Enfilade

José Juárez, The Virgin of Guadalupe with Four Apparitions, detail, 1656, oil on canvas, 251 × 293 cm
(Ágreda, Soria: Monasterio de Concepcionistas Franciscanas)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

From the press release for the exhibition:

So Far, So Close: Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain

Museo Nacional del Prado, 10 June — 14 September 2025

Curated by Jaime Cuadriello and Paula Mues Orts

So Far, So Close: Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain casts an unprecedented gaze on the artistic dialogue between Latin America and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, showing how the Virgin of Guadalupe was reinterpreted, reproduced, and venerated on both continents, emerging as a transatlantic devotional and political icon. The exhibition offers a new perspective on the role of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a miraculously created image, an object of worship, and symbol of identity in the Hispanic world. Through nearly 70 works, including paintings, prints, sculptures and books, the exhibition shows how this manifestation of the Virgin, which first appeared on the Cerro del Tepeyac or Tepeyac Hill in 1531, transcended the borders of New Spain to become a powerful presence in the Spanish collective imagination. The project, curated by the Mexican professors Jaime Cuadriello (UNAM) and Paula Mues Orts (INAH), is the result of years of research and collaboration between institutions. The exhibition is structured into eleven thematic sections, combining small and large-format works that range from the earliest depictions of apparitions of the Virgin to the sophisticated vera effigies reproduced for devotional or political purposes.

Attributed to Joaquín Villegas (act. ca. 1713–53), The Eternal Father Painting the Virgin of Guadalupe, ca. 1740–50, oil on canvas (México City, INBAL/Museo Nacional de Arte, Donación FONCA, 1991).

The exhibition begins with a visual cartography that charts the surprising density of the presence of images of the Virgin of Guadalupe across all of Spain. This dissemination reflects economic, social and political factors such as trade with the Indies, mining and the movement of viceregal officials. These works reflect both devotion and the concerns of communities, artists, merchants, the nobility, and the clergy, who together made the Virgin a shared devotional cult. Themes covered in the exhibition’s different sections include the transmission of the Guadalupe story through standardised narrative and visual models; the formal genealogy of the image and its connection with European Marian icons such as the Immaculate Conception and the Tota pulchra; its status as a ‘painting not made by human hand’, which relates to the concept of the Deus pictor; and the sacredness of the Virgin’s mantle, conceived as a living relic and object of veneration. A comparison is also made with Iberian painting of the same period, revealing stylistic affinities and differences with schools such as Madrid and Andalusia.

Of particular interest are the sections dedicated to the vera effigies, which are exact copies or modified versions of the original, reproduced using specialised artistic techniques. Also notable is the presence of exotic materials, such as mother-of-pearl, ivory and brass, which arrived on the Manila Galleon, demonstrating the global reach of the cult of Guadalupe and its integration into transoceanic networks of cultural exchange. The exhibition includes masterpieces by artists from New Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, including José Juárez, Juan Correa, Manuel de Arellano, Miguel Cabrera, Velázquez, Zurbarán, and Francisco Antonio Vallejo. Together they trace an artistic and symbolic map of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe which lasted from the 17th to the early 19th century.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Fundación Casa de México in Spain is collaborating on an extensive cultural programme that focuses on the symbolic and artistic dimension of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The programme includes lectures by the curators, a cycle of historical and contemporary films, informational capsules and workshops on traditional Mexican crafts taught by masters from Michoacán and Chiapas. These activities, taking place at the Museo del Prado and at the Fundación’s venue in Madrid, will offer participants a wide-ranging experience that interweaves history, art, and living tradition.

Jaime Cuadriello and Paula Mues Orts, eds., Tan lejos, tan cerca: Guadalupe de México en España (Madrid: Prado, 2025), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-8484806325, €32.

John Robert Cozens, View of Vietri and Raito, Italy, ca. 1783, watercolor over graphite on cream laid paper (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Stuart Collection, museum purchase funded by Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer in honor of Dena M. Woodall).

