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.]
New Book | The Neapolitan Crèche at the Art Institute of Chicago
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.
Exhibition | Robert Adam’s London
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.
New Book | The Prints of Paul Sandby: A Catalogue Raisonné
From Brepols:
Ann Gunn, The Prints of Paul Sandby (1731–1809): A Catalogue Raisonné (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 339 pages, ISBN: 978-1909400160, £127 / $195.
Born in Nottingham, Paul Sandby (1731–1809) is best known as a founder member of the Royal Academy and a prominent figure in the development of British watercolour painting. However, he was also one of the most prolific and inventive printmakers in eighteenth-century Britain. From his early years as a draughtsman for the military survey of Scotland, and later from his extensive tours throughout England and Wales, he depicted the people, towns, castles, and landscapes of the nation. He provided the public with images of their country which contributed to the emerging appreciation of native landscape, to antiquarian interests, and to the development of picturesque tours within the British Isles. Although he never travelled abroad, he reproduced the work of fellow artists who had, tapping into the Grand Tour market with prints of Ionian antiquities, Neapolitan landscapes, and the Roman carnival. But his work encompassed more than landscape; he could move from the pastoral humour of illustrations to Allan Ramsay’s poem The Gentle Shepherd, through the urban realism of his Cries of London to the merciless satire of his attacks on William Hogarth. From the 1740s to the 1780s, he made over 380 prints: engravings, etchings, soft ground etchings, and finally aquatints, a medium in which he was a pioneer. Aquatint enabled printmakers to reproduce the effects of watercolour paintings; Sandby gave the process its name and developed varied techniques which allowed the exact reproduction of the artist’s brush strokes, producing some of the most beautiful prints ever made in this medium.
Ann V. Gunn, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, has worked as Keeper of Art at Nottingham City Museums, Assistant Registrar at Princeton Art Museum, and Registrar of the University of St Andrews Art Collection. She also ran her own gallery, which specialised in contemporary Scottish art. She is Honorary Curator of the University’s Fine Art Collection. She is also Chair of Fife Contemporary Art & Craft and a member of the Fife Committee of the Art Fund. She is the author of The Prints of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Complete Catalogue (2007).
New Book | Hyacinthe Rigaud: Le Catalogue Raisonné
Published by Faton and available from Artbooks.com:
Ariane James-Sarazin, Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743): Le Catalogue Raisonné, 2 volumes (Dijon: Faton, 2016), 1408 pages, ISBN: 978-2878441734, 320€ / $395.
Fruit d’années de recherches, l’ouvrage en deux volumes d’Ariane James-Sarazin, archiviste, conservateur en chef du patrimoine et directrice des musées d’Angers, s’impose comme une étape décisive dans l’histoire de l’art moderne. Pour la première fois, l’auteur propose le catalogue exhaustif des oeuvres du grand peintre français Hyacinthe Rigaud (Perpignan, 1659 – Paris, 1743) : plus d’un millier de numéros organisés chronologiquement, tous rigoureusement étudiés, dévoilent bien des aspects méconnus du portraitiste des élites européennes, à travers peintures, dessins, répliques, copies et gravures. Les amateurs d’art exigeants et passionnés y trouveront l’étude la plus complète jamais publiée sur le peintre et son oeuvre, et une analyse inédite de la peinture, de la société au tournant du Grand Siècle et du siècle des Lumières. Le catalogue est précédé d’une biographie complète du peintre, établie avec une méthodologie rigoureuse, déjà saluée par les spécialistes pour les précédents travaux d’Ariane James-Sarazin sur l’artiste, ainsi que d’une étude fouillée sur la clientèle, le processus de création, l’oeuvre et son évolution. De nombreuses annexes complètent cette somme d’érudition : iconographie du peintre, chronologie raisonnée, généalogies, dictionnaire inédit des élèves et collaborateurs, aperçu de la fortune critique, table de concordances avec l’édition des livres de comptes de Joseph Roman en 1919, sources commentées, bibliographie, pièces justificatives et plusieurs index. Marqueur de l’évolution de la mode et des textiles, révélateur des intrigues de Cour, objet du paraître social, symbole de l’image royale, le portrait, miroir des enjeux d’une époque, offre une mine d’informations aux disciplines connexes de l’histoire de l’art.
