Study Day | Print Collecting in the 18th Century
A study day in connection with the exhibition An Amateur’s Passion: Lord Fitzwilliam’s Print Collection . . .
Print Collecting in the 18th Century: English Print
Collectors and Collections of English Prints
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 20 January 2017
Jan Collaert Album (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum)
From the outset the print collection was one of the chief glories of the Fitzwilliam. The collection of Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam (1745–1816), which he left to the University of Cambridge in order to found the Fitzwilliam, included 198 albums of prints and four unbound portfolios, containing some 40,000 prints. Lord Fitzwilliam’s collection of Rembrandt prints was considered one of the two best collections of his day, but he had much else besides. His collections of Netherlandish and early German prints, notably those by Dürer, were remarkably complete. He spent much time in Paris in the 1780s (he had a mistress there), thus affording him the opportunity to collect French prints in large number. Some of his albums derive from French aristocratic collections broken up at the time of the French Revolution. These albums still sit on the shelves in the Print Room of the Fitzwilliam today. Although the stars of the collection—the Rembrandts, the Dürers—have long since been mounted in separate mounts (mats) for ease of study and display, most of Fitzwilliam’s albums remain intact: a fabulously rare and precious document of an eighteenth-century print collection. Fitzwilliam himself carefully supervised the arrangement of the prints in these albums, mostly during the last years of his life, when he retired to his house in Richmond to devote himself to such tasks.
Tickets £10. Lunch is not included, but coffee is provided. Booking is essential: telephone 01223 332904 or email education@fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk.
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P R O G R A M M E
10.00 Registration and coffee
10.20 Morning Session
• David Alexander, Print Collecting in Eighteenth Century Britain: An Overview
• Nick Stogdon, Collecting Rembrandt Prints in the Eighteenth Century
• Simon Turner, Collecting Hollar: Drawings and Prints
• Elenor Ling, Lord Fitzwilliam’s Print Collection
• Meredith Hale, Thomas Kerrich as Print Collector
12:30 Short tour of An Amateur’s Passion
12:45 Group A visits Graham Robertson Study Room to view selection of albums
13:00 Group B visits Graham Robertson Study Room to view selection of albums
13:15 Lunch
14.30 Afternoon Session
• Sileas Wood, John Brand: Antiquarian
• Sarah Grant, Marie-Antoinette and the Princesse de Lamballe’s English Prints’ Prints
• Kate Heard, ‘A Most Profitable and Intelligent Study’: George IV as a Collector of Prints
15.30 Closing remarks and final discussion
Journée d’études | Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
From Le Blog de L’ApAhAu
Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 30 November 2016
Cette journée d’étude souhaite s’interroger sur la survivance de certains motifs dans les programmes décoratifs de la période moderne. Il s’agirait de définir le motif décoratif de son invention jusqu’à ses usages les plus tardifs afin de proposer une réflexion sur la fonction du décor et ses modalités de réception. Cette réflexion portera à la fois sur l’invention du motif, c’est-à-dire sur sa naissance et ses conditions de création et la place qu’il occupe dans le système décoratif. Sera également abordée la question de la survie et de la récurrence du motif sous différentes formes et divers usages dans le décor intérieur qu’il soit public ou privé. Enfin la survivance d’un motif à travers les siècles nous amène à nous interroger sur sa réception et la fluctuation de sa valeur dans le temps.
Comité scientifique
Lucille Calderini, lucille.calderini@inha.fr
Bastien Coulon, blycoulon@gmail.com
Charlotte Rousset, charlotte_rousset@hotmail.com
P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Accueil des intervenants et mot d’introduction
10.00 Vie et résurgence d’un procédé visuel
• Tiphaine Gaumy (Université de Caen), Un pais ou les chapeaux n’ont point esté faicts pour couvrir la teste… : le salut, un motif décoratif plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît, 1550–1700
• Stéphanie Imbaud (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Les lambrequins dans les représentations armoriées du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
• Charlotte Rousset (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Vie et survie d’emblèmes au service d’une ornementation efficace : le cas de l’entrée royale de Marie de Médicis à Avignon en 1600
12.00 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Création et évolution d’un motif décoratif : le trophée
• Sébastien Bontemps (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Bnf), Célébrer Dieu, célébrer le Roi : le motif du trophée en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
• Chloé Perrot (Université Lille 3, Ecole du Louvre), Le trophée comme motif ornemental : composition, formes et évolution en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
15.15 Pause
15.30 Le motif décoratif en architecture
• Francisco Mamani Fuentes (ENS, Université de Grenade), L’arabesque et l’héritage andalou en Espagne et en Amérique latine pendant le XVI siècle
• Lucille Calderini (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Inha), La fontaine dans la gravure de Jean Lepautre: création et variation d’un motif au XVIIe siècle
• Michaël Decrossas (EPHE, Université catholique de l’ouest Angers), Regard de l’architecte sur le motif : la conception ornementale selon Pierre Vigné de Vigny (1690–1772)
17.00 Discussion et mot de conclusion
Conference | More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images
From Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre:
More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s
University of Warwick, 4 March 2017
For Italy, the ‘long seventeenth century’ was a period of considerable financial challenges. This was especially evident on the book market. Nevertheless, thanks to new techniques and formats that mutually related text and images within the same publication, innovative genres were born that were marketed towards both ends of the audience spectrum, from the learned to the illiterate.
