Enfilade

From L’Erma di Bretschneider (and available from artbooks.com) . . .

Francesco Freddolini, Giovanni Baratta 1670–1747: Scultura e industria del marmo tra la Toscana e le corti d’Europa (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2013), 355 pages, ISBN: 978-8882659257, €215.

Discendente di una tra le più importanti dinastie di scultori attive in Italia tra Sei e Settecento, Giovanni Baratta fu a capo del primo importante studio di scultura basato a Carrara, la città del marmo. Negli anni giovanili l’ ambiente artistico fiorentino ed il sofisticato mondo dei cortigiani medicei ispirarono lo scultore a sperimentare ardite soluzioni formali e soggetti raffinati e a creare alcuni tra i capolavori assoluti della decorazione a stucco italiana di primo Settecento. La natura delle commissioni, la composizione della bottega, l’organizzazione del lavoro ed i rapporti con i committenti subirono tuttavia un progressivo cambiamento nella stagione matura, quando l’ industria del marmo inizió a guidare le scelte dello scultore. Questo studio mostra come l’ evoluzione della carriera di Baratta—attraverso la grande decorazione scultorea e architettonica per le corti europee, la collaborazione con Filippo Juvarra ed il mercato del marmo—rifletta la risposta dello scultore alle sfide dell’ agone artistico italiano ed europeo e getti nuova luce sulla storia materiale e sociale della scultura.

Francesco Freddolini è Assistant Professor of Art History a Luther College, University of Regina, ed ha ricevuto borse di studio dalla National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., dallo Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., dalla Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, e dal Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

A preview of the book is available here»

Due out from Ashgate in April:

Sarah Hibberd and Richard Wrigley, eds., Art, Theatre, and Opera in Paris, 1750–1850: Exchanges and Tensions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-1409439479, £65.

Art, Theatre, and Opera in Paris, 1750–1850: Exchanges and Tensions maps some of the many complex and vivid connections between art, theatre, and opera in a period of dramatic and challenging historical change, thereby deepening an understanding of familiar (and less familiar) artworks, practices, and critical strategies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout this period, new types of subject matter were shared, fostering both creative connections and reflection on matters of decorum, legibility, pictorial, and dramatic structure. Correspondances were at work on several levels: conception, design, and critical judgement. In a time of vigorous social, political, and cultural contestation, the status and role of the arts and their interrelation came to be a matter of passionate public scrutiny.

Scholars from art history, French theatre studies, and musicology trace some of those connections and clashes, making visible the intimately interwoven and entangled world of the arts. Protagonists include Diderot, Sedaine, Jacques-Louis David, Ignace-Eugène-Marie Degotti, Marie Malibran, Paul Delaroche, Casimir Delavigne, Marie Dorval, the ‘Bleeding Nun’ from Lewis’s The Monk, the Comédie-Française and Etienne-Jean Delécluze.

Sarah Hibberd is Associate Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Nottingham, UK. Richard Wrigley is Professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham, UK.

C O N T E N T S

Sarah Hibberd and Richard Wrigley, Introduction

David Charlton, Hearing through the eye in eighteenth-century French opera

Mark Darlow, Nihil per saltum: Chiaroscuro in eighteenth-century lyric theatre

Mark Ledbury, Musical mutualism: David, Degotti, and operatic painting

Thomas Grey, Music, theatre, and the Gothic imaginary: Visualising the ‘Bleeding Nun’

Sarah Hibberd, Belshazzar’s Feast and the operatic imagination

Olivia Voisin, Romantic painters as costumiers: The stage as pictorial battlefield

Stephen Bann, Delaroche off stage

Patricia Smyth, Performers and spectators: Viewing Delaroche

Beth S. Wright, Delaroche and the drama of history: Gesture and impassivity from The Children of Edward IV to Marie-Antoinette at the Tribunal

Céline Frigau Manning, Playing with excess: Maria Malibran as Clari at the Théâtre Italien

Richard Wrigley, All mixed up: Etienne-Jean Delécluze and the théâtral in art and criticism

Bibliography

Index

Distributed by Yale UP:

Beth Carver Wees with Medill Higgins Harvey, Early American Silver in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013), 340 pages, ISBN: 978-0300191837, $75.

This lavishly illustrated book documents the most distinguished works from The Metropolitan Museum’s extensive collection of domestic, ecclesiastical, and presentation silver from the Colonial and Federal periods. Detailed discussions provide a stylistic and socio-historical context for each piece, offering a wealth of new information to both specialist and non-specialist readers. Every object is documented with new photography that captures details, marks, and heraldic engraving. Finally, accompanying essays discuss issues of patronage and provenance, design and craft, and patterns of ownership and collecting, providing windows onto the past that help bring these pieces to life.

