Enfilade

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Looking ahead to the fall . . . press release from the National Maritime Museum:

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 3 November 2016 — 17 April 2016

From humble origins, Emma Hamilton rose to national and international fame as a model, performer, and interpreter of neo-classical fashion. Within the public mind, however, she typically continues to occupy a passive and supporting role and is often remembered simply as the mistress of Britain’s greatest naval hero, Admiral Lord Nelson. This landmark exhibition recovers Emma from myth and misrepresentation and reveals her to be an active and influential historical actor in her own right: one of the greatest female lives of her era.

Born into poverty in 1765, Emma’s talent and beauty brought her fame while still in her teens as muse to the great portrait artist George Romney. In her twenties she achieved still greater artistic prominence in Naples, the epicentre of the fashionable Grand Tour. Here, as the confidante of Queen Maria Carolina, she also came to wield considerable political power. Emma embarked on a passionate affair with Admiral Lord Nelson but risked her security and social status in the process. Her fortunes never recovered from the tragedy of his death at Trafalgar, and—following a period in debtor’s prison—she died in self-imposed exile in Calais in 1815.

The exhibition carries visitors through the arc of this remarkable story, revealing Emma’s driving ambition and her brilliance as a performer and placing in sharp relief the social conventions ranged against her. In an age when people tended to remain fixed in the social categories in which they began their lives, she crossed boundaries of all kinds, broke through barriers, and ultimately paid a heavy price.

Emma’s story will be told through over 200 objects from public and private lenders around a core from the Museum’s own collections. Emma’s compelling story will be explored through exceptional fine art, antiquities that inspired Emma’s famous ‘attitudes’, costumes that show her impact on contemporary fashions, prints and caricatures that carried her image to a mass audience, her personal letters and those of Nelson and William Hamilton, and finally the uniform coat that Nelson wore at Trafalgar, retained by Emma until destitution forced her to part with it.

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From Thames & Hudson:

Quintin Colville and Kate Williams, with contributions by Vic Gatrell, Hannah Greig, Jason Kelly, Margarette Lincoln, Christine Riding, and Gillian Russell, Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity (London: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0500252208, £30 / $50.

Emma Hamilton (1765–1815) is widely known as a temptress who ensnared the naval hero Horatio Nelson and paid the price by dying in poverty in Calais. But this epic love affair, and the judgments surrounding it, have obscured a spectacular life story. This book, published to coincide with a major exhibition on Hamilton at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, explores her remarkable life and recovers Emma from myth and misrepresentation. Distinguished contributors provide a fresh evaluation of her artistic undertakings, cultural achievements, and legacy, as well as of the momentous years of her association with Nelson and the unravelling of her fortunes after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Illustrated with paintings, prints, and drawings capturing the beauty that propelled her to celebrity status, Emma Hamilton tells the story of an extraordinary woman who broke through barriers of class and privilege to win her own unique place in British history.

Quintin Colville is Curator of Naval History at the National Maritime Museum. He edited Nelson, Navy & Nation and is the author of The British Sailor of the First World War.
Kate Williams is Professor of History at the University of Reading. Her biography England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton was published in 2006.

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Note (added 28 October 2016) — The original version of this posting used an earlier working title, Seduction and Celebrity: The Spectacular Life of Emma Hamilton. Other changes have been made to reflect updated information.

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Now on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille:

Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793
Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, 17 June — 16 October 2016

Pour la première fois le panorama artistique d’une période majeure de l’histoire de Marseille, le XVIIIe siècle, va être présenté au musée des Beaux-arts. Cent cinquante œuvres, peintures, sculptures et dessins, provenant des riches collections patrimoniales de la ville, musées, bibliothèque, archives, mais également des musées français et européens seront réunies pour retracer une histoire des arts dans une ville que le commerce a, de tout temps, ouvert aux influences extérieures.

Cette évocation débute pourtant par une tragédie, celle de l’épidémie de Peste dont les grandes toiles de Michel Serre, restaurées pour l’occasion, nous ont gardé l’exceptionnel souvenir. La ville saura se relever du désastre et au milieu du siècle, deux grands peintres, Dandré-Bardon et Joseph Vernet viendront redonner un nouveau souffle au milieu local.

En créant en 1753, l’académie de peinture et de sculpture de Marseille, Dandré-Bardon va faire de cette institution un extraordinaire vivier de jeunes artistes, y attirant également ceux qui sont en route vers l’Italie. Joseph Vernet, dont l’Europe entière s’arrache les marines, venant sur place peindre pour Louis XV le port de Marseille,  va susciter de nombreux émules comme Lacroix de Marseille, Volaire ou Henry d’Arles, et faire des marines un genre particulièrement prisé des collectionneurs marseillais.

