The Burlington Magazine, November 2023
Charles Wild, Kensington Palace: The King’s Gallery, 1816, watercolour with touches of bodycolour over etched outlines, 20 × 25 cm c
(Royal Collection Trust, 922158)
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The eighteenth century in the November issue of The Burlington, which focuses on sculpture:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (November 2023)
e d i t o r i a l
• History of Art after Brexit, p. 1171.
It is probably fair to say that the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020 as a consequence of the referendum of 2016 was not greeted with much enthusiasm by professional art historians. The subject as it has developed over the past century is by its very nature transnational in outlook.
a r t i c l e
• Jonathan Marsden, “George I’s Kensington Palace: The Sculptural Dimension,” pp. 1196–1205.
William Kent’s decoration of the new state rooms at Kensington Palace, London, for George I in 1722–27 has long been recognised as a pioneering exercise in neo-Palladianism. It was also an early example of the use of Classical sculpture in English interiors, a development in which Michael Rysbrack played a larger role than has formerly been recognised.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e
• Nicola Ciarlo, “Domenico Guidi in Padula: A Rediscovered Annunciation,” pp. 1206–09.
r e v i e w s
• Adriano Aymonino, “Albanimania,” pp. 1214–19.
A series of recent publications has turned the spotlight on Cardinal Alessandro Albani—described by Winckelmann as ‘the greatest patron in the world’—his villa in Rome, and collection of Classical antiquities, which have become newly accessible to scholars and the public after decades of seclusion.
• Heather Hyde Minor, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Piranesi and the Modern Age (Nationalmuseum, Oslo / MIT Press, 2022), pp. 1239–41.
• Adam Bowett, Review of Ada De Wit, Grinling Gibbons and His Contemporaries (1650–1700): The Golden Age of Woodcarving in the Netherlands and Britain (Brepols, 2022), pp. 1247–49.
Archangel Gabriel, attributed by Nicola Ciarlo to Domenico Guidi, ca.1699–1701, marble, 94 × 81 × 39 cm, with socle (Padula: Charterhouse of S. Lorenzo).
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of Jan Zahle, Thorvaldsen: Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period, 3 volumes (Thorvaldsens Museum and Aarhus University Press, 2020), pp. 1249–50.
• Natacha Coquery, Review of Iris Moon, Luxury after the Terror (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), pp. 1254–56.
• Joshua Mardell, Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire, North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023), pp. 1256–57.
o b i t u a r y
• Paul Williamson, Obituary for Michael Kauffmann (1931–2023), pp. 1258–60.
Keeper of the Department of Prints & Drawings and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum and subsequently Director of the Courtauld Institute of of Art, Michael Kauffmann was a scholar with a remarkable breadth of interest, as well as a widely respected and sensitive administrator and manager.
s u p p l e m e n t
• “Recent Acquisitions (2007–2023) of European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,” pp. 1261–68.
Seventeen years have passed since the publication of the last supplement in this Magazine describing the recent sculpture acquisitions made by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A). The present supplement therefore highlights a selection of the most noteworthy works acquired in the intervening years.
Exhibition | The Regency in Paris, 1715–1723
Pierre Denis Martin, View of Paris from the Quai de la Rapée toward la Salpêtrière, l’île Saint-Louis, and l’île de la Cité, 1716, oil on canvas, 170 × 315 cm (Paris: Louvre / Musee Carnavalet)
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Now on view at the Musée Carnavalet:
The Régence in Paris, 1715–1723: The Dawn of the Enlightenment
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, 20 October 2023 — 25 February 2024
Curated by Valérie Guillaume, with José de Los Llanos and Ulysse Jardat
The Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris presents an exhibition on the Regency, a forgotten period in history, marking the return of the King and of political, economic, and cultural life to Paris.
Louis XIV died in Versailles on 1 September 1715, leaving behind a nation in debt and a five-year-old child too young to rule, Louis XV, as his heir. On 2 September, the Duke Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the late King, took on the role of Regent of France. This exhibition takes place as part of the tricentennial commemoration of the Regent’s death.
In 1715, the court, the government, and all the administrations moved back to Paris, the second city in Europe, whose population then increased significantly. Thus, the city, and notably the Palais-Royal, the Regent’s residence, became the heart of all political life. A period of intense cultural effervescence ensued, giving rise to a world of philosophical, economic, and artistic innovations. Voltaire, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Law, and Watteau are some the most well-known figures of the time. With the invention of paper money and the bankruptcy of 1720, these years of economic and financial frenzy were interspersed with significant twists and turns. Under the Régence emerged a newfound freedom of criticism, which would become known as the spirit of the Enlightenment.