More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s aims to investigate the ways in which the consolidation of the book and print trade influenced the development of such new book genres from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The new commercial items, moreover, contributed to the spread of cultural phenomena, for instance the Grand Tour through its souvenir prints that were sometimes incorporated in atlases. This one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine these matters by focusing on the products, audiences, and professionals involved. By doing so, it sets out to lay the foundations for a shared history of printed products and markets in the early modern period. The conference promotes a multidisciplinary perspective, bridging the gaps between art history, history of the book, and other disciplines such as intellectual history and communication studies.
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P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Registration and coffee
10.10 Welcome and introduction
10.20 Session 1: Understanding Techniques and Genres
Chair: Rosa Salzberg (University of Warwick)
• Angela McShane (RCA/V&A), Keynote Lecture
• Liz Miller (V&A), Libri et Stampe in Rame’: A Bound Volume of Antonio Lafreri’s Architectural and Ornament Publications
• Loretta Vandi (Scuola del libro, Urbino), Handy and Cheap: Giovanni Baleni Printer and Seller of Chap-books in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence and Lucca
• Floriana Giallombardo (University of Palermo), The Venetian Musei by Paolo Boccone (1697): The Illustrated Natural Book and the Social Production of Natural Knowledge
12.10 Lunch
13.10 Session 2: Tracing Networks
Chair: Max Engammare (Institut de l’Historie de la Réformation, University of Geneva)
• Marika Keblusek (Leiden University), Keynote Lecture
• Ingeborg van Vugt (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa/Amsterdam University), Books beyond Borders? The Circulation of Prohibited Books in the Epistolary Network of Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714)
• Huub van der Linden (École Française de Rome/University College Roosevelt), The Private Exchange of Printed Ephemera between Bologna and Rome around 1700
• Nina Lamal (University of St Andrews), Challenges and Opportunities: Printing and Marketing the First Italian Newspapers
15.00 Tea and coffee
15.30 Session 3: Evolving Markets and Audiences
Chair: Ingrid de Smet (University of Warwick)
• Julia Martins (The Warburg Institute), Illustrating Alchemical Recipes: Books of Secrets and the Case of I Secreti della Signora Isabella Cortese in Early Modern Italy
• Domenico Ciccarello (University of Palermo), Baroque Imagery and Literary Genres in Sicily: An Overview across Print Books with Illustrations
• Flavia Bruni (Sapienza University/University of St Andrews) ‘Becoming Peripheral: The Decline of the Italian Book Market in the Seventeenth Century’
16.45 Roundtable and closing remarks
17.15 Wine reception and buffet
Journées d’Étude | Académies d’Art et Mondes Sociaux, 1740–1805
From the conference programme:
Académies d’Art et Mondes Sociaux, 1740–1805
Fonder les institutions artistiques : l’individu, la communauté et leurs réseaux
Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 8–9 December 2016
Le XVIIIe siècle connaît un mouvement inédit de fondation d’écoles de dessin et d’académies d’art dans toutes les régions en France. Le phénomène émerge à partir des années 1740 à Rouen et à Toulouse puis se déploie sur l’ensemble du territoire. Il est le fait de quelques hommes déterminés, qui s’inscrivent à la suite des grands projets colbertiens de modernisation de l’État. Ils agissent dans un jeu de tension entre pouvoirs municipaux et autorité royale, ambitions personnelles et intérêts communautaires, projet pédagogique et visée commerciale. Comment naissent ces institutions et quel rôle y prend l’individu selon son rang, ses activités, son milieu ? Quelles stratégies sont mises en œuvre pour donner un cadre juridique et une légitimité sociale à ces établissements ? Quelles logiques président à leur fondation, ces écoles étant pensées comme des structures-clef de la formation et des échanges artistiques, mais aussi comme des viviers d’artistes, d’artisans et d’entrepreneurs prêts à développer des centres de production en Europe. De quelle manière le « modèle » de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture est-il utilisé ou, à l’inverse, contourné devant les contraintes et les logiques locales ?
Ces journées d’étude, premier volet d’une série consacrée aux réseaux des académies d’art, seront l’occasion de questionner la genèse des institutions à travers le prisme de l’individu. En prenant l’exemple de quelques figures phare—entendues comme les ego et leurs alter engagés dans des liens aux configurations multiples, notamment familiales, amicales, socio-professionnelles—nous interrogerons l’épaisseur et l’efficacité des relations humaines dans la construction et l’organisation des établissements. Dans un aller-retour permanent entre l’individuel et le collectif, il s’agira aussi de réfléchir à la fonction des structures institutionnelles comme régulateur social. L’objectif est donc d’accompagner une relecture du mouvement académique à l’appui d’outils d’analyse encore peu usités. Les intervenants s’attacheront à la fois à examiner les sources qui documentent l’ouverture des écoles (correspondances, lettres patentes, etc.) et à déterminer les réseaux sociaux activés.
Issu d’un partenariat scientifique entre le programme de recherche ACA-RES (Les Académies d’art et leurs réseaux dans la France pré-industrielle, soutenu par le Labex Structuration des Mondes Sociaux de l’Université de Toulouse et la MSH-T2) et le Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art de Paris, cette journée d’étude entend privilégier le dialogue entre spécialistes et jeunes chercheurs.
