Enfilade

From the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes:

De Véronèse à Casanova: Parcours italien dans les collections de Bretagne
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, 19 April — 30 September 2013
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, 14 December 2013 — 2 March 2014

Curated by Mylène Allano

Les musées des beaux-arts de Rennes et de Quimper présentent successivement une grande exposition des peintures italiennes conservées dans la région. La manifestation a pour vocation de mettre en valeur et de faire connaître le patrimoine de la Bretagne historique, en exposant les fleurons des collections italiennes des musées de Brest, Dinan, Morlaix, Nantes, Quimper, Rennes, Vannes et ainsi que les plus belles œuvres des églises bretonnes ; soit 85 peintures de tout premier ordre offrant un panorama représentatif de la peinture italienne des XVIe au XVIIIe siècles.

Didier Rykner provides an exhibition review at La Tribune de l’Art (13 May 2013). . .

. . . L’exposition s’est basée sur une thèse de Mylène Allano—commissaire scientifique de cette exposition—qui cataloguait toutes les peintures italiennes conservées en Bretagne. Le parcours aurait pu être chronologique, par école ou par thèmes. C’est cette dernière présentation qui a été choisie. . .

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The catalogue is available from Artbooks.com:

Mylène Allano, ed., De Véronèse à Casanova: Parcours italien dans les collections de Bretagne (Lyon: Lieux Dits, 2013), 199 pages, ISBN: 978-2362190742, $47.50.

Italian paintings held in Brittany are well known and appreciated by art specialists, and are characterised by their quality and by the variety of places represented (Venice, Rome, Naples…). This exhibition enables access to a remarkable set of works collected by museums, which have never previously received such attention. There are no less than eighty works which, for the first time, are the subject of an original display underlying the extraordinary vitality of artistic creation in Italy from the 16th century until the end of the 18th century.

As Courtney Barnes noted back in November at Style Court, America’s fascination with England’s country houses will continue into the new year (and 2015). While Houghton Revisited, which brought dozens of paintings back to the house from Russia for display this summer and fall, was awarded Apollo Magazine’s 2013 Exhibition of the Year, pictures and objects still in the Houghton Hall collection will travel to Houston, San Francisco, and Nashville. From the MFAH press release (22 November 2013). . .

Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 22 June — 22 September 2013
Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 18 October 2014 — 18 January 2015
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, 13 February — 10 May 2015

Curated by Gary Tinterow and Christine Gervais with David Cholmondeley

William Hogarth, The Cholmondeley Family, 1732
(Marquess of Cholmondeley, Houghton Hall)

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Family portraits by Hogarth and Sargent, exquisite examples of Sèvres porcelain, and unique pieces of William Kent furniture from this aristocratic English family chronicle three centuries of art, history, and politics.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Director Gary Tinterow today announced an unprecedented exhibition: Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, which will be on view at the Museum from June 22 to September 22, 2014. The exhibition marks the first time the renowned collection of the Marquesses of Cholmondeley, housed at Houghton Hall, the family estate in Norfolk, will travel outside of England.

Houghton Hall (Photo: Nick McCann)

The house and much of its collection were built in the early 1700s by Sir Robert Walpole—England’s first prime minister and the ancestor of the current marquess. Renowned as one of the finest Palladian houses and one of the most extensive art collections in Britain, Houghton became notorious when Sir Robert’s collection of Old Master paintings was sold by his grandson to Catherine the Great, in 1779. But the house and all of its furnishings, considered to comprise William Kent’s Georgian masterpiece, remained intact; Walpole’s descendants added considerably to the collection of paintings. From great family portraits by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, and John Singer Sargent, to exquisite examples of Sèvres porcelain, rare pieces of R. J. & S. Garrard silver, and unique furniture by William Kent, the exhibition vividly evokes the fascinating story of art, history, and politics through the collections of this aristocratic English family over three centuries.

Organized by Tinterow; Christine Gervais, associate curator; and Lord Cholmondeley, the exhibition will tour nationally after the Houston presentation, beginning with the Legion of Honor of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (October 18, 2014–January 18, 2015) and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville (February 13–May 10, 2015).

