New Book | The Centrality of Slavery
From Penn Press:
John Craig Hammond, The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-1512828429, $45. Early American Studies Series.
How French and American colonizers created systems of enslavement in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
The Centrality of Slavery examines how French and American colonizers used the powers of various imperial regimes to create slave societies in present-day Missouri and Illinois from the 1720s through the 1820s. The first book-length study of slavery and empire in both Illinois and Missouri, it begins with the origins of Native American and African American enslavement in the region. It then traces how successive French, Spanish, British, and American regimes shaped the development of slavery over the course of a century, examines the significance of the Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery in Illinois, and then analyzes the diverging histories of slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the early 1800s. The book concludes with an analysis of the Missouri Crisis and the compromise of 1820, along with the Middle Mississippi Valley’s significance in the road towards disunion and civil war in the late 1850s. More broadly, The Centrality of Slavery argues that the Middle Mississippi Valley sat astride the crossroads of imperial North America. The practices of empire and enslavement forged and fought over there exerted an outsized influence on the history of slavery in North America and the United States. Rather than treating the region’s eighteenth-century past as a prologue to the rise of the United States, John Craig Hammond analyzes the colonial history of the region on its own terms, through the European colonizers, American settlers, and enslaved people of Indigenous and African descent who shaped the development of slavery in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
John Craig Hammond is Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, New Kensington.
New Book | The Household War
From Penn Press:
John Blanton, The Household War: Property, Personhood, and the Domestication of Anglo-American Slavery, 1547–1729 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1512828306, $55.
A bold reinterpretation of perennial debates over the origins and development of slavery in colonial English North America.
The Household War offers a bold reinterpretation of perennial debates over the origins and development of slavery in colonial English North America. John N. Blanton argues that the law and practice of slavery in the empire’s earliest American colonies were shaped by a tension between two competing definitions of the institution. One strand of thought, war-slavery ideology, claimed that the power of life and death transformed war captives into chattel slaves. The power to kill defined both war and slavery. But bringing war captives into enslavers’ private households was a dangerous proposition, and so a parallel ‘domestication’ ideology emerged calling for limitations on the power of enslavers and the recognition of the enslaved as persons held to labor in a variant of English servitude.
The Household War examines how the tensions between war-slavery and domestication ideologies, along with crucial political, economic, and cultural differences, shaped the development of slavery in Virginia and Massachusetts from their founding through 1729, creating distinct systems of bondage in England’s flagship mainland colonies. In Massachusetts, where a diversified and dynamic commercial economy afforded opportunities for mobility and access to material resources, the dominance of domestication ideology enabled enslaved people to negotiate their bondage, attain free status, and build free Black households and communities. Virginia, however, committed itself to war-slavery early in its development, with enslaved people defined as articles of property subject to enslavers’ power of life and death while the extreme inequality of plantation society made free Black household formation nearly impossible. Long before American independence highlighted their differences, then, Massachusetts and Virginia were already on distinct trajectories, laying the foundation for a future house divided on the question of slavery.
John N. Blanton is Assistant Professor of History at City College of New York.
New Book | Death, Disease. and Mystical Experience in Early Modern Art
From Routledge:
Michael Hill and Jennifer Milam, eds., Death, Disease. and Mystical Experience in Early Modern Art (New York: Roultedge, 2025), 452 pages, ISBN: 978-9463729185 (hardback), $180 / ISBN: 978-1003693741 (ebook), $57.
Fear of death and disease preoccupied the European consciousness throughout the early modern era, becoming most acute at times of plague and epidemics. In these times of heightened anxieties, images of saints and protectors served to reassure the faithful of their religious protection against infection. Modes of visual engagement and devotional subject matter were coupled in new ways to reinforce the emotive impact of art works and to reaffirm the perceived reality of the afterlife. In this context, a visual language of mystical devotion, which overcame the limits of the body and even eroticised its suffering, could serve the needs of the desolate and the pained. In this series of essays focused on spiritual sensibilities in Renaissance art and its legacies, authors present original ideas about the themes of death, disease, and mystical experience, based primarily on the study of objects and their documented historical contexts. Methodologically wide-ranging in approach, the resulting volume provides novel insights into the interplay between suffering and art making in the Western world.
