Enfilade

Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Clara, the Rhinoceros, 1749, oil on canvas, 306 × 453 cm
(Staatliches Museum Schwerin)

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From the press release (11 July 2022) for the exhibition:

Clara the Rhinoceros: Superstar of the 18th Century / Clara de Neushoorn: Superster van de 18e eeuw
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 30 September 2022 — 15 January 2023

Curated by Gijs van der Ham

Clara was strange and new, huge and awe-inspiring—she was utterly unlike any other known animal. This fall, the Rijksmuseum presents Clara the Rhinoceros, an exhibition about an animal who travelled far from her native land of India and became the most famous rhinoceros in the world.

Saint-Germain, J.J., and F. Viger, Clock with Rhinoceros as Carrier, 1755 (Parnassia Collection).

The exhibition shows how new knowledge changed perceptions of the rhinoceros, and how art played its part in this process. The 60 objects on display include paintings, drawings, medals, statues, books, clocks, and a goblet. Very few of these artworks have been displayed before in the Netherlands, and never before have so many exceptional objects devoted to Clara the rhinoceros being presented together. They range from the first-ever European print depicting a rhinoceros—made in 1515 by Albrecht Dürer—to a life-size, full-length portrait of Clara by Jean-Baptiste Oudry dating from 1749. Clara the Rhinoceros runs from 30 September 2022 to 15 January 2023 in the Phillips Wing of the Rijksmuseum.

Clara may not have been the first rhinoceros to come to Europe, but she did become the most famous one. After her long voyage from India, in 1741 she arrived in Amsterdam. Her owner, Douwe Mout van der Meer, was soon showing her to anyone who would pay for the pleasure, whether at fairs, markets, carnivals, or royal courts. For the next 17 years she travelled around Europe in a custom-made cart, accompanied by her entourage. She travelled far and wide: to Vienna and Paris, and to Naples and Copenhagen. Upon her return to the Netherlands, she lived in a field in the North district of Amsterdam. Eventually, Clara died in London in 1758.

People touched, teased, admired, and studied Clara. She prompted this sensational level of interest because no one in Europe had ever been able to see a real live rhinoceros. She was a hyped up, must-see cultural phenomenon, and Mout used print advertising and medals to pump that hype to the max. Until Clara’s arrival, all that Europeans knew of her species was from a print made by Dürer in 1515. He based his drawing on a sketch of a rhinoceros that was briefly in Lisbon, though the sketch wasn’t entirely accurate: it depicted the rhinoceros with an extra horn on its back, for example, and skin that resembled a suit of armour.

Clara’s appearance on the scene changed all this, leaing to a better understanding of the rhinoceros and to more accurate portrayals. Scholars studied her in minute detail, from head to tail, and artists became fascinated by every fold of her skin. A remarkable number of likenesses were made of Clara, in many forms and using many different materials. This exhibition presents an outstanding selection of these objects, including an impressive life-size portrait painted in Paris in 1749 by Oudry (on loan from Staatliches Museum Schwerin), a painting by Pietro Longhi showing Clara standing in front of her audience in Venice (from Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice), a large marble statue by the Flemish artist Pieter Anton Verschaffelt (from the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor), and an exceptionally rare clock mounted on a Clara figure (from a private Dutch collection) made by the Parisian bronzier and clockmaker Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain.

Clara was almost never free to walk or run. She depended on humans for her survival, and was rarely able to display natural behaviours—except for example the occasions when she needed to cross a river by swimming, and clearly enjoyed the water. In 1750 the Neurenberg biographer Christoph Gottlieb Richter published a conversation between a rhinoceros and a grasshopper, in which the rhinoceros bemoans the way people treat her and stare at her. This book presents a role-reversal, with the rhinoceros appraising and studying people rather than the other way around. And in her 2016 installation Clara, the contemporary artist Rossella Biscotti uses the rhinoceros’s story to interrogate the relationship between humans and animals. The installation, which is also part of the exhibition, shows that Clara’s story is also about colonialism, exoticism, and globalisation, as well as exploitation and power.

