New Book | Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
In the U.S., October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Friday, October 18th, is National Mammography Day. From the publisher:
Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1848933644, £60 / $99.
Early modern physicians and surgeons tried desperately to understand breast cancer, testing new medicines and radically improving operating techniques. In this study, the first of its kind, Marjo Kaartinen explores the emotional responses of patients and their families to the disease in the long eighteenth century.
Using a wide range of primary sources, she examines the ways in which knowledge about breast cancer was shared through networks of advice that patients formed with fellow sufferers. By focusing on the women who struggled with the disease as well as the doctors that treated them, much is revealed about early modern attitudes to cancer and how patients experienced – and were considered to experience – the cancerous body.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
‘One of the Most Grievous and Rebellious Diseases’: Defining, Diagnosing and the Causes of Cancer
2 ‘But Sad Resources’: Treating Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
3 Women’s Agency and Role in Choice of Treatment
4 ‘So Frightful to the Very Imagination’: Pain, Emotions and Cancer in the Breast
Epilogue
New Book | Ornamenting the Cold Roast
Distributed by Columbia University Press:
Dorothee Wagner von Hoff, Ornamenting the Cold Roast: The Domestic Architecture and Interior Design of Upper-Class Boston Homes, 1760–1880 (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2013), 340 pages, ISBN: 978-3837622768, $62.
This book presents the meticulous case studies of three individual houses from different eras, which serve to depict the social, political, and cultural effects that domestic architecture and interior design had on the upper class, the city of Boston, and a national American identity. It takes the reader on a journey to 18th- and 19th-century Boston and provides insight into the lives of these prominent men and women as seen through the perspective of their homes. It is a novel examination of the cultural significance of domestic architecture and interior design; and, because of its story-telling character and extensive attention to detail, it is fascinating for curious readers and cultural historians alike.
Dorothee Wagner von Hoff received her PhD at the University of Munich. Her research interests include Colonial and Victorian Architecture and interior design, as well as urban studies and American literature.
New Book | Making of a Cultural Landscape: The English Lake District
From Ashgate:
John K. Walton and Jason Wood, eds., The Making of a Cultural Landscape: The English Lake District as Tourist Destination, 1750–2010 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 292 pages, 978-1409423683, £70 / $135.
For centuries, the English Lake District has been renowned as an important cultural, sacred and literary landscape. It is therefore surprising that there has so far been no in-depth critical examination of the Lake District from a tourism and heritage perspective. Bringing together leading writers from a wide range of disciplines, this book explores the tourism history and heritage of the Lake District and its construction as a cultural landscape from the mid eighteenth century to the present day.
It critically analyses the relationships between history, heritage, landscape, culture and policy that underlie the activities of the National Park, Cumbria Tourism and the proposals to recognise the Lake District as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It examines all aspects of the Lake District’s history and identity, brings the story up to date and looks at current issues in conservation, policy and tourism marketing. In doing so, it not only provides a unique and valuable analysis of this region, but offers insights into the history of cultural and heritage tourism in Britain and beyond.
Professor John K. Walton is IKERBASQUE Research Professor at the Department of Contemporary History, University of the
Basque Country, Leoia, Bilbao, Spain. Jason Wood, is Director
of Heritage Consultancy Services, Lancaster, UK.