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Now on view at the MFAH:

Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection

of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 12 January — 6 July 2025

Featuring more than 70 works of art in a variety of media, Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond explores how the genre of landscape evolved during an era of immense transformation in Britain. This diverse collection of watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil sketches traces the shift from topographical and picturesque depictions of the natural world to intensely personal ones that align with Romantic poetry of the period. The exhibition spotlights the Stuart Collection, built over the past decade in collaboration with Houstonian Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer. This exceptional collection includes standout works by notable artists such as John Constable, John Robert Cozens, Thomas Gainsborough, J.M.W. Turner, and Richard Wilson, whose innovative approaches to watercolor raised its status as an art form and heralded a golden age for the medium.

Through the work of these luminaries and their contemporaries, Picturing Nature reveals how landscape emerged as a distinct artistic genre in England in the late 1700s, then reached its greatest heights the following century, attracting international response and inspiring both artists and collectors at home and abroad. Period publications and artist’s supplies, including drawing manuals and a mid-19th-century Winsor & Newton watercolor box, further illustrate the flowering of the landscape tradition.

Dena M. Woodall, Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond, $35. The online catalogue of the Stuart Collection is available here.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Mama: From Mary to Merkel

Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 12 March — 3 August 2025

Curated by Linda Conze, Westrey Page, and Anna Christina Schütz

Marie-Victoire Lemoine, Portrait of Madame de Lucqui with Her Daughter Anne-Aglaé Deluchi, 1800, oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm (Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Rau Collection for UNICEF).

The exhibition Mama: From Mary to Merkel explores the many different aspects of motherhood over eight chapters. The focus is on the societal expectations that have always influenced motherhood and are reflected in art, culture, and everyday life. The approximately 120 works on display from the fourteenth century to the present day create a panorama that involves everyone, including fathers and those without children of their own. From the concept of the ‘good mother’ to care work and family configurations, the show illustrates how the role of mother quickly breaks down into different, highly individual perspectives that are nevertheless deeply intertwined in cultural history. A polyphonic sound installation uses pre-recorded voice messages to give space to personal experiences, memories, and visions.

“Everyone has a mother. By placing motherhood at the centre of an exhibition, the Kunstpalast is once again addressing a topic that directly touches the lives of our visitors and that everyone can relate to with their own experiences and opinions. The show combines seriousness with humour and art with everyday life and pop culture— thus tying in with the Kunstpalast’s mission statement on several levels,” says Felix Krämer, general director of the Kunstpalast.

Popular culture and art both emphasise societal expectations of mothers and the role of the GOOD MOTHER. We begin with figures of the Virgin Mary from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The image of Mary—probably the most prominent mother in Christian culture—remains a symbol of total maternal devotion today. The stereotype of the ‘good’ mother was established in the eighteenth century and is still widespread: contemporary artists in the exhibition explore the efforts involved in attaining this ideal. For a portrait of his mother, Aldo Giannotti (b. 1977) pressed a sign into her hands. The word ‘MOM’ on it only becomes an admiring exclamation of ‘WOW’ when she subjects herself to the strain of hanging upside down from the ceiling. Motherhood is a yardstick by which a woman’s achievement is measured—even if she is not a mother. A well-known example is Angela Merkel (b. 1954): nicknamed ‘Mutti’ (Mum) when she was German Chancellor, she can also be seen as Mother Theresa on the cover of Der Spiegel magazine.

The historical changeability of notions of ‘good’ motherhood is demonstrated by advice books from various decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, whose recommendations to mothers are often fundamentally contradictory. ADVICE OR REGULATION—from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism, the early Federal Republic and the GDR to the present-day reunified Germany, this genre is characterised by both consistencies and inconsistencies. A bookshelf in the exhibition gathers advice literature from recent decades and invites visitors to pause and read.

