Exhibition | Carmontelle (1717–1806)
Carmontelle, Self-Portrait, ca. 1762; graphite, watercolor, red chalk, and gouache on paper
(Chantilly: Musée Condé)
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From the Domaine de Chantilly:
Carmontelle (1717–1806), ou la Douceur de Vivre / And the Age of Pleasures
Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly, 5 September 2020 — 28 March 2021
Curated by Nicole Garnier
A playwright, draughtsman, and landscape architect, Louis Carrogis— known as Carmontelle—was a brilliant connoisseur whose many talents reflect the cultivated and cosmopolitan world in which he lived. The organizer of festivities for the Duke of Orléans, famous for his portraits and improvised comedies called Proverbes, Carmontelle designed the Parc Monceau in Paris for the Duke of Chartres and perfected transparencies or long rolls of paper depicting delightful landscapes.
With sitters ranging from Mozart to Buffon, from Rameau to Baron Grimm, Carmontelle created a faithful portrait of mid-18th century Parisian society: princes of the blood, writers, philosophers, musicians, scientists, and elegant beauties of the ‘age of pleasures’—words coined by Talleyrand to describe the Ancien Régime. Thanks to Henri d’Orléans, Duke of Aumale (1822–1897), descendant of the Orléans who acquired the majority of this ensemble, the Condé museum at Chantilly has the best collection in the world of Carmontelle’s works with 484 drawn portraits and one transparency.
The son of a master cobbler, Louis Carrogis took the name ‘Carmontelle’ in 1744 after studying geometry. A topographer during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), he spent his spare time making portraits of the officers and organizing improvised comedies. In 1759, he entered the service of the Duke of Orleans as tutor to the young Duke of Chartres (1747–1793), the next Duke of Orléans and future Philippe Egalité; and from 1755 to 1784, he created ‘bad but accurate likenesses’ (Grimm) in gouache and watercolour of the entire court of the Orléans family at the Palais-Royal, Saint-Cloud, and Villers-Cotterêts. As an amateur draughtsman, Carmontelle preferred profile portraits for their ease of execution.
Nicole Garnier-Pelle, Carmontelle (1717–1806) ou le Temps de la Douceur de Vivre: Collection les Carnets de Chantilly n11 (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 2020), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-2878442779, €20.
Note: The exhibition, originally scheduled to close in January, has been extended until the end of March.
Exhibition | Lines from Life: French Drawings
From The Clark—and please note next Thursday’s conversation with Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Anne Leonard, the details of which are included below:
Lines from Life: French Drawings from the Diamond Collection
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 12 July — 13 December 2020
Curated by Kristie Couser
Nineteenth-century French figure drawings embody a conceptual tension between academic methods of drawing the human form and freer approaches that challenged those conventions. The curriculum of the state-sponsored École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris and the esteemed Académie de France (French Academy) in Rome long considered drawings of the nude, studied and sketched live in the classroom, to be the ultimate measure of an artist’s skill. Modeled after ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and Renaissance examples, the predominantly white and male figure centered in works exploring historical, mythological, and religious themes was a physique that was not reflective of the diversity of human bodies. By midcentury many French artists—including those who originally trained in academic studios—signaled their creative independence with portraits and genre scenes representing ordinary and working people in natural poses. This exhibition traces transformations in figure drawing during a period in which these developing interests in Realism and contemporary life diverged from the idealism championed by public institutions.
François Louis Joseph Watteau (1758–1823), Sheet of Studies for ‘The Battle of Alexander’, ca. 1795; black chalk on off-white paper (The Clark Art Institute, Gift of Herbert and Carol Diamond, 2018.11.13).
The works on view span the nineteenth century and reveal the varied uses of figure drawing. Detailed studies addressing a model’s features and form commingle with swiftly drawn sketches that explore gesture and movement. Sheets bearing grid lines and handwritten annotations demonstrate the relationships between drawing and other media, including painting and printmaking. Many of these works illuminate the versatility of graphite, the primary instructional medium before the middle of the century. Compositions by artists associated with Realism, Impressionism, and other late nineteenth-century art currents evoke how the infusion of diverse media—chalk, charcoal, Conté crayon, and color pastel—often bolstered experimentation as artists increasingly depicted the people around them.
