Exhibition | James Gillray: Characters in Caricature
Now on view at Gainsborough’s House (which was just announced as the winner of The Georgian Group’s 2023 award for the ‘Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Context’). . .
James Gillray: Characters in Caricature
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, 11 November 2023 — 10 March 2024
Curated by Tim Clayton
James Gillray (1756–1815) was Georgian Britain’s funniest, most inventive, and most celebrated graphic satirist. His work transcends his own time and has continued to influence his successors of the modern age, from David Low to Martin Rowson. Tim Clayton, author of 2022’s definitive biography of James Gillray, brings the master satirist to life in an astonishing, colourful, and at times salacious exhibition, James Gillray: Characters in Caricature. This lively and daring exhibition examines how Gillray exposed the most notorious scandals of his time by focusing on the artist’s principal characters—household names to which he returned to again and again, from Emma Hamilton to the Emperor Napoleon.
Tim Clayton, James Gillray: Characters in Caricature (Sudbury: Gainsborough’s House Society, 2023), ISBN: 978-0946511693, £20.
Exhibition | Pleasing Truths: Power and Portraits in the American Home
Closing this month at the DAR Museum, with a curatorial talk scheduled for the 12th.
Pleasing Truths: Power and Portraits in the American Home
Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, Washington, DC, 17 March — 31 December 2023
Curated by William Strollo
Unidentified French artist, Portrait of Elisabeth Has Haley, ca. 1810, oil on canvas, 32 × 38 inches (Washington, DC: DAR Museum, Gift of Sarah Hawkes Thornton, 75.189.2).
In 1754, artist Lawrence Kilburn advertised that “all Gentlemen and Ladies inclined to favour him in having their pictures drawn, that he don’t doubt of pleasing them in taking a true Likeness.” Kilburn’s advertisement, loaded with meaning, is one of many examples of advertisements placed by artists in the 18th and 19th centuries to garner portrait commissions. This ad reveals a lot about his, and other artists, potential clients, and their desires for being represented on canvas. In looking closer at portraits, subjects, artists, and the context in which they were produced, a deeper understanding of society is revealed—a society that valued power, personal leisure, and prescribed gender roles. This exhibition takes a deeper dive into the context and symbolism of early portraits to better understand the transmission of ideas and their impact on people over time.
William Strollo, Pleasing Truths: Power and Portraits in the American Home (Washington, DC: Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, 2023), 135 pages, $35.
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As noted at Events in the Field, the calendar maintained by The Decorative Arts Trust:
Curator’s Talk: William Strollo on Pleasing Truths
Online and in-person, DAR Museum, Washington, DC, 12 December 2023, noon
The exhibition Pleasing Truths: Power and Portraits in the American Home features over 50 portraits from the DAR Museum’s collection, dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In this talk, William Strollo, Curator of Exhibitions, will discuss the use of portraits to convey power and prestige and to reinforce traditional gender roles in the early American home. This free event will take place in-person and will also be streamed online; pre-registration is requested.
Exhibition | Maestras
Now on view at the Thyssen:
Maestras / Women Masters
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 31 October 2023 — 4 February 2024
Curated by Rocío de la Villa
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1787, oil on canvas. 100 × 81 cm (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper).
Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffmann, Clara Peeters, Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, María Blanchard, Natalia Goncharova, Sonia Delaunay, and Maruja Mallo were celebrated artists in their lifetimes who are now enjoying renewed recognition in response to their erasure from the art-historical account alongside others who broke moulds with creations of undoubted excellence. Featuring nearly 100 works—including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and textiles—Maestras is curated from a feminist viewpoint by Rocío de la Villa. The exhibition presents a survey from the late 16th century to the early decades of the 20th century through eight contexts important within women’s path towards emancipation. Starting from the contemporary notion of sisterhood, it focuses on groups of female artists, patrons, and gallerists who shared values as well as favourable socio-cultural and theoretical conditions despite the patriarchal system. Employing a structure principally based on the conjunction of historical periods, artistic genres, and themes, the exhibition reveals how these artists approached important issues of their day, established their positions, and contributed new iconographies and alternative gazes.