The exhibition design for Clara the Rhinoceros and Crawly Creatures is by stage designer Theun Mosk | Ruimtetijd. Graphic design for the exhibition is by Irma Boom.

Gijs van der Ham, Clara the Rhinoceros (Rotterdam: nai101, 2023), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-9462087477, $40.

Design drawing for a patinated bronze vase, anonymous, ca. 1780
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum)

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From the museum:

Process: Design Drawings from the Rijksmuseum, 1500–1900
Créer: Dessiner pour les arts décoratifs, 1500–1900 
Design Museum Den Bosch, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 5 November 2022 — 12 February 2023
Fondation Custodia / Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, 25 February — 14 May 2023

Curated by Reinier Baarsen

This pioneering exhibition is an opportunity to discover a collection of extraordinary design drawings from the Rijksmuseum. The drawings, which date from the period 1500–1900, have been brought together for the first time and are arranged according to the successive stages of the design process.

The focus here is not on big artistic names, but on the crucial role that drawings have played in design. We watch from close-by as the ideas for all sorts of items are formed and we also get to meet their inventors, makers, and patrons. Drawings of vases, chairs and clocks, stoves, sledges, and carriages are shown, from the first rough pencil sketches to beautifully worked-up and colourful presentations. The drawings in this exhibition were recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where they belong to a special collection established by Senior Curator Reinier Baarsen. He offers us a unique insight here into the role that drawing has played in the design process, as well as the superb drawings it has produced.

Reinier Baarsen, Process: Design Drawings from the Rijksmuseum, 1500–1900 (Rotterdam: nai101, 2022), 464 pages, SBN 978-9462087354, €60 / $70.

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Note (added 28 February 2023) — The posting was updated to include the Fondation Custodia as a second venue.

Now on view at the Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery:

Silver City: 500 Years of Portsmouth’s History
Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery, 28 May 2022 — 26 February 2023

Curated by James Daly and Susan Ward

Portsmouth Flagons, made in 1683 by Wolfgang Howzer and presented to Portsmouth by Louise de Kéroualle, the Duchess of Portsmouth. She was one of Charles II’s mistresses and presented the Flagons to Portsmouth when she was made duchess, although there is no record of her having visited the town.

Silver City: 500 Years of Portsmouth’s History is a major exhibition at Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery, telling the story of the city through amazing silver treasures. It showcases many precious objects that have never been on public display before. Most come from the city’s civic collection, but others have been loaned from the Royal Navy, the city’s Anglican cathedral, and the Goldsmiths’ Company Charity. Objects include a model of HMS Victory presented to the city when the Portsmouth Command of the Royal Navy was awarded the Freedom of the City in 1965. It is made from copper taken from the ship and plated in silver.

James Daly and Susan Ward, Silver City: 500 Years of Portsmouth’s History (Portsmouth: Tricorn Books, 2022), 161 pages, ISBN: 978-914615276, £27.

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Frances Parton’s review of the exhibition appeared in October issue of The Burlington Magazine, pp. 1015–17.

Now on view at Philip Mould in London:

‘Without Hands’: The Art of Sarah Biffin
Philip Mould & Company, London, 1 November — 21 December 2022

Sarah Biffin, A miniature watercolour of subaltern or captain of a British ‘royal’ regiment of line infantry by, ca. 1815–20.

The remarkable story of Sarah Biffin (1784–1850), has been largely overlooked by historians. Those who have attempted to illustrate her life have often perpetuated misconceptions, and Biffin’s artistic reputation has suffered as a result. This exhibition, established upon ground-breaking primary research, is the first of its kind to present Biffin’s artistic achievements and represent her history.

