Enfilade

Rosalba Carriera, Portrait of an Unknown Lady in a Blue Coat over a Light Dress, detail, pastel on paper, 76 × 64 cm
(Dresden: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)

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From Dresden’s Zwinger:

Rosalba Carriera – Perfection in Pastel / Perfektion in Pastell
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 9 June — 24 September 2023

On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757), the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) is dedicating a special exhibition to the most famous pastel painter. More than 100 objects will be presented, including around 70 works by the portraitist, who was one of the first female artists to enjoy success throughout Europe. With 73 pastels, Dresden possesses the world’s largest collection of the Venetian artist’s work. Under August III, more than twice as many pieces by Carriera were in the gallery’s holdings, and in 1746 a separate pastel cabinet was even set up in the Johanneum near the Frauenkirche and named after her.

Rosalba Carriera, A Venetian from the House of Barbarigo (Caterina Sagredo Barbarigo), ca. 1735/40, pastel on paper, 42 × 33 cm (Dresden: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister).

Pastel painting was still considered a comparatively young genre at the time. Carriera was instrumental in making this technique a valued form of painting. The many portraits of princes of the ruling dynasties of Europe show how much in demand the artist was. But she also captured the likenesses of literary figures, musicians, and dancers from her native Venice; a visit to her studio was part of the regular programme of the numerous travellers through Italy. Thus, portraits constitute the largest part of her oeuvre.

Carriera’s pastels bear witness to the beauty ideals of the Rococo period, whose cosmetics were dominated by powder: pale, even skin, powdered hair, and wigs. The powdery surfaces of pastel painting reflect this fashion and thus bring us closer to this bygone era. In cooperation with the Theatre Design/Mask Design course at the Dresden University of Fine Arts, students are illustrating the maquillage of the 18th century in a project that will thus be brought to life in the exhibition.

Carriera’s artistic beginnings lay in miniature painting, as she had little competition to fear from male painter colleagues in this field. In 1705, the San Luca Academy of Art in Rome appointed her a member. This high distinction was bestowed on only a few women, especially as academic training was still denied them for a long time. The Accademia Clementina in Bologna also accepted her as a member in 1720, and a year later the Académie Royale in Paris.

The exhibition shows over 100 objects, taking the public first to the lagoon city of Venice, with views of the Grand Canal, where Carriera had her residence. In addition to the pastel paintings, there are also typical Venetian handicraft products such as glass, lace, and fine cloth to discover.

Roland Enke and Stephan Koja, Rosalba Carriera: Perfection in Pastel (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 280 pages, ISBN: 978-3954987580 (English) / ISBN 978-3954987573 (German), €44.

Now on view at the Mellon Centre:

A Harpy and His Brothers: The Wildmans in Bedford Square and Newstead Abbey
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 30 May — 15 September 2023

Curated by Martin Myrone

George Romney, Portrait of Thomas Wildman MP, detail, oil on canvas, 78 × 64 cm (Private Collection).

This Drawing Room display shows some of the ways that the architectural and cultural histories of Bedford Square and Newstead Abbey have been addressed in the past and the ways in which those stories might be revised and complicated. The inclusion of the film project Blood Sugar, developed by volunteers at Newstead Abbey, offers further perspectives on these historical stories.

Bedford Square has always been esteemed as one of London’s most prestigious addresses. Built in 1775–82, it is widely considered to be the finest surviving example in London of a Georgian town square, embodying in its orderly architecture appearance the favoured self-image of the British social elite. This display explores the history and reputation of Bedford Square by focusing on two brothers who were among its first inhabitants: the successful lawyer Thomas Wildman (1740–1795) and his younger brother James Wildman (1747–1816). Together with a third brother, the merchant Henry Wildman (1746–1816), they made a fortune through their connections with the fabulously wealthy William Beckford, managing his legal affairs and his extensive plantations in the West Indies. Thomas Wildman’s wealth allowed his son, also Thomas (1787–1859), to purchase Newstead Abbey, a historic property in Nottinghamshire previously owned by the poet Lord Byron.

A digital version of the accompanying 36-page booklet is available here»

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More information about “Blood Sugar: The Slavery History of Newstead Abbey” can be found here, with the 5-minute 2018 film itself available on YouTube.