Michael Hill is Head of Art History and Theory at the National Art School in Sydney. His research focuses on the art and architecture of the Italian Baroque, Australian sculpture, and art historiography. Michael has also written with Peter Kohane a number of articles of the idea of decorum in architectural theory. Jennifer Milam is Professor of Art History and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Newcastle in Waikato. Her research focuses on art, architecture, and garden design during the eighteenth century. Her publications include A Cultural History of Plants in the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomsbury, 2022), Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century (University of Delaware Press, 2022), Beyond Chinoiserie: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West during the Late Qing Dynasty (Brill, 2018), Historical Dictionary of Rococo Art (Scarecrow Press, 2011), Fragonard’s Playful Paintings. Visual Games in Rococo Art (University of Manchester Press, 2007), and Women, Art and The Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Ashgate Press, 2003).
c o n t e n t s
Introduction: Manipulating the Sacred — Jennifer Milam and Michael Hill
1 Mary as Model for Trecento Mourning — Judith Steinhoff
2 Pacem meam do vobis: Earthly Suffering and Celestial Redemption in the Trecento Fresco Program by Vitale da Bologna at Pomposa Abbey — Catherine Blake
3 Dying to be Born Again: Death in the Florentine Sacre Rappresentazioni — Nerida Newbigin
4 The Visual Transformations of St Anthony the Abbot: From Protector of the Sick to Victor over Sexual Desire — Charles Zika
5 Giovanni Cariani’s Woman Reclining in a Landscape: The Erotic Subverted — Carolyn Smyth
6 Touching Visions: Female Mystics Interacting with the Christ Child and with Mary — Patricia Simons
7 Queering Mysticism and the Lactating Virgin: The Madonna delle Grazie with Souls in Purgatory and its Audience of Nuns — Christina Neilson
8 Securing Heavenly Protection in Apocalyptic Times: A Series of Fresco Votives in the Oratory of San Giovanni Battista in Urbino — Di Haskell
9 The Long Goodbye: Resurrecting Rome’s Apostolic Past in The Final Embrace of Saints Peter and Paul — Barbara Wisch
10 The Beautiful Death of the Count of Orgaz: Andrés Núñez, El Greco, and the Making of a Counter Reformation Saint — Karen McCluskey
11 A Vessel to be Filled: Caravaggio’s Conversion of St. Paul in Santa Maria del Popolo — Michael Hill
12 Lo Strascino’s Lamento and the Visual Culture of the French Pox around 1500 — John Gagne
13 Whiz King: Urination as Divination in Prints for Louis XIV — Mark de Vitis
14 David’s Saint Roch: Plague Painting in the Age of Enlightenment — Jennifer Milam
15 Blake’s Petworth House Last Judgment and Female Anatomy — Anthony Apesos
16 Cocteau’s London Elegy: Re-purposed Renaissance Imagery in a Twentieth-Century Crucifixion — Stephen Holford
Index
Exhibition | The Count of Artois, Prince and Patron
Château de Maisons, in Maisons-Laffitte, a northwest outer suburb of Paris, about 12 miles from the city center
(Photo: © EPV / Thomas Garnier)
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From the Château de Versailles:
The Count of Artois, Prince and Patron: The Youth of the Last King of France
Château de Maisons, Maisons-Laffitte, 14 November 2025 — 2 March 2026
The result of a partnership between the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and the Palace of Versailles, this exhibition traces the life of the Count of Artois (1757–1836), brother of Louis XVI and the future Charles X, through his residences, his artistic projects, and his passions. From the splendor of the Château de Maisons to the count’s exile in 1789, it reveals the journey of a refined prince at the heart of the 18th century.
The exhibition begins with a presentation of the Château de Maisons in the 18th century and then traces the life of the Prince of Artois from his birth to his exile. The prince’s personality, his life, his patronage, and his taste are explored through a great variety of objects: graphic arts, paintings, objets d’art, sculptures, furniture, curiosities, and books. The exhibition also highlights the prince’s interest in architecture, as he was the last owner of the Château de Maisons under the Ancien Régime. Sourced primarily from the collections of the Palace of Versailles, the exhibition benefits from additional prestigious loans from the National Archives, the National Library of France, the Louvre Museum, the Mobilier National, the Château de Fontainebleau, the Carnavalet Museum, the Musée de l’Armée – Invalides, the municipal library of Versailles, and the Fine Arts Museums of Amiens and Reims, as well as from private collections.
