New Book | Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture
From Yale UP:
Adam Eaker, Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 250 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107345, £35 / $45.
A new account of painting in early modern England centered on the art and legacy of Anthony van Dyck
As a courtier, figure of fashion, and object of erotic fascination, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) transformed the professional identities available to English artists. By making his portrait sittings into a form of courtly spectacle, Van Dyck inspired poets and playwrights at the same time that he offended guardians of traditional hierarchies. A self-consciously Van Dyckian lineage of artists, many of them women, extends from his lifetime to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. Recovering the often surprising responses of both writers and painters to Van Dyck’s portraits, this book provides an alternative perspective on English art’s historical self-consciousness. Built around a series of close readings of artworks and texts ranging from poems and plays to early biographies and studio gossip, it traces the reception of Van Dyck’s art on the part of artists like Mary Beale, William Hogarth, and Richard and Maria Cosway to bestow a historical specificity on the frequent claim that Van Dyck founded an English school of portraiture.
Adam Eaker is an associate curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New Book | The Enlightened Mind
From Vernon Press:
Amanda Strasik, ed., The Enlightened Mind: Education in the Long Eighteenth Century (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2022), 164 pages, ISBN: 978-1648895142, $68. With contributions by Dorothy Johnson, Amanda Strasik, Rachel Harmeyer, Brigitte Weltman-Aron, Franny Brock, Madeline Sutherland-Meier, and Karissa Bushman
The rise of Enlightenment philosophical and scientific thought during the long eighteenth century in Europe and North America (c. 1688–1815) sparked artistic and political revolutions, reframed social, gender, and race relations, reshaped attitudes toward children and animals, and reconceptualized womanhood, marriage, and family life. The meaning of ‘education’ at this time was wide-ranging and access to it was divided along lines of gender, class, and race. Learning happened in diverse environments under the tutelage of various teachers, ranging from bourgeois mothers at home, to Spanish clergy, to nature itself.
The contributors to this cross-disciplinary volume weave together methods in art history, gender studies, and literary analysis to reexamine ‘education’ in different contexts during the Enlightenment era. They explore the implications of redesigned curricula, educational categorizations and spaces, pedagogical aids and games, the role of religion, and new prospects for visual artists, parents, children, and society at large. Collectively, the authors demonstrate how new learning opportunities transformed familial structures and the socio-political conditions of urban centers in France, Britain, the United States, and Spain. Expanded approaches to education also established new artistic practices and redefined women’s roles in the arts.
Amanda Strasik is an Associate Professor of Art History at Eastern Kentucky University. She received her PhD in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art history from the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on representations of royalty, childhood and family relationships, and issues of gender identity in French art during the long eighteenth century. Strasik has received numerous grants and fellowships to conduct research in France at the Musée du Louvre, the National Museum of the History of Education in Rouen, the Palace of Versailles, as well as The Frick Collection in New York City.
C O N T E N T S
List of Figures
About the Editor
About the Contributors
Acknowledgements
The Enlightened Mind: Introduction — Amanda Strasik
1 Anatomy Lessons: Teaching Anatomy to Artists in Eighteenth-Century France — Dorothy Johnson
2 Painting Paradoxes: Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet’s Little Girl Teaching her Dog to Read — Amanda Strasik
3 The Education of Daughters: Embroidered Pictures after Angelica Kauffman — Rachel Harmeyer
4 Madame de Genlis’s New Method and Teaching Drawing to Children in Eighteenth-Century France — Franny Brock
5 Outside for Girls in Madame d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie — Brigitte Weltman-Aron
6 Reforming Education in Eighteenth-Century Spain: Padre Sarmiento’s Reflections on Teaching Young Children — Madeline Sutherland-Meier
7 Religious Education and the Lasting Effect on Goya’s Depictions of Saints — Karissa E. Bushman
Index
New Book | Industry and Ingenuity: Ince and Mayhew
From Bloomsbury:
Hugh Roberts and Charles Cator, Industry and Ingenuity: The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2023), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301098, $100.
The first comprehensive study of William Ince and John Mayhew’s famous eighteenth-century cabinetmaking partnership, complemented by high-quality photographs of their work.
