd, ed., Art, Animals and Politics: Knowsley and the Earls of Derby (Unicorn Press, 2015), 822 pages, ISBN: 978-1910065, £60.
• Arthur MacGregor, ed., The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre, 2015), 495 pages, ISBN: 978-0300204353, £75.
• John Richard Moores, Representations of France in English Satirical Prints, 1740–1832 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2015), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0230545328, £60.
• Steven Parissien, ed., Celebrating Britain: Canaletto, Hogarth and Patriotism (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372780, £25.
• Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, Carol Jacobi, Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (London: Tate, 2015), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1849763431, £40.
• David Solkin, Art in Britain, 1660–1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press / Pelican History of Art, 2015), 378 pages, ISBN: 978-0300215564, £55.
• Sheila White and Philip Sheail, eds and trans., Lord Fordwich’s Grand Tour, 1756–60 (Hertford: Hertfordshire Record Publications, 2015), 401 pages, ISBN: 978-0956511140, £22.
Exhibition | The Art of Law: Three Centuries of Justice Depicted
Now on view in Brugge:
The Art of Law: Three Centuries of Justice Depicted
De kunst van het recht: Drie eeuwen gerechtigheid in beeld
Groeningemuseum, Brugge, 28 October 2016 — 5 February 2017
Curated by Vanessa Paumen
In the fifteenth century, it was customary to decorate courtrooms with works of art that were intended to ‘encourage’ the aldermen and judges to perform their duties in an honest and conscientious manner. These works often depicted the supreme moment of divine justice: the Last Judgement. But other scenes from the Bible were also used, as were images from more profane sources. Together, these are known as the exempla iustitiae (‘examples of fair justice’). In 1498, Gerard David was commissioned by the city council of Bruges to paint just such a work: The Judgement of Cambyses. This remarkably gruesome painting once hung in the courtroom of Bruges town hall and is now one of the finest masterpieces in the Groeningemuseum.
Subjects relating to justice were also depicted outside the courtroom in paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture and stained glass windows. The Art of Law exhibition has brought together some twenty works of art from the collections of Musea Brugge, supplemented by about hundred other pieces on loan from galleries and museums both at home and abroad. They paint a fascinating picture of the way in which justice and the law were represented in art during the Ancien Régime.
Vanessa Paumen works at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges as the coordinator of the Flemish Research Center for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands. She earned a BA degree, cum laude and an MA degree in Art History, with a focus on European Art at the University of Texas in Austin. In her master’s thesis, “Judged, Beheaded, Burned: Dieric Bouts, The Justice of Emperor Otto III within the Context of Fifteenth-Century Punitive Practices,” she looked at how justice paintings functioned in fifteenth-century Flemish society.
Vanessa Paumen, et al., The Art of Law: Three Centuries of Justice Depicted (Tielt: Lannoo Publishers, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978 9401440417, £30.
Exhibition | Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art
Francis Wheatley, The Dublin Volunteers on College Green, 4th November 1779, 1779–80, oil on canvas, 175 × 323 cm
(Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland)
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Now on view at the National Gallery of Ireland:
Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 8 October 2016 – 15 January 2017
Curated by Brendan Rooney
This exhibition represents the Gallery’s principal contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. It brings together over 50 paintings spanning the seventeenth century to the 1930s, depicting or inspired by episodes in Irish history from the early fifth century arrival of St. Patrick to the establishment of the Free State. A significant number of paintings in the exhibition are drawn from the Gallery’s collection, many of which have undergone extensive conservation in preparation for this show, such as Jan Wyck’s The Battle of the Boyne, Francis Wheatley’s The Dublin Volunteers on College Green, 4th November 1779, and Joseph Patrick Haverty’s The Monster Meeting at Clifden. Other artists represented in the exhibition include James Barry, Charles Russell, John Lavery, Richard Thomas Moynan, Seán Keating, and Jack B. Yeats, complemented by loans from public and private collections in Ireland and overseas.
Brendan Rooney, ed., Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2016), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1911024286, €25.