“Ideals and role models, advice, expectations and emotions—the aim of this exhibition is to make the subject of motherhood tangible in all its artistic, cultural historical, social and, of course, highly personal dimensions,” agree the three curators of the show. Linda Conze, Westrey Page and Anna Christina Schütz have approached the topic from different angles, finding mothers and non-mothers in the Kunstpalast collection, supplementing these artists with important, sometimes international loans and bringing everything together to create a narrative. “Connections between the collectively selected works reveal continuities, but also the mutability of images of mothers, which are constantly being reappropriated, reinterpreted, contested and celebrated. We see the show as an invitation to open up a dialogue about care and motherliness and look forward to hearing the audience’s perspectives,” explains the curatorial team.

Looking after children is work. Nevertheless, CARE WORK remains mostly unpaid and has traditionally been automatically assigned to women. With a critical eye, artists have drawn attention to the fact that care is influenced by social norms and class affiliations. For a long time, only poor mothers breastfed their babies themselves, while wealthier women hired wet nurses. Around 1800, the idea that all women should take care of their babies themselves became prevalent; the presence of the biological mother became more important. In the present day, working mothers who focus “too much” on their careers are judged just as much as those who devote themselves entirely to their children and the household. The balancing of care and paid work as well as the role of caregiver and other identities is a recurring theme among the women artists in the exhibition. Several paintings in the exhibition are by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), who was always fascinated by motifs of the bond between mother and child. However, she was also apprehensive about the effects of her own motherhood on her artistic work. In her sculpture of a body dissolving in the mechanics of a breast pump, Camille Henrot (b. 1978) focuses on the fine line between providing nourishment and self-sacrifice.

The exhibition delves deeper into the subject of the PLACES OF MOTHERHOOD: historical doll’s house kitchens are brought into dialogue with the video work Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler (b. 1943), which examines the distance of the housewife’s domain from intellectual settings. Scottish artist Caroline Walker (b. 1982) portrays mothers with their newborns in the intimate yet isolating domestic sphere. Finnish artist Katharina Bosse (b. 1968) photographs herself in erotically charged poses with her toddler crawling beside her in natural landscapes. In this way, she disrupts the seemingly natural idyll that surrounds motherhood in art and cultural history.

Several women artists use their work to address the fact that the decision to (NOT) HAVE CHILDREN often could not and still cannot be made freely, despite all the progress that has been made. For centuries, female ‘nature’ was defined in a wide variety of societies by a woman’s ability to conceive and bear children. The Virgin Mary, whose life is depicted in Dürer’s Life of the Virgin, is both a female role model and a special case. Her actions are always centred on her son, whom she conceived by divine intervention.

The medical achievements and societal developments of the twentieth century allowed women to emancipate themselves from their socially prescribed destiny for the first time by taking the contraceptive pill or asserting their hard-fought right to terminate a pregnancy. Hannah Höch (1889–1978) paints her struggle with the decision to not have a child by Raoul Hausmann. Nina Hagen’s (b. 1955) protest against the expectations of fulfilling her duty as a mother in the song “Unbeschreiblich Weiblich” (Indescribably Feminine) is juxtaposed with Elina Brotherus’s (b. 1972) confrontation with her own involuntary childlessness.

For a long time, the physical bond between mother and child was unquestioningly viewed as a prerequisite for a motherly love that was regarded as intrinsic. The exhibition also shows that the often positively connoted intimate relationship between mother and child at all ages can also have a potentially traumatic side. In a series of photographs, Leigh Ledare (b. 1976) explores his CLOSENESS to his mother, who confronts her adult son with uncompromising desire. In a video work by performance artist Lerato Shadi (b. 1979), she and her mother lick sugar and salt off each other’s tongues and explore the space between repulsion and affection. The armchair by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce (1939–2024) promises a return to the mother’s womb, with the foot section connected to the main body of the furniture via an ‘umbilical cord’.

