Enfilade

From Brepols:

Adriano Aymonino, Eloisa Dodero, Nicholas Penny, and Francis Haskell, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900, revised and amplified edition (Turnhout: Harvey Miller / Brepols, 2024), 3 volumes, approximately 1684 pages, ISBN: 978-1909400252, €395.

Indispensable for historians of taste and for art historians concerned with the debt owed by artists from the Renaissance onwards to the art of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as for students and collectors of the many surviving copies of the sculptures discussed.

For several hundred years, until about 1900, a limited number of antique sculptures were as much admired as are the Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or Michelangelo’s David today. They were reproduced in marble, bronze, and lead, as plaster casts in academies and art schools, as porcelain figurines for chimneypieces and as cameos for bracelets and snuffboxes. They were celebrated by poets from Du Bellay and Marino to Byron and D’Annunzio, and memorably evoked by novelists as diverse as Marcel Proust and Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot and Charles Dickens. Copies of some of these statues can be seen at Pavlosk and Madrid, at Stourhead, Charlottenburg, Malibu and Versailles, and in countless gardens, houses, and museums throughout the world.

How and when did these particular sculptures achieve such a special status? Who were the collectors, restorers, dealers, artists, dilettanti, scholars and archaeologists who created their reputations? Under what names (often wildly fanciful) did they first become famous? How were they interpreted, and how and when and why did their glamour begin to wane? These are some of the problems that are confronted in Taste and the Antique.

Taste and the Antique has become a classic of art history since its original publication in 1981. Now expanded into three volumes, this revised and amplified edition significantly updates the information based on new research undertaken in the last several decades, as well as expanding examples of the reception and influence of these works by artists and collectors from the Renaissance through to contemporary art.

When Taste and the Antique was published in 1981, Francis Haskell (1928–2000) was established as one of the most influential historians of art, not only in the English-speaking world but throughout Europe, chiefly on account of his first book, Patrons and Painters (1963), a highly original account of Baroque art in Italy. Since his appointment as professor of art history in Oxford in 1967, he had turned his attention from Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to France in the eighteenth and nineteenth, and had begun his investigations of collecting, historiography, and the role of the museum and of the art critic, eventually published as Rediscoveries in Art (1976) and Past and Present in Art and Taste (1987). Taste and the Antique identified the models for art education and criticism during the four centuries with which Haskell was chiefly preoccupied, providing a series of individual case studies for the works upon which orthodox taste was founded. The book had a central place in his oeuvre, prompting preoccupations which persist in the last book that he published in his lifetime, History and Its Images (1993), as well as in The Emphemeral Museum, published posthumously in 2000.

When he began to work with Francis Haskell on Taste and the Antique, Nicholas Penny was teaching art history at the University of Manchester. His first book, Church Monuments in Romantic England (1977), had attracted Haskell’s attention and subsequently they discovered and developed many mutual interests. Penny went on to occupy curational positions in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the National Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. From 2008 to 2015 he was director of the National Gallery. He is now a visiting professor at the National Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou. Among his other books are Raphael (1983), written with the late Roger Jones, and The Materials of Sculpture (1993), as well as catalogues of the sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum (3 volumes, 1992) and of the sixteenth-century Italian paintings in the National Gallery (2004, 2008, 2016). He is currently cataloguing the Italian paintings in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, of which one volume was published in 2021 and the other, written with Imogen Tedbury, is approaching completion.

Adriano Aymonino is the director of the MA in Art Market, Provenance and History of Collecting at the University of Buckingham. He is the author of Paper Palaces (2013); Drawn from the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal (with Anne Varick Lauder, 2015); and, most recently, Enlightened Eclecticism. The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (2021), winner of the 2022 William MB Berger Prize.

Eloisa Dodero is archaeological curator at the Capitoline Museums in Rome. She is the author of Il Tesoro di Antichità. Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento (with Claudio Parisi Presicce, 2017); Ancient Marbles in Naples in the Eighteenth Century (2019); and co-author, with Amanda Claridge, of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Sarcophagi and other Reliefs (four volumes, 2022) and, within the same series, of Statues and Busts (2023).

c o n t e n t s

Volume I | Text

A revised and amplified version of the 1981 edition. Fifteen chapters trace in narrative form, with the support of a wide variety of plates, the rise and decline of this highly important episode in the history of taste. These chapters are followed by catalogue entries for 95 of the most celebrated sculptures, all of them illustrated, which provide information on when and where they were discovered, changes of ownership and nomenclature, as well as a record of varying critical fortunes designed to complement the more general discussion in the earlier chapters.

