Exhibition | Portraits en Majesté: de Troy, de Largillierre, Rigaud

Nicolas de Largillierre, La Belle Strasbourgeoise , detail, ca. 1703, oil on canvas, 132 × 106 cm. The painting sold at Christie’s in Paris on 15 September 2020 (Sale 19158, Lot 212) for €1.57million, surpassing its high estimate of €1million.
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Now on view at the Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud:
Portraits en Majesté: François de Troy, Nicolas de Largillierre, Hyacinthe Rigaud
Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud, Perpignan, 26 June — 7 November 2021
Curated by Pascale Picard, Dominique Brême, and Ariane James-Sarazin
S’inscrivant naturellement dans la programmation du musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud dont les collections accordent une large place à l’enfant du pays, Portraits en majesté bénéficie d’un partenariat exceptionnel avec le musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon.
Portraits en majesté valorise de façon inédite—puisque c’est la première fois qu’un tel rapprochement est proposé—les trois artistes français qui, de Louis XIV à Louis XV ont révolutionné l’art du portrait : François de Troy (1645–1730), Nicolas de Largillierre (1656–1746) et Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743), au travers d’une sélection généreuse et exigeante de leurs plus belles œuvres qui transcendent le genre et s’imposent avant tout pour leur esthétique. Chaque salle souligne tant la singularité de la matière des trois peintres que les éléments de vocabulaire (format, veine, modèle, composition…) relevant d’une inspiration commune. Le rapprochement de leurs œuvres met en exergue le fait que le portrait, tels que de Troy, de Largillierre et Rigaud le conçurent, se voulait une création d’art total, réunissant en son sein tous les genres.
La commissaire générale
• Pascale Picard, Directrice du musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud de Perpignan
Les commissaires scientifiques
• Dominique Brême, Directeur du musée du Domaine départemental de Sceaux
• Ariane James-Sarazin, Conservatrice générale du patrimoine, Directrice adjointe du musée de l’Armée de Paris
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Dominique Brême and Ariane James-Sarazin, eds., Portraits en Majesté: François de Troy, Nicolas de Largillierre, Hyacinthe Rigaud (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2021), 296 pages, ISBN: 978-8836644209, €35.
Au cours de son règne—le plus long de l’histoire de France—Louis XIV accorda aux arts une place centrale dans l’accompagnement de son projet politique : architecture, peinture, sculpture, musique ou danse bénéficièrent ainsi d’un mécénat royal quasiment sans limite. Représentant les acteurs de cet âge d’or, le portrait peint trouva particulièrement à s’y épanouir, surtout à partir des années 1680, lorsque trois artistes, concurrents mais amis, entreprirent de renouveler le modèle trop sage du portrait classique en lui insufflant un élan baroque inattendu. Francois de Troy (1645–1730), Nicolas de Largillierre (1656–1746) et Hyacinthe Rigaud (1649–1753) révolutionnèrent ainsi la syntaxe du portrait français et, plus généralement, du grand portrait d’apparat européen. Habiles à varier incessamment sur un schéma de composition très contraignant—celui du triangle de base de la figuration humaine—ils donnèrent au genre ses lettres de noblesse en le hissant à un niveau de difficulté de conception et de qualité d’exécution au moins égal à celui des grands tableaux d’histoire. Accompagnant l’exposition d’une centaine de chefs-d’œuvre, ce livre étudie les modalités pratiques, théoriques et esthétiques de l’art du portrait français à son apogée.
New Book | French Rococo Ébénisterie
From The Getty:
Anne-Lise Desmas, ed., French Rococo Ébénisterie in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2021), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1606066300, $75. Available as a free online publication, in multiple formats, here»
The first comprehensive catalogue of the Getty Museum’s significant collection of French Rococo ébénisterie furniture.