In German, the word MUTTERSEELENALLEIN describes the utmost loneliness. Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, mourning her dead son Jesus Christ, is one of the central motifs in Western art history. Artists have repeatedly made reference to the so-called Pietà, appropriating and reinterpreting it as a motif. The loss of the child is juxtaposed with the loss of the mother, which artists of different generations have sometimes made an autobiographical theme and thus given expression and form to their personal grief. Finally, mutterseelenallein can also refer to anyone who has been denied motherhood, whether due to social norms, physical conditions or decisions that were not made voluntarily.

The exhibition chapter FAMILY CONFIGURATIONS asks what influence family images have on motherhood. In the eighteenth century, the nuclear family rose to become the ideal of the Western world. In this model, the mother is the centre of care, while the father is responsible for financial support. Through processing their own personal or observed experiences, artists have questioned the dominance of this father-mother-child constellation. Alice Neel, who lived apart from her daughter, captures psychological subtleties in her family portraits that resist simple narratives. Oliviero Toscani’s photos for a campaign for the Benetton fashion brand around 1990 challenged conservative notions of family by placing homosexual parents at the centre. Queer lifestyles can inspire ways of thinking in which the burden of care is placed on several shoulders instead of being the sole responsibility of the biological mother. The circle of people who can be mothered also extends beyond biological relatives: foster, step-, adopted children and those in care are also looked after. In the complexity of modern living arrangements, the bond with a pet can be just as important as other relationships. Art reflects the shift from the question ‘Who is the mother?’ to ‘Who is mothering?’

The exhibition is an invitation to continue the dialogue about care and motherhood—for example in the diverse accompanying programme, which ranges from a midwife consultation in the exhibition to workshops with various collectives and organisations such as Düsseldorf family centres. One of Germany‘s most prominent mother figures has recorded the audio guide for the exhibition: Marie-Luise Marjan, aka ‘Mutter Beimer’ from the popular TV series Lindenstraße.

Mama: From Mary to Merkel is curated by Linda Conze, Head of Department of Photographs; Westrey Page, Curator Special Projects; and Anna Christina Schütz, Department of Prints and Drawings, Research Associate.

Linda Conze, Westrey Page, and Anna Christina Schütz, ed., Mama: Von Maria bis Merkel (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2025), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-3777444888, €45.

Closing soon at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs:

Rococo & Co: From Nicolas Pineau to Cindy Sherman

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 12 March — 18 May 2025

Curated by Bénédicte Gady, with Turner Edwards and François Gilles

This exhibition celebrates the restoration of a unique collection of nearly 500 drawings from the workshop of the sculptor Nicolas Pineau (1684–1754), one of the main proponents of the Rocaille style, which Europe adopted as Rococo. A practitioner of measured asymmetry and a subtle interplay of solids and voids, Nicolas Pineau excelled in many fields: woodwork, ornamental sculpture, architecture, prints, furniture and silverware. The presentation of this major Rococo figure is extended to include a workshop that plunges the visitor into the heart of the creation of Rococo panelling. Asymmetries, sinuous lines, chinoiserie dreams and animal images illustrate the infinite variations of the Rococo style. Finally, from the 19th to the 21st century, this aesthetic has found numerous echoes, from neo-styles to the most unexpected and playful reinterpretations.

The exhibition explores the evolution of the Rococo style and its reappearance in contemporary design and fashion, including Art Nouveau and psychedelic art. Nearly 200 drawings, pieces of furniture, woodwork, objets d’art, lighting, ceramics, and fashion items engage in a playful dialogue of curves and counter-curves. Nicolas Pineau and Juste Aurèle Meissonnier are joined by Louis Majorelle, Jean Royère, Alessandro Mendini, Mathieu Lehanneur, the fashion designers Tan Giudicelli and Vivienne Westwood, and the artist Cindy Sherman.

Bénédicte Gady, Turner Edwards, and François Gilles, eds., Nicolas Pineau 1684–1754: Un sculpteur de rocaille entre Paris et Saint-Pétersbourg (Paris: Éditions Les Arts Décoratifs, 2025), 504 pages, ISBN: 978-2847425123, €85.