The White Drawing Room at Houghton Hall, with paintings by John Hoppner and George James (Photo: Nick McCann)

“Houghton Hall and its superb collections epitomize the historic legacy of art, architecture, and patronage among the great families and country houses of England,” commented Tinterow. “I am delighted to partner with David Cholmondeley to bring this extraordinary heritage to American audiences. Given our fascination with Downton Abbey and its similar story of a great English house and its family, I know this exhibition will be highly anticipated.”

“I was enormously gratified by the response to Houghton Revisited, the exhibition in which we reunited the paintings sold to Catherine the Great with their home at Houghton Hall,” commented David Cholmondeley on the success of that recent project. “I look forward to working with Gary Tinterow and his colleagues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to share Houghton Hall and our family’s history with visitors in Houston, San Francisco, and Nashville.”

About Portrait of an English Country House

Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House will assemble more than 100 objects in settings that combine paintings, porcelain, sculpture, costume, metalwork, and furniture to evoke the stunning rooms at Houghton Hall. Bought or commissioned by eight generations of descendants of Sir Robert Walpole, together these objects comprise a fascinating chronicle. (more…)

From the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova:

Vincoli d’Amore: Spose in casa Gonzaga tra XV e XVIII secolo
Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 18 October 2013 — 6 January 2014

Curated by Paola Venturelli and Daniela Ferrari

Si inaugura venerdì 18 ottobre alle ore 16.30 nell’Atrio degli Arcieri la mostra Vincoli d’Amore. Spose in casa Gonzaga tra XV e XVIII secolo, a cura di Paola Venturelli e Daniela Ferrari e promossa dall’Archivio di Stato di Mantova in collaborazione con la Soprintendenza BSAE di Mantova. Insieme alle curatrici intervengono Giovanna Paolozzi Strozzi, Soprintendente e Direttore del Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Francesca Zaltieri, Assessore alla Cultura della Provincia di Mantova e Renata Casarin Presidente del Soroptimist International Club di Mantova.

Spose di casa Gonzaga o spose giunte in casa Gonzaga lungo un arco di tempo che coincide con gli anni del dominio di questa grande dinastia, dagli inizi del XV secolo all’aprirsi del XVIII. Solo di alcune conosciamo le fattezze. Di poche gli interessi, i pensieri e le attitudini, rimanendo la maggior parte quasi priva di spessore storico e relegata nello sfondo della Grande Storia. Pedine, le cui mosse, abilmente studiate, porteranno tuttavia a costruire la Grande Storia dei Gonzaga. I loro matrimoni, voluti per allacciare vincoli di parentela con i principali casati, italiani o d’Oltralpe, erano infatti il frutto di oculate strategie dinastiche. Vincoli, qualche volta “d’amore”, anche spirituale – sull’imitazione del matrimonio mistico di Santa Caterina -, che cambiarono il panorama esistenziale delle nostre protagoniste.

La mostra è allestita negli ambienti in cui alcune delle protagoniste di questa esposizione hanno mosso i primi passi della loro vita coniugale. Presenti le duchesse Eleonora d’Asburgo ed Eleonora de’ Medici, ritratte nella supersite porzione della pala della Santissima Trinità, eseguita da Pieter Paul Rubens (ca. 1605), che domina la Sala degli Arcieri.

From the Uffizi:

The Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713): Collector and Patron of the Arts
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 26 June — 3 November 2013, extended until 6 January 2014

Curated by Riccardo Spinelli

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To mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713), the Galleria degli Uffizi is planning to devote a celebratory exhibition to this key figure who was one of the most important collectors and patrons of the arts in the entire history of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The son of Cosimo III and of Marguerite-Louise d’Orléans, Ferdinando nurtured two overriding interests, in the theatre and music and in the figurative arts, from a very early age. The exhibition sets out to convey the complexity of his interests and the innovative nature of his approach which drew the leading artists of the era (musicians, instrumentalists, painters and sculptors) to Florence between the end of the 17th century and the first decade of the 18th. The exhibition is broken down into sections illustrating the complex issues surrounding the prince’s cultural inclinations, while also presenting the buildings in which his patronage was played out.

An introductory iconographic section displays likenesses of the prince and of his family, with works by Giovan Battista Foggini, Justus Suttermans and Anton Domenico Gabbiani.