The exhibition’s thematic structure highlights the innovations of the period in order to illustrate the breadth of their historical significance. Over 200 works from public and private collections—paintings, sculptures, prints, items of decor, and pieces of furniture—help us explore this period of history, accounting for the mutations of society at a time when Paris was becoming the cultural capital of France in a permanent way.
Curators
• Valérie Guillaume, director of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
• José de Los Llanos, head curator, in charge of the Graphic Arts Department and the Maquettes Department
• Ulysse Jardat, curator, head of the Decor, Furniture, and Decorative Arts Department
La Régence à Paris (1715–1723): L’aube des Lumières (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2023), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605705, €39.
New Book | Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment
From Bloomsbury:
Stacey Sloboda, ed., Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment: A Cultural History (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1350408029, $120.
Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of interior design and interior spaces from 1700 to 1850. Considering the interior as material, social, and cultural artefact, this volume moves beyond conventional descriptive accounts of changing styles and interior design fashions, to explore in depth the effect on the interior of the materials, processes, aesthetic philosophies, and cultural attitudes of the age. From the Palace of Versailles to Virginia coffeehouses, and from chinoiserie bathhouses to the trading exchanges of the West Indies, the chapters in this book examine a wide range of themes including technological advancements, public spaces, gender and sexuality, and global movements in interior designs and decorations. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars, this volume provides the most authoritative and comprehensive survey of the history of interiors and interior architecture in the long eighteenth century.
Stacey Sloboda is Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
c o n t e n t s
Preface
Introduction: The Interior in the Age of Enlightenment — Stacey Sloboda
1 Beauty: Cultural Aesthetics in the Enlightenment Interior — Anne Nellis Richter
2 Technology: Cultural Transfer, Imitation, and Improvement of Materials and Surfaces of the Interior — Noémie Étienne
3 Designers, Professions, Trades: Conceiving and Making the Interior — Conor Lucey
4 Global Movements: Exoticism and Hybridity in the Globalized Interior — Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding
5 Private Spaces: Performing the Home — Mimi Hellman
6 Public Spaces: Staging Ritual and Shaping Identity — Laurel O. Peterson
7 Gender and Sexuality: The Desire of Decor — Michael Yonan
8 The Interior in the Arts: Literary and Visual Representations — Karen Lipsedge and Melinda McCurdy
Bibliography
Index
New Book | A Cultural History of the Home
The 6 volumes appeared in 2020; the stand-alone volume on the Enlightenment became available in 2022 (see below); another option will appear in 2024.
Amanda Flather (anthology editor), A Cultural History of the Home, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), ISBN: 978-1472584410, $610.
A Cultural History of the Home provides a comprehensive survey of the domestic space from ancient times to the present. Spanning 2800 years, the six volumes explore how different cultures and societies have established, developed and used the home. It reveals a great deal about how people have lived day-to-day in a range of regions and epochs by providing a historical focus on the location in which they will have spent much of their time: the domestic space.
1 Antiquity, 800 BCE–800 CE
2 Medieval Age, 800–1450
3 Renaissance, 1450–1648
4 Age of Enlightenment, 1648–1815
5 Age of Empire, 1815–1920
6 Modern Age, 1920–Present
Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
• The Meaning of the Home
• Family and Household
• The House
• Furniture and Furnishings
• Home and Work
• Gender and Home
• Hospitality and Home
• Religion and Home
This structure offers readers a broad overview of a period within each volume or the opportunity to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter across volumes.
Amanda Flather is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Essex. She is the author of Gender and Space in Early Modern England (2006).
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Clive Edwards, ed., A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1472584250, $110. The paperback edition will be available in 2024.
During the period of the Enlightenment, the word ‘home’ could refer to a specific and defined physical living space, the location of domestic life, and a concept related to ideas of roots, origins, and retreat. The transformations that the Enlightenment encouraged created the circumstances for the concept of home to change and develop in the following three ways. First to influence homemaking were the literary and cultural manifestations that included issues around attitudes to education, social order and disorder, sensibility, and sexuality. Secondly, were the roles of visual and material culture of the home that demonstrated themselves through print, portraiture, literature, objects and products, and dress and fashion. Thirdly, were the industrial and sociological aspects that included concepts of luxury, progress, trade and technology, consumption, domesticity, and the notions of public and private spaces within a home. The chapters in this volume therefore discuss and reflect upon issues relating to the home through a range of approaches. Enlightenment homes are examined in terms of signification and meaning; the persons who inhabited them; the physical buildings and their furniture and furnishings; the work undertaken within them; the differing roles of men and women; the nature of hospitality, and the important role of religion in the home. Taken together they give a valuable overview of the manners, customs, and operation of the Enlightenment home.