In celebration of the generous, ongoing gift of Herbert and Carol Diamond, this exhibition highlights works from the couple’s remarkable collection of more than 160 French drawings and sculptures, which they have assembled since 1964. The Diamonds’ particular fascination with the preparatory role of drawing broadens the Clark’s presentation of nineteenth-century French art—the cornerstone of the museum’s founding gift—and introduces works by artists not previously represented in the collection. Select figure studies from the Clark’s collection, which has continued to expand, join this display in the spirit of inviting a new look.
Lines from Life: French Drawings from the Diamond Collection is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Kristie Couser, curatorial assistant for works on paper.
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Clark Connects with Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
(Online) Thursday, 6:00–7:00pm, 3 December 2020
Join Ewa Lajer-Burcharth for a conversation on nineteenth-century drawing and the role of the body image. Professor Lajer-Burcharth, whose research spans from eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art to contemporary art, as well as feminist and critical theory, will be in dialogue with Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Anne Leonard.
Registration (required to receive Zoom log-in details) is available here.
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth is William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University. She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art and has written extensively on contemporary art.
Exhibition | Alexander von Humboldt and the United States
Now on view at SAAM:
Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 18 September 2020 — 3 January 2021
Organized by Eleanor Jones Harvey
Renowned Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. He lived for 90 years, published more than 36 books, traveled across four continents, and wrote well over 25,000 letters to an international network of colleagues and admirers. In 1804, after traveling four years in South America and Mexico, Humboldt spent exactly six weeks in the United States. In these six weeks, Humboldt—through a series of lively exchanges of ideas about the arts, science, politics, and exploration with influential figures such as President Thomas Jefferson and artist Charles Willson Peale—shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment.
Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture places American art squarely in the center of a conversation about Humboldt’s lasting influence on the way we think about our relationship to the natural world. Humboldt’s quest to understand the universe—his concern for climate change, his taxonomic curiosity centered on New World species of flora and fauna, and his belief that the arts were as important as the sciences for conveying the resultant sense of wonder in the interlocking aspects of our planet—make this a project evocative of how art illuminates some of the issues central to our relationship with nature and our stewardship of this planet.
Charles Willson Peale, Self-Portrait with Mastodon Bone, 1824, oil on canvas, 26 × 22 inches (New-York Historical Society, Purchase, James B. Wilbur Fund).
This exhibition will be the first to examine Humboldt’s impact on five spheres of American cultural development: the visual arts, sciences, literature, politics, and exploration, between 1804 and 1903. It centers on the fine arts as a lens through which to understand how deeply intertwined Humboldt’s ideas were with America’s emerging identity. The exhibition includes more than 100 paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts as well as a video introduction to Humboldt and his connections to the Smithsonian through an array of current projects and initiatives.
Artworks by Albert Bierstadt, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Church, Eastman Johnson, Samuel F.B. Morse, Charles Willson Peale, John Rogers, William James Stillman, and John Quincy Adams Ward, among others, will be on display. The installation features a digital exploration of Frederic Church’s famous landscape, Heart of the Andes (1859), enabling visitors to engage with the painting’s details in new ways. The wealth of detail is a painterly extrapolation of Humboldt’s plant geography map. The mountain at the center of the work, Chimborazo, was referred to as ‘Humboldt’s Mountain’. The narrated, 2.5D animated projection enables visitors to appreciate the connections between Church’s painting and Humboldt’s ideas.
The exhibition also includes the original ‘Peale Mastodon’ skeleton, on loan from the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, with ties to Humboldt, Peale and an emerging American national identity in the early nineteenth century. Its inclusion in the exhibition represents a homecoming for this important fossil that has been in Europe since 1847, and emphasizes that natural history and natural monuments bond Humboldt with the United States.
Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture is organized by Eleanor Jones Harvey, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A major catalogue, written by Harvey, accompanies the exhibition. The book shows how Humboldt inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans and extol America’s wilderness as a signature component of the nation’s sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt’s ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service.
Eleanor Jones Harvey, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-0691200804, £62 / $75.
