Exhibition | Archive of the World: Spanish America, 1500–1800
The exhibition closes at LACMA this weekend, but the catalogue remains available, and a version of the show will open at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum this time next year and then in Saint Louis in 2024.
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 June — 30 October 2022
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 20 October 2023 — 28 January 2024
Saint Louis Art Museum, 22 June — 1 September 2024
Curated by Ilona Katzew
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 is the first exhibition of LACMA’s notable holdings of Spanish American art. Following the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas in the 15th century, the region developed complex artistic traditions that drew on Indigenous, European, Asian, and African art. The Spanish conquest of the Philippines in 1565 inaugurated a commercial route that connected Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Private homes and civic and ecclesiastic institutions in Spanish America were filled with imported and locally made objects. Many local objects also traveled across the globe, attesting to their wide appeal. This confluence of riches signaled the status of the Americas as a major emporium—what one author described as “the archive of the world.” Featuring approximately 90 works, including several recent acquisitions, the exhibition emphasizes the creative power of Spanish America.
Following its presentation at LACMA, Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 will be on view at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, from 20 October 2023 through 28 January 2024.
The press release is available as a PDF file here»
Ilona Katzew, ed., Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Highlights from LACMA’s Collection (New York: DelMonico Books, 2022), 391 pages, ISBN: 978-1636810201, $85. With contributions by Ilona Katzew, Pablo F. Amador Marrero, Rafael Barrientos Martínez, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, Carlos F. Duarte, Clarissa M. Esguerra, Cristina Esteras Martín, Alejandra Mayela Flores Enríquez, Aaron M. Hyman, Rachel Kaplan, Paula Mues Orts, Jeanette Favrot Peterson, Elena Phipps, JoAnna M. Reyes, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Edward J. Sullivan, and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Designed by Lorraine Wild and Xiaoqing Wang, Green Dragon Office.
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Note (added 13 June 2024)— The posting was updated to include the Saint Louis Art Museum as a venue; there, the exhibition is entitled simply Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Highlights from LACMA’s Collection.
The Burlington Magazine, September 2022
The eighteenth century in the September issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 164 (September 2022)
E D I T O R I A L
• “A Practical Guide to Restitution,” p. 835.
A R T I C L E S
• Rahul Kulka, “Counter-Reformation Ambers: Friedrich Schmidt’s Workshop in Kretinga, Lithuania,” pp. 839–53.
On the basis of a unique signed and dated domestic altarpiece it has been possible to attribute a significant body of work to the amber workshop of Friedrich Schmiddt, who worked in Kretinga in the seventeenth century. They include a reliquary of St Casimir given in 1678 with other works in amber to Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany by the Bishop-Elect of Vilnius, Mikolajus Steponas Pacas.
• Aurora Laurenti, “Nicolas Pineau as a Designer of Ornament Prints,” pp. 864–73.
Although designs by the woodcarver Nicolas Pineau in publication by Jean Mariette and Jacques-François Blondel played a significant role in the creation and dissemination of the Rococo style in the first half of the eighteenth century, they have never been studied in detail and their sequence and chronology have remained uncertain.
R E V I E W S
• Alison Wright, Review of the exhibition Gold (British Library, 2022), pp. 910–12.
• Philippe Bordes, Review of the exhibition Le Voyage en Italie de Louis Gauffier (Montpellier, 2022) and the catalogue raisonné by Anna Ottani Cavina and Emilia Calbi, Louis Gauffier: Un pittore francese in Italia (Silvana Editoriale, 2022), pp. 915–18.
• Ariane Varela Braga, Review of Dario Gamboni, Jessica Richardson, and Gerhard Wolf, The Aesthetics of Marble: From Late Antiquity to the Present (Hirmer, 2021), p. 934.
• Celia Curnow, Review of J.V.G. Mallet and Elisa Sani, eds., Maiolica in Italy and Beyond: Papers of a Symposium held at Oxford in Celebration of Timothy Wilson’s Catalogue of Maiolica in the Ashmolean Museum (Ashmolean Museum, 2021), pp. 937–38.
• François Marandet, Review of Delphine Bastet, Les Mays de Notre-Dame de Paris, 1630–1707 (Arthena, 2021), pp. 938–40.
• John Bold, Review of Christina Strunck, Britain and the Continent 1660–1727: Political Crisis and Conflict Resolution in Mural Paintings at Windsor, Chelsea, Chatsworth, Hampton Court and Greenwich (De Gruyter, 2021), pp. 940–41.
• Mark Stocker, Review of Matthew Potter, Representing the Past in the Art of the Long Nineteenth Century: Historicism, Postmodernism, and Internationalism (Routledge, 2021), pp. 941–42.
• Yuriko Jackall, Review of Alan Hollinghurst and Xavier F. Salomon, Fragonard’s Progress of Love (Frick Collection, 2022), pp. 945–46.
O B I T U A R I E S
• Tim Knox, Obituary for John Harris (1931–2022), pp. 950–52.
Exhibition | ‘I Made This …’: The Work of Black American Artists
From the press release (19 September 2022) for the exhibition:
‘I Made This …’: The Work of Black American Artists and Artisans
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 22 October 2022 — 31 December 2025
Armchair probably by enslaved artisans working in the Monticello Joinery, Albemarle County, Virginia, 1790–1815. Cherry, linen, tow, hair, leather, and brass (Colonial Williamsburg, 1994-107).