This is followed by a second section illustrating the early years of Ferdinando’s art collecting and patronage which focused in particular on his beloved villa at Pratolino where, alongside musicians, singers, costumiers and composers, he also hosted the Bibbiena family from Bologna, masters in the art of stage design. At the same time, the residence was being transformed in its interior decor and embellished with the work of Ferdinando’s favourite painters at the time, including Livio Mehus, Pier Dandini and Domenico Tempesti, all of whom were Tuscans, but also such “foreigners” as Crescenzio Onofri from Rome or Cristoforo Munari from northern Italy, all of them engaged in producing works closely linked to the villa and to the performances and other leisure activities that were held in it.

The third section is devoted to the renovation of Palazzo Pitti, of the Pergola Theatre and of the cathedral of Florence on the occasion of Ferdinando’s wedding to Princess Violante Beatrix of Bavaria in 1689. The ducal palace underwent radical transformation in its piano nobile, in the bridal couple’s apartments and in the mezzanines above, which were renovated in a spectacularly imaginative way, evinced in the exhibition by the memoirs and preparatory drawings of the artists who executed in the work (Luca Giordano, Diacinto Maria Marmi, Alessandro Gherardini, Giovan Battista Foggini and Anton Domenico Gabbiani). At the same time, the section also explores the ceremonies and festivities held in Florence to mark the prince’s wedding, using drawings and documents for the purpose.

The fourth section illustrates the prince’s growing interest in the figurative arts, both in contemporary sculpture and in painting, with the leading artists active at the time, many of whom were experts in such ‘modern’ late 17th-century genres of as still-life and portraiture. Thus this part of the exhibition contains both religious and secular works (by Carlo Dolci, Carlo Loth, Baldassarre Franceschini and Il Volterrano) and examples of ‘painted nature’ (by Jacopo Ligozzi, Bartolomeo Bimbi, Margherita Caffi, Fardella, Houbracken and Michelangelo Pace da Campidoglio). Of equal interest in the section is the presence of sumptuary objects, pieces of furniture and everyday items testifying to Ferdinando’s sophisticated tastes, with works by the leading engravers, marquetry inlayers and silversmiths then active at court.

The highly significant fifth section explores the tastes of the Grand Prince as collector, with some of the 16th- to 18th-century paintings removed from churches in Tuscany and elsewhere, including Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Harpies, Lanfranco’s Ectasy of St. Margaret of Cortona, Annibale Carracci’s Farnese Altarpiece, and lastly, the Madonna of the Long Neck by Parmigianino, one of Fernando’s most prestigious acquisitions in the field of Renaissance art as the 17th century drew to a close.

The sixth section is devoted to the grand prince’s favourite villa of all, Poggio a Caiano, whose decoration he renovated with the greatest magnificence. He chose a room on its piano nobile to house one of his most original collections comprising ‘works in miniature’, which is eloquently recreated in the exhibition through a selection paintings that once formed part of it, illustrating the prince’s catholic tastes in collecting.

The seventh section of the exhibition illustrates the prince’s taste for major Florentine statuary at the close of the 17th century, while in the sphere of painting it looks at the change in Ferdinando’s taste in favour of ‘foreign’ schools—far more modern than anything local artists could produce—such as the Venetian school (of which he was enamoured in his youth), the Bolognese school and the Ligurian school (with work by Crespi, Cassana, Fumiani, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Magnasco and Peruzzini) whose leading painters were summoned to Florence, where they produced some of their masterpieces specifically for the prince.

The final section is devoted to the last years of Ferdinando’s life, exploring the results and repercussions of his art patronage and collecting, and displaying the drawings for a celebratory monument that it was planned to erect in his memory, the sketches for that project, and material relating to his funeral.

Available from Artbooks.com:

Riccardo Spinelli, ed., Il gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713) Collezionista e Mecenate (Firenze: Giunti, 2013 ), 430 pages, ISBN: 978-8809786103, $77.50.

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From The Holburne Museum:

Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond
The Holburne Museum, Bath, 25 January — 5 May 2014
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, dates TBA

Joseph Wright, Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the
Islands in the Bay of Naples, ca. 1776–80 (London: Tate)

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I have taken the Liberty to give this Letter of Introduction to my Friend Mr. Wright of Derby, Who since his Return from Italy is come to Bath, & Designs to settle there.
Erasmus Darwin, 22 November 1775

Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–1797) lived and worked in Bath between November 1775 and June 1777. This brief and little-known episode in Wright’s life marked a crossroads in his career; yet it has never been explored in detail. Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond will place Wright in the context of the many artists, musicians, writers, business people and scientists living and working in the Georgian spa and present for the first time a comprehensive view of his life and work during those eighteen months. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will also go ‘beyond’ to examine the effect of his time in Bath and his travels in Italy on Wright’s later work.