Clive Edwards is Emeritus Professor of Design History at Loughborough University. He is editor of The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2015) and author of Turning Houses into Homes: A History of the Retailing and Consumption of Domestic Furnishings (2017), The Twentieth Century Interiors Sourcebook (2013), Interior Design: A Critical Introduction (2010), How to Read Pattern: A Crash Course in Textile Design (2009), Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, Soft Furnishings and Floor Coverings (2007), British Furniture: 1600–2000 (2006), and Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades, and Techniques (2001).
c o n t e n t s
1 The Meaning of Home — Karen Lipsedge
2 Family and Household —Helen Metcalfe
3 The House — Stephen Hague
4 Furniture and Furnishings — Clive Edwards
5 Home and Work — Leonie Hannan
6 Gender and Home — Ruth Larsen
7 Hospitality and Home — Woodruff Smith
8 Religion and the Home — Matthew Neal
New Book | A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6
From Bloomsbury:
Christina Anderson (anthology editor), A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 1824 pages, ISBN: 978-1472577894, $550.
Furniture is an artifact, so what can it tell us about culture? What social, religious, political, and economic factors have shaped its form and functions? How does furniture demonstrate the transformations in private and public life across time and cultures?
In a 6-volume work spanning 4,500 years, 70 experts chart the changing cultural framework within which furniture was designed, produced, and used in Western Europe. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and, to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.
1 Antiquity, 2500 BCE–500 CE
2 Middle Ages and Renaissance, 500–1500
3 Age of Exploration, 1500–1700
4 Age of Enlightenment, 1700–1800
5 Age of Empire and Industry, 1800–1900
6 Modern Age, 1900–Present
Chapters address: Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations. The total extent of the pack is approximately 1,824 pages. Each volume opens with a series preface, an introduction, and notes on contributors; each concludes with notes, bibliography, and an index.
A Cultural History of Furniture is part of the Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access.
Christina M. Anderson is Research Fellow, History Faculty and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
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Sylvain Cordier, Christina Anderson, and Laura Houliston, eds., Volume 4: A Cultural History of Furniture in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), ISBN: 9781472577856.
c o n t e n t s
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface
Introduction — M. B. Aldrich with Sylvain Cordier
1 Design and Motifs — Barbara Lasic
2 Makers, Making, and Materials — Yannick Chastang
3 Types and Uses — Mary-Eve Marchand
4 The Domestic Setting — Antonia Brodie
5 The Public Setting — Jeffrey Collins
6 Exhibition and Display — Frederic Dassas
7 Furniture and Architecture — Peter N. Lindfield
8 Visual Representations — Michael Decrossas and Sylvain Cordier
9 Verbal Representations — Tessa Murdoch
New Book | America’s Collection
The entrance hall of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State; completed in 1979, the room includes a rococo ceiling taken in part from Philadelphia’s Powel House, now installed as a period room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Photograph by Durston Saylor). For more information on the book and the history of the reception rooms, see James Tarmy’s August 24th article for Bloomberg.
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From Rizzoli:
Virginia Hart, America’s Collection: The Art and Architecture of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2023), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0847873272, $100. With a foreword by John Kerry and contributions by Bri Brophy, Allan Greenberg, Mark Alan Hewitt, Stacy Schiff, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, Elliot Bostwick Davis, Deborah Dependahl Waters, David Rubenstein, Carolyn Vaughan, and Laaren Brown.
The first volume in more than 20 years tells a new and modern story of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms, one of the top collections of American fine and decorative arts in existence.
The art of United States diplomacy has been conducted over more than two centuries with figures from all over the world, in peacetime and in conflict. For the last six decades, these negotiations have taken place in the rarified environment of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State. Tucked inside the modern Truman Building in the center of Washington, D.C., lies this special suite of rooms transformed by four renowned architects—gems of classical architecture brimming with exceptional American art and artifacts that tell the story of the nation’s founding and represent the singular ideals of the American character.
Housing one of the finest collections in the world, along with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Winterthur, these rooms display more than 5,000 objects, including paintings by John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart; silver and porcelain owned by George Washington and other presidents; fine furniture; maps and documents; prints and drawings, not to mention the very desk the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War was signed on. With all-new photography and essays, this book captures the history of the rooms and explores more than 150 examples of the extraordinary American art that animates the exquisite spaces.
Virginia B. Hart is director and curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms and Bri Brophy is deputy chief curator. The Honorable John F. Kerry is U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and former U.S. Secretary of State. Allan Greenberg is an architect and author. Mark Alan Hewitt is an architect and architectural historian. Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser is the Senior Curator for the 2026 Bicentennial at Frederic Chruch’s home Olana and Curator Emerita of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is the Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Elliot Bostwick Davis is Senior Editor, Harvard Social Impact Review, Arts and Culture and a former museum curator and director. Deborah Dependahl Waters is an independent decorative arts historian and part-time assistant professor at Parsons, New School University. David M. Rubenstein is a financier and philanthropist. Carolyn Vaughan is a writer and editor of art books and exhibition catalogues. Laaren Brown is a writer and editor for art and natural history topics. Durston Saylor is a photographer of contemporary interior design and architecture. Bruce M. White is a photographer of works of art and historic architecture. Sarah Gifford is an award-winning graphic designer.
New Book | Americana Insights, 2023
From Penn Press:
Robert Shaw, ed., Americana Insights, 2023 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 288 pages, ISBN: 979-8988533108, $65.
Americana Insights 2023 presents the latest research and discoveries on traditional American folk art and material culture. Groundbreaking essays by leading scholars provide a wealth of new insights on a wide array of artistic traditions. Covering a broad geographic area—including New England, the mid-Atlantic, South, and mid-West—and spanning the colonial era to early twentieth century, these essays enhance our understanding of the diverse American experience. This is the only interdisciplinary publication devoted exclusively to traditional Americana and folk art.
Contributors cover a range of topics including portraiture, furniture, jewelry, textiles, and works on paper. In the first volume, authors share groundbreaking research on the use of hooked rugs in the colonial revival era; revisit the work of a famed Connecticut portrait painter known as the Beardsley Limner and his namesake sitters; Rufus Porter’s work as an artist and entrepreneur; a distinctive group of paint-decorated dressing tables from New Hampshire; delicate cutworks made by an incarcerated inmate in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary; painted tavern signs; jewelry in folk portraiture; New Jersey schoolmaster and calligrapher Thomas Earl; and signature quilts from the nineteenth century.
Contributors: Deborah M. Child, Pamela and Brian Ehrlich, Cynthia Fowler, Emelie Gevalt, Mark D. Mitchell, Eileen M. Smiles, Laura Fecych Sprague.
Robert Shaw is an independent curator and art historian who has written and lectured extensively on many aspects of American folk art. His many critically acclaimed books include Bird Decoys of North America: Nature History and Art (2010), American Quilts: The Democratic Art (2017), and American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds (2021). He has curated exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Shelburne Museum, where he served as curator from 1981 to 1994.
Americana Insights is a nonprofit publication dedicated to the study of Americana and American folk art. It was founded in 2021 by Jane Katcher in collaboration with David A. Schorsch, her longtime friend and mentor in the field, founding editor Robert Shaw, and a distinguished advisory board of museum professionals and scholars. In 2023, curator and scholar Lisa Minardi was appointed editor of Americana Insights. More information is available here»
Exhibition | On the Reverse
Installation view of Reversos / On the Reverse, at The Prado in Madrid, 2023.
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Now on view at The Prado:
On the Reverse
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 7 November 2023 — 3 March 2024
Curated by Miguel Ángel Blanco
Until 3 March 2024, the Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación AXA are undertaking a journey that moves beyond the surface of artistic masterpieces to allow for the contemplation of a fascinating reality: the hidden side of the work of art, its reverse. Alongside works from the Prado’s own collection, On the Reverse includes generous loans from other national and international institutions. They include Assemblage with Graffiti by Antoni Tàpies from Fundación Telefónica, Cosimo I de’Medici by Bronzino from the Abelló Collection, Self-Portrait as a Painter by Van Gogh from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Artist in His Studio by Rembrandt from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Empty Mask by Magritte from the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. In all, about a hundred works are on display.
