Enfilade

In the US, daylight saving time ends Sunday morning. New from Michael Imhof:

Angelika Eder, Chronos: Die Personifikation der Zeit und ihr Einsatz in der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2024), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-3731914044, €50.

Chronos, die Personifikation der Zeit, fand in der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts weite Verbreitung—sei es in Tafelbildern, in Deckengemälden, in der Druckgrafik oder der Skulptur. Das weite Einsatzspektrum dieser äußerst komplexen Figur bildet den Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Untersuchung.

Die Konfrontation mit der Erkenntnis des befristeten Lebens und der Fragilität jeder Existenz machte die Menschen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert empfänglich für das Thema der Vergänglichkeit, das die destruktive Seite von Chronos in den Vordergrund stellt. Auf vielfältige Weise wird die Personifikation der Zeit als Zerstörerin dargestellt: von menschlichem Leben, von Liebe, von materiellen Errungenschaften. Parallel zeigen Kunstwerke die positive Seite von Chronos, bei denen sich die Zeit als Helferfigur offenbart. In der Allegorie trägt so die Zeit den Ruhm des Herrschers über dessen Tod hinaus in die Zukunft. Ebenso bewahrt Chronos die Schöpfungen der neuzeitlichen Künstler vor dem Verfall und sichert deren Andenken in ihren bleibenden Werken. Im Buch wird eine bisher fehlende Systematik entwickelt, die von der Herkunft und Genese der Zeitfigur ausgeht und anhand von ausgewählten Beispielen ihre facettenreiche Verwendung in den Blick nimmt.

From Norton:

Rebecca Davis, Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024), 480 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-1631496578, $35.

From an esteemed scholar, a richly textured, authoritative history of sex and sexuality in America—the first major account in three decades.

Our era is one of sexual upheaval. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, school systems across the country are banning books with LGBTQ+ themes, and the notion of a ‘tradwife’ is gaining adherents on the right while polyamory wins converts on the left. It may seem as though debates over sex are more intense than ever, but as acclaimed historian Rebecca L. Davis demonstrates in Fierce Desires, we should not be too surprised, because Americans have been arguing over which kinds of sex are ‘acceptable’—and which are not—since before the founding itself.

From the public floggings of fornicators in early New England to passionate same-sex love affairs in the 1800s and the crackdown on abortion providers in the 1870s, and from the movements for sexual liberation to the recent restrictions on access to gender affirming care, Davis presents a sweeping, engrossing, illuminating four-hundred-year account of this nation’s sexual past. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including legal records, erotica, and eighteenth-century romance novels, she recasts important episodes—Anthony Comstock’s crusade against smut among them—and, at the same time, unearths stories of little-remembered pioneers and iconoclasts, such as an indentured servant in colonial Virginia named Thomas/Thomasine Hall, Gay Liberation Front cofounder Kiyoshi Kuromiya, and postwar female pleasure activist Betty Dodson.

At the heart of the book is Davis’s argument that the concept of sexual identity is relatively novel, first appearing in the nineteenth century. Over the centuries, Americans have shifted from understanding sexual behaviors as reflections of personal preferences or values, such as those rooted in faith or culture, to defining sexuality as an essential part of what makes a person who they are. And at every step, legislators, police, activists, and bureaucrats attempted to regulate new sexual behaviors, transforming government in the process. The most comprehensive account of America’s sexual past since John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s 1988 classic, Intimate Matters, Davis’s magisterial work seeks to help us understand the turmoil of the present. It demonstrates how fiercely we have always valued our desires, and how far we are willing to go to defend them.

Rebecca L. Davis is professor of history at the University of Delaware and author of Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics and More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss. She lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

From Penguin Random House in the UK, with publication forthcoming (2025) in the US:

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (London: Allen Lane, 2024), 688 pages, ISBN: 978-0241400937, £35 / $40.

The Bible observes that God made humanity “for a while a little lower than the angels.” If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. In a single lifetime, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary about-turns in attitudes to sex and gender in human history. There have followed revolutions in the place of women in society, a new place for same-sex love amid the spectrum of human emotions and a public exploration of gender and trans identity. For many the new situation has brought exciting liberation—for others, fury and fear.