A portion of The Met’s Oceanic Collection, now on view in Shanghai at the Museum of Art Pudong:

The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania
Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai, 1 June — 20 August 2023
National Museum of Qatar, Doha, 16 October 2023 — 15 January 2024

Accompanies the reopening of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Spring 2025

Maori Weaving Peg (Turuturu), late 18th–early 19th century, wood, 14 inches high (NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.206.1600. ‘Ko te taura whiri, he whiri i te tangata’ (‘The woven cord is like the cord that connects people’). –Māori proverb

The exhibition The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania from The Metropolitan Museum of Art is produced by the Lujiazui (Group) Co., Ltd., and co-organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) and the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP). The exhibition marks the first time that MAP collaborates with The Met, a world-renowned art institution. Meanwhile, it is also the first time ever that an exhibition taken entirely from The Met’s collection has come to Shanghai, China, adding extraordinary historical significance to the event.

The Shape of Time centers around The Met’s Oceanic art collection, showing the exuberant and diverse culture of Oceania. Divided into three main sections— Voyaging, Ancestors, and Time—the exhibition displays more than 110 valuable artworks from the past four centuries. Encompassing the arts and cultures of the Pacific Islands, The Met’s collection of Oceanic art comprises over 2,800 works that reflect the rich history of creative expression and innovation that is emblematic of the region. Since joining in The Met’s permanent collection, these treasures of Oceania have never left New York. The exhibition The Shape of Time therefore is the first time after about half a century that these works will travel out of the United States, and MAP is honoured to be the first stop of this historic voyage.

From The Met’s catalogue entry for the weaving peg (at right):

This weaving peg incorporates a distinctively carved male figure with elaborate designs that accentuate his tattooed skin (moko). Carved in the round, intricate low-relief carvings cover the entire surface of the figure’s body except for the back of his head, which is the seat of an individual’s mana or personal sanctity. With elbows resting on each knee, the arms extend up towards the chin, which is supported by five-fingered hands. The face is dynamic—serial notching accentuates the pronounced arch of each brow, giving way to more fluid grooves, lengthened lines that delineate elongated eyes and the contours of the lips and mouth. The nostrils flare, the mouth is wide open and gaping, as if to consume this flow of energy. Spiral designs on each knee spill over onto the top section of the polished shaft and create a characteristic double spiral motif. This feature frames the face of a further face which faces the other direction, drawing the eye around to the back, creating an energy and dynamism much admired in Māori figural sculpture. . . . The process of twining began when the weaver drove two pegs into the ground and stretched between them a single cord from which the strands of flax were hung. The left-hand peg was always left plain, while the right-hand one was carved and dedicated to the female deity associated with the moon, Hine-te-iwaiwa. The more complex form of carved weaving pegs, such as this one, were designed to incorporate the spiritual potency associated with the goddess whose efficacy was believed to become integrated into the bound texture of the cloak, thus enhancing the spiritual armature of the wearer. . .

The catalogue is published by Yale UP:

Maia Nuku, Oceania: The Shape of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1588397669, $50.

The visual arts of Oceania tell a wealth of dynamic stories about origins, ancestral power, performance, and initiation. This publication explores the deeply rooted connections between Austronesian-speaking peoples, whose ancestral homelands span Island Southeast Asia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the island archipelagoes of the northern and eastern Pacific. Unlike previous books, it foregrounds Indigenous perspectives, alongside multidisciplinary research in art history, ethnography, and archaeology, to provide an intimate look at Oceania, its art, and its culture. Stunning new photography highlights more than 130 magnificent objects, ranging from elaborately carved ancestral figures in ceremonial houses, towering slit drums, and dazzling turtle-shell masks to polished whale ivory breastplates. Underscoring the powerful interplay between the ocean and its islands, and the ongoing connection with spiritual and ancestral realms, Oceania: The Shape of Time presents an art-focused approach to life and culture while guiding readers through the artistic achievements of Islanders across millennia.

Maia Nuku is Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Installation view of Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 2023.

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From the press release (20 April 2023) for the exhibition:

Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 21 April – 8 October 2023
The King’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 22 March — 22 September 2024

Curated by Anna Reynolds

The wedding dress of George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte of Wales, on display for the first time in over a decade, is among more than 200 works from the Royal Collection on view at The Queen’s Gallery in the exhibition Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians.

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Queen Charlotte, ca. 1781, oil on canvas, 239 × 159 cm (London: Royal Collection, RCIN 401407). As noted at the exhibition website, this full-length portrait, “usually hangs in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle. Painted by candlelight, it depicts the Queen in a magnificent gown, worn over a wide hoop and covered with gold spangles and tassels.”

The exhibition explores what fashion can tell us about life in Georgian Britain, a period rocked by social, political, and technological revolutions. Alongside paintings, prints, and drawings by artists such as Gainsborough, Zoffany, and Hogarth are rare surviving examples of clothing, jewellery, and accessories. Together, they provide a fascinating insight into what was worn across all levels of society, from the practical dress of laundry maids to the glittering gowns at court.