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C O N T E N T S
List of Figures and Tables, vii
List of Contributors, xi
Foreword, xiii
Preface and Acknowledgements, xv
Part I: Lake District History and Identity
1 Susan Denyer, The Lake District Landscape: Cultural or Natural?, 3
2 John K. Walton, Setting the Scene, 31
3 Angus J. L. Winchester, The Landscape Encountered by the First Tourists, 49
4 John K. Walton, Landscape and Society: The Industrial Revolution and Beyond, 69
5 Melanie Hall, American Tourists in Wordsworthshire: From ‘National Property’ to ‘National Park’, 87
Part II: Lake District Tourism Themes
6 Keith Hanley, The Imaginative Visitor: Wordsworth and the Romantic Construction of Literary Tourism, 113
7 Adam Menuge, ‘Inhabited by Strangers’: Tourism and the Lake District Villa, 133
8 Jonathan Westaway, The Origins and Development of Mountaineering and Rock Climbing Tourism in the Lake District, c. 1800–1914, 155
Part III: Lake District Tourism Case Studies
9 Mike Huggins and Keith Gregson, Sport, Tourism and Place Identity in the Lake District, 1800–1950, 181
10 Sarah Rutherford, Claife Station and the Picturesque in the Lakes, 201
11 Jason Wood, Furness Abbey: A Century and a Half in the Tourists’ Gaze, 1772–1923, 219
12 David Cooper, The Post-Industrial Picturesque? Placing and Promoting Marginalised Millom, 241
Select Bibliography
Index
Exhibition | Naples’s Treasure: The Museum of Saint Januarius
Press release from the Museo Fondazione:
Naples’s Treasure: Masterpieces of the Museum of Saint Januarius
Il Tesoro Di Napoli: I Capolavori del Museo di San Gennaro
Museo Fondazione, Palazzo Sciarra, Rome, 30 October 2013 — 16 February 2014
Musée Maillol, Paris, 19 March — 20 July 2014
Curated by Paolo Jorio and Ciro Paolillo
Michele Dato, Necklace of Saint Januarius, gold, silver,
and precious stones, 1679, with additions made in the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
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Never before have such masterpieces from the most important collection of goldsmith art in the world, together with original documents, paintings, drawings, vestments and church plate, been exhibited beyond the walls of Naples. This exhibition offers an opportunity to investigate the inestimable artistic and cultural value of the treasure of Saint Januarius from a scientific point of view.
The exhibition, curated by Paolo Jorio, Director of the Museo del Tesoro di San Gennaro, and Ciro Paolillo, a professional gemmologist and professor of history, economics and the production of jewellery in the Sapienza University of Rome, with the advice of Franco Recanatesi, will be an event of great historic and artistic importance: over seventy works belonging to one of the most important collections of goldsmith’s art will be displayed for the first time beyond the walls of the Parthenopean city, beside original documents, paintings, drawings, vestments and church plate. The exhibition will offer an opportunity to investigate the inestimable artistic and cultural worth of the treasure of Saint Januarius from a scientific point of view, in order to rediscover, pass down and re-experience Naples on a journey through time and to protect its name, history, artists and, above all, this priceless heritage that has been collected over seven centuries.
With twenty-five million devotees scattered throughout the globe, Januarius is the most famous Roman Catholic Saint in the world. Amidst devotion and prejudice, faith and disbelief, his long history is closely connected to Naples, the citizens of which – periodically threatened by natural catastrophes and historical events – even closely identify themselves with their patron saint. The exhibition to be held in Palazzo Sciarra will have both a scientific and an emotional approach, in order to explain the evolution of the cult of Saint Januarius in Naples, why the Treasure belongs to a secular institution and how Parthenopean goldsmithery was perfected over the centuries, thus creating most of the masterpieces on show.
In order to understand the impact of this event, suffice it to say that the historical value of the Treasure of Saint Januarius, formed throughout seven centuries of donations from Popes, Emperors, Kings and popular ex-votos, is higher than that of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom and those of the Tsar of Russia, as found during a research project conducted by a team of gemmologists led by Professor Ciro Paolillo, curator of the exhibition, the results of which were published in 2010. The team investigated several precious jewels donated to the Saint, which will be exhibited in Rome, for three years. Moreover, unlike other dynastic and ecclesiastical heritages, the Treasure has remained in tact ever since it was formed and has never endured spoliation, nor have the jewels ever been sold to fund wars. It has constantly been increased by means of acquisitions and accessions.
Matteo Treglia, Mitre in gilded silver, 3326 diamonds, 164 rubies, 198 emeralds and 2 garnets, 1714.
Professor Emmanuele F. M. Emanuele, Chair of the Fondazione Roma, says, “I believe it is essential to spread knowledge of this priceless heritage belonging to our country, the preservation and enhancement of which constitutes a strategic asset for the culture market. It is precisely due to its commitment in this field that the Fondazione Roma, by means of the activities performed by Fondazione Roma-Arte-Musei, has, in time, become a point of reference for the balance of the demand and supply of culture in the Eternal City. The exhibition devoted to Saint Januarius fully qualifies to be included in the cultural project promoted by our institution, which aims to spread all forms of art as an element of social development. The attention we pay to the relationship between culture and the community constitutes the link between the activities performed by the Foundation and those of the Museo di San Gennaro, which has led to the accomplishment of this important exhibition that will allow the public to admire, for the first time, works which, due to their preciousness and strong connotations of identity, have never been shown beyond the walls of Naples.”