For the first time, the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg will display a wide range of works from their heralded decorative arts and folk arts collections made exclusively by Black artists from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The exhibition will include nearly 30 examples of paintings, furniture, textiles, decorative sculptures, quilts, ceramics, tools, metals, and more, including new acquisitions, and will focus on the makers and their stories. ‘I Made This …’: The Work of Black American Artists and Artisans will open on October 22 in the Miodrag and Elizabeth Ridgely Blagojevich Gallery of the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and will remain on view until 31 December 2025. Among the objects to be presented are works by noted Black artists and artisans including David Drake, Bill Traylor, Thornton Dial, Sr., Cesar Chelor, Clementine Hunter, William Edmondson, members of the Gee’s Bend quilting community, as well as less known or anonymous makers.
“Colonial Williamsburg has long sought to acquire objects that illustrate the diverse nature of early American society,” said Ronald Hurst, the Foundation’s Senior Vice President, Education and Historic Resources and The Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator. “The documented works of gifted Black artists and artisans have long been included in our exhibitions, but we have rarely had the opportunity to mount an exhibition that looks solely at this rich body of material. This is an important and timely undertaking.”
The curation of ‘I Made This …’ is also an important first for the Art Museums. Colonial Williamsburg employees from across the Foundation’s various disciplines assembled to assist with the exhibition. The diverse advisory group—comprised of Black and white staff from the historic trades, museum theater, orientation, historic sites, curatorial services, archaeology, and conservation departments—met over the course of several months to discuss exhibit themes and to help with object selection. The outcome of their individual experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives guided important conversations, among them the decision to emphasize the personal stories of Black artists and makers alongside their objects in the exhibition. Committee members also worked with input from Foundation curators and conservators to refine a list of 140 objects from Colonial Williamsburg’s collections down to nearly 30 pieces in addition to several rotations of light-sensitive material.
A central concept of the exhibition is the idea to highlight makers from various circumstances and backgrounds in a way that celebrates their achievement, artistry, and craftsmanship over the course of three centuries. This was done by placing a diverse grouping of objects from various time periods alongside one another. While the creation of a multi-media, cross-disciplinary exhibition on African American art is new for Colonial Williamsburg, the acquisition and exhibition of Black-made objects goes back at least 75 years. The Foundation’s commitment to telling the larger story of American craft is also evident in the recent acquisition of important objects by Black artists and artisans. Nearly one third of the objects in the exhibition are comprised of pieces acquired within the past five years.
One exciting outcome of this project is new discovery. Ongoing research in the areas of furniture, textiles, mechanical arts, and painting has led to renewed scholarship, updated maker attributions, and groundbreaking findings on artists painting techniques. A symposium planned for November 2023 will feature scholars speaking on a variety of these topics related to African American art and craftsmanship.
Jug by David Drake, Edgefield, South Carolina, 1842, alkaline-glazed stoneware (Colonial Williamsburg, 2021.900.24).
The exhibition’s title quote, “I made this …,” comes from David Drake (ca. 1801–ca. 1875), among the more well-known artisans whose work will be featured. Drake is one of the few enslaved potters in 19th-century America whose work can be specifically attributed. Working in the Edgefield district of South Carolina, Drake is one of the very few enslaved potters known to sign and date his wares at a time when literacy for the enslaved was illegal. He often inscribed verses on his pots; several began with the words, “I made this ….” Drake may have learned to read and write from his first enslaver, Harvey Drake.
A five-gallon jug, made by Drake of ash-glazed stoneware and on view for the first time at the Art Museums, is among the highlights of the exhibition. Very few two-handled Drake jugs are known, and even fewer are signed and dated. This example, made at Stoney Bluff plantation in Edgefield, is the tallest of his recorded jugs at nearly 20 inches and is a monumental example of his outstanding potting techniques. It is dated “April 26, 1842” on one side and reads “L. Miles Dave” on the other, referencing Lewis J. Miles and Drake himself. Drake began working for Lewis Miles in 1840, while enslaved by John Landrum who died in 1846. In 1849, Miles became Drake’s enslaver.
Another featured work that will delight visitors is a 1993 watercolor on paper by Thornton Dial, Sr. (1928–2016), simply titled Painting and made in Bessemer, Alabama. The artist lived his entire life around Bessemer. Always interested in working with his hands, Dial toiled at odd jobs ranging from carpentry to iron work. In his spare time, he made sculptures from recycled materials. He worked for 28 years for the Pullman Standard Company where he learned about drawing from studying machine illustrations. Once Dial began to draw, he was prolific in the production of his pictures using them as a means for expressing his ideas and feelings. Tigers symbolized empowerment for him and were often a subject in his art as exemplified by this painting. As Dial said in 1995 and 1996 interviews, “Art is like a bright star up ahead in the darkness of the world. It can lead peoples through the darkness and help them from being afraid of the darkness. Art is a guide for every person who is looking for something. That’s how I can describe myself: Mr. Dial is a man looking for something.”
Sampler by Sarrah Ann Pollard, 1818, flat silk embroidery threads on a linen ground of 27 × 27 threads per inch, 53 × 52 cm (Williamsburg Foundation, 2011-103).
One of the notable textile examples to be seen in this exhibition is a sampler made in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1818 by Sarrah Ann Pollard (dates unknown), a student at the Salem African School. The primary goal of African schools was to provide religious instruction to Black children. Making samplers provided instruction for girls in arithmetic and spelling in addition to stitching. Sarrah’s teacher was Clarissa Lawrence, who presided over the school from 1807 to 1823. In 1832 Lawrence became a charter member of the Salem Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, established by free Black women, and served as chair for the Society’s committee for the Salem African School, helping to underwrite the teacher’s salary and provide substitute teaching when necessary. Lawrence was chosen in 1839 as a delegate to the third annual Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. During a discussion about improving education for Black children, Lawrence addressed the convention saying in part, “We meet the monster prejudice everywhere … we are blamed for not filling useful places in society; but give us light, give us learning, and see what places we can occupy.”
