Enfilade

The English description of the book from CEEH:

Gloria Martínez Leiva, with a foreword by Javier Jordán de Urríes, Mariana de Neoburgo, última reina de los Austrias: Vida y legado artístico (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2022), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-8418760082, €50.

Maria Anna of Neuburg (1667−1740), the second wife of Charles II (Carlos II), was queen consort of Spain for ten years and queen dowager for another forty. However, she is a little-known figure to whom historians have barely paid attention. This study takes a look at her life, her image and her artistic patronage, which was not unaffected by the heightened political tension that characterised European history around 1700 and resulted in a change of dynasty in Spain.

Against this turbulent international backdrop, the survey of the queen’s life explores in depth important aspects of court art such as the decoration of her apartments in the royal palaces and sites in which she lived, drawing on documents held in Spanish and foreign archives. It also examines the residences she occupied as a widow in Toledo and Guadalajara, as well as her homes and palaces in Bayonne during her thirty-two-year exile. The approximately one hundred known portraits of her help both unravel her personality and trace the artistic, stylistic and conceptual evolution of the genre over more than half a century, showing how her image—first as queen consort and subsequently as queen dowager—was shaped and publicly projected.

A comprehensive overview of the works of art she commissioned—especially from Luca Giordano—or owned, the portrait gallery she assembled, the paintings she sent to her brother the elector palatine, her richly stocked library and her exceptional founding of the chapel of Loreto in Chiusa (Italy) sheds new light on the patronage of Maria Anna, who is finally studied in her full dimension as the last Habsburg queen.

Gloria Martínez Leiva, who received a PhD in art history for her thesis on Maria Anna of Neuburg, has focused her research on the Spanish royal collections, on which she has published many articles. She is co-author of Quadros y otras cosas que tiene Su Magestad Felipe IV en este Alcázar de Madrid. Año de 1636 (2007) and El inventario del Alcázar de Madrid de 1666. Felipe IV y su colección artística (2015). She has pursued a career in cultural institutions such as Patrimonio Nacional and the Fundación Universitaria Española. She is director of the platform InvestigArt.

Largely a 17th-century story, but also entirely relevant to the 18th century with good 18th-century examples—and to my thinking, a really smart, helpful book for thinking about portraits of any sort (and incredibly well-written). –CH

From The Pennsylvania State UP:

Adam Jasienski, Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-0271093444, $120.

In Praying to Portraits, art historian Adam Jasienski examines the history, meaning, and cultural significance of a crucial image type in the early modern Hispanic world: the sacred portrait.

Across early modern Spain and Latin America, people prayed to portraits. They prayed to ‘true’ effigies of saints, to simple portraits that were repainted as devotional objects, and even to images of living sitters depicted as holy figures. Jasienski places these difficult-to-classify image types within their historical context. He shows that rather than being harbingers of secular modernity and autonomous selfhood, portraits were privileged sites for mediating an individual’s relationship to the divine. Using Inquisition records, hagiographies, art-theoretical treatises, poems, and plays, Jasienski convincingly demonstrates that portraiture was at the very center of broader debates about the status of images in Spain and its colonies.

Highly original and persuasive, Praying to Portraits profoundly revises our understanding of early modern portraiture. It will intrigue art historians across geographical boundaries, and it will also find an audience among scholars of architecture, history, and religion in the early modern Hispanic world.

Adam Jasienski is Associate Professor of Art History in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Portraits and Sacred Images in Early Modernity
1  Sacrificing the Self
2  True Portraits, Lying Portraits
3  Repainting Portraits
4  Portraits as Sacred Images
Conclusion: The Life Histories of Sacred Portraits and the History of Sacred Portraiture

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Éditions Faton:

Christophe Huchet de Quénetain and Moana Weil-Curiel, Étienne Barthélemy Garnier (1765–1849): De l’Académie royale à l’Institut de France (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 2023), 544 pages, ISBN: 978-2878443462, €74.

Étienne-Barthélemy Garnier, dont on connaît parfois la monumentale Consternation de Priam, ou certains très beaux dessins, est trop souvent considéré comme un élève de David. Dans une période complexe sur les plans politique et artistique, il saura tracer un chemin qui va le mener des Prix de l’Académie royale aux cimaises du Salon, des décors officiels aux plus hautes fonctions de l’Institut, dont il deviendra le doyen, sans cesser de plaire à une clientèle privée. Dans ce livre, le lecteur comme l’amateur vont découvrir un bel artiste qui perpétue dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle les préceptes reçus de ses maîtres (Durameau, Doyen et Vien), tous pleinement inscrits dans le XVIIIe siècle. Sa volonté de privilégier, quelle que soit la technique, la lisibilité de ses compositions face au lyrisme ou à l’emphase de certains confrères et la précocité (son Hippolyte quittant Phèdre, son portrait de Napoléon dans son cabinet de travail), sinon l’originalité (sa Charité romaine féminisée…), de certains sujets font assurément partie de ses qualités et nous font regretter que ses projets pour la tapisserie destinés à la manufacture des Gobelins n’aient pu être menés à bien.