Comité d’organisation
Markus Castor (Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art)
Anne Perrin-Khelissa (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Laboratoire FRAMESPA UMR 5136)
Émilie Roffidal (CNRS, Laboratoire FRAMESPA UMR 5136)
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J E U D I , 8 D É C E M B R E 2 0 1 6
17.30 Ouverture — Thomas Kirchner, directeur de Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art Paris
Conférence introductive — Christian Michel, Université de Lausanne, Les relations complexes entre l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture et les autres académies du royaume
18.30 Apéritif dinatoire pour les participants
V E N D R E D I , 9 D É C E M B R E 2 0 1 6
Intervenants de la journée
• Aude Gobet (musée du Louvre), L’académie de Rouen
• Arianne James-Sarazin, L’école de dessin d’Angers
• Gaëtane Maës (université de Lille 3), Les académies de Lille et Valenciennes
• Laëtitia Pierre et Gérard Fabre (musée des beaux-arts de Marseille), L’académie de Marseille
• Fabienne Sartre (université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier 3), L’académie de Toulouse
• Elsa Trani (université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier 3), L’académie de Montpellier
• Nelly Vi-Tong (université de Bourgogne), L’académie de Dijon
9.00 Accueil par Markus Castor, Anne Perrin Khelissa, Emilie Roffidal
9.20 Séance de travail 1 : les hommes
Il s’agira de mettre l’accent sur le rôle des individus dans la création des écoles de dessins et des académies artistiques. Nous interrogerons notamment leur origine sociale, leur carrière, leur entregent, etc.
10.20 Pause
11.30 Table-ronde avec l’ensemble des intervenants et les organisateurs
12.30 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Séance de travail 2 : les textes fondateurs
Au cours de cette séance, les textes fondateurs des établissements (lettres patentes, statuts, règlements et d’autres sources) seront examinés pour en questionner les contenus, les objectifs et leurs évolutions.
15.15 Pause
16.15 Table-ronde avec l’ensemble des intervenants et les organisateurs
17.00 Conférence conclusive — Nathalie Heinich (EHESS), Le phénomène académique : une approche sociologique
U of Michigan Graduate Symposium: All That Glitters
The day’s presentations include these eighteenth-century papers:
All That Glitters: Magnificence in Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture
2016 Graduate Symposium
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 12 November 2016
• Philippe L. B. Halbert (Yale University), ‘Our Colony Has Today Become Opulent’: Material Magnificence in the French Atlantic World, 1660–1789
• Emily Anderson (University of Southern California), Magnificent Macabre: The Engravings of the Anatomical Preparations of Frederik Ruysch
Conference | The Inexplicable and the Unfathomable: China and Britain
This weekend at The Courtauld:
The Inexplicable and the Unfathomable: China and Britain, 1600–1900
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 11–12 November 2016
Organized by David Park, Lars Tharp, and Frances Wood
The “Chinese character seems at present inexplicable,” observed Lord Macartney during his celebrated embassy to China in the 1790s, while the Chinese themselves at this time often described “western ocean barbarians” as “unfathomable.” The failure of Macartney’s embassy is well known, not least the Emperor Qianlong’s dismissive comment that “we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”
A sense of bafflement might therefore overwhelm the present-day visitor to the Forbidden City, on encountering its glorious array of English clocks, many imported during Qianlong’s reign. The present conference will consider some of the endless misunderstandings and deliberate deceptions that characterised relations between Britain and China in the four centuries under review, in fields as varied as religion and art, and commerce and literature. It will also explore, however, the burgeoning range of contacts between the two countries, and the increased mutual understanding achieved by two cultures separated by “the confines of many seas.”
Advance booking required: £16 general admission / £11 students and concessions.
Organisers
David Park, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Lars Tharp, Ceramics Historian, Curator and Broadcaster
Frances Wood, Former Curator of Chinese Collections, The British Library
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F R I D A Y , 1 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
17.30 Registration
18.00 Keynote Address
• Donald S. Lopez (University of Michigan), Britain and Buddhism: George Bogle in Tibet, 1774–75
19.15 Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 1 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9.45 Registration
10.15 Session 1 – Chair: Roderick Whitfield
• Greg Clingham (Bucknell University, PA), Cosmology and Commerce on Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China, 1792–94
• Catherine Pagani (University of Alabama), Elaborate Clocks and Sino-British Encounters in the Eighteenth Century
11.25 Tea and coffee
11.55 Session 2 – Chair: David Park
• Tang Hui (University of Warwick), ‘The Finest of Earth’: Selling Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century Canton
• Lars Tharp, China on a Plate: Images from Hogarth to Whistler
13.00 Lunch break
14.30 Session 3 – Chair: Frances Wood
• Jessica Harrison-Hall (The British Museum), Collecting Chinese Art at the British Museum, 1760–1860
• Edward Weech and Nancy Charley (Royal Asiatic Society), The Thomas Manning Archive and Prospects for a New Perspective on British Intellectual Engagement with China in the Early 1800s
15.45 Tea and coffee
16.45 Session 4 – Chair: Lars Tharp
• Elizabeth Chang (University of Missouri), Writing Personhood from the Frontier of Western China
• Frances Wood, The View from the Other Side: China’s Reactions to the West
17.45 Concluding remarks
Symposium | Objects of Study: Paper, Ink, and the Material Turn
From the symposium website:
Objects of Study: Paper, Ink, and the Material Turn
University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 30 March — 1 April 2017
This symposium is co-organized by Aaron M. Hyman (University of California, Berkeley) and Juliet Sperling (University of Pennsylvania). It is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through a partnership of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Andrew W. Mellon Object-Based Learning Initiative between the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The goal of this symposium is to dissect the interpretive aims of ‘materiality studies’ through a focused lens of works on paper. In recent years, ‘materiality’ has become a buzzword across the humanities, and an impressive range of methods, investigative starting points, and analytic goals have come to rest under the term’s mantle. But in grouping this diverse array of approaches under a single heading, does each method’s unique potential risk becoming flattened and obscured? An illustrated book might just as easily inspire a reconsideration of workshop practices as it could a chemical investigation of ink formulae; are social history and chemistry, to name just these two examples, justifiably held together within the rubric of materiality?