The partnership of William Ince (1737–1804) and John Mayhew (1736–1811) ran from 1758 to 1804, and was one of the most enduring and well-connected collaborations in Georgian London’s tight-knit cabinetmaking community. The partners’ clientele was probably larger, and their work was arguably more influential over a longer period, than most other leading metropolitan makers—perhaps even than that of their older contemporary, the celebrated Thomas Chippendale. Despite their considerable output and an impressive tally of clients and commissions, much of Ince and Mayhew’s work has remained unidentified until recent times. The authors’ substantial research in private family archives, county record offices and bank archives has allowed them to uncover much new evidence about the business and its influence within cabinetmaking circles. In Industry and Ingenuity, the results of these new investigations are presented alongside an impressive selection of more than 500 colourful, vibrant photographs of Ince and Mayhew’s works, many previously unpublished, which together emphasise the partnership’s proper position in the pantheon of great eighteenth-century cabinetmakers.
Sir Hugh Roberts, Surveyor Emeritus of The Queen’s Works of Art, was Director of The Royal Collection, the art collection of the British Royal Family, from 1996 until 2010, having joined the Royal Household in 1988. From 1970 to 1987 he worked at Christie’s, where he was a main board director from 1976. He has written extensively on English and French furniture and decorative arts in Royal Collection exhibition catalogues and major journals, and is the author of For The King’s Pleasure (2001) and The Queen’s Diamonds (2012).
Charles Cator has worked at Christie’s, the fine art auctioneers, since 1973 and is currently Deputy Chairman of Christie’s International. During his career there he has held a number of senior positions, notably in the furniture and decorative arts fields, and has contributed articles to leading journals in these areas on furniture-makers and the history of collecting. He is also the co-author (with David Linley and Helen Chislett) of Star Pieces (2009).
C O N T E N T S
Preface
Part One: The Business
Apprenticeship and Partnership
Premises and Family
Role of the Partners
The Universal System of Houshold Furniture
Branches of the Business
Workshop Management
Accounting and Finance
Clientele
Relationship with Architects
‘House Style’ and Stylistic Development
Dissolution of the Partnership
The Suit in Chancery
Part Two: Commissions
Documented Commissions
Possible Commissions
Part Three: Illustrations
Select Bibliography
Photographic Credits
Acknowledgements
Index
New Book | Growing Up Getty
From Simon & Schuster:
James Reginato, Growing Up Getty: The Story of America’s Most Unconventional Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1982120986, $28.
An enthralling and comprehensive look into the contemporary state of one of the wealthiest—and most misunderstood—family dynasties in the world, perfect for fans of Succession, The House of Gucci, The Cartiers, and Fortune’s Children.
Oil magnate J. Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, is the patriarch of an extraordinary cast of sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. While some have been brought low by mental illness, drug addiction, and one of the most sensational kidnapping cases of the 20th century, many of Getty’s heirs have achieved great success. In addition to Mark Getty, a cofounder of Getty Images, and Anne G. Earhart, an award-winning environmentalist, others have made significant marks in a variety of fields, from music and viniculture to politics and LGBTQ rights.
Now, across four continents, a new generation of lively, unique, and even outrageous Gettys are emerging, and not coasting on the dynasty’s still-immense wealth. August Getty designs extravagant gowns worn by Katy Perry, Cher, and other stars; his sibling, Nats—a fellow LGBTQ rights activist who announced his gender transition following his wedding to transgender icon Gigi Gorgeous—produces a line of exclusive streetwear. Their fascinating cousins include Balthazar, a multi-hyphenate actor-director-DJ-designer, and Isabel, a singer-songwriter-MBA candidate. A far-flung yet surprisingly close-knit group, the ascendant Gettys are bringing this iconic family onto the global stage in the 21st century.
Through extensive research, including access to J. Paul Getty’s diaries and love letters, and fresh interviews with family members and friends, Growing Up Getty offers an inside look into the benefits and burdens of being part of today’s world of the ultra-wealthy.
James Reginato, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair and a contributor to Sotheby’s magazine, was formerly the features director for W magazine. He is the author of Great Houses, Modern Aristocrats, and The Carlyle. A graduate of Columbia University, he lives in New York City.