Christophe Huchet de Quénetain est historien d’art et antiquaire. Docteur en histoire de l’art de l’université de Paris-IV Sorbonne, auditeur de The Royal Collection Studies et de l’Institut des hautes études de défense nationale, ancien élève de l’École pratique des hautes études, de l’École du Louvre et de l’École Boulle-Greta, il est qualifié aux fonctions de maître de conférences des universités. Il s’intéresse aux arts décoratifs et aux collectionneurs des XVIIe, XVIIIeet XIXe siècles.

Docteur en histoire de l’art de l’École pratique des hautes études, les principaux domaines de recherche de Moana Weil-Curiel sont la peinture et le décor en France et en Italie du XVIIe au XVIIIe siècle, ainsi que l’histoire du goût.

From The Pennsylvania State UP:

Robin Thomas, Palaces of Reason: The Royal Residences of Bourbon Naples (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2024), 212 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0271095219, $110.

Palaces of Reason traces the fascinating history of three royal residences built outside of Naples in the eighteenth century at Capodimonte, Portici, and Caserta. Commissioned by King Charles of Bourbon and Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony, who reigned over the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, these buildings were far more than residences for the monarchs. They were designed to help reshape the economic and cultural fortunes of the realm.

The palaces at Capodimonte, Portici, and Caserta are among the most complex architectural commissions of the eighteenth century. Considering the architecture and decoration of these complexes within their political, cultural, and economic contexts, Robin L. Thomas argues that Enlightenment ideas spurred their construction and influenced their decoration. These modes of thinking saw the palaces as more than just centers of royal pleasure or muscular assertions of the crown’s power. Indeed, writers and royal ministers viewed them as active agents in improving the cultural, political, social, and economic health of the kingdom. By casting the palaces within this narrative, Thomas counters the assumption that they were imitations of Versailles and the swan songs of absolutism, while expanding our understanding of the eighteenth-century European palace more broadly.

Robin L. Thomas is Professor of Art History and Architecture at Penn State University. He is the author of Architecture and Statecraft: Charles of Bourbon’s Naples, 1734–1759, also published by Penn State University Press.

From Yale UP:

John Brewer, Volcanic: Vesuvius in the Age of Revolutions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 544 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0300272666, £30 / $40.

A vibrant, diverse history of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the age of Romanticism

Vesuvius is best known for its disastrous eruption of 79CE. But only after 1738, in the age of Enlightenment, did the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii reveal its full extent. In an era of groundbreaking scientific endeavour and violent revolution, Vesuvius became a focal point of strong emotions and political aspirations, an object of geological enquiry, and a powerful symbol of the Romantic obsession with nature. John Brewer charts the changing seismic and social dynamics of the mountain, and the meanings attached by travellers to their sublime confrontation with nature. The pyrotechnics of revolution and global warfare made volcanic activity the perfect political metaphor, fuelling revolutionary enthusiasm and conservative trepidation. From Swiss mercenaries to English entrepreneurs, French geologists to local Neapolitan guides, German painters to Scottish doctors, Vesuvius bubbled and seethed not just with lava, but with people whose passions, interests, and aims were as disparate as their origins.

John Brewer is emeritus professor of humanities and social sciences at the California Institute of Technology and a faculty associate of the Harvard University History Department. His books include Pleasures of the Imagination, which won the Wolfson History Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Awards.

From The Walpole Society:

The Walpole Society is delighted to announce an agreement with the Berger Collection Educational Trust (BCET) to run the leading book prize for British art history, the Berger Prize. The Berger Prize celebrates brilliant writing and scholarship about the arts and architecture of the United Kingdom. The Walpole Society, which promotes the study of Britain’s art history, will deliver the Berger Prize from 2024, working alongside the BCET and Denver Art Museum, home of the Berger Collection of British art. The Walpole Society was appointed following the retirement of Robin Simon, co-founder and organiser of the prize since 2001. Chair of BCET trustees, Katherine MB Berger, and Dr Jonny Yarker, incoming chair of judges, paid tribute to Robin Simon at the 2023 Prize ceremony.

Several initiatives starting in 2024 will build on the Prize’s two decades of support for British art history, further broadening its reach:

• A new website to showcase the prize.

• The prize’s eligibility and rules, with a renewed commitment to governance and transparency, will be updated. Nominations for the 2024 prize close on 28 March.

• The incumbent prizewinner will deliver a lecture at the Denver Art Museum, home of the Berger Collection. The 2024 lecture by Tim Clayton is on 7 May.

• A summer event in London will announce the long list. In 2024 this will be on 28 June, when Tim Clayton will talk about his 2023 Berger Prizewinning book, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire.

• New from 2024, each shortlisted book will receive a prize of £500. The 2024 shortlist will be announced at a virtual event on 15 September.