Joseph Wright, The Rev. Dr. Thomas Wilson and his adopted Daughter Miss Catherine Sophia Macaulay, 1776 (Chawton House Library)

Wright came to Bath to paint portraits, hoping to build on the success of Thomas Gainsborough who had recently left for London. The exhibition will include the three remaining portraits that the artist certainly made in Bath, including his painting of the elderly Rev. Thomas Wilson with the young daughter of Catharine Macaulay, the radical historian.

Whilst in Bath Wright worked up landscape studies he had made in Italy, producing spectacular views of Vesuvius in Eruption and the dazzling firework displays of Rome, the highlight of a visit to the artist’s studio in Brock Street. It was whilst in Bath that he first began to explore subjects from sentimental contemporary literature, which in turn have a strong impact on his portrait composition, and the exhibition will include some of his most beautiful depictions of figures alone in the landscape.

We are grateful to Derby Museum, which holds the world’s largest and finest collection of Wright’s work, for its generous loans to this exhibition which will include The Indian Widow, The Alchymist and some beautiful drawings. Other lenders include the National Gallery, Musée du Louvre, Tate, the British Museum, the Walker Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum. This exhibition will travel to Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

A study day is scheduled for 24 February 2014.

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From I. B. Tauris:

Amina Wright, Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2014), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-1781300213, £16 / $30.

Joseph Wright (1734–1797) arrived in Bath from his native Derby in November 1775. Recently returned from a tour of Italy, he came to the fashionable spa town to re-establish his business as a portrait painter, hoping to fill the vacancy left by Thomas Gainsborough the previous year. This book, the first to examine Wright’s little-known Bath period, places the artist in the context of a city then at the height of its unique cultural significance. Using rarely-seen illustrations of his work, it considers his attempts to conquer a saturated portrait market with images of local celebrities, and his use of domestic spaces for public exhibition. His celebrated views of fireworks in Rome and the terrors of Vesuvius were first shown in Bath. Beautifully illustrated and highly readable, Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond sheds new light on a key moment in this important English artist’s career, deepening our understanding of his life and work as a whole.

Amina Wright is Senior Curator at the Holburne Museum in Bath, UK, and has been Curator of Fine Art there since 2001. She was closely involved in the Holburne’s major redevelopment project, completed in 2011, as well as a number of exhibitions relating to British eighteenth-century painting, drawings and Georgian Bath. Previous publications include the exhibition catalogues Pictures of Innocence: Children in Portraits from Hogarth to Lawrence (2005) and Pickpocketing the Rich: Portrait Painting in Bath 1720–1800 (2002).

From Artbooks.com:

Dipinti tra rococò e neoclassicismo da Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia e da altre raccolte
Palazzo Ducale Castromediano di Cavallino, Lecce, 21 September — 15 December 2013

La mostra è dedicata alla memoria di Fiammetta Luly Lemme (Ancona, 20 marzo 1937 – Roma, 29 marzo 2005), avvocato, collezionista e studiosa d’arte, moglie dell’avvocato Fabrizio Lemme, che con lei ha condiviso i medesimi interessi per l’arte e il collezionismo, che ancora coltiva. La collezione Lemme, formata con la consulenza di insigni studiosi quali Federico Zeri, Italo Faldi e Giuliano Briganti, fornisce un rilevante materiale di studio per la conoscenza della pittura barocca, rococò e proto-neoclassica, con particolare attenzione al Settecento romano. Nel 1998 i coniugi Lemme donarono al Museo del Louvre venti quadri e una scultura, collocati nella “Sala Lemme,” mentre altri ventuno furono donati contestualmente alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, oggi organicamente inseriti nel nuovo allestimento.

