Enfilade

Exhibition | Portraits, from Botticelli to Lempicka

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on August 24, 2026

From the press release for the exhibition opening this fall at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 16 October 2026 — 14 March 2027

Curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with Marie-Luise Hugler

How do we see ourselves—and how have people in different historical periods wished to be seen? The special exhibition Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka at the Gemäldegalerie (Old Master Paintings) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, invites viewers on a fascinating journey through the history of portraiture. Unusual juxtapositions of works spanning five centuries reveal striking similarities, bringing the pieces to life and providing opportunities to reflect on the presentation of the self and others, as well as on staging, roles, and character. Masterpieces by artists such as Botticelli and Lempicka, Mino da Fiesole and Rogier van der Weyden, Dürer and Giorgione, or Rubens and Gainsborough are brought into conversation with one another, revealing striking and often surprising affinities. Works that have never ‘met’ before come together for the first time, offering a fresh perspective on themes such as identity, beauty, status and power.

Portraits reveal more than just people’s outward appearance. They also reveal details about self-awareness, character, emotion and staged representation. Clothing, posture, and accessories act as codes for social, political and gender affiliation. By comparing portraits from different regions and eras, visitors can recognise, trace, and understand artistic decisions and visual strategies: What was considered beautiful, dignified or worthy of authority? How did these ideals evolve over the centuries? The exhibition reveals the variety of these responses, while also highlighting the surprising connections between them.

The exhibition’s starting point is the outstanding international collection of portraits at the Gemäldegalerie, which is complemented by a selection of loans from other museums of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, including the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) and the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), the Ägyptisches Museum (Egyptian Museum) and the Skulpturensammlung (Sculpture Collection). It presents a multifaceted panorama of portraiture from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Around 90 masterpieces by artists such as Petrus Christus, Mino da Fiesole, Botticelli, Giorgione, Dürer, Cranach the Elder, Holbein the Younger, Titian, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, and Tamara de Lempicka encompass a wide variety of portraiture’s diverse aspects, ranging from glorious portraits of rulers to intimate scenes of friendship and proud self-proclamations. Each encounter tells its own story and invites wonder, comparison and discovery.

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Anton Raphael Mengs, Self-Portrait, 1779 (Berlin: Staatliche Museen).

Various forms and functions of portraits are examined in the four sections of the exhibition. The prologue highlights the astonishing constancy of mimetic portrait art, which has spanned many centuries, and also sheds light on the genre’s roots in Europe.

Portrait Types North and South of the Alps

The first section of the exhibition explorse the development of portraiture in Italy and the North during the Renaissance. Various prototypes emerged, such as the northern three-quarter profile used by Rogier van der Weyden and the strict profile preferred by Filippo Lippi. Differing tendencies towards naturalism and idealisation soon mingled and influenced the development of portrait painting in the following centuries.

Self-Representation of the Elite

Portraits were a powerful means of social representation and distinction. The clothing, poses, and size of a work all revealed the aspirations and status of the person depicted. Anthonis Mor’s prestigious, knee-length portrait of the Duchess Margaret of Parma, with her regal gaze, is on a par with Giambattista Moroni’s portrait of the nobleman Don Gabriel de la Cueva.

Family, Friendship, and Intimacy

On the one hand, the section on family, friendship and intimacy is dedicated to the private aspects of portraiture. Relatives, close friends, and loved ones are captured in images that serve as personal mementos. Sofonisba Anguissola’s mother, Bianca, engages with her daughter while she paints, in a manner that is similar to how the wife of the painter Eugen Spiro looked at her husband 380 years later. Portraits of the deceased offer a final glimpse of them.

Portraits of Art Collectors and Artists

The final section of the exhibition focuses on portraits of art collectors and artists. For centuries, self-portraits have not only served as a means of self-exploration, but also as a way of positioning oneself and one’s work within traditional contexts. Therbusch portrays herself as an intellectual, while Poussin and Anton Raphael Mengs use their self-portraits to reflect on their lives and artistic fame.

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Portraits is not just an art historical exhibition; it also reflects our current image-obsessed world. In the age of selfies and social media:how do we construct our identity? How do we read faces? And what does our view reveal about ourselves? The reflection of masterworks from the past provides the perfect opportunity to study and understand these current questions.

The exhibition is curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with assistance from Marie-Luise Hugler. A richly illustrated catalogue provides an in-depth exploration of the works and their relationships with each other.

Porträts! Überraschende Begegnungen von Botticelli bis Lempicka (Petersberg: Michael Imhof-Verlag, 2026), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915980, €49.