This catalogue focuses on French ébénisterie furniture in the Rococo style dating from 1735 to 1760. These splendid objects directly reflect the tastes of the Museum’s founder, J. Paul Getty, who started collecting in this area in 1938 and continued until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection is particularly rich in examples created by the most talented cabinet masters then active in Paris, including Bernard van Risenburgh II (after 1696–ca. 1766), Jacques Dubois (1694–1763), and Jean-François Oeben (1721–1763). Working for members of the French royal family and aristocracy, these craftsmen excelled at producing veneered and marquetried pieces of furniture (tables, cabinets, and chests of drawers) fashionable for their lavish surfaces, refined gilt-bronze mounts, and elaborate design. These objects were renowned throughout Europe at a time when Paris was considered the capital of good taste. The entry on each work comprises both a curatorial section, with description and commentary, and a conservation report, with construction diagrams. An introduction by Anne-Lise Desmas traces the collection’s acquisition history, and two technical essays by Arlen Heginbotham present methodologies and findings on the analysis of gilt-bronze mounts and lacquer.
This open-access catalogue is available for free online and in multiple formats for download, including PDF, MOBI/Kindle, and EPUB. For readers who wish to have a bound reference copy, this paperback edition has been made available for sale.
C O N T E N T S
Timothy Potts, Director’s Foreword
Glossary of Woods Used in French Furniture from the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection
Contributors
Essays
• Anne-Lise Desmas — Introduction: Acquisitions History of the Rococo Ébénisterie Collection
• Jessica Chasen, Arlen Heginbotham, and Michael Schilling — The Analysis of East Asian and European Lacquer Surfaces on Rococo Furniture
• Arlen Heginbotham — Technical Note: The Use of X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF) in the Technical Study of Gilt Bronze Mounts in This Catalogue
Catalogue
Bibliography
About
New Book | Watteau, Gersaint, et le Pont Notre-Dame
From Presses Universitaires du Septentrion:
Youri Carbonnier, Sophie Raux, Christophe Renaud, François Rousselle, eds., avec Youri Carbonnier, Laura Louvrier-Masquelier, Nicolas Moucheront, Mylène Pardoen, Sophie Raux, Sophie Reculin, Christophe Renaud, François Rousselle, Rémi Synave, Watteau, Gersaint, et le pont Notre-Dame à Paris au temps des Lumières: Les enjeux d’une restitution numérique (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Éditeur Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2021), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-2757432839, 22€. Also available in a PDF edition.
Le pont Notre-Dame fut l’un des ponts habités les plus extraordinaires de Paris. Son histoire reste attachée à un événement : la présentation éphémère en façade de la boutique de Gersaint de la fameuse Enseigne peinte par Watteau en 1720. À quoi ressemblait ce pont monumental avant la destruction de ses habitations? Pourquoi L’Enseigne de Gersaint eut-elle un tel retentissement? Comment se projeter dans cet univers si étranger à notre expérience actuelle des ponts parisiens? Comment dépasser l’image mentale que chacun peut se faire à partir des sources qui nous sont parvenues? Autant de questions qui ont motivé cette restitution numérique du pont Notre-Dame. En s’attachant à restituer le sens des espaces et des volumes de son architecture disparue, ainsi qu’à rendre sensible l’ambiance lumineuse et sonore de son environnement, ses auteurs offrent une exploration inédite en 5D du pont, ainsi qu’une réflexion sur l’apport des technologies numériques à la recherche historique.
S O M M A I R E
Sophie Raux
• Introduction : Un dialogue entre présent et passé
Youri Carbonnier
• Le pont Notre-Dame
• Des maisons sur un pont
• La pompe du pont Notre-Dame
Sophie Raux
• Le pont Notre-Dame et le commerce d’art à Paris
Christophe Renaud
• Restitutions historiques et photoréalisme
• Notions de simulation d’éclairage
Sophie Reculin
• Ombres et lumières sur le pont Notre-Dame : la première simulation de l’éclairage public durant l’époque moderne
Nicolas Moucheront
• L’histoire du pont Notre-Dame au XVIIIe siècle : enjeux professionnels et épistémologiques
François Rousselle
• La restitution du pont Notre-Dame en 3D temps réel
Mylène Pardoen
• De l’ambiance sonore
Sophie Raux
• De quoi L’enseigne de Gersaint était-elle l’image ?