The institutional landscape of object-based study has had a role to play in miscommunications about the goals of focusing on materiality. As art historians, we have noticed that materiality, as a concept, has often complicated communication between scholars of art objects in academic and museum settings. Conversations about process and the substance of things in the academy often veer quite far from the ways of engaging objects with which curators and conservators have long been deeply invested. In light of this muddled translation across institutions, we have chosen to focus this symposium on a single genre of objects that rely upon the materials of paper and ink. Books, prints, drawings, and documents, to name but a few examples, attract intense interest across not only museums and the academy but also libraries, archives, and antiquarian collections. By looking at the spectrum of approaches generated by these materials, this symposium works towards answering a pressing question: do the academy, museum, archive, and library define ‘materiality’ differently? And, if so, what are future avenues towards intersection and collaboration?
The questions and objectives of this symposium have been shaped by the emerging field of ‘critical bibliography’, which unites scholars from a range of disciplinary and methodological backgrounds around the central axis of the book. We aim to map these connections onto art history by gathering academics, archivists, artists, conservators, and curators to think together about shared and divergent premises and, most importantly, goals for object-based study. The symposium will interweave hands-on workshops led by curators, conservators and artists with public talks by materially-focused scholars. In turn, discussions will not solely center on formal presentations, but will extend to alternative venues: the conservation lab, the studio, and the study room.
To begin addressing the symposium’s driving questions, we will ask participants to present ‘materialist’ case studies of 20 minutes in length, and then to devote at least 5 additional minutes to explicitly addressing how ‘materiality’ operates in their work. What are the analytic goals of a materially focused account? Where and how does such an inquiry begin? And, finally, how do those aims and methods relate to the field’s broader material turn? Talks may engage these questions in relationship to works on paper across time, and from any geographic origin.
Conference | Decor and Architecture in the 17th and 18th Centuries
From H-ArtHist (25 October 2016). . .
Decor and Architecture in the 17th and 18th Centuries
University of Lausanne, 24–25 November 2016
During the early modern period, décor was considered to be one of the most fundamental elements of architecture. Thanks to décor, architecture could elevate itself beyond simple masonry and claim a superior status. Décor was thus defined as a necessary prerequisite for architecture, rather than a marginal component. However, despite its privileged status, many authors mistrusted it, fearing the harmful effect which an uncontrollable proliferation of ornament would surely have on architecture. This conference aims to question how the relations between décor and architecture were defined and implemented in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Our perception of these relations has often been informed by teleological approaches: indeed, the radical ideas conveyed by certain 20th-century texts, which define décor as an unnecessary bi-product of architecture, have acted as a distorting prism. The history of art, for its part, has often separated décor-related studies from architecture-related ones, suggesting a de facto rupture between these fields and potentially biasing our understanding of the artistic production of the Early Modern Period by reducing its scope. As various case studies have shown, the conditions to which the invention of a décor was subjected varied greatly from one building to another. The architects’ prerogatives differed according to the circumstances and constraints imposed on them: while some were largely involved in the invention of the décor, others delegated its conception to artists or workmen.
Scientific Organisers
Matthieu LETT (université de Lausanne, université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Carl MAGNUSSON (The Courtauld Institute of Art, université de Lausanne)
Léonie MARQUAILLE (Université de Lausanne)
Scientific Committee
Marianne COJANNOT-LE BLANC (université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Alexandre GADY (université Paris-Sorbonne)
Dave LÜTHI (université de Lausanne)
Christian MICHEL (université de Lausanne)
Werner OECHSLIN (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich)
Antoine PICON (Harvard University)
Katie SCOTT (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
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T H U R S D A Y , 2 4 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9.30 Accueil des participants
9.45 Introduction by Matthieu LETT, Carl MAGNUSSON, Léonie MARQUAILLE
10.15 1. Les artistes au service de l’architecte? (Président: Christian Michel, Université de Lausanne)
• Sébastien BONTEMPS (Bibliothèque nationale de France), Invention, fonction(s) et exécution du décor architectural: Paul-Ambroise Slodtz et l’embellissement du chœur de l’église Saint-Merry à Paris
• Hermann DEN OTTER (University of Amsterdam), Changes in the Role of the Joiner in 18th-Century Paris
• Sandra BAZIN-HENRY (Université Paris IV Sorbonne), Le langage architectural des glaces: La part de l’architecte et du miroitier dans l’invention des décors
13.00 Lunch
14.30 2. Le rôle de l’architecte (Président: Alexandre Gady, Université Paris IV Sorbonne)
• Léonie MARQUAILLE (Université de Lausanne), Jacob van Campen, architecte et peintre de la Salle d’Orange à la Huis ten Bosch
• Alexia LEBEURRE (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), « Tout est de son ressort » : l’architecte et la décoration intérieure dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle
• Matthieu LETT (Université de Lausanne), La question de la répartition de l’invention sur le chantier du nouveau palais royal de Madrid, 1735–1790
• Adrian Fernandez ALMOGUERA (Université Paris IV Sorbonne), De Versailles à Pompéi: Continuités, transformations et hybridations dans le décor architectural espagnol à la fin du XVIIIe siècle
F R I D A Y , 2 5 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9.30 3. La question de la décoration intérieure (Président: Carl Magnusson, The Courtauld Institute, Université de Lausanne)
• Hendrik ZIEGLER (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne), La place de la décoration intérieure française dans les récits de voyage d’architectes allemands, 1685–1723
• Jason NGUYEN (Harvard University), Smoke and Mirrors: Architectural Decoration and the Physics of Fire, ca. 1700
• Thomas WILKE, Jacques-François Blondel and the Rules of Interior Decoration
• Paolo CORNAGLIA (Politecnico di Torino), Leonardo Marini, Giuseppe Battista Piacenza and Carlo Randoni: Neoclassical Interior Decoration at the Turin Court, 1775–1793
Lunch