Princess Charlotte was George IV’s only legitimate child, but died in childbirth at the age of 21 in 1817. Her marriage to Prince Leopold a year earlier was considered one of the most important royal weddings of the era. Her silk embroidered bridal gown is the only royal wedding dress that survives from the Georgian period, though it appears to have been significantly altered from its original form, in keeping with the Georgian practice of repurposing and recycling clothing. The Princess followed the tradition for European royal brides to wear silver, despite white wedding dresses becoming popular by the end of the 18th century.

Princess Charlotte’s mother, Caroline of Brunswick, also wore silver for her wedding to the future George IV in 1795. On display for the first time is a portrait of the wedding ceremony by John Graham, displayed alongside the original silver and gold dress samples supplied for the bride and other royal guests, on loan from Historic Royal Palaces. While the royal couple and their congregation made a glittering spectacle, their highly embellished clothing and wide skirts would have been noticeably outdated in fashionable circles, reflecting the increasing association of the court with old-fashioned styles of dress rather than cutting-edge trends.

Anna Reynolds, curator of Style & Society, said, “Dress is so much more than just what we see on the surface, and it’s fascinating what we can learn about a period when looking at it through a fashion history lens. Visitors might be surprised to learn how much the Georgian period has in common with the fashion landscape we know today, from influencers and fashion magazines to ideas about the value of clothes and how they can be recycled and repurposed.”

At the heart of the exhibition is a full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, ca.1781, depicting Queen Charlotte wearing a magnificent court gown. It will be shown alongside a beautifully preserved gown of a similar style, worn at Queen Charlotte’s court in the 1760s, on loan from the Fashion Museum Bath. Portraits throughout the exhibition will demonstrate how artists rendered magnificent gowns such as these in paint in exquisite detail, from the metallic woven silk in Antoine Pesne’s Duchess of Saxe-Wessenfels, to the bows and fine lace of Francis Cotes’ Princess Louisa and Princess Caroline.

Allan Ramsay’s life-size coronation portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte demonstrate how ceremonial clothing was carefully chosen to emphasise themes of continuity, tradition, and spectacle. Queen Charlotte wears a gown heavily embroidered with gold thread and a stomacher panel covered with diamonds. This stomacher, which no longer survives, was valued by a contemporary spectator at £60,000—the equivalent of almost £10 million today.

The exhibition trailer (above), engages with the painting St James’s Park and the Mall, by an unknown painter, ca. 1745, oil on canvas, 104 × 139 cm (London: Royal Collection, RCIN 405954).

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With the rise of a professional class, more women earning wages, and cheaper fabrics available, the 18th century saw fashion becoming more accessible to the masses. Pleasure gardens, theatres, and coffee houses provided new settings to show off the latest styles, and the first fashion periodicals spread up-to-the-minute trends, many inspired by clothing previously reserved for working-class or sporting pursuits. Pages from influential French fashion periodicals, on display for the first time, recommend looks inspired by men’s riding dress and military uniforms, both of which became popular everyday styles for women.

The Georgian period saw specific forms of children’s clothing introduced, designed with comfort, practicality and freedom of movement in mind. In Benjamin West’s 1782 portrait of Prince Octavius, the 13th child of George III and Queen Charlotte, the three-year-old wears a skeleton suit—a new style of children’s dress inspired by the working-class clothing of sailors and fishermen. The young prince, perhaps playing at being king, is shown carrying his father’s sword, which will be shown alongside the painting, both on public display for the first time.

Georgian jewellery was often highly personal and sentimental. Items on display include diamond rings given to Queen Charlotte on her wedding day and a bracelet with nine lockets, six containing locks of hair and one with a miniature of the left eye of Princess Charlotte of Wales. As with textiles, jewellery was often repurposed; a striking necklace was made from pearl-adorned dress-coat buttons that had belonged to George III. Other accessories that may be less familiar to visitors will include jewel-encrusted snuffboxes and chatelaines, which were attached to the waist and used to carry items from pocket watches to perfume bottles.

The exhibition also explores the hair, cosmetics, and grooming tools used by Georgian men and women to achieve their elaborate styles, as well as 18th-century developments in eyewear and dentistry. On show for the first time is a silver-gilt travelling toilet service, acquired by the future George IV as a gift for his private secretary at a cost of £300, the equivalent of more than £20,000 today. The toilet service gives a remarkable insight into a Georgian gentleman’s grooming routine, containing more than 100 objects including razors, combs, ear spoons, and tongue scrapers—as well as tools for cleaning guns and making hot chocolate.

