Later this Year: Exhibition on Johann Christian Wentzinger
Freiburg Baroque: Johann Christian Wentzinger und seine Zeit
Augustinermuseum, Freiburg, 27 November 2010 — 6 March 2011
ISBN: 9783422070394, $53.50 (available in December 2010)
This exhibition at the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg, commemorates the 300th birthday of Johann Christian Wentzinger (1710-1797). A Baroque sculptor, painter and architect, Wentzinger may be counted among the most important eighteenth-century artists in southern Germany.
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A full description (in German) of the artist and the upcoming exhibition from the Badische Zeitung is available here»
Meissen Part II: The Larger European Context
The Fascination of Fragility: Masterpieces of European Porcelain
Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, 9 May — 29 August 2010
This unique exhibition paints a vivid picture of 18th-century European porcelain. The entire spectrum of European porcelain is on show, from elegant French court porcelain and English wares to German and Italian porcelains with their bright colours and bold forms. For this exceptional show the Ephraim-Palais has been turned into a magical ‘Porcelain Palace’. When presented in such an international context, the collected masterpieces of the most famous Berlin manufactory, the KPM, also develop their own special charisma.
This special exhibition in Berlin is part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden’s tercentenary celebrations commemorating the invention of European hard-paste porcelain. The exhibition – organised in association with the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin – encompasses around 500 objects, including about a hundred porcelains from the holdings of the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Porcelain wares from the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin held in the Stadtmuseum Berlin as well as items on loan from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Musée national du Céramique in Sèvres complete the exhibition.
The exhibition places Meissen Porcelain within the context of European porcelain culture. Particular attention is therefore paid to masterpieces from other European manufactories . Outstanding objects are on display from each of the approximately 50 manufactories. The exhibition focuses on the specific features of the products of each manufactory, as well as showing the shared elements which gave rise to a common tradition. Both the influence of Meissen por-celain on the wares produced by other manufactories and the effect of other Euro-pean manufactories on the Saxon products is clearly illustrated.
Exactly 300 years ago, August the Strong established the first European hard-paste porcelain manufactory in Meissen. Thereafter, Meissen porcelain swiftly became an indispensable status symbol for the European aristocracy. Until the middle of the 18th century, the Meissen manufactory was the leading force in porcelain design, setting standards for table and dining culture and laying down the entire repertoire of forms and styles of decor. From the mid-18th century onwards, there was a boom in the production of porcelain. Newly established manufactories entered into serious competition with Meissen. They emancipated themselves from the dominance of Meissen and introduced their own innovations. Meissen gradually lost the upper hand to Berlin and Sèvres, which now took over the leading role in Europe.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by E. A. Seemann Verlag Leipzig: The Fascination of Fragility. Masterpieces of European Porcelain by Ulrich Pietsch and Theresa Witting (eds.). Price: 49.90 Euro.
Meissen Turns 300
Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie, 1710-1815
Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden, 8 May — 29 August 2010
Meissen beaker and cover, 1727 (Amsterdam: Rijkmuseum)
The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of Meissen Porcelain art from the Baroque to the Biedermeier era. Meissener Porzellan (Meissen Porcelain) has never before been displayed in this context alongside works of art on loan from all around the world. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden are taking the anniversary of the invention of European porcelain as an opportunity to exhibit Meissen Porcelain for the first time in the building which August the Strong dedicated to the presentation of the royal porcelain treasures from the Far East and from Meissen – the Japanisches Palais.
In 1710 August the Strong established the first European porcelain manufactory in Meissen. Thereafter, Meissen Porcelain swiftly became an indispensable status symbol for the European aristocracy. Today, it continues to be the epitome of sophisticated table culture and luxurious room décor. In order to create an appropriate setting in which to indulge his ‘maladie de porcelaine’, the Elector planned to convert the Japanisches Palais into a Porcelain Palace. This project, however, was never completed.
The exhibition Triumph of the Blue Swords encompasses a total of around 800 porcelain items, including a large number of the holdings of the Dresden collection that are not normally on public display. They are complemented by a wide range of items on loan from museums and collections around the world in places as diverse as California, Moscow, New York, London, Paris, Prague and Budapest. The development and manufacture of porcelain, which has previously only been demonstrated with reference to a small number of specimens, will be presented in detail, drawing upon the latest research findings.