14.30 4. Les programmes d’embellissement: une nécessaire adaptation du décor à l’architecture? (Présidente: Marie Theres Stauffer, Université de Genève)
• Emmanuelle BORDURE (Université Paris IV Sorbonne), Architecture religieuse et décor sculpté dans le dernier quart du XVIIIe siècle: étude comparative de quatre cas d’églises paroissiales en Ile-de-France
• Léonore LOSSERAND et Alexandra MICHAUD (Université Paris IV Sorbonne), Les embellissements du chœur de Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois: entre architecture et sculpture, 1755–1762
• Tomas MACSOTAY (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), The Rise and Fall of the Décor Economy in Ecclesiastical Interiors in Murcia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands
17.15 Concluding remarks from Christian MICHEL (Université de Lausanne)
Exhibition | Charles Percier: Architecture and Design
Press brochure for the exhibition at Bard Graduate Center:
Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions
Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, 18 November 2016 — 5 February 2017
Château de Fontainebleau, 18 March — 19 June 2017
Curated by Jean-Philippe Garric
Robert Lefèvre, Portrait of Charles Percier, 1807, oil on canvas (Chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles; photo by Gerard Blot).
Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions will be the first large-scale exhibition to survey the magnificent range of projects undertaken by the French architect and designer from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Jean-Philippe Garric, professor of the history of architecture at the University of Paris I, Panthéon- Sorbonne, is the curator.
Although largely remembered for his close collaboration with Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (1762–1853)—together they defined the Empire style and created the decorative program of Napoleon’s reign—Charles Percier’s (1764–1838) artistic style was unique, complex, and ever-evolving. From the last years of the ancien régime, when Percier was a promising student—first at the Académie royale d’architecture in Paris and then at the French Academy in Rome, where he concentrated on graphic work—his commissions for public and private clients significantly influenced decorative arts and architecture during an extremely turbulent and rapidly changing period in French history.
Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions breaks with the tradition of considering Percier and Fontaine together. This choice, shaped by the discovery of new documents relating to the production of the two partners, allows a better understanding of Percier’s multifaceted artistic practice. The exhibition will feature more than 130 art works from principal museums and cultural institutions in France and the United States, as well as key objects from private collections, including his designs for furniture, porcelain, metalwork, and the renovation of the rue de Rivoli—the construction of which transformed the center of Paris. Rare drawings and spectacular examples of early nineteenth-century cabinets, candelabras, and tureens will also be displayed. By focusing on his most famous and seminal works, such as sketches for the arc du Carrousel, the interior designs for Josephine Bonaparte’s rooms in the Tuileries Palace, and the magnificent books dedicated to Roman palaces and interior decoration, the exhibition will demonstrate the diverse and extraordinary creations of an artist whose work brilliantly bridged ancien régime court culture and the industrial production of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Organized by Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, in association with the château de Fontainebleau and the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris. Following its presentation at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions will be on view at château de Fontainebleau from March 18, 2017 to June 19, 2017.
Background
Pierre Phillippe Thomire after design by Charles Percier, Andiron with Psyche, 1809, chased and gilt bronze (Château de Fontainebleau, inv. F 943 C)
With thousands of drawings in public and private collections, several architectural and urban interventions of prime importance in the heart of Paris, numerous furniture and interior designs commissioned by prestigious patrons, publications that left their mark on several generations of architects and decorators, and, among his students, sixteen Prix de Rome winners and seven members of the Institut de France, the genius of Charles Percier was evident to his contemporaries. While his importance has been acknowledged by most historians of art, architecture, and decorative arts, no exhibition or book has yet attempted an overview of his production as a whole. This is not merely an injustice to him given his central role in the arts at a time of transition between the ancien régime and the modern period and his proximity to those in power under Napoleon, it has compromised our understanding of the architecture and decorative arts produced during this time, not just in France but throughout Europe.
While there are many surviving graphic documents and other works by Percier, there is no Percier archive. The principal sources—Fontaine’s journal and memoirs, the former written for posterity and the latter for his grandchildren—purport to be accurate, but often overlook entire aspects of his career. Fontaine failed to mention all of the projects undertaken by Percier alone. As a result, this exhibition, by concentrating on Percier, offers a biographical synthesis of his career that focuses on specific projects, whether realized, published, or drawn.
Percier and His Circles
Charles Percier owed a great deal to the academic world, and he gave a great deal back to it. After studying drawing at an exemplary philanthropic institution of the last years of the ancien régime, the École gratuite de dessin (Free Drawing School), he was a model student at the Académie royale d’architecture (Royal Academy of Architecture) and then, after winning the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1786, an enthusiastic pensioner (fellow) at the Académie royale d’architecture. He began teaching students of his own in 1791—almost immediately after returning to Paris from Italy—and gradually became one of the most important French architecture professors of the first third of the nineteenth century, entering the Institut de France in 1811. Percier lived alone but often worked with others—Pierre Fontaine, the most important of these, was by no means the only one—and befriended many of his fellow Rome pensioners as he would later do with several of his students, many of whom collaborated with him. His circle included fellow École gratuite de dessin pupils such as Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824); his teacher Antoine François Peyre (1739–1823); fellow Rome pensioners, most notably Jean German Drouais (1763–1788); architects and painters including François Gérard (1770–1837); and several generations of students who engaged in com- mon projects and socialized, both casually and within more structured frameworks such as the dinners of the society of artists known as the Duodi.