Brendan Rooney is Curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery of Ireland, and author/editor of numerous works on Irish art, including Thomas Roberts: Landscape and Patronage in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (2009) and A Time and a Place: Two Centuries of Irish Social Life (2006).
New Book | A Civic Utopia
When we noted the exhibition A Civic Utopia this past summer, we didn’t include information on the catalogue, which is now available from Drawing Matter:
Nicholas Olsberg and Basile Baudez, A Civic Utopia: Architecture and the City in France, 1765–1837 (London: Drawing Matter, 2016), 52 pages, ISBN: 978-0995630901, £20.
This large format, finely illustrated edition is published to coincide with the exhibition A Civic Utopia at The Courtauld Gallery of Art. In addition to the ‘Introduction’, it contains an essay entitled ‘Law, Order and the Beautiful’ by Nicholas Olsberg and ‘Case Studies’ by Basile Baudez. The essay explores the Enlightenment themes: A New Rome, Porta, Ratio, Lex, Sanitas, Spectaculum, Lexicon, and Exemplum. The case studies examine the work of Louis Combes, Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, André Sainte-Marie Châtillon, Paul Piot, François-Joseph Bélanger, François-Joseph Bélanger, and Louis-Pierre Baltard. The book expands on a selection of architectural drawings from the exhibition that show public building and public space in Enlightenment-era France. The drawings served as models for the expression of an ordered and open civic life as the foundation of an ideal polity. They responded to the urgings of writers, critics, and philosophes to make a systematic effort toward civic improvement, or what Voltaire entitled the “embellissement de la ville.”
The book traces how, over the next century, a new model of the modern French city emerged, one that deployed a consistent architecture capable of expressing the liberal qualities of the civic life within it: ordered, open, and dignified. These ideal forms, the methods of visualising and realising them through drawing, and the techniques of design and construction developed to build them, were circulated through engravings and compendia throughout the world. With their new emphases on turning their principal face out towards the street and square, on the horizontal line, and on the evident entrance, these models established an international aesthetic for the architecture of public life, and a universal system of architectural training.
Basile Baudez is maître de conférences at Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV and visiting professor at the Ecole nationale des Chartes. His main areas of research are the history of architectural schools and the Beaux-Arts system and the history of architectural representation in the Western world. Recent publications include, Les Hôtels de la Guerre et des Affaires étrangères à Versailles (co-editor), and Chalgrin, architectes et architecture entre l’Ancien Régime et l’Empire as well as numerous journal articles. His current book project addresses the history of colour in architectural representation.
Nicholas Olsberg is an historian, archivist, curator and writer. As Editor of the Colonial and State Records of South Carolina from 1967–74, he published numerous studies on political and civic life in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and as Archivist of the Commonwealth from 1975 to 1979 produced a major exhibition on the 1790 constitution of Massachusetts. His recent published works in architecture include major monographs on Cliff May, John Lautner, Arthur Erickson, and Ernest and Esther Born; a series of essays on Frank Lloyd Wright; and regular contributions to journals of architecture.
New Book | A Golden Age of European Art
From Yale UP:
Edited by James Clifton and Melina Kervandjian with essays by Barbara Baert, Andrea Bayer, Anne Dunlop, Steven Ostrow, Lisa Pon, Martin Postle, and Arthur K. Wheelock, A Golden Age of European Art: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300207811, $65.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the acclaimed Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, this commemorative book presents masterpieces from the foundation’s collection. The works span more than 400 years, from the 16th through the early 20th century, and feature a range of media including paintings, prints, and printed books. After a comprehensive introduction to the foundation and its collection, essays by eight scholars present new scholarship on key works. The featured objects include an image of the Madonna and Child by the Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini; Richard Wilson’s iconic 18th-century composition The White Monk; printed materials in Venice that bridged Jewish and Christian cultures; and portraits by Paolo Veronese, Simon Vouet, and others. With more than 200 illustrations, this beautiful publication is a rich survey as well as a timely celebration of this exceptional collection.