The exhibition is divided into eight sections:
• Sisterhood I. The Causa delle Donne
• Botanists, Well-Versed in Wonders
• Enlightened Women and Academicians
• Orientalism / Genre Painting
• Workers, Carers
• New Portrayals of Motherhood
• Sisterhood II. Rapport
• Emancipated Women
Women Masters is the first major exhibition to reflect the process of feminist rethinking on which the Museo Thyssen has been engaged over the past few years. It benefits from the collaboration of the Comunidad de Madrid and sponsored by Carolina Herrera. After its presentation in Madrid, a reduced version of the exhibition can be seen at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen (Germany).
Rocío de la Villa, Haizea Barcenilla, Ana Martínez-Collado, and Marta Mantecón, Maestras (Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-8417173784, €38. Spanish with appendix with texts in English.
Exhibition | Berthe Morisot and the Art of the 18th Century
Now on view at the Musée Marmottan Monet:
Berthe Morisot et l’art du XVIIIe siècle: Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Perronneau
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 31 March — 10 September 2023
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, 18 October 2023 — 3 March 2024
Curated by Marianne Mathieu and Dominique d’Arnoult, with Claire Gooden
From 18 October 2023 to 3 March 2024, the Musée Marmottan Monet will present a very special exhibition, entitled Berthe Morisot and the Art of the 18th Century: Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Perronneau. The exhibition is curated by art historians Marianne Mathieu and Dominique d’Arnoult, with the participation of Claire Gooden, Head of Conservation at the Musée Marmottan Monet. Sixty-five art works from French and international museums, as well as private collections are brought together here for the first time to highlight the links between the work of the first female Impressionist Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) and the art of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), François Boucher (1703–1770), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), and Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (1715–1783). Based on an analysis of mainly unpublished sources (letters, press clippings, and notebooks belonging to Berthe Morisot and her husband Eugène Manet and their entourage) and an in-depth genealogical study, this exhibition and the corresponding catalogue shed new light on a subject often mentioned by historians yet never having been the focus of dedicated and exhaustive research. While it has been demonstrated that Berthe Morisot is not Fragonard’s great-grand-niece and had no family ties to him, the exhibition nevertheless emphasizes the veritable foundations of their artistic affinities, retracing the chronology of their development, as well as their main characteristics.
Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2023), 210 pages, ISBN: 978-1898519485, $40.
The Burlington Magazine, November 2023
Charles Wild, Kensington Palace: The King’s Gallery, 1816, watercolour with touches of bodycolour over etched outlines, 20 × 25 cm c
(Royal Collection Trust, 922158)
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The eighteenth century in the November issue of The Burlington, which focuses on sculpture:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (November 2023)
e d i t o r i a l
• History of Art after Brexit, p. 1171.
It is probably fair to say that the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020 as a consequence of the referendum of 2016 was not greeted with much enthusiasm by professional art historians. The subject as it has developed over the past century is by its very nature transnational in outlook.
a r t i c l e
• Jonathan Marsden, “George I’s Kensington Palace: The Sculptural Dimension,” pp. 1196–1205.
William Kent’s decoration of the new state rooms at Kensington Palace, London, for George I in 1722–27 has long been recognised as a pioneering exercise in neo-Palladianism. It was also an early example of the use of Classical sculpture in English interiors, a development in which Michael Rysbrack played a larger role than has formerly been recognised.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e
• Nicola Ciarlo, “Domenico Guidi in Padula: A Rediscovered Annunciation,” pp. 1206–09.
r e v i e w s
• Adriano Aymonino, “Albanimania,” pp. 1214–19.
A series of recent publications has turned the spotlight on Cardinal Alessandro Albani—described by Winckelmann as ‘the greatest patron in the world’—his villa in Rome, and collection of Classical antiquities, which have become newly accessible to scholars and the public after decades of seclusion.
• Heather Hyde Minor, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Piranesi and the Modern Age (Nationalmuseum, Oslo / MIT Press, 2022), pp. 1239–41.
• Adam Bowett, Review of Ada De Wit, Grinling Gibbons and His Contemporaries (1650–1700): The Golden Age of Woodcarving in the Netherlands and Britain (Brepols, 2022), pp. 1247–49.
