Enfilade

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.

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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).

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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.

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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€.

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Distributed by Yale University Press:

Sylvain Bellenger, Carmine Romano, and Jesse Rosenberg, with a preface by Riccardo Muti, The Neapolitan Crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2016), 176 pages, ISBN: 978 0300222357, $40.

The 18th-century Neapolitan crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago, which contains over 200 figures arranged in a panorama of street life, represents the pinnacle of a rich artistic heritage. This luxurious catalogue is the first to study the crèche in the context of art and music history. Essays explore the Neapolitan crèche tradition and examine the design of Chicago’s example with reference to other important crèches in Europe and the United States. Entries on individual figures identify the characters and types they represent, as well as their social and historical meaning and religious significance. Other entries address groups of figures, animals, and cultural themes present in the creche. Together the essays and entries highlight the astonishing realism and potent symbolism of these figures, which range from heavenly angels and the Holy Family around the manger to street vendors and revelers feasting, drinking, and dancing in a tavern. Nativity scene.

Sylvain Bellenger is director of the Museo de Capodimonte, Naples; Carmine Romano is a PhD student at Paris-Sorbonne University; and Jesse Rosenberg is clinical associate professor, musicology, at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.

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Press release (26 October 2016) for the exhibition:

Robert Adam’s London
Sir John Soane’s Museum, 30 November 2016 — 11 March 2017

Curated by Frances Sands

The work of one of the greatest British architects of all time is examined in a new exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Robert Adam’s London takes an in-depth look at some of the Scottish architect’s work which helped change the landscape of the capital. Some of the famous buildings looked at in the exhibition include Buckingham Palace, the Admiralty Screen on Whitehall and Portland Place. Robert Adam’s London is the first time the architect’s work across the city as a whole has been examined in a London museum. It will showcase his ground-breaking neo-classical style and his desire to unify architecture and interior design. It will also feature both completed buildings alongside those, which were never realised, offering a glimpse into the architect’s ambitious vision for London.

On display will be some of Sir John Soane’s Museum’s most beautiful, influential, and rarely seen designs of Adam’s projects in London, taken from their 9,000-strong Adam drawing collection. The Museum holds 80% of the world’s surviving Adam drawings which are of huge international-significance for our understanding of Georgian architecture and interior design. Projects on show include the famous Admiralty Screen on Whitehall, Portland Place, and six monuments for Westminster Abbey, as well as projects subsequently demolished or never realised, such as the interiors of Buckingham House (before it became Buckingham Palace), 15 Downing Street, Lansdowne House, and Adelphi. A large-scale facsimile of an eighteenth-century map of London will form the centrepiece of the show, plotting Adam’s various projects across the city, creating an ‘in-exhibition’ trail for visitors. Alongside this will be a portrait of Robert Adam by George Williamson, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, and a pedestal designed by Adam from Kenwood House.

Robert Adam had a long and enduring connection to London, establishing his London practice in 1758 and remaining in the city until his death in 1792. There is a greater density of his work for this city than anywhere else, as he focused on designing complete schemes for the decoration of domestic, public, commercial, speculative and commemorative buildings. His work in London demonstrates how his style evolved past the fashionable Palladian design of the time, into a new, more flexible style, incorporating influences from Roman, Etruscan, and Baroque styles. Adam’s radical style was often attributed to a desire to design everything down to the smallest detail.

Adam regularly favoured large-scale and grandiose designs, many of which remained purely speculative as their ambitions—and cost—were often prohibitive. One such project examined in the exhibition in detail is for Portland Place, where he hoped to construct detached aristocratic palaces which might rival noblemen’s urban homes in Europe. Palaces for the Earls of Kerry and Findlater were designed, but never came to fruition. If they had, central London would have looked significantly different to how it is today.

Bruce Boucher, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum says: “The Adam Drawings at the Soane Museum is one of our most important collections. Not only is it an invaluable record of the work of one of this country’s most innovative architects, but also a fascinating glimpse into what London could have been had all his projects survived or come to fruition. People have always cared passionately about the architecture of London, as today’s fierce debates testify, so it is wonderful to be able to examine this fascinating chapter in the architectural history of this great city, right in the heart of the city itself.”

Dr Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum comments: “The Adam office provided designs in deliberate contrast to the more severe neo-Palladian style that had dominated Britain in earlier decades. Adam instigated a fashion for his own recognisable and characteristic style, one not based on dogmatic archaeological accuracy, but rather a creative fusion of all that he had seen abroad. With his distinctive, delicate interior decorative style and bold, rippling architecture, Adam became enormously successful; his practice catered to clients across Britain—and occasionally beyond—but nowhere more heavily than in London. Often remembered as an architect of great country houses, this exhibition celebrates the skill and dexterity of his numerous works here in town.”

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Frances Sands, Robert Adam’s London (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2017), 142 pages, ISBN: 978-1784914622, £18.

The iconic eighteenth-century architect Robert Adam was based in London for more than half of his life and made more designs for this one city than anywhere else in the world. This book reviews a wide variety of his designs for London, highlighting lesser known buildings as well as familiar ones. Each of Adam’s projects explored in this book is plotted on Horwood’s map of London (1792–99), enabling readers to recognise Adam’s work as they move around the city, as well as to envisage London as if more of his ingenious designs had been executed or survived demolition.

Frances Sands is Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum.

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