Enfilade

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, De Romanorum magnificentia et architectura: Della magnificenza ed architettura de’ Romani (Rome, 1761). ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 1311.

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From the press release for the exhibition:

The Hidden Horizontal: Cornices in Art and Architecture
Die unterschätzte Horizontale: Das Gesims in Kunst und Architektur
Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, 25 August — 14 November 2021

Curated by Linda Schädler and Maarten Delbeke, with Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Emma Letizia Jones

In architecture, the cornice hides in plain sight. Omnipresent as the elaborate junction between roof and wall, or wall and ceiling, this ornamental element seems to have attracted far less attention from architects, critics, or theoreticians than, for instance, columns or the architectural orders. But in a new exhibition at the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, the cornice makes its long overdue grand entrance, displaying its many incarnations in art and architecture. Over 150 drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day are united in a new dialogue, some shown for the first time in Switzerland.

Cornices are everywhere. Once you start looking, their ubiquity is almost irritating. Windows, doors, ceilings, mirrors, and wall panelling from across the centuries sport elaborate profiles at their edges. The skyline of any city street is a ragtag procession of cornices in various states of materiality, refinement, and maintenance. It does not stop there. Cars and clothes, furniture, and household objects feature their own cornice-like elements. Strips, bands, and lines of paint act like cornices by framing, delineating, or crowning almost any kind of artefact. Still, they attract far less attention from architects, critics, theoreticians, or even the general public than other building parts. In response, a reappraisal of this underrated element are presented in the current exhibition at Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, where the cornice is placed at centre stage.

Giuseppe Gallli Bibiena, Sketch for Set Decoration ‘Scena per angolo’, 1700–50, pen and ink drawing (Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich).

The cornice, once an essential part of any classical composition, incurred the wrath of modernists at the beginning of the 20th century. It has, at various times, been identified as the most expressive part of architecture, as well as the most problematic. It has drawn attention to itself in drawings, etchings, and other works of art. Hence, a history of the cornice in many ways offers a new window onto the multiple histories of architecture and its representations. For, on account of its ubiquity, the cornice carries several layers of meaning: as an element defined by, and defining building regulations; as the solution to the technical problem of joining wall and roof; and as a site to expression of social aspirations or distinction. As the visual limit of a construction, the cornice is as much about the individual building as it is about the city or the landscape. As an ornament applied to buildings, it involves matters of taste and aesthetics as much as of craft and industrial production. And as a subject depicted in two-dimensional works of art on paper, it allows us to interrogate the art historical conventions of image-viewing and composition. Finally, as a complex three-dimensional object, the cornice raises questions of cultural representation and communication through material transfers over time.

The exhibition unites a unique selection of drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day. Authors and artists exhibited include Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Gottfried Semper, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, amongst many others. By bringing works from earlier centuries from the ETH collections into direct dialogue with loans from important institutions in Switzerland and abroad—including the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, the Drawing Matter Collections (UK), the Berlin State Museums, the Rietberg Museum Zurich, and more—the exhibition exposes the ‘hidden horizontal’ at the centre of five centuries of art and design thinking.

Featuring works by:
Cherubino Alberti, Daniel Badger, Ottavio Antonio Baiardi, Baccio Bandinelli, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Nicolas Beatrizet, François-Joseph Bélanger, Stefano della Bella, Ferdinando and Giuseppe Galli Bibiena, Jacques-François Blondel, Jan van Bronchorst, Andreas Buschmann, Richard Cahan, Cesare Cesariano, Charles Chipiez, François Collignon, Francesco Colonna, Le Corbusier, Pascal Coste, Marco Dente after Raphael, Deutscher Werkbund, Wendel Dietterlin, Giovanni Dosio, Albrecht Dürer, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Charles Eisen, Theodor Fischer, Domenico Fontana, Johannes Gachnang, George Jackson and Sons, Ludger Gerdes, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Hubertus Goltzius, Karl Adolf Graffenried, Michael Graves, Iain Hales, Herzog & de Meuron, Utagawa Hiroshige, Jacques Hittorff, Daniel Hopfer, Lucas Kilian, Henri Labrouste, Mari Lending, Johann Baptist Marzohl, Johann Matthäus Mauch, Meister GA mit der Fussangel, Nicoletto da Modena, Richard Nickel, Friedrich Ohmann, Ordinary Architecture (Charles Holland and Elly Ward), Andrea Palladio, Manuel Pauli, Georges Perrot, Pablo Picasso, Christiane Pinatel, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Marcantonio Raimondi, Mies van der Rohe, Diego Prévost Sagredo, Antonio Sangallo the Younger, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Gottfried Semper, Sebastiano Serlio, Hermann Spielberg, Philippe Starck, Christian Ludwig Stieglitz, Gabriel Ludwig Stürler, Johann Georg Sulzer, Charles Heathcote Thatham, Philippe Thomassin, Constantin Uhde, Agostino Veneziano, Howard Charles Walker, Frank Lloyd Wright, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Hans Vredeman de Vries, and Nicolai Zabaglia.

The presentation is jointly organised by the ETH collection of prints and drawings, Dr. Linda Schädler, and the chair of the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zürich, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke. Additional curatorial support has been provided by Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Dr. Emma Letizia Jones.

Programming details including guided tours, a lecture series, and walks can be found here.

Publications

Illustration from Vorbilder für Fabrikanten und Handwerker (‘Patterns for Manufacturers and Handicraftsmen‘), edited by Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1821).