New to the Foundation’s furniture collection and included in ‘I Made This …’ is a side chair made by Thomas Day, a free Black craftsman from Milton, North Carolina. Day learned the art of cabinetmaking from his father, later operating his own shop from the early 1820s until his death in 1861. Day employed free Black, white and enslaved workers in the production of furniture and architectural woodwork. He was well-regarded by local society, often described by customers and neighbors as “steady and industrious,” and considered to be a “first rate workman,” and a “highminded, good, and valuable citizen.” His attendance at The Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour in Philadelphia in 1835 and ties to national abolitionist leaders suggests he quietly harbored anti-slavery sentiments that he likely dared not share outside his family. This chair may have been originally owned by Day’s neighbors and fellow Presbyterian parishioners Samuel and Elizabeth Watkins, owners of the building that Day purchased for his shop and home in 1848.
Special programming related to the exhibition will include ‘Expert Insights’ talks with Colonial Williamsburg curators and educators who will offer an in-depth look at the Black artists and artisans featured in I Made This …’ on Tuesdays at 10.30am October 25, November 1, 8, and 15. On Wednesday afternoons at 3.00pm (October 26, November 2, 9, and 16) visitors can join ‘Works by Black Artists and Artisans’ tours, in which they can tour the museum galleries, including this exhibition, to explore decorative arts and folk art made by Black artists and artisans.
Additionally, an exhibition conference will be held 10–11 November 2023, with keynote lectures from founding members of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archives, Dr. Tiffany Momon (visiting assistant professor at Sewanee: The University of the South) and Dr. Torren Gatson (assistant professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro), along with an opening dinner and presentation specially designed by James Beard award-winning author Michael Twitty. Dr. Bernie Herman (the George B. Tindall Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) rounds out the lineup of guest lecturers.
‘I Made This …’: The Work of Black American Artists and Artisans is generously funded by a grant from The Americana Foundation.
Smithsonian Commitments to the Center for the Study of Global Slavery
Brownell’s recent article for The New York Times highlights priorities of the National Museum of African American History and Culture—as first established under the leadership of Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director, who now oversees the entire Smithsonian Institution—as well as forthcoming projects including the international exhibition In Slavery’s Wake.
Ginanne Brownell, “A Smithsonian Museum Sharpens Focus on the History of Slavery,” The New York Times (14 October 2022). Despite ambivalence from some on the topic, the institution’s latest leader “knew that slavery had to be at the heart of the museum.”
Exterior view of the National Museum of African American History and Culture; Washington, DC (Photo by Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC).
“Every nation is ambivalent about slavery,” said Mr. [Lonnie] Bunch, the first African American to lead the Smithsonian. “The people of color are ambivalent: Is this something to be embarrassed by? Is this something that is better left unsaid? So basically, I knew that slavery had to be at the heart of the museum.”
When the museum [National Museum of African American History and Culture] opened in 2017, so did the Center for the Study of Global Slavery within it. The center’s work focuses on three international collaborative initiatives: the Slave Wrecks Project, the Global Curatorial Project, and the Slave Voyages Consortium.
The Slave Wrecks Project helps coordinate searches for sunken slave ships and works on maritime archaeological research and historical recovery. This month in Senegal, the inaugural Slave Wrecks Project Academy’s cohort of African and diaspora students are being trained in diving and learning about the global slave trade. The center also works with slavevoyages.org to help expand data collection beyond the trans-Atlantic slave trade and is working to broaden research into both the Indian Ocean and inter-American slave trades.
Under the auspices of the Global Curatorial Project, a number of partner institutions—including Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, Iziko Slave Lodge in Cape Town, and Belgium’s Royal Museum of Central Africa—are in the midst of putting together In Slavery’s Wake, a traveling exhibition that will open first at the museum in Washington in late 2024 and then move to Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
The center will be hosting an event in Lisbon, Portugal in January, with a tentative title Reckoning with Race: The Social Memory of the Slave Trade in Our World, that will aim to bring more public attention to the role that Portugal played in the slave trade. Mr. Bunch will be one of the event’s speakers. . . .
The full article is available here»
Symposium | Early Modern Global Political Art
From the Krannert Art Museum:
Early Modern Global Political Art
In-person and online, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 20–21 October 2022
Romeyn de Hooghe, Marriage of William and Mary, 1677, etching (Krannert Art Museum, 2019.7.7).
Featuring emerging scholarship on the art of this period against the backdrop of the exhibition Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic, Krannert Art Museum hosts a symposium on Early Modern Global Political Art.
In the early modern period, nations, nobles, corporations, religious groups, and others found dynamic and innovative ways to use the visual arts for a wide range of political purposes. Nations dispatched elaborate diplomatic gifts to initiate and consolidate alliances. Aristocratic powers and individual collectors alike amassed collections to convey and enhance their political and economic power. Courts and cities produced ephemeral decorations to assert and display ideal political relations between nobility and their subjects, and between regional and outside authorities. Broadsheets addressing factional conflicts within and among institutions proliferated with the expansion of affordable print media. This symposium will investigate visual media that communicated political ideas, arguments, positions, and forms of resistance in the early modern period.