For the exhibition, curated by artist Miguel Ángel Blanco, rooms A and B of the Jerónimos Building have been painted black for the first time. On the Reverse takes the form of an open survey that gives maximum freedom to the spatial relationship between the works, devoid of any hierarchy or chronological ordering and including the presence of creations by contemporary artists such as Vik Muniz, Sophie Calle, and Miguel Ángel Blanco himself, who is represented by three of his box-books from the Library of the Forest. Taking his starting point from a contemplation of Las Meninas—in which the reverse of the vast canvas on which Velázquez is working occupies a large portion of the pictorial surface—Blanco proposes an unusual approach to painting by turning the works around in order to encourage visitors to establish a new and more complete relationship with the artists whose work is included.
Numerous studies have been undertaken to date on individual works that have interesting backs for different reasons, and some museums have explored this aspect in a partial manner through small exhibitions focused on the reverse of works in their collections. However, with the collaboration of Fundación AXA, it is the Museo Nacional del Prado that is now approaching this subject with the necessary ambition. In addition to undertaking a complete reassessment of the backs of works in its collections, the Museum has also located examples in some of the world’s leading museums that reveal how an appreciation of works of art is enriched when their contemplation is not limited to the front.
Structured thematically, the exhibition includes artists never previously seen at the Prado, among them Van Gogh (1853–1890), René Magritte (1898–1967), Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), Pablo Palazuelo (1915–2007), Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), Sophie Calle (b. 1953), Vik Muniz (b. 1961), Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933), José María Sicilia (b. 1954), Wolfgang Beurer (active 1480–1504), Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845), Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916), Martin van Meytens (1695–1770), Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1677), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), and Max Liebermann (1847–1935).
On the Reverse opens with ‘The Artist behind the Canvas’, crossing that dimensional threshold to which Velázquez draws our attention with the enigmatic reverse of the canvas depicted in Las Meninas. Painters frequently portrayed themselves behind a picture, but even when these backs are not so directly associated with the artist’s activity, they acquire a prominent presence as objects of special significance in painters’ studios.
The depiction of the back returns in ‘This Is Not a Reverse’, a section that paraphrases Magritte in order to bring together various trompe l’oeils that represent backs of paintings. This meta-artistic subject reveals the enormous significance that the hidden side of works could acquire for artists, leading them to imitate the annotations, inscriptions, drawings, etc, habitually found on picture backs.
One of the elements that makes up the pictorial support is the subject of ‘The Stretcher as Cross’, the exhibition’s third section. This concealed structural element normally takes the form of a wooden cross that can be used to carry the painting from one place to another. When—in a habitual, everyday action that also emphasises the three-dimensional status of the work which this exhibition analyses—an artist picks up the cross of the stretcher in order to move the work in the studio or take it outside for the purpose of painting outdoors he/she is performing a type of ‘Via Crucis’ that symbolises the effort and difficulties of artistic endeavour.
Martin van Meytens, Kneeling Nun, obverse and reverse, ca. 1731, oil on copper, 28 × 21 cm (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, NM 7036; purchased in 2006 with the Axel och Nora Lundgren Fund). The painting was also included in the 2017–18 exhibition Casanova: The Seduction of Europe.
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The exhibition’s central section, ‘B-Sides’, focuses on works that can be termed ‘two-sided’. Here the back has its own artistic status and complements the principal image in various ways. It may feature the back of a figure seen from the front on the other side, a landscape or allegorical scene that modifies the meaning of the principal representation, heraldic information, associated religious themes, portraits, and more. Continuing this theme, the section ‘The Hidden Side’ includes works in which the back reveals traces of the creative process in the form of drawings, geometrical designs, or expressive whimsies.
‘More Information on the Back’ looks at a classic problem in painting. Although word and image coexisted relatively easily until the Middle Ages, a moment arrived when artists entrusted all the weight of the narrative to the latter. Furthermore, when they needed to convey information, identify subjects or individuals, or include additional information or commentaries on the execution of the work, they almost invariably wrote on the back. In some cases information has been added to backs at a later date in the form of labels and stamps or seals that help us to trace the history of the works: the collections they belonged to, the palaces they adorned, their changes of location, and any restoration undertaken on them.
Zacarías González Velázquez, Reverse of Two Fishermen, One with a Rod and the Other Seated, 1785, oil on canvas (Madrid, Cuartel General del Ejército, depósito del Museo Nacional del Prado). The back of the painting reveals a strip of canvas that was folded over the stretcher at some date in order to fit the work into a narrower space.
In other cases, as seen in ‘Ornaments and Ghosts’, the backs reveal stories contained in the works’ actual materials: textiles that had domestic uses or patterned weaves that contain unintentional ghosts which appear when oil soaks into the cloth. In addition, the section ‘Folds, Cuts, and Cutouts’ shows how old restorations and alterations made to adapt paintings to new locations or functions are visible on reverses that include repairs, cuts, and folds that result in part of the image being relegated to facing the wall.
