Gemmae Antiquae, Part I
From the Getty Villas’s website:
Carvers and Collectors: The Lasting Allure of Ancient Gems
Getty Villa, Los Angeles, 19 March – 7 September 2009
Jeffrey Spier, Ancient Gems and Finger Rings: Catalogue of the Collections (Getty Museum, 1993), ISBN 978-0-89236-215-8 ($70)
Gems from the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (For individual identifications, click on the image)
The beauty of carved gemstones has captivated collectors, connoisseurs, and craftsmen since antiquity. Precious markers of culture and status, gems were sought by Greek and Roman elites as well as modern monarchs and aristocrats. This exhibition features intaglios and cameos carved by ancient master engravers along with outstanding works by modern carvers and works of art in diverse media that illustrate the lasting allure of gems. . . .
In antiquity, gems were engraved with personal or official insignia that, when impressed on wax or clay, were used to sign or seal documents. Carved gems were valued not only for their distinctive designs, but also for the beauty of their stones, some of which were believed to have magical properties. From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, rulers, nobles, and wealthy merchants sought and traded classical gems, and carvers produced replicas and forgeries.
Augustin de Saint-Aubin after Charles-Nicolas Cochin II, engraving in François Arnaud, Description des principales pierres gravées du cabinet de S.A.S. Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans. . . (Paris, 1870) The Getty Research Institute 85-B16748
Sumptuous engraved catalogues of gem collections were published in the days before photography. Like the gems they illustrated, these volumes functioned as luxury objects. The engravings in these books sometimes improve upon the already excellent carving of the gems themselves. Louis Philippe d’Orléans (1725–1785), the great-grandson of King Louis XIV of France, published his gem collection in an elaborately engraved volume dedicated to his cousin King Louis XVI. The frontispiece, shown here, depicts the duke himself and also represents the superiority of gems over other art forms: in the foreground, two cupids inspect the contents of drawers pulled from a large gem cabinet, while symbols of architecture, sculpture, and painting are relegated to the upper right and lower left corners. . . .
Since the Renaissance, gem carvers have attempted to equal and surpass their ancient counterparts. Because of the high demand for classical gems, some carvers, dealers, and collectors sought to pass off modern works as ancient. Some even forged the signatures of famous Greek and Roman carvers. No scientific method exists for proving the antiquity of gems, and quality is no proof of authenticity. Thus it is usually some deviation in style or imagery that reveals a piece to be modern. . . .
Engraved Gem, signed by Giovanni Pichler or Luigi Pichler, ca. 1750-1850
Austrian carver Antonio (Johann Anton) Pichler worked in Rome in the 1700s copying ancient gems. His son Giovanni also became an accomplished gem carver, as did Giovanni’s half-brothers Giuseppe and Luigi and Giovanni’s son Giacomo. Luigi was the most renowned: he received commissions from the Vatican and the French and Austrian courts to carve both classical and contemporary subjects. This intaglio is modeled after a famous relief of Antinous (the beloved of the Roman emperor Hadrian) housed in the Villa Albani, Rome. The fact that the gem is signed “Pichler” in Greek indicates no intention to deceive but rather an emulative spirit, the artist vying with his ancient predecessors.
[Text and images from the Getty Villa exhibition website]
New World Missions
From the San Antonio Museum of Art website:
The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain
San Antonio Museum of Art, 17 October 2009 – 3 January 2010
Saint Francis of Assisi, seventeenth century, carved, polychromed, and gilded wood, 51” high (Tepotzotlán, Mexico: Museo Nacional del Virreinato)
Antonio de Torres, “Saint Francis Xavier Baptizing the Nations of the World,” ca. 1720 (Mexico City: Museo del Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola Vizcaínas)
The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain is the first exhibition to explore the rich artistic legacy of the Franciscan and Jesuit mission churches in northern Mexico and the American Southwest. An integral part of Spain’s colonization of the New World, the missionary enterprise was integral to the crown’s effort. Franciscans arrived in Mexico shortly after Cortes’s capture of Tenochtitlan, Mexico to spread Christianity and were soon joined by the Dominicans, then the Augustinians, and, later, by the Jesuits. From shortly after the Conquest until Mexico obtained its independence from Spain in 1821, hundreds of missions were founded by the Franciscans and Jesuits in northern reaches of the Viceroyalty, in present-day states of Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California in Mexico; and California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida in the United States. Nearly all of these Franciscan and Jesuit missions were richly decorated with paintings, sculpture, furniture, liturgical objects and liturgical vestments which have received little critical public attention. Many of the works were made by the most prominent artists in Mexico City and elsewhere in New Spain, while others came from Europe and as far away as Asia. Indigenous artists also made works of art found in the missions. In short, there are extensive visual remains of a spiritual and cultural undertaking that was, although part of an immense worldwide effort, quite nearly unique to the New World. The exhibition will include approximately 125 objects from collections in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, including many from the missions themselves, most of which have never left their original locations.