• Jean Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes, 1684 – Nogent-sur-Marne, 1721)
• Edme-François Gersaint (Paris, 1694 – Id., 1750)
Laura Louvrier, François Rousselle, Rémi Synave
• Restituer l’intérieur de la boutique de Gersaint : questions méthodologiques et techniques
François Rousselle
• Des applications adaptées aux supports de restitution
Youri Carbonnier
• Paysage restitué, paysage recréé, paysage rêvé ?
• Apports et limites de la restitution 5D du pont Notre-Dame
Index des noms
Liste des auteurs
Remerciements
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Also see, Sophie Raux, “Virtual Explorations of an 18th-Century Art Market Space: Gersaint, Watteau, and the Pont Notre-Dame,” Journal18, Issue 5 Coordinates (Spring 2018), https://www.journal18.org/2542. DOI: 10.30610/5.2018.3
Exhibition | The Hidden Horizontal: Cornices in Art and Architecture

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, De Romanorum magnificentia et architectura: Della magnificenza ed architettura de’ Romani (Rome, 1761). ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 1311.
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From the press release for the exhibition:
The Hidden Horizontal: Cornices in Art and Architecture
Die unterschätzte Horizontale: Das Gesims in Kunst und Architektur
Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, 25 August — 14 November 2021
Curated by Linda Schädler and Maarten Delbeke, with Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Emma Letizia Jones
In architecture, the cornice hides in plain sight. Omnipresent as the elaborate junction between roof and wall, or wall and ceiling, this ornamental element seems to have attracted far less attention from architects, critics, or theoreticians than, for instance, columns or the architectural orders. But in a new exhibition at the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, the cornice makes its long overdue grand entrance, displaying its many incarnations in art and architecture. Over 150 drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day are united in a new dialogue, some shown for the first time in Switzerland.
Cornices are everywhere. Once you start looking, their ubiquity is almost irritating. Windows, doors, ceilings, mirrors, and wall panelling from across the centuries sport elaborate profiles at their edges. The skyline of any city street is a ragtag procession of cornices in various states of materiality, refinement, and maintenance. It does not stop there. Cars and clothes, furniture, and household objects feature their own cornice-like elements. Strips, bands, and lines of paint act like cornices by framing, delineating, or crowning almost any kind of artefact. Still, they attract far less attention from architects, critics, theoreticians, or even the general public than other building parts. In response, a reappraisal of this underrated element are presented in the current exhibition at Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, where the cornice is placed at centre stage.

Giuseppe Gallli Bibiena, Sketch for Set Decoration ‘Scena per angolo’, 1700–50, pen and ink drawing (Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich).
The cornice, once an essential part of any classical composition, incurred the wrath of modernists at the beginning of the 20th century. It has, at various times, been identified as the most expressive part of architecture, as well as the most problematic. It has drawn attention to itself in drawings, etchings, and other works of art. Hence, a history of the cornice in many ways offers a new window onto the multiple histories of architecture and its representations. For, on account of its ubiquity, the cornice carries several layers of meaning: as an element defined by, and defining building regulations; as the solution to the technical problem of joining wall and roof; and as a site to expression of social aspirations or distinction. As the visual limit of a construction, the cornice is as much about the individual building as it is about the city or the landscape. As an ornament applied to buildings, it involves matters of taste and aesthetics as much as of craft and industrial production. And as a subject depicted in two-dimensional works of art on paper, it allows us to interrogate the art historical conventions of image-viewing and composition. Finally, as a complex three-dimensional object, the cornice raises questions of cultural representation and communication through material transfers over time.
The exhibition unites a unique selection of drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day. Authors and artists exhibited include Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Gottfried Semper, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, amongst many others. By bringing works from earlier centuries from the ETH collections into direct dialogue with loans from important institutions in Switzerland and abroad—including the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, the Drawing Matter Collections (UK), the Berlin State Museums, the Rietberg Museum Zurich, and more—the exhibition exposes the ‘hidden horizontal’ at the centre of five centuries of art and design thinking.