Archangel Gabriel, attributed by Nicola Ciarlo to Domenico Guidi, ca.1699–1701, marble, 94 × 81 × 39 cm, with socle (Padula: Charterhouse of S. Lorenzo).
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of Jan Zahle, Thorvaldsen: Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period, 3 volumes (Thorvaldsens Museum and Aarhus University Press, 2020), pp. 1249–50.
• Natacha Coquery, Review of Iris Moon, Luxury after the Terror (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), pp. 1254–56.
• Joshua Mardell, Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire, North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023), pp. 1256–57.
o b i t u a r y
• Paul Williamson, Obituary for Michael Kauffmann (1931–2023), pp. 1258–60.
Keeper of the Department of Prints & Drawings and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum and subsequently Director of the Courtauld Institute of of Art, Michael Kauffmann was a scholar with a remarkable breadth of interest, as well as a widely respected and sensitive administrator and manager.
s u p p l e m e n t
• “Recent Acquisitions (2007–2023) of European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,” pp. 1261–68.
Seventeen years have passed since the publication of the last supplement in this Magazine describing the recent sculpture acquisitions made by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A). The present supplement therefore highlights a selection of the most noteworthy works acquired in the intervening years.
Exhibition | The Regency in Paris, 1715–1723
Pierre Denis Martin, View of Paris from the Quai de la Rapée toward la Salpêtrière, l’île Saint-Louis, and l’île de la Cité, 1716, oil on canvas, 170 × 315 cm (Paris: Louvre / Musee Carnavalet)
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Now on view at the Musée Carnavalet:
The Régence in Paris, 1715–1723: The Dawn of the Enlightenment
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, 20 October 2023 — 25 February 2024
Curated by Valérie Guillaume, with José de Los Llanos and Ulysse Jardat
The Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris presents an exhibition on the Regency, a forgotten period in history, marking the return of the King and of political, economic, and cultural life to Paris.
Louis XIV died in Versailles on 1 September 1715, leaving behind a nation in debt and a five-year-old child too young to rule, Louis XV, as his heir. On 2 September, the Duke Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the late King, took on the role of Regent of France. This exhibition takes place as part of the tricentennial commemoration of the Regent’s death.
In 1715, the court, the government, and all the administrations moved back to Paris, the second city in Europe, whose population then increased significantly. Thus, the city, and notably the Palais-Royal, the Regent’s residence, became the heart of all political life. A period of intense cultural effervescence ensued, giving rise to a world of philosophical, economic, and artistic innovations. Voltaire, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Law, and Watteau are some the most well-known figures of the time. With the invention of paper money and the bankruptcy of 1720, these years of economic and financial frenzy were interspersed with significant twists and turns. Under the Régence emerged a newfound freedom of criticism, which would become known as the spirit of the Enlightenment.
The exhibition’s thematic structure highlights the innovations of the period in order to illustrate the breadth of their historical significance. Over 200 works from public and private collections—paintings, sculptures, prints, items of decor, and pieces of furniture—help us explore this period of history, accounting for the mutations of society at a time when Paris was becoming the cultural capital of France in a permanent way.
Curators
• Valérie Guillaume, director of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
• José de Los Llanos, head curator, in charge of the Graphic Arts Department and the Maquettes Department
• Ulysse Jardat, curator, head of the Decor, Furniture, and Decorative Arts Department
La Régence à Paris (1715–1723): L’aube des Lumières (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2023), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605705, €39.
Exhibition | On the Reverse
Installation view of Reversos / On the Reverse, at The Prado in Madrid, 2023.
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Now on view at The Prado:
On the Reverse
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 7 November 2023 — 3 March 2024
Curated by Miguel Ángel Blanco
Until 3 March 2024, the Museo Nacional del Prado and Fundación AXA are undertaking a journey that moves beyond the surface of artistic masterpieces to allow for the contemplation of a fascinating reality: the hidden side of the work of art, its reverse. Alongside works from the Prado’s own collection, On the Reverse includes generous loans from other national and international institutions. They include Assemblage with Graffiti by Antoni Tàpies from Fundación Telefónica, Cosimo I de’Medici by Bronzino from the Abelló Collection, Self-Portrait as a Painter by Van Gogh from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Artist in His Studio by Rembrandt from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Empty Mask by Magritte from the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. In all, about a hundred works are on display.