New Book | Barocke Prälaturen oberdeutscher Zisterzienser

Posted in books by Editor on August 23, 2026

From Michael Imhof:

Elisabeth Krebs, Barocke Prälaturen oberdeutscher Zisterzienser: Raumfolgen & Bildprogramme (Petersberg: Michael Imhof-Verlag, 2026), 592 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915904, €99. Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, Band 206

Für die oberdeutschen Zisterzienser der Neuzeit war die weltabge­wandte ­Existenz ihrer mittelalterlichen Vorgänger bereits Geschichte. Im Rahmen der reichs- und ordenspolitischen, wirtschaftlichen, kulturellen und sozialen Randbedingungen des 17./18. Jahrhunderts mussten Beziehungen gepflegt und tradierte Rechte verteidigt werden, einem epochenbedingt steigenden Bauaufwand Rechnung getragen und dem Dekorum von Aus­stattung genügt werden.

Der klausurfreie Wohn- und Amtssitz eines (Reichs-)Abtes — die hier hervorgehobene Prälatur — gewann an Repräsentation. Vesti­büle, Stiegen­häuser, Tafelzimmer, große Säle, die Abtswohnung und ihr zugeordnete ­Gästezimmer boten Möglichkeiten der Äußerung von Bild­programmen mit gezielt unterlegten Botschaften, ob nun reichspolitisch, konfessionell-katholisch, zur Selbstlegitimation oder geistlich-zisterziensisch motiviert. Die Arbeit fragt nach Kategorien, Ordnungen und Qualitäten von Raum und Bild, in denen sich das Selbstverständnis oberdeutscher Zister­zienseräbte zwischen ursprünglich auferlegter Simplicitas und selbsterhaltend notwendiger Außendarstellung reflektierte.

New Book | Architectural Revolution on the Ottoman Frontier

Posted in books by Editor on August 22, 2026

From Penn State UP:

Emily Neumeier, Architectural Revolution on the Ottoman Frontier: Greece and Albania in the Age of Ali Pasha (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025), 232 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0271097749, $115.

In the early nineteenth century, the most consequential developments in Ottoman architecture were taking place not in Istanbul but in the farthest reaches of imperial territory. Emily Neumeier investigates this wider phenomenon through a consideration of the architecture of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, one of the most prolific patrons in the history of the Ottoman Empire, who undertook a building program so ambitious that it ultimately got him killed.

Ali Pasha is still a household name in present-day Greece and Albania, where he served as Ottoman governor from 1788 to 1822. To consolidate his rule over an incredibly diverse population, the governor set out on a sweeping building program that included mosques, palaces, military fortifications, dervish lodges, and even Orthodox Christian monasteries. Drawing upon a wealth of primary sources, Neumeier reveals how Ali Pasha’s buildings shifted the sociopolitical order by testing the standards of patronage established by the imperial court and relocating administrative authority from center to province. To reconstruct the world that Ali Pasha built, Neumeier draws from both extensive fieldwork and abundant archival material, whose far-flung nature—from Istanbul to London—reflects the impressively wide scope of Ali Pasha’s influence.

Rigorously researched and packed with fascinating stories, this book presents an innovative spatial history of the Ottoman frontier during the age of revolutions, a pivotal period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when there was no obvious blueprint for power. It will be of interest to specialists in art and architectural history, the Ottoman Empire, and Mediterranean, Islamic, and Modern Greek studies.

Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Temple University.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Translations and Transliterations

Introduction
1  ‘Amidst No Common Pomp’: Redefining the Governor’s Palace
2  Revising the Rules of Engagement: Fortifications on a Liquid Frontier
3  Building Local Support: Patronage for Multiconfessional Communities
4  Poetic Justice: Experiments in Architectural Epigraphy
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

New Book | Beyond Blue and White

Posted in books by Editor on August 20, 2026

Distributed by Simon & Schuster:

Genevieve Wheeler Brown, Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic (New York: Pegasus Books, 2025), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1639368914, $35.

An absorbing work of cultural history that reveals the stories behind one of the world’s most coveted and beloved ceramic.

When over seventy-five pieces of rare and intriguing 17th- and 18th-century Delftware are rediscovered in an historic Manhattan townhouse, decorative art advisor and writer Genevieve Wheeler Brown quickly recognizes that, together, these pieces tell an amazing story. What begins as a curatorial exercise quickly evolves not only into an exploration of this colorful, expressive, and sometimes even humorous decorative art, coveted for hundreds of years, but also an unexpected uncovering of forceful female lives yet untold.