Preface to the Revised and Amplified Edition
An Updated Note on the Presentation of the Essay and Catalogue
Introduction

1  ‘A New Rome’
2  The Public and Private Collections of Rome
3  Plaster Casts and Prints
4  Control and Codification
5  Casts and Copies in Seventeenth-Century Courts
6  ‘Tout ce qu’il y a de beau en Italie’
7  Erudite Interests
8  Florence: The Impact of the Tribuna
9  Museums in Eighteenth-Century Rome
10  The New Importance of Naples
11 The Proliferation of Casts and Copies
12  New Fashions in the Copying of Antiquities
13  Reinterpretations of Antiquity
14  The Last Dispersals
15  Epilogue

Notes to the Text
Updated Bibliography
Catalogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Volume II | Originals

Contains especially commissioned new photography of over 90 statues catalogued in Volume I.

Volume III |Replicas and Adaptations

Devoted to a visual survey of the full range of replicas and adaptations of the works catalogued and illustrated in the previous volumes.

From Penguin Random House:

Charles King, Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah (New York: Doubledy, 2024), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0385548267, $32.

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones. But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope. Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

Charles King is the author of eight books, most recently Gods of the Upper Air, a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize. His Odessa won a National Jewish Book Award. He is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University.

From Marsilio Arte:

Toto Bergamo Rossi and Marco Bay, with photographs by Marco Valmarana, The Gardens of Venice (Venice: Marsilio Arte, 2024), 296 pages, ISBN: ‎979-1254631973, €65 / $70.

A lush look into Venice’s verdant gardens, photographed in every season of the year.

Turquoise lagoons and crystalline canals, criss-crossed by romantic bridges and traversed by singing gondoliers on their gondolas: water is considered by many to be Venice’s most enchanting feature. Yet on the little land that constitutes this ancient city, secret and sumptuous gardens lie waiting to cast their captivating spell. This lushly illustrated volume takes readers inside Venice’s most undiscovered and most exclusive green spaces across the city. The gardens of the palazzi that overlook the Grand Canal, along with the more vernacular ones of the lagoon islands, are captured throughout the seasons: the flowering in spring, the opulence of summer, the colors of fall and the frost of winter. Photographer Marco Valmarana’s exquisite images evoke a sense of wanderlust enough to inspire even the most jaded traveler. To walk the reader through the legacy of these special spaces, author Toto Bergamo Rossi recounts the evolution and history of the Venetian garden alongside a glossary of commonly used plants. The Gardens of Venice also includes a special foreword by designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Toto Bergamo Rossi, formerly a specialist in the conservation of stone materials, has restored a number of important monuments in Italy. Since 2010 he has served as the director of Venetian Heritage. He is the author of Inside Venice (Rizzoli, 2016) and Venice and Its Doges (Rizzoli, 2023).

The tenth edition for Venice appeared last year. While I’ve always thought of Blue Guides as reliably informative, this updated edition is also engaging, fun to read, and handsomely designed. If you’ve not tried a Blue Guide recently, it’s worth another look. –CH

Alta Macadam, Blue Guide Venice: Tenth Edition (London: Somerset Books, 2024), 495 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1905131945, $25.

Full color throughout, with photographs, diagrams, site plans, and detailed maps.

The 10th edition of this accessible, detailed guide to Venice is an essential handbook for any traveler who wants to fully understand the existence and future challenges of this unique and extraordinary city, as well as its history, art, architecture, cuisine, and culture.

Completely updated, this new edition is in full colour, with photographs, plans, and illustrations, as well as detailed and accurate maps of the labyrinthine streets and canals. There is also a section of practical tips, ideas on food and wine, and how to navigate the transportation system. The depth of information and quality of research make this book the very best guide for the independent cultural traveler, as well as for all students of art history, architecture, and Italian culture. Ideal as an on-site guide or as a desk resource.

Art historian Alta Macadam lives in Fiesole, on the hillside above Florence.

From ORO Editions:

Michael Dennis, The Venetian Façade (South Bend: Notre Dame School of Architecture / ORO Editions, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1961856356, $40.

There are no books that focus on the unique artistic characteristics of the Venetian facade and its potential relevance to contemporary architectural and urban issues, as this book intends.