The exhibition as installed at the Château de Maisons
(Photo: © EPV / Thomas Garnier)
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The Count of Artois, Future Charles X
Reputed for his frivolous spirit and taste for luxury, the Count of Artois was both an attractive and controversial figure, eccentric yet conservative. Charles-Philippe of France, known under the title Count of Artois, was born in Versailles on 9 October 1757. He was the grandson of Louis XV and the brother of Louis XVI and the future Louis XVIII. He became King of France upon the death of the latter in 1824, under the name Charles X, and soon emerged as the representative of the most uncompromising Catholic faction. He was consecrated at Reims the following year. The July Ordinances of 1830, which restricted freedom of the press and dissolved the Chamber, triggered an uprising that became known as the Three Glorious Days. Faced with the revolt, Charles X abdicated and left France. His exile led him first to Scotland, then to Prague, and finally to Istria (a peninsula shared by Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy), where he died on 6 November 1836.
A Taste for Innovation
From an early age, the Count of Artois distinguished himself through his marked interest in splendor and refinement, coupled with an unrestrained passion for the modern currents of art and fashion. He was very close to Marie-Antoinette at the beginning of her reign, and they shared this common enthusiasm. However, unlike the queen, constrained by the demands of court etiquette, the Count of Artois enjoyed far greater freedom to adopt and promote the latest trends.
The château de Maisons, a masterpiece by François Mansart, was built from 1633 onward for René de Longueil, a magistrate of the Parliament of Paris. Designed as a pleasure residence, it became, as early as the 17th century, a place admired by the court. King Louis XIV himself visited it several times. In the following century, the estate entered a new era of splendor when, in 1777, the Count of Artois acquired it. He commissioned the architect François-Joseph Bélanger to transform the château with ambitious embellishment projects, refined interior decoration, and modern gardens. The count intended to make it both a setting for entertainment and a symbol of aristocratic refinement. But the upheavals of 1789 brought the work to a halt, and the prince’s property was confiscated.
After the Revolution, the château passed through various hands, from Marshal Lannes under the Empire to the banker Jacques Laffitte, who subdivided the park. The château was saved from ruin at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to its listing as a historic monument and its acquisition by the State. Today, restored and open to the public, the Château de Maisons remains a jewel of the Grand Siècle and still bears the mark of the Count of Artois’s lavish ambitions, whose tenure constitutes one of the most brilliant episodes in its history.
A Dialogue between Collections
The partnership established in 2013 between the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and the Palace of Versailles creates a dialogue between collections that are too often overlooked and major landmarks of France’s national heritage. Temporary exhibitions allow both institutions to pool their resources in order to offer as many people as possible the opportunity to discover, or rediscover, chapters of French history within the prestigious setting of national monuments. The CMN and the Palace of Versailles have concluded a deposit agreement that will allow the return and presentation, in situ, of works that were once at Maisons during the time of the Count of Artois, seized during the Revolution, and later kept at Versailles.
Curators
• Laurent Salomé, director of the National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon
• Vincent Bastien, scientific collaborator at the Palace of Versailles
• Benoît Delcourte, chief curator at the Palace of Versailles
• Raphaël Masson, chief curator at the Palace of Versailles
• Clotilde Roy, responsible for enriching the collections of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux
• Gabriel Wick, doctor of history
Vincent Bastien, Benoît Delcourte, and Clotilde Roy, eds., Le Comte d’Artois, Prince et Mécène: La Jeunesse du Dernier Roi de France (Paris: Éditions du patrimoine, 2025), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-2757710821, €16.
Exhibition | Painters, Ports, and Profits
Unknown artist (Company style), Breadnut (Artocarpus camansi), ca. 1825, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, sheet: 15 × 19 1/4 inches (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B2022.5).
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From the press release for the exhibition, which opens today:
Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 8 January — 21 June 2026
Curated by Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer
The Yale Center for British Art presents Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850 from January 8 through June 21, 2026. Spanning a century of artistic production, the exhibition reveals the material and technical innovations of the Indian, Chinese, and British artists whose work and lives were shaped by the British East India Company’s global reach. Featuring more than one hundred objects, Painters, Ports, and Profits highlights the beauty and range of the extraordinary artwork produced within the context of one of the most powerful and ruthless corporations in history.
“This exhibition brings to light an astonishing chapter of global art history, when artistic innovation and exchange flourished under the shadow of empire,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art. “It tells the story of direct encounters between artists from different continents and traditions, who responded to one another by experimenting with new materials and methods. We are thrilled to share these important, and rarely seen, works from our collection and to invite new reflection on their artistic legacy.”