For the exhibition, curated by artist Miguel Ángel Blanco, rooms A and B of the Jerónimos Building have been painted black for the first time. On the Reverse takes the form of an open survey that gives maximum freedom to the spatial relationship between the works, devoid of any hierarchy or chronological ordering and including the presence of creations by contemporary artists such as Vik Muniz, Sophie Calle, and Miguel Ángel Blanco himself, who is represented by three of his box-books from the Library of the Forest. Taking his starting point from a contemplation of Las Meninas—in which the reverse of the vast canvas on which Velázquez is working occupies a large portion of the pictorial surface—Blanco proposes an unusual approach to painting by turning the works around in order to encourage visitors to establish a new and more complete relationship with the artists whose work is included.
Numerous studies have been undertaken to date on individual works that have interesting backs for different reasons, and some museums have explored this aspect in a partial manner through small exhibitions focused on the reverse of works in their collections. However, with the collaboration of Fundación AXA, it is the Museo Nacional del Prado that is now approaching this subject with the necessary ambition. In addition to undertaking a complete reassessment of the backs of works in its collections, the Museum has also located examples in some of the world’s leading museums that reveal how an appreciation of works of art is enriched when their contemplation is not limited to the front.
Structured thematically, the exhibition includes artists never previously seen at the Prado, among them Van Gogh (1853–1890), René Magritte (1898–1967), Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), Pablo Palazuelo (1915–2007), Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), Sophie Calle (b. 1953), Vik Muniz (b. 1961), Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933), José María Sicilia (b. 1954), Wolfgang Beurer (active 1480–1504), Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845), Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916), Martin van Meytens (1695–1770), Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1677), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), and Max Liebermann (1847–1935).
On the Reverse opens with ‘The Artist behind the Canvas’, crossing that dimensional threshold to which Velázquez draws our attention with the enigmatic reverse of the canvas depicted in Las Meninas. Painters frequently portrayed themselves behind a picture, but even when these backs are not so directly associated with the artist’s activity, they acquire a prominent presence as objects of special significance in painters’ studios.
The depiction of the back returns in ‘This Is Not a Reverse’, a section that paraphrases Magritte in order to bring together various trompe l’oeils that represent backs of paintings. This meta-artistic subject reveals the enormous significance that the hidden side of works could acquire for artists, leading them to imitate the annotations, inscriptions, drawings, etc, habitually found on picture backs.
One of the elements that makes up the pictorial support is the subject of ‘The Stretcher as Cross’, the exhibition’s third section. This concealed structural element normally takes the form of a wooden cross that can be used to carry the painting from one place to another. When—in a habitual, everyday action that also emphasises the three-dimensional status of the work which this exhibition analyses—an artist picks up the cross of the stretcher in order to move the work in the studio or take it outside for the purpose of painting outdoors he/she is performing a type of ‘Via Crucis’ that symbolises the effort and difficulties of artistic endeavour.
Martin van Meytens, Kneeling Nun, obverse and reverse, ca. 1731, oil on copper, 28 × 21 cm (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, NM 7036; purchased in 2006 with the Axel och Nora Lundgren Fund). The painting was also included in the 2017–18 exhibition Casanova: The Seduction of Europe.
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The exhibition’s central section, ‘B-Sides’, focuses on works that can be termed ‘two-sided’. Here the back has its own artistic status and complements the principal image in various ways. It may feature the back of a figure seen from the front on the other side, a landscape or allegorical scene that modifies the meaning of the principal representation, heraldic information, associated religious themes, portraits, and more. Continuing this theme, the section ‘The Hidden Side’ includes works in which the back reveals traces of the creative process in the form of drawings, geometrical designs, or expressive whimsies.