Anna Reynolds, Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2023), 344 pages, ISBN: 978-1909741850, £40 / $50.

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Note (added 20 April 2024) — The posting was updated to include information on the exhibition as presented in Edinburgh.

Giuseppe Marchesi, known as il Sansone, Moses and the Daughters of Jethro / Mosé e le figlie di Jethro, ca. 1720–25, oil on canvas
(Private Collection)

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Bologna’s Musei Civici d’Arte Antica hosts the first monographic exhibition on the early career of the painter Giuseppe Marchesi, known as Samson.

Leggiadro Barocco: L’attività giovanile di Giuseppe Marchesi detto il Sansone
Collezioni Comunali d’Arte, Palazzo d’Accursio, Bologna, 1 April — 2 September 2023

Curated by Antonella Mampieri and Angelo Mazza

Giuseppe Marchesi (1699–1771)—of restless temperament and imposing build, to which he owed his nickname ‘Samson’—was among the most fruitful painters in cosmopolitan 18th-century Bologna, where the art scene was as lively as ever. He was, however, forgotten as a result of changes in the history of taste. Leggiadro Barocco: L’attività giovanile di Giuseppe Marchesi detto il Sansone aims to rediscover this significant painter from the classicist side of the Bolognese school. A pupil of leading artists of the previous generation, including Aureliano Milani and Marcantonio Franceschini, Marchesi was part of the local painting tradition that found an indispensable model in the Carracci and their pupils—particularly Guido Reni, Francesco Albani, and Domenichino.

Giuseppe Marchesi, known as il Sansone, Autumn, from The Four Seasons, ca. 1725, oil on canvas (Bologna: Pinacoteca Nazionale).

This stylistic orientation was also supported and promoted by the city’s main artistic institution, the Accademia Clementina, to which Marchesi belonged, holding a variety of positions, didactic and directorial, until his appointment as Principe in 1752. His subsequent artistic evolution led him to the gradual abandonment of an Arcadian classicism in favor of an almost Mannerist style, similar to that of Francesco Monti and Vittorio Maria Bigari. Marchesi’s biography, present only in the manuscript lives composed by the Bolognese scholar Marcello Oretti in the second half of the century, is missing in Luigi Crespi’s Felsina Pittrice (1739) and appears only marginally in the Storia dell ’ Accademia Clementina by Giampietro Zanotti (1739), who nevertheless recognized, along with Luigi Lanzi, Marchesi’s remarkable artistic qualities for “a manner of painting so beautiful and so strong, that all delight, and good, and great fame comes to him.”

Early on there was overlap between Marchesi’s work and that of his contemporary Ercole Graziani, so much so that at the 1935 Mostra del Settecento Bolognese, which marked the resurgence of interest in this period of local art history, many of the works now ascribed to Marchesi were attributed to Graziani. It was up to critic Renato Roli to make a brilliant first reconstruction of Marchesi’s oeuvre in 1971, distinguishing the hands of the two painters. Subsequent studies, conducted mainly by Antonella Mampieri and Angelo Mazza, expanded the catalogue of known paintings, adding specimens of graphics and engravings made from Marchesi’s drawings. The ability to blend warm colors and strong musculature, derived from the Carracci, with the Arcadian grace of drawing, typical of Franceschini’s painting, made Samson a fashionable painter, up to date with the post-Baroque trends that were already in vogue in France and Austria, appreciated by the public and his colleagues.

A prolific and garrulous petit maître, his lively narrative vein yielded extremely pleasing results, especially in his younger years. The culmination of this phase was the fresco decoration of the vault and apse of the church of Santa Maria di Galliera, in Bologna, Marchesi’s first great public commission (1732–44), which established his reputation as a painter at home, in other Italian regions, and in other European countries, including England and Holland.

Giuseppe Marchesi, known as il Sansone, The Abduction of Helen, 1725 (Bologna: Collezioni d’Arte e di Storia della Cassa di Risparmio).