Sarah Biffin (or Beffin) was born into a farming family in Somerset in 1784, where her baptism records state that she was “born without arms and legs.” Teaching herself to write and draw from a young age, Biffin rose to fame as an artist and established a professional career as a portrait painter. Throughout her long and successful career, she travelled extensively, took commissions from royalty, and recorded her own likeness through exquisitely detailed self-portraits. Her artworks—many proudly signed “Without Hands”—are a testament to her talent and accomplishment.

Around the age of twenty, Biffin left home. She contracted herself to a ‘Mr Dukes’ who toured the country with Biffin, visiting county fairs where she was described as the “Eighth Wonder.” Using her mouth and shoulder, Biffin would sew, write, and paint watercolours and portrait miniatures in front of crowds who turned up and left with a sample of her writing included in the cost of their ticket. One such spectator was the wealthy and well-connected Earl of Morton, who supported her in her quest to finesse her artistic skills. In her mid-twenties she began formal tuition with a miniature painter, William Marshall Craig. From 1816 she set herself up as an independent artist and later took commissions from nobility and royalty.

Biffin travelled extensively, exhibiting her artwork and taking commissions all over the country and abroad. She took studios in cities including London, Brighton, Birmingham, Cheltenham, and Liverpool. In each of these cities, she taught the art of miniature painting and was a champion of women students in particular. Continuously recording her own image throughout her lifetime, Biffin’s self-portraits evidence the artistic aptitude, self-respect, and skill of this tenacious artist.

Following the story of her life, the exhibition includes original handbills and broadsides from Biffin’s time in travelling fairs, along with the samples of her writing included in the cost of the entry tickets. Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to see examples of the art from her professional career, including portraits, landscapes, and highly-skilled still lifes. More personal exhibits include private letters (including one to her mother) and almost every self-portrait she ever painted. With advisor, artist Alison Lapper MBE (born 180 years later with the same condition); consultant and contributor, Professor Essaka Joshua (specialist in Disability Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana); and loans from national institutions, the exhibition will celebrate Biffin as a disabled artist who challenged attitudes to disability.

The catalogue is published by PHP and distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Emma Rutherford and Ellie Smith, eds., with contributions by Essaka Joshua, Alison Lapper, and Elle Sushan, ‘Without Hands’: The Art of Sarah Biffin (London: Paul Holberton, 2022), 80 pages, ISBN: 978-1913645366, £18 / $25.

Emma Rutherford is a portrait miniatures consultant at Philip Mould & Company in London. Ellie Smith is a researcher at Philip Mould & Company. Professor Essaka Joshua is a specialist in disability studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Based in Brighton, Alison Lapper is an artist, television presenter, speaker, and Gig-Arts Charity patron. Elle Shushan is a specialist, author, lecturer, and museum consultant in Philadelphia.

The exhibition closes at LACMA this weekend, but the catalogue remains available, and a version of the show will open at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum this time next year and then in Saint Louis in 2024.

Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 June — 30 October 2022
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 20 October 2023 — 28 January 2024
Saint Louis Art Museum, 22 June — 1 September 2024

Curated by Ilona Katzew

Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 is the first exhibition of LACMA’s notable holdings of Spanish American art. Following the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas in the 15th century, the region developed complex artistic traditions that drew on Indigenous, European, Asian, and African art. The Spanish conquest of the Philippines in 1565 inaugurated a commercial route that connected Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Private homes and civic and ecclesiastic institutions in Spanish America were filled with imported and locally made objects. Many local objects also traveled across the globe, attesting to their wide appeal. This confluence of riches signaled the status of the Americas as a major emporium—what one author described as “the archive of the world.” Featuring approximately 90 works, including several recent acquisitions, the exhibition emphasizes the creative power of Spanish America.

Following its presentation at LACMA, Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 will be on view at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, from 20 October 2023 through 28 January 2024.