New Book | Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History
A new edition of this pioneering book, first published in 1995:
Gretchen Gerzina, with a foreword by Zadie Smith, Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History (London: John Murray Press, 2022), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1399804882, £20.
The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Georgian England had a large and distinctive Black community. Whether prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, they all ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Black England tells their dramatic, often moving stories.
In the eighteenth century, Black people could be found in clubs and pubs, there were special churches, Black-only balls and organisations for helping Black people who were out of work or in trouble. Many were famous and respected: most notably Francis Barber, Doctor Johnson’s beloved manservant; Ignatius Sancho, a correspondent of Laurence Sterne; Francis Williams, a Cambridge scholar, and Olaudah Equiano whose Interesting Narrative went into multiple editions. But far more were ill-paid and ill-treated servants or beggars, despite having served Britain in war and on the seas. For alongside the free world there was slavery, from which many of these Black Britons had escaped.
The triumphs and tortures of Black England, the Ambivalent relations between the races, sometimes tragic, sometimes heart-warming, are brought to life in this wonderfully readable history. Black England explores a fascinating chapter of our shared past, a chapter that has been ignored too long.
Information about Gretchen Gerzina is available from her faculty profile page at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and from her personal website.
Symposium | Early Modern Global Political Art
From the Krannert Art Museum:
Early Modern Global Political Art
In-person and online, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 20–21 October 2022
Romeyn de Hooghe, Marriage of William and Mary, 1677, etching (Krannert Art Museum, 2019.7.7).
Featuring emerging scholarship on the art of this period against the backdrop of the exhibition Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic, Krannert Art Museum hosts a symposium on Early Modern Global Political Art.
In the early modern period, nations, nobles, corporations, religious groups, and others found dynamic and innovative ways to use the visual arts for a wide range of political purposes. Nations dispatched elaborate diplomatic gifts to initiate and consolidate alliances. Aristocratic powers and individual collectors alike amassed collections to convey and enhance their political and economic power. Courts and cities produced ephemeral decorations to assert and display ideal political relations between nobility and their subjects, and between regional and outside authorities. Broadsheets addressing factional conflicts within and among institutions proliferated with the expansion of affordable print media. This symposium will investigate visual media that communicated political ideas, arguments, positions, and forms of resistance in the early modern period.
The event will be hybrid, blending in person presentations with online presentations via Zoom to facilitate greater accessibility and wider participation. All virtual components will be live captioned in English via Zoom. If you have a question or an accessibility request, please email us at kam-accessibility@illinois.edu. Registration is required for virtual and in-person components of the symposium.
Keynote Speakers
Dawn Odell (Lewis & Clark College) — Dr. Odell studies artistic exchange between China and northern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is currently writing a book on Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, an 18th-century Dutch Immigrant to the newly formed United States whose travelogues and Chinese porcelain collection were leveraged for social and political power.
Liza Oliver (Wellesley College) — Dr. Oliver’s research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century India, Europe, and the West Indies. Her current projects include the book Empire of Hunger: Representing Famine, Land, and Labor in Colonial India and work about British prints about abolition and the Haitian Revolution.
T H U R S D A Y , 2 0 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2
9.00 Catholic Rulership around the World, Part One
• Moyun Zhou (PhD Candidate, University of Hong Kong), Can You Feel Me? The Global Space of St. Paul’s in Macao, 1592–1644
• Maria Vittoria Spissu (Senior Assistant Professor, University of Bologna and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow), Bonds and Tenets in the Wider Iberian Catholic Universe: Fostering Political Unanimity by Means of Early Modern Altarpieces and Books
• Małgorzata Biłozór-Salwa (Curator of Old Master Drawings, University of Warsaw Library), Let’s Make A Crusade! Power of Images Under Louis XIII
10.20 Fashion, Part One
• Isabel Escalera (PhD Candidate, University of Valladolid), Jewelry as A Political Instrument: Renaissance Women and the Transmission of Their Power
• Diana Lucía Gómez-Chacón (Faculty, Complutense University of Madrid), Fashion as A Political Art: Gender, Monarchy, and Spectacle in Early Modern Castile
11.15 Negotiating Political Power in Republics
• Răzvan-Iulian Rusu (Graduate Student, Utrecht University), Global Gifts of Johan Maurits: Patronage, Image-Formation, Art & Material Culture
• Laura Blom (Postdoctoral Fellow, Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence), Death as Dissent: The Macabre and the Medici in Renaissance Florence
5.30 Keynote Lecture
• Liza Oliver (Associate Professor of Art, Wellesley College), An Economy of Sentiment: The Shared Language of Abolitionists and the West India Interest in Late 18th-Century British Print Culture link»
This talk considers how spectatorial sympathy, a governing principle of 18th-century British art and literature, was deployed by opposing sides of the debate on Britain’s slave trade in the decades preceding its abolition. Considering broadsides, travel narratives, and caricatures, it argues for the ways in which sentiment became a common visual currency among both abolitionists and the pro-slavery lobby, with each side respectively seeking to sever or reaffirm the connection between morality on the one hand and self-interest and economic prosperity on the other.