The fully illustrated catalogue in Spanish and English will contain essays by prominent historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians for the U.S. and Mexico. They discuss the art and architecture of the missions; native and Pre-Columbian art and cultures and the reception of European-based art brought to the missions; contrasts in native and Spanish conceptions of space and their impact on Spanish-Indian relations at the missions; the cultural and linguistic diversity of indigenous people of northern New Spain and their effect on missionaries’efforts; and the later impact of the missions on art, literature, and film in the U.S. and Mexico.
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[The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain (El arte de las misiones del norte de la Nueva España, 1600–1821) was on view at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City earlier this summer. It will travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art, October 17 to January 3, 2010, followed by the Museo de Historia Mexicana, Monterrey; the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Baja California; and the Oakland Museum of California. The exhibition is co-curated by Michael Komanecky and Clara Bargellini of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. The July issue of Magazine Antiques featured an instructive article by Michael Komanecky, along with fifteen photographs. The two images used here are from that slideshow.]
Masculin, féminin
Member News
Anne-Louis Girodet, "Self Portrait with Julie Candeille"
Heather Belnap Jensen, Assistant Professor of Art History at Brigham Young University, participated this past June in the colloquium, Historiennes et critiques d’art à l’époque de Juliette Récamier, which was organized in conjunction with the exhibition on Juliette Récamier and her circle, held at the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Jensen’s talk, “Quand la muse parle: Julie Candeille sur l’art de Girodet,” questioned androcentric interpretations of Girodet’s life and art. Papers from the journée d’étude are to be published by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (IHNA).
In addition, Jensen is co-editing a collection of essays (together with Temma Balducci and Pamela Warner), entitled Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914 (Ashgate, 2010). As a pendant, she and Balducci next turn their attention to the role of women in public: they’re chairing a session at CAA on the topic (“Women, Femininity, and Public Space in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture”), and plans are in the works for a second edited volume.
Jensen’s essay “Diversionary Tactics: Art Criticism as Political Weapon in Staël’s Corinne, ou l’Italie (1807),” appeared in Women Against Napoleon: Historical and Fictional Responses to his Rise and Legacy (Campus Verlag, 2008), and she recently reviewed Ruth Iskin’s Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting for French Studies (volume 63, Spring 2009).
[HECAA members Mechthild Fend, Melissa Hyde, and Mary Sheriff also participated in the Récamier colloquium. A summary of the event and exhibition will be published as a separate posting in the near future.]
Prints of War
James Clifton, Leslie Scattone, Emine Fetvaci, Ira Gruber, and Larry Silver, The Plains of Mars: European War Prints, 1500-1825, from the collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Yale University Press), 254 pages, $65 (hardback) ISBN 9780300137224
Last week’s Art Newspaper includes a review by Alexander Adams of The Plains of Mars, the catalogue from a show that appeared at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston earlier this year, February 7 – May 10, 2009.
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Editors have organised a diverse spectrum of material into themes, within which prints are sequenced chronologically. The catalogue section is preceded by enlightening essays dealing with the imagery of the Landsknecht (German mercenary of the 15th to 17th centuries), the recurrence of the Turk—as symbol of alien despotism and the exotic Orient—and the mixture of pictorial, cartographic and topographic modes in war prints. A concise survey by Professor Gruber deftly covers military developments in conflicts of this period. The catalogue section, complete with comparative figures, includes extensive commentaries necessary to contextualise individual prints . . .