Paolo Jorio says that, “Each work of art belonging to the Treasure of Saint Januarius expresses its intrinsic artistic wealth, fruit of the unequaled craftsmanship of sculptors, silversmiths, chasers, welders and ‘put togetherers’ (as the assemblers were called in those days) who were capable of creating masterpieces of rare beauty using their technical know-how and creativity, and also tells the extraordinary story of a people and its ancient civilization. An account that places the Neapolitan people and European monarchs on the same level, since they all paid homage to Saint Januarius in a secular way and donated priceless masterpieces to the city of Naples.”
The exhibition will revolve around the two most extraordinary masterpieces of the Treasure: the Necklace of Saint Januarius, in gold, silver and precious stones created by Michele Dato in 1679, and the Mitre, in gilded silver, 3326 diamonds, 164 rubies, 198 emeralds and 2 garnets, created by Matteo Treglia in 1714, the
Tricentennial of which is celebrated this year.
The Necklace of Saint Januarius is one of the most precious jewels in the world and its history inextricably interweaves with the trail of constant devotion the city and monarchs have paid to this saint over the centuries. In 1679, the Members of the Deputation decided to use several jewels (crosses studded with sapphires and emeralds hanging from thirteen large solid gold links) in order to create a magnificent ornament for the bust, appointing Michele Dato, with the aid of other craftsmen, to enable the execution of such an exacting piece of work in only five months. The necklace is now comprised of other jewels of illustrious provenance created by various craftsmen at different times: a cross donated by Charles de Bourbon in 1734, a cross offered by Maria Amalia of Saxony, a three piece clasp with diamonds and emeralds, a cross with diamonds and sapphires dated 1775 bestowed by Maria Carolina of Austria, a crescent shaped broach dated 1799 donated by the Duchess of Casacalenga, a cross and a broach with diamonds and chrysolite offered by Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and other artefacts. Interestingly, Queen Marie Josè, consort of Umberto II of Italy, was attending a private visit to the Chapel of San Gennaro in 1933 and having nothing to donate, she removed the ring she was wearing and offered it to the saint. This regal gift is now to be found on the necklace.
When landing in Naples, even Napoleon, who plundered everywhere, not only refrained from stealing but, for once in his life, actually donated. In fact, when entering Naples in 1806 Joseph Bonaparte donated, as advised by his brother, a cross of diamonds and emeralds of rare beauty which the Deputation then included amongst the jewels bestowed by sovereigns that compose the priceless Necklace of Saint Januarius. Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, who married beautiful Caroline Bonaparte, also paid heed to the advice of the French Emperor and donated a monstrance in gold and silver with precious stones in 1808. Both masterpieces will be exhibited in Rome. The arrival of the French in Naples is witnessed in only one known artwork: a painting by the French artist, Hoffman, depicted in 1800 and retrieved in Paris by the Deputation, in which the high altar in the Dome may be distinguished. The armed and threatening French troops, commanded by Championnet and Macdonald, stand on the altar ‘demanding’ Saint Januarius to perform the miracle of the liquefaction of his blood in front of the people. This painting will also be exhibited in Rome, as likewise the canvas of Saint Januarius depicted in 1707 by Solimena, the most famous authentic chromatic masterpiece in the world since, as from that year, all the holy pictures of the patron saint of Naples have been inspired by this painting.
The Mitre, the Tricentennial of which is celebrated this year, was commissioned by the Deputation in order to be placed on the bust during the festive procession held in April 1713. It was created in the Antico Borgo Orefici, established by the Anjou monarchs, which was an authentic mine of talents including the author, the maestro goldsmith, Matteo Treglia. The Mitre has an enormous material and symbolic value. The Mitre is adorned with 3964 precious stones including diamonds, rubies and emeralds, according to the traditional construction of ecclesiastical items in relation to the symbolic meaning of the gems: emeralds represented the union between the sanctity of the Saint and the emblem of eternity and power; rubies the blood of martyrs and diamonds an irreprehensible faith. The gemstones also reveal another fascinating affair. Several gems have been found to come from the ancient quarries in Latin America. Ciro Paolillo affirms that “thanks to Treglia’s devotion, today we are looking at one of the world’s most beautiful collections of emeralds belonging to the ancient people of South America; consequently, these gems are valuable both for their preciousness and history.” (more…)
New Book | The Decoration of a Palace in Genoa
Anne Perrin Khelissa, Gênes au xviiie siècle. Le décor d’un palais (Paris: INHA/CTHS, Collection L’art et l’essai, 2013), 400 pages, ISBN : 978-2735508013, 33€.