Featuring works by:
Cherubino Alberti, Daniel Badger, Ottavio Antonio Baiardi, Baccio Bandinelli, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Nicolas Beatrizet, François-Joseph Bélanger, Stefano della Bella, Ferdinando and Giuseppe Galli Bibiena, Jacques-François Blondel, Jan van Bronchorst, Andreas Buschmann, Richard Cahan, Cesare Cesariano, Charles Chipiez, François Collignon, Francesco Colonna, Le Corbusier, Pascal Coste, Marco Dente after Raphael, Deutscher Werkbund, Wendel Dietterlin, Giovanni Dosio, Albrecht Dürer, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Charles Eisen, Theodor Fischer, Domenico Fontana, Johannes Gachnang, George Jackson and Sons, Ludger Gerdes, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Hubertus Goltzius, Karl Adolf Graffenried, Michael Graves, Iain Hales, Herzog & de Meuron, Utagawa Hiroshige, Jacques Hittorff, Daniel Hopfer, Lucas Kilian, Henri Labrouste, Mari Lending, Johann Baptist Marzohl, Johann Matthäus Mauch, Meister GA mit der Fussangel, Nicoletto da Modena, Richard Nickel, Friedrich Ohmann, Ordinary Architecture (Charles Holland and Elly Ward), Andrea Palladio, Manuel Pauli, Georges Perrot, Pablo Picasso, Christiane Pinatel, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Marcantonio Raimondi, Mies van der Rohe, Diego Prévost Sagredo, Antonio Sangallo the Younger, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Gottfried Semper, Sebastiano Serlio, Hermann Spielberg, Philippe Starck, Christian Ludwig Stieglitz, Gabriel Ludwig Stürler, Johann Georg Sulzer, Charles Heathcote Thatham, Philippe Thomassin, Constantin Uhde, Agostino Veneziano, Howard Charles Walker, Frank Lloyd Wright, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Hans Vredeman de Vries, and Nicolai Zabaglia.
The presentation is jointly organised by the ETH collection of prints and drawings, Dr. Linda Schädler, and the chair of the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zürich, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke. Additional curatorial support has been provided by Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Dr. Emma Letizia Jones.
Programming details including guided tours, a lecture series, and walks can be found here.
Publications

Illustration from Vorbilder für Fabrikanten und Handwerker (‘Patterns for Manufacturers and Handicraftsmen‘), edited by Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1821).
A special edition of gta papers (the journal of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zurich) dedicated to the cornice will be published in Fall 2021 to coincide with the exhibition (retail price: Fr. 25.–). Edited by Maarten Delbeke, Erik Wegerhoff, and Adam Jasper, the issue features an introduction by Maarten Delbeke and texts by Richard Anderson, Guido Beltramini, Emma Letizia Jones, Edoardo Piccoli, Linda Schädler, Oliver Streiff, David Bühler, Flavia Crisciotti, Linda Stagni with Claudio Gianocelli, Xu Han, and Maxime Zaugg.
The September 2021 issue of werk, bauen + wohnen focuses on the cornice as well. It contains an introduction by Maarten Delbeke, the first German translation of Luigi Moretti’s 1952 text “I valori della modenatura: Wert und Wirkung plastischer Profile,” a text by Mario Rinke, and reviews of projects by De Smet Vermeulen Architecten, 31/44 Architects, KilgaPopp Architekten, Joos & Mathys Architekten, Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten, and Studio Anne Holtrop.
New Book | Château de Haroué
From Rizzoli:
Victoria Botana de Beauvau-Craon, with photographs by Miguel Flores-Vianna and foreword by Jean-Louis Deniot, Château de Haroué: The Home of the Princes de Beauvau-Craon (New York: Rizzoli, 2021), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0847870929, $65.
A dazzling tour of Château de Haroué, the epitome of opulent French style and one of today’s must-see examples of vibrant eighteenth-century architecture and design.