The press release is available as a PDF file here»

Ilona Katzew, ed., Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Highlights from LACMA’s Collection (New York: DelMonico Books, 2022), 391 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1636810201, $85. With contributions by Ilona Katzew, Pablo F. Amador Marrero, Rafael Barrientos Martínez, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, Carlos F. Duarte, Clarissa M. Esguerra, Cristina Esteras Martín, Alejandra Mayela Flores Enríquez, Aaron M. Hyman, Rachel Kaplan, Paula Mues Orts, Jeanette Favrot Peterson, Elena Phipps, JoAnna M. Reyes, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Edward J. Sullivan, and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Designed by Lorraine Wild and Xiaoqing Wang, Green Dragon Office.

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Note (added 13 June 2024)— The posting was updated to include the Saint Louis Art Museum as a venue; there, the exhibition is entitled simply Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Highlights from LACMA’s Collection.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 14 August 2022 — 8 January 2023

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America, an ambitious and timely show that explores the production, meaning, and representation of fabric and garments as they were experienced in civil and religious settings across Latin America during the 1700s. Painted Cloth features over 70 objects produced in five countries from the Blanton’s growing collection of art of the Spanish Americas, alongside key loans from distinguished institutions and private collections around the world.

Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor, Cusco, 18th century, oil with gold leaf on canvas, 105 × 73 inches (Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)

“With the opening of Painted Cloth, we’re thrilled to finally unveil the extraordinary exhibition made possible by our longstanding partnership with the Thoma Foundation, whose investment and belief in the Blanton over the years has strengthened our commitment to the study of art of the Spanish and Portuguese Americas,” said Blanton director Simone Wicha. “Thanks to their support, the work of Rosario I. Granados, the first Marilynn Thoma Associate Curator, Art of the Spanish Americas, has advanced significant scholarship in this still underrepresented era of art history. The elaborate fabrics, fashion, and other richly textured works in this show are not only a feast for the eyes, they also will give our audiences a good look into everyday life during an era of dynamic cultural exchange and show how clothing—then as now—is so intertwined with our identities. Equally beautiful as it is insightful, Painted Cloth is sure to inspire conversations about race and colonialism’s complex legacies and offer a greater understanding of this period in Latin America’s history.”

An unquestionable marker of identity, clothing distills complex relationships between race, gender, religion, and class. Painted Cloth reflects on the social roles of textiles and their visual representations, emphasizing how aesthetic traditions of Indigenous and European origin wove themselves into civil, religious, and artistic life at a time when the Spanish monarchy imposed their rule in the region.

As the title references, the exhibition foregrounds not only beautifully crafted garments and textiles, but also explores how the practice of depicting textiles in paintings, sculptures, prints, and furnishings created a visual artifice that captured their aesthetic, ritual, and commercial value. This interplay between objects and images courses through five visually striking sections: Cloth Making, Wearing Social Status, Dressing the Sacred, The Holiness of Cloth, and Ritual Garments.

“Collectively, these groupings address how cloth and their representation in other media articulated narratives of social privilege and survival of cultural traditions, while also highlighting the mixed identity of colonial Latin America,” said Granados. “Garments are a lens by which we can recognize the many inequalities and societal contradictions that characterized the social fabric of this contested era, which altered the lives of so many Indigenous communities, but also the beauty of the Spanish America’s artistic production and thereby the diverse cultures of its peoples.”

José Joaquin Magón, Two Casta Paintings, ca. 1770.

Cloth Making

Painted Cloth begins with the manufacture and artistry of textiles in the 1700s. Works in the first section on Cloth Making underscore how various kinds of European and Indigenous garments were manufactured, emphasizing the role persons of different social status played in the industry. Included are works from the only series of casta paintings (a Mexican artistic genre that documents mixed-race couples and their children according to a caste system defined by Spanish elites) to prominently showcase women as integral to the production of textile arts, from spinning and weaving wool to their work as seamstress and tailor’s aids. In one example of this series by Mexican painter José Joaquín Magón, a woman makes bobbin lace, a costly material that was commonly imported from Europe and adopted in local attire.