The exhibition focuses on the period up to 1815, during which Meissen developed the whole spectrum of possibilities that would thereafter be open to European porcelain. In these first hundred years, Meissen was the epitome of European porcelain art, long defying the competition from the newly founded manufactories and even managing to survive the crises of the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars, right down to the present day. Until 1756 Meissen was the predominant manufactory in Europe; after that, the leading role was taken over by Sèvres, and Meissen had to reposition itself. Unlike previous presentations, this exhibition consciously integrates the concept of crisis and new beginnings.
The exhibition pays particular attention to the table service. For one thing because, as the most important product of the Meissen Manufactory, it has had a profound influence on table culture in general. For another, because it especially underlines the importance of Meissen Porcelain for diplomatic gifts. Among the items on display are two table services commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich II: a service designed on a Prussian/musical theme with a green scale-pattern rim, and the set known as the “Möllendorff” service, which was a gift for the Prussian General Möllendorff. Both services are opulently displayed on a dinner table. The Meissen Manufactory was the first to produce a table service made of porcelain.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by E. A. Seemann Verlag Leipzig: Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815 by Ulrich Pietsch and Claudia Banz (eds.)
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In Apollo Magazine, Louise Nicholson profiles two of the collectors who have offered loans for the exhibition, Kurt and Jutta Salfeld, whose porcelain birds are among the rarest of all Meissen production.
Ricci Exhibition to Mark His 350th Birthday
Sebastiano Ricci: Il trionfo dell’invenzione nel Settecento veneziano
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 24 April — 11 July 2010
This exhibition is the principal event in the programme of celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the birth of Sebastiano Ricci, promoted by the Veneto Region and the Giorgio Cini Foundation through a specially created regional committee. On show will be paintings, sculptures and drawings connected to the problematic issue of the bozzetto (models for sculptures, and painted sketches and drawings for larger works). The exhibition will, thus, provide an opportunity to explore an original aspect of the multifaceted talent of the artist from Belluno. Specialist studies agree in attributing a key role to Sebastiano Ricci as a precursor and modern interpreter of the Rococo in Italy and the rest of Europe. In fact, thanks to his wide-ranging activities in European courts and centres of culture, he was able to develop his skills and an accomplished virtuoso language that catered to
changes in taste in the early 18th century.
Catalogue edited by Giuseppe Pavanello ISBN: 9788831706377, $65
The main section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the art of the bozzetto and the modelletto (an initial small version of a proposed large work for presentation to patrons), in which Sebastiano Ricci was not only a supreme master, but also an ingenious innovator. Sebastiano’s letter to Giacomo Tassi of 14 November 1731 is usually considered to mark the starting point for a reversal of values that saw the aesthetic preeminence of the work of art pass from its “finished” version, conceived for public display, to the bozzetto, the preliminary work usually destined to remain in the studio. Sebastiano’s last sentence in the letter addressed to his patron – “moreover, this small work is the original and the altarpiece is the copy” – ushered in a view that was eventually so successful that it even influenced most 20th-century critics.
The exhibition will also provide the opportunity for comparisons with the bozzetti of other major artists in the Venetian school. These artists include Antonio Pellegrini, the young Giambattista Tiepolo, Gaspare Diziani, Giambattista Pittoni and Jacopo Amigoni. There will also be a special focus on Ricci’s graphic works, now mainly kept in the Drawing and Prints Cabinet of the Accademia, Venice, and in the royal collections of Windsor Castle. Ricci’s swirling exploratory graphic technique lends itself to precise comparisons with his own modelletti and with the work of the sculptor Giovanni Maria Morlaiter. In fact, the exhibition will also include some terracotta models and bozzetti from the workshop “remainders” of Giovanni Maria Morlaiter – Sebastiano Ricci’s alter ego in sculpture – now in storage in the Ca’ Rezzonico Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venetian Art, Venice.