The event will be hybrid, blending in person presentations with online presentations via Zoom to facilitate greater accessibility and wider participation. All virtual components will be live captioned in English via Zoom. If you have a question or an accessibility request, please email us at kam-accessibility@illinois.edu. Registration is required for virtual and in-person components of the symposium.
Keynote Speakers
Dawn Odell (Lewis & Clark College) — Dr. Odell studies artistic exchange between China and northern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is currently writing a book on Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, an 18th-century Dutch Immigrant to the newly formed United States whose travelogues and Chinese porcelain collection were leveraged for social and political power.
Liza Oliver (Wellesley College) — Dr. Oliver’s research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century India, Europe, and the West Indies. Her current projects include the book Empire of Hunger: Representing Famine, Land, and Labor in Colonial India and work about British prints about abolition and the Haitian Revolution.
T H U R S D A Y , 2 0 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2
9.00 Catholic Rulership around the World, Part One
• Moyun Zhou (PhD Candidate, University of Hong Kong), Can You Feel Me? The Global Space of St. Paul’s in Macao, 1592–1644
• Maria Vittoria Spissu (Senior Assistant Professor, University of Bologna and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow), Bonds and Tenets in the Wider Iberian Catholic Universe: Fostering Political Unanimity by Means of Early Modern Altarpieces and Books
• Małgorzata Biłozór-Salwa (Curator of Old Master Drawings, University of Warsaw Library), Let’s Make A Crusade! Power of Images Under Louis XIII
10.20 Fashion, Part One
• Isabel Escalera (PhD Candidate, University of Valladolid), Jewelry as A Political Instrument: Renaissance Women and the Transmission of Their Power
• Diana Lucía Gómez-Chacón (Faculty, Complutense University of Madrid), Fashion as A Political Art: Gender, Monarchy, and Spectacle in Early Modern Castile
11.15 Negotiating Political Power in Republics
• Răzvan-Iulian Rusu (Graduate Student, Utrecht University), Global Gifts of Johan Maurits: Patronage, Image-Formation, Art & Material Culture
• Laura Blom (Postdoctoral Fellow, Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence), Death as Dissent: The Macabre and the Medici in Renaissance Florence
5.30 Keynote Lecture
• Liza Oliver (Associate Professor of Art, Wellesley College), An Economy of Sentiment: The Shared Language of Abolitionists and the West India Interest in Late 18th-Century British Print Culture link»
This talk considers how spectatorial sympathy, a governing principle of 18th-century British art and literature, was deployed by opposing sides of the debate on Britain’s slave trade in the decades preceding its abolition. Considering broadsides, travel narratives, and caricatures, it argues for the ways in which sentiment became a common visual currency among both abolitionists and the pro-slavery lobby, with each side respectively seeking to sever or reaffirm the connection between morality on the one hand and self-interest and economic prosperity on the other.
F R I D A Y , 2 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Catholic Rulership around the World, Part Two
• Rachel Wise (2020 PhD in Art History, University of Pennsylvania), A Royal Devotion: Printed Habsburg Propaganda and the 80 Years’ War
• Angela Ho (Associate Professor, George Madison University), Risks and Payoffs: Ferdinand Verbiest’s World Map for Kangxi in Political Context
11.00 Fashion, Part Two
• Heather Hughes (Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art), Recognizing the Enemy: The Spaniard in Dutch and Flemish Costume Prints
• Nancy Karrels (2022 PhD in Art History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Women for Bonaparte: Political Prints and Female Self-Fashioning in France’s Cultural Conquests
12.00 Lunch Break
1.30 Keynote
• Dawn Odell (Associate Professor of Art History, Lewis & Clark College), The Politics of Personhood in A.E. Van Braam Houckgeest’s China Memoir link»
Following his participation in the Dutch East India Company’s last embassy to the Chinese court (1794–95), A.E. van Braam Houckgeest moved to Philadelphia with an enormous personal collection of Chinese art. This talk explores van Braam’s self-fashioning through his collaboration with two unnamed Guangzhou artists and the French émigré printer and defender of race-based slavery, M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry. The illustrated memoir these men produced places van Braam’s textual narrative within an expansive visual environment of Chinese landscape paintings and other works of Asian art, conjuring artistic presences as testaments to the author’s self-proclaimed virtue, prestige, and republican ideals.
3.00 Tour of Fake News and Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic
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From the Krannert:
Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 25 August — 17 December 2022
Curated by Maureen Warren
Comedians, editorial cartoons, and memes harness the power of satire, parody, and hyperbole to provoke laughter, indignation—even action. These forms of expression are usually traced to eighteenth-century artists, such as William Hogarth, but they are grounded in the unprecedented freedom of artistic expression in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.
Maureen Warren, ed., with contributions by Wolfgang Cillessen, Meredith McNeill Hale, Daniel Horst, Maureen Warren, and Ilja Veldman, Paper Knives, Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, 2022), 184 pages, ISBN: 978-1646570294, $40.
Exhibition | Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
From the press release for the exhibition:
Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 14 August 2022 — 8 January 2023
The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America, an ambitious and timely show that explores the production, meaning, and representation of fabric and garments as they were experienced in civil and religious settings across Latin America during the 1700s. Painted Cloth features over 70 objects produced in five countries from the Blanton’s growing collection of art of the Spanish Americas, alongside key loans from distinguished institutions and private collections around the world.
Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor, Cusco, 18th century, oil with gold leaf on canvas, 105 × 73 inches (Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)
“With the opening of Painted Cloth, we’re thrilled to finally unveil the extraordinary exhibition made possible by our longstanding partnership with the Thoma Foundation, whose investment and belief in the Blanton over the years has strengthened our commitment to the study of art of the Spanish and Portuguese Americas,” said Blanton director Simone Wicha. “Thanks to their support, the work of Rosario I. Granados, the first Marilynn Thoma Associate Curator, Art of the Spanish Americas, has advanced significant scholarship in this still underrepresented era of art history. The elaborate fabrics, fashion, and other richly textured works in this show are not only a feast for the eyes, they also will give our audiences a good look into everyday life during an era of dynamic cultural exchange and show how clothing—then as now—is so intertwined with our identities. Equally beautiful as it is insightful, Painted Cloth is sure to inspire conversations about race and colonialism’s complex legacies and offer a greater understanding of this period in Latin America’s history.”
An unquestionable marker of identity, clothing distills complex relationships between race, gender, religion, and class. Painted Cloth reflects on the social roles of textiles and their visual representations, emphasizing how aesthetic traditions of Indigenous and European origin wove themselves into civil, religious, and artistic life at a time when the Spanish monarchy imposed their rule in the region.
As the title references, the exhibition foregrounds not only beautifully crafted garments and textiles, but also explores how the practice of depicting textiles in paintings, sculptures, prints, and furnishings created a visual artifice that captured their aesthetic, ritual, and commercial value. This interplay between objects and images courses through five visually striking sections: Cloth Making, Wearing Social Status, Dressing the Sacred, The Holiness of Cloth, and Ritual Garments.
“Collectively, these groupings address how cloth and their representation in other media articulated narratives of social privilege and survival of cultural traditions, while also highlighting the mixed identity of colonial Latin America,” said Granados. “Garments are a lens by which we can recognize the many inequalities and societal contradictions that characterized the social fabric of this contested era, which altered the lives of so many Indigenous communities, but also the beauty of the Spanish America’s artistic production and thereby the diverse cultures of its peoples.”
José Joaquin Magón, Two Casta Paintings, ca. 1770.
Cloth Making
Painted Cloth begins with the manufacture and artistry of textiles in the 1700s. Works in the first section on Cloth Making underscore how various kinds of European and Indigenous garments were manufactured, emphasizing the role persons of different social status played in the industry. Included are works from the only series of casta paintings (a Mexican artistic genre that documents mixed-race couples and their children according to a caste system defined by Spanish elites) to prominently showcase women as integral to the production of textile arts, from spinning and weaving wool to their work as seamstress and tailor’s aids. In one example of this series by Mexican painter José Joaquín Magón, a woman makes bobbin lace, a costly material that was commonly imported from Europe and adopted in local attire.
The interlacing of foreign materials and traditions with local practices is also present in a set of silk swatches from Mexico. Sent with official reports to the King of Spain, these rare fabric samples show the production of block-print patterns inspired by textiles from India that signal the presence of highly skilled silk weavers in the New Spanish (Mexican) capital. The Cuzqueña painting Virgen de los Sastres (Virgin of Tailors) gives evidence that tailors, many of whom were of mixed-race descent, produced liturgical vestments made from imported European silks and brocades—examples of which are seen in the last section of the exhibition.
Many of the works in this section also address how Indigenous and Christian notions of the sacred were combined. Christian missionaries in the Andes popularized iconography that linked spiritual devotion with the labor involved in manufacturing cloth, circulating paintings that depicted the Virgin Mary or Holy Family undertaking artistic or industrious activities. By depicting Mary embroidering and spinning, the two paintings La Casa de Nazareth (The House of Nazareth) and La Virgen niña hilando (The Child Mary Spinning) make a connection between Christianity and the Indigenous cultures’ regard for the sacred nature of textiles.
Wearing Social Status
Miguel Cabrera, Doña María de la Luz Padilla y Gómez de Cervantes, ca. 1760, oil on canvas, 43 × 33 inches (Brooklyn Museum).
The second and largest section of the exhibition, Wearing Social Status, explores how fashion codes determined social interactions and collective identities in terms of gender, race, and class. This is particularly visible in Mexican casta paintings and a unique series of Peruvian mestizaje paintings, on view in the U.S. for the first time, as well as in commissioned portraits—an increasingly popular genre in this period. Since few garments from the era have survived, such paintings, although ripe with artifices, serve as an invaluable source for the study of fashion and its social significance.
One of the most memorable features of this section is the pairing of painted garments in portraits with actual garments. Paintings of well-dressed Latin American sitters by Miguel Cabrera, one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of the period, demonstrate a desired social prestige, as evident in the great attention paid to the subject’s dress. These costly dresses and elegant three-piece suits are in dialogue with similar European costumes, illustrating the influence of global trade as well as French fashion.
Clothing is also relevant in the portraits Indigenous elite commissioned to assert noble ancestry. The figure in Inca Noblewoman, notably dressed in an intricate anuca, or women’s dress, resembles the first queen of the Inca dynasty, Mama Occllo. Such motifs and codes of dress establish the sitter’s connection to Inca royalty and, as the inscription makes clear, her status as the first Christian Inca woman. In conversation with this portrait is a late 17th-century camelid wool anacu embroidered with mermaids, Inca queens, and traditional Andean geometric patterns, accompanied by a silver fastening pin known as a ttipqui or tupo incised with the imperial double-headed eagle. These artifacts offer examples of fusing Incan and European motifs to negotiate identity in a colonial environment.
