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…)
Quilts at the V&A
From the V&A’s website:
Quilts: 1700-2010
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 20 March — 4 July 2010
Bishops Court quilt, 1690-1700 (V&A no. T.201-1984)
The V&A will present its first ever exhibition of British quilts, with examples dating from 1700 to the present day — a unique opportunity to view the V&A’s unseen quilt collection as well as key national loans. The exhibition will show 65 beautifully crafted quilts, predominantly from the V&A’s own collection but also including a number of important loans and new works by contemporary artists, many of which have been commissioned especially for the show.
Earliest examples include a sumptuous silk and velvet bedcover, with an oral narrative that links it to King Charles II’s visit to an Exeter manor house in the late 17th century. Recent examples will include works by leading artists such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin and commissions for the exhibition by a number of contemporary artists including Sue Stockwell and Caren Garfen.
Catalogue by Sue Prichard, ISBN: 978-1851775958 ($60)
The curators have unravelled some of the complex personal narratives and broader historical events documented in the quilts. Examples by both named and unnamed makers will be shown with objects relating to their subject matter and makers including paintings and prints, as well as needlework tools and personal keepsakes. One example is a cot quilt made at Deal castle, displayed for the first time alongside the maker’s diary and portraits of the two grandchildren who slept under it.
There will also be bedcovers that commemorate the lives of prominent figures including Admiral Lord Nelson, Charles II and the Duke of Wellington and important events such as the coronation of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington’s battle at Vittoria. The exhibition will end with Tracey Emin’s To Meet My Past (2002), a confessional installation which follows the tradition of quilts used as vessels for personal and
collective memories. (more…)
Richard Wilson Exhibition in New York
From a press release from Richard Feigen:
Richard Wilson and the British Arcadia
Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York, 29 April – 25 June 2010
Richard Wilson, "View of Caernarvon Castle, Wales," 1744-45 (Detroit Institute of Arts)
Richard L. Feigen & Co. will present Richard Wilson and the British Arcadia, a loan exhibition dedicated to the first great British landscape artist, Richard Wilson (c.1713-1782). This will be the first exhibition to be devoted to the artist in North America in over 25 years.
Richard Wilson and the British Arcadia will feature approximately a dozen of the painter’s works from both public and private US collections. One of the highlights of the exhibition will be the great Destruction of the Children of Niobe, the key picture of Wilson’s career and a landmark in the history of British landscape paintings, which is being loaned by the Yale Center for British Art. Also included will be Wilson’s earliest known view of his native Wales, Caernarvon Castle, on loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts, as well as several seminal pictures painted during the artist’s sojourn in Italy, among them, The Temple of Clitumnus from a private US collection.
Wilson’s second English period will be represented by his perhaps most famous landscape, The White Monk, loaned by the Toledo Museum of Art, and a magnificent view of Tivoli from the Kimbell Art Museum. The exhibition will also feature several pictures by some of the seventeenth-century landscape masters whose work influenced Wilson’s. Claude Lorrain’s exquisite Pastoral Landscape, a small copper being lent by the Yale University Art Gallery, and Aelbert Cuyp’s idyllic Landscape with the Flight into Egypt from the Metropolitan Museum will be among the pictures shown in this context.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, to which the distinguished scholar of British art, Andrew Wilton, has contributed the introductory essay. Mr. Wilton is Visiting Research Fellow at Tate Britain, having formerly been Keeper of the British Collection and Curator of the Turner Collection in the Clore Gallery. The most recent of his many publications are Turner in His Time, Turner as Draughtsman, and Five Centuries of British Painting: From Holbein to Hodgkin. All proceeds from the sale of the catalogue will be donated to the Richard Wilson catalogue raisonné project, which is being undertaken by Dr. Paul-Spencer-Longhurst on behalf of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, the sister institution to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.
Palladio and His Legacy at the Morgan
From The Morgan’s website:
Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 2 April — 1 August 2010
Villa Rotunda, from “The Architecture of A. Palladio,” 1715-20 (RIBA Library)
Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey features thirty-one original Palladio drawings from the Royal Institute of British Architects. These exquisite drawings, which were exhibited only once before in America and never in New York, will be on view to the public for the first time in over thirty years. They are being presented with rare architectural texts to illustrate the journey from Italy to North America of Palladio’s design principles of proportion, harmony, and beauty.