Beth Carver Wees is curator of American decorative arts, and Medill Higgins Harvey is a research associate in the American Wing, both at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

From Abbeville:

Michel Delon, ed., with a foreword by Marilyn Yalom, The Libertine: The Art of Love in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Abbeville, 2013), 496 pages, ISBN: 978-0789211477, $150.

“Delon’s anthology… display[s] the dazzling breadth and depth of the 18th-century obsession with pleasures of the flesh. Certainly The Libertine is as lavish—with its sumptuous illustrations of luscious Rococo nudes and other toothsome lovelies—as an 18th-century bal masqué. But Delon’s analogy understates the dizzying diversity of the ball’s invitees. Priapic peasants, depraved duchesses, masked miscreants, sexy sylphs, coy mistresses, foot fetishists, human sofas (!) and a surprising abundance of naughty nuns: These raunchy revelers engage in one decadent mating dance after another, tirelessly chasing ‘it’, and gamely explaining why it matters.” —The New York Times

“That which both sexes then called ‘love’ was a kind of commerce that they entered into, often without inclination, where convenience was always preferred to sympathy, interest to pleasure, and vice to feeling.” Thus did one novelist describe the spirit that pervaded the twilight years of the Ancien Régime, the heyday of the libertine. Today this word typically evokes the excesses of a Sade or the cruel manipulations of Dangerous Liaisons, but the game of love, as the jaded French aristocracy played it, was most often characterized by a refinement of speech and manner, a taste for nuance over forthright assertion that finds its counterpart in the paintings of Fragonard and the operas of Mozart. The amours of the libertine also colored the intellectual life of the time, figuring into the great debates about natural instinct versus social institutions, and the proper limits of personal freedom.

This sumptuous volume re-creates the milieu of the libertine in all its lively decadence, bringing together more than eighty brief selections from eighteenth-century French literature, grouped into eight broad themes—including tales of seduction, fantasies of exotic lands, and the discoveries of youth—and introduced by an eminent French scholar. These pieces, which encompass fiction, drama, verse, essays, and letters, are the work of nearly sixty writers, some familiar to Anglophone readers—such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and yes, the Marquis de Sade—and some much less so; indeed, many of the selections are hitherto untranslated. Each excerpt is accompanied by splendid reproductions of period artworks, many rarely seen, by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and numerous others, that echo and heighten the mood of the texts.

Michel Delon, professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, is the author of several studies of the eighteenth-century libertine. He has edited the works of Diderot and Sade for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, as well as Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment.

Marilyn Yalom is a former professor of French and presently a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. In 1991 she was decorated as an Officier des Palmes Académiques by the French Government. She is the author of widely acclaimed books such as Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory (1993), A History of the Breast (1997), A History of the Wife (1997), and How the French Invented Love: 900 Years of Passion and Romance (2012). She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, the psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom.

Due out in June from Archetype:

Troels Filtenborg, Between Formula and Freestyle: Nicolai Abildgaard and Eighteenth-Century Painting Technique (London: Archetype, 2014), 152 pages, ISBN: 978-1909492097, £38 / $80.

As the most important Danish history painter, Nicolai Abildgaard (1743–1809) worked in a century that saw marked shifts in the styles of painting, from the late Baroque via Rococo to Neoclassicism, as well as the emergence of art academies throughout Europe as the prevalent factor in the training of young artists. Abildgaard has been the subject of a number of studies through the years. Within this considerable body of research, however, little attention has been given to the technical material aspect of his art. This book presents results of a paint technical study of his oeuvre, from early student paintings to mature works from his later years.

As a result of the composite nature of his training in Copenhagen as well as in Rome in the 1760s and 70s, a number of factors in Abildgaard’s formative years were influential in shaping his painting methods and choice of materials. Defying a specific formula, his technique displays the coexistence of a stepwise, systematic approach, typical of academic painting, with a freer, more alla prima manner. However, in adopting a variety of interchanging methods, Abildgaard does not appear to be unique for his time. And although his practice may at times appear unorthodox and inconsistent, most of its separate components are found in works by his contemporaries, making his technique a reflection of different characteristic currents in 18th-century painting.

C O N T E N T S

Preface
Introduction
Painting supports: Fabrics, sizes and formats
Grounds
Underdrawings
Paint layers: Pigments and Varnishes
The Christiansborg series
The Terence series

From Harvard UP:

Ingrid D. Rowland, From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 352 pages, ISBN 978-0674047938, $29 / £22 / €26.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the force of the explosion blew the top right off the mountain, burying nearby Pompeii in a shower of volcanic ash. Ironically, the calamity that proved so lethal for Pompeii’s inhabitants preserved the city for centuries, leaving behind a snapshot of Roman daily life that has captured the imagination of generations.