Online Exhibition | Participez à la vie des académies d’art
Announcing the exhibition:
Participez à la vie des académies d’art… Portes ouvertes de 9 à 90 ans
An online exhibition of the ACA-RES programme
Organized by Émilie Roffidal and Anne Perrin Khelissa
How were artists and craftsmen trained in French art academies in the age of Enlightenment? The virtual exhibition Participez à la vie des académies d’art. Portes ouvertes de 9 à 90 ans is now available online. The result of a collective work combining research and training, the exhibition presents a selection of works from the teaching material and artistic production of art academies and provincial art schools in the 18th century. Most of the collections from these institutions were dispersed during the French Revolution between city museums, libraries, and other heritage collections such as art schools. Painted portraits of teachers, pupils, or amateurs are included, providing a more vivid testimony of the institutions. A whole little-known part of French heritage is honoured here.
This exhibition has been developed within the framework of the ACA-RES research programme on art academies and their networks in pre-industrial France (Les Académies d’art et leurs réseaux dans la France préindustrielle) supported by the FRAMESPA UMR 5136 laboratory of the Toulouse-Jean Jaures University, the Labex SMS, the Deutsches Forum Für Kunstgeschichte of Paris and the Centre National d’Histoire de l’art.
Print Quarterly, September 2020
Johann Jakob Mettenleiter, Double Portrait of Johann Elias Haid and Johann Jakob Mettenleiter, ca. 1778–84, oil on copper, 31 × 38 cm (image courtesy Boris Wilnitsky Fine Arts, Vienna).
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The eighteenth-century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly (with apologies for being so slow! -Craig).
Print Quarterly 37.3 (September 2020)
A R T I C L E S
Julie Mellby, “Audubon’s Copperplates for Birds of America”, pp. 283–93.
After a brief introduction to John James Audubon’s (1785–1851) life and the publication history of his famous Birds of America, this article explores the afterlife of the copperplates. Partly damaged during a fire and later sold as used copper, some of these objects were eventually acquired and restored by William E. Dodge II (1832–1903). Their history interestingly overlaps with the history of important American institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Princeton University Art Museum.
Marianne A. Yule, “A Friendship Portrait of J. J. Mettenleiter and J. E. Haid”, pp. 294–99.
This piece focuses on a newly discovered painting and its related mezzotint, the only known collaborative work between the printmaker John Elias Haid (1739–1809) and the painter Johann Jakob Mettenleiter (1750–1825). It explores the history of the image and identifies all the prints depicted therein.
N O T E S A N D R E V I E W S
Peter Van Der Coelen, Review of Henk van Nierop, The Life of Romeyn de Hooghe 1645–1708: Prints, Pamphlets, and Politics in the Dutch Golden Age (2018), pp. 314–16.
The note, as the book it reviews, sheds light on the lesser known, yet extremely prolific Romeyn de Hooghe (1645–1708), a printmaker operating between the Netherlands and Paris. His prints depict the political events of the day, such as the French invasion of Holland, as well as fashionable pastimes, as exemplified by his illustrations for a treatise on wrestling. De Hooghe’s life and work attest to the rising dominance of France all over Europe in the age of Louis XIV, both politically and artistically.
Domenico Pino, Review of Xavier F. Salomon, Andrea Tomezzoli and Denis Ton, Tiepolo in Milan: The Lost Frescoes of Palazzo Archinto (2019), pp. 319–21.
The catalogue under review reconstructs a cycle of frescoes commissioned for an aristocratic Milanese palace and destroyed during World War II. The note focuses on one chapter in particular, analysing Giambattista Tiepolo’s (1697–1770) early career as a book illustrator in Verona and Milan in the 1720s and ’30s, reading it in the context of the cultural fervour that spread all over Italy following the war of Spanish succession.
Domenico Pino, Review of Canaletto & Venezia (2019), pp. 321–22.
The note offers an overview of eighteenth-century Venice and the cultural fervour it hosted. The exhibition catalogue explores in detail the artistic career of Canaletto (1697–1768), Giambattista Tiepolo (1697–1770) and Giambattista Piazzetta (1682–1754), and discusses the developments of artistic trends in furniture, glass, porcelain and architecture in Venice throughout the century up to the fall of the Republic in 1797.