F R I D A Y , 2 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Catholic Rulership around the World, Part Two
• Rachel Wise (2020 PhD in Art History, University of Pennsylvania), A Royal Devotion: Printed Habsburg Propaganda and the 80 Years’ War
• Angela Ho (Associate Professor, George Madison University), Risks and Payoffs: Ferdinand Verbiest’s World Map for Kangxi in Political Context
11.00 Fashion, Part Two
• Heather Hughes (Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art), Recognizing the Enemy: The Spaniard in Dutch and Flemish Costume Prints
• Nancy Karrels (2022 PhD in Art History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Women for Bonaparte: Political Prints and Female Self-Fashioning in France’s Cultural Conquests
12.00 Lunch Break
1.30 Keynote
• Dawn Odell (Associate Professor of Art History, Lewis & Clark College), The Politics of Personhood in A.E. Van Braam Houckgeest’s China Memoir link»
Following his participation in the Dutch East India Company’s last embassy to the Chinese court (1794–95), A.E. van Braam Houckgeest moved to Philadelphia with an enormous personal collection of Chinese art. This talk explores van Braam’s self-fashioning through his collaboration with two unnamed Guangzhou artists and the French émigré printer and defender of race-based slavery, M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry. The illustrated memoir these men produced places van Braam’s textual narrative within an expansive visual environment of Chinese landscape paintings and other works of Asian art, conjuring artistic presences as testaments to the author’s self-proclaimed virtue, prestige, and republican ideals.
3.00 Tour of Fake News and Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic
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From the Krannert:
Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 25 August — 17 December 2022
Curated by Maureen Warren
Comedians, editorial cartoons, and memes harness the power of satire, parody, and hyperbole to provoke laughter, indignation—even action. These forms of expression are usually traced to eighteenth-century artists, such as William Hogarth, but they are grounded in the unprecedented freedom of artistic expression in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.
Maureen Warren, ed., with contributions by Wolfgang Cillessen, Meredith McNeill Hale, Daniel Horst, Maureen Warren, and Ilja Veldman, Paper Knives, Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, 2022), 184 pages, ISBN: 978-1646570294, $40.
Exhibition | Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
From the press release for the exhibition:
Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 14 August 2022 — 8 January 2023
The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America, an ambitious and timely show that explores the production, meaning, and representation of fabric and garments as they were experienced in civil and religious settings across Latin America during the 1700s. Painted Cloth features over 70 objects produced in five countries from the Blanton’s growing collection of art of the Spanish Americas, alongside key loans from distinguished institutions and private collections around the world.
Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor, Cusco, 18th century, oil with gold leaf on canvas, 105 × 73 inches (Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)
“With the opening of Painted Cloth, we’re thrilled to finally unveil the extraordinary exhibition made possible by our longstanding partnership with the Thoma Foundation, whose investment and belief in the Blanton over the years has strengthened our commitment to the study of art of the Spanish and Portuguese Americas,” said Blanton director Simone Wicha. “Thanks to their support, the work of Rosario I. Granados, the first Marilynn Thoma Associate Curator, Art of the Spanish Americas, has advanced significant scholarship in this still underrepresented era of art history. The elaborate fabrics, fashion, and other richly textured works in this show are not only a feast for the eyes, they also will give our audiences a good look into everyday life during an era of dynamic cultural exchange and show how clothing—then as now—is so intertwined with our identities. Equally beautiful as it is insightful, Painted Cloth is sure to inspire conversations about race and colonialism’s complex legacies and offer a greater understanding of this period in Latin America’s history.”