A special edition of gta papers (the journal of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zurich) dedicated to the cornice will be published in Fall 2021 to coincide with the exhibition (retail price: Fr. 25.–). Edited by Maarten Delbeke, Erik Wegerhoff, and Adam Jasper, the issue features an introduction by Maarten Delbeke and texts by Richard Anderson, Guido Beltramini, Emma Letizia Jones, Edoardo Piccoli, Linda Schädler, Oliver Streiff, David Bühler, Flavia Crisciotti, Linda Stagni with Claudio Gianocelli, Xu Han, and Maxime Zaugg.

The September 2021 issue of werk, bauen + wohnen focuses on the cornice as well. It contains an introduction by Maarten Delbeke, the first German translation of Luigi Moretti’s 1952 text “I valori della modenatura: Wert und Wirkung plastischer Profile,” a text by Mario Rinke, and reviews of projects by De Smet Vermeulen Architecten, 31/44 Architects, KilgaPopp Architekten, Joos & Mathys Architekten, Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten, and Studio Anne Holtrop.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Paris–Athens: The Birth of Modern Greece, 1675–1919
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 30 September 2021 — 7 February 2022

Curated by Marina Lambraki Plaka, Anastasia Lazaridou, Jean-Luc Martinez, and Débora Guillon

2021 is the bicentenary year of two events: the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, traditionally dated to 25 March 1821, and the arrival at the Louvre of the Venus de Milo in the same month of the same year—on 1 March 1821—following its discovery in April 1820. The proximity of these two events is rich in meaning, raising the question of the special place of ancient Greek art in the Louvre’s collections and the singular role of Greece in the construction of the cultural identity of Europe, and of France in particular. However, the fascination with Greek antiquity continues to obscure our knowledge of modern Greece, which the French began to rediscover from the 18th century onwards. The birth of the Greek nation in the 19th century was determined to a large extent by the development of scientific archaeology and by French and German neoclassicism. This exhibition spotlights the cultural, historical, and artistic links between the two nations—links that led to the definition of modern Greece.

The exhibition is organised chronologically and divided into eight key periods.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, ambassadors on their way to the Sublime Porte (the central government of the Ottoman Empire) in Constantinople discovered an Ottoman province, which aroused the interest of artists and intellectuals. In 1821, the Greek War of Independence received military and financial support from certain European countries and generated considerable popular enthusiasm. Following its liberation in 1829, Greece proclaimed Athens as its capital in 1834. Influenced by the German and French presence on its territory, the new Greek state drew inspiration from French and German neoclassicism to build a modern cultural identity. The European contribution to the preservation of the Greek national heritage is illustrated by the founding of archaeological institutes, such as the French School of Athens in 1846, which revolutionized knowledge of the material past of Greece. This exhibition is a first attempt to cross reference the history of archaeology with the development of the Greek state and of modern art. The excavations of Delos, Delphi and the Acropolis led to the rediscovery of a colourful Greece—a far cry from the neoclassical ideal. The great Universal Exhibitions held in Paris in the late 19th century (in 1878, 1889 and 1900) presented a modern Greek art bearing the imprint of the country’s Byzantine and Orthodox identity. Our exhibition ends with works by the Techne group, Greek artists who were close to the European avant-garde and who exhibited in Paris in 1919.

Ottoman Greece and the War of Independence

The territories that make up present-day Greece were part of the so-called Byzantine Empire, under Ottoman rule from 1071 onwards. Athens was captured by the Turks in 1456, but the Christian tradition endured and the Orthodox religion remained a central part of Greek culture. The exhibition opens with the visit to Athens in 1675 by the Marquis de Nointel, Louis XIV’s ambassador to the Sublime Porte. At that time, the French saw Greece as a rather sleepy province of the Ottoman Empire.

Eugène Delacroix, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826, oil on canvas, 82 × 58 inches (Museum of Fine Arts of Bordeaux).

On 25 March 1821—now a Greek national holiday—Archbishop Germanos of Patras incited the Greeks to rise against the Ottoman Empire, marking the beginning of the War of Independence. After the liberation of Athens, the Peloponnese, Missolonghi and Thebes, Greece declared its independence on 12 January 1822. The Ottoman Empire launched a fierce war against the province, destroying Souli and massacring the inhabitants of the island of Chios. Eugène Delacroix depicted this dramatic battle in his painting The Massacre at Chios. The battle of Missolonghi was also depicted by Romantic artists, inspired by the heroic pride of the Greeks and the example of Lord Byron who, after committing himself to the Greek cause in his writings, went on to participate in the military action and died in the besieged city of Missolonghi in 1824. Delacroix, who had a close artistic friendship with the English poet, paid him a vibrant tribute with his painting Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, which he presented at an exhibition in support of the Greeks at the Galerie Lebrun in Paris, in 1826. The philhellenic movement in Europe was nourished by this Western perception of Greece and by support for the Greeks’ aspiration to independence and freedom.

The Greek proclamation of independence on 12 January 1822 sparked a violent response from the Ottomans. After the intervention of the great European powers and the Russian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire, the modern Greek state came into being in 1829. A European dynasty was established in Greece with the ascension to the throne of the Bavarian prince Otto in 1832, and Athens became the new capital in 1834. For the Greeks, the monuments of the ancient city were reminders of their former glory; for the Germans, they were symbols of power. The young Greek state now faced the challenge of becoming a modern nation like its European neighbours. How did the Byzantine and Ottoman past fit into this scheme of things, and how did Germany and France contribute to defining the new Greek identity?

To make a clear break with the five centuries of Ottoman occupation, the Greek state had to reinvent everything and create a new European identity. New codes of language had to be established and a new kind of urbanism (inspired by Munich) needed to be defined. This remodelling appealed to Western photographers, who soon turned their attention to Athens and Greece.