Jean Barbault Exhibition in Strasbourg
Jean Barbault: Le théâtre de la vie italienne / The Theater of Italian Life
Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 22 May — 22 August 2010
Catalogue by Pierre Rosenberg et al. (ISBN: 9782351250815)
This year the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg will present an exhibition focused around the painter Jean Barbault (Val-d’Oise, 1718 — Rome, 1762). This seemed an opportune moment to spotlight such an enticing artist since the museum acquired one of his masterpieces just a few short months ago. The exhibition thus unveils a complete, eloquent panorama of his work. Barbault is renowned for whimsical figures painted with virtuosity and refined color as well as canvases treating “Mascarades” organized by residents at the Academy of France in Rome. He also signed landscapes of ruins and considered himself a “painter of History.” As an added feature the exhibition is showing a series representing his French contemporaries working in Rome at the same period, including Fragonard, who, like him were deeply attracted to Ancient (fascinating) and modern (picturesque) Rome and dazzled by Italian light.
Last year the Musée des Beaux-Arts further enriched its collection (thanks to a purchase made possible by the City of Strasbourg and by the Fonds Régional d’Acquisition des Musées / Regional Fund for Museum Acquisitions) with a major painting entitled Neapolitan Shepard and Buffalo Cow Leaving the Grotto by Jean Barbault. This is one of the mid-18th century’s most attractive works of French (and Italian) painting. Its subject matter and spiritual treatment personify the very essence of the Age of Enlightenment. The painting is a masterpiece done in Italy circa 1750 by an artist who largely remains in the shadows despite exhibitions previously shown at the Museums of Beauvais, Angers and Valence, 1974-1975.
The exhibit – and its catalog – gives an overview of his painted work. Barbault settled in Rome in 1747, remaining in this fascinating city and fully integrating himself into Italian life until his death. He was an original artist, the author of characters in typical Italian costume and exotic figures for Mascarade, who also undertook the register of ruins. Despite a rather dramatic existence, he considered himself an artist-in-full. Besides an extraordinary collection of engravings by the Italian Piranesi, the exhibition also exposes the unique milieu of residents at the Academy of France in Rome. Barbault was the contemporary of Jean-Honoré Fragonard and belonged to an exciting generation, between Boucher and David, Rocaille and Neo-Classicism.
Catalogue: Pierre Rosenberg et al., Jean Barbault: Le théâtre de la vie italienne (Strasbourg: Editions des Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg, 2010), 160 pages (ISBN: 9782351250815), $53.50, available at artbooks.com.
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Didier Rykner’s review of the exhibition for La Tribune de l’Art (5 June 2010) can be found here»
Delaroche Exhibition
Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey
National Gallery, London, 24 February — 23 May 2010
Although primarily a nineteenth-century exhibition, the Delaroche show that just closed at the National Gallery offered plenty of jewels for thinking about the eighteenth century, too, especially in light of the aftermath of the French Revolution. A review of the exhibition by David Howarth can be found at Apollo Magazine:
. . . The “Execution [of Lady Jane Grey]” is the centrepiece of a beautifully crafted show, as meticulously prepared as the smooth finish of Delaroche’s vast canvases. Although a limited number of paintings are on display in the exhibition, the range extends beyond the confines of a notorious basement which has ill-served so many exhibitions. The accompanying catalogue, by Stephen Bann and Linda Whiteley, includes important new thinking on the relationship between art and the stage. . .
The full review is here»
Old Master Drawings in Grenoble
From the evene.fr site:
De chair et d’esprit: Les dessins italiens du musée de Grenoble (XVe — XVIIIe siècles)
Musée de Grenoble, 6 March – 30 May 2010
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754), "Bust of a Young Woman," Black chalk and charcoal, heightened with white gouache - 37.6 x 30.4 cm (Grenoble: Musée de Grenoble)
Le musée de Grenoble a entrepris d’étudier et de publier les 3500 dessins anciens (du XVe au XVIIIe siècle) conservés dans ses collections, en présentant chaque année, sur trois ans, une sélection des oeuvres les plus représentatives de ce fonds. Un fonds qui était demeuré jusqu’alors largement inexploité et pour l’essentiel inédit. En 2010, la première étape de cette démarche sera consacrée à l’Italie et permettra de découvrir près de 120 dessins issus des différents foyers artistiques de la péninsule. L’étude et la mise en valeur de ses collections sont parmi les missions premières d’un musée. A Grenoble, alors que la majeure partie des peintures et sculptures ont été publiées, les équipes travaillent depuis plusieurs années sur le fonds d’art graphique.