Il 28 maggio 2007 Fabrizio, Giuliano e Ilaria Lemme hanno formalizzato la donazione al Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia del nucleo più importante della collezione, costituito da 128 dipinti, in gran parte già oggetto di notifica del Ministero dei Beni Culturali e Ambientali come insieme di elevato interesse storico artistico (Decreto del 1 dicembre 1998). La raccolta è confluita nel Museo del Barocco Romano, ubicato nella dimora chigiana, formato a partire dal nucleo di dipinti del ‘600 lasciati nel 2002 dallo storico dell’arte Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco. Ulteriori donazioni provenienti da altre raccolte (Ferdinando Peretti, Oreste Ferrari, Renato Laschena, etc.) hanno potenziato il museo di Palazzo Chigi, arricchendo le già rilevanti raccolte di provenienza chigiana, acquisite con la dimora nel 1989.

Il presente evento si pone in continuità ideale ed è una prosecuzione in termini didattici e storicoartistici della mostra Dipinti del Barocco Romano da Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, tenuta a Cavallino di Lecce tra settembre e dicembre 2012, circoscritta alla pittura romana del ‘600. L’esposizione si volge al ‘700, il secolo dei lumi, l’età d’oro del Grand Tour d’Italie, che ebbe in Roma il proprio centro pulsante, propagandosi in tutta Italia. Tuttavia, oltre agli artisti attivi nella capitale pontificia, sono presenti in mostra anche pittori della scuola napoletana, provenienti o attivi nel regno borbonico. Spicca in ambito meridionale la figura di Corrado Giaquinto, il massimo artista pugliese del secolo ed uno dei più grandi del ‘700. Sono presenti anche tele di Paolo de Matteis, pittore della scuola napoletana attivo anche nel Salento. Le opere esposte provengono in gran parte da Palazzo Chigi, sia dalla collezioni storiche chigiane che dal Museo del Barocco. Sono presenti anche alcune opere in collezione privata, compresi ulteriori dipinti raccolti da Fabrizio Lemme negli ultimi anni o provenienti da una prestigiosa collezione privata inglese.

Francesco Petrucci, Dipinti tra rococò e neoclassicismo da palazzo Chigi in Ariccia e da altre raccolte (Rome: Gangemi, 2013), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-8849227086, $48.50.

Now on view in Nancy, as noted at Arachné, a research group blog dedicated to tapestries:

Chefs-d’œuvre de la tapisserie: La collection du Petit Palais, Paris
Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 25 October 2013 — 27 January 2014

Curated by Charles Villeneuve de Janti and Patrick Lemasson

Le Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, possède l’une des plus belles collections de tapisseries des XVII^e et XVIII^e siècles. Issues de grandes manufactures européennes, elles furent élaborées et tissées en matériaux précieux d’après les cartons de peintres majeurs tels que Le Brun, Champaigne, Boucher, à l’instar du carton pour La Destruction du Palais d’Armide par Charles Coypel, l’un des chefs-d’œuvre du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy.

Ces œuvres, pouvant mesurer jusqu’à 5 mètres de hauteur, permettront aux visiteurs de découvrir un art de cour spectaculaire faisant écho à celui dévoilé dans l’exposition L’Automne de la Renaissance : d’Arcimboldo à Caravage. Pour des raisons de conservation, ces pièces sont très rarement présentées au public. Ce prêt du Petit Palais constitue donc une faveur exceptionnelle.

Didier Rykner provides a review at La Tribune de l’Art (4 November 2013).

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The catalogue is available from Artbooks.com:

Patrick Lemasson, Chefs d’oeuvres de la Tapisserie: La collection du Petit Palais, Paris (Milan: Silvana, 2013), 72 pages, ISBN: 978-8836627257, $29.

As noted at ArtDaily (2 December 2013) . . .

Master Drawings New York | Gainsborough and the Landscape of Refinement
Lowell Libson at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, 24 January — 1 February 2014

Thomas Gainsborough, Figures Resting in Woodland Landscape, signed 1784, 232 x 291 (Lowell Libson)

The exhibition is centered round a group of landscape drawings made by Gainsborough in the last two decades of his life but includes twelve drawings by Gainsborough spanning the full length of his career, from Gainsborough’s earliest recorded landscape study—completed when the artist was only 18—to a preparatory drawing for one of his last ‘Fancy pictures’ A Boy with a Cat, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which was completed the year before his death. Three of the drawings are previously unpublished and exhibited to the public for the first time here.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) was one of the Britain’s greatest artists, famed for his engaging portraits and evocative landscape paintings, he is also universally acknowledged as one of the finest European draughtsman of the eighteenth century. Despite this reputation, there have been very few exhibitions dedicated to Gainsborough’s drawings. These are not topographical works but imagined landscapes which Gainsborough created by drawing models he created using rocks and wood found in his garden and, as one writer noted, ‘distant woods of broccoli.’