This book seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender, and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. The message of Lower than the Angels is simple, necessary and timely: to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity. The reader can decide from the story told here whether there is a single Christian theology of sex, or many contending voices in a symphony that is not at all complete. Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church introduces an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears, and hopes.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is a fellow of both St Cross College and Campion Hall, Oxford, and emeritus professor of the history of the church at Oxford University. His books include Thomas Cranmer: A Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize, and Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, a New York Times bestseller that won the Cundill Prize in History. He has presented many highly celebrated documentaries for television and radio and was knighted in 2012 for his services to scholarship. He is an ordained deacon of the Church of England. He lives in Oxford.

From Penguin Random House:

Tim Blanning, Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco (London: Allen Lane, 2024), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-0241705148, £30.

From the acclaimed author of The Pursuit of Glory and Frederick the Great, a riotous biography of the charismatic ruler of 18th-century Poland and Saxony—and his catastrophic reign.

Augustus is one of the great what-ifs of the 18th century. He could have turned the accident of ruling two major realms into the basis for a powerful European state—a bulwark against the Russians and a block on Prussian expansion. Alas, there was no opportunity Augustus did not waste and no decision he did not get wrong. By the time of his death Poland was fatally damaged and would subsequently disappear as an independent state until the 20th century. Tim Blanning’s wonderfully entertaining and original new book is a study in failed statecraft, showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance. Augustus’s posthumous sobriquet ‘The Strong’ referred not to any political accomplishment, but to his legendary physical strength and sexual athleticism. Yet he was also one of the great creative artists of the age, combining driving energy, exquisite taste, and apparently boundless resources to master-mind the creation of peerless Dresden, the baroque jewel of jewels. Augustus the Strong brilliantly evokes this time of opulence and excess, decadence, and folly.

Until age-dictated retirement in 2009, Tim Blanning was Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He remains a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1990. His major works include The French Revolution in Germany, The French Revolutionary Wars, The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815, and The Triumph of Music. He has written biographies of Joseph II, Frederick the Great, and George I.

From National Museums Scotland:

Stephen Jackson, Scottish Furniture, 1500–1914 (Edinburgh: NMSE Publishing, 2024), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1910682487, £40.

Scotland’s furniture evolved against a background of social and cultural change that included religious reformation, civil war, union with England, and participation in rapidly expanding commercial empire. The contribution of the country’s finest workshops has been overlooked in general histories of British furniture and sever decades of scholarly research is represented here to a wider public for the first time. From the beguiling and fragmentary woodwork of the sixteenth century to the blossoming of new art movements in the years around 1900, Scottish Furniture explores a form of material culture that was central to both everyday life and the expression of status and identity. The careers of prominent cabinet-makers such as Francis Brodie and William Trotter are explored in depth, while over sixty others from all regions of the country are represented among the 340 illustrations. Well-known designers such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh are considered alongside the firms which made their furniture.

Stephen Jackson is Senior Curator, Furniture and Woodwork at National Museums Scotland.

From Rizzoli:

Robert O’Byrne, photographs by Luke White, The Irish Country House: A New Vision (Ne York: Rizzoli, 2024), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0847832835, $65.

A unique presentation of Irish country house interiors, combining well-preserved historic estates with adventurous contemporary restorations, celebrating some of the most characterful houses in Ireland.

Forgoing the criteria of stateliness and opulence, this book is an exploration of the most captivating and unusual interiors in Ireland. Whether in the transformation of a derelict estate, the preservation of an historic hunting lodge, or the re-creation of a Gothic fantasy, each of the homes in this extraordinary book reflects a renewed vitality in the contemporary approach to Irish country houses.

Rich in detail and varied in scope, the houses reveal a refreshing dynamism in their decoration by equally diverse owners—from the ornate refurbishment of a castle by a Mexican financier to the bold palette of a contemporary artist’s renovation to an Elizabethan Revival house. The sparse interiors of a mansion in Westmeath reflect its painstaking restoration by descendants of the original owners, and at Coollattin—Ireland’s largest country house, part restored, part still in disrepair—the building’s baroque splendor is amplified by its raw, unfinished state. Accompanying photography of the houses made specially for the book, the author guides readers through fifteen exceptional spaces, elucidating the remarkable aspects of each—and in doing so celebrates the unexpected eclecticism and reinvigorated spirit of Ireland’s historic interiors.