Palladio’s work has significantly influenced American architecture from colonial times to the present day. Focusing on the artist’s original drawings and following the trajectory of his ideas, the show also traces the story of American Palladianism. The drawings are supported by numerous architectural models. Three large examples—the Pantheon, Villa Rotunda, and Jefferson’s unrealized design for the White House—programmatically illustrate the journey from Rome to America. Smaller models, along with rare architectural texts and pattern books through which Palladio’s ideas were primarily transmitted, reinforce the themes of the exhibition.
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This book has been written to accompany the exhibition Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey and shows drawings, books and images from the peerless Palladio collections of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It shows how Palladio studied and reinterpreted the architecture of antiquity, how he developed his ideas, how his message spread, and how Palladianism developed and spread across America, where Palladio’s legacy has remained longest and most widespread. Andrea Palladio lived and worked some 500 years ago in the Veneto. Yet his international influence, and particularly his impact on American architecture, has been greater than that of any architect since. Simplicity and proportion formed the basis of his idea of architecture; the villas he created in the Veneto around Venice, together with his writings, which were widely disseminated after his death, have helped shape European and American buildings for more than 400 years.
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As noted by The Art History Newsletter, the exhibition was reviewed in The New York Times by Nicolai Ouroussoff on 8 April 2010. There’s also an interview by Suzanne Stephens and William Hanley at Architectural Record.
Early Modern Art Markets: Flemish & Dutch Paintings in Geneva
From the Geneva museum’s website:
L’art et ses marchés: La peinture flamande et hollandaise, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
Les Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, 1 October 2009 – 29 August 2010
Frédéric Elsig (Paris: Somogy, 2009), ISBN: 9782757202500
This exhibition is in follow-up to La naissance des genres (2005-2006), and it similarly has two objectives. On the one hand, it will present a part of the Museum’s collection that is as important as it is little known: a selection of Flemish and Dutch paintings from the 16th to the 18th centuries that have been treated for purposes of conservation and restoration, and of which the catalogue raisonné will be published on the same occasion. On the other hand, it will illustrate a consequential phenomenon that first emerged during this period in the former Low Countries: the rapid expansion of the art market. With different sections devoted to what were then perfectly constituted categories, the display will highlight the new development’s principal characteristics as well as the predilection of Geneva collectors for Dutch paintings of the Siècle d’Or.
Review of the Met’s Watteau Exhibition and Catalogue
Recently added to CAA Reviews:
Katherine Baetjer, ed., Watteau, Music, and Theater, exhibition catalogue (New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2009), 176 pages, ISBN: 9780300155075, $35.
Reviewed by Sarah R. Cohen, University at Albany, State University of New York; posting added 24 March 2010.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is ideally suited for an exhibition devoted to the theme of “Watteau, Music, and Theater” because two of Watteau’s most incisive treatments of these themes reside in its collection: the solitary singer “Mezzetin” (ca. 1718–20) and the tragic-comic “French Comedians” (ca. 1720–21). Both works also display Watteau’s ineffable fusion of performance and humanity, artifice and nature, and gestures both rote and heartfelt. The exhibition, rich in drawings as well as paintings loaned from a wide variety of institutions and private collections, allowed viewers to ponder the artist’s compelling transformation of music and theater into an exploratory pictorial language. But only about half of the exhibition featured works by Watteau himself; the rest comprised an eclectic mix drawn largely from the Metropolitan’s extensive collections of eighteenth-century objects, including paintings, graphic arts, porcelain figures, miniature boxes, and musical instruments. . . .
The exhibition catalogue, edited by Baetjer, features an essay on Watteau by Pierre Rosenberg as well as an account by Cowart of the multiple venues where eighteenth-century Parisians could encounter musical theater. Scholarly entries on all of the objects in the exhibition were contributed by the Metropolitan’s curators as well as outside experts, notably Mary Tavenor Holmes on Lancret and Kim de Beaumont on Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. . . .