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A review of the exhibition by Didier Rykner from The Art Tribune is available in English here»
. . . . We were struck during our visit to this exhibition in Grenoble by the quality of the works which nonetheless remained totally unknown until now, even to specialists. Furthermore, we would like to commend the museum for its determination to explore and catalogue all of its collections, an undertaking begun many years ago and which its current director, Guy Tossato, continues to pursue. Next year, after the Italian drawings, the museum will highlight French drawings before the 19th century, then will present Northern European sheets. Let us hope that the entire collection will soon be published, a feat not yet achieved, to our knowledge, by any of the other provincial museums.
The accompanying catalogue is available through Michael Shamansky’s artbooks.com. Eric Pagliano, Catherine Monbeig Goguel, and Philippe Costamagna, De chair et d’esprit, dessins italiens du musée de Grenoble XVe –XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Somogy, 2010), ISBN: 9782757203057, $65.
Old Master Drawings at the Met
Press release from the Met:
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 12 May — 15 August 2010
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, "A Family Group," 1750s. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk. Sheet: 9 1/2 x 13 7/16 in. (24.1 x 34.2 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift of David M. Tobey (TR.331.50.2007).
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo presents 72 extraordinary works of the 16th through 18th centuries, from one of the preeminent collections of Italian Old Master drawings in private hands. It features masterpieces by gifted and historically important draftsmen—principally Italian masters but also artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps—among them Correggio, Parmigianino, Bernini, Poussin, Guercino, Canaletto, and Tiepolo. The drawings represent the principal centers of Italian art: Florence, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Parma, Venice, Genoa, and Milan. Their strikingly broad range of subject matter includes figure studies, historical and mythological narratives, landscapes, vedute, botanical drawings, motifs copied from or inspired by classical antiquity,
and designs for painted compositions.
Catalogue by Linda Wolk-Simon and Carmen Bambach, ISBN: 9780300155242, $50
The 16th-century Italian painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari has been credited with formulating the concept of Renaissance art in his celebrated Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550). He also invented the practice of systematically collecting Italian drawings in compiling his Libro dei disegni, a volume comprising examples by many of the artists whose biographies he authored. From Vasari’s time until the present, such works—intimate glimpses of an artist’s imagination and creative powers at work—have held a seductive allure and an intellectual appeal for collectors and connoisseurs alike. An Italian Journey offers a unique glimpse of the myriad riches of this exceptional collection, presented to the public for the first time.
Among the many treasures of the collection on view are a recently discovered, magnificent red chalk drawing of the head of Julius Caesar by Andrea del Sarto, the leading Florentine painter of the first decades of the 16th century; a luminous study by Correggio for the figure of Eve in his great masterpiece, the painted dome of the cathedral of Parma; a sprightly pen drawing by his younger contemporary Parmigianino—hailed in his day as the spirit of the divine Raphael reborn—for one of his most important painted portraits; brilliantly rendered colored studies by the Florentine artist Jacopo Ligozzi, one depicting, with poetry and scientific precision, a plant, and another an exotic Oriental theme; a powerful study of a recumbent nude man by the towering genius of Baroque Rome, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and of a fanciful ship by his contemporary, the sculptor Alessandro Algardi, made for the pope; a rich concentration of drawings by some of the leading Bolognese painters of the 17th century, notably Guercino (who is represented by three masterful studies), Guido Reni, and Domenichino; and fine examples by the great Venetian draftsmen of the 18th century, among them Canaletto, Guardi, Piranesi, and the greatest artistic luminary of the age, Giambattista Tiepolo. (more…)
Grangerized Books
Extending the Book: The Art of Extra-Illustration
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 28 January – 25 May 2010
Curated by Erin Blake (Folger Shakespeare Library) and Stuart Sillars (University of Bergen) with LuEllen DeHaven (Folger Shakespeare Library)
Texts are never static objects, but it is rare that readers’ interactions with them are as physically evident as they are in extra-illustrated books. The concept is simple: identify significant people, places, and things in a printed text, collect pictures of them, then insert the pictures as visual annotations to the text. Extra-illustration came to prominence after the 1769 publication of James Granger’s Biographical history of England. Granger’s un-illustrated book combined thumbnail biographies with lists of portraits, and readers began to supplement their copies with actual examples of the portraits. The practice spread to other texts, and the great era of extra-illustration, or “grangerizing,” began. At its most extreme, a single volume could grow to dozens.