This theme presents Percier’s various academic projects, including his Grand Prix winning architectural design, sketches he made in Rome, his graphic reconstruction of Trajan’s Column, as well as portraits of and work by his students.
Between Italy and France
Percier’s Italian sojourn (1786–91) had a profound effect on him. Like many fellowship students at the French Academy in Rome, his stay there was characterized by enthusiasm and wonder, but, more than any other, he made this experience a key moment in his emotional, artistic, and intellectual life. A relentless campaign of measuring and drawing made it possible for him to gather material for two volumes of engravings that were to have considerable influence on his con- temporaries and later designers. For the rest of his life, he remained a fervent admirer of Italian antiquity and Renaissance art and architecture, and planned a second trip to Italy that never happened.
Despite his ardent Italophilia, Charles Percier was not indifferent to French architecture, especially that of the French Renaissance, and he admired the decorative and sculptural production of Jean Goujon (active 1540–65) and Pierre Lescot (ca. 1515–1578). Consistent with his admiration of Italian architecture, he carefully studied the château de Fontainebleau through hundreds of drawings. He also collaborated with art historian Alexandre Lenoir (1761–1839) on the installation and graphic reproduction of works in the Musée des monuments français, a museum dedicated to French architectural heritage, which Lenoir opened in 1795.
This theme evokes the artistic context of Percier’s Italian sojourn through drawings from his stay at the French Academy in Rome, a volume on Roman palaces and villas, and sketches. It also examines his involvement with the Musée des monuments français.
A Graphic Artist
Apart from a few letters, Percier left behind almost no writings. From the several thousand carefully organized drawings he bequeathed, it is apparent, even during his early training at the École gratuite de dessin, that his skill as a draftsman enabled him to stand out, consolidate his position, and prevail over his contemporaries. His line is fine and precise, and he was less interested in the art of perspective than in delineation and linear agility. His mastery of outline and contour coupled with his passion for abundant ornament were the very heart of his creative work. This ability, cemented by his prolonged study of the bas-reliefs of Trajan’s Column, enabled him to stand out as the illustrator, graphic designer, and decorator of his own publications and other prestigious editions, as well as of luxury objects.
Percier’s most remarkable achievements, given that he’s an architect, are his drawings for the editions of Horace and the Fables of La Fontaine published by Didot. –Alexandre Lenoir, 1805
This theme emphasizes Percier’s graphic work, considered both as an independent artistic domain and as the unifying thread between Percier’s other creative projects. Exquisite drawings from the Louvre, luxury books, including a commemorative book for Napoleon’s coronation, prints, and even a fan for Josephine will be on view.
The Recueil de décorations intérieures
Charles Percier, Clock, by Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, 1813, bisque porcelain, gold highlights (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique, MNC 13022).
Percier’s production in the realm of interior decoration and furniture design was considerable. Not only was he called upon to design a great many interiors, furnishings, and objects—from his first commissions for the National Convention in 1793 to the carriage for the coronation of Charles X—his major works were much publicized by the Recueil de décorations intérieures (1801–12). This collection of 72 plates of furniture and interior designs was one of the most important and influential ornament books in France and indeed in Europe of the time. It established an international neoclassical taste and became a model for commercial catalogues of ornaments, unwittingly inaugurating an era of industrial arts production. The Recueil was a major source of inspiration for generations of decorators and designers. It ensured Percier’s legacy while simultaneously linking it inextricably to that of Fontaine.
Percier, whose temperament and taste, indeed his gifts, were ill-suited to the trouble and demands of business, left all practical matters to me. I handled the correspondence as well as the accounts, and he focused almost exclusively on study drawings and graphic compositions. –Pierre Fontaine, 1804
As Fontaine acknowledged himself, the Recueil was Percier’s masterwork. Percier drew and engraved the plates largely on his own, despite including both of their signatures. ‘Percier and Fontaine’ is thus perhaps more akin to a luxury brand than an indication of shared artistic paternity. Separating Percier from Fontaine, this exhibition restores Percier’s role and singular contribution to the decorative arts as an expert draftsman and designer.
But the contributions Charles Percier made to the realms of furniture and interior decoration do not all fall within the chronological parameters of the Recueil de decorations intérieures, nor are they limited to the ensembles and objects represented there. His work for artisanal firms like Jacob frères and that of Martin Guillaume Biennais and his designs for manufactories like Sèvres were the point of departure for national and international diffusion of the style Percier. This diffusion ran parallel to the gradual industrialization of the arts, as well as a certain democratization of access to luxury objects.
This theme first focuses on the Recueil de décorations intérieures, juxtaposing rare hand-colored prints from the publication with corresponding drawings, furniture, and objects. It will include extraordinary pieces made for Napoleon, Josephine, and members of the imperial circle from the collections of Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Elysée Palace. It also demonstrates the dissemination of Percier’s style and its vulgarization, as well as Percier’s continued artistic development after 1815.
The Louvre, the Tuileries and the rue de Rivoli
Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, Arc du Carrousel, south side view, 1806–15, watercolor and pen (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE FOL-VE-53 C).