Archaeology

The discipline of archaeology was truly established in the mid-19th century with the emergence of a more scientific approach to excavation. Before then, highly qualified students of history or classics had been sent to excavate in Greece, where they attempted to locate the great ancient sites through research on ancient texts, such as those of Homer and Pausanias.

The creation of archaeological institutes, beginning with the French School of Athens in 1846, spurred the development of archaeology as a truly scientific discipline. The French School of Athens conducted its first excavations in 1870 on Santorini, bringing an unknown history of Greece to light. From then on, archaeologists turned their attention to periods predating what is now known as ‘classical Greece’. At the same time, after the War of Independence, the Greek authorities introduced protective measures for antiques, such as a ban on exports.

When the Archaeological Society of Athens was founded, excavations at the great archaeological sites were shared out among the European institutes present in Greece—mainly those of Germany and France. That is how the site of Olympia came to be excavated by the German School (from 1875 onwards), and how Delphi—and Delos in particular—came to be explored by archaeologists from the French School. Those ancient sites still attest to the strong ties between the two countries, as French archaeologists continue to work there today.

With the advent of new scientific techniques—such as photography (which facilitated documentation), casting, stratigraphic drawings, etc.—the reception and treatment of archaeological discoveries also evolved. During excavations, archaeologists began to record their finds in notebooks which they filled with diagrams and sketches. Photography also made it possible to document excavations in detail, recording both the context of finds and the excavation techniques used. Furthermore, plaster casts of the new discoveries were circulated or used for study purposes. This archaeological adventure will be illustrated in our exhibition by a mosaic from Delos and rare bronzes from the Museum of Delphi, presented for the first time. The exhibition will also feature a reconstruction of the French archaeology display at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900.

Colour in Antiquity and the Construction of Greek Identity

In the 18th century, two British travellers, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, were surprised to find traces of polychromy on fragments of Greek architecture. This discovery contradicted the accepted theory of the whiteness of Greek sculpture, associated with classical beauty. Despite more and more evidence of polychromy, the myth of whiteness in classical Greek art remained deeply rooted in people’s minds. Little by little, however, the idea that ancient sculpture may have been painted gained ground, and by the late 19th century the polychromy of ancient architecture had become an accepted fact. This is reflected in the reconstructions of polychromy on Greek monuments (notably the Parthenon) proposed by French architect Benoît Loviot, at the request of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The Gilliéron family, Swiss artists who settled in Greece in 1877, helped raise awareness in Europe of Greek archaeological finds. Émile Gilliéron set up a business creating a new national imagery, which was widely circulated on the occasion of the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896. The images of archaeological finds he reproduced on postage stamps, bank notes, diplomas and posters contributed to awareness of the finds themselves, but also to the construction of a modern national identity.

The Rediscovery of the Byzantine Past

In their battle against the Ottoman Empire and their desire to assert their Orthodox and Byzantine identity, the Greeks endeavoured to increase their knowledge of the Christian past by expanding their collection of archives and drawings.

The Byzantine past of Greece was long overshadowed in France by the ancient classical period. Travellers to Greece in the 17th and 18th centuries and the first half of the 19th century took little interest in the Byzantine period, and it was not until the 1840s that interest developed in Byzantine Greece, with travellers such as Adolphe Napoléon Didron and Dominique Papety (who were not always accurate in their dating of monuments, some of which actually post-dated the fall of Byzantium in 1453).

The first Byzantine excavations conducted by French archaeologists, in about 1900, were led by Gabriel Millet, whose interest in Byzantine Greece led him to amass a wealth of documentation on Byzantine monuments, churches, and art objects. The material thus made available for the study of Byzantine art history in France was equivalent to the documentation on ancient Greek archaeology. The Greek architect Lysandros Kaftantzoglou also played a key role in the preservation of Byzantine art. In 1849, just after the destruction of the Byzantine church of the Prophet Elijah at the Staropazaro (the Athens wheat market), he had a mid-15th century fresco detached and sent to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The Entry into Modernity and the Construction of a European Identity

The Athens School of Fine Arts opened its doors in 1836, shortly after a Bavarian dynasty ascended to the Greek throne and Athens was chosen as capital (in 1834). There was constant exchange between Bavaria and Greece, particularly in the field of art—as reflected in the influence of Munich-style neoclassicism. Due to the political and cultural links between Greece and Germany, Munich continued to be the city of reference for Greek artists—and their favourite place to study—until the late 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, however, the artistic centre of Europe moved from Munich to Paris, and increasing numbers of Greek artists went to study in the French capital.

The Universal Exhibitions of 1878, 1889, and 1900, each in turn, marked an important step in the development of the Greek artistic identity. The Greek artists present at the 1878 Exhibition included the most distinguished representatives of the Munich School. They asserted their presence on the European art scene with painters and sculptors who inspired comparison with their great ancient ancestors. Although the classical tendencies characteristic of the Munich School endured, some Greek artists began to study in other European capitals such as Brussels—and especially Paris. The Greek pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 was still distinctly classical in style: a triangular pediment, straight lines, and ancient Greek letters surrounding a sculpture by Leonidas Drossis based on the statue of Minerva by Phidias. The Greek presence was far stronger at the Exhibition of 1900. The great names in Greek painting (the upholders of tradition) were still represented, but other artists, such as Iakovos Rizos (aka Jacques Rizo), who had studied in Paris, distinguished themselves by their modernity. Rizo was awarded a silver medal for his painting Athenian Evening—a work strongly influenced by artists of the Parisian Belle Époque, Alexandre Cabanel in particular.