It is easy to simplify the experience of ‘facing’ a painting to a question of fronts: the work’s and the viewer’s. Looking at a painting implies locating ourselves before it with our ‘front side’, where our eyes are located. However, for some time now, the experience of art has been understood as something more physical; our entire body in all its dimensions participates in it. In fact, in both depictions of artists working in their studios and in images of the public looking at art in museums and exhibitions these figures are often seen ‘From behind, In front of the Painting’.
Finally, ‘Nature in the Background’ investigates the unusual or less common materials that have been used over the centuries as the supports for paintings in the Museum’s collection. This research has identified copper, tin, slate, alabaster, cork, brick, porcelain, and ivory. Furthermore, dust is always present. Regular cleaning is, of course, undertaken at the Museum, but the largest and heaviest works are less frequently moved. A short time ago the Museo del Prado removed The Transfiguration by Giovanni Francesco Penni from the wall, allowing Miguel Ángel Blanco to collect some of the dust accumulated on its reverse, which he has used to make three box-books for his Library of the Forest.
Miguel Ángel Blanco, ed., Reversos (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2023), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-8484806042, €38. With additional contributions by Ramón Andrés, Ana González Mozo, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Victor I. Stoichita.
Exhibition | Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea
On view at Galerie Kugel:
Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th–18th Century
Galerie Kugel, Paris, 18 October — 16 December 2023
From Roman times to the 18th century, many recognised the inherent value of amber and hypothesised its origin, some assuming it to be whale sperm, others, solidified lynx urine. Its mystery endowed it with medicinal virtues. Amber was recommended as a powder to cure melancholy, toothache, and epilepsy, among other ailments, and as a love filter. The occasional inclusions of insects and small animals found trapped in amber have also made it a symbol of immortality. Pliny the Elder was the first to unveil its nature as the result of plant resin, but it wasn’t until 1757 that the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonossov determined its true origin.
Amber is a fossilised resin originating, in the case of the objects exhibited, from a prehistoric forest dating back to some 30 to 40 million years, located under the Baltic Sea, between the towns of Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia), then, in East Prussia. In the 16th century, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1490–1568) converted to Protestantism and transformed the territories of the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the Duchy of Prussia. This marked the beginning of a tremendous expansion in the trade and production of amber works of art. They became Prussia’s diplomatic gifts par excellence and were sought after to adorn the ‘Kunstkammern’ of Europe’s sovereigns and princes. It took nearly 20 years to collect the fifty pieces on display in this exhibition. Combining sculptures, caskets, tankards, and game boards, the wide variety of objects presented illustrate the fascination for amber through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
Alexis Kugel and Rahul Kulka, Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th to 18th Century / Ambre: Trésors de la mer Baltique du XVI au XVIIIe siècle (Saint-Remy-en-l’Eau: Éditions Monelle Hayot, 2023), 376 pages, €85. Available in French and English.
Exhibition | Drawing on Blue
Opening in January at The Getty:
Drawing on Blue
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 30 January — 28 April 2024
Curated by Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan
Made from blue rags, blue paper has fascinated European artists from its earliest use in Renaissance Italy to Enlightenment France and beyond. Through new technical examination of drawings in the Getty’s collection, this exhibition offers fresh insight into the physical properties of blue paper and its unique contribution to artistic practice from the 15th through 18th centuries.
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From Getty Publications:
Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan, eds., Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s–1700s (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1606068670, $35. With contributions by Mari-Tere Álvarez, Thea Burns, Marie-Noelle Grison, Camilla Pietrabissa, and Leila Sauvage.
This engaging book highlights the role of blue paper in the history of drawing. The rich history of blue paper, from the late fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, illuminates themes of transcultural interchange, international trade, and global reach. Through the examination of significant works, this volume investigates considerations of supply, use, economics, and innovative creative practice. How did the materials necessary for the production of blue paper reach artistic centers? How were these materials produced and used in various regions? Why did they appeal to artists, and how did they impact artistic practice and come to be associated with regional artistic identities? How did commercial, political, and cultural relations, and the mobility of artists, enable the dispersion of these materials and related techniques? Bringing together the work of the world’s leading specialists, this striking publication is destined to become essential reading on the history, materials, and techniques of drawings executed on blue paper.
Edina Adam is assistant curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Michelle Sullivan is associate conservator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
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