James Clifton is director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and curator of Renaissance and Baroque painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Exhibition | 350 Years of Creativity
Now on view at the French Academy in Rome:
350 Years of Creativity: The Artists of the French Academy in Rome from Louis XIV to the Present
350 ans de création: Les artistes de l’Académie de France à Rome de Louis XIV à nos jours
Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici, 14 October 2016 — 15 January 2017
Curated by Jérôme Delaplanche
Founded by Louis XIV in 1666, the Academy is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year with a special series of events retracing its history. This exhibition is one of the program’s high points and is accompanied by two others in Rome, organized by the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and focusing on their relationships with the French Academy. 350 Years of Creativity is a chance for the visitor to discover the creative output of artists at the Academy—both residents and directors—during their stays in Rome. It includes over a hundred works dating from 1666 to the present day, by artists including Fragonard, David, Ingres, Berlioz, Garnier, Carpeaux, Debussy, and Balthus. In the course of a fascinating journey through three and half centuries of French art, visitors are offered a closer look at the Academy and its successive generations of creators.
350 Years of Creativity illustrates the high points of the Academy’s long life with works by its leading artists presented under the following headings: the ancient and modern quest for the ideal; the discovery of picturesque reality; the relationship with the body and the nude; the significance of the move to the Villa Médicis; eclecticism and the value of originality; new life for tradition; and the Academy as a center for creative experiment. The exhibition itinerary brings together paintings, drawings, statues, prints, musical scores, and archival material as testimony to the sheer artistic variety the institution has produced. Some of these works come from the Academy’s own collection, notably portraits by residents and the plaster statues. The exhibition closes with a video of works created by residents over the last few decades. For the visitor all this adds up to an opportunity to survey the history of French art from 1666 to 2016.
350 Years of Creativity will also be accompanied by other events—screenings, encounters, concerts—presented at the Villa Médicis as part of the series ‘Thursdays at the Villa: Art Matters’. It will conclude with a symposium on 11–13 January 2017 with the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, titled Art Academies: Heritage and Contemporary Art Issues.
Jerome Delaplanche, ed., 350 anni di creatività: Gli artisti dell’Accademia di Francia a Roma da Luigi XIV ai nostri giorni (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2016), 224 pages, ISBN: 978 8899765101 (Italian), ISBN: 978 8899765088 (French), 35€.
The Burlington Magazine, November 2016
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 158 (November 2016)
A R T I C L E S
• Lucia Simonato, “A New Work by Domenico Guidi: The Bust of Cardinal Gianfrancesco Albani,” pp. 885–90.
• Bent Sørensen, “The Parisian Career of Jacques François Saly, 1749–53,” pp. 891–99.
L E T T E R
• Kim Legate, “More on Chippendale at Hestercombe House,” p. 904.
R E V I E W S
• Anthony Geraghty, Review of Owen Hopkins, From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (Rekation Books, 2015), p. 907–08.
• Tessa Murdoch, Review of Malcolm Baker, The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), p. 908.
• Martin Postle, Review of James Ayres, Art, Artisans, and Apprentices: Apprentice Painters and Sculptors in the Early Modern British Tradition (Oxbow Books, 2014), p. 909.
• Loyd Grossman, Review of Susan Rather, The American School: Artists and Status in the Late-Colonial and Early National Era (Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 909–10.
• François Quiviger, Review of Andrea Daninos, Una Rivoluzione di Cera: Francesco Orso e e i «cabinets de figures» in Francia (Officina Libraria, 2016), pp. 911–12.
• Philip Ward-Jackson, Review of Vanessa Brett, Bertrand’s Toyshop in Bath: Luxury Retailing, 1685–1765 (Oblong Creative, 2014), p. 912.
• Jamie Mulherron, Review of the exhibition Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793 (Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, 2016), pp. 921–23.
• Jeremy Warren, Review of the exhibition Splendida Minima (Tesoro dei Granduchi, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 2016), pp. 923–24. [Includes the eighteenth-century reception of these small-scale sculptures.]
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