Enfilade

Campo de Ghetto Novo, Venezia
(Wikimedia Commons, 2013)

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As the Ghetto in Venice turns 500 on 29 March, the city marks the anniversary with events spread throughout the year, along with a major exhibition. David Laskin provides a preview for The New York Times (9 March 2016). From the website Venice Ghetto 500:

Venice, the Jews and Europe, 1516–2016
The Doge’s Apartments, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 19 June — 13 November 2016

Curated by Donatella Calabi

The exhibition Venice, the Jews and Europe, 1516–2016 will be the highlight of the Quincentennial year of the Jewish Ghetto. Organized in collaboration with MUVE foundation of Venice in the prestigious venue of the Doge’s Palace, it will be a visible and symbolic event to mark this historic anniversary.

The exhibition, curated by Donatella Calabi, leading expert on the urban history of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, aims at underscoring the wealth of relationships between the Jews and civic society throughout the history of their long residence 
in the lagoon, in the Veneto, and in Europe and 
the Mediterranean. It will recount the story of the Ghetto’s settlement, its growth, its architecture, 
its society, its trades, its daily life, and the relationships between the Jewish minority and the city at large, within the context of its relationships with other Jewish settlements in Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

The best of Venetian Jewish art and culture meet advanced and effective multimedia languages to show the reciprocal influence between the Jews and the society around them. (Paintings depicting biblical subjects will symbolize the age-old symbiosis between the Old Testament and the Veneto landscape). The virtual reconstruction of the Ghetto in its various historical phases will make it possible to trace the neighborhood’s development. Important, recently restored, silver ceremonial objects will help explain Jewish religious customs and traditions, fusing art and craftsmanship with culture. Books will bear witness to the extraordinary importance of Venetian Jewish printing, which was
the first in Europe, through the example of the Talmud printed in Venice first and still in use today throughout
the world.

 Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Vue du parc d’Arcueil
(Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN – Grand Palais / Suzanne Nagy)

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From The Louvre:

In Arcueil’s Leafy Groves: Drawing an 18th-Century Garden
À l’ombre des frondaisons d’Arcueil: Dessiner un jardin du 18e siècle
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 24 March — 20 June 2016

Curated by Xavier Salmon

The Arcueil domain knew its golden age in the early 18th century. Situated near the aqueduct built for Marie de Medici between 1614 and 1624, the château was surrounded by a vast garden that included flowerbeds, woodland, covered galleries, and stairs. After the death of the Prince de Guise, the domain found a new owner, whose heirs subdivided it. When it was sold in 1752, the château and its grounds were razed under circumstances that remain unclear. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, the town of Arcueil sprang up around the aqueduct; of this substantial estate, with its sumptuous gardens and numerous outbuildings, only a few fragments now remain. Nonetheless, the memory of this historic site lives on in landscape drawings of Arcueil made by various artists in the 1740s. The goal of the exhibition is to present virtually all of these drawings for the first time.

From The Boston Public Library:

We are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence
Boston Public Library, 2 May — 29 November 2015
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 5 March 2016 — 29 January 2017
New-York Historical Society, 2017

We Are One maps the American road to independence. It explores the tumultuous events that led thirteen colonies to join to forge a new nation. The exhibition takes its title from Benjamin Franklin’s early design for a note of American currency containing the phrase “We Are One.” This presaged the ‘E Pluribus Unum‘ found on the seal of the United States, adopted in 1782, and on all U.S. coins.

Using geographic and cartographic perspectives, the exhibition traces the American story from the strife of the French and Indian War to the creation of a new national government and the founding of Washington, D.C. as its home. Exhibited maps and graphics show America’s early status as a British possession: thirteen colonies in a larger trans-Atlantic empire. During and after the French and Indian War, protection of those thirteen colonies exhausted Britain economically and politically, and led Parliament to pass unpopular taxes and restrictions on her American colonial subjects. The Stamp Act, the Tea Act, and limits on colonial trade and industry incited protests and riots in Boston, as contemporaneous portrayals in the exhibition show.

When tensions between Britain and her American colonies erupted into war, British cartographers and other witnesses depicted military campaigns, battles, and their settings. These maps, drawings, and military artifacts now bring the long, bloody struggle for independence to life.