Dressing the Sacred
Inmaculada Concepción (Immaculate Conception), Guatemala, ca. 1740–80, silver and oil on wood, 34 inches high (Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019).
The exhibition’s third section exemplifies how religious material culture enhanced the experience of the holy for all social sectors. The use of fine materials in sacred objects amplified an object’s visual appearance, and with it, its sacred aura, thereby facilitating conversion and enhancing devotional practice. This is particularly true of the fabrics placed on imágenes de vestir, or ‘dress images’. These simple wooden structures were explicitly made to be clothed in rich fabrics, like the satin mantle on view, embroidered in gold and silver threads for a statue of the Virgin Mary.
In other instances, real fabrics were imitated by modeled silver, as in an example of a devotional sculpture from Guatemala, a practice that continues in the Central American country today. Fabrication of reality was likewise achieved by replicating golden embroideries and brocade fabrics using estofado, a technique that involves applying gold leaf to wooden surfaces. In two paintings from the so-called Cusco School, respectively depicting St. Lawrence and St. Jerome, gilded details emphasize the richness of saintly garments.
Brimming with golden brocades, the large painting Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante (Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor) bookends this section. The work, a brilliant example of a verdadero retrato, or ‘true portrait’, depicts the 16th-century cult statue of Our Lady of Bethlehem of Cusco placed on a processional platform. Displayed in a dimly lit gallery that alludes to the painting’s original display, viewers can get a sense of the effect such objects were intended to evoke.
Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, Cusco, 18th century, oil and gold on canvas, 38 × 52 inches
(Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma)
Holiness of Cloth
The fourth section, Holiness of Cloth, illuminates how the actual depiction of fabric was central to images that were believed to be of miraculous nature. Cloth could provide material substance to help elucidate abstract notions of the divine, as in examples from the Cusco School of painting, which introduced Andean renditions of Catholic subjects.
The painting Virgen del Carmen salvando a las almas del Purgatorio (Virgin of Carmel Saving Souls in Purgatory) depicts the Virgin Mary with an open cloak—a familiar iconography across the Spanish Americas that symbolized protection. In a disparate work that renders the iconographic Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple, tunics and mantles are gilded with brocateado, elaborate gold-brocade decoration, a technique characteristic of the Indigenous artistic production of Cusco.
In some cases, cloth becomes the divine itself, such as in Mexican painter José de Alzibar’s two works, united and on display together for the first time in history. The first, a representation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the national patron of Mexico, depicts the cloak of an Indigenous man where the sacred image was thought to have been miraculously imprinted. The second, La Verónica, depicts the Veil of Veronica, one of the most recognizable images in which cloth is represented as a vehicle for the holy.
Ritual Garments
The final section focuses on the use of fabric in church interiors and ritual ceremonies as well as in the formation of clerical identities. Since much of the material used was extraordinarily delicate, prone to damage and decay, paintings of the era help reconstruct an understanding of the use of cloth.
The hierarchical position of Catholic clergy could be recognized by distinct, standardized liturgical clothing. A small glass painting from Bolivia details the repertoire of garments and accessories worn by priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope, whereby the particular use of colors functioned as a key signifier of rank. In the case of the chasuble, the outermost vestment worn during the celebration of the Eucharist, four seasonal colors were used to represent the passage of time in the liturgical calendar. Although the chasuble was worn by the lowest rank of priest, the artifact on view from Mexico is crafted in fancy silks and embroidered with silken threads covered in silver and gold.
In the context of the Catholic church, the altar is an important ritual site; in the Spanish Americas it was lavishly decorated, as visual depictions like Misa frente al Cristo de los Temblores (Masses before Christ of the Earthquakes) convey. Like many works that depicted ideal Masses, this painting was created for a private home and painted from the view of a churchgoer to direct focus to the fine textiles and silverware covering the altar. On occasion, a less costly ‘painted cloth’ instead decorated the altar—exemplified by a canvas altar cloth with floral designs that mimic actual textiles. In contrast, a Guatemalan processional banner created entirely from silver emphasizes the use of even valuable materials to imitate cloth and create visual artifice.
“Painted Cloth rejoices in the artifice of the visual arts to uncover the complexities of human nature,” concluded Granados. “Together, I hope these stunning artworks and artifacts encourage reflection on values of the past and shed new light on the factors that have shaped contemporary Latin American experience.”
The exhibition includes works from the Blanton’s collection, including from the recently acquired Huber Collection, and loans from: Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Carl & Marilynn Thoma Collection, Chicago and Santa Fe, NM; Colección Andrés Blaisten, Mexico City; Colección Barbosa Stern, Lima; Denver Art Museum; Hispanic Society of America, New York; Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; Museo de Arte de Lima; Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima; Museo de América, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; Witte Museum, San Antonio.
Rosario Inés Granados, ed., Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1477323977, $45. With contributions by Granados, Ana Paulina Gámez Martínez, Julia McHugh, Ricardo Kusunoki Rodríguez, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi.