The Plains of Mars presents a wealth of socially and historically important sources (some of them great artistic achievements) in a clear and authoritative fashion. A glossary, index and biographical notes of all featured artists conclude this impressive volume.
Read the full review at The Art Newspaper›
Time at the Louvre
Breguet and the Louvre: An Apogee of European Watchmaking
Exhibition curated by Marc Bascou
Musée du Louvre, Sully Wing, La Chappelle exhibition hall, June 25 – September 7, 2009
Turkish Watch – The name was used to denote watches produced specially for the Turkish market. They have enamel dials and very distinctive numerals in Turkish characters. The cases are also highly distinctive: often richly decorated with floral motifs and landscapes.
'Souscription' Watch – Launched through a publicity brochure in 1797, watches of this sort were sold on a subscription basis, with a down-payment of a quarter of the price when the order was placed. Called “Souscription” in the sales ledgers, they were reliable and proved a great success.
Abraham-Louis Breguet was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1747 but moved to Paris in 1775. A peerless technician, Breguet invented mechanisms that constituted wonderful advances in watchmaking, notably the tourbillon regulator, an astonishing device that corrected the effect of gravity on the balance wheel. Watches, clocks, and measuring instruments, accompanied by portraits, archive documents and patent applications, shed light on the developments pioneered by Breguet from his early years in Paris to the period when he handed the business over to his son, Antoine-Louis.
Marine chronometers took the form of a movement of fairly large volume enclosed in a cylindrical brass casing. The latter was attached to a sturdy wooden box by means of brass gimbals serving as stabilizer and shock absorber. Fitted with handles and a glass face, the marine chronometer was placed at the heart of the vessel; among other functions, it was used to calculate longitude at sea.
In 1796, Breguet built the first modern carriage clock. It is equipped with a Breguet overcoil – which offered major advantages over the pendulum balance it replaced, which was not adapted to being moved – glazed on four sides and of small dimensions. Some of the carriage clocks of the first half of the nineteenth century are veritable tours de force, endowed with various advanced features.
Combining items from the lavish collections of the Louvre and of the Musée Breguet, this exhibition of historic Breguet timepieces also includes masterpieces on loan from private collections and prestigious institutions such as the British Royal Collections, the Musée des Arts et Métiers de Paris, the Kremlin Museum and the Swiss National Museum.
Published in conjnction with the exhibition is the catalogue, Breguet au Louvre, un apogée de l’horlogerie européenne, edited by Marc Bascou and Emmanuel Breguet, 39 € (also available in English as Breguet and the Louvre, An Apogee of European Watchmaking)
[N.B. – Text, images, and captions are drawn from the exhibition website at the Louvre. Portions of the text also comes from the Breguet website.]
Jefferson in the Library
Thomas Jefferson’s Library, an ongoing exhibition that opened 11 April 2008 at the Library of Congress in D.C., is featured in a recent article from Smithsonian.com:
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Library of Congress curator Mark Dimunation stands among the fruits of his endeavor; over 4,000 books have been acquired but nearly 300 titles have yet to be located. Photo by Molly Roberts.
On the Hunt for Jefferson’s Lost Books
A Library of Congress curator is on a worldwide mission to find exact copies of the books that belonged to Thomas Jefferson
By Ashley Luthern
Smithsonian.com, August 11, 2009
For more than a decade, Mark Dimunation has led a quest to rebuild an American treasure—knowing he will likely never see the complete results of his efforts.
On an August day 195 years ago, the British burned the U.S. Capitol in the War of 1812 and by doing so, destroyed the first Library of Congress. When the war ended, former President Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his personal library, which at 6,487 books was the largest in America, to Congress for whatever price the legislators settled upon. After much partisan debate and rancor, it agreed to pay Jefferson $23,950.
Then another fire in the Capitol on Christmas Eve of 1851 incinerated some 35,000 volumes, including two-thirds of the books that had belonged to Jefferson. And although Congress appropriated funds to replace much of the Library of Congress collection, the restoration of the Jefferson library fell by the wayside.