Between 1750 and 1850, the Company’s growing commercial, military, and political operations linked an incredibly varied group of artists—amateurs, soldiers, and professionals—into a vast network that stretched from London to Calcutta (Kolkata) to Canton (Guangzhou). As goods, people, and ideas circulated through the Company’s networks, artists experimented with papers, pigments, and methods, adapting techniques from different traditions to develop a striking visual language that connected art to the expanding global economy.
“We are excited to take visitors on a journey to ports and trading cities across India and China where artists produced captivating and innovative works of art,” said exhibition curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer. “The period of the East India Company is one in which art and business intersected. There is a profound tension between the ventures of a global corporation and the works of beauty created by the artists in its orbit. With technical brilliance, these artists ingeniously fused traditions and materials together to develop new ways of making, picturing, and selling.”
Years in development, the preparations for Painters, Ports and Profits included extensive original research and careful technical study by curators and conservators at the YCBA in collaboration with conservation scientists at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The resulting exhibition illuminates the museum’s deep holdings of Asian art, showcasing many exceptional works that have hardly ever or never been displayed. Highlights of the exhibition include stunning small- and large-scale portraits, such as the monumental Woman Holding a Hookah at Faizabad, India (1772) by Tilly Kettle and the intimate Portrait of a Woman (ca. 1850) by an artist from the circle of eminent painter Lam Qua. Watercolor drawings of a great Indian fruit bat by Bhawani Das (1778–82) and breadnut by an artist once known (ca. 1825), among others, record the flora and fauna of the Company’s domain with striking naturalism. A spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll uses delicate watercolor to depict the city of Lucknow, India, in panoramic detail, which recent technical analysis has revealed was completed by multiple artists working in collaboration.
Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850 is organized by the Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition is curated by Laurel O. Peterson, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the YCBA, and Holly Shaffer, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University.
r e l a t e d p r o g r a m m i n g
First Look | Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850
Thursday, 15 January, 4pm, Lecture Hall and Livestream
Spring Exhibitions Openings
Thursday, 26 February, 4pm, Lecture Hall and Livestream
Curator Tours
Thursdays, 22 January, 26 March, 16 April, 21 May, and 18 June, 4pm
Docent Tours
Saturdays, 3pm
The catalogue is published by YCBA and distributed by Yale UP:
Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, eds., Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850 (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2026), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0300286540, $65. With contributions by Mark Aronson, Tim Barringer, Swati Chattopadhyay, Soyeon Choi, Anita Dey, Gillian Forrester, Navina Najat Haidar, Richard R. Hark, Emma Hartman, Brooke Krancer, Margaret Masselli, Kaylani Madhura Ramachandran, Romita Ray, Yuthika Sharma, Marcie Wiggins, Winnie Wong, and Tom Young.
Featuring more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the YCBA’s collection, including architectural drawings, watercolors, and hand-colored aquatints, the catalog critically reconsiders the vibrant creative exchanges between artists in India, China, and Britain during a period driven by ruthless commercial and colonial expansion.
New Book | The Royal Pavilion, Brighton
From Yale UP:
Alexandra Loske, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton: A Regency Palace of Colour and Sensation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300266665, $50.
The first in-depth study since the 1980s of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, a building that is often considered the most impressive architectural expression of the Romantic imagination and that has become a hallmark of Regency style
Created between 1787 and 1823 by George IV, the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is perhaps the most daring and enchanting example of a building that expresses the European fascination with what in the early nineteenth century was considered the ‘Orient’, in particular China and India. The building, with its Indian-inspired exterior, was the work of the renowned architect John Nash, who with the contributions of several other gifted and inventive architects, artists, and designers, created a building that draws you in, takes you on a journey, and plays with your senses. Featuring new photography, this lavishly illustrated book will provide a fresh look at the sumptuous Chinoiserie interiors of the Royal Pavilion and their enduring appeal. Drawing on recent research, conservation projects, and the unprecedented loan exhibition A Prince’s Treasure: From Buckingham Palace to the Royal Pavilion (2019–22), this book celebrates the colours and sensual beauty of these interiors while situating the Royal Pavilion in the context of the time of its creation and development under royal ownership, from its beginning in the wake of the French Revolution, through its transformation and extension during and just after the Napoleonic Wars, to its fate and legacy in the early Victorian era.
Alexandra Loske is a British-German art historian, writer, and curator with a particular interest in late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century European art and architecture, specialising in the history of colour. She has been working at the University of Sussex since 1999, where she also studied art history and completed an AHRC-funded DPhil in 2014. The subject of her doctoral thesis was the use of colour and the application of colour theory in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Since 2014 Alexandra has been a curator at the Royal Pavilion. Since 2022, she has been the curator of the Royal Pavilion and Historic Properties at Brighton & Hove Museums.