This book is about architecture. It is not about history, although a bit of history is necessary to set the context. It is not about theory, although, again, a bit is necessary to connect the facade with urbanism. It is also not about structure and technology. And, most definitely, it is not about the plan. All of these topics are well-covered elsewhere. This book is about the facade. It explores the art and typology of the Venetian facade, not only as a high point of architectural literacy and achievement, but as a potentially useful contemporary stimulant.

Michael Dennis is the principal of Michael Dennis & Associates in Boston, and Professor of Architecture Emeritus at MIT. 1986 Thomas Jefferson Professor of Architecture, University of Virginia; 1988 Eero Saarinen Professor of Architecture, Yale University; 2006 Charles Moore Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan.

Published by Scala and distributed by Rizzoli:

Lelia Packer and Charles Beddington, Canaletto and Guardi: Views of Venice at the Wallace Collection (Milan: Scala, 2024), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1785513206, £25 / $30.

A celebration of the beauty of Venice that Wallace Collection’s paintings convey and an enjoyable and informative complement to viewing the paintings in the flesh. Among the renowned Old Master paintings at the Wallace Collection in London is an important group of 27 eighteenth-century views of Venice, known as vedute, by Canaletto and his followers, including Francesco Guardi. They hang together in a dedicated gallery known as the Canaletto Room, but the majority had not been cleaned since the nineteenth century and their original beauty was obscured by multiple layers of discoloured varnish.

The paintings have now been restored, following a recent multi-year conservation and research project, and this book presents them in their renewed splendour. It features essays and commentaries by Charles Beddington, the global expert on vedute, and by Wallace Collection curator Lelia Packer, which provide fresh insights into the artists’ creative processes, the dating of pictures and their authorship. Canaletto and Guardi is a gorgeous celebration of the beauty of Venice that these paintings convey.

Lelia Packer is the curator of Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German, and pre-1600 paintings at the Wallace Collection.
Charles Beddington is an independent scholar and art dealer based in London.

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More information on the conservation and research project is available here»

From Amsterdam UP:

Tracy Cooper, ed., Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400–1750: Uncovering the Female Presence (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024), 292 pages, ISBN: 978-9048559718, €141.

This book of essays highlights the lives, careers, and works of art of women artists and artisans in Venice and its territories from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The collection represents the first fruits of an ongoing research program launched by Save Venice, Inc., Women Artists of Venice, directed by Professor Tracy Cooper of Temple University, in conjunction with a conservation program, led by Melissa Conn, Director of Save Venice, Inc. Inspired by a growing body of research that has resurrected female artists and artisans in Florence and Bologna during the last decade, the Save Venice project seeks to recover the history of women artists and artisans born or active in the Venetian republic in the early modern period. Topics include their contemporary reception—or historical silence—and current scholarship positioning them as individuals and as an underrepresented category in the history of art and cultural heritage.

Tracy E. Cooper is Professor of Art History at Temple University and on the Board of Directors of Save Venice, Inc., where she is director of the Women Artists in Venice research program. She is best known for Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale, 2006), winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize from the Renaissance Society of America.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations

Introduction — Tracy Cooper, Temple University
1  La Serenissima in Context: Women Artists in Venice and Beyond — Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University
2  The Taiapiera in Fourteenth-Century Venice: What’s in a Name? — Louise Bourdua, University of Warwick
3  In Search of Marietta Tintoretta — Robert Echols, Independent Scholar, and Frederick Ilchman, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
4  The ‘Vite’ of Women Artists in Venice (Sixteenth to Eighteeth Century) — Antonis Digalakis, University of Crete
5  Artists and Artisans in the Account Books of Marino Grimani, Patrician and Doge of Venice (Late Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Centuries) — Maria Adank, Università degli Studi di Verona
6  Chiara Varotari (1584/1585–after 1663) — Diana Gisolfi, Pratt Institute
7  Artemisia Gentileschi in Venice: Facts and Suppositions — Davide Gasparotto, J Paul Getty Museum
8  Giovanna Garzoni and Venetian Witchcraft: Still Lifes as Natural Enchantments — Sheila Barker, Medici Archive Project and University of Pennsylvania
9  Caterina Tarabotti Unveiled — Georgios Markou, University of Cambridge
10  Shining a Light on Giulia Lama’s Painting Practice in the San Marziale Four Evangelists — Cleo Nisse, Columbia University
11  Rosalba Carriera Unframed — Xavier Salomon, The Frick Collection

General Bibliography
Archival Abbreviations
Works Cited
Index