Located in a remote village in the Lorraine region of northeastern France, the estate of Chateau de Haroue is an unrivaled treasure of Gallic culture and heritage. Built between 1720 and 1729 for Marc de Beauvau, Prince de Beauvau-Craon, constable of Lorraine and viceroy of Tuscany, his descendants have inhabited the castle and kept it going in high style ever since. Here, readers are invited to discover the château’s impressive architecture and fashionably chic interior design. Newly commissioned photographs by Miguel Flores-Vianna alongside archival documents offer unprecedented access to 82 sumptuous rooms, which are enlivened by dynamic tapestries and family portraits, a breathtaking artwork collection, and stately antique furniture. Informative texts by Victoria Botana de Beauvau, one of France’s preeminent modern-day aristocrats and an It girl in Parisian society, paint a picture of the castle’s architectural splendors, lifestyle, notable events, and her family’s unique approach to keeping history alive.
Victoria Botana de Beauvau is a creative director and producer. Miguel Flores-Vianna is a renowned Argentine-born, London-based photographer whose images regularly appear in Architectural Digest and Cabana magazine. Jean-Louis Deniot is a French interior designer and a close friend of the de Beauvau-Craon family.
New Book | At Home in the Eighteenth Century
From Routledge:
Stephen G. Hague and Karen Lipsedge, eds., At Home in the Eighteenth Century: Interrogating Domestic Space (New York: Routledge, 2021), 378 pages, ISBN 978-0367276799, $160.
The eighteenth-century home, in terms of its structure, design, function, and furnishing, was a site of transformation—of spaces, identities, and practices. Home has myriad meanings, and although the eighteenth century in the common imagination is often associated with taking tea on polished mahogany tables, a far wider world of experience remains to be introduced. At Home in the Eighteenth Century brings together factual and fictive texts and spaces to explore aspects of the typical Georgian home that we think we know from Jane Austen novels and extant country houses while also engaging with uncharacteristic and underappreciated aspects of the home. At the core of the volume is the claim that exploring eighteenth-century domesticity from a range of disciplinary vantage points can yield original and interesting questions, as well as reveal new answers. Contributions from the fields of literature, history, archaeology, art history, heritage studies, and material culture brings the home more sharply into focus. In this way At Home in the Eighteenth Century reveals a more nuanced and fluid concept of the eighteenth-century home and becomes a steppingstone to greater understanding of domestic space for undergraduate level and beyond.
Stephen G. Hague is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Rowan University. He specializes in British and British imperial history and is the author of The Gentleman’s House in the British Atlantic World, 1680–1780 (2015). He researches and writes on the intersections of political, social, cultural, and architectural history.
Karen Lipsedge is an Associate Professor in English Literature, at Kingston University, England. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century domestic space, material culture, and society and its representation in British eighteenth-century literature and art. She is the author of Domestic Space in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel (2012).
C O N T E N T S
Introduction, Stephen Hague and Karen Lipsedge
Part I: The Organization and Arrangement of Space
1 Paula Humfrey, Staging Fictions for Domestic Privacy in Early Eighteenth-Century London Households
2 Karen Lipsedge, Reading Pamela through the Domestic Parlour: Rooms, Social Class, and Gender
3 Kristin Distel, ‘I will not be thus constrained’: Domestic Power, Shame, and the Role of the Staircase in Richardson’s Clarissa
4 Julie Park, ‘A Small House in the Country: Cottage Dreams and Desires in the Eighteenth-Century English Imagination
Part II: Money, Value, and Consumption
5 Stephen Hague, ‘I am now determined to inform you what I am sure will amaze you’: Objects, Domestic Space, and the Economics of Gentility
6 Beth Cortese, Home Economics: Female Estate Managers in Long Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Society
7 Gillian Williamson, Genteel, Respectable, and Airy: The Lodgings Market in London, 1770–1800
8 Deborah L. Miller, “Great earthly riches are no real advantage to our posterity”: Space, Archaeology, and the Philadelphia Home
Part III: Different Perspectives on Home
9 Victoria Barnett-Woods, Transatlantic Domesticity and the Limits of a Genre in A Woman of Colour
10 Margaret A. Miller, Making Room: Queer Domesticity in Jane Austen’s Emma and the Anne Lister Diaries
11 Jon Stobart, Servants’ Furniture: Hierarchies and Identities in the English Country House
12 Katie Barclay, Making the Bed, Making the Lower-Order Home in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
13 Laura Keim, Hierarchies of the Home: Spaces, Things, and People in the Eighteenth Century
14 Oliver Cox, Twenty-First Century Visitors in Eighteenth-Century Spaces: Challenges and Opportunities
Conclusion: Assessing Eighteenth-Century Domestic Space, Stephen Hague and Karen Lipsedge
New Book | L’art du XVIIIe siècle
From PU Rennes:
Guillaume Glorieux, L’art du XVIIIe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021), 342 pages, ISBN: 978-2753582668, 25€.