The interlacing of foreign materials and traditions with local practices is also present in a set of silk swatches from Mexico. Sent with official reports to the King of Spain, these rare fabric samples show the production of block-print patterns inspired by textiles from India that signal the presence of highly skilled silk weavers in the New Spanish (Mexican) capital. The Cuzqueña painting Virgen de los Sastres (Virgin of Tailors) gives evidence that tailors, many of whom were of mixed-race descent, produced liturgical vestments made from imported European silks and brocades—examples of which are seen in the last section of the exhibition.

Many of the works in this section also address how Indigenous and Christian notions of the sacred were combined. Christian missionaries in the Andes popularized iconography that linked spiritual devotion with the labor involved in manufacturing cloth, circulating paintings that depicted the Virgin Mary or Holy Family undertaking artistic or industrious activities. By depicting Mary embroidering and spinning, the two paintings La Casa de Nazareth (The House of Nazareth) and La Virgen niña hilando (The Child Mary Spinning) make a connection between Christianity and the Indigenous cultures’ regard for the sacred nature of textiles.

Wearing Social Status

Miguel Cabrera, Doña María de la Luz Padilla y Gómez de Cervantes, ca. 1760, oil on canvas, 43 × 33 inches (Brooklyn Museum).

The second and largest section of the exhibition, Wearing Social Status, explores how fashion codes determined social interactions and collective identities in terms of gender, race, and class. This is particularly visible in Mexican casta paintings and a unique series of Peruvian mestizaje paintings, on view in the U.S. for the first time, as well as in commissioned portraits—an increasingly popular genre in this period. Since few garments from the era have survived, such paintings, although ripe with artifices, serve as an invaluable source for the study of fashion and its social significance.

One of the most memorable features of this section is the pairing of painted garments in portraits with actual garments. Paintings of well-dressed Latin American sitters by Miguel Cabrera, one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of the period, demonstrate a desired social prestige, as evident in the great attention paid to the subject’s dress. These costly dresses and elegant three-piece suits are in dialogue with similar European costumes, illustrating the influence of global trade as well as French fashion.

Clothing is also relevant in the portraits Indigenous elite commissioned to assert noble ancestry. The figure in Inca Noblewoman, notably dressed in an intricate anuca, or women’s dress, resembles the first queen of the Inca dynasty, Mama Occllo. Such motifs and codes of dress establish the sitter’s connection to Inca royalty and, as the inscription makes clear, her status as the first Christian Inca woman. In conversation with this portrait is a late 17th-century camelid wool anacu embroidered with mermaids, Inca queens, and traditional Andean geometric patterns, accompanied by a silver fastening pin known as a ttipqui or tupo incised with the imperial double-headed eagle. These artifacts offer examples of fusing Incan and European motifs to negotiate identity in a colonial environment.

Dressing the Sacred

Inmaculada Concepción (Immaculate Conception), Guatemala, ca. 1740–80, silver and oil on wood, 34 inches high (Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019).

The exhibition’s third section exemplifies how religious material culture enhanced the experience of the holy for all social sectors. The use of fine materials in sacred objects amplified an object’s visual appearance, and with it, its sacred aura, thereby facilitating conversion and enhancing devotional practice. This is particularly true of the fabrics placed on imágenes de vestir, or ‘dress images’. These simple wooden structures were explicitly made to be clothed in rich fabrics, like the satin mantle on view, embroidered in gold and silver threads for a statue of the Virgin Mary.

In other instances, real fabrics were imitated by modeled silver, as in an example of a devotional sculpture from Guatemala, a practice that continues in the Central American country today. Fabrication of reality was likewise achieved by replicating golden embroideries and brocade fabrics using estofado, a technique that involves applying gold leaf to wooden surfaces. In two paintings from the so-called Cusco School, respectively depicting St. Lawrence and St. Jerome, gilded details emphasize the richness of saintly garments.