The experience of Pompeii always reflects a particular time and sensibility, says Ingrid Rowland. From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town explores the fascinating variety of these different experiences, as described by the artists, writers, actors, and others who have toured the excavated site. The city’s houses, temples, gardens—and traces of Vesuvius’s human victims—have elicited responses ranging from awe to embarrassment, with shifting cultural tastes playing an important role. The erotic frescoes that appalled eighteenth-century viewers inspired Renoir to change the way he painted. For Freud, visiting Pompeii was as therapeutic as a session of psychoanalysis. Crown Prince Hirohito, arriving in the Bay of Naples by battleship, found Pompeii interesting, but Vesuvius, to his eyes, was just an ugly version of Mount Fuji. Rowland treats readers to the distinctive, often quirky responses of visitors ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain to Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. Interwoven throughout a narrative lush with detail and insight is the thread of Rowland’s own impressions of Pompeii, where she has returned many times since first visiting in 1962.

Ingrid D. Rowland is Professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture in Rome.

Introduction: Naples, 1962
1. Pompeii, May 2013
2. The Blood of San Gennaro and the Eruption of Vesuvius
3. Before Pompeii: Kircher and Holste
4. Mr. Freeman Goes to Herculaneum
5. The Rediscovery of Pompeii
6. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
7. Further Excavations
8. Karl Bryullov
9. Railway Tourism
10. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain
11. Giuseppe Fiorelli, the “Pope” of Pompeii
12. Bartolo Longo
13. The Social Role of Tourist Cameos
14. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
15. The Legacy of August Mau
16. Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan
17. Don Amedeo Maiuri
18. Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman
19. Autobus Gran Turismo
Coda: Atomic Pizza
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Published by Archetype and available from ACC Distribution:

David Bourgarit, Jane Bassett, Francesca Bewer, Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Philippe Malgouyres, and Guilhem Scherf, eds., French Bronze Sculpture: Materials and Techniques, 16th–18th Century (London: Archetype Publications, 2014), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1909492042, £65 / $140.

The papers in this volume examine the origins and cross-fertilization of ideas and technology related to the making of bronzes in France between the Renaissance and the 18th century from the perspectives chronology, geography and typology. The production of specific sculptors and founders, or of specific works of art are considered in terms of the technology, the documentation of both the processes and the persons involved e.g. sculptors, founders, merchants, etc. and how these may have impacted the stylistic and technical outcome.

C O N T E N T S

Part 1: From Primaticcio to Houdon

I.1 Francesco Bordoni: spécificités techniques chez un sculpteur-fondeur du 17e siècle D. Bourgarit , G. Bresc, F. Bewer

I.2 Barthélemy Prieur fondeur, son atelier, ses méthodes de travail R. Seelig, F. Bewer, D. Bourgarit

I.3 De Dame Tholose au Mercure volant: fondre en Languedoc aux 16e et 17e siècles P. Julien, A. de Beauregard

I.4 Casts after the antique by Hubert Le Sueur J. Griswold, C. Hess, J. Bassett, G. Bresc, M. Bouchard, R. Harris

I.5 Keller et les autres: les fondeurs des jardins de Versailles ou les cent-un bronzes de Louis XIV A. Maral, A. Amarger, D. Bourgarit

I.6 Keller and his alloy: copper, some zinc and a little bit of tin J.-M. Welter

I.7 Jean-Antoine Houdon: sculptor and founder J. Bassett, G. Scherf

Part 2: Small castings and multiples

II.1 The Dresden bronze of the Bath of Apollo: a model, not a copy F. Moureyre, U. Peltz

II.2 Les bronzes décoratifs à Paris autour de 1700: A propos des groupes de François Lespingola Ph. Malgouyres

II.3 Bronzes Dorés: A technical approach to examination and authentication A. Heginbotham

II.4 A Prussian manufactory of gilt bronzes à la française: Johann Melchior Kambly (1718–84) and the adoption of Parisian savoir-faire T. Locker

II.5 Les mortiers, objets méconnus des bronziers français B. Bergbauer

Part 3: Casting techniques: transmission and evolution

III.1 Casting Sculpture and Cannons in Bronze: Jehan Barbet’s Angel of 1475 in The Frick Collection J. Day, D. Allen

III.2 The cut-back core process in late 17th- and 18th-century French bronzes J. Bassett, F. Bewer

III.3 Témoins archéologiques d’un atelier de bronzier travaillant à Saint-Denis à la fin du 16e siècle O. Meyer, N. Thomas, M. Wyss

III.4 The Foundry at the Hippodrome: a French foundry for monumental sculpture in Stockholm around 1700 L. Hinners

III.5 Boffrand’s and Mariette’s descriptions of the casting of Louis XIV and Louis XV on Horseback A.-L. Desmas

III.6 Cire perdue moule carapace: à travers les recherches et les réalisations de la fonderie de Coubertin J. Dubos