Des dernières lueurs du règne de Louis XIV, qui s’éteint à Versailles en 1715, à la disparition de Catherine II de Russie en 1796 à Saint-Pétersbourg, ce livre aborde la création artistique en Europe au siècle des Lumières. Entre les deux dates s’écoule un siècle marqué par de profonds bouleversements dans la production artistique et, plus encore, dans la façon dont l’art s’inscrit dans la société. Source de délectation, l’oeuvre d’art fait aussi l’objet de débats et de critiques, à une époque qui voit l’essor d’une réflexion sur l’art et ses finalités. L’effervescence créatrice qui caractérise la période s’exprime dans tous les domaines, la peinture, l’architecture, la sculpture et les arts décoratifs. Ce livre se propose de parcourir le XVIIIe siècle—ses grands artistes, les oeuvres majeures et les principaux courants—dans un cheminement chronologique attentif aux données sociales, politiques et culturelles.
Professeur des universités et historien de l’art, Guillaume Glorieux est directeur de l’enseignement et de la recherche de L’École des Arts joailliers, avec le soutien de Van Cleef & Arpels, après avoir enseigné à l’université Rennes 2. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs livres sur la peinture, le commerce du luxe et les arts décoratifs, dont Watteau (Citadelles & Mazenod, 2011) et À l’enseigne de Gersaint. Edme-François Gersaint, marchand d’art sur le pont Notre-Dame (1694–1750) (Champ Vallon, 2002, prix Eugène-Carrière de l’Académie française). Son dernier livre porte sur les métiers et les savoir-faire de la joaillerie : Les Arts joailliers. Métiers d’excellence (Gallimard / L’École des Arts Joailliers, 2019).
S O M M A I R E
Introduction
1 Les fantaisies de l’art rocaille
2 Les bouleversements de la peinture
3 L’exotisme dans les arts au XVIIIe siècle
4 Scénographies urbaines
5 Un art porteur de sens : les Lumières et les arts
6 Marché de l’art et collectionnisme
7 Sentiment, nature et subjectivité : le préromantisme
8 Néoclassicisme et retour à l’ordre
Conclusion
Analyses d’œuvres
Images des œuvres
Chronologie
Bibliographie
The Burlington Magazine, September 2021
The eighteenth century in this month’s issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 163 (September 2021)
E D I T O R I A L
• “Nicholas Goodison and The Burlington,” p. 779.
A R T I C L E S
• David Pullins, Dorothy Mahon, Silvia A. Centeno, “The Lavoisiers by David: Technical Findings on Portraiture at the Brink of Revolution,” pp. 780–91.
Recent technical examination of Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, painted between 1787 and 1788, has revealed significant and previously unknown alterations that transform our understanding of this celebrated portrait, its author, and its sitters.
R E V I E W S
• Susan Babaie, Review of the exhibition Epic Iran (V&A, 2021), pp. 837–39.
• Jonathan Conlin, Review of the exhibition Creating a National Collection: The Partnership between Southampton City Art Gallery and the National Gallery (Southampton City Art Gallery, 2021), pp. 845–48.
• Tanya Harrod, Review of the newly renovated Museum of the Home (previously the Geffrye Museum), pp. 858–61.
• John Bold, Review of John Martin Robinson, Wilton House: The Art, Architecture, and Interiors of One of Britain’s Great Stately Homes (Rizzoli Electa, 2021), pp. 872–74.
• Simon Lee, Review of Janis Tomlinson, Goya: A Portrait of the Artist (Princeton UP, 2020), pp. 874–75.