Exhibition | Antonio Balestra: Nel Segno della Grazia
Now on view in Verona:
Antonio Balestra: Nel Segno della Grazia / In the Sign of Grace
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 19 November 2016 — 19 February 2017
Il Comune di Verona, Direzione Musei d’Arte e Monumenti honors the painter Antonio Balestra (1666–1740) on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the artist’s birth with the exhibition Antonio Balestra: In the Sign of Grace, staged in the Castelvecchio Museum. The exhibition presents over sixty works: paintings, drawings, etchings, and volumes of prints, coming from public and private lenders.
Andrea Tomezzoli, Antonio Balestra: Nel Segno della Grazia (Verona: Scripta Edizioni, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-8898877690, $38.
New Book | Women Artists in Early Modern Italy
From Brepols:
Sheila Barker, ed., Women Artists in Early Modern Italy: Careers, Fame, and Collectors (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2016), 181 pages, ISBN: 978-1909400351, $125.
Enhancing our understanding of early Italian female painters including Sofonisba Anguissola and introducing new ones such as Costanza Francini and Lucrezia Quistelli, this volume studies women artists, their patrons, and their collectors, in order to trace the rise of the social phenomenon of the woman artist.
In ten chapters spanning two centuries, this collection of essays examines the relationships between women artists and their publics, both in early modern Italy and across Europe. Drawing upon archival evidence, these essays afford abundant documentary evidence about the diverse strategies that women utilized in order to carry out artistic careers, from Sofonisba Anguissola’s role as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Philip II of Spain, to Lucrezia Quistelli’s avoidance of the Florentine market in favor of upholding the prestige of her family, to Costanza Francini’s preference for the steady but humble work of candle painting for a Florentine confraternity. Their unusual life stories along with their outstanding talents brought fame to a number of women artists even in their own lifetimes—so much fame, in fact, that Giorgio Vasari included several women artists in his 1568 edition of artists’ biographies. Notably, this visibility also subjected women artists to moral scrutiny, with consequences for their patronage opportunities. Because of their fame and their extraordinary (and often exemplary) lives, works made by women artists held a special allure for early generations of Italian collectors, including Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642–1723), who made a point of collecting women’s self-portraits. In the eighteenth century, British collectors wishing to model themselves after the Italian virtuosi exhibited an undeniable penchant for the Italian women artists of a bygone era, even though they largely ignored the contemporary women artists in their midst.
Sheila Barker directs the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists at the Medici Archive Project, the first archival program of its kind. Her publications of documentation on women artists have shed light on Lucrezia Quistelli, Artemisia Gentileschi, Irene Parenti Duclos, and the phenomenon of female copyists.
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C O N T E N T S
1 Editor’s Preface, Sheila Barker (The Medici Archive Project)
2 ‘Piu che famose’: Some Thoughts on Women Artists in Early Modern Europe, Sheila ffolliott (George Mason University, emerita)
3 Sofonisba Anguissola at the Court of Philip II, Cecilia Gamberini (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Felsina Cattòlica)
4 Sofonisba Anguissola, ‘Pittora de Natura’: A Page from Van Dyck’s Italian Sketchbook, Barbara Tramelli (Max Planck Institute, Berlin)
5 Lucrezia Quistelli (1541–1594): A Noblewoman and Artist in Vasari’s Florence, Sheila Barker (The Medici Archive Project)
6 Arcangela Paladini and the Medici, Lisa Goldenberg Stoppato (Independent Scholar)
7 Costanza Francini. A Painter in the Shadow of Artemisia Gentileschi, Julia Vicioso (Archivio Storico dell’Arciconfraternita dei Fiorentini)
8 A Newly Discovered Late Work by Artemisia Gentileschi: Susanna and the Elders of 1652, Adelina Modesti (La Trobe University)
9 The Medici’s First Woman Court Artist: The Life and Career of Camilla Guerrieri Nati, Eve Straussman-Pflanzer (The Davis Museum, Wellesley College)
10 Female Painters and Cosimo III de’ Medici’s Art Collecting Project, Roberta Piccinelli (Univerity of Teramo)
11 The English Collectors of Italy’s Female Old Masters, 1700–1824, Nicole Escobedo (Independent Scholar)
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