• The first prize of £5000 is the largest sum offered by any art history book prize. The winner of the 2024 Berger Prize will be presented on 15 November, at a ceremony at London’s Reform Club.

• A new podcast from The Walpole Society, launching in the latter part of 2024, will showcase brilliant writing and scholarship about the arts and architecture of the United Kingdom, with a focus on Berger Prize shortlisted authors.

• Walpole Society trustee, Dr Jonny Yarker, succeeds Robin Simon as chair of judges. Joining the panel in 2024 are Clare Hornsby, Chairwoman of The Walpole Society, and Angelica Daneo, Chief Curator at the Denver Art Museum. Click here for information about the 2024 prize jury.

Katherine MB Berger, Chairman of the Berger Collection Educational Trust (BCET), commented: “We are all so excited and we look forward to future vibrant initiatives—and to working together with The Walpole Society on our shared aim for promoting excellence in British art history.”

Clare Hornsby, Chairwoman of The Walpole Society, said: “We’re honoured to have been chosen by the Berger Collection Educational Trust to run the Berger Prize. The Prize feels like a natural fit for The Walpole Society, whose goals are so closely aligned with it and with the BCET. We intend the Prize in this new era to reach an even wider audience—in the UK, US, and internationally, whilst honouring its twenty year heritage established by Robin Simon and Katherine Berger.”

Incoming chair of Berger Prize judges, Dr Jonny Yarker, said: “British art history is extraordinary for its richness, range and creativity. I look forward to the Berger Prize both recognising the brilliance and dedication of researchers, whose books are often the summation of a life’s research, and also for the Prize to offer an annual snapshot of the field of studies in all its diversity and depth.”

From Reaktion, with additional distribution by The University of Chicago Press:

Stephen Harris, The Beauty of the Flower: The Art and Science of Botanical Illustration (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 336 pages, ISBN: 97-81789147803, £30 / $45.

Featuring superb and rare images, this book reveals the fascinating stories behind botanical illustration.

In a world flooded with images designed to create memories, validate perceptions and influence others, botanical illustration is about creating technically accurate depictions of plants. Reproductions of centuries-old botanical illustrations frequently adorn greetings cards, pottery and advertising, to promote heritage or generate income, yet their art is scientific: its purpose is to record, display and transmit scientific data. The Beauty of the Flower shows us how scientific botanical illustrations are collaborations among artists, scientists and publishers. It explores the evolution and interchanges of these illustrations since the mid-fifteenth century, the ways in which they have been used to communicate scientific ideas about plants and how views of botanical imagery change. Featuring unique images rarely seen outside of specialist literature this book reveals the fascinating stories behind these remarkable illustrations.

Stephen A. Harris is an Associate Professor of Plant Sciences and curator of the herbarium at the University of Oxford. His books include Sunflowers (Reaktion, 2018) and Roots to Seeds: 400 Years of Oxford Botany (2021).

c o n t e n t s

Preface
1  Plant and Page
2  Themes and Trends
3  Science and Illustration
4  Blood and Treasure
5  Garden and Grove
6  Inside and Out
7  Habit and Habitat
8  Observe and Test
9  Sweat and Tears

Appendix: Plant Names
References
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index

From Princeton UP:

Gunnar Broberg, The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus, translated by Anna Paterson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 512 pages, ISBN: 978-0691213422, £35 / $40.

A new biography of Carl Linnaeus, offering a vivid portrait of Linnaeus’s life and work

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. Linnaeus himself classified thousands of species; the simple and immediately recognizable abbreviation ‘L’ is used to mark classifications originally made by Linnaeus. This biography, by the leading authority on Linnaeus, offers a vivid portrait of Linnaeus’s life and work. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished sources—including diaries and personal correspondence—as well as new research, it presents revealing and original accounts of his family life, the political context in which he pursued his work, and his eccentric views on sexuality.

The Man Who Organized Nature describes Linnaeus’s childhood in a landscape of striking natural beauty and how this influenced his later work. Linnaeus’s Lutheran pastor father, knowledgeable about plants and an enthusiastic gardener, helped foster an early interest in botany. The book examines the political connections that helped Linnaeus secure patronage for his work, and untangles his ideas about sexuality. These were not, as often assumed, an attempt to naturalize gender categories but more likely reflected the laissez-faire attitudes of the era. Linnaeus, like many other brilliant scientists, could be moody and egotistical; the book describes his human failings as well as his medical and scientific achievements. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Man Who Organized Nature—one of the only biographies of Linnaeus to appear in English—provides new and fascinating insights into the life of one of history’s most consequential and enigmatic scientists.

Gunnar Broberg (1942–2022) was professor emeritus of history of ideas and sciences at Lund University in Sweden. He was the author of numerous books, including Golden Apples, which won the August Prize for best Swedish nonfiction title of the year, and The History of the Night, which was nominated for Best Swedish History Book of the Year. Anna Paterson, a retired neuroscientist, is an award-winning translator and the author of Scotland’s Landscape: Endangered Icon.