Since 1998, Dimunation, the rare-books and special collections curator for the Library of Congress, has guided a slow-moving, yet successful search for the 4,324 Jefferson titles that were destroyed. The result of his labor thus far is on view at the library in the Jefferson Collection Exhibition. . . .
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Visit the Smithsonian website for the full article; there’s also a video to complement the story. In addition, LibraryThing includes a catalogue of Jefferson’s books (or at least 5418 of them), complete with useful tags (and if you’ve not yet seen LibraryThing, you must click here—tout de suite! -CAH).
Conservation on Display in St. Louis
For this series on conservation issues, our first stop is the St. Louis Art Museum, which is incidentally celebrating a century of free admission! (the achievement is especially impressive as museums across the country are raising prices). From the musuem’s website:
Reviving Antiquity:
Restoring Hubert Robert’s Views of Ancient Ruin
Hubert Robert, "Fantastic View of Tivoli," 1789; oil on canvas; 95 x 75"
This summer, one of the Museum’s main level galleries will become a painting conservation lab, where conservator Mark Bockrath of Philadelphia will clean and restore three large 18th-century landscapes by the French painter Hubert Robert (1733–1808). The three paintings—The Obelisk, The Ruin, and Fantastic View of Tivoli—are part of four landscapes commissioned during the 1780s by unknown Russian clients. Museum visitors may recall that the group of four Robert paintings hung for many years in the corners of Grigg Gallery. Ever since the reinstallation of Grigg Gallery in 2006, the paintings have been in storage, awaiting conservation.
In 1996, Museum Paintings Conservator Paul Haner cleaned and inpainted one of the four (The Column). The Column is currently on loan to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, where it is on view as part of the Pulitzer’s current exhibition, Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer.
Paul Haner at work on "The Column"
Curated by Judith Mann, curator of European Art to 1800, Reviving Antiquity: Restoring Hubert Robert’s Views of Ancient Ruins, supported by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, will be on view in gallery 205.
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Bockrath will be at work in the museum from August 25th until September 6th. He’s available for visitors’ questions on Fridays, Saturday, and Sundays from 2:30 until 3:00. A brief interview with Paul Haner can be found here.
Size Matters in Omaha
Midwest Art History Society Call for Session Proposals (due 23 August)
8-10 April 2010 – Omaha, Nebraska
Étienne-Louis Boullée, "Projet de Bibliothèque Royale," 1785
The Midwest Art History Society is currently accepting session proposals for its annual conference, to be held next spring in Omaha. The meeting’s timely theme – Exploring Monumentality: Re-Thinking Scale Relationships in Art – comes on the heels of the remarkable 2008-09 exhibition, Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian (organized by Larry Silver with Elizabeth Wyckoff), and precedes an exhibition at the Getty that will pursue the subject into the seventeenth century; Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and the Monumental Prints of the Ancien Régime (organized by Louis Marchesano) opens May 18 and runs through October 17.
The MAHS conference might provide an ideal venue for asking how oversize scale functioned in the eighteenth century (one thinks perhaps of Vanbrugh, Boullée, or Piranesi). Conference organizers will include some topics not related to the theme of monumentality, so other session ideas are welcome, too. Here’s the official call for proposals:
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For its 37th annual conference in Omaha, Nebraska (April 8-10, 2010), the Midwest Art History Society will devote the majority of sessions to a central topic–Monumentality. All cultures and periods have generated works of large relative scale. Well-known examples include the Colossus of Rhodes, the monumental heads of Easter Island, Mount Rushmore, the enormous statuary at Buddhist temple complexes throughout Asia, Michelangelo’s David, and the oversized creations of contemporary artist Jeff Koons. We invite session proposals devoted to the impact and meaning of size; logistical considerations for large and small-scale works; famous and/or important monumental works; and other issues related to scale. Because we will still offer open sessions for conference papers that do not address the central issue, we also invite proposals for sessions on other topics apart from that of our central theme. (more…)
‘Love Art’ app from the National Gallery
"Love Art" $2.99 from the iTunes Store
June 2009 Press Release from the National Gallery, London:
The National Gallery is the first ever gallery to make its paintings accessible through a downloadable iPhone application, making it possible to take a mini tour of the Gallery anywhere in the world.