Connecting the accounts of women across centuries, Beyond Blue and White allows us to craft a more complete picture of female experience through the lens of material culture. We meet female Delftware makers, including Barbara Rotteveel founder of “The Three Bells” Delftware factory in 1671. We are introduced to female Delftware patrons such as Queen Mary II, who found her means of expression while creating a vogue in the 17th century for Delft blue and white across royal courts. And then there are the female collectors beginning in the 19th century who saw the artistry and craft in these ceramics others had overlooked. Foremost among them was Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II who came together with fellow New York women and laid the groundwork for women in the museum world while preserving decorative arts with an educational mission.

With illustrations of period objects, documents, maps, paintings, prints and drawings, Beyond Blue and White is a colorful celebration of an iconic decorative art and dynamic women living in extraordinary times. Wheeler Brown’s rich narrative encourages us to see beyond the dazzling cobalt glaze of Delftware to consider that these vessels are also our connection to a history with a fascinating group of women at its center.

As a decorative art advisor and writer with over thirty years in the art world, including a decade with Christie’s in New York and London, Genevieve Wheeler Brown has been actively involved in the community of Delftware. She has also participated on the Antiques Roadshow as an appraiser with an eye out for overlooked ‘treasure’. In her role, she has held innumerable objects, from fake Stradivari violins to gold-mounted Faberge eggs, considering their value but also the stories they can tell.

Print Quarterly, June 2026

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions, journal articles, reviews by Editor on August 18, 2026

With apologies for not posting this much sooner! CH

The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:

Print Quarterly 43.2 (June 2026)

a r t i c l e s

Attributed to Martin Tyroff, Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway, ca. 1740, pen and grey ink and grey wash, 152 × 101 mm (Augsburg, State and City Library of Augsburg).

• Victoria Fernandez, “On Conserving and Remounting the Edmond de Rothschild Collection at the Louvre,” pp. 158–68. This article examines the Louvre’s conservation campaign since 2016 to conserve and remount the roughly 35,000 prints and 865 drawings bequeathed by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845–1934), with respect to the stipulations mentioned in the deed of gift. The author also illustrates many unique findings and observations, including reattributions. Readers of Enfilade may be interested to know that part of the collection includes those that belonged to the donor’s father, Baron James de Rothschild (1792–1868), who owned the complete printed oeuvre of Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801).

• Karl-Georg Pfändtner, “Denmark’s Sea Trade: A Preparatory Drawing and Martin Tyroff’s Related Print,” pp. 169–72. This short article connects a drawing in the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg with the engraved portrait of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway (1723–66) by Martin Tyroff (1704–59). Crown Prince Frederick ascended the throne of Denmark and Norway in 1746. The print served as the frontispiece to a book of Martin Luther’s writings, Das Nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften Des seligen Herrn D. Martini Lutheri, published in 1740. Originally from Nuremberg, but active for years in Augsburg, Tyroff married the daughter of the Nuremberg engraver and publisher Christoph Weigel, and moved back to Nuremberg himself. The iconography highlights trade via Danish settlements in India and forts on the Danish Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, as well as missionary activity there.

n o t e s  a n d  r e v i e w s

• Daan van Heesch, Review of Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, eds., Figures du Fou. Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques (Musée du Louvre and Éditions Gallimard, 2024), pp. 173–75.

• Richard Stephens, Review of François Marandet, Louis Chéron: L’ambition du dessin parfait (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 2021), pp. 183–85.

• Esther Chadwick, Review of Elizabeth Wyckoff and Sarah Weston, Blake (Yale Center for British Art, 2025), pp. 185–87.

• Thierry Depaulis, Review of Sara Benvenuti and Francesca Volpini, L’arte del gioco. Giochi antichi dalla Collezione Crippa della Raccolta Bertarelli di Milano (Silvana Editoriale, 2024), pp. 187–89.

• Ellis Tinios, Review of Hokusai’s Method (Thames and Hudson, 2024), pp. 189–90.

• Louis Marchesano, Review of Maxime Préaud, Louis le Grand, la terreur et l’admiration de l’univers. Les almanachs muraux publiés à Paris sous le règne personnel de Louis XIV (1661/1662–1715/1716) (Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Le Passage, 2023), pp. 203–07.

• Tim Clayton, Review of Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2024), pp. 208–12.

Exhibition | Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on August 9, 2026

Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot-à-oille), 1735–38, designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and made by Pierre-François Bonnestrenne and Henry Adnet, silver (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977.182).