The exhibition, designed for the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte, which keeps in its permanent collection the painting Clement VIII Returning the Keys of the City to the Elders of Bologna, focuses on the early period of the artist’s elegant and graceful career: his relationship with Marcantonio Franceschini, who transmitted to him his moderate Arcadian taste, to 1725, the conventional starting point of Marchesi’s independent career. Two paintings recently found on the antiques market and exhibited here for the first time from a private collection—Moses and the Daughters of Jethro and Solomon Censoring the Idols, the success of which is demonstrated by the presence of copies at the Museo Diocesano in Imola—and other examples of paintings of sacred and profane themes demonstrate the artist’s youthful style. These include the Four Seasons from the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and The Drunkenness of Noah, now in a private collection. Completing the exhibition are a miniature Portrait of a Maiden preserved at the Museo Civico d’Arte Industriale and Galleria Davia Bargellini and two lively drawings from the the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna: The Abduction of the Sabine Women and The Abduction of Helen, preparatory projects for a large painting to be made in the hall of honor of the house that later belonged to the Buratti merchants, promoters of the arts and various Bolognese artists. Only the second one, dated 1725, was later realized by the painter, opening his documented career.

Leggiadro Barocco: L’attività giovanile di Giuseppe Marchesi detto il Sansone proposes a renewed reading of this protagonist of the Bolognese ’barocchetto’, allowing new hypotheses on the chronological ordering of his early work. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication edited by Antonella Mampieri and Angelo Mazza, with the collaboration of Silvia Battistini, a preface by Massimo Medica, text by Mirko Bonora, and essays by Antonella Mampieri and Angelo Mazza.

From the French National Archives and the Boutiques de musées:

Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and the Revolution: The Royal Family at the Tuileries, 1789–1792
Archives Nationales / Hôtel de Soubise, Paris, 29 March — 6 November 2023

Curated by Isabelle Aristide-Hastir, Jean-Christian Petitfils, and Emmanuel de Waresquiel

A period of almost three years separated the end of the ancien régime from the collapse of the French monarchy. Between 1789 and 1792, the royal family, forced to leave Versailles and its splendour, lived under house arrest in Paris, in the Tuileries Palace. Through archival documents, engravings, works of art, and pieces of furniture from the Tuileries, this tumultuous period is presented in the exhibition with a particular focus on the daily life of the royal couple, Marie-Antoinette’s secret correspondence with the Swedish Count Axel de Fersen, and the intimacy of a palace that has since disappeared.

Les Archives nationales éclairent d’un jour nouveau la période méconnue qui a suivi les événements de 1789. Cette exposition rassemble une centaine de documents, tableaux, gravures et plusieurs éléments de mobilier, et propose une immersion dans le quotidien de la famille royale, depuis son départ de Versailles pour les Tuileries jusqu’à la chute de la monarchie.

Comment la famille royale a-t-elle vécu la période de grande tension politique qui a suivi le déclenchement de la Révolution ? À quoi ressemblait la vie de la cour dans l’enceinte des Tuileries ? De quelle manière le roi et la reine ressentaient-ils le tumulte de la rue et la pression de l’opinion publique ? Autant de questions qui sont au cœur de l’exposition Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette et la Révolution. La famille royale aux Tuileries, 1789–1792, présentée par les Archives nationales, à l’hôtel de Soubise, du 29 mars au 6 novembre 2023.

Riche en événements politiques, cet épisode de mille jours est bien représenté dans les archives et l’iconographie. Entre autres documents inédits ou méconnus, les visiteurs pourront ainsi découvrir le prAdolf Ulrik Wertmüller, Portrait de la reine Marie-Antoinette, vers 1785–1788. Marie-Antoinette est ici représentée dans une tenue d’intérieur. Le peintre suédois Wertmüller a aussi peint la reine en 1785 avec ses deux enfants dans le jardin de Trianon, et en 1788 en habit d’amazone. Collection particulièreé-cieux journal de Louis XVI (« Mardi 14 juillet : rien ») ouvert aux pages des années 1791–1792, son manifeste politique aux Français (20 juin 1791), un portrait de la reine très rarement exposé et la correspondance secrète entre Marie-Antoinette et le comte de Fersen. Pour la première fois, le contenu de leurs lettres codées, chiffrées et caviardées sera révélé au grand public. L’une des facettes les plus fascinantes de cette période fondatrice de l’histoire de France, marquée Lettre de Marie-Antoinette à Fersen (copie faite par Fersen), avec passages caviardés. Autographe, 26 septembre 1791par la fin d’un règne et la naissance d’un monde nouveau.

Isabelle Aristide-Hastir, Jean-Christian Petitfils, Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Lucien Bély, and Philip Mansel, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette et la Révolution: La famille royale aux Tuileries, 1789–1792 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2023), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-2072974618, €30.

The cover of the catalogue comes from a print after Jean-Louis Prieur, Siege and Capture of the Château des Tuileries on 10 August 1792 / Siège et prise du château des Tuileries le 10 août 1792, ca. 1792 (Paris: Archives nationales, AE/II/3019).