Exhibition | Canova: Sketching in Clay
Antonio Canova, Adam and Eve Mourning the Dead Abel, detail of Eve and Abel, ca. 1818–22, terracotta
(Possagno: Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova; photograph by Tony Sigel)
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Antonio Canova, at age 64, died on this day (13 October) 200 years ago; his clay models are the subject of a major exhibition opening in June. From the NGA:
Canova: Sketching in Clay
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 11 June — 9 October 2023
Art Institute of Chicago, 19 November 2023 — 18 March 2024
Curated by C. D. Dickerson and Emerson Bowyer
How does a sculptor turn an initial idea into a finished work of marble? For Antonio Canova (1757–1822), the most famous artist of Europe’s revolutionary period, the answer was with clay. Working with his hands and small tools, Canova produced dazzling sketch models in clay, which helped him plan his designs for his large statues in marble. Imprinted with the fire of his imagination, these sketches were boldly executed in mere minutes. Canova also made more finished models, sensuous in their details, that he showed to patrons or used as guides for carving. Approximately 40 of the some 60 of his surviving models reveal the artist’s extraordinary working process—a process that led to the creation of some of the most iconic works in the history of sculpture.
Canova: Sketching in Clay is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington and The Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is curated by C. D. Dickerson, curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art, and Emerson Bowyer, Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe, The Art Institute of Chicago.
C. D. Dickerson and Emerson Bowyer, with contributions by Anthony Sigel and Elyse Nelson, Canova: Sketching in Clay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0300269758, $65.
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Note (added 12 June 2023) — The original posting was updated to include information on the catalogue, which was published 6 June 2023.
Exhibition | Maria Hadfield Cosway
Now on view at the Fondazione Maria Cosway in Lodi, in the nineteenth-century rooms of the Collegio delle Grazie, the girls’ school that Cosway founded in 1812 (with additional information available here) . . .
Maria Hadfield Cosway
Fondazione Maria Cosway, Lodi, 23 September — 27 November 2022
Curated by Monja Faraoni and Laura Facchin with Massimiliano Ferrario and Maria Cristina Loi
Oltre cinquanta opere tra dipinti, lettere, spartititi musicali e sculture che ripercorrono la vita di Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760–1838) sono esposti a Lodi nella mostra a lei dedicata visitabile fino al 27 novembre.
Il visitatore sarà accompagnato nel percorso da pannelli esplicativi e didascalie che mettono in luce le fasi essenziali della biografia dell’artista e filantropa, nonché i personaggi e gli eventi della “Grande Storia” che segnarono le diverse fasi della sua vita. L’artista e donna di cultura è molto nota sia a Londra che negli Stati Uniti d’America per la sua amicizia con Thomas Jefferson, terzo Presidente USA. Un periodo della sua vita lo trascorse anche a Lodi, dove morì nel 1838.
La sua profonda convinzione nell’importanza dell’educazione per i giovani portò Maria Cosway ad aprire proprio a Lodi, nella sede dell’ex convento dei padri Minimi, il collegio della Beata Vergine Maria delle Grazie, destinato alle bambine dai 6 ai 12 anni, che ospiterà anche Vittoria Manzoni.
La mostra è stata organizzata dalla Fondazione Maria Cosway e vede la collaborazione di diverse realtà locali tra cui due istituti lodigiani, il liceo artistico Callisto Piazza e la Fondazione Luigi Clerici. Studenti ed insegnanti sono stati coinvolti nella creazione del catalogo e dell’allestimento delle diverse tappe dell’esposizione, visitabile presso la sede della Fondazione di via Paolo Gorini 10.
Monja Faraoni, Laura Facchin, Massimiliano Ferrario, and Maria Cristina Loi, eds., Maria Hadfield Cosway (Lodi: Fondazione Maria Cosway, 2022), 444 pages, ISBN: 979-1280950208.
S O M M A R I O
Presentazioni istituizionali
Maria Cosway tra Firenze, Londra, Parigi e Lodi: Le Ragioni della Mostra
• L’educazione in età napoleonica — Mario Riberi
• Maria Cosway in London, 1780–1790 and 1794–1801 — Stephen Lloyd
• ‘I am susceptible and everything that surrounds me has great power to magnetise me’: Maria Cosway e l’ambiente romantico — Massimiliano Ferrario
• Maria Cosway et l’ambiente artistico-letterario femminile fra la fine dell’Antico Regime e la Restaurazione — Laura Facchin
• Maria Cosway, Leonardo e Giuseppe Bossi: fra teorie artistiche e appunti figurativi — Rosalba Antonelli
• La musica nella vita e nel progetto educativo di Maria Cosway — Patrizia Fiorio
• Una storia ancora da raccontare: la biblioteca della Fondazione Maria Cosway — Francesco Laghezza e Beatrice Porchera
• La moda nella Parigi et nella Milano di Maria Cosway — Silvia Mira
• La vita di Blevio — Laura Facchin e Massimiliano Ferrario
• Un titolo nobitare per Maria Cosway — Luca Marcarini
• Gaetano Manfredini: ‘volente scultore pei quale l’ingiusta sorte non ha benigni sorris!’ e l’eterno volto di Maria Cosway — Beatrice Bolandrini
Catalogolo delle opere
Maria Cosway et gli Stati Uniti, a cura di Maria Cristina Loi
• ‘But that immense sea, makes it a great distance’: note sui carteggio Maria Cosway–Thomas Jefferson — Maria Cristina Loi
• Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway in Paris: art and affection — Susan R. Stein
Catalogo delle opere
L’allestimento della mostra Maria Hadfield Cosway — Elena Amoriello, Luca Armigero, Annalisa Aversa, Maria Teresa Carossa, Chiara Lupi, Susanna Marinoni e Angela Mento
Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi
Credit fotografici
Exhibition | Canaletto: A Venetian’s View
Canaletto, View of the Grand Canal Looking East from Palazzo Bembo to Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, mid 1730s, oil on canvas, 47 × 80 cm
(Woburn Abbey Collection, Bedfordshire)
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Now on view at Worcester City Art Gallery:
Canaletto: A Venetian’s View
Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, 1 October 2022 — 7 January 2023
Curated by Deborah Fox
Celebrating the work of Canaletto, particularly paintings commissioned by the 4th Duke of Bedford in the 1730s, the exhibition features stunning paintings from the Woburn Abbey Collection alongside artworks from Worcester’s Fine Art Collection and loans from Birmingham Museums, Tate, and Compton Verney.