Brimming with golden brocades, the large painting Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante (Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor) bookends this section. The work, a brilliant example of a verdadero retrato, or ‘true portrait’, depicts the 16th-century cult statue of Our Lady of Bethlehem of Cusco placed on a processional platform. Displayed in a dimly lit gallery that alludes to the painting’s original display, viewers can get a sense of the effect such objects were intended to evoke.

Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, Cusco, 18th century, oil and gold on canvas, 38 × 52 inches
(Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)

Holiness of Cloth

The fourth section, Holiness of Cloth, illuminates how the actual depiction of fabric was central to images that were believed to be of miraculous nature. Cloth could provide material substance to help elucidate abstract notions of the divine, as in examples from the Cusco School of painting, which introduced Andean renditions of Catholic subjects.

The painting Virgen del Carmen salvando a las almas del Purgatorio (Virgin of Carmel Saving Souls in Purgatory) depicts the Virgin Mary with an open cloak—a familiar iconography across the Spanish Americas that symbolized protection. In a disparate work that renders the iconographic Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, tunics and mantles are gilded with brocateado, elaborate gold-brocade decoration, a technique characteristic of the Indigenous artistic production of Cusco.

In some cases, cloth becomes the divine itself, such as in Mexican painter José de Alzibar’s two works, united and on display together for the first time in history. The first, a representation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the national patron of Mexico, depicts the cloak of an Indigenous man where the sacred image was thought to have been miraculously imprinted. The second, La Verónica, depicts the Veil of Veronica, one of the most recognizable images in which cloth is represented as a vehicle for the holy.

Ritual Garments

The final section focuses on the use of fabric in church interiors and ritual ceremonies as well as in the formation of clerical identities. Since much of the material used was extraordinarily delicate, prone to damage and decay, paintings of the era help reconstruct an understanding of the use of cloth.

The hierarchical position of Catholic clergy could be recognized by distinct, standardized liturgical clothing. A small glass painting from Bolivia details the repertoire of garments and accessories worn by priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope, whereby the particular use of colors functioned as a key signifier of rank. In the case of the chasuble, the outermost vestment worn during the celebration of the Eucharist, four seasonal colors were used to represent the passage of time in the liturgical calendar. Although the chasuble was worn by the lowest rank of priest, the artifact on view from Mexico is crafted in fancy silks and embroidered with silken threads covered in silver and gold.

In the context of the Catholic church, the altar is an important ritual site; in the Spanish Americas it was lavishly decorated, as visual depictions like Misa frente al Cristo de los Temblores (Masses before Christ of the Earthquakes) convey. Like many works that depicted ideal Masses, this painting was created for a private home and painted from the view of a churchgoer to direct focus to the fine textiles and silverware covering the altar. On occasion, a less costly ‘painted cloth’ instead decorated the altar—exemplified by a canvas altar cloth with floral designs that mimic actual textiles. In contrast, a Guatemalan processional banner created entirely from silver emphasizes the use of even valuable materials to imitate cloth and create visual artifice.

“Painted Cloth rejoices in the artifice of the visual arts to uncover the complexities of human nature,” concluded Granados. “Together, I hope these stunning artworks and artifacts encourage reflection on values of the past and shed new light on the factors that have shaped contemporary Latin American experience.”

The exhibition includes works from the Blanton’s collection, including from the recently acquired Huber Collection, and loans from: Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Carl & Marilynn Thoma Collection, Chicago and Santa Fe, NM; Colección Andrés Blaisten, Mexico City; Colección Barbosa Stern, Lima; Denver Art Museum; Hispanic Society of America, New York; Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; Museo de Arte de Lima; Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima; Museo de América, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; Witte Museum, San Antonio.

Rosario Inés Granados, ed., Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), 248 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1477323977, $45. With contributions by Granados, Ana Paulina Gámez Martínez, Julia McHugh, Ricardo Kusunoki Rodríguez, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi.

Now on view at the Fondazione Maria Cosway in Lodi, in the nineteenth-century rooms of the Collegio delle Grazie, the girls’ school that Cosway founded in 1812 (with additional information available here) . . .