• Peter Fuhring, Review of Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (Cambridge UP, 2018), pp. 875–76.
O B I T U A R Y
• Simon Jervis, “Ronald Lightbown (1932–2021),” pp. 879–80.
Spending most of his career at the Victoria and Albert Museum and National Art Library, Ronald Lightbown was a scholar of exceptional breadth, whose publications ranged from goldsmiths’ work of the late Middle Ages to Renaissance art and from the history of jewellery to Baroque wax sculpture.
New Book | Villa Albani Torlonia: The Cradle of Neoclassicism
From Rizzoli:
Carlo Gasparri, Raniero Gnoli, and Alvar González-Palacios, with photographs by Massimo Listri, Villa Albani Torlonia: The Cradle of Neoclassicism (New York: Rizzoli, 2021), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-8891832146, $150.
Villa Albani Torlonia, with its collections, the Italian garden, and the hemicycle of the Kaffeehaus, is a sublime testimony of that particular antiquarian taste which came to the fore in the mid-eighteenth century, that for which Rome became a favorite destination on the Grand Tour. The classicist dream of Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692–1779) was preserved thanks to the Torlonia family, who purchased the villa in 1866, enlarging the collection and the gardens and restoring the most important cardinal residence of the eighteenth century.
More than 300 images by the great Italian master Massimo Listri recount the history of this extraordinary cultural heritage for the very first time. An immersive journey leads the reader between its collections of ancient masterpieces. Statues, bas-reliefs, and fountains are ensconced between the various buildings and gardens of the villa in a composition of environments, landscapes, and works of art forever waiting to be discovered.
Massimo Listri is a photographer who has published more than 70 books and has exhibited his work at numerous solo exhibitions throughout the world. Carlo Gasparri is emeritus professor at the University of Naples Federico II and has authored several books about archaeology and Greek and Roman art. Raniero Gnoli is an Orientalist and historian of religions. Alvar González-Palacios is an author and art historian and former collaborator of FMR magazine.
New Book | The Living Death of Antiquity
From Oxford UP:
William Fitzgerald, The Living Death of Antiquity: Neoclassical Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0192893963, £75 / $100.
The Living Death of Antiquity examines the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, “a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.” Fitzgerald discusses the aesthetics of this strain of neoclassicism as manifested in a range of work in different media and periods, focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the aftermath of Winckelmann’s writing, John Flaxman’s engraved scenes from the Iliad and the sculptors Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen reinterpreted ancient prototypes or invented new ones. Earlier and later versions of this aesthetic in the ancient Greek Anacreontea, the French Parnassian poets, and Erik Satie’s Socrate, manifest its character in different media and periods. Looking with a sympathetic eye on the original aspirations of the neoclassical aesthetic and its forward-looking potential, Fitzgerald describes how it can tip over into the vacancy or kitsch through which a ‘remaindered’ antiquity lingers in our minds and environments. This book asks how the neoclassical value of simplicity serves to conjure up an epiphanic antiquity, and how whiteness, in both its literal and its metaphorical forms, acts as the ‘logo’ of neoclassical antiquity, and functions aesthetically in a variety of media. In the context of the waning of a neoclassically idealized antiquity, Fitzgerald describes the new contents produced by its asymptotic approach to meaninglessness, and how the antiquity that it imagined both is and is not with us.
After taking a BA in Classics at Oxford (1974) and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Princeton (1980), William Fitzgerald taught for 23 years at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley. He returned to the UK in 2003 and taught at Cambridge University until 2007, when he became Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London. He has published books and articles on Latin literature, especially poetry, and on classical reception.
C O N T E N T S
1 Introduction: Why Neoclassicism?
2 The Iliad Backtranslated: Alexander Pope and John Flaxman
3 Sculpture between the Graceful and the Heroic: Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen
4 Voicing Antiquity: The Anacreontea and Charles Leconte de Lisle’s Études Latines
5 Modernism, Neoclassicism, and Irony: Erik Satie’s Socrate
Conclusion



















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