For the full review (CAA membership required), click here»
The Circle of Tiepolo
From the cultura italia site:
Bortoloni, Piazzetta, Tiepolo: il ‘700 Veneto
Pinacoteca di Palazzo Roverella, Rovigo, 30 January — 13 June 2010
Mattia Bortoloni "Giunone chiede a Eolo di liberare i venti"
Finally, a major exhibit to ‘reveal’ Mattia Bortoloni, juxtaposing Piazzetta, Tiepolo, Balestra, Ricci and other greats from 18th-century Veneto. Some only know him for a Guinness-type work: the widest single fresco of all times and places – 5,500 square meters of delicate painting covering the entire, enormous elliptical dome, the largest in the world, of the Vicoforte Sanctuary, in Piedmont. A colossal work, more or less the dimension of an entire football field, considered the masterpiece of the Piedmontese Baroque period, frescoed in celebration of the Blessed Virgin, while at the same time, glorifying the House of Savoy.
Mattia Bortoloni (Canda di Rovigo, 1696 – Bergamo, 1750), famous, and quite sought-after during his lifetime, then faded into oblivion, considered ‘merely’ one of the best of Giovan Battista Tiepolo’s assistants, to the point that in not a few of the great master’s most celebrated pieces, it is to this day difficult to distinguish which brushstrokes to credit to which artist.
Over the last twenty years, more and more detailed studies have brought about a rediscovery of the breadth of Bortoloni’s own talent. Today it is possible to say, without qualifications, that he was an extraordinary and rather original artist, “suffocated” during his lifetime and by his notoriety as an assistant to the titans of 18th-century artists from the Veneto region, from the Veronese Balestra (who was his teacher) to Tiepolo himself. This major exhibit, entitled Bortoloni, Piazzetta and Tiepolo: 18th-Century Veneto will offer a selection of Bortoloni’s masterpieces juxtaposed with around thirty extraordinary works by Pellegrini, Piazzetta, Ricci and Tiepolo, the ‘titans’ of 18th-century Veneto.
Giambattista Pittoni "Diana e le ninfe"
Among the masterpieces on display, some early works by Tiepolo are worth special mention, including the Glory of St. Dominic and the Temptations of St. Anthony, next to essays into mythological subjects such as Diana and Actaeon and The Judgement of Midas, made available courtesy of the Galleries of the Academy of Venice. Of Piazzetta to be displayed is a rather moving altar piece depicting The Ecstasy of St. Francis, a work on loan from the Civic Museum of Vicenza, next to an early attempt by Sebastiano Ricci depicting Hercules at the Crossroads, on loan from the historic Palazzo Fulcis in Belluno. By Giambattista Pittoni are two works placed next to each other, the first inspired by the tales by Torquato Tasso depicting Olindo and Sofronia and, also of 17th-century layout, the second, Diana and the Nymphs, which shows an already rocailles flavour.
Giambattista Tiepolo "Digntario della Serenissima"
By Bortoloni’s teacher, Antonio Balestra, will be exhibit a never-before-seen Nativity and two extraordinary paintings, on loan from the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul of Argon, following a lengthy restoration project. The exhibit will be further enhanced by a valuable sketch section featuring works by the greatest fresco artists of the 18th century: besides Tiepolo (Giambattista and Giandomenico), Piazzetta and Bortoloni himself, as well as Diziani, Crosato Fontebasso Guarana, who were the great followers of this art form in later years. For the first time, completing this snapshot of the group is one of the key players, unduly forgotten for many years: Mattia Bortoloni, around whom this major exhibit pivots.
Bortoloni was a revered artist, so much so that at just twenty years of age he earned a much sought-after commission – that of frescoing the interior of Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese, one of Palladio’s masterpieces. An undertaking in which he, albeit extremely tender in years, wisely anticipated the rococo style, which his friend in later years,
Giovanbattista Tiepolo, would then articulate with aplomb.