Au xviiie siècle, au cœur d’évènements qui mettent à mal la souveraineté et le prestige de Gênes, l’aristocratie parvient à maintenir sa place économique et politique. Les palais que les familles de la noblesse de l’époque meublent et donnent à voir au public en sont la preuve incontestable : le décor installé dans ces demeures répond au décorum et à une stratégie qui vise à consolider l’établissement des familles par le moyen de l’héritage.
Le palais Spinola à Pellicceria est paradigmatique de ces stratégies. Cet ouvrage éclaire les usages que l’aristocratie fait du décor, en analysant les meubles et les objets qui le composent, sous un angle à la fois social, juridique et esthétique. Il met aussi en évidence la cohérence des collections, enjeu majeur pour les familles, contraintes potentielles pour les artistes et artisans auxquels elles passent commande.
Anne Perrin Khelissa est maître de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne à l’Université Toulouse II – Le Mirail.
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S O M M A I R E
Remerciements
Préface de Peter Fuhring
Introduction
Première Partie: Hériter, transmettre
I. Le palais Spinola à Pellicceria et ses propriétaires
II. Pérennité des valeurs du clan
III. La sauvegarde du patrimoine
Deuxième Partie: Dépenser, commander
I. L’élaboration du décor
II. L’organisation du chantier
III. Aux origines de la commande : le mariage du fils aîné
IV. Les changements opérés par les héritiers
Troisième Partie: Habiter, séjourner
I. La distribution des intérieurs
II. Permanence et changements dans l’ameublement
III. Un parangon des styles européens
IV. Échapper au décorum de la résidence urbaine
Conclusion
Annexes
Les passages de propriété du palais à Pellicceria
Lexique
Sources manuscrites
Bibliographie
Index
Forthcoming Book | Painting in Latin America, 1550–1820
Available in December from Yale UP:
Luisa Elena Alcala and Jonathan Brown, ed., Painting in Latin America, 1550–1820: From Conquest to Independence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 480 pages, ISBN: 978-0300191011, $75.
Painting in Latin America, 1550–1820: From Conquest to Independence surveys the diverse styles, subjects, and iconography of painting in Latin America between the 16th and 19th centuries. While European art forms were widely disseminated, copied, and adapted throughout Latin America, colonial painting is not a derivative extension of Europe. The ongoing debate over what to call it—mestizo, hybrid, creole, indo-hispanic, tequitqui—testifies to a fundamental yet unresolved question of identity.
Comparing and contrasting the Viceroyalties of New Spain, with its center in modern-day Mexico, and Peru, the authors explore the very different ways the two regions responded to the influence of the Europeans and their art. A wide range of art and artists are considered, some for the first time. Rich with new photography and primary research, this book delivers a wealth of new insight into the history of images and the history of art.
Luisa Elena Alcala is a professor titular at the department of history and theory of art, Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. Jonathan Brown is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University.
Re-Released Title | American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840
While the book appeared in hardback in 2005, a paperback edition (priced extraordinarily enough at just $22) was published earlier this year by the University of Oklahoma Press:
Stephanie Pratt, American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-00806142005, $22.
Ask anyone the world over to identify a figure in buckskins with a feather bonnet, and the answer will be “Indian.” Many works of art produced by non-Native artists have reflected such a limited viewpoint. In American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840, Stephanie Pratt explores for the first time an artistic tradition that avoided simplification and that instead portrayed Native peoples in a surprisingly complex light.
During the eighteenth century, the British allied themselves with Indian tribes to counter the American colonial rebellion. In response, British artists produced a large volume of work focusing on American Indians. Although these works depicted their subjects as either noble or ignoble savages, they also represented Indians as active participants in contemporary society.
Pratt places artistic works in historical context and traces a movement away from abstraction, where Indians were symbols rather than actual people, to representational art, which portrayed Indians as actors on the colonial stage. But Pratt also argues that to view these images as mere illustrations of historical events or individuals would be reductive. As works of art they contain formal characteristics and ideological content that diminish their documentary value.
Exhibition | High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson
Press release from The Royal Collection:
High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson
The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 22 November 2013 — 2 March 2014
The Holburne Museum, Bath, 27 September 2014 — 8 February 2015
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 13 November 2015 — 14 February 2016
![High Spirits lead crop 810584-lpr[1]_0](https://enfilade18thc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/high-spirits-lead-crop-810584-lpr1_0.jpg?w=720&h=257)
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The absurdities of fashion, the perils of love, political machinations and royal intrigue were the daily subject-matter of Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), one of the wittiest and most popular caricaturists of Georgian Britain. Blunt, sometimes bawdy and often irreverent, his work offers a new perspective on an era best known through the novels of Jane Austen. Along with his contemporaries, James Gillray, James Sayers and the Cruikshank family, Rowlandson shaped the visual comedy of the period, and his colourful prints and drawings are as amusing today as when they were first produced some 200 years ago.
Rowlandson made his name poking fun at politicians, foreign enemies and even members of the royal family. Despite this, it was the young George, Prince of Wales (1762–1830), later George IV, who began the collection of around 1,000 caricature prints by Rowlandson in the Royal Collection today. Around 100 works by Rowlandson will go on display in High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse in November. The exhibition will explore Rowlandson’s life and art, and the perhaps surprising popularity of his work with George IV, and with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Thomas Rowlandson studied at the Royal Academy Schools, sponsored by a wealthy aunt. A keen draughtsman, he developed a talent for portraiture and an ability to capture likeness in a couple of strokes of the pen. This skill was combined with a lively sense of humour and an eye for the absurd, and he soon found work designing and making comical prints for London publishers. In a life that would itself make an appropriate subject for satire, Rowlandson gambled and drank away his inheritance, staving off poverty through hard work and an enviable talent.
Satirical printmaking was a venerable tradition in Georgian Britain, where freedom of the press had long been exploited by artists. Satirical prints were collected by the fashionable elite and pasted into albums, on to walls and decorative screens, and laughed over at dinner parties and in coffee houses. George IV shared the taste for collecting prints, even though the royal family often found themselves the subject of the joke, and in extreme cases the butt of attacks on their lifestyle and affairs. Conversely, while George IV was collecting caricatures, he was also attempting to suppress and censor prints that showed him in a bad light, caught in a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse with inventive and mischievous printmakers.
Few of the leading political personalities of the day escaped Rowlandson’s scrutiny. The artist turned his pen on Napoleon, the licentious politician Charles James Fox and the ambitious William Pitt the Younger. In The Two Kings of Terror, Napoleon and Death sit face to face on the battlefield after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig in 1813. London high society too was the focus of many of Rowlandson’s caricatures. The glamorous and scandalous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who it was claimed had traded kisses for votes in the cut-throat Westminster election of 1784, is shown kissing a butcher in The Devonshire, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes.
Other highlights of the exhibition include Dr Convex and Lady Concave, which pokes fun at two very different characters; Money Lenders, thought to be the earliest satire on the Prince of Wales’s increasingly large debts; and Sketches at – an Oratorio!, showing Rowlandson’s talent for capturing human faces and expressions. In A York Address to the Whale. Caught lately off Gravesend, the Duke of York thanks a 23 metre-long whale for distracting attention from accusations that his mistress was paid by army officers for securing their promotions from the Duke, as well as her threats to publish their love letters.
Rowlandson produced a number of highly finished watercolours, and two of his largest and most important works in this medium will be on display. The exhibition also includes a number of the artist’s landscapes, which, although never intended as satire, are infused with the humour that permeates all of Rowlandson’s work.
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Kate Heard, High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson (London: Royal Collection, 2013), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1905686766, £16.
Portly squires and young dandies. Jane Austenesque heroines and their gruesome chaperones. Dashing young officers and corrupt politicians. The keenly observant satires by English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) make clear his sharp eye for current affairs as well as his appreciation of the humour in everyday life.