Shakespeare proved especially attractive to grangerizers thanks to the variety of editions available and the many portraits of historical figures, fictitious characters, and well-known actors that could be added. Many extra-illustrators went beyond portraiture to include playbills, scenic views, and even entire books; others inserted manuscript letters, original watercolors, and rare engravings, thus preserving a treasure-trove of unique material. Finished volumes range from the skilled work of professional inlayers and binders hired by wealthy collectors to self-made books of inexpensive clippings pasted onto cheap inserts. Any book owner could be an extra-illustrator.
From the beginning, extra-illustrators had to defend their “exquisite handicraft” (in the words of an 1890 proponent) against accusations of “breaking up a good book to illustrate a worse one” (in the words of an 1892 critic). This exhibition examines the art and the practice of extra-illustration, from crudely altered books to beautiful new creations.
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The Folger’s exhibition site includes more information and an intriguing sampling of images»
At the Getty: The Grand Manner on Paper
Press release from the Getty:
Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV
The Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, 18 May — 17 October 2010
Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707), after Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), "Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander from the Battles of Alexander," ca. 1675 Etching and engraving 26 9/16 x 35 5/16 in. Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2003.PR.42)
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Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV explores a little-known facet of late 17th-century reproductive engravings. The exhibition examines the prints’ rich vocabulary and illuminates the context in which they were made between the mid-1660s and the mid-1680s. While it focuses on the relationship between Charles Le Brun (French, 1619–90) and the printmakers who reproduced his compositions, the exhibition also interprets the prints and their inscriptions in light of Le Brun’s ambitions and struggles as a court painter, designer, and print publisher in the highly competitive atmosphere surrounding Louis XIV.
Catalogue by Louis Marchesano and Christian Michel (Getty Research Institute, 2010) ISBN: 978-0892369805, $50
The works in this exhibition and related catalog reproduce Le Brun’s narrative compositions in the Grand Manner, the genre in which a heroic protagonist engages in a morally significant action—a battle to be won, a victory to be celebrated, or a vice to be avoided. By disseminating these subjects in printed form, Le Brun presented to both collectors and artists his mastery of the most complex type of art. In turn, the quality and size of these prints allowed him to demonstrate the unprecedented authority over the fine arts in France.
The eleven large prints featured in Printing the Grand Manner were clearly intended to evoke the grandeur of Le Brun’s large-scale paintings and tapestry designs that illustrate events from the exemplary lives of ancient rulers such as Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great. A prodigious artist and designer, now best known for his work at Versailles, Le Brun was Louis XIV’s principal painter, leader of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and director of the huge royal manufactory at the Hôtel des Gobelins, the integrated workshops where hundreds of artists and craftsmen produced the fine objects that gave the age of Louis XIV its veneer of splendor and grandeur.
Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707), after Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), "Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander from the Battles of Alexander," detail, ca. 1675
“Le Brun used prints strategically to promote his agenda. Naturally, he wanted the best printmakers to reproduce his compositions and to disseminate them in the best possible light. As a painter and leader of the arts who experienced the power of prints in his own career, he was able to encourage the development of printmaking in France,” says Louis Marchesano, the Getty Research Institute’s curator of prints and drawings. “In retrospect, we know Le Brun’s own interventions in the field of prints paid off because the material and stylistic excellence of the large prints whet the appetites of collectors and critics well into the 19th-century.”
Le Brun was most successful at the height of his power in the 1670s, when he oversaw the publication of the Battles of Alexander, a suite of five images comprising his Persian and Indian campaigns. With his reputation and authority at stake, he convinced the Crown to spare no expense on the quality of the paper and the size of the impressions. Pulled from 15 copper plates, large printed sheets had to be assembled into a suite of five separate images. The Alexander suite was made by two of the best artists at Le Brun’s disposal, Gérard Edelinck and Gérard Audran. Showcasing Audran’s astonishing mixed etching and engraving technique, the four prints by him were judged to be the epitome of printmaking, in part because they appeared to improve upon Le Brun’s original paintings, a rather unusual judgment in favor of prints. (more…)
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