Saitō Motonari, Illustrations of Uji Tea Production, 1803, Edo period (1615–1868), handscroll (57 feet) of thirty-two sheets reformatted as a folding album (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023.237).

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Now on view at The Met:

The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and

Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 August 2024 — 3 August 2025

Curated by John Carpenter

In East Asian cultures, the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting are traditionally referred to as the ‘Three Perfections’. This exhibition presents over 160 rare and precious works—all created in Japan over the course of nearly a millennium—that showcase the power and complexity of the three forms of art. Examples include folding screens with poems brushed on sumptuous decorated papers, dynamic calligraphy by Zen monks of medieval Kyoto, hanging scrolls with paintings and inscriptions alluding to Chinese and Japanese literary classics, ceramics used for tea gatherings, and much more. The majority of the works are among the more than 250 examples of Japanese painting and calligraphy donated or promised to The Met by Mary and Cheney Cowles, whose collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive assemblages of Japanese art outside Japan.

The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation Fund.

Information on the objects exhibited can be found here»

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

John Carpenter, with Tim Zhang, The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1588397805, $65.

In East Asian cultures, the integration of poetry, painting, and calligraphy, known as the ‘Three Perfections’, is considered the apex of artistic expression. This sumptuous book explores 1,000 years of Japanese art through more than 100 works—hanging scrolls, folding screens, handscrolls, and albums—from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. John T. Carpenter provides an engaging history of these interrelated disciplines and shows evidence of intellectual exchange between Chinese and Japanese artists in works with poetry in both languages, calligraphies in Chinese brushed by Japanese Zen monks, and examples of Japanese paintings pictorializing scenes from Chinese literature and legend. Many of the works featured, including Japanese poetic forms, Chinese verses, and Zen Buddhist sayings, are deciphered and translated here for the first time, providing readers with a better understanding of each work’s rich and layered meaning. Highlighting the talents of such masters as Musō Soseki, Sesson Shūkei, Jiun Onkō, Ryōkan Taigu, Ike no Taiga, and Yosa Buson, this book celebrates the power of brush-written calligraphy and its complex visual synergy with painted images.

John T. Carpenter is the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been with The Met since 2011. From 1999 to 2011, he taught the history of Japanese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and served as head of the London office of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He has published widely on Japanese art, especially in the areas of calligraphy, painting, and woodblock prints, and has helped organize numerous exhibitions at the Museum, including Designing Nature (2012–13), Brush Writing in the Arts of Japan (2013–14), Celebrating the Arts of Japan (2015–17), The Poetry of Nature (2018–2019), and The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated (2019).

Tim T. Zhang is Research Associate of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

c o n t e n t s

Director’s Foreword
Preface
Becoming a Collector of Japanese Art — Cheney Cowles
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader

Introduction
Inscribing and Painting Poetry: The Three Perfections in Japanese Art — John T. Carpenter

Catalogue
1  Courtly Calligraphy Styles: Transcribing Poetry in the Heian Palace
Entries 1–13
2  Spiritual Traces of Ink: Calligraphies by Medieval Zen Monks
Entries 14–31
3  Reinvigorating Classical Poetry: Brush Writing in Early Modern Times
Entries 32–59
4  Poems of Enlightenment: Edo-Period Zen Calligraphy
Entries 60–84
5  China-Themed Paintings: Literati Art of Later Edo Japan
Entries 85–111

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Credits

Moon Jar, white porcelain, Joseon Dynasty, 18th century
(Seoul: National Museum of Korea)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

From the press release for the exhibition:

100 Ideas of Happiness: Art Treasures from Korea

Residenzschloss, Dresden, 15 March — 10 August 2025

For the first time in over 25 years, precious artifacts that give an overview of Korean art and cultural history are on display in Germany. The exhibition 100 Ideas of Happiness takes place thanks to a cooperation with the National Museum of Korea, which is supported by the Korea Foundation.