Robert O’Byrne is a writer and lecturer specializing in the fine and decorative arts. He is the author of more than a dozen books, a former columnist for Apollo magazine, and has written for both The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. He authors the award-winning blog The Irish Aesthete. Luke White is a British photographer of portraits, interiors, and architecture.

From Pen and Sword History:

Julie Peakman, ed., Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe: The Sexes Abroad (Barnsley: Pen and Sword History, 2024), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1399049603, £25 / $50.

A collection of essays by leading scholars brought together by Julie Peakman, an expert in eighteenth-century culture.

The Grand Tour was considered a part of the education of a young gentleman. Travellers included blossoming scholars, poets, writers, and scientists. Visits were made to Greece and Italy via France and Switzerland, often taking in Turkey. But women also travelled extensively, though these accounts have been under-explored. This collection of essays examines first-hand accounts of the impact of foreign travel on both women and men, as seen through their letters, travel diaries, journals, and their creative response in poems, music, and art. Its originality is seen in its exploration of a comparison between the views of women and men abroad and the differences in what they deemed interesting and worthy of comment. The book is especially relevant in light of the many past (and current) xenophobic views of the ‘foreigner’. Here, we more often see travellers viewing their experience of ‘otherness’ and exoticism, in a positive light, a cultural appreciation rather than a cultural appropriation. This book examines how men and women saw these new worlds opening up before them, what delighted them, what influenced them, and their interaction with others in the light of domesticity, antiquity, politics, work, science, sex, and friendships.

Julie Peakman is an historian, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow at the Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. She contributes regularly to newspapers, popular and academic journals and has worked on various documentaries for TV including for the BBC, Sky, Channel 4, and the Biography channel. She is a prolific author in the areas of eighteenth-century culture, history of sexuality, and social history. Her books include Libertine London, Licentious Worlds; The Pleasure’s All Mine; Amatory Pleasures, Lascivious Bodies; and Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England; along with biographies of Dublin brothel-keeper Peg Plunket and Emma Hamilton.

From Cohen et Cohen:

Xavier Salmon, Maurice Quentin de La Tour: L’Oeil absolu (Paris: Cohen et Cohen, 2024), 623 pages, ISBN: 978-2367491141, €160.

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) se joua des difficultés à reproduire ce qu’il voyait, transcrivant à l’aide des poudres de pastel aussi bien la douceur d’un velours, la délicatesse d’une dentelle, que le miroitement d’une armure, mais il sut aussi emporter l’âme de ses modèles en descendant à leur insu au plus profond de leur être.

L’homme n’a jamais laissé indifférent et il s’est livré tout au long de son œuvre et de ses écrits. Maurice Quentin de La Tour se joua des difficultés à reproduire ce qu’il voyait. Non seulement il eut le secret de toutes les manufactures, ainsi que se plurent à le souligner ses contemporains, transcrivant à l’aide des poudres de pastel aussi bien la douceur d’un velours, la délicatesse d’une dentelle, que le miroitement d’une armure, mais il sut aussi emporter l’âme de ses modèles en descendant à leur insu au plus profond de leur être. Fin psychologue, La Tour se piqua également de musique, de théâtre, de danse ou bien encore d’astronomie. Sans cesse en quête de perfection, il fut l’ami des philosophes, des savants et des artistes et livra leurs visages à la postérité.

Riche d’environ 500 pastels et préparations, l’œuvre de La Tour et la vie du maître n’ont pas fait en France l’objet d’une monographie complète depuis celle que publièrent Albert Besnard et Georges Wildenstein en 1928. Travaillant depuis bientôt 30 ans sur le maître et ses créations, Xavier Salmon relève aujourd’hui le défi de rendre un nouvel hommage au plus célèbres des pastellistes du XVIIIème siècle et livre une étude précise où chefs-d’œuvre et pastels inédits ou méconnus sont soigneusement analysés, replacés dans le contexte du temps et reproduits afin de restituer toute la richesse et la diversité d’un Siècle des Lumières dont Maurice Quentin de La Tour fut assurément l’un des témoins les plus fidèles.