Elizabeth Rudy, Review of Aude Prigot, La Réception de Rembrandt à traversles estampes en France au XVIIIe siècle (2018), pp. 322–25.
The note explores the impact Rembrandt had on artists from the eighteenth through to the twenty-first century. In particular it focuses on the practice of collecting his prints in eighteenth-century France and that of copying his composition in the later part of the century. The main case studies are five French artists, among them Claude-Henri Watelet (1718–86) and Dominique Vivant-Denon (1747–1825).
Exhibition | François Boucher: Rococo Artist
François Boucher, Shepherd and Shepherdess, 1760, oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm
(Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)
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Opening next month at the Staatliche Kunsthalle:
François Boucher: Künstler des Rokoko / Artiste Rococo
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 14 November 2020 — 7 February 2021
François Boucher (1703–1770) est encore considéré de nos jours comme l’artiste rococo français par excellence. À l’occasion du 250e anniversaire de sa mort, la Kunsthalle de Karlsruhe présente la première exposition en Allemagne qui lui soit exclusivement consacrée.
Bien que né dans un milieu modeste, Boucher s’est affirmé comme l’un des principaux artistes de son époque. Premier peintre du roi, il comptait parmi ses commanditaires la marquise de Pompadour ainsi que la margravine Caroline-Louise de Bade. Son style rayonna dans toute l’Europe et ses compositions furent reprises pour un grand nombre de tapisseries et de décors de théâtre, de meubles et de porcelaines.
La diversité des styles qu’il aborda et des sujets qu’il traita reste impressionnante jusqu’à l’heure actuelle. Ses élégantes scènes de genre ainsi que les représentations qu’il a données de paysages bucoliques et de sujets mythologiques se distinguent par leur inventivité, leur humour et l’ironie qui s’en dégage. Par leur exécution subtile et leur palette délicate, ses œuvres nous sensibilisent à la sensualité pouvant irradier d’une toile.
Ses dessins et ébauches à l’huile illustrent parfaitement sa manière de travailler. Tantôt puissantes et virtuoses, tantôt empreintes de retenue et témoins d’une introspection, ces esquisses s’affirment comme desœuvres d’art à part entière.
Artiste fascinant, Boucher, a ainsi développé un style très riche dont l’influence est perceptible jusque dans l’art moderne – Un style que l’exposition de la Kunsthalle permettra de redécouvrir.
L’exposition se complète par une installation sonore d’Elina Lukijanova qui reproduit des éléments stylistiques du Rococo à l’aide de bruits et de mots de notre époque.
Astrid Reuter, ed., François Boucher: Künstler des Rokoko (Cologne: Wienand, 2020), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-3868325812, 45€. With essays by Astrid Reuter, Barbara Bauer, Alexander Eiling, Peter Fuhring, Holger Jacob-Friesen, Melissa Hyde, Oliver Jehle, Françoise Joulie, Alastair Laing, Hans Plechinski, Aileen Ribeiro, Dorit Schäfer, Martin Schieder, Perrin Stein, Christoph Martin Vogtherr, and Kirsten Voigt.
Exhibition | The Torlonia Marbles
Notice of the exhibition appeared here at Enfilade last November; here’s the updated information; the catalogue is published by Electa.
The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces
I Marmi Torlonia: Collezionare Capolavori
Musei Capitolini at Palazzo Caffarelli, Rome, 14 October 2020 — 29 June 2021
Curated by Carlo Gasparri and Salvatore Settis
The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces presents 96 works selected from the 620 cataloged marbles belonging to the Torlonia Collection, the prestigious private collection of ancient sculptures, significant for the history of art, excavations, restoration, taste, museography, and archaeological studies. The exhibition is organized in five sections, telling the story of the collecting of ancient Greek and Roman marbles in reverse chronology beginning with the founding of the Torlonia Museum in 1875 by Prince Alexander Torlonia. The second section brings together the nineteenth-century finds of antiquity in the Torlonia properties. The next section addresses eighteenth-century collecting, with sculptures from the acquisitions of Villa Albani and the collection of the sculptor and restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. A selection of sculptures owned by Vincenzo Giustiniani, one of the most sophisticated Roman collectors of the seventeenth century then follows, with the final section presenting pieces from collections of aristocratic families of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Exhibition | Promoting America: Maps
A MAP OF NORTH AMERICA; Henry Schenck Tanner, cartographer, engraver, and publisher; Philadelphia, 1822; line engraving on laid paper with hand-coloring (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1997-5).