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Note added (21 January 2026) — Alexandra Loske gave an online talk related to the book on 22 October 2025. The event was hosted by Cooper Hewitt and moderated by Jamie Kwan, the museum’s Assistant Curator of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design. A recording of the talk is available here.
New Book | A Guide to Regency Dress
From Yale UP:
Hilary Davidson, A Guide to Regency Dress: From Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-0300282412, $25.
An accessible, fun, yet authoritative guide to male and female Regency fashions.
Celebrated dress historian Hilary Davidson brings together nearly 20 years of research on Regency fashion in an illustrated guide for the first time. All the elements of the Regency wardrobe of both men and women—from coats, gowns and undergarments to shoes, accessories, beauty, hair and jewellery—are assembled, along with their textiles and trimmings. A Guide to Regency Dress is an essential companion to navigate the fashion world of Jane Austen or re-create the Regency look.
Hilary Davidson is associate professor and chair of MA Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. She has curated, lectured, broadcast, and published extensively in her field and is author of Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion and Jane Austen’s Wardrobe.
Exhibition | Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture
Aimee Ng, the exhibition’s curator, is the subject of a recent feature by Alexandra Starr in The New York Times (20 December 2025). From the press release (3 November 2025) for the exhibition:
Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture
The Frick Collection, New York, 12 February — 11 May 2026
Curated by Aimee Ng
Thomas Gainsborough, Mary, Countess Howe, 1763–64, oil on canvas, 243 × 154 cm (English Heritage, Kenwood House, London).
Beginning 12 February 2026, The Frick Collection will present its first special exhibition dedicated to the English artist Thomas Gainsborough, and the first devoted to his portraiture ever held in New York. Displaying more than two dozen paintings, the show will explore the richly interwoven relationship between Gainsborough’s portraits and fashion in the eighteenth century. The works included represent some of the greatest achievements from every stage of this period-defining artist’s career, drawn from the Frick’s holdings and from collections across North America and the United Kingdom.
The trappings and trade of fashion filled the artist’s world—in magazines and tailor shops, at the opera and on promenades—and his portraits were at the heart of it all. This exhibition invites visitors to consider not only the actual clothing the painter depicted, but also the role of his canvases as both records of and players in the larger conception of fashion: encompassing everything from class, wealth, labor, and craft to formality, intimacy, and time. Recent technical investigations also shed light on Gainsborough’s artistic process, including connections to materials that fueled the fashion industry.
Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture is organized by Aimee Ng, the museum’s Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator. She states: “The spectacular and at times, to modern eyes, absurd fashions in portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and his contemporaries continue to fascinate viewers today. The appeal of these demonstrations of taste, status, and wealth persists in tension with increased recognition, over the last few decades, of the injustices that often made such extravagance possible. This exhibition necessarily deals with clothing and personal attire, while exploring how fashion was understood in Gainsborough’s time, how it touched every level of society, and how portraiture itself was as much a construction and invention as a sitter’s style.”
Aimee Ng, Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2026), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-0847876235, $50. With an additional essay by Kari Rayner.
The exhibition is complemented by a richly illustrated catalogue authored by Aimee Ng, with an additional essay by Kari Rayner, Associate Conservator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Along with entries for each work in the show, the catalogue features essays on portraiture and self-fashioning in Gainsborough’s era, on materials and techniques that linked clothing and paintings, and on the roles of class and time in eighteenth-century style. The volume considers how and why Gainsborough and his sitters—from dukes and duchesses to the artist’s family members to the once-enslaved writer and composer Ignatius Sancho—shaped how they would be immortalized in paint. The book also touches on the longstanding appeal of Gainsborough’s art, particularly its renewed popularity a century after the painter’s death among American collectors such as the Fricks, Vanderbilts, and Huntingtons.
Major support for Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture is provided by an anonymous donor in honor of Ian Wardropper. Additional funding is provided by Barbara and Bradford Evans, Kathleen Feldstein, Michael and Jane Horvitz, Dr. Arlene P. McKay, The Helen Clay Frick Foundation, James K. Kloppenburg, David and Kate Bradford, Katie von Strasser – InspiratumColligere, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, Edward Lee Cave, Mr. and Mrs. Hubert L. Goldschmidt, Jennifer Schnabl, the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, Bradley Isham Collins and Amy Fine Collins, Siri and Bob Marshall, Bailey Foote, Alexander Mason Hankin, Brittany Beyer Harwin and Zachary Harwin, and Otto Naumann and Heidi D. Shafranek. The exhibition catalogue is funded by Dr. Tai-Heng Cheng.