The Gallery, in partnership with Antenna Audio and Apple Inc., has designed a new application for iPhones and iTouch devices that enables people to explore a sample of the collection while they’re on the move. Designed to appeal to art enthusiasts and fans of the Gallery, this application is the first of its kind to be released by a major gallery.
This Pentimento application, called “Love Art,” features 250 paintings from the collection along with around 200 minutes of audio and video content, including interviews with National Gallery Director Dr Nicholas Penny, dramatist Robin Brooks, artist Maggie Hambling and Girl with a Pearl Earring author Tracy Chevalier.
Making use of special iPhone features such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrollable menus, “Love Art” offers a playful exploration of the collection, together with informative commentaries. The paintings are showcased to the best advantage using high-resolution images on the iPhone’s excellent-quality screen. Due to a tactile interface the experience gained through this application is not only highly enjoyable, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed. (more…)
Sèvres in London
200 pages, 185 ills. Joanna Gwilt is Assistant Curator of Works of Art at the Royal Collection. Formerly of the Wallace Collection, she specialises in French eighteenth-century decorative arts, in particular Sèvres porcelain.
From the website of the British Royal Collection:
23 May — 11 October 2009
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace — London
French Porcelain for English Palaces:
Sèvres from the Royal Collection
This exhibition brings together around 300 pieces created by the pre-eminent European porcelain factory of the 18th century. The finely painted and gilded works by Sèvres were loved by royalty, aristocrats, connoisseurs and collectors. The factory’s unrivalled techniques and complex methods of production appealed to their liking for the rare, exotic and extravagant.
The assemblage of Sèvres in the Royal Collection is considered to be the world’s finest. Much of it was acquired between 1783 and 1830 by George IV, who popularised the taste for French porcelain in Britain. The King’s choice of Sèvres was greatly influenced by his admiration for and extensive knowledge of France and the French royal family. The French Revolution brought on to the market a vast quantity of furniture, porcelain and other works of art that had been the property of the French Crown and France’s erstwhile ruling classes, and there was an active trade in souvenirs of the old political and social system.
Sèvres Flower Vase, c.1760 (RCIN 36073). The Royal Collection ©2009. The cuvette Mahon is named to commemorate the seizure by the French of the British-held port of Mahon on the island of Menorca in May 1756, at the start of the Seven Years War between France and England (1756-63). The painted scene depicting peasants drinking – one of whom stands brandishing an empty pitcher in the direction of a serving wench – may be inspired by a detail taken from "La Quatrième Fête Flamande," engraved by Philippe Le Bas (1707-83) after David Teniers the Younger.
Among the highlights of the exhibition are a garniture of three vases first bought by Marie-Antoinette and recently reunited through an acquisition by Her Majesty The Queen; a vase that was probably bought by Louis XV’s mistress Madame du Barry and is decorated with a youthful profile of the French king, and the Table of the Grand Commanders, which was made for Napoleon and given to George IV by Louis XVIII.
Sèvres suited George IV’s taste for lavish and colourful decoration, particularly at his London residence Carlton House. In 1783, at the age of 21, he made his first purchase from the factory and continued to buy as Prince of Wales, Regent and King. He bought ornamental vases to place on chimneypieces and furniture in the richly decorated principal rooms of Carlton House. Pieces were often grouped together by colour, shape or painted decoration. George IV also followed the French practice of displaying practical tablewares, such as broth basins and déjeneurs (tea sets), as bibelots or trinkets. To this day, dinner services bought by George IV continue to be used for State Banquets and ceremonial occasions.
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[Text and photos from the exhibition website; information on the Flower Vase, as presented on the Royal Collection site, is adapted from the catalogue, French Porcelain for English Palaces, Sèvres from the Royal Collection (London, 2009). Historical-fiction author Catherine Delors includes an informal review on her website, usefully noting that Sèvres remains an active state-owned manufacture of porcelain.]
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