September 2013 Issue of ‘The Art Bulletin’
The eighteenth century from the September issue:
Matthew M. Reeve, “Gothic Architecture, Sexuality, and License at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill,” The Art Bulletin 95 (September 2013): 411–39.
From 1747 Horace Walpole and a close circle of male friends and associates designed, decorated, and furnished Strawberry Hill, the remarkable neo-Gothic villa in Twickenham, a fashionable suburb of London. An examination of the role of Walpole’s sexuality in the design and reception of the house and its furnishings, following the lead of recent studies in literature, historiography, and the history of sexuality, reveals the interrelations between the revival of the Gothic as one of the “modern styles” of eighteenth-century architecture and fundamental changes in human sexuality characterized by the rise of a “third sex.”
In addition, the “Notes from the Field” feature addresses the theme of time, with the following responses drawing on the eighteenth century:
Malcolm Bull, “Time,” The Art Bulletin 95 (September 2013): 360–62.
Ludmilla Jordanova, “Time,” The The Art Bulletin 95 (September 2013): 364–67.
Gerrit Walczak, “Time,” The Art Bulletin 95 (September 2013): 377–79.
David E. Wellbery, “Time, The Art Bulletin 95 (September 2013): 379–80.
We All Scream for Ice Cream
In case you’re somewhere hot, thinking about ice cream . . . (a full list of contents for the current issue of Past & Present is available here).
Melissa Calaresu, “Making and Eating Ice Cream in Naples: Rethinking Consumption and Sociability in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present 220 (August 2013): 35-78.
Pietro Fabris, Venditore di sorbett’a minuto, from his Raccolta di varii vestimenti ed arti del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1773). © British Library Board D-7743.h.13.
Two barefoot children reach out to lick the spoon of the ice-cream seller. He carries a pouch around his waist that hints at the profits that are to be made from his trade. Two wooden containers rest on the ground beside him, one of which has a canister inside it and a strap outside to carry it, while the other holds a tray of cups to serve the ice cream (Plate 1).1 Behind this scene is the Angevin castle in Naples and a crowd gathered around a puppet stall. Pietro Fabris made this engraving as part of a collection depicting the costumes and customs of Neapolitans which was published in 1773 and dedicated to the British emissary to Naples, William Hamilton. Three years later, Fabris would provide elaborate hand-coloured illustrations for Hamilton’s scientific study of the eruptions of Vesuvius published in French and English and dedicated to the members of the Royal Society.2 Both books projected an image of Naples that appealed to the Grand Tourists who were flocking to see the excavations of the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii and the volcanic spectacle nearby (Vesuvius was particularly active in the last decades of the eighteenth century), and to experience life on the streets of the city. The collection of engravings including the sorbet seller appealed directly to a growing interest in Neapolitan popular culture and presented an image of the city as a theatre of extremes, in which the pleasures of life collided with the extreme poverty of the lazzaroni, and where its poorest inhabitants splurged on what — from a northern European perspective — might be seen as one of the great luxuries of the eighteenth century. We could leave our interpretation of the Fabris engraving there, safely within a history of the vast visual production of the Grand Tour in Italy, but the image conveys more than a tourist discourse about the exotic.3 In fact, the engraving illustrates the eating of a food product that was far from a luxury, and its sale to ordinary people on the streets of Naples, a point that has been completely overlooked by historians of the early modern period. . .
N O T E S
1 There is a variety of vocabulary in English, French and Italian describing ice or frozen desserts and drinks with a water or milk base. In Italian, sorbetto is used in the eighteenth century generally to describe what we know today as both sorbet and ice cream. Here I use the term ‘ice cream’ generically. All translations from Italian are my own unless otherwise stated.
2 Pietro Fabris, Raccolta di varii vestimenti ed arti del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1773); William Hamilton, Campi Phlegræi: Observations on the Volcanos of the Two Sicilies as They Have Been Communicated to the Royal Society of London, 3 vols. (Naples, 1776–9), i–ii. On Fabris and Hamilton, see the essays in Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan (eds.), Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection (London, 1996).
3 The use and the study of the term lazzaroni have a long history. It generally had a pejorative sense in travel accounts describing some of the poorer inhabitants of Naples, meaning ‘scoundrels’ or ‘layabouts’, although the lazzaroni became of increasing ethnographic interest at the end of the eighteenth century: see Melissa Calaresu, ‘From the Street to Stereotype: Urban Space, Travel and the Picturesque in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples’, Italian Studies, lxii (2007).
Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 (Summer 2013)
Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 (Summer 2013)
A R T I C L E S
Patrick C. Fleming, “The Rise of the Moral Tale: Children’s Literature, the Novel, and The Governess,” pp. 463–77.