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Press release (8 September 2020) from Colonial Williamsburg for the exhibition:
Promoting America: Maps of the Colonies and the New Republic
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Williamsburg, Virginia, 17 October 2020 — 27 March 2022
Curated by Margaret Beck Pritchard and Katie McKinney
Ever since the first attempts by the English to colonize America, artists and mapmakers used maps as a savvy marketing tactic to portray the New World as both abundant and rich in land and resources, often portraying America as a latter-day Garden of Eden. A new exhibition, Promoting America: Maps of the Colonies and the New Republic will open on 17 October 2020, at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, and will shed new light on this topic. Through 21 extraordinary objects, including maps (several of which have never before been exhibited in Colonial Williamsburg and a few of which are recent acquisitions), prints, glass transfers, books and more, visitors will gain insights into how the promise of a good and prosperous life in the New World was communicated. The exhibition, the first in a new gallery dedicated to maps, prints, and drawings in the recently expanded Art Museums building, will remain on view through 27 March 2022.
“More than cartographic records, early maps are often pieces of propaganda,” said Roald L. Hurst, the foundation’s Carlisle H. Humelsine chief curator and vice president for museums, preservation, and historic resources. “This exhibition allows guests to see how subtle messages were embedded into these everyday objects.”
Adriaen Collaert, after Maerten de Vos, America, from the Four Continents, late sixteenth century, engraving.
At first, mapmakers included iconographic images of the flora, fauna as well as images of the native population of America as decorative elements to promote the promise of a life of opportunity there. By the 17th and 18th centuries, however, mapmakers used a variety of visual strategies to promote ideas and values intended to encourage laying claim to land in the New World.
“My favorite maps in the collection are the ones that tell us a much larger story rather than those that simply record the geography of a particular region. Each of the maps chosen for this exhibition was designed either to encourage immigration to America or to promote the vastness of America’s natural resources,” said Margaret Beck Pritchard, deputy chief curator at Colonial Williamsburg.
Among the highlights of the exhibition is a map of New England by Captain John Smith, its cartographer, and William Hole, its engraver. Originally published in 1616, this line engraving on laid paper was printed in London in 1624. After charting the New England coastline, Smith returned to England with valuable geographic information and great enthusiasm for establishing a colony at Plymouth. As English interests had moved from one of discovery and exploration of the New World to establishing settlements and claiming land there, Smith labeled this map with recognizable English names rather than meticulously identified Indian towns as he used six years earlier in his map of Virginia (also included in the exhibition). Instead of illustrations of Natives as seen in the Virginia map, this chart of New England featured an impressively large self-portrait of Smith.
“The decorative details on these maps sometimes contradict the conflicted and often violent colonization of North America, but they made Europeans familiar with and curious about the “New World,” encouraging settlement and investment,” said Katie McKinney, Colonial Williamsburg’s Margaret Beck Pritchard assistant curator of maps and prints. “The evolution of the symbols over time tells a powerful story about how iconography can reflect and embody cultural ideas and ambitions.”
Another featured map in Promoting America is Herman Moll’s A New and Exact MAP of the DOMINIONS of the KING of GREAT BRITAIN on ye Continent of NORTH AMERICA, published after 1753, and first published by Thomas and John Bowles in 1715. Map decoration was often used to reflect the economic potential for prospective settlers through depiction of America’s abundant natural resources. From the early 17th century, beaver pelts were the primary commodity for trade and a main source of competition between the French and the English in America. Moll’s illustration of the Industry of ye Beavers promoted American settlement. Since industry was known to create wealth and beavers were known to be industrious, the animals represented the potential for American success with “great order and wonderfull Dexterity.” The scene also features an early view of Niagara Falls, which would come to symbolize pride in America’s vast untamed wilderness and promote a vision for its future. After the American Revolution, the falls became a nationalistic symbol for the New Republic.