Spécialiste de l’art européen du XVIIème et du XVIIIème siècle, Xavier Salmon est directeur du département des Arts graphiques du musée du Louvre. Il a été précédemment conservateur des peintures du XVIIIème siècle et du cabinet d’arts graphiques au château de Versailles, chef de l’inspection générale des musées et directeur du patrimoine et des collections du château de Fontainebleau. Il fut commissaire de nombreuses expositions dont les rétrospectives Jean-Marc Nattier, Maurice Quentin de La Tour: Le voleur d’âmes, et Alexandre Roslin: Un portraitiste pour l’Europe à Versailles, Madame de Pompadour et les arts également à Versailles, Marie-Antoinette et Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun au Grand Palais à Paris. Il a reçu en 2014 le grand prix de l’Académie Française pour son ouvrage : Fontainebleau: Le temps des Italiens. Il a dédié une partie de ses travaux aux pastels français du XVIIIème siècle.

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As Adam Busiakiewicz noted at Art History News in June, Salmon’s is the first print catalogue raisonné to be published since 1928, though Neil Jeffares published a new online catalogue in 2022 as part of his Pastellists website, available for free here. –CH

From Yale UP:

Susan Owens, The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0300260472, $35.

Drawing is at the heart of human creativity. The most democratic form of art-making, it requires nothing more than a plain surface and a stub of pencil, a piece of chalk or an inky brush. Our prehistoric ancestors drew with natural pigments on the walls of caves, and every subsequent culture has practised drawing—whether on papyrus, parchment, or paper. Artists throughout history have used drawing as part of the creative process.

While painting and sculpture have been shaped heavily by money and influence, drawing has always offered extraordinary creative latitude. Here we see the artist at his or her most unguarded. Susan Owens offers a glimpse over artists’ shoulders—from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Hokusai to Van Gogh, Käthe Kollwitz, and Yayoi Kusama—as they work, think, and innovate, as they scrutinise the world around them or escape into imagination. The Story of Drawing loops around the established history of art, sometimes staying close, at other times diving into exhilarating and altogether less familiar territory.

Susan Owens is a writer, art historian, and former V&A curator. Her previous books include The Art of Drawing, Spirit of Place, and Imagining England’s Past.

From Penn Press:

Paul Kahan, Philadelphia: A Narrative History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), 424 pages, ISBN: 978-1512826296, $40.

A comprehensive history of Philadelphia from the region’s original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century

Philadelphia is famous for its colonial and revolutionary buildings and artifacts, which draw tourists from far and wide to gain a better understanding of the nation’s founding. Philadelphians, too, value these same buildings and artifacts for the stories they tell about their city. But Philadelphia existed long before the Liberty Bell was first rung, and its history extends well beyond the American Revolution. In Philadelphia: A Narrative History, Paul Kahan presents a comprehensive portrait of the city, from the region’s original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century.

As any history of Philadelphia should, this book chronicles the people and places that make the city unique: from Independence Hall to Eastern State Penitentiary, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross to Cecil B. Moore and Cherelle Parker. Kahan also shows us how Philadelphia has always been defined by ethnic, religious, and racial diversity—from the seventeenth century, when Dutch, Swedes, and Lenapes lived side by side along the Delaware; to the nineteenth century, when the city was home to a vibrant community of free Black and formerly enslaved people; to the twentieth century, when it attracted immigrants from around the world. This diversity, however, often resulted in conflict, especially over access to public spaces. Those two themes— diversity and conflict—have shaped Philadelphia’s development and remain visible in the city’s culture, society, and even its geography. Understanding Philadelphia’s past, Kahan says, is key to envisioning future possibilities for the City of Brotherly Love.

Paul Kahan is an expert on U.S. political, economic, and diplomatic history. He earned his Ph.D. in U.S. history from Temple University and lives outside of Philadelphia with his family. This is his seventh book.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  Philadelphia Before 1681
2  The Founding of Philadelphia, 1681–1718
3  Franklin’s Philadelphia, 1718–1765
4  The Revolutionary City, 1765–1800
5  The Athens of America, 1800–1854
6  Civil War and Reconstruction, 1854–1876
7  Corrupt and Contended, 1876–1901
8  Wars, Abroad and at Home, 1901–1945
9  The Golden Age? 1945–1976
10  Crisis . . . and Renaissance? Philadelphia Since 1976

Notes
Index
Acknowledgments