Gainsborough was fascinated by a limited number of landscape features—herds of cattle, serpentine roads, clumps of trees and hilly horizons—often obsessively playing with these features time and time again, each time creating completely new works. This creative repetition—or refinement—was given expression in Gainsborough’s fascination with different techniques.

No two drawings in the exhibition are handled in the same way as Gainsborough explored different combinations of chalks, pencil, ink washes and watercolour in each work. Many of the drawings in the exhibition have provenances stretching back to the eighteenth century, one is inscribed as a present from ‘the ingenious artist’ to the daughter of a friend, another was in the collection of the celebrated surgeon, Dr John Hunter, who treated Gainsborough in his final illness. This group is the largest concentration of Gainsborough drawings to be offered by an art gallery since the celebrated exhibition mounted by Knoedler in 1914. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with scholarly entries written by the leading Gainsborough authority, Hugh Belsey.

The exhibition is free and open daily from Friday 24 January to Saturday 1 February, 2014 Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 1018 Madison Avenue, New York. Monday to Saturday, 11–6; Sunday, January 26, 2–6; Tuesday, 28 and Thursday, 30 January, 11–8.

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Press release (15 August 2013) from Master Drawings New York:

Master Drawings New York
New York, 25 January — 1 February 2014

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In a fifteen block stretch of the Upper East Side’s ‘Gold Coast’ in New York, close to 30 of the most acclaimed international dealers in master drawings will show the latest artworks entering the market during the eighth edition of Master Drawings New York, January 25th through February 1, 2014 with a Preview Friday January 24th from 4 to 8pm. Timed to coincide with New York’s major January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, Master Drawings New York includes top dealers from the US as well as the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Originally conceived as an annual walkthrough, Master Drawings New York has grown into a ‘must see’ event with a number of New York dealers making their galleries available to their overseas colleagues for the week. (more…)

From the Vatican Museums:

Precious Antiquities: The Profane Museum at the Time of Pius VI
Room of the Aldobrandini Wedding, Vatican Museums, Rome, 2 October 2013 — 4 January 2014

Curated by Guido Cornini and Claudia Lega

For the first time in over two hundred years, an exhibition will bring back to life in the Vatican the charm of the eighteenth-century collections of the Profane Museums at the time of Pius VI, before the Napoleonic requisitions. It offers a unique opportunity to see reunited, in their original museum context, works previously exhibited in the Museum and now conserved in prestigious international cultural institutions. The exhibition will open simultaneously with the new display of the historical collections of the Profane Museum.

The Profane Museum, the original nucleus of the collections of profane antiquities in the future complex of the Vatican Museums, was created by Clement XIII (Rezzonico, 1758–1769) and enriched with further collections and furnishings under Pius VI (Braschi, 1775–1799). The conclusion of this demanding restoration project, which involved the entire collection and its context, is an opportunity to imagine a momentary “homecoming” of a nucleus of antique gems and cameos, mounted in elaborate Neoclassical settings at the end of the eighteenth century, and a valuable numismatic collection of Greek, Etruscan and Roman exemplars. Involved in the dramatic wartime events of the Napoleonic period, these works were transported to France as a war indemnity following the assassination of General Mathurin-Léonard Duphot in Rome in 1798.

Curated by Guido Cornini and Claudia Lega, curator and assistant in the Department of Decorative Arts of the Vatican Museums, the exhibition Precious Antiquities: The Profane Museum at the Time of Pius VI – presented in the evocative surroundings of the Room of the Aldobrandini Wedding – displays for the first time in over two hundred years works such as the Augustus Group, with its splendid portrait of the emperor in chalcedony, the famous Carpegna Cameo of magnificently engraved onyx depicting the Triumph of Bacchus, the “Delle Paste” Group, with a glass cameo pinax depicting the loves of Bacchus and Ariadne, and other Groups and cameos masterfully reinterpreted and infused with new life by Luigi Valadier, celebrated silversmith in Rome at the time of Pius VI. (more…)