Du baroque au néo-classicisme, Marseillais ou non, installés à demeure ou simplement de passage, artistes et amateurs d’arts, ont fait de Marseille un des importants foyers artistiques de la France du XVIIIe siècle.

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From Somogy:

Luc Georget and Gérard Fabre, eds., Marseille au XVIIIe siècle: Les années de l’Académie, 1753–1793 (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-2757210581, 39€.

Cet ouvrage rend compte de la vie artistique à Marseille au Siècle des lumières. L’Académie de peinture et de sculpture  de Marseille, créée en 1753, est au cœur de ce récit. La naissance de cette institution concrétisait les efforts de ces hommes, artistes et amateurs d’art, qui voulaient doter leur ville d’un établissement capable de former peintres, sculpteurs et architectes. Ils rêvaient de faire de cette institution un soutien pour les jeunes artistes, un lieu d’accueil et de rencontre pour ceux qui étaient de passage et, par le réseau de relations qu’ils entretinrent avec le reste de l’Europe, un instrument du rayonnement de leur ville. Au cours de ses quarante années d’existence, l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture a formé des élèves qui connurent de grands succès, bien au-delà de Marseille, et des dessinateurs qui offrirent aux productions de ses manufactures un niveau inégalé. Fermée en 1793, comme toutes les académies en France, elle devait donner naissance, une fois la tourmente apaisée, à deux des plus importantes institutions culturelles du XIXe siècle : l’école des beaux-arts et le musée.

Sous la direction de Luc Georget, Conservateur en chef du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille et Gérard Fabre, assistant de conservation au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille – Avec la collaboration de Régis Bertrand, Marie-Claude Homet, Emilie Beck Saiello, Olivier Bonfait, Laëtitia Pierre, Markus Castor, Sylvain Bédard, Emilie Roffidal, Christine Germain-Donnat, Yves di Domenico, Alexandre Maral, et Claude Badet.

S O M M A I R E

• Luc Georget, Avant-propos
• Régis Bertrand, Le « glorieux » XVIIIe siècle marseillais: Marseille de la Régence à la Révolution
• Marie-Claude Homet, L’héritage baroque: Michel Serre
• Émilie Beck Saiello, De l’aristocratie du négoce aux cercles de l’Académie: Les réseaux marseillais de Joseph Vernet
• Olivier Bonfait, École de dessin, académie, académies: L’« Académie de Peinture, &c. de Marseille » dans l’espace des Lumières
• Gérard Fabre, De l’École académique de dessin à l’Académie de peinture, sculpture et architecture civile et navale de Marseille, 1753–1793
• Laëtitia Pierre et Markus Castor, Faire œuvre de pédagogie: Le directorat de Michel-François Dandré-Bardon à l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture de Marseille, 1749–1783
• Sylvain Bédard, Modèles parisiens: Un lot de figures académiques pour Marseille
• Luc Georget, Une académicienne: Françoise Duparc
• Émilie Roffidal, L’union des arts et du commerce
• Christine Germain-Donnat, La faïence de Marseille
• Yves di Domencio, Le cycle de l’Histoire de Tobie de Pierre Parrocel
• Alexandre Maral, Les sculpteurs de l’Académie de Marseille
• Luc Georget, L’architecture à l’Académie: Les morceaux de réception
• Luc Georget, Une commande singulière: Le Saint Roch intercède la Vierge pour la guérison des pestiférés de David
• Claude Badet, Marseille et la création artistique pendant la Révolution

Liste des œuvres exposées
Bibliographie
Index des noms de personnes

Left: Royal Meissen manufactory, a pair of four-sided bottles with stoppers, ca. 1724, Collection of Henry H. Arnhold; photo by Michael Bodycomb. Right: Arlene Shechet, Three Hundred Years, 2012, © Arlene Shechet, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; photo by Alan Wiener.

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Now on view at The Frick:

Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection
The Frick Collection, New York, 24 May 2016 — 2 April 2017

Curated by Charlotte Vignon

The Frick will present a year-long exhibition exploring the complex history of making, collecting, and displaying porcelain. Included are 130 pieces produced by the renowned Royal Meissen manufactory, which led the ceramic industry in Europe, both scientifically and artistically, during the early to mid-eighteenth century. Most of the works date from 1720 to 1745 and were selected by New York−based sculptor Arlene Shechet from the promised gift of Henry H. Arnhold. Twelve works in the exhibition are Shechet’s own sculptures—exuberant porcelain she made during a series of residencies at the Meissen manufactory in 2012 and 2013. Designed by Shechet, the exhibition avoids the typical chronological or thematic order of most porcelain installations in favor of a personal and imaginative approach that creates an intriguing dialogue between the historical and the contemporary, from then to now. With nature as the dominant theme, the exhibition will be presented in the Frick’s Portico Gallery, which overlooks the museum’s historic Fifth Avenue Garden.

Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection is organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection. Major support for the exhibition is generously provided by Chuck and Deborah Royce, Melinda and Paul Sullivan, Margot and Jerry Bogert, and Monika McLennan. A fully illustrated booklet featuring installation views and a conversation with Arnhold, Shechet, and Vignon will be available in July.

Additional information and images are available from Meghan Dailey’s piece: “Contemporary Ceramics, Up Against 18th-Century Pieces — Literally,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine (24 May 2016).

Francisco de Goya, Blind Man’s Bluff (La Gallina Ciega), 1788, canvas, 269 x 350 cm
(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado)

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Press release for the exhibition now on view in Vienna:

Celebration! 125 Years, Anniversary Exhibition / Feste Feiern: 125 Jahre – Jubiläumsausstellung
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, 8 March — 11 September 2016

Curated by Gudrun Swoboda

In 2016 the Kunsthistorisches Museum is celebrating a jubilee: 125 years ago, on October 17, 1891, Emperor Franz Joseph formally opened the new main museum on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. To celebrate this anniversary in style we are showing an important exhibition on ‘the art of celebration’ showcasing precious artworks from all the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. International loans like Francisco de Goya’s La gallina ciega from the Prado in Madrid or the magnificent Yashmak designed by Shaun Leane for one of Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows from the V&A in London will enrich this magnificent show, which presents 125 groups of objects in three galleries.

The show focuses on celebrations and their history, and looks at different aspects of European festivities from the Renaissance to the French Revolution—at court (especially that of the Habsburgs) in towns and cities, and in the country. Court banquets and their opulent dishes, dancing and music form the centre of the show (Gallery VIII). The adjacent galleries look at sumptuous outdoor parties organized to celebrate coronations, weddings or birthdays but also during Carnival, popular festivals or on market days (Gallery IX), and at courtly tournaments (Gallery I).

Festivities always represent a state of exception during which every-day laws are temporarily suspended—through role-playing games and disguises that flout historical, cultural and gender differences. But what can we display of these ephemeral, long gone festivities? By turning the question on its head we arrive at a preliminary answer: we can display what remains of the day: show-pieces, props and pictorial records of these events.

For millennia something was presented or displayed during many of these celebrations, be they ecclesiastical or secular. Court festivities offered the host the opportunity to display precious show-pieces removed for this purpose from his treasury or Kunstkammer. The large two-handled rock crystal vase is such a show-piece; in 1764 it was removed from the Imperial Treasury in Vienna and transported to Frankfurt for the coronation of Joseph II. After the event these prestigious artefacts were returned to their respective depositories, only to reappear again at the next important festivity. Not a show-piece sensu stricto but nonetheless an important prop is the seventeen-metres-long tablecloth presented here to the public for the first time; Emperor Charles V commissioned it in 1527 for the banquets of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Another extraordinary prop for princely drinking parties is the 16th-century ‘trick chair’ that shackled guests until they had downed the content of a ‘welcome-glass’.

Fantastic parade armour worn at Renaissance tournaments documents exceptional creativity and imagination, and these artefacts are among the most fascinating props used as elegant disguises by the elite. Courtly festivities demanded both opulence and splendour but also extravagance—including technical extravagance. A particularly sophisticated construction that documents the innovative potential and the creative energies employed to plan and produce surprising show-effects is the mechanical breast-piece comprising springs and levers that Emperor Maximilian I commissioned for courtly tournaments. A direct hit on the shield of one’s opponent activated the mechanism, catapulting the pieces of the disintegrating shield high into the air. Hosts worked hard to surprise and enchant their guests, and the creative achievements of the court artists especially employed to plan and organize these festivities reflected back on their patrons.

Fragile sculptures made of molten sugar functioned as ephemeral table décor at banquets, and they, too, illustrate the sophistication of such costly festive creations. Contemporary Tuscan artisans have produced a number of sugar statuettes especially for this exhibition, an attempt to recreate the splendour of these centrepieces known as trionfi di tavola. But festive infrastructure also required invisible props like the 17th-century rocket-pole that bears witness to the magnificence of ephemeral baroque fireworks displays. In addition to opulent treasures and curious extravagances the exhibition includes depictions of real and imaginary festivities: from coronations to Bruegel’s boisterous peasant celebrations to the fanciful fêtes galantes of Watteau and his followers—dreamy scenes set in Arcadian parklands in which fashionable ladies and gentlemen give themselves up to dance, games and gallant conversation.