Sarah Fielding’s The Governess has been called the first children’s novel. But by conflating two separate genres, critics risk oversimplifying both the novel and children’s literature. This article brings together children’s literature studies and novel studies in order to address the narrative form of The Governess, and to suggest that the term “moral tale” better captures the complex origins of the eighteenth-century children’s novel.
Mark Koch, ” ‘A Spectacle Pleasing to God and Man’: Sympathy and the Show of Charity in the Restoration Spittle Sermons,” pp. 479–97.
In the 1670s the long-standing Spittle sermons became almost exclusively charity sermons, many of which argued that almsdeeds are accompanied with a sensual pleasure and articulated principles of sympathetic response involving an affective theatricality. This paper considers the place of these sermons and their ancillary children’s processions in the London public sphere, how they worked as spectacle to evoke pity from spectators, and how, despite the Latitudinarian tendency toward rationalism, they often contained elements of what was deemed an empirically nebulous “show” or “fiction.”
Catherine Packham, “Cicero’s Ears, or Eloquence in the Age of Politeness: Oratory, Moderation, and the Sublime in Enlightenment Scotland,” pp. 499–512.
This paper argues that Hume’s essay, “Of Eloquence,” should be read as part of a Scottish Enlightenment attempt to accommodate the sublime to commercial modernity. Hume inherits the sublime of ancient oratory not as a matter for narrow stylistic regulation—to be rejected in a new age of politeness, as some have argued—but as a moral problem at the heart of modern subjectivity. Hume looks to taste to regulate and contain the sublime, but it is Adam Smith who solves the problem of the sublime by recouping its excess as a mark of the possibilities for virtue in the modern age.
Lisa T. Sarasohn, ” ‘That Nauseous Venomous Insect’: Bedbugs in Early Modern England,” pp. 513–30.
Bedbugs were perceived as a new entry in the rich range of vermin that plagued eighteenth-century England, and the way they were viewed and treated reveals much about the mentality, prejudices, assumptions and aspirations of society at that time. Their presence increasingly elicited repugnance and even hysteria. The reaction to bedbugs during the eighteenth century serves as an indicator of modernity and emerging attitudes towards the body, class, nature and science.
Ryan Whyte, “Exhibiting Enlightenment: Chardin as tapissier,” pp. 531–54.
This essay addresses the work of Jean-Baptiste Chardin as tapissier to show his design of the Salon du Louvre functioned as an ideological system that derived meaning from Enlightenment discourses of epistemology and taxonomy. First, this essay explores how the Salon design answered the Académie’s need to represent its structure to the Salon public, and to guide the public in judging the individual works comprising it. Second, this essay examines points of contact between Chardin, the Académie, Carl Linnaeus and the authors of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert as intellectual context for the Salon design.
Abigail Zitin, “Thinking Like an Artist: Hogarth, Diderot, and the Aesthetics of Technique,” pp. 555–70.
In The Analysis of Beauty, William Hogarth advocated an unusual kind of formalism based in artistic practice: not form distilled into a rule for judgment but rather derived from the artist’s techniques for perception and composition. Denis Diderot, too, embraced an aesthetics of technique, particularly in the Paradoxe sur le comédien, in which he contends that what appears impassioned in an affecting dramatic performance is in fact calculated. Diderot, however, had the extra burden of reconciling the ideal of illusion with his demystification of the practitioner’s perspective, a reconciliation he could only conceive as a paradox.
R E V I E W S
Mark K. Fulk “Travel And/As Enigma: Review of Ian Warrell, ed., Turner Inspired in the Light of Claude (National Gallery Company, 2012) and Yaël Schlick, Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment (Bucknell University Press, 2012),” pp. 571–73.
Recent work on travel by scholars Nicola Watson (The Literary Tourist: Readers and Places in Romantic and Victorian Britain [2008]), Zoë Kinsley (Women Writing the Home Tour, 1682–1812 [2008]), and Ann C. Colley (Victorians in the Mountains [2010]) has added markedly to our understanding of British travel in the latter eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries through its foregrounding of issues of class, gender, and the changing understanding of landscape aesthetics and theories of the sublime. The books in this review supplement this discussion by their emphasis on Anglo-French experiences of travel in the period. . .
Jennifer Milam, “Review of Michael Yonan, Empress Maria Theresa and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011),” pp. 575–77.
. . . Thanks to Yonan’s interpretive approach, Empress Maria Theresa and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art is a ground-breaking study in the history of Austrian art and architecture. His book is a substantial contribution to the study of women as powerful agents in the production and reception of visual culture in European court circles during the eighteenth century. Moreover, Yonan’s wide-ranging choice of material—portraiture, decorative objects, architecture, interior decoration, and garden sculpture—provides the reader with a comprehensive understanding of Maria Theresa’s individualized approach to the representation of her personal authority in the visual arts. