New Title | Inganno – The Art of Deception
To judge from the table of contents, I think this is really a collection of essays on the sixteenth century, though it does conclude with an eighteenth-century piece by Kristin Campbell, “‘Such is Picture Dealing’: Noel Joseph Desenfans (1745-1807) and the Perils of Purchasing in 18th-Century London.” -CH
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From Ashgate:
Sharon Gregory and Sally Anne Hickson, eds., Inganno – The Art of Deception: Imitation, Reception, and Deceit in Early Modern Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 216 pages, 9781409431497, $105.
The essays contained in this volume address issues surrounding the use, dissemination, and reception of copies and even deliberate forgeries within the history of art, focusing on paintings, prints and sculptures created and sold from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. The essays also probe contemporary sensibilities about the art of inganno, or deception, sometimes even viewed as pleasurable deception, in the making and viewing of copies among artists and their audiences.
Through specific case studies, the contributors explore the fine line between imitations and fakes, distinctions between the practice of copying as a discipline within the workshop and the willful misrepresentation of such copies on the part of artists, agents and experts in the evolving art market. They attempt to address the notion of when a copy becomes a fake and when thoughtful repetition of a model, emulation through imitation, becomes deliberate fraud. The essays also document developing taxonomies of professionals within the growth of the “business of art” from the workshops of the Renaissance to the salons and galleries of eighteenth-century London. As a whole, this volume opens up a new branch of art historical research concerned with the history and purpose of the copy.
Roundtable Discussion for New Book on Court Funerals
As noted at L’ApAhAu, in Paris on Thursday, 20 September 2012, at 6pm, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, in conjunction with the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles, will host a roundtable discussion with the authors of this new book on the role of court funerals in early modern Europe. The invitation (as a PDF) is available here»
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Juliusz A. Chrościcki, Mark Hengerer, Gérard Sabatier, Les funérailles princières en Europe, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle — Volume I : Le grand théâtre de la mort (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2012), ISBN: 9782735114269, 47€. [Publication issue du colloque international des 14-16 octobre 2007 à Cracovie]
Depuis une trentaine d’années, les historiens ont exploré la problématique de la « genèse de l’État moderne » en Europe entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècle, et son corollaire, la place centrale tenue par les cours princières dans le processus. L’objectif de ce livre est de s’interroger sur la part qu’ont pu y prendre les stratégies funéraires des familles souveraines. Ce livre propose une approche différente des travaux consacrés jusqu’à présent aux rituels funéraires princiers où l’histoire de l’art y est prépondérante. Les funérailles princières sont étudiées en terme de stratégies de la part des monarchies, comme rituel interne de transmission du pouvoir, mais aussi dans le cadre de leurs relations entre dynasties, et de leurs rapports tant avec leurs opinions publiques propres qu’avec une opinion européenne en formation.
Premier des trois volumes consacrés aux funérailles princières, l’ouvrage s’intéresse au déroulement des cérémonies en relation avec les institutions propres, la conjoncture, les traditions particulières, les rapports de force internes, l’insertion dans le jeu politique européen.
Forthcoming | From Books to Bezoars: Sloane and His Collections
Due in November from the University of Chicago Press:
Michael Hunter, Alison Walker, and Arthur MacGregor, eds., From Books to Bezoars: Sir Hans Sloane and His Collections (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 296 pages, ISBN: 9780712358804, $60.
This well-illustrated volume offers fresh perspectives on the great eighteenth-century physician, naturalist, and collector Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose extensive holdings formed the basis of the British Museum and its offspring, the Natural History Museum and the British Library. The colonial milieu within which Sloane operated gets prominence here, particularly the time he spent in Jamaica. Attention is paid to his enormous network of acquaintances and correspondents throughout the world as well as to the way his collecting activities permeated every aspect of his life. Other essays consider the museum specimens accumulated by Sloane—both natural and man-made—shedding new light on his aims for acquiring and organizing them. A fascinating look at the man behind three of the United Kingdom’s most famous museums, From Books to Bezoars will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth century studies, early modern science, and the history of the book.
Exhibition | Fables and Magic: The Guidobono Brothers
From Cultura Italia:
Fables and Magic: The Guidobono Brothers, Painters of the Baroque
Palazzo Madama, Turin, 29 May — 2 September 2012
Curated by Mary Newcome Schleier, Giovanni Romano, and Gelsomina Spione
From 29 May to 2 September, Palazzo Madama in Turin hosts Fables and Magic: The Guidobono Brothers, Painters of the Baroque, an exhibition focusing on the life and work of the two artists, Bartolomeo and Domenico Guidobono, best known for decorating the ceiling of Palazzo Madama, along with an extensive series of paintings on canvas held in the most prestigious European and American museums.
The Savona-born painters Bartolomeo and Domenico Guidobono were not well-known in Piedmont. Nevertheless, between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th, they were entrusted with several important commissions in Turin. Following in the footsteps of their father, the painter and ceramic artist Giovanni Antonio, who drew a salary from Victor Amadeus II, the two brothers introduced to Turin the light and festive decorative style typical of Genoese residences, with its emphasis on light effects and elements drawn from nature. Both lived in Turin twice, more precisely between 1685 and 1690, and again from 1702 to 1726, when they painted the frescoes decorating the vault ceiling of the apartments of the second Madama Reale, Marie Jeanne of Savoy.
Their work is illustrated by paintings, drawings, and engravings that highlight their meticulous approach to depicting the details of their subjects, which ranged from mythology to Biblical stories, sacred subjects, still lifes, and magic scenes. Flowers, fruits, birds, animals, objects, and details of still lifes are painted with a refined, light touch and ooze seductive mystery.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically and begins with the work of the older of the two brothers, Bartolomeo Guidobono (Savona 1654 – Turin 1709). During his first sojourn in Turin, he painted the frescoes of the presbytery of the Casanova abbey near Carmagnola and a painting for Palazzo Madama, which was originally located in the former apartments of the Madama Reale and is now lost. During his second sojourn, from 1702 to 1709, Bartolomeo decorated both the residences of the Savoy court and church altars in Turin and the Duchy of Savoy. It is in this context that his Genoese-inspired decorations were made, such as those of the convent of San Francesco da Paola and the Pilone cupola, the ceiling in the hall currently known as the Madama Felicita apartment in Palazzo Reale, which are featured in the exhibition thanks to video images.
Domenico’s style began to emerge more forcefully after his brother’s death in 1709. The artist, who maintained a close relationship with the Madama Reale Maria Giovanna Battista, became the undisputed protagonist of the decorations of the halls on the first floor of Palazzo Madama, known as the Guidobono halls – the Madama Reale’s Chamber, the Chinese Cabinet, and the Southern Veranda – which were decorated on the orders of the Duchess orders between 1708 ad 1721. Domenico Guidobono was active in Turin and the rest of the Duchy until the ascent of Filippo Juvara, who eventually marginalized him and caused him to return to Genoa and subsequently to Naples, where he died in 1746. The exhibition delves into the life and work of Domenico Guidobono through recently discovered documents and artwork. The history of his art can be traced thanks to a dowry inventory put together by his daughter Maria Beatrice in 1720, which lists the works from her father’s Turin workshop. Today, most of these works are held in foreign museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
The exhibition is enhanced by works by Genoese masters and other artists who were crucial influences on the Guidobono brothers, such as Domenico Piola, Gregorio De Ferrari, and Daniel Seyter. There is also a selection of engravings by Rembrandt and Castiglione, the stylistic points of reference underlying Genoese painting, followed by a section on project planning with preparatory sketches by Piola and De Ferrari from the Cabinet of Drawings and Paintings in Genoa’s Palazzo Rosso.
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From Artbooks.com:
Catalogue: Clelia Arnaldi di Balme, Giovanni Romano, Mary Newcome Schleier, and Gelsomina Spione, Favole e Magie: I Guidobono, Pittori del Barocco (Milano: Silvana, 2012), 128 pages, ISBN: 9788836623952, $33.
Ai fratelli Bartolomeo e Domenico Guidobono, attivi tra la fine del Seicento e l’inizio del Settecento in Liguria e in Piemonte, è dedicato questo volume, che offre una retrospettiva completa e aggiornata sulla loro carriera di pittori, costellata di successi in vita, ma poco considerata dalla critica nei secoli successivi. I due fratelli, originari di Savona, hanno lasciato il segno della loro ispirazione più alta nei soffitti di Palazzo Madama a Torino, ma si deve a loro anche una vasta produzione di quadri da cavalletto, ora in gran parte dispersa in musei e collezioni private d’Europa e d’America. Giunti a Torino a seguito del padre – pittore e ceramista stipendiato da Vittorio Amedeo II –, introducono in Piemonte i caratteri leggeri e festosi della grande decorazione barocca genovese, che trae i suoi spunti dall’osservazione della natura e dallo studio degli effetti della luce. Favole mitologiche, storie bibliche e soggetti sacri, nature morte e scene di magia si accompagnano alla descrizione precisa di fiori, frutti, uccelli, animali, oggetti e brani di natura morta, con esiti di raffinata leggerezza e talvolta di seducente mistero. Il volume, che nel ricostruire la loro attività permette di fare il punto sulla fortuna critica e sugli studi svolti intorno ai due pittori, presenta, accanto alle opere dei Guidobono, anche quelle di altri artisti che rappresentarono un punto di riferimento per la loro formazione, come Domenico Piola, Gregorio De Ferrari e Daniel Seyter. Il volume è completato da una bibliografia.
Exhibition | John Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812)
From Edinburgh’s City Art Centre:
John Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812)
Edinburgh City Art Centre, 3 November 2012 — 3 February 2013
Curated by Geoffrey Bertram
John Clerk of Eldin, Craigmillar Castle from the South-East, detail
John Clerk of Eldin is well known to historians of 18th-century British art, and he is often included in exhibitions and publications relating to the work of other 18th-century figures, namely Robert Adam, the architect, and of Paul Sandby, the well respected English painter and printmaker. In addition, his geological drawings are highly valued by geologists as the illustrations provided for Dr James Hutton’s seminal 1790s publication ‘A Theory of the Earth’. However Clerk’s etchings have never received a major overview, which the exhibition aims to redress. This anniversary year provides a perfect opportunity to highlight the prints of this remarkable man.
The exhibition is being organised and curated by Geoffrey Bertram. The main part of the exhibition is being lent by the Clerk family, supplemented with additional etchings to be borrowed from the National Gallery of Scotland. The etchings presented will range from some of the earliest efforts to those finest, with some related drawings that show his working method. These will be supplemented by sketchbooks, geological drawings and copies of the 1855 compendium of etchings published by the Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, as well as other items relating to his life and work.
For more information, see the exhibition website»
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Catalogue: Geoffrey Bertram et al, The Etchings of John Clerk of Eldin (Enterprise Editions, 2012), 180 pages, ISBN 9780957190405, £35.
Published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Clerk’s death, the book catalogues all of Clerk’s etchings and examines his etching technique and the influences on his style. It also includes essays by Iain Gordon Brown “John Clerk of Eldin and ‘The Virtuoso Genius of the Family'” and Duncan Macmillan “Scottish Printmakers in the Eighteenth Century.” Copies are available from Bertram Enterprises, 1 Knutscroft Lane, Thurloxton, Somerset TA2 8RL email: geoffrey@clerkofeldin.com
Reviewed | Dubin’s ‘Futures and Ruins’
Recently added to caa.reviews:
Nina L. Dubin, Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010), 210 pages, ISBN: 9781606060230, $50.
Reviewed by Frédérique Baumgartner, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University; posted 27 July 2012.
In an article entitled “Les musées ne sont pas à vendre” (“Museums Are Not For Sale”) published on December 12, 2006, in the daily French paper ‘Le Monde’, the art historians Françoise Cachin, Jean Clair, and Roland Recht strongly denounced the increasing commercialization of the national patrimony, epitomized by the Louvre’s plan to rent out part of its collection to a branch established in Abu Dhabi. The authors warned the French administration against the incoherence of its cultural policy: claiming to protect the nation’s artistic treasures, while at the same time using those treasures as commodities.
The controversy over the Louvre Abu Dhabi is one of the many contemporary resonances that Nina Dubin’s book, ‘Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert’, holds for its reader. A meticulously researched study examining Robert’s paintings of Parisian ruins in light of the new financial interests and related economic and cultural risks that defined the city’s urban and patrimonial policies in the 1770s–1790s, ‘Futures and Ruins’ will prompt readers to consider the origins of the economic and cultural precariousness of today’s world. As such, the book is both historically stimulating and morally engaging.
At the center of ‘Futures and Ruins’ lies the following historical claim: in the course of the eighteenth century, Paris, in the grip of the forces of early capitalism, became the terrain of intense real estate speculation. It was enabled by the introduction of paper money in 1716, as the greater capacity for circulation of paper money precipitated transactions and engendered prospects of hastily accumulated wealth. At the same time, the reliance of the real estate market on the expansion of credit raised the specter of bankruptcy. As Dubin underscores, in agreement with the historian Michael Sonenscher, the nature of credit was characterized by “the ease with which it enabled economic prosperity, while at the same time catalyzing the potential for expansive debt” (Michael Sonenscher, ‘Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution‘, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, 91).
These economic phenomena, Dubin argues, found their aesthetic counterpart in pictures of ruins—a genre in which Robert (1733–1808), received as Peintre d’architecture at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1776, excelled. . .
The full review is available here» (CAA membership required)
New Title | Transculturation in British Art, 1770–1930
From Ashgate:
Julie F. Codell, ed., Transculturation in British Art, 1770–1930 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 314 pages, ISBN: 9781409409779, $120.
Examining colonial art through the lens of transculturation, the essays in this collection assess painting, sculpture, photography, illustration and architecture from 1770 to 1930 to map these art works’ complex and unresolved meanings illuminated by the concept of transculturation. Authors explore works in which transculturation itself was being defined, formed, negotiated, and represented in the British Empire and in countries subject to British influence (the Congo Free State, Japan, Turkey) through cross-cultural encounters of two kinds: works created in the colonies subject over time to colonial and to postcolonial spectators’ receptions, and copies or multiples of works that traveled across space located in several colonies or between a colony and the metropole, thus subject to multiple cultural interpretations.
Essays in Transculturation in British Art, 1770–1930 argue that, due to art’s fundamental nature as spatial, art can illuminate imperial transculturation sites of border cultures and contact zones that go far beyond hybridities of national cultural traditions or conventions. Transcultural works generate new cultural and imperial values. Authors posit that visual culture can suggest nuances and implications for transculturation, a word used in many other humanities and social science disciplines, to give this word a visual dimension.
New Title and Exhibition | New York Rising
From ACC Distribution:
Valerie Paley, New York Rising: New York and the Founding of the United States (London: Scala Publishers, 2012), 64 pages, ISBN: 9781857597769, $10.
Published in conjunction with the opening of the New-York Historical Society’s newly installed permanent gallery, New York Rising: New York and the Founding of the United States seeks to capture this nascent moment in America’s history. Featuring paintings, sculpture, historical documents and other fascinating artefacts, this fully illustrated book details important moments in both the history of New York and of the United States. These include the occupation of New York by the British Army during the Revolutionary War; the city’s role as marketplace and centre of commerce; the inauguration of George Washington as first President of the United States; the politically-charged duel fought by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; and the establishment of the New-York Historical Society. Associations are made between the paintings and the objects in the exhibition that set in context these events and the individuals who shaped and were shaped by
them.
Valerie Paley is Historian for Special Projects at the New-York Historical Society.
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Exhibition | Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics
From LACMA:
Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 6 October 2012 — 31 March 2013
Ewer, c. 1700, Rouen, France, Earthenware with tin glaze and enamel (grand feu faïence), 11 x 11 in. LACMA, Gift of MaryLou and George Boone in honor of the museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary, M.2010.51.1, Photo © Susan Einstein.
Long-time LACMA benefactor MaryLou Boone has amassed the West Coast’s finest collection of French faience and soft-paste porcelain, 25 pieces of which she gave to LACMA in 2010. (Although originally made to emulate hard-paste porcelain imported into Europe from Asia, faience and soft-paste porcelain ultimately became distinctive and sought-after ceramics in their own right.)
The exhibition comprises over 130 pieces from the foremost manufactories of the era, representing myriad aesthetic influences, as well as advances in technology and the rhythms of domestic life. The collection includes wares for dining and taking tea, for storing the many toiletries necessary for a stylish appearance, and for preparing mixtures that comforted in time of sickness. Inextricably intertwined with every day duties and diversions, these objects provide a unique view of French life and culture.
The accompanying exhibition catalogue, Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection, includes more than 145 entries of French faience and porcelain from the collection, as well as essays about the collector and 17th and 18th-century French ceramics.
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From ACC Distribution:
Elizabeth Williams and Meredith Chilton, Daily Pleasures French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012), 392 pages, ISBN: 9780875872155, $75.
MaryLou Boone’s collection of French ceramics spans the reigns of some of France’s most fascinating kings, from Louis XIII to Louis XVI, yet the collection is not one of royal vases and princely gifts but, rather, of wares for dining and taking tea, of porcelain frivolities, and of ceramics for the sickroom and the pharmacy. Mrs. Boone – a collector, scholar, and donor – has amassed the West Coast’s finest collection of 17th and 18th-century French faience and soft-paste porcelain, objects that provide a unique view of French life and culture. Emphasizing the aesthetics French ceramics and also its functionality, the catalogue comprises over 130 collection entries, as well as essays on the collector, ceramics in 17th-18th century France, French faience and its makers and French porcelain and its makers. Although originally created to emulate Asian porcelain, faïence and soft-paste porcelain ultimately became distinctive and sought-after ceramics in their own right.
C O N T E N T S
• Michael Govan and John Murdoch — Foreword
• Elizabeth Williams — Introduction
• Map of Manufactories
• Victoria Kastner — MaryLou Boone: The Accidental Collector
• Meredith Chilton — The Pleasures of Life: Ceramics in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
• Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé — French Faience from Its Origins to the Nineteenth Century
• Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé — Faience Manufactory Histories
• Faience Catalogue
• Meredith Chilton — Porcelain Production in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
• Meredith Chilton — Porcelain Manufactory Histories
• Porcelain Catalogue
• Marks Appendix
• Glossary
• Selected Bibliography
• Illustration Credits
• Index
Meredith Chilton is an independent art historian and was the founding curator of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto from 1983 to 2004. She has curated many exhibitions, published extensively and lectured internationally. Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé is Conservateur général honoraire du Patrimoine and Ancien directeur du musée national de Céramique, Sèvres where she worked as both a conservator and director. She has organized many ceramic and glass exhibitions and written extensively on the history of ceramics. Catherine Hess is Chief Curator of European Art at The Huntington Art Collections in San Marino, California. She is responsible for a collection particularly strong in Renaissance bronzes, 18th-Century French decorative arts, and 18th-Century British portraiture. Victoria Kastner, the Historian at Hearst Castle, has published several books and holds graduate degrees in architectural history and museum management. Elizabeth A. Williams is the Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Assistant Curator of the Decorative Arts and Design department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
New Title | J. B. Fischer von Erlach: Architecture as Theater
From Yale UP:
Esther Gordon Dotson and Mark Richard Ashton, J. B. Fischer von Erlach: Architecture as Theater in the Baroque Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 184 pages, ISBN: 9780300166682, $75.
Though little known in the English-speaking world, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) was one of the most important and influential European baroque architects. The buildings that he designed for the emperor of Austria and his courtiers reveal an element of theatricality—an element that author Esther Gordon Dotson probes in this attractive volume.
In his architectural designs, Fischer incorporated devices from ceremonial pageantry and scene design, controlled lighting effects, and a sense of dramatic progression in approaching and moving through a building. Dotson identifies these various elements in her close reading of Fischer’s structures, and splendid new photographs, taken by Mark Richard Ashton, bring them to life on the printed page. The author also delves into Fischer’s past and his writings to explain the impact his awareness of architectural history, his early employment by designers of street-festival pageants and his relationships with others involved in such staged productions had upon his architectural designs. Dotson guides readers in discovering the theatrical qualities in Fischer’s buildings, illuminating their conceptual liveliness, variety, drama, and enduring beauty.
At the time of her death in October 2009, Esther Gordon Dotson was professor emerita in the Department of the History of Art at Cornell University. Mark Richard Ashton is an independent scholar and photographer in Ithaca, New York.
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