Born in Venice, Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), commonly known as Canaletto, was an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. He became very popular with English collectors and visited England repeatedly between 1746 and 1756. Canaletto revolutionised the use of colour, ground, and canvas and pioneered the technique of painting from life, sitting in front of the subject outdoors as opposed to his contemporaries who completed paintings in the studio. Canaletto: A Venetian’s View explores the painter’s work and the impact he had on the generations of artists who followed him.
It is extremely rare for this hugely significant collection to leave Woburn Abbey, and this is the first time the paintings have been united with other examples of Canaletto’s work from Birmingham Museums and Compton Verney. The paintings on display comprise the largest set of paintings Canaletto produced for a single patron, John Russell, the 4th Duke of Bedford, who commissioned the works in the 1730s. They are considered the absolute best of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice. The exhibition is being described as the most ambitious in the history of Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum.
William Marlow, View on the Thames, ca. 1775, oil on canvas, 49 × 79 cm (London: Tate, T00930).
Deborah Fox, Senior Curator at the Art Gallery and Museum commented: “We are committed to bringing great art and artists to the region and through bringing Canaletto to Worcester we are offering a once in a generation opportunity to see these incredible artworks ‘on your doorstep’ as well as creating an opportunity to showcase and reinterpret important works in our own collection. We see this exhibition as a wonderful opportunity not only to bring world class art to the gallery, but also to examine its influence on some of Worcester’s best-loved artworks.”
The twenty paintings of Venice on loan from the Woburn Abbey Collection are accompanied by three other works by Canaletto—two views of Warwick Castle on loan from Birmingham Museums and a view of Vauxhall Gardens that normally hangs at Compton Verney—as well as by a wonderful work from Tate painted by William Marlow considered to be Canaletto’s natural heir. Canaletto’s influence is further explored through Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum’s own collection including a beautiful view of Worcester Cathedral by Marlow and works by Paul Sandby, Samuel Prout, and Samuel Rowlandson—all of whom were heavily influenced by Canaletto. Worcester’s most famous artist, B.W. Leader, is represented in the exhibition through the inclusion of one of his most famous works, February Fill Dyke (1881), also on loan from Birmingham Museums.
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Matthew Hirst, Canaletto in Context
Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, Thursday, 13 October 2022, 6pm
Matthew Hirst, Curator at Woburn Abbey, will discuss the fascinating paintings by Canaletto currently on display at Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, exploring their context in wider fine and decorative arts in the collections at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. Tickets include exhibition entry, a drink, and the talk.
Call for Papers | Rococo across Borders: Designers and Makers
From the Call for Papers:
Rococo across Borders: Designers and Makers
London, venue TBC, 24–25 March 2023
Organized by the Furniture History Society and the French Porcelain Society
Proposals due by 4 November 2022
We are delighted to announce that the Furniture History Society and the French Porcelain Society will be joining forces in Spring 2023 to hold a two-day symposium on the theme of Rococo across Borders: Designers and Makers. Using the Versailles exhibition Louis XV, Passion d’un roi / Passions of a King as our starting point, the symposium will broaden out to discuss the geographical spread of the style, the interaction between designers and makers, and the significant roles played by print culture and the evolving art market in disseminating the Rococo across Europe.
This symposium calls for papers that go beyond the traditional geographical, chronological, and conceptual fields of Rococo design to explore how it evolved throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, it aims to open up wider discussions about the historical contexts for Rococo ceramics and furniture, the place of the ‘Rococo’ in museums and art historical scholarship today, and its impact on contemporary makers. We invite submissions for 30-minute conference papers. Topics for consideration may include, but are not limited to the following:
• ‘Beyond Rococo’: ceramics, furniture, and decorative schemes outside France
• Networks: makers, designers, and consumers across borders
• Case studies of individual interiors or objects
• Changing reception: scholastic and the art market
Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words and a short biography to diana_davis@hotmail.co.uk and events@furniturehistorysociety.org by Friday, 4 November 2022. Please email events@furniturehistorysociety.org with any queries.
Organizing Committee
Diana Davis, Patricia Ferguson, Beatrice Goddard, Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, David Oakey, and Adriana Turpin
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Picture Credits: Top left to bottom right, Flower vase (cuvette Mahon), probably designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis, Sèvres Manufactory, soft-paste porcelain, ca. 1757–60 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974.356.592); Side chair, attributed to Benjamin Randolph, Philadelphia, mahogany, ca. 1769 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974.325); Vase, Chelsea factory, soft-paste porcelain, ca. 1762 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970.313.2a); Commode attributed to William Vile and John Cobb, mahogany, pine, gilt-bronze, ca. 1760 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 64.101.1142); Girandolle à branche de porcelaine garnie d’Or, from Oeuvres de Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, engraved by Gabriel Huquier, French, 1738–49 (Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 1921-6-212-29-b); Porcelain Room designed by Giuseppe Gricci, Real Fábrica de Porcelana del Buen Retiro, installed in the Palace of Aranjuez, 1763–65; Commode designed by Jean-François Cuvilliés, the Elder, pine partially painted and gilded, ca. 1735–40 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 28.154).
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