The Greece of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was strongly marked by a number of geopolitical events. At the Berlin Conference of 1878, the European powers defined new borders in the Balkan Peninsula, mainly in order to counter the Greek ‘Great Idea’ of uniting all Greeks within a single nation state, with Constantinople as its capital. This arbitrary division of territory led to the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Greece—weakened by the wars, territorial losses, and the ‘National Schism’ between the Germanophile monarchists who supported King Constantine I and the partisans of the Triple Entente who backed Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos— was late to enter World War I alongside the Allies. The king abdicated in 1916 after a coup d’état led by Venizelos, who took his country into war against Bulgaria.

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 between the victors of World War I, divided up the Ottoman Empire and awarded eastern Thrace and Smyrna to Greece. However, Turkey recovered those territories as a result of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–22, putting paid to the ‘Great Idea’ and causing the ‘Great Catastrophe’—the displacement of populations in horrendous conditions.

The Greece that emerged from these multiple conflicts was a profoundly changed country, and this transformation was reflected in its artistic output. The Techne Group, which exhibited in Paris, imposed a new vision of the Greek artistic identity: its artists, inspired by the European avant-garde, put paid to the Parisians’ clichéd view of Greece with an art that was European through and through.

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The exhibition is curated by Marina Lambraki Plaka, director of the National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens; Anastasia Lazaridou, Directorate of Archaeological Museums, Exhibitions and Educational Programmes of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Athens; Jean-Luc Martinez, Honorary President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, assisted by Débora Guillon.

Jean-Luc Martinez and Débora Guillon, eds., Paris–Athènes: Naissance de la Grèce moderne, 1675–1919 (Paris: Louvre éditions/ Hazan, 2021), 504 pages, ISBN: 978-2754112123, €39.

Rhinoceros, called Miss Clara, bronze, ca. 1750s, 25 × 47 × 15 cm
(Birmingham: Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Purchased 1942, No.42.9)

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Today (22 September) is World Rhino Day. The catalogue for the upcoming exhibition is available from Paul Holberton and (in North America) from The University of Chicago Press:

Miss Clara and the Celebrity Beast in Art, 1500–1860
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, 12 November 2021 – 27 February 2022

Curated by Robert Wenley

This exhibition tells the fascinating story of the rhinoceros Miss Clara, the most famous animal of the eighteenth century. It is the first ever major loan exhibition devoted to Clara and celebrity pachyderms in the UK. The latest in the Barber’s acclaimed object-in-focus series, Miss Clara focuses on a small bronze sculpture of a rhinoceros, and also considers other celebrity beasts, the emergence of menageries and zoos, and the significance of the capture and captivity of these big beasts within wider academic discussions of colonialism and empire.

‘Miss Clara’ arrived in Europe from the Dutch East Indies in 1741, brought by a retired Dutch East India Company captain, Douwe Mout van der Meer, who then toured her round Europe (including England) to huge acclaim and excitement. Jungfer Clara (so christened while visiting Würzburg in 1748) was the first rhino to be seen on mainland Europe since 1579 and the object of great wonder and affection. Her fame generated a massive industry in souvenirs and imagery from life-scale paintings by major masters to cheap popular prints; there were even Clara-inspired clocks and hairstyles.

Miss Clara is one of the most remarkable and best-loved sculptures in the Barber and was praised by the great German art historian and museum director Wilhelm von Bode as “the finest animal bronze of Renaissance”—a telling tribute to its quality, even if he misunderstood its date. The Barber’s cast is one of only two known, the other being at the V&A. There are also closely related marble versions. Other celebrity beasts featured will include the elephants Hansken, Chunee, and Jumbo; Dürer’s and various London rhinos; and the hippo Obaysch, star of London Zoo in the 1850s, and the first to be seen in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Robert Wenley, ed., with Charles Avery, Samuel Shaw, and Helen Cowie, Miss Clara and the Celebrity Beast in Art, 1500–1860 (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-1913645021, £17 / $25.

The catalogue looks at the phenomenon of Clara but, unlike previous studies of the subject, focuses primarily on sculptural/3D representations of her, within the context of other celebrity pachyderms represented by artists between the 16th and 19th centuries. It is comprised of entries for the thirty exhibits—included extended texts by Dr Helen Cowie (York University) on images of Chunee and Obaysch—preceded by three essays. Robert Wenley, Deputy Director of the Barber Institute, and the curator of the exhibition, relates the story of Miss Clara (and of other celebrity rhinos) and explores the sculptural representations of her, presenting new research into their attribution and dating. The eminent sculptural historian, Dr Charles Avery, formerly of the V&A Museum and Christie’s, provides a complementary essay about celebrity elephants in Europe between 1500 and 1700. Dr Sam Shaw of the Open University, discusses private menageries and public zoos in the UK between about 1760 and 1860 and considers celebrity pachyderms as emblems of empire and colonialism.

Installation of the exhibition Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace, at The Queen’s Gallery In London.

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Now on view at The Queen’s Gallery:

Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 17 May 2021 — 13 February 2022

Curated by Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Isabella Manning

Masterpieces from the Royal Collection have been displayed in Buckingham Palace since the residence was acquired by George III and Queen Charlotte in 1762. The painting displays were reinvented during the reign of their son, George IV, who commissioned the architect John Nash to renovate the palace in the 1820s. A Picture Gallery was included to display the monarch’s exceptional collection of paintings. Since then, the Picture Gallery has remained the focus for some of the most treasured Italian, Dutch, and Flemish paintings from the Royal Collection.

The Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace (typically open to visitors only during the summer) is currently being renovated–creating an opportunity to display the paintings normally installed there in other contexts.

Palace displays are often imbued with dynastic meaning; the Picture Gallery was one of the few spaces intended for the enjoyment of art, pure and simple. It is in this same spirit that we have mounted this exhibition: for the first time the paintings are displayed together in modern gallery conditions, allowing us to look at them afresh.

In general these paintings are securely dated and attributed; mostly we know which monarch bought them. We are providing this information here, but we are also asking a different, more subjective question—what makes them important? What do they have to offer? In the exhibition catalogue we have suggested qualities that were valued by the makers of these works and can still be appreciated today: the imitation of nature; the sensuous use of materials; the creation of beautiful design; and the ability to express human emotion. But are we missing something? We hope that visitors will make up their own minds about what there is to enjoy in these paintings and find reasons to believe that they are still worth exploring.

Dou to Vermeer

The paintings in this room were all created in the Low Countries between 1630 and 1680, the heyday of the so-called Dutch Golden Age. They are modest in scale, the majority scenes of everyday life, with figures in landscapes or in homes, taverns and shops. These artists didn’t set up their easels in the market place; they worked from drawings, memory and imagination, but they depicted the familiar everyday world around them. The people they painted were of the same kind that bought their paintings: we can see examples in simple ebony frames on the walls of the interiors of de Hooch and Vermeer.

All but two of these paintings were acquired by George IV to hang in the sumptuous interiors of Carlton House, his London residence when Prince of Wales. Like their original purchasers, he admired them for their comedy, their brilliant technique and their truth to life. They continue to fascinate through their minute detail, tactile surfaces and ability to suggest spaces filled with light and air.

Canaletto, The Piazza Looking North-West with the Narthex of San Marco, ca. 1723–24, oil on canvas, 172 × 134 cm (London: Royal Collectin Trust, RCIN 401037). The painting is one of a set of six views of the Piazza San Marco and the Piazzetta.

Rubens, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck

The artists in this room all come from the Low Countries, as in the previous section. There are some comic scenes of everyday life, but the majority of works belong to the more prestigious branches of art—narrative painting, commissioned portraits, and ambitious landscapes with a symbolic or religious meaning.

This room is dominated by three artists of very different character: Rubens, a diplomat and land-owner; van Dyck, a courtier; and Rembrandt, a professional serving the merchants of Amsterdam. In other ways they are similar, especially in their enthusiasm for the type of Venetian painting that can be seen in the next section.

Painting in Italy, 1510–1740

The paintings in this room were created in Italy, in various artistic centres and over a period of two hundred years. Bringing together this great range of painting evokes something of the first displays at Buckingham Palace, during the reign of George III.

Several strands of Italian art are here on show. There are sober male portraits, often painted with a bare minimum of detail and colour range, but conveying great psychological intensity. There are ideal female figures, derived from the study of antique sculpture, their beauty impassive however dramatic the narrative. There are expressive landscapes, ranging from a cataclysmic storm to the unruffled stillness of a sunset. Then there are Canaletto’s boldly expressive views of Venice, where the imposing monuments of the city are spiced with a hint of picturesque shabbiness.

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In the United States, the catalogue is distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Isabella Manning, Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2021), 160 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1909741737, £20 / $25.

In this beautifully designed book, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures, and Assistant Curator of Paintings, Isabella Manning, examine 65 of the most celebrated paintings from the Picture Gallery, which sits at the heart of Buckingham Palace. With masterpieces by such artists as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens, Titian, Jan Steen, Claude, and Canaletto, this publication offers new insights into these world-famous works of art. The authors encourage readers to look at the works in a new way and to consider how Claude paints a sky; how Rubens models the landscape through his use of color; and how Titian uses contrast to add gravitas to a portrait. Rather than re-treading the old boards of provenance and attribution, the authors seek to engage with different, perhaps riskier and more subjective, questions: asking not when were they painted and by whom, but why should we concern ourselves with them? A short introduction gives an account of the creation of the Picture Gallery and tells the story of the monarchs who curated this extraordinary collection of paintings and how the works entered the Collection.

C O N T E N T S

A History of Old Master Paintings at Buckingham Palace
Looking at the Old Masters
The Pictures

Further Reading
Index

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Desmond Shawe-Taylor’s very productive fifteen-year tenure as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures came to an end in December 2020, as reported by the BBC, in response to £64m of lost income related to the pandemic. Indeed, the historic Surveyor position—first filled in 1625 during the reign of Charles I—is for now “lost and held in abeyance.” Royal Collection Director, Tim Knox, has taken on “overall responsibility for the curatorial sections, supported by the Deputy Surveyors of Pictures and Works of Art.”

From the press release (10 June 2021) for the exhibition:

Canvas & Silk: Historic Fashion from Madrid’s Museo del Traje
The Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas, 19 September 2021 — 9 January 2022

Curated by Amanda Dotseth and Elvira González

The Meadows Museum, SMU, has announced a major exhibition of Spanish dress and fashion that will pair paintings from the Meadows’s collection with historic dress and accessories from the Museo del Traje, Centro de Investigación del Patrimonio Etnológico in Madrid. Canvas & Silk: Historic Fashion from Madrid’s Museo del Traje marks the first major collaboration between this important Spanish institution and an American museum and will include approximately 40 works from the Meadows alongside examples of dress and accessories from the Museo del Traje (Spanish National Museum for Fashion). Displayed together, the works in the exhibition not only tell the story of how fashion trends in Spain changed over four hundred years, but also reveal how elements of a country’s history—such as its involvement with global trade or the formation of a national identity—are reflected in its dress.