Light and shadow accompanied his extensive career in which, together with others but often alone, saw his busy with a kind of tunnel-vision (even for those days) with major works in Venice, and throughout the Regions of Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont. Among his masterpieces are the series of frescoes at the Cathedral of Monza, for the Sanctuary of the Consolata (“The Consoled”), and for Palazzo Barono in Turin, for Palazzo Clerici and Palazzo Dugnani in Milan, Villa Vendramin Calergi in Fiesso Umbertino, Villa Albrizzi in Preganziol, Villa Raimondi in Birago di Lentate and Visconti-Citterio in Brignano d’Adda, the Venetian Churches of Saints John and Paul, and of St. Nicholas in the Tolentini, Ca’ Sceriman and Ca’ Rezzonico, also in Venice, through to his unquestionable masterpiece, the formidable series for the Vicoforte Sanctuary, more than five-thousand square meters of the finest fresco for the world’s largest elliptical dome.
In addition to his work as a fresco painter, Bortoloni was also a wonderful historical-painting artist, works in which storytelling ability goes hand in hand with original interpretive skill. For obvious reasons, this important production was the first to be delved into at the highly anticipated exhibit at Palazzo Roverella. These are works often being studied for the first time, with credits and attributions assigned for the first time as well, pieces never before shown to the public (and others that are ordinarily quite difficult to access), works that restore Bortoloni to a well-deserved prominence, which he enjoyed during his life, before being eclipsed by the magnificence of Tiepolo’s art work.
Catalogue available from Artbooks.com
In this panels, Bortoloni proves himself an inspired and original painter. These are compositions that are laid out in an anti-academic way, ironic and sometimes irreverent, which unquestionably ran against the grain with respect to the era’s other sacred painting. The piece with St. Thomas of Villanova of the Concordi Academy represents, in this light, one of Bortoloni’s highest accomplishments. Bortoloni, indeed, marked the passage from the late 17th century tradition, well ahead of his time even with respect to the great Tiepolo and – as demonstrated by the two historical paintings with the Adoration of the Magi and of the Shepherds of Fratta Polesine – much in line with Pittoni and Ricci’s innovations.
Exhibition Catalogue: Alessia Vedova and Fabrizio Malachin, eds., Bortoloni Piazzetta Tiepolo: il ‘700 veneto (Milan: Silvana, 2010), 255 pages, ISBN: 978883661503, €30 / $59.
Recent Reviews: ‘The Intimate Portrait’ and ‘Fuseli’s Milton Gallery’
Reviews from the current issue of The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 33 (March 2010),
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The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence, curated by Kim Sloan and Stephen Lloyd, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 25 October 2008 — 1 February 2009; British Museum, 5 March — 31 May 2009.
Reviewed by Kate Retford, Birkbeck College, University of London.
This exhibition brought together nearly 200 portrait drawings, pastels and miniatures from the rich collections of the British Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, billed as “more intimate types of Georgian and Regency portraiture.” These were not regularly exhibited works. Miniatures are hard to display, particularly in a way that will convey full experience of their qualities and functions. Drawings can only ever be shown for limited periods of time, owing to the threat of fading. The show included some exceptional images, not least Thomas Lawrence’s 1789 drawing of Mary Hamilton, enhanced with red and black chalk, used for the publicity materials. It was the export licence deferral and subsequent acquisition of this beautiful portrait by the British Museum which prompted the show. . . .
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Luisa Calè, Fuseli’s Milton Gallery: ‘Turning Readers into Spectators’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 273 pages, ISBN: 0199267383, $125.
Reviewed by Martin Myrone, Tate Britain.
The Swiss-born history painter Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) was a central figure in London’s cultural scene from the 1770s through to his death, both acclaimed and reviled for his extravagant paintings of supernatural, heroic and uncanny scenes. Approaching Fuseli from the perspective of a literary scholar armed with the lessons of narrative theory and reception studies, Luisa Calè’s new study makes a highly significant contribution to the literature on this artist, and seeks to establish his work in the context of a commercial culture of art that fostered complex dependencies and exchanges between the visual and the textual, the social and the aesthetic. The book focuses on Fuseli’s Milton Gallery – a scheme of ambitious paintings based on subjects drawn from the poet’s writings and life that preoccupied the artist through the 1790s – which opened, to almost complete public indifference, in 1799 and 1800. Calè offers an impressively thoughtful reconsideration of this major artistic project which has wide implications for our understanding of narrative painting and the commerce of art at the end of the eighteenth century. . . .
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