Public festivals offered a counter-draft to the strictly regulated hierarchical court festivities—especially during Carnival, a looking-glass world when the existing social order was temporarily turned upside down through exuberant partying, the donning of disguises and role reversal—one way of defusing the tensions that accumulate in every hierarchic society. A number of musical examples document that various elements of public festivals have enriched and inspired court celebrations. A perfect example of this rich interdependency is the painting of Blind Man’s Bluff by the Spanish court painter Francisco de Goya, who recorded public festivals and their entertainments in many of his compositions. Occasionally elements of a public festival are even turned into a court ceremony, and are thus constrained and controlled. One example is the Cuccagna Napoletana, which evolved out of carnival processions in Naples. The rising number of increasingly serious accidents during celebrations originally organized by the craftsmen’s guild led the ruler to assume control. Royal troops guarded a land-of- Cockayne-like structure set up in front of the royal palace until the king standing on a balcony gave the sign that gave it up for plunder, and it was stormed by the populace.

The artefacts assembled for this exhibition bear witness to the exceptional splendour and opulence of some of these festivities but they also hint at their rigid as well as fragile order. They also show that the history of celebrations includes some that never actually happened. The exhibition offers insights into the history of celebrations—mainly, but not exclusively, during the early Modern Era. Our aim is to show that throughout history festivities were always also displays, and although the installation is ‘festive’ it aims also to remind visitors of what separates us from earlier festivities: it is, of course, obvious that modern museum visitors differ greatly from the protagonists and spectators of historical feasts—but how does a modern audience see itself? The exhibition poses this question in the form of a magnificent baroque mirror: it is, in a way, a precursor of our modern selfies, and functioned in much the same way. But perhaps it can also turn into an instrument of (humorous) self reflection, for which there is more than enough cause 125 years after the formal opening of the magnificent museum building on the Ringstrasse.

The exhibition was curated by Gudrun Swoboda, curator for Baroque Painting in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Most of the artefacts on show come from the rich holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and some of them have never, or only very rarely, been on display. In addition, the show includes loans from a number of national and international museums such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Historisches Museum Frankfurt, the MAK—Austrian Museum for Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, the Albertina, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Hofmobiliendepot and the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Tiroler Landesmuseum. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who have also lent a number of important works.

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The full-length German catalogue is available from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, along with an abridged English version. A 27-page booklet with a checklist of the 126 items included in the exhibition and a brief description for each object is available to download as a PDF file here.

Sabine Haag and Gudrun Swoboda, eds., Feste Feiern (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2016), 320 pages, 35€.

Opening in June at The Morgan Library:

City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics  
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 17 June — 11 September 2016

Rome exists not only as an intensely physical place, but also as a romantic idea onto which artists, poets, and writers project their own imaginations and longings. City of the Soul examines the evolving image of Rome in art and literature with a display of books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and drawings.

This groundbreaking exhibition considers the ever-evolving identities of Rome during a pivotal period in the city’s history, 1770–1870, when it was transformed from a papal state to the capital of a unified, modern nation. Venerable monuments were demolished to make way for government ministries and arteries of commerce. Building projects and improvements in archaeological techniques revealed long forgotten remnants of the ancient metropolis. A tourist’s itinerary could include magnificent ruins, ecclesiastical edifices, scenic vistas, picturesque locales, fountains, gardens, and side trips to the surrounding countryside.

The exhibition juxtaposes a century of artistic impressions of Rome through a superb selection of prints and drawings by recognized masters such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), and Edward Lear (1812–1888) along with lesser known artists whose work deserves greater attention.

The invention of photography also influenced the image of the city. Photographers consciously played on the compositions of Piranesi and earlier masters of the veduta tradition, while at the same time exploiting the expressive potential of this new medium. As the meditative, measured pace of the Grand Tour gave way to the demands of organized tourism, they supplied their new clientele with nostalgia as well as novelty in their views of the Eternal City.

John Pinto, City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2016), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0875981710, $50.

Rome, described by Byron as the ‘City of the Soul’, has always inspired fervid imaginings and visionary renderings of itself and its past. It has existed not only as an intensely physical place but also as a romantic idea onto which artists and writers projected their own imaginations and longings. City of the Soul illuminates how the spirit of Romanticism (the term itself invokes Rome)—its passion, imagination, individuality, transcendence, nonconformity—thrived in the artistic community of Rome in the century between 1770 and 1870.

The expansive artistic response to Rome during that period reflected the timeless yet changing city, when visitors experienced the transition from the Grand Tour to the onset of mass tourism and history witnessed Rome’s dramatic transformation from papal enclave to the capital of a newly unified Italy. Rome in the Romantic era attracted extraordinary writers and visual artists, and, as it had for centuries, facilitated vibrant artistic exchange among them. The records of these encounters—in the form of letters and diary entries, poems, novels, prints, drawings, watercolors, oil sketches, and the exciting new medium of photography—collectively constitute the portrait of a very particular place, a city that touched the very soul.

John A. Pinto taught for twenty-five years at Princeton University in the Department of Art and Archaeology. His research interests focus on the architecture of eighteenth-century Rome and on the relationship between the architecture of classical antiquity and that of the Renaissance. He currently resides in New York City.