Traje a ‘la francesca’ (calzón, chupa, casaca) / French Costume (Breeches, Vest, Dress Coat), ca. 1795–1800; silk, linen, and cotton (Madrid: Museo del Traje, Centro de Investigación del Patrimonio Etnológico; Calzón, CE000663; chupa, CE000664; casaca, CE000665; photo by Gonzalo Cases Ortega).

Canvas & Silk will be on view at the Meadows from 19 September 2021 until 9 January 2022. Concurrently, the Meadows will also present Image & Identity: Mexican Fashion in the Modern Period, an investigation into Mexican dress spanning from Mexican Independence to modern times through photographs and prints from the collections of the Meadows Museum and SMU’s DeGolyer Library.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to gain further insight into the Meadows’s collection of Spanish art through its exhibition with loans from Spain’s premier collection of historic dress,” said Amanda W. Dotseth, curator at the Meadows Museum and co-curator of the exhibition in collaboration with Elvira González of the Museo del Traje. “This exhibition makes it possible to tell a more nuanced story about Spanish society through the presentation of historic paintings with contemporaneous examples of the garments depicted therein. We are as never before able to explore the complex relationships between representation and reality, between image and artifact. Spanish fashion has long been a point of interest for the Meadows Museum, whether in the form of past exhibitions—such Balenciaga and His Legacy: Haute Couture from the Texas Fashion Collection in 2007—or as portrayed in the collection’s prints, paintings, and sculptures. We look forward to continuing our study and display of Spanish fashion with this unprecedented collaboration with the Museo del Traje.”

Canvas & Silk will be divided into themes that elucidate various trends in the history of European fashion in general and Spanish dress in particular over the past five hundred years. These include ‘Precious Things’, featuring accessories like jewelry and combs made from precious metals and other rare materials such as coral; ‘Traditional Dress’ with examples of garments and ensembles that are typically identified with Spain, such as a traje de luces (the suit typically worn by bullfighters) and mantón de Manila (traditional embroidered silk shawls historically traded through Manila); and ‘Stepping Out’ demonstrating the importance of what one wore when presenting themselves in public. Highlights of pairings combining paintings from the Meadows’s collection and historic dress from the Museo del Traje include Ignacio Zuloaga’s The Bullfighter ‘El Segovianito’ (1912) accompanied by a traje de luces of the same color; Zuloaga’s Portrait of the Duchess of Arión, Marchioness of Bay (1918) displayed alongside a mantón de Manila similar to the one the duchess is holding; and Joan Miró’s Queen Louise of Prussia (1929) paired with a vibrantly hand-painted dress and shoes by twentieth-century fashion designer Manuel Piña.

“By pairing the Museo del Traje’s collection with that of the Meadows’s, we are bringing the dress, accessories, and other material objects to life, enabling viewers to see the contexts in which such articles were worn,” said Elvira González, curator of the historic apparel collection at the Museo del Traje. “Viewed together, the clothing allows for a deeper understanding of the painting; for example, the presence of the mantón de Manila (embroidered Manila silk shawl) in Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta’s painting Portrait of the Duchess of Arión, Marchioness of Bay (1918) speaks to the social position of the woman depicted. Not only will our collection be seen by audiences in the U.S. for the first time, but it will also be displayed in a completely new light. We’re excited to see what kind of scholarship and new ideas might be generated by presenting these works in a new environment and alongside these paintings and drawings.”

The accompanying exhibition catalogue will contain an essay co-authored by Dotseth and González that illuminates themes linking the garments, accessories, and corresponding works in the Meadows collection. The publication will feature new photography of key objects by Jesús Madriñán.

Canvas & Silk will be accompanied by a focused exhibition in the museum’s first-floor galleries titled Image & Identity: Mexican Fashion in the Modern Period, curated by Akemi Luisa Herráez Vossbrink, the Center for Spain in America (CSA) Curatorial Fellow at the Meadows Museum. Featuring photographs, prints, books, and gouaches from the 19th and 20th centuries, this exhibition will explore Mexican fashion through images of everyday scenes, festivities, regional types, and occupations. Building on a theme developed in Canvas & Silk, Image & Identity will also show how national identity formation is reflected in fashion and is often accompanied by a resurgence in the popularity of indigenous dress. Works in Image & Identity are drawn from the collections of the Meadows Museum and SMU’s DeGolyer Library, named after Everette L. DeGolyer, Sr. who, with his son, collected maps, books, manuscripts, and photographs related to Mexican exploration and history. Artists featured in the exhibition include Alfred Briquet, Carlos Mérida, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Jerry Bywaters, Paul Strand, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

From the press release (20 August 2021) . . .

Imperfect History: Curating the Graphics Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library
The Library Company of Philadelphia, 20 September 2021 — 8 April 2022

Curated by Erika Piola and Sarah Weatherwax

New exhibition reveals visual cues of bigotry and inequality over hundreds of years in America.

At a time when Americans are constantly bombarded with graphics, some with hidden meanings, our ability to interpret visuals has taken on new urgency. Imperfect History: Curating the Graphics Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library is a new exhibit designed to help us read between the lines of popular graphics. Drawing from a collection of extraordinary breadth spanning 300 years, Imperfect History showcases hidden and rare items, the unseen stories of everyday people, and the prejudices and preconceptions of different time periods. It’s a visual time machine of the good, the bad, and the ugly of American culture.