High Spirits brings together nearly one hundred comic works by Rowlandson, with subjects spanning the entire range of English society. Full-colour illustrations are accompanied by new archival research on both the works and their royal collectors, from George IV to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Kate Heard is Curator of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust. She is the co-author of The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein (2011) and is Deputy Editor of the Journal of the History of Collections.
Exhibition | Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection
From The Frick:
Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection
The Frick Collection, New York, 28 January — 15 June 2014
Curated by Denise Allen
Giuseppe Piamontini, Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III on Horseback, ca. 1695, bronze, 25 inches (62.5 cm), The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill
The Frick Collection will be the only venue for the first public exhibition of this private collection devoted to the bronze figurative statuette. The nearly forty sculptures included in the show are of exceptional quality and span the fifteenth through the eighteenth century, exemplifying the genre from its beginnings in Renaissance Italy to its dissemination across the artistic centers of Europe.
The Hill Collection is distinguished by rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio, Giambologna, and Giuseppe Piamontini. Its holding of works by the Giambologna school evokes the splendor of the late Renaissance courts, while the richness of the international Baroque is represented by Alessandro Algardi’s religious sculptures and by a remarkable assemblage of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French bronzes in the classical mode. The Hill Collection reveals the range of artistry, invention, and technical refinement characteristic of sculptures created when the tradition of the European statuette was at its height. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated scholarly catalogue edited by Patricia Wengraf with
contributions by Claudia Kryza-Gersch, Dimitrios Zikos, and Denise Allen,
organizing curator of the exhibition at The Frick Collection.
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Patricia Wengraf, ed., Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2014), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372636, $125.
This richly illustrated and beautifully produced scholarly catalog of the superlative collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronze figurative statuettes from the Hill Collection, accompanies an exhibition of the collection at The Frick Collection, New York opening late January 2014. Spanning the 15th through the 18th century, the sculptures presented are of exceptional quality and exemplify the bronze statue or statuette from its beginnings in Renaissance Italy to its dissemination across the artistic centers of Europe.
The Hill Collection is distinguished by rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio and Giambologna, and has the most important collection of Baroque bronzes by Giuseppe Piamontini in the world. Its holding of works by the Giambologna school – the strongest found in any single collection, with the sole exception of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence – evokes the splendor of the late Renaissance courts, while the richness of the international Baroque is represented by religious sculptures by Alessandro Algardi, northern bronzes by Adriaen de Vries and Hubert Gerhard, and a remarkable assemblage of French 17th- and early 18th-century bronzes in the classical mode, by Barthelemy Prieur and from the circle of Ponce Jacquiot. The Hill Collection reveals the range of artistry, invention and technical refinement characteristic of sculptures created when the tradition of the European statuette was at its height.The catalog includes detailed biographies of each of the artists represented and is introduced with essays by the distinguished authors.
Patricia Wengraf is one of the world’s leading dealers in bronzes, sculpture and works of art, and in her particular specialty, bronzes of the 15th-18th centuries, her knowledge and connoisseurship are of world repute. Denise Allen is Curator of Renaissance Paintings and Sculpture at The Frick Collection. Claudia Kryza-Gersch is Curator of Renaissance Sculpture at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Dimitrios Zikos is Curator at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. Rupert Harris is the leading conservator of metalwork and sculpture in the UK.
New Book | From Still Life to the Screen
From Yale UP:
Joseph Monteyne, From Still Life to the Screen: Print Culture, Display, and the Materiality of the Image in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2013), 292 pages, ISBN: 978-0300196351, $85.
From Still Life to the Screen explores the print culture of 18th-century London, focusing on the correspondences between images and consumer objects. In his lively and insightful text, Joseph Monteyne considers such themes as the display of objects in still lifes and markets, the connoisseur’s fetishistic gaze, and the fusion of body and ornament in satires of fashion. The desire for goods emerged in tandem with modern notions of identity, in which things were seen to mirror and symbolize the self. Prints, particularly graphic satires by such artists as Matthew and Mary Darly, James Gillray, William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and Paul Sandby, were actively involved in this shift. Many of these images play with the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, self and thing. They also reveal the recurring motif of image display, whether on screens, by magic lanterns, or in “raree-shows” and print-shop windows. The author links this motif to new conceptions of the self, specifically through the penetration of spectacle into
everyday experience.
Joseph Monteyne is associate professor in the history
of art at the University of British Columbia.
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