A MAP of the BRITISH EMPIRE in AMERICA with the FRENCH and SPANISH SETTLEMENTS adjacent thereto; Henry Popple, cartographer; Bernard Baron, William Henry Toms, and Richard William Seale, engravers; London, 1733; line engraving on laid paper with hand-coloring; pasted to linen and attached to a roller and ledge (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1955-408).
In the early 18th century, English concern over French exploration of the Mississippi Valley encouraged new North American map production as officials and colonists alike needed accurate records of the continent’s land, waterways, forts, and settlements. Maps were also essential for domestic political reasons because they delineated and legitimized boundaries and helped to define British economic interests. Illustrating these points in the exhibition is A MAP of the BRITISH EMPIRE in AMERICA with the FRENCH and SPANISH SETTLEMENTS adjacent thereto made by London cartographer Henry Popple in 1773. Several features of Popple’s map reveal the motivation behind its production. The sheer size of the map suggested England’s dominant role in America. It was the largest printed map of North America made before the Revolution. The title appears to be etched onto a stone tablet upon which British holdings were identified as part of her “empire,” but French and Spanish holdings were described as “settlements.” The Native American on the left of the decorative cartouche points to the title as if to confirm the assertion that the area represented belonged to Britain, while the figure on the right points to the thriving commercial activity along the shore.
The latest dated map in Promoting America is another highlight of the exhibition: Henry Schenck Tanner’s A MAP OF NORTH AMERICA, made in Philadelphia in 1822. This map, considered to be the most significant of the American West produced during the early 19th century, incorporated information from discoveries made by Merriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804–06), Zebulon Pike (1806), and Stephen H. Long (1819–20). The Lewis and Clark expedition following the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and Thomas Jefferson’s commission for the men to map the region and find a route across the continent furthered the belief that success of the new nation was tied to exploration and cultivation of the frontier. As Herman Moll’s decorative details in his map of North America showed a century earlier, by early in the 19th century, natural wonders were regarded as symbols of Americans’ national pride. The cartouche on Tanner’s map combined images of both Niagara Falls and Virginia’s Natural Bridge along with other symbolic forms of American fauna such as a rattlesnake, a beaver, and an eagle.
Promoting America: Maps of the Colonies and the New Republic is co-curated by Ms. Pritchard and Ms. McKinney. It will be on view in the The Michael L. and Carolyn C. McNamara Gallery and was generously funded by Rex and Pat Lucke.
Colonial Williamsburg reopened at reduced capacity and has followed site-specific safety guidelines as part of the foundation’s COVID-19 business resumption plan and in accordance with the state’s plans for reopening. During Colonial Williamsburg’s reopening, most interpretive programming has been moved outdoors. For the safety of employees and the public, ticketed guests can expect limited interaction with interpretive staff. Site entry is limited by state-mandated capacity guidelines for social gatherings, and guests are encouraged to proceed quickly through interpretive sites to accommodate as many visitors as possible. Face coverings are required while inside foundation-owned buildings and their use is encouraged outdoors as well. Guests are also asked to adhere to social distancing guidelines during their visit to Colonial Williamsburg sites, when walking along Duke of Gloucester Street and in other publicly accessible areas. Most doors, faucets and other high-traffic touchpoints are now touchless, and there are significantly enhanced cleaning protocols throughout the foundation’s open locations.
Exhibition | The Piranesi Principle
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Colosseum in Rome, Bird’s Eye View from the North, ca. 1760–70
(Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek / Dietmar Katz)
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A very brief posting appeared here at Enfilade in February. Here’s the expanded version; from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
The Piranesi Principle: Marking the 300th Birthday of the Great Italian Master
Das Piranesi-Prinzip: Zum 300. Geburtstag des großen italienischen Meisters
Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, 4 October 2020 — 7 February 2021
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was one of the great polymaths of the 18th century. He carved out an international career as an archaeologist, artist, collector, designer, publisher and author. The principle behind his success was to grasp the multifaceted nature of reality and transform it into something new. He found inspiration everywhere: in the artifacts of bygone epochs and faraway regions, in images from science, technology and opera, and even in denunciations and defeats. This exhibition celebrating the 300th anniversary of his birth brings this Piranesi principle back to life in all its creativity. It is centred around Piranesi’s masterpieces of engraving, his books, pamphlets, satirical illustrations, and drawings from the collections of the Kunstbibliothek and the Kupferstichkabinett, some of which are being shown for the very first time.