New Book | Portrait Miniatures
As noted by Adam Busiakiewicz, at Art History News; from Michael Imhof:
Bernd Pappe and Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, eds., Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions, Manufacturing Aspects, and Collections (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2025), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915096, €40.
Twenty-two renowned experts from nine countries present the miniature portrait from different perspectives, discussing the private use of miniatures, special depictions, and messages conveyed by miniatures. Significant but little-known museum collections are introduced alongside insightful information about the living conditions of the artists active at the time. Lastly, aspects regarding the production techniques for miniatures are examined.
This fourth volume publishes the presentations given at the 2024 conference held by the Tansey Miniatures Foundation. Interested individuals from all over the world come together in Celle every two to three years at these conventions on the portrait miniature to discuss this special genre of portrait painting.
The table of contents can be seen here»
Exhibition | Hercules: Hero and Anti-Hero
Exhibition photo with a mid-19th-century plaster cast after Balthasar Permoser’s ‘Saxon Hercules’. As noted on the SKD’s Instagram account, “The original crowned the Wall Pavilion of the Dresden Zwinger from 1718 to 1945, symbolising its patron, Augustus the Strong, with his astonishing physical strength and the Herculean efforts he undertook every day as the Saxon-Polish ruler. Where Hercules dwells with the vault of heaven, the Garden of the Hesperides cannot be far away. And so Permoser’s Hercules gazed upon the orange trees in the Zwinger courtyard, which bore the apples of the Hesperides, as it were, and promised Saxony a golden age.”
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Hercules: Hero and Anti-Hero
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 22 November 2025 — 28 June 2026
Hercules (‘Heracles’ in Greek), the best-known hero of classical antiquity, is one of the most enduring and popular mythical figures anywhere in the world. His name is universally known, and the phrase ‘a Herculean task’ is an everyday expression for anything requiring extraordinary strength and effort.
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections, SKD) is dedicating an exhibition to this demigod in the Winckelmann Forum of the Semper Gallery of the Zwinger. With Hercules: Hero and Anti-Hero, the Skulpturensammlung bis 1800 (Sculpture Collection up to 1800) and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) present a wide range of depictions of this mythological character. Featuring 135 objects, including top-quality sculptures, paintings, prints, coins, armour, and works of the goldsmith’s art, the exhibition explores the question of why Hercules has been such a fascinating figure for millennia and continues to be so today—one need only think, for example, of some of the major films of recent years.
As the son of the supreme deity Zeus and the Theban queen Alcmene, Hercules was a demigod—with superhuman strength and human flaws. His popularity was revived during the Renaissance. In Rome, dozens of large-scale Hercules statues were already known in the sixteenth century, and these had a huge influence on early modern art. The exhibition showcases works of art from classical antiquity to the neoclassical period, with some glimpses into the present day. Alongside objects from the rich holdings of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, there are prestigious loans from such eminent institutions as the Vatican Museums in Rome, the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.
In a prologue and five chapters, the exhibition explores the famous ‘Labours of Hercules’, his relationships with women, his anti-heroic escapades, and his role as a model of virtue for rulers such as Alexander the Great and August the Strong. Balthasar Permoser’s colossal Saxon Hercules, created for the Rampart Pavilion of the Dresden Zwinger, bears witness to this.
Hercules was evidently not only strong and virtuous. In some situations, he behaved dishonourably, succumbed to vice, or committed cruel injustices, even against his own children. He often fought against evil for the good of humanity, but he was also a murderer, rapist, drunkard, and thief. Through significant works of art and an extensive accompanying programme, the exhibition encourages reflection on the role of heroism in history and its relevance in our society today. Particular attention is paid to the extraordinary narrative richness of the myth.
Videos telling eight of the stories about Hercules have been created specially for the exhibition. Dresden-born actor Martin Brambach—known for his role as Chief Inspector Peter Michael Schnabel in the television series Tatort—relates important and amusing episodes from the life of the hero and anti-hero. A multimedia guide is available free of charge.
Holger Jacob-Friesen, ed., Herkules: Held und Antiheld (Dresden: Sandstein Kultur, 2025), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-3954988945, €38.
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