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Opening in October at The Cleveland Museum of Art:

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus

The Cleveland Museum of Art, 25 October 2026 — 14 March 2027

Curated by Ada de Wit

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750) was the most revolutionary forerunner of the Rococo style in the decorative arts. Multitalented with entrepreneurial skills, he worked for the French court and European nobility. Considered a genius goldsmith by his contemporaries, he was also a prolific designer and aspiring architect, seamlessly maneuvering between media and disciplines.

Born and trained in Turin, Italy, Meissonnier moved to Paris around 1715 to advance his career, although the conservative guild of Parisian goldsmiths made it practically impossible for newcomers to register as masters and open their own workshops. Meissonnier’s ambition, creativity, and determination in pursuing his desired career path are apparent from his work and limited biographical information and continue to resonate today.

Few of Meissonnier’s works survived political upheavals; the most celebrated is a silver tureen in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, made for the Duke of Kingston. A striking sculpture rather than a functional object, the tureen epitomizes the Rococo style with its movement, asymmetrical design, fluid unity of form and ornament, and elements inspired by nature. The tureen has recently undergone scientific analysis, which has provided new insights into its sophisticated creation process.

The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Ada de Wit, ed., with additional contributions by Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, Beth Edelstein, Peter Fuhring, Alexandre Gady, and Colleen Snyder, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Goldsmith, Designer, and Architect (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300282306, $50.

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From the press release for the recent acquisition of a snuffbox (7 May 2026) . . .

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, Gold Box, 1728–29, gold and lapis lazuli, 3 × 8.3 × 5.2 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026.12).

The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired an extraordinarily rare gold snuffbox made in Paris in 1728–29 by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. Of exceptional art historical importance, the box is one of only five known objects in precious metals firmly associated with Meissonnier to have survived the political upheavals of subsequent centuries, during which works in gold and silver were frequently melted down. For many years, it was the only known work bearing the maker’s mark of Meissonnier, until the 2019 discovery of his mark on a gold mount for a rock crystal ewer belonging to Marie Antoinette, now in the Louvre. The snuffbox is distinguished as a work executed by Meissonnier himself, without the involvement of other master goldsmiths.

This acquisition significantly strengthens the museum’s Meissonnier collection and will play a central role in Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus, an exhibition of the artist’s work, which opens at the CMA in October 2026. Notably, the object has never before been displayed in a museum.

“This important acquisition reinforces the museum’s standing as one of the world’s leading collections of 18th-century French decorative arts,” said the CMA’s Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director William M. Griswold. “It also strengthens our position as a preeminent center for the study and appreciation of Meissonnier’s work.”

“Meissonnier’s box is one of the most sophisticated works of art in our collection, whose extraordinary qualities can be fully appreciated only through close, in-person looking,” said Ada de Wit, the Ellen S. and Bruce V. Mavec Curator of Decorative Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “This remarkable acquisition further enhances the CMA as a destination for both scholars and the broader public.”

The snuffbox was acquired through a private sale facilitated by the auction house Christie’s. The deputy chairman of Christie’s Department of European Furniture and Works of Art, Will Strafford, said: “We have a long and proud history of private sales to storied institutions such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and we are thrilled that this sublime masterpiece of the decorative arts has gone to such a worthy home; I have no doubt that this work amazes and delights visitors to the museum for generations to come.”

This Meissonnier box has long been regarded as among the finest of its kind and described as “an object in a class of its own.” It stands out from others due to its superior design and execution, the strong sense of movement achieved by its dynamic contour, its extraordinary level of detail, and the dramatic contrast of its gold and lapis lazuli materials. Together, these qualities position the box at the pinnacle of Meissonnier’s artistic achievement.

Small, ornate boxes such as this were used to hold snuff tobacco and functioned as highly personal luxury objects that conveyed the owner’s wealth, refinement, and social standing. Often exchanged as prestigious gifts, they were among the most sophisticated expressions of craftsmanship and design in 18th-century Europe.

The snuffbox also carries an important royal and modern history. It was made for the dowager Queen of Spain, Maria Anna of Neuburg, and bears her coat of arms alongside that of her late husband, Charles II. During World War II, it was looted by the Nazis from the collection of Parisian collector David David-Weill. The object was restituted to him in 1946 after passing through the Munich Central Collecting Point, administered by the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.

 

Exhibition | These Truths: The Declarations of Independence

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on August 8, 2026

Now on view:

These Truths: The Declarations of Independence

American Philosophical Society Museum, Philadelphia, 10 April 2026 — 3 January 2027

These Truths: The Declarations of Independence explores how Americans used and reproduced the document during the first fifty years of its history.