‘More Information on the Back’ looks at a classic problem in painting. Although word and image coexisted relatively easily until the Middle Ages, a moment arrived when artists entrusted all the weight of the narrative to the latter. Furthermore, when they needed to convey information, identify subjects or individuals, or include additional information or commentaries on the execution of the work, they almost invariably wrote on the back. In some cases information has been added to backs at a later date in the form of labels and stamps or seals that help us to trace the history of the works: the collections they belonged to, the palaces they adorned, their changes of location, and any restoration undertaken on them.
Zacarías González Velázquez, Reverse of Two Fishermen, One with a Rod and the Other Seated, 1785, oil on canvas (Madrid, Cuartel General del Ejército, depósito del Museo Nacional del Prado). The back of the painting reveals a strip of canvas that was folded over the stretcher at some date in order to fit the work into a narrower space.
In other cases, as seen in ‘Ornaments and Ghosts’, the backs reveal stories contained in the works’ actual materials: textiles that had domestic uses or patterned weaves that contain unintentional ghosts which appear when oil soaks into the cloth. In addition, the section ‘Folds, Cuts, and Cutouts’ shows how old restorations and alterations made to adapt paintings to new locations or functions are visible on reverses that include repairs, cuts, and folds that result in part of the image being relegated to facing the wall.
It is easy to simplify the experience of ‘facing’ a painting to a question of fronts: the work’s and the viewer’s. Looking at a painting implies locating ourselves before it with our ‘front side’, where our eyes are located. However, for some time now, the experience of art has been understood as something more physical; our entire body in all its dimensions participates in it. In fact, in both depictions of artists working in their studios and in images of the public looking at art in museums and exhibitions these figures are often seen ‘From behind, In front of the Painting’.
Finally, ‘Nature in the Background’ investigates the unusual or less common materials that have been used over the centuries as the supports for paintings in the Museum’s collection. This research has identified copper, tin, slate, alabaster, cork, brick, porcelain, and ivory. Furthermore, dust is always present. Regular cleaning is, of course, undertaken at the Museum, but the largest and heaviest works are less frequently moved. A short time ago the Museo del Prado removed The Transfiguration by Giovanni Francesco Penni from the wall, allowing Miguel Ángel Blanco to collect some of the dust accumulated on its reverse, which he has used to make three box-books for his Library of the Forest.
Miguel Ángel Blanco, ed., Reversos (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2023), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-8484806042, €38. With additional contributions by Ramón Andrés, Ana González Mozo, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Victor I. Stoichita.
Exhibition | Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea
On view at Galerie Kugel:
Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th–18th Century
Galerie Kugel, Paris, 18 October — 16 December 2023
From Roman times to the 18th century, many recognised the inherent value of amber and hypothesised its origin, some assuming it to be whale sperm, others, solidified lynx urine. Its mystery endowed it with medicinal virtues. Amber was recommended as a powder to cure melancholy, toothache, and epilepsy, among other ailments, and as a love filter. The occasional inclusions of insects and small animals found trapped in amber have also made it a symbol of immortality. Pliny the Elder was the first to unveil its nature as the result of plant resin, but it wasn’t until 1757 that the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonossov determined its true origin.
Amber is a fossilised resin originating, in the case of the objects exhibited, from a prehistoric forest dating back to some 30 to 40 million years, located under the Baltic Sea, between the towns of Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia), then, in East Prussia. In the 16th century, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1490–1568) converted to Protestantism and transformed the territories of the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the Duchy of Prussia. This marked the beginning of a tremendous expansion in the trade and production of amber works of art. They became Prussia’s diplomatic gifts par excellence and were sought after to adorn the ‘Kunstkammern’ of Europe’s sovereigns and princes. It took nearly 20 years to collect the fifty pieces on display in this exhibition. Combining sculptures, caskets, tankards, and game boards, the wide variety of objects presented illustrate the fascination for amber through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
Alexis Kugel and Rahul Kulka, Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th to 18th Century / Ambre: Trésors de la mer Baltique du XVI au XVIIIe siècle (Saint-Remy-en-l’Eau: Éditions Monelle Hayot, 2023), 376 pages, €85. Available in French and English.