An unquestionable marker of identity, clothing distills complex relationships between race, gender, religion, and class. Painted Cloth reflects on the social roles of textiles and their visual representations, emphasizing how aesthetic traditions of Indigenous and European origin wove themselves into civil, religious, and artistic life at a time when the Spanish monarchy imposed their rule in the region.
As the title references, the exhibition foregrounds not only beautifully crafted garments and textiles, but also explores how the practice of depicting textiles in paintings, sculptures, prints, and furnishings created a visual artifice that captured their aesthetic, ritual, and commercial value. This interplay between objects and images courses through five visually striking sections: Cloth Making, Wearing Social Status, Dressing the Sacred, The Holiness of Cloth, and Ritual Garments.
“Collectively, these groupings address how cloth and their representation in other media articulated narratives of social privilege and survival of cultural traditions, while also highlighting the mixed identity of colonial Latin America,” said Granados. “Garments are a lens by which we can recognize the many inequalities and societal contradictions that characterized the social fabric of this contested era, which altered the lives of so many Indigenous communities, but also the beauty of the Spanish America’s artistic production and thereby the diverse cultures of its peoples.”
José Joaquin Magón, Two Casta Paintings, ca. 1770.
Cloth Making
Painted Cloth begins with the manufacture and artistry of textiles in the 1700s. Works in the first section on Cloth Making underscore how various kinds of European and Indigenous garments were manufactured, emphasizing the role persons of different social status played in the industry. Included are works from the only series of casta paintings (a Mexican artistic genre that documents mixed-race couples and their children according to a caste system defined by Spanish elites) to prominently showcase women as integral to the production of textile arts, from spinning and weaving wool to their work as seamstress and tailor’s aids. In one example of this series by Mexican painter José Joaquín Magón, a woman makes bobbin lace, a costly material that was commonly imported from Europe and adopted in local attire.
The interlacing of foreign materials and traditions with local practices is also present in a set of silk swatches from Mexico. Sent with official reports to the King of Spain, these rare fabric samples show the production of block-print patterns inspired by textiles from India that signal the presence of highly skilled silk weavers in the New Spanish (Mexican) capital. The Cuzqueña painting Virgen de los Sastres (Virgin of Tailors) gives evidence that tailors, many of whom were of mixed-race descent, produced liturgical vestments made from imported European silks and brocades—examples of which are seen in the last section of the exhibition.
Many of the works in this section also address how Indigenous and Christian notions of the sacred were combined. Christian missionaries in the Andes popularized iconography that linked spiritual devotion with the labor involved in manufacturing cloth, circulating paintings that depicted the Virgin Mary or Holy Family undertaking artistic or industrious activities. By depicting Mary embroidering and spinning, the two paintings La Casa de Nazareth (The House of Nazareth) and La Virgen niña hilando (The Child Mary Spinning) make a connection between Christianity and the Indigenous cultures’ regard for the sacred nature of textiles.
Wearing Social Status
Miguel Cabrera, Doña María de la Luz Padilla y Gómez de Cervantes, ca. 1760, oil on canvas, 43 × 33 inches (Brooklyn Museum).
The second and largest section of the exhibition, Wearing Social Status, explores how fashion codes determined social interactions and collective identities in terms of gender, race, and class. This is particularly visible in Mexican casta paintings and a unique series of Peruvian mestizaje paintings, on view in the U.S. for the first time, as well as in commissioned portraits—an increasingly popular genre in this period. Since few garments from the era have survived, such paintings, although ripe with artifices, serve as an invaluable source for the study of fashion and its social significance.
One of the most memorable features of this section is the pairing of painted garments in portraits with actual garments. Paintings of well-dressed Latin American sitters by Miguel Cabrera, one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of the period, demonstrate a desired social prestige, as evident in the great attention paid to the subject’s dress. These costly dresses and elegant three-piece suits are in dialogue with similar European costumes, illustrating the influence of global trade as well as French fashion.