“The point is not to take things at face value,” said Michael Barsanti, the Edwin Wolf 2nd Director of the Library Company. “Inequalities and prejudices have existed in plain view for centuries. We just need to look for the clues in visual materials. Our hope is that this exhibition will help teach the public to understand racist, sexist, and other biased imagery in popular culture today and throughout history, in an effort to mitigate bigotry.”

Items glorifying white men, stereotyping African Americans, satirizing feminism, and representing economic disparities will be on display. So too will ‘imperfect’ works that would never see the light of day in a fine arts exhibit, but that offer important lessons in how people lived, what they cared about and what they really thought.

“We want to help patrons understand American history through graphic materials,” notes co-curator Erika Piola, Director of the Visual Culture Program. “These are images created and seen by everyday people. They were collected by the son of a Library Company librarian, hung on the walls of American homes, were saved in scrapbooks, and mailed to the dwellings of average citizens.”

Included in the exhibition are an ink blotter with female nudes on lettuce, a promotional item never seen before publicly. There are rare items such as a print of an enslaved teen with vitiligo who was exploited as a sideshow curiosity and a lithograph of living and dead all-white male Masons described as the “wise and good among mankind.”

Among the exhibition’s five areas is the ‘Imperfection Section’ with items that have been altered, suffered age deterioration, damage, have artistic errors, or inscriptions. “We want people to appreciate that just because items like photographs, prints and sketches might be damaged, it doesn’t make them any less important to future generations,” says Piola.

Co-curator Sarah Weatherwax, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts notes, “Benjamin Franklin founded the Library Company to prepare colonists for citizenship by giving them access to books. But today, being an engaged citizen requires us to look beyond text and also focus on visuals, to understand nuance and context.”

The Imperfect History project includes an exhibition, publication, digital catalog, a visual literacy workshop, a one-day symposium, and a curatorial fellowship. It is in commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Graphic Arts Department.

Digital Catalog
The digital catalog creatively demonstrates multiple viewpoints through descriptions of the same visual material written by four guest catalogers from different fields. The exhibition publication is an illustrated catalog providing an overview of the history of graphics collecting at the Library Company as well as narratives and a case study of the relationships between American art history, visual culture and literacy, race, gender, and Philadelphia imagery and image makers.

Visual Literacy Workshop: Urban In-sights
A select group of historians, curators, and other professionals from around the U.S. gathered virtually at the end of June for a workshop designed to enhance participants’ ability to ‘read’ and analyze graphic materials. In addition to historical context, they learned about different graphic processes, and how to conduct primary and secondary research using graphic materials.

Symposium: Collecting, Curating, and Consuming American Popular Graphic Arts Yesterday and Today
The one-day symposium scheduled for 25 March 2022 will examine the changing and innovative trends in how popular graphics are curated, interpreted, used and understood by those who produced, viewed, and consumed them.

Curatorial Fellowship
Imperfect History included a 20-month fellowship providing an aspiring graphics curator with practical career training.

Support for Imperfect History is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, Walter J. Miller Trust, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jay Robert Stiefel, and Terra Foundation for American Art.

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About the Library Company of Philadelphia

Established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company of Philadelphia was founded as the first public library with the mission of putting books in the hands of ‘ordinary citizens’. It is the oldest cultural institution in America, the Nation’s first Library of Congress, and the largest lending library through the Civil War.

Today, the Library Company is an independent research library and educational institution specializing in American and global history from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. With one of the world’s largest holdings of early Americana, the Library Company also has close to one million pieces in their collections that relate to African American history, economic and women’s history, the history of medicine, and visual culture. The Library Company promotes access to these collections through fellowships, exhibitions, programs, and online resources.

The holdings of over 100,000 items in the Graphic Arts Collection comprise one of the few public collections in the United States specializing in historical American popular graphics from the 17th century through the early 20th century. The works represent the multiple perspectives and aesthetic senses of their creators, while they also serve as material documents of the culture, politics, and economics in which they were produced and consumed.

From Jaime Eguiguren Art & Antiques:

Discovering Viceregal Latin American Treasures
Colnaghi, New York and London, 2 July — 10 September 2021
Jaime Eguiguren Art & Antiques, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2 July — 10 December 2021

Jaime Eguiguren Art & Antiques and Colnaghi gallery are delighted to announce Discovering Viceregal Latin American Treasures, a survey exhibition that brings together more than a hundred works of art from the Viceregal period. The presentation takes place virtually and is supported by the publication of a printed exhibition catalogue, which will be the most in-depth publication on Viceregal art ever printed. The Old Master works in the exhibition date from the 16th to 18th century and include paintings, sculptures, silver, barniz de pasto (lacquer-like resin), ceramics, and furniture.

Discovering Viceregal Latin American Treasures, with essays by Pablo F. Amador Marrero, Alejandro Antuñano, Gonzalo Eguiguren Pazzi, Jaime Eguiguren, Cristina Esteras Martín, Sofía Fernández Lázaro, Concha García Sáiz, Jorge González Matarraz, Nuria Lázaro Milla, Yaiza A. Pérez Carracedo, Héctor San José, Dorie Reent (London: Colnaghi, 2021), 344 pages, ISBN: 978-8409304752.

Looking ahead to next year at SLAM (the catalogue is available now) . . .

Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530–1800
Saint Louis Art Museum, 20 February — 15 May 2022

Curated by Judith Mann

In 2000 the Saint Louis Art Museum purchased Cavaliere d’Arpino’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda (ca. 1593–94), an exceptional painting on lapis lazuli. The acquisition of the small, stunning work of art spurred extensive research that culminates in Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800, the first systematic examination of the pan-European practice of this unusual and little-studied artistic tradition.