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Napoleon engaged Percier and Fontaine to execute one of the most ambitious projects of his reign and of their careers—linking the Louvre and Tuileries palaces. This large-scale enterprise had three principal ambitions. The first and oldest one was to connect the Louvre with the Tuileries, thereby creating a palace of unmatched magnitude. As heir to the Revolution, Napoleon could not reside at Versailles, and he wanted to complete a project that a century of royal rule had been unable to bring to fruition. The Tuileries became the principal imperial residence, with all its practical and symbolic consequences. The second ambition was to transform the surrounding city. Given their dimensions and location, connecting the Louvre with the Tuileries meant recasting the center of Paris. From this perspective, the operation constitutes a link between the great urban embellishment projects of the eighteenth century and the transformations of the Second Empire. Finally, the third ambition, doubtless the most contemporary, was cultural in nature: to complete and restore buildings considered jewels of French architectural patrimony as well as to create, within the Louvre, the world’s largest museum.
This theme presents Percier and Fontaine’s designs for the Louvre and the Tuileries, from an urban scale to the arrangement of interiors and decoration. It will also include their designs for the renovation of the arcades on the nearby rue de Rivoli.
Paper Architecture
Much of the architecture Charles Percier designed with Pierre Fontaine was never built. Paper architecture, or plans for unrealized structures, was the reality for architects during this era of political turmoil. In fact, paper architecture became a practice in itself at the Académie royale d’architecture when Percier was a student there during the late eighteenth century. Economic crises in the 1780s resulted in a lack of architectural commissions and architects like Percier began defining themselves as artists who produced beautiful drawings of hypothetical structures, rather than builders.
When Percier left Paris for Rome, he was still training to be a court architect. By the time he returned in the midst of the French Revolution, the world he knew was shattered. Percier’s talent for drawing enabled him to be flexible and versatile in seeking other forms of work. Besides book illustration, in the 1790s, Percier and Fontaine served as co-directors of set design at the Paris Opera, where they created spectacular yet ephemeral scenery for the stage.
Despite being swept into Napoleon’s extravagant ambitions, including his plans for a Palace of the King of Rome, Percier and Fontaine managed to build only a small number of important structures. Their contributions to the staging of Napoleonic power, notably the emperor’s coronation and his marriage to Marie-Louise, represent a significant portion of their realized work. The fact that they produced more ephemeral projects and—especially—designs for buildings that were never constructed resulted in a corpus of works on paper that reveal the richness and diversity of their imaginations. This final theme presents architectural drawings, water- colors, commemorative volumes, and objects, related to Napoleonic ceremonies and commissions, as well as opera sets designed by both Percier and Fontaine.
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Symposium | Percier: Antiquity and Empire
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 18 November 2016
Taking place on Friday afternoon, 18 November 2016, the symposium will feature speakers including Jean-Philippe Garric, Ulrich Leben, Iris Moon, Darius Spieth, and more. RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link here or email public.programs@bgc.bard.edu.
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From Yale UP:
Jean-Philippe Garric, ed., Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions (New Haven: Yale University Press, with Bard Graduate Center, 2017), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0300221589, $75.
Handsomely designed and richly illustrated, this publication surveys the magnificent spectrum of projects undertaken by French architect and interior designer Charles Percier (1764–1838). After gaining an illustrious reputation for supervising the scenery at the Paris Opéra during the French Revolution, Percier was later appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte. With the Emperor’s support, he developed the opulent versions of neoclassicism closely associated with the Napoleonic era, and now known as Directoire style and Empire style. Percier worked on the renovation or redecoration of many of France’s royal palaces, including the Louvre, the Tuileries, and the chateaux of Malmaison, Saint-Cloud, and Fontainebleau. The full scope and variety of Percier’s design projects are revealed in this book, which also includes archival material detailing Percier’s relationships with patrons and peers.
Jean-Philippe Garric is professor of architecture at the University of Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne.
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Note (added 28 November 2016) — The symposium included the following presentations:
• Jean-Philippe Garric (Professor, History of Architecture, University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne and curator of the exhibition Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in an Age of Revolutions), Charles Percier: Beyond the Antique Model
• Iris Moon (Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Pratt Institute), New Heads for Old Bodies: Percier’s Designs for the French Revolution
• Ulrich Leben (Research Scholar and Visiting Professor, Bard Graduate Center), Charles Percier’s Vision of Antiquity
• Darius Spieth (Professor, Art History, Louisiana State University), Percier and Piranesi
• Jean-François Bédard (Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Syracuse University), Franks, Not Romans: Medieval Imagery and the Making of Imperial France
Conference | Synagogue and Museum
From the Society of Architectural Historians:
Synagogue and Museum: 3rd International Congress on Jewish Architecture
Technische Universität Braunschweig, 21–23 November 2016
Organized by the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Technische Universität Braunschweig/ Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Hochschule für jüdische Studien Heidelberg, in cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, and the Israel Jacobson Netzwerk für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte e.V.
Since antiquity and especially since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE, synagogues have become the central places of gathering of Jewish communities. They are complex, highly significant and polyvalent objects of for religious, social, economic, architectural, and artistic developments in Jewish culture. At the same time, they reflect the interdependencies with the surrounding cultures. Since the holocaust, historic synagogues also gained high importance as focal points of remembrance and education.