Embedded in the baroque Paraderäume (Royal State Apartments) and the Neues Grünes Gewölbe (New Green Vault) of the Dresden Residenzschloss (Royal Palace), the show opens up an exciting dialogue between cultures. The central theme is the timeless question of the various ideas of happiness—including the desire for eternal life, peace in this world and the next, inner strength or pure joie de vivre— as expressed in works of art through colours, symbols, and the choice of subject matter.

On display are around 180 outstanding individual objects and groups of objects, including valuable grave goods, precious jewellery, royal robes, and exquisite porcelain from several eras of Korean history. The objects give a multifaceted impression of Korea’s artistic traditions from the time of the ancient kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla (57 BC–935 AD) to the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897). Numerous loans are on show for the first time in Europe. The central themes of the presentation are ancient funerary traditions, the role of Buddhism and Confucianism as state-endorsed religions, the legacy of ceramic art, and the significance of the traditional Korean attire, the Hanbok, in the past and present.

A tour of the exhibition through the Paraderäume concludes with a selection of Korean artworks from the ethnographic collections of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections). These include folding screens, armour, and weapons collected by German travellers in Korea at the beginning of the 19th century. They offer valuable insights into Korea at that time and document the beginnings of a cultural exchange between Korea and Germany. An important item is the folding screen from the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig. Its title is 100 Ideas for Happiness and Longevity and gave the exhibition its name.

The second exhibition venue within the Residenzschloss is located in the Sponsel Room of the Neues Grünes Gewölbe. Surrounded by the treasures of Augustus the Strong, a selection of precious gold jewellery from the royal tombs of the Silla Dynasty is displayed there. These objects—including the famous gold crown from Geumgwanchong, one of the most important royal tombs in Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla kingdom—are among Korea’s national treasures. An elaborately decorated belt made of pure gold, a wing-shaped headdress, and magnificent earrings and rings (presented in the exhibition as an ensemble for the first time in many years) also come from this tomb. They are cultural and historical testimonies to the great significance of the Silla Kingdom.

Claudia Brink and Sojin Baik, 100 Ideen von Glück: Kunstschätze aus Korea (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2025), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-3954988631, €34.

Now on view at the Leopold Museum, with the full press release available at Art Daily . . .

Biedermeier: The Rise of an Era / Eine Epoche im Aufbruch

Leopold Museum, Vienna, 10 April — 27 July 2025

Curated by Johann Kräftner with Lili-Vienne Debus

Day Dress, ca. 1816 (Wien Museum; photo by Birgit and Peter Kainz).

The fascinating era of the Biedermeier, which lasted from around the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15 to the revolutions of 1848, delineates a period in Europe that was shaped by political upheaval and social revolts, which profoundly changed society. The congress resulted in the restitution of absolutism and princely rule, heralding a long phase of political restoration founded on a suppression of democratic aspirations. The resigned population turned away from politics and revolutionary ideals for fear of reprisals, seeking refuge in the private sphere. Themes of longing for security and harmony in everyday life entered the pictorial worlds of the Biedermeier.

Aside from all the political friction, the Biedermeier was also an era of great innovation and esthetical changes. The most important driving force was the industrial progress, which led to the construction of the first railway lines and spectacular suspension bridges, like the one connecting Buda and Pest. These technological revolutions resulted in decisive changes in the development of art. Many of these innovations did not emanate from Vienna as the center of the Habsburg Monarchy, but rather from the splendid cities of the crown lands, such as Budapest, Prague, Ljubljana, Trieste, Venice, and Milan.

The art of the monarchy was shaped by international exchange. Thus, the exhibition showcases not only the Viennese masters, including Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Friedrich von Amerling, but also Miklós Barabás and József Borsos from Budapest, Antonín Machek and František Tkadlík from Prague, as well as the artists active in Lombardy-Venetia Francesco Hayez and Jožef Tominc (Giuseppe Tominz).