Finally, We Are One shows how, in the aftermath of the Revolution, America took stock of her new geography with surveys and maps. During this period, the Founders struggled to craft a new national government that would confederate thirteen colonies with different economic interests and cultures. European maps reflect their success by recognizing America’s triumphant new status of nationhood and her expanding territory.

More information is available here»

Joseph Wright, letter including sketches of Castel Saint’ Angelo and Saint Peter’s in Rome, 1774
(Derby Museums Trust)

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One of this year’s installments in the Grand Tour series, which explores the topic as related to people and collections in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire:

The Grand Tour: Joseph Wright and the Lure of Italy
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, 19 March — 12 June 2016

For many wealthy Europeans, The Grand Tour, which reached its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries, marked a rite of passage that culminated in a visit to Italy; a country rich in the remains of classical history, art, and landscape. Among these tourists were Derbyshire men and women, including the artist Joseph Wright, who made his own artistic pilgrimage between 1773 and 1775. This exhibition draws upon this formative period in Wright’s life, alongside the experiences of his fellow Derbeians abroad. Among paintings and drawings from Derby Museums’ collection are treasures gathered together from public and private collections in Derbyshire and further afield, some of which have never before been seen in Derby.

Masterpieces by Pompeo Batoni and other early Italian Renaissance artists are shown alongside examples of Wright’s highly-skilled work, revealing how his time on the continent influenced his practice. Also on display is a folio of Raphael engravings the Derbyshire artist purchased whilst in Rome in 1775.

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), Venice: A View of the Doge’s Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni from the Piazzetta, ca.1729, oil on copper panel,  45.7 x 61 cm (Chatsworth House, Derbyshire)

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One of this year’s installments in the Grand Tour series, which explores the topic as related to people and collections in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire:

A Grand Tour of The Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, 19 March — 23 October 2016

From the Grand Tour of the 2nd Earl in the company of his tutor, the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes, to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’s exile on the continent, A Grand Tour of The Devonshire Collection looks at what they saw, where they went—and what they and their contemporaries bought. The exhibition also demonstrates the impact of the Grand Tour at home through the introduction of new ideas and styles of art and architecture. This includes the overthrow of Baroque by Palladianism, triggered by the travels of Inigo Jones and later, the 3rd Earl of Burlington (father-in-law of the future 4th Duke of Devonshire).

As part of A Grand Tour of The Devonshire Collection, the Old Master Drawings Cabinet hosts displays of artists’ impressions of what Grand Tourists saw on their travels. This will start with ‘Rome in Ruins’—an evocative collection of drawings by Sebastian Vrancx, previously unseen at Chatsworth.

From The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts:

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Artworks from Russian and Foreign Collections
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 20 September — 12 November 2016

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is planning to host a major exhibition dedicated to the art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), an Italian engraver, architect, researcher, decorator, and collector of Ancient Roman objects. The display will include more than 100 etchings by Piranesi, engravings and drawings by his predecessors and followers, plaster casts, medals, books, models from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Cini Foundation (Venice), the Schusev State Museum of Architecture,  the Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum, and other collections based in Russia and Western Europe.

The works of the predecessors and the followers of the Italian master will help visitors get a better understanding of how Piranesi’s artistic personality was formed, how his art influenced the following generations of artists and of the role of his legacy in Russia. Piranesi’s art inspired the architects of Catherine II’s court—Giacomo Quarenghi, Charles Cameron, Vincenzo Brenna; as well as masters of Russian Avant-garde—Ivan Leonidov, Konstantin Melnikov, Yakov Chernikhov. This art still continues to impress its admirers with its sophistication: a contemporary Russian artist Valeriy Koshlyakov will display an artwork he has created exclusively for this exhibition.

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From The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art:

The Idea of the Perfect Painter: Russian Academic Model
Engraving and Books for Artists from the 18th Century
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 20 February — 22 May 2016

The exhibition Idea of the Perfect Painter will help visitors extend their knowledge on the learning methods of the Russian academic school of the 18th century. It is no coincidence that the display is located in the Olympic hall, surrounded by plaster casts similar to those, which could be found in studios. Plaster casts constituted the second step of artistic education, while the first one was dedicated to engraved ‘models’. The exhibition will showcase drawings, engravings, and prints dating from the end of the 18th century, as well as the first European art-related manuals and books. The display will feature original works by Georg Friedrich Schmidt (1712–1775) and sheets by his scholars—Alexey Grekov, Prokofy Artemyev, and others.