At first it served as a pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol. The creation of the Declaration was a process, not an event, and its story is more complex than assumed. The many copies of the Declaration in the exhibition offer a reminder that the Declaration’s ‘truths’ were never static and each era reevaluated their meaning.

These Truths draws on the APS’s extensive Library and Museum holdings. Highlights of the exhibition include a first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the chair Thomas Jefferson sat in while writing the Declaration of Independence, John Binns’ 1819 printing of the Declaration, and William James Stone’s 1823 printing of the Declaration.

Distributed by Penn Press:

David Gary, Emily Sneff, and Patrick Spero, These Truths: The Declarations of Independence (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society Press, 2026), 100 pages, ISBN: 9781606181744, $30.

New Book | The A–Z of Georgian London and Its Environs, 1746–47

Posted in books by Editor on August 5, 2026

From The London Topographical Society:

Sheila O’Connell and Laurence Worms, eds., with an introduction by John Montague, a checklist of Rocque’s London maps by Ashley Baynton-Williams, and an index by Roger Cline, The A–Z of Georgian London and Its Environs: John Rocque’s Maps, 1746–1747 (London: The London Topographical Society, 2026), 207 pages, £23.

This publication reproduces at about fifty per cent actual size John Rocque’s two great maps of London in the 1740s: the 24-sheet Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of Southwark and the 16-sheet Exact Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark with the Country near ten Miles round.

John Montague’s introduction tells the complex story of the development of the maps, incorporating new information on Rocque’s early life courtesy of Sandra Robinson. Roger Cline has produced an index of 6000 place names, over 250 places of worship, and sixty-four estates outside the urban centre.

New Books Network Podcast | City of the Gallows

Posted in books by Editor on August 4, 2026

Many of you will already know about the New Books Network, but if not, this conversation between Meredith Gamer and Kelsey Brosnan is a fine introduction! As described by the Wikipedia entry for the network:

The New Books Network (NBN) is a podcast network featuring interviews with scholars, researchers, and writers about their new books. Most of the books the NBN covers are non-fiction and published by university or independent scholarly presses. The mission of the NBN is public education. The NBN is the largest book-focused podcast enterprise in the world. It features over 130 ‘organic’ author-interview podcasts (“New Books in…”) produced in-house and over 100 ‘hosted’ podcasts produced by university presses, academic institutes, and scholars. The NBN publishes 70 episodes per week and has published over 30,000 episodes to date, all of which are permanently accessible for free on the NBN website. The NBN reaches 200,000 listeners monthly; those listeners download approximately one million episodes each month. . . .

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From the NBN website:

Podcast | Meredith Gamer, City of the Gallows, hosted by Kelsey Brosnan on the art channel of the New Books Network (27 July 2026), 62 minutes.

Meredith Gamer, City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts—from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slang—it offers new readings of works by major artists, such as William Hogarth, Johan Zoffany, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and shines a light on others that traditional accounts of the period have overlooked or ignored. In doing so, this book shows how state violence shaped the art and visual culture of this era, whose legacies persist to this day.

Kelsey Brosnan is an art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. Her book on the still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster was published by Lund Humphries and Getty Publications in 2026.

New Book | The Enlightenment in Concert

Posted in books by Editor on July 27, 2026

From Yale UP:

Andrei Pesic, The Enlightenment in Concert: Music, Markets, and Secularization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0300251579, $65.

A new interpretation of the Age of Enlightenment through the lens of music, institutions, and markets

The birth of public concerts changed Europe’s cultural landscape by introducing sacred music to secular spaces. The Concert spirituel in Paris is a landmark in this Enlightenment transition: the first long-lasting concert series, it began in 1725 with performances that mostly featured sacred music composed for the royal chapel in Versailles. By the time the Concert ended, in 1790, it was presenting a variety of musical genres, and its sacred repertoire had declined precipitously. The Concert had evolved from an institution dependent on the church calendar and the court into a business in a competitive market. Andrei Pesic explores the dynamics of secularization during the Enlightenment, including the unintended consequences of linking music to commerce, social hierarchy, and religious practices. He reveals the role of public concerts in a burgeoning marketplace for entertainment—and the expansion of secular customs and diminishment of religious constraints—in places as varied as Paris, Berlin, and Haiti.

Andrei Pesic is assistant professor of French and Italian at Stanford University. His research has been supported by a Mellon/ACLS Fellowship, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.