Secretary, Bohemia, ca. 1820 (Prague: The Museum of Decorative Arts; photo by Gabriel Urbánek and Ondřej Kocourek).

Despite the severe poverty of the time, which affected large segments of the population, the simultaneous economic upturn yielded a bourgeoisie whose members wanted to be depicted in confident portraits. Alongside portraits celebrating realistic likenesses of the depicted and the documentation of their social status, the pictorial worlds were dominated by themes from everyday life: family portraits, genre paintings, and renderings of the artists’ own surroundings. Despite the Biedermeier’s typical restrictions to the microcosm of the everyday and one’s immediate surroundings, artists of the period also looked further afield to far-flung countries and cities in order to satisfy people’s curiosity and interest in foreign cultures. Featuring around 190 works from Austrian and international collections, ranging from paintings and graphic works to furnishings, glassware and dresses, the exhibition presents a varied picture of this era.

Curator: Johann Kräftner
Curatorial Assistance and Project Coordination: Lili-Vienne Debus

Johann Kräftner and Hans-Peter Wipplinger, eds., Biedermeier: Eine Epoche im Aufbruch / The Rise of an Era (Cologne: Walther König, 2025), 328 pages, ISBN: ‎978-3753308159, €40.
The catalogue, in German and English, includes essays by Lili-Vienne Debus, Sabine Grabner, Johann Kräftner, Stefan Kutzenberger, Michaela Lindinger, Fernando Mazzocca, Juliane Mikoletzky, Adrienn Prágai and Radim Vondráček, as well as a prologue by Hans-Peter Wipplinger.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Note (added 23 April 2025) — This posting originally appeared April 22; it was moved back to April 21st for improved continuity with other posts.

Some 100 works—paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts—from the 17th and 18th centuries are now on view in Turin for this exhibition produced in collaboration with the National Museums of Genoa–Palazzo Spinola and the National Gallery of Liguria.

Magnificent Collections: Art and Power during the Age of the Doges of Genoa

Reggia di Venaria, Torino, 10 April — 7 September 2025

Curated by Gianluca Zanelli, Marie Luce Repetto, Andrea Merlotti, and Clara Goria, with Donatella Zanardo

Anton von Maron, Portrait of Maria Geronima Pellegrina ‘Lilla’ Cambiaso and Her Daughter Caterina, 1792, oil on canvas (Genoa: Palazzo Spinola di Pellicceria).

In mostra alla Reggia di Venaria le straordinarie raccolte d’arte di alcune delle più importanti famiglie del patriziato genovese (i Pallavicino, i Doria, gli Spinola, i Balbi) conservate a Palazzo Spinola di Pellicceria, insieme alle più recenti acquisizioni dei Musei Nazionali di Genova con prestiti da altri musei e collezioni private.

Un patrimonio unico di arte e storia che annovera celebri dipinti di Peter Paul Rubens, Antoon Van Dyck, Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta, Luca Giordano, e poi ancora Hyacinthe Rigaud e Angelica Kauffman, oltre ai maestri della grande scuola figurativa genovese. Attraverso un centinaio di opere tra dipinti, sculture, argenti e arredi del Sei e Settecento, si proporrà un percorso espositivo, suddiviso in sei sezioni, riferito alle raccolte del palazzo poi divenuto museo, ma anche il racconto del secolo d’oro di Genova ‘la Superba’, teatro del Barocco, antica repubblica retta dai dogi, con la sua regalità e fasto. La mostra continua il grande filone dedicato alla storia, all’arte, alla cultura e alla magnificenza delle corti inaugurato dalla riapertura della Reggia e proseguito negli anni.

Gianluca Zanelli and Marie Luce Repetto, eds., Magnifiche collezioni: Arte e potere nella Genova dei Dogi (Genoa: Sagep Editori, 2025), 128 pages, ISBN: 979-1255902041, €18.