By 1530 Italian artists had begun to paint portraits and sacred images on stone. At first artists used slate and marble. By the last decades of the sixteenth century, the repertoire expanded, eventually including alabaster, lapis lazuli, onyx, jasper, agate, and amethyst. In addition to demonstrating the beauty of these works, Paintings on Stone explains why artists began using stone supports and the role that stone played in the meaning of these endeavors. Bringing together more than 90 examples by 58 artists, the exhibition represents major centers of stone painting and features 34 different stones, nearly the full range that were used. The exhibition is curated by Judith W. Mann, curator of European art to 1800.

Judith W. Mann, ed., Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530–1800 (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2021), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-3777435565, $50.

Paintings on Stone examines a fascinating tradition long overlooked by art historians—stone surfaces used to create stunning portraits, mythological scenes, and sacred images. Written by an international team of scholars, the catalogue reveals the significance of these paintings, their complex meanings, and their technical virtuosity. Using a technique perfected by Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547), sixteenth-century Italian artists created compositions using stone surfaces in place of panel or canvas. The practice of using stone supports continued to engage European artists and patrons well into the eighteenth century. This volume reveals the beauty of these works and examines the complexity of using materials such as slate, marble, alabaster, lapis lazuli, and amethyst. Illustrated with more than one hundred examples, and with essays on topics ranging from importing stone to its relationship to alchemy, Paintings on Stone will become the essential reference on this little-studied practice.

From the press release (18 May 2021) for the exhibition now on view at the NGV (with lots of interesting online features) . . .

Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 24 June — 3 October 2021

The world-exclusive exhibition Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum features more than 160 works on paper by Francisco Goya (1746–1828), celebrating the artist’s extraordinary draughtsmanship and imagination. Considered to be one of the first truly modern artists, Goya produced humorous and critical images of Spanish society that comment on gender relationships, social inequality, and violence, as well as visions of fantastic creatures.

Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum is the first major presentation of Goya’s work at the NGV in more than 20 years and features 44 drawings on loan from the Prado Museum, the largest group of Goya’s drawings ever seen in Australia. Ranging from bold ink drawings to delicate red chalk sketches, the drawings on display have been selected by the Prado especially for this NGV presentation. Highlights include examples from the artist’s earliest albums of social satires, preparatory drawings for his iconic print series, through to pages from the late albums, which contain some of Goya’s most complex and surreal images. This rich and diverse selection of drawings showcases the breadth of Goya’s drawing practice, as well as offering a rare insight into the artist’s image-making process.

Francisco Goya, This is how useful men usually end up, 1814–23, wash, brush, bistre on laid paper (Madrid: Prado).

Following a near-fatal illness in 1792, which left him profoundly deaf, Goya turned to drawing to record his private thoughts, visions, and dreams and continued this practice until the end of his life. In eight private albums, as well as in single sheet drawings, he gave expression to a vision of humanity that had no equivalent in the art of his day. Highlight works include This is how useful men usually end up (1814–23), a moving commentary on the consequences of poverty and war, and Literate animal (1824–28), a satirical image of an educated animal, which Goya drew in the last years of his life.

The works drawn from the Prado collection have been complemented by more than 120 etchings from Goya’s renowned print series: the Caprichos (1797–98), which satirised vices and follies in Spanish society; The Disasters of War (1810–15), based on the atrocities of the war and famine that followed the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808; Tauromaquia (1815–16) on the subject of bullfighting; and the enigmatic Disparates (c. 1815–19), made during the reign of Ferdinand VII, whose suppression of civil liberties affected the lives of many intellectuals and reformers, including Goya and his friends. The prints are drawn from the NGV Collection with fifteen works on loan from the Art Gallery of South Australia. Goya’s most famous etching, The sleep of reason produces monsters, a striking composition of the sleeping artist haunted by monstrous apparitions, is also featured in the exhibition.

The exhibition is structured chronologically and thematically around recurring themes in Goya’s art, many of which are as relevant today as they were in Goya’s time: the relationship between men and women; the condemnation of ignorance and religious zeal; the exploration of violence and its consequences; and the device of the nightmare or dream to critique social and political realities.

Tony Ellwood AM, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, said: “All aspects of society came under Goya’s critical eye—from education and marriage, to social justice and power relationships. Audiences to this exhibition will be astonished by the contemporary relevance of this exhibition and the universal themes that underpin the works of this celebrated Spanish artist.”

“The NGV has a longstanding relationship with the Prado Museum in Madrid, a cultural partnership which has resulted in the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, as well as the NGV’s commitment to sharing its significant collection of William Blake watercolours with Spanish audiences in the near future. We are indebted to the Prado Museum for generously lending these important Goya drawings. Without their continued support and commitment to this cultural exchange between Europe and Australia, a presentation of this significance would not be possible,” said Ellwood.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was the most celebrated artist of his time in Spain. He was court painter to four monarchs and lived through the turbulent events of the French occupation, the subsequent Peninsular War, and the Inquisition. He moved in elite circles and painted portraits of statesmen, aristocrats, influential writers, and intellectuals. His friendships with liberals sharpened Goya’s political awareness and social conscience, which was particularly evident in his drawings and prints.

Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021), 360 pages, ISBN: 978-1925432862, $70 (AUD). With contributions by José Manuel Matilla, Manuela Mena Marqués, Mark McDonald, Phillip Adams, Eric Campbell, Michael Christoforidis, Gideon Haigh, Adrian Martin, Richard Read, and Colm Tóibín, as well as NGV curators.