Clothing is also relevant in the portraits Indigenous elite commissioned to assert noble ancestry. The figure in Inca Noblewoman, notably dressed in an intricate anuca, or women’s dress, resembles the first queen of the Inca dynasty, Mama Occllo. Such motifs and codes of dress establish the sitter’s connection to Inca royalty and, as the inscription makes clear, her status as the first Christian Inca woman. In conversation with this portrait is a late 17th-century camelid wool anacu embroidered with mermaids, Inca queens, and traditional Andean geometric patterns, accompanied by a silver fastening pin known as a ttipqui or tupo incised with the imperial double-headed eagle. These artifacts offer examples of fusing Incan and European motifs to negotiate identity in a colonial environment.
Dressing the Sacred
Inmaculada Concepción (Immaculate Conception), Guatemala, ca. 1740–80, silver and oil on wood, 34 inches high (Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019).
The exhibition’s third section exemplifies how religious material culture enhanced the experience of the holy for all social sectors. The use of fine materials in sacred objects amplified an object’s visual appearance, and with it, its sacred aura, thereby facilitating conversion and enhancing devotional practice. This is particularly true of the fabrics placed on imágenes de vestir, or ‘dress images’. These simple wooden structures were explicitly made to be clothed in rich fabrics, like the satin mantle on view, embroidered in gold and silver threads for a statue of the Virgin Mary.
In other instances, real fabrics were imitated by modeled silver, as in an example of a devotional sculpture from Guatemala, a practice that continues in the Central American country today. Fabrication of reality was likewise achieved by replicating golden embroideries and brocade fabrics using estofado, a technique that involves applying gold leaf to wooden surfaces. In two paintings from the so-called Cusco School, respectively depicting St. Lawrence and St. Jerome, gilded details emphasize the richness of saintly garments.
Brimming with golden brocades, the large painting Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante (Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor) bookends this section. The work, a brilliant example of a verdadero retrato, or ‘true portrait’, depicts the 16th-century cult statue of Our Lady of Bethlehem of Cusco placed on a processional platform. Displayed in a dimly lit gallery that alludes to the painting’s original display, viewers can get a sense of the effect such objects were intended to evoke.
Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, Cusco, 18th century, oil and gold on canvas, 38 × 52 inches
(Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)
Holiness of Cloth
The fourth section, Holiness of Cloth, illuminates how the actual depiction of fabric was central to images that were believed to be of miraculous nature. Cloth could provide material substance to help elucidate abstract notions of the divine, as in examples from the Cusco School of painting, which introduced Andean renditions of Catholic subjects.
The painting Virgen del Carmen salvando a las almas del Purgatorio (Virgin of Carmel Saving Souls in Purgatory) depicts the Virgin Mary with an open cloak—a familiar iconography across the Spanish Americas that symbolized protection. In a disparate work that renders the iconographic Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, tunics and mantles are gilded with brocateado, elaborate gold-brocade decoration, a technique characteristic of the Indigenous artistic production of Cusco.
In some cases, cloth becomes the divine itself, such as in Mexican painter José de Alzibar’s two works, united and on display together for the first time in history. The first, a representation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the national patron of Mexico, depicts the cloak of an Indigenous man where the sacred image was thought to have been miraculously imprinted. The second, La Verónica, depicts the Veil of Veronica, one of the most recognizable images in which cloth is represented as a vehicle for the holy.
Ritual Garments
The final section focuses on the use of fabric in church interiors and ritual ceremonies as well as in the formation of clerical identities. Since much of the material used was extraordinarily delicate, prone to damage and decay, paintings of the era help reconstruct an understanding of the use of cloth.
The hierarchical position of Catholic clergy could be recognized by distinct, standardized liturgical clothing. A small glass painting from Bolivia details the repertoire of garments and accessories worn by priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope, whereby the particular use of colors functioned as a key signifier of rank. In the case of the chasuble, the outermost vestment worn during the celebration of the Eucharist, four seasonal colors were used to represent the passage of time in the liturgical calendar. Although the chasuble was worn by the lowest rank of priest, the artifact on view from Mexico is crafted in fancy silks and embroidered with silken threads covered in silver and gold.