Piranesi’s Rome
The exhibition begins with a trip back through time to Piranesi’s Rome. While today’s tourists marvel at the city’s ancient ruins in an urban setting, in the 18th century the Venetian-born artist lived and worked in a city surrounded by a landscape of ruins, in which monuments overgrown by plants protruded from the ground. It was in this context that Piranesi found the motifs for his images and architectural visions, collected artefacts for his ‘Museo’, and conducted research into art and architectural history—the results of which he published in monumental works such as the Antichità Romane (1756). And it was here that he found his clientele and his audience: artists, art scholars, archaeologists, antiques and art dealers came from all over the world to make their fortune in the ‘eternal city’—or, like Piranesi himself—to earn their immortality.
Piranesi’s Stage
Opera and theatre have been influential mass media since the Baroque era. Performances took place not only in private residences, but also on the street and in public squares, where religious festivities were staged as elaborate spectacles. In the 18th century, theatre was a big business, for which artists designed stage sets and decorations, and in doing so revolutionised the viewing habits of their audiences. Piranesi, who had already become acquainted with this scene in Venice, picked up on these ideas and used them to dramatise his compositions. Both his Vedute (Views) and his famous Carceri (Prisons) largely owe their magic to the influence of the theatre of the time.
Piranesi’s Laboratory
As well as the dream factory of theatre, the technical imagery of the sciences was another a source of great fascination for Piranesi. Imagining his workshop as a laboratory, he experimented with creating futuristic images in order to find ways to communicate the findings of his research on archaeology and art with scholars and the public alike. In the section Piranesi’s Laboratory, the exhibition focuses on the monumental display panels, reconstructions and maps that made him famous within the sciences far beyond Italy, and saw him named a member of the Society of Antiquaries in London in 1757 and an honorary member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1761. His images are ground-breaking and ahead of their time above all because of their resemblance to a computer desktop featuring a multitude of windows open simultaneously. They succeeded in sealing Piranesi’s status as a pioneer of visual communication.
Piranesi’s Palazzo
This section takes viewers to the central site of his work: Palazzo Tomati, not far from the Spanish steps, where Piranesi resided from 1761 onwards, ran a large workshop, and opened his ‘Museo’ (a warehouse of antiques and self-manufactured objects) to tourists and art scholars. The drawings by Piranesi that are held by the Kunstbibliothek, including his renowned fireplace designs, provide important information about his work process. Piranesi was open to everything: he drew on both Roman and Egyptian antiquity, Etruscan and Greek art, and often came up with daring hybrid forms. Even the wastepaper in his studio provided points of departure and stimulus for his creative processes. Recycling and re-using were part of his daily routine in the workshop, especially as paper was a valuable resource. The exhibition makes evident how the recto and verso of his prints, drawings and notes were used over and over again for new sketches.
Piranesi’s Arena
Finally, in the section Piranesi’s Arena, the exhibition presents Piranesi as a polarising figure in the international art scene. Four people in his life are presented to exemplify this tension, beginning with fellow Venetian Pope Clement XIII (1693–1769), who was particularly important due to his role as a patron, and then looking at three antagonists who infuriated Piranesi to such an extent that he resorted to unusual artistic weapons. He dedicated an entire publication to taking down the argument of French art scholar Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), who had questioned the significance of Roman antiquity, with words and pictures. The name of his Irish patron, Lord Charlemont (1728–1799), who had withdrawn funding for one of his largest projects, was visually erased from public memory. And to express his displeasure in a dispute with French archaeologist Bertrand Capmartin de Chaupy (1720–1798), he produced a detailed and masterfully elaborate depiction of his own excrement.
An exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek – Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in cooperation with the Kupferstichkabinett – Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
The exhibition and catalogue were jointly conceived by students, curators, and researchers at the Kunstbibliothek and the Department for Art and Visual History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. An exhibition catalogue, edited by Georg Schelbert and Moritz Wullen, will be published by E.A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig, 144 pages, 135 colour illustrations, ISBN 978-3865024435 (German edition), 978-3865024442 (English edition), €27.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Vignette: Satire targeting Bertrand Capmartin De Chaupy, 1769
(Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek / Dietmar Katz)
Exhibition | A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750
The exhibition was scheduled to be on view at the NGA this past summer; it will now arrive in Washington after appearing in Rome. From the NGA:
A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 / La Superba e il Barocco
Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 25 March — 1 August 2021
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 26 September 2021 — 9 January 2022
Curated by Jonathan Bober, Piero Boccardo, and Franco Boggero
By the 17th century, Genoa was the banking center of Europe with a functioning republican government and enormous wealth that enabled its artists and their patrons to create a singularly rich and beautiful expression of baroque style, with works of extraordinary material sumptuousness, visual splendor, and exuberant feeling. The first major presentation of the Genoese baroque in the United States, this landmark exhibition—accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog—presents some 130 paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, drawings, and prints ranging from 1600 through 1750.
Forming the core of the exhibition are works by the school’s well-known painters—Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Alessandro Magnasco—as well as key works by other Italians and foreigners drawn to the city’s flourishing environment—Peter Paul Rubens, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Orazio Gentileschi, Anthony van Dyck, and Francesco Solimena. Some of the very finest works by such native painters as Valerio Castello, Domenico Piola, and Gregorio De Ferrari are also on view. Monumental decorative ensembles from churches and residences are represented by corresponding oil sketches and presentation models, several grand in scale themselves. Also included are full-size statues by masters—Pierre Puget, Filippo Parodi, and Anton Maria Maragliano—terracotta sketches, and exquisite bronze repetitions of monumental groups, as well as spectacular ceremonial silver from early in the period.
Among the drawings and prints featured are many by the same artists who executed the paintings and objects, with some connected to them. These works reveal the striking characteristics of Genoese draftsmanship: complex techniques, pictorial elaboration, and autonomous function. In fantasy and fluency, the etchings—particularly those of Castiglione and Bartolomeo Biscaino—surpass those of any other Italian school.
The exhibition is curated by Jonathan Bober, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art; Piero Boccardo, Superintendent of the City Collections of Genoa; and Franco Boggero, director, historic and artistic heritage section, Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, Genoa.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, with special cooperation from the City and Museums of Genoa. The exhibition is made possible by the Robert Lehman Foundation. Additional funding is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.
The catalogue is now available from Princeton UP:
Jonathan Bober, Piero Boccardo, Franco Boggero, Peter Lukehart, and Andrea Zanini, A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2020), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0691206516, $65 / £54.
Genoa completed its transformation from a faded maritime power into a thriving banking center for Europe in the seventeenth century. The wealth accumulated by its leading families spurred investment in the visual arts on an enormous scale. This volume explores how artists both foreign and native created a singularly rich and extravagant expression of the baroque in works of extraordinary variety, sumptuousness, and exuberance. This art, however, has remained largely hidden behind the facades of the city’s palaces, with few works, apart from those by the school’s great expatriates, found beyond its borders. As a result, the Genoese baroque has been insufficiently considered or appreciated.
Lavishly illustrated, A Superb Baroque is comprehensive, encompassing all the major media and participants. Presented are some 140 select works by the celebrated foreigners drawn to the city and its flourishing environment—from Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Giulio Cesare Procaccini to Pierre Puget, Marcantonio Franceschini, and Francesco Solimena; by the major Genoese masters active for much of their careers in other settings—Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Filippo Parodi, and Alessandro Magnasco; and above all by the brilliantly synthetic but unfamiliar masters who worked primarily in Genoa itself—Gioacchino Assereto, Valerio Castello, Domenico Piola, and Gregorio De Ferrari. Offering three levels of exploration—essays that frame and interpret, section introductions that characterize principal currents and stages, and texts that elucidate individual works—this volume is by far the most extensive study of the Genoese baroque in the English language.
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