Exhibition | Drawing on Blue
Opening in January at The Getty:
Drawing on Blue
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 30 January — 28 April 2024
Curated by Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan
Made from blue rags, blue paper has fascinated European artists from its earliest use in Renaissance Italy to Enlightenment France and beyond. Through new technical examination of drawings in the Getty’s collection, this exhibition offers fresh insight into the physical properties of blue paper and its unique contribution to artistic practice from the 15th through 18th centuries.
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From Getty Publications:
Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan, eds., Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s–1700s (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1606068670, $35. With contributions by Mari-Tere Álvarez, Thea Burns, Marie-Noelle Grison, Camilla Pietrabissa, and Leila Sauvage.
This engaging book highlights the role of blue paper in the history of drawing. The rich history of blue paper, from the late fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, illuminates themes of transcultural interchange, international trade, and global reach. Through the examination of significant works, this volume investigates considerations of supply, use, economics, and innovative creative practice. How did the materials necessary for the production of blue paper reach artistic centers? How were these materials produced and used in various regions? Why did they appeal to artists, and how did they impact artistic practice and come to be associated with regional artistic identities? How did commercial, political, and cultural relations, and the mobility of artists, enable the dispersion of these materials and related techniques? Bringing together the work of the world’s leading specialists, this striking publication is destined to become essential reading on the history, materials, and techniques of drawings executed on blue paper.
Edina Adam is assistant curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Michelle Sullivan is associate conservator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The Burlington Magazine, October 2023
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Coriolanus Taking Leave of His Family, 1786, oil on canvas, 114 × 146 cm
(National Gallery of Art, Washington)
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The eighteenth century in the October issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (October 2023)
a r t i c l e
• Aaron Wile, “Girodet’s Coriolanus Taking Leave of His Family Rediscovered,” pp. 1094–1105.
In 2019 Girodet’s lost entry for the 1786 Grand prix de peinture came to light and was acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The painting, which depicts a rarely represented incident from the story of Coriolanus—a subject that may have had contemporary political relevance—was not awarded the prize, probably because Girodet was regarded as being too close to Jacques-Louis David, a relationship to which the work may allude.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e
• Antoinette Friedenthal, “Image of a Connoisseur: An Unknown Portrait of Pierre Jean Mariette,” pp. 1106–10.
Among the unpublished miniatures in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (V&A), is an eighteenth-century bust-length portrait of a middle-aged gentleman. A basic unillustrated inventory sheet for this work appeared in 2020 on the museum’s website. It stated that the portrait represents Pierre Jean Mariette (1694–1774) but gave no reasons for this identification and did not provide any information on the object’s provenance. It will be argued here that a combination of visual and documentary evidence confirms the identification.
r e v i e w s
• Mark Bill, Review of the exhibition Reframing Reynolds: A Celebration (The Box, Plymouth, 2023), pp. 1124–27.
• Stephen Lloyd, Review of the refurbished Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque galleries at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, pp. 1130–33.
• Beth McKillop, Review of the exhibition China’s Hidden Century (The British Museum, London, 2023), pp. 1136–38.
• Satish Padiyar, Review of the exhibition Sade: Freedom or Evil (CCCB, Barcelona, 2023), pp. 1143–46.
• Malcolm McNeill, Review of Anne Farrer and Kevin McLoughlin, eds., Handbook of the Colour Print in China, 1600–1800 (Brill, 2022), pp. 1150–52.
• Edward Cooke, Review of Elisa Ambrosio, Francine Giese, Alina Martimyanova, and Hans Bjarne Thomsen, eds., China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting (De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 1152–53.
• David Ekserdjian, Review of the catalogue, Denise Allen, Linda Borsch, James David Draper, Jeffrey Fraiman, and Richard Stone, eds., Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), pp. 1156–58. The book is available as a free PDF The Met’s website.
• Rowan Watson, Review of Christopher de Hamel, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club (Allen Lane, 2022), pp. 1160–62.
• Stefan Albl, Review of Francesco Lofano, Un pittore conteso nella Napoli del Settecento: L’epistolario e gli affari di Francesco de Mura (Istituto Italiano Studi Filosofici, 2022), pp. 1163–64.
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