Maria Hadfield Cosway
Fondazione Maria Cosway, Lodi, 23 September — 27 November 2022

Curated by Monja Faraoni and Laura Facchin with Massimiliano Ferrario and Maria Cristina Loi

Oltre cinquanta opere tra dipinti, lettere, spartititi musicali e sculture che ripercorrono la vita di Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760–1838) sono esposti a Lodi nella mostra a lei dedicata visitabile fino al 27 novembre.

Il visitatore sarà accompagnato nel percorso da pannelli esplicativi e didascalie che mettono in luce le fasi essenziali della biografia dell’artista e filantropa, nonché i personaggi e gli eventi della “Grande Storia” che segnarono le diverse fasi della sua vita. L’artista e donna di cultura è molto nota sia a Londra che negli Stati Uniti d’America per la sua amicizia con Thomas Jefferson, terzo Presidente USA. Un periodo della sua vita lo trascorse anche a Lodi, dove morì nel 1838.

La sua profonda convinzione nell’importanza dell’educazione per i giovani portò Maria Cosway ad aprire proprio a Lodi, nella sede dell’ex convento dei padri Minimi, il collegio della Beata Vergine Maria delle Grazie, destinato alle bambine dai 6 ai 12 anni, che ospiterà anche Vittoria Manzoni.

La mostra è stata organizzata dalla Fondazione Maria Cosway e vede la collaborazione di diverse realtà locali tra cui due istituti lodigiani, il liceo artistico Callisto Piazza e la Fondazione Luigi Clerici. Studenti ed insegnanti sono stati coinvolti nella creazione del catalogo e dell’allestimento delle diverse tappe dell’esposizione, visitabile presso la sede della Fondazione di via Paolo Gorini 10.

Monja Faraoni, Laura Facchin, Massimiliano Ferrario, and Maria Cristina Loi, eds., Maria Hadfield Cosway (Lodi: Fondazione Maria Cosway, 2022), 444 pages, ISBN: 979-1280950208.

S O M M A R I O

Presentazioni istituizionali

Maria Cosway tra Firenze, Londra, Parigi e Lodi: Le Ragioni della Mostra

• L’educazione in età napoleonica — Mario Riberi
• Maria Cosway in London, 1780–1790 and 1794–1801 — Stephen Lloyd
• ‘I am susceptible and everything that surrounds me has great power to magnetise me’: Maria Cosway e l’ambiente romantico — Massimiliano Ferrario
• Maria Cosway et l’ambiente artistico-letterario femminile fra la fine dell’Antico Regime e la Restaurazione — Laura Facchin
• Maria Cosway, Leonardo e Giuseppe Bossi: fra teorie artistiche e appunti figurativi — Rosalba Antonelli
• La musica nella vita e nel progetto educativo di Maria Cosway — Patrizia Fiorio
• Una storia ancora da raccontare: la biblioteca della Fondazione Maria Cosway — Francesco Laghezza e Beatrice Porchera
• La moda nella Parigi et nella Milano di Maria Cosway — Silvia Mira
• La vita di Blevio — Laura Facchin e Massimiliano Ferrario
• Un titolo nobitare per Maria Cosway — Luca Marcarini
• Gaetano Manfredini: ‘volente scultore pei quale l’ingiusta sorte non ha benigni sorris!’ e l’eterno volto di Maria Cosway — Beatrice Bolandrini

Catalogolo delle opere

Maria Cosway et gli Stati Uniti, a cura di Maria Cristina Loi

• ‘But that immense sea, makes it a great distance’: note sui carteggio Maria Cosway–Thomas Jefferson — Maria Cristina Loi
• Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway in Paris: art and affection — Susan R. Stein

Catalogo delle opere

L’allestimento della mostra Maria Hadfield Cosway — Elena Amoriello, Luca Armigero, Annalisa Aversa, Maria Teresa Carossa, Chiara Lupi, Susanna Marinoni e Angela Mento

Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi
Credit fotografici