However, scholars were interested in the material culture(s) of Jews all over the world well before the holocaust and turned synagogues and their furnishings into a focus of their research. The documentation of synagogues as objects of cultural and historical significance started alongside with the establishment of Jewish ethnography (jüdische Volkskunde) as an academic discipline at the end of the 19th century. They became items of collecting, which were set up in exhibitions and museums. Objects from the religious and cultural practice got ‘musealised’, as well as entire synagogue furnishings and sometimes even architectural elements. After 1945, the interest in synagogues as objects of cultural history continued. Besides ritual objects and furnishings, the ’empty’ buildings of the annihilated communities became objects of interest. Historic synagogue buildings were regarded as museums, their material substance was and is restored and interpreted in different ways. The virtual and haptic reconstruction of destroyed synagogues generated another group of ‘immaterial’ exhibits.
The congress will examine the subject in a wide range of perspectives of theoretical and historical reflections. Historic and actual examples of documenting, collecting, and researching synagogues and their furnishing will shed light on the history, the presence, and the future of synagogues in and as museums.
For registration and any questions, please, contact us by email, synagogen@tu-bs.de; registration should be done by 7 November 2016. A congress fee of 50€ is payable directly at the registration desk; it includes coffee breaks and refreshments, the visit of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum Hinter Aegidien, and the evening events on Tuesday, 22 November.
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M O N D A Y , 2 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
13:00 Opening Session
• Welcome from Alexander von Kienlin (Braunschweig)
• Greetings, Jürgen Hesselbach (President of the TU Braunschweig), Johannes Heil (Rektor of the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg), Heike Pöppelmann (Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum), Aliza Cohen-Mushlin (Center for Jewish Art, Jerusalem), and Jochen Litterst (Braunschweig)
• Keynote address by Annette Weber (Heidelberg)
• Introduction, Ulrich Knufinke (Braunschweig)
14:30 Coffee break
15:00 Panel 1 | Displaying Synagogues: A History of Transfers and Transformations
Chair: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (New York)
• Sabine Offe (Bremen), Synagogues as Traces
• Ilia Rodov (Bar Ilan), Synagogue as Museum: Ritual and Exposition
• Naomi Simhony (Jerusalem), Synagogue Exhibitions in National Museums in the State of Israel
16:45 Panel 2 | Synagogues as Sources for Research and Education
Chair: Jutta Dick (Halberstadt)
• Mirko Przystawik (Braunschweig), The Hornburg Synagogue and Its Furnishing
• Renato Athias (Pernambuco/Brazil), Memory and Architectural Preservation of the First Synagogue in the Americas
• Marc Grellert (Darmstadt), Synagogues Destroyed in Germany: 20 Years of Virtual Reconstructions in Museums
T U E S D A Y , 2 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9:00 Panel 3 | Collecting Contexts: Objects From Synagogues in Jewish and Non-Jewish Collections
Chair: Chana C. Schütz (Berlin)
• Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Wien), The Judaica-Collection at the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum and its Presentation(s)
• Sergey Kravtsov (Jerusalem), The Jewish Museum in Lviv: Genius Loci and Realpolitik
• Miranda Crowdus (Hannover), Synagogue Music-Objects as Metonyms: Ethics and Dissonances in the Material Representation/Display of Jewish Practice
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Panel 4 | Objects and Sites of Jewish Material Culture
Chair: Alexander von Kienlin (Braunschweig)
• Svetlana Tarkhanova (Moscow), The Chorazin Synagogue (4th–6th centuries) at the Archaeological Site and in the Museum Space
• Askold Ivantchik (Bordeaux), Archeological and Epigraphical Traces of an Early Diaspora Community in Tanais, Russia
• Hans-Christof Haas (Bamberg), The Sukkah of Mendel Rosenbaum in Zell /Lower Franconia: Tradition – Research – Presentation
12:30 Lunch break
13:30 Poster presentation
14:15 Panel 5 | Synagoguges as Museums: New Concepts of Display and Education
Chair: Samuel Gruber (Syracuse NY)
• Ron Epstein (Zurich), Re-Used Synagogues in Switzerland
• Martha Keil (St. Pölten/Wien), ‘Who is in need of a Judentempel?’ The Former Synagogue of St. Pölten (Lower Austria) and Its Cultural Location
• Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (New York), The Example of the Wooden Synagogue in the Polin-Museum, Warsaw
16:30 Visit of the Jüdisches Museum des Braunschweigischen Landesmuseums
18:00 Reception by the Lord Mayor of the City of Braunschweig, Altstadtrathaus
19:00 Public Lecture
Ismar Schorsch (New York), Leopold Zunz und die Wissenschaft des Judentums
W E D N E S D A Y , 2 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9:00 Panel 6 | Reconstruction, Re-contextualization: Synagogue-Museums and Their
Environments
Chair: Rudolf Klein (Budapest)
• Anselm Hartinger (Erfurt), The Museum Old Synagogue
• Gabi Rudolf M.A. (Würzburg), Synagogue Arnstein: Visual Fragment of an Invisible History
• Givi Gambashidze, Tbilisi), Museum as a Space of Peace
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Panel 7 | The Future of Synagogues in/ as Museums
Chair: Vladimir Levin (Jerusalem)
• Eszter Gantner (Marburg), Synagogue as Space of Conflicts: The Formal Synagogue of Esztergom, Hungary
• Heike Pöppelmann and Hans Jürgen Derda (Braunschweig), The Museum of Religions in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum
• Benigna Schönhagen (Augsburg), The Example of Augsburg
• Christiane Twiehaus and Sebastian Ristow (Cologne), The Findings, Reconstruction, and Museum Presentation of the Cologne Medieval Synagogue and the Jewish Quarter
12:30 Final discussion
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