In the context of the Catholic church, the altar is an important ritual site; in the Spanish Americas it was lavishly decorated, as visual depictions like Misa frente al Cristo de los Temblores (Masses before Christ of the Earthquakes) convey. Like many works that depicted ideal Masses, this painting was created for a private home and painted from the view of a churchgoer to direct focus to the fine textiles and silverware covering the altar. On occasion, a less costly ‘painted cloth’ instead decorated the altar—exemplified by a canvas altar cloth with floral designs that mimic actual textiles. In contrast, a Guatemalan processional banner created entirely from silver emphasizes the use of even valuable materials to imitate cloth and create visual artifice.
“Painted Cloth rejoices in the artifice of the visual arts to uncover the complexities of human nature,” concluded Granados. “Together, I hope these stunning artworks and artifacts encourage reflection on values of the past and shed new light on the factors that have shaped contemporary Latin American experience.”
The exhibition includes works from the Blanton’s collection, including from the recently acquired Huber Collection, and loans from: Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Carl & Marilynn Thoma Collection, Chicago and Santa Fe, NM; Colección Andrés Blaisten, Mexico City; Colección Barbosa Stern, Lima; Denver Art Museum; Hispanic Society of America, New York; Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; Museo de Arte de Lima; Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima; Museo de América, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; Witte Museum, San Antonio.
Rosario Inés Granados, ed., Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1477323977, $45. With contributions by Granados, Ana Paulina Gámez Martínez, Julia McHugh, Ricardo Kusunoki Rodríguez, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi.
Exhibition | Canova: Sketching in Clay
Antonio Canova, Adam and Eve Mourning the Dead Abel, detail of Eve and Abel, ca. 1818–22, terracotta
(Possagno: Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova; photograph by Tony Sigel)
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Antonio Canova, at age 64, died on this day (13 October) 200 years ago; his clay models are the subject of a major exhibition opening in June. From the NGA:
Canova: Sketching in Clay
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 11 June — 9 October 2023
Art Institute of Chicago, 19 November 2023 — 18 March 2024
Curated by C. D. Dickerson and Emerson Bowyer
How does a sculptor turn an initial idea into a finished work of marble? For Antonio Canova (1757–1822), the most famous artist of Europe’s revolutionary period, the answer was with clay. Working with his hands and small tools, Canova produced dazzling sketch models in clay, which helped him plan his designs for his large statues in marble. Imprinted with the fire of his imagination, these sketches were boldly executed in mere minutes. Canova also made more finished models, sensuous in their details, that he showed to patrons or used as guides for carving. Approximately 40 of the some 60 of his surviving models reveal the artist’s extraordinary working process—a process that led to the creation of some of the most iconic works in the history of sculpture.
Canova: Sketching in Clay is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington and The Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is curated by C. D. Dickerson, curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art, and Emerson Bowyer, Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe, The Art Institute of Chicago.
C. D. Dickerson and Emerson Bowyer, with contributions by Anthony Sigel and Elyse Nelson, Canova: Sketching in Clay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0300269758, $65.
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Note (added 12 June 2023) — The original posting was updated to include information on the catalogue, which was published 6 June 2023.
New Book | Dublin Castle: From Fortress to Palace
From Wordwell Books:
Seán Duffy, John Montague, Kevin Mulligan, and Michael O’Neill, Dublin Castle: From Fortress to Palace, Volume 1: Vikings to Victorians, A History of Dublin Castle to 1850 (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1446880715, €50 / $70.
This is the first of a three-volume series dedicated to Dublin Castle and the archaeological excavations carried out there. Volume 1 presents a history of Dublin Castle, covering the period from the first Viking settlement in the ninth century to 1850. The castle was the centre of English (and later British) royal government in Ireland from the 1170s until it was handed over to the Provisional Government of Ireland in 1922. A large early thirteenth-century castle, built on the orders of King John, stood on the site until it was gradually replaced between the 1680s and the 1770s by the present quadrangle of palatial buildings. The only intact portion of the medieval castle to survive this rebuilding is the large, circular south-east corner tower, known today as the Record Tower. It is the first substantial history of the castle to be published and is intended to provide a comprehensive historical background to the results of archaeological excavations undertaken between 1961 and 1987.
Exhibition | Maria Hadfield Cosway
Now on view at the Fondazione Maria Cosway in Lodi, in the nineteenth-century rooms of the Collegio delle Grazie, the girls’ school that Cosway founded in 1812 (with additional information available here) . . .
Maria Hadfield Cosway
Fondazione Maria Cosway, Lodi, 23 September — 27 November 2022
Curated by Monja Faraoni and Laura Facchin with Massimiliano Ferrario and Maria Cristina Loi
Oltre cinquanta opere tra dipinti, lettere, spartititi musicali e sculture che ripercorrono la vita di Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760–1838) sono esposti a Lodi nella mostra a lei dedicata visitabile fino al 27 novembre.
Il visitatore sarà accompagnato nel percorso da pannelli esplicativi e didascalie che mettono in luce le fasi essenziali della biografia dell’artista e filantropa, nonché i personaggi e gli eventi della “Grande Storia” che segnarono le diverse fasi della sua vita. L’artista e donna di cultura è molto nota sia a Londra che negli Stati Uniti d’America per la sua amicizia con Thomas Jefferson, terzo Presidente USA. Un periodo della sua vita lo trascorse anche a Lodi, dove morì nel 1838.
La sua profonda convinzione nell’importanza dell’educazione per i giovani portò Maria Cosway ad aprire proprio a Lodi, nella sede dell’ex convento dei padri Minimi, il collegio della Beata Vergine Maria delle Grazie, destinato alle bambine dai 6 ai 12 anni, che ospiterà anche Vittoria Manzoni.
La mostra è stata organizzata dalla Fondazione Maria Cosway e vede la collaborazione di diverse realtà locali tra cui due istituti lodigiani, il liceo artistico Callisto Piazza e la Fondazione Luigi Clerici. Studenti ed insegnanti sono stati coinvolti nella creazione del catalogo e dell’allestimento delle diverse tappe dell’esposizione, visitabile presso la sede della Fondazione di via Paolo Gorini 10.
Monja Faraoni, Laura Facchin, Massimiliano Ferrario, and Maria Cristina Loi, eds., Maria Hadfield Cosway (Lodi: Fondazione Maria Cosway, 2022), 444 pages, ISBN: 979-1280950208.
S O M M A R I O
Presentazioni istituizionali
Maria Cosway tra Firenze, Londra, Parigi e Lodi: Le Ragioni della Mostra
• L’educazione in età napoleonica — Mario Riberi
• Maria Cosway in London, 1780–1790 and 1794–1801 — Stephen Lloyd
• ‘I am susceptible and everything that surrounds me has great power to magnetise me’: Maria Cosway e l’ambiente romantico — Massimiliano Ferrario
• Maria Cosway et l’ambiente artistico-letterario femminile fra la fine dell’Antico Regime e la Restaurazione — Laura Facchin
• Maria Cosway, Leonardo e Giuseppe Bossi: fra teorie artistiche e appunti figurativi — Rosalba Antonelli
• La musica nella vita e nel progetto educativo di Maria Cosway — Patrizia Fiorio
• Una storia ancora da raccontare: la biblioteca della Fondazione Maria Cosway — Francesco Laghezza e Beatrice Porchera
• La moda nella Parigi et nella Milano di Maria Cosway — Silvia Mira
• La vita di Blevio — Laura Facchin e Massimiliano Ferrario
• Un titolo nobitare per Maria Cosway — Luca Marcarini
• Gaetano Manfredini: ‘volente scultore pei quale l’ingiusta sorte non ha benigni sorris!’ e l’eterno volto di Maria Cosway — Beatrice Bolandrini
Catalogolo delle opere
Maria Cosway et gli Stati Uniti, a cura di Maria Cristina Loi
• ‘But that immense sea, makes it a great distance’: note sui carteggio Maria Cosway–Thomas Jefferson — Maria Cristina Loi
• Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway in Paris: art and affection — Susan R. Stein
Catalogo delle opere
L’allestimento della mostra Maria Hadfield Cosway — Elena Amoriello, Luca Armigero, Annalisa Aversa, Maria Teresa Carossa, Chiara Lupi, Susanna Marinoni e Angela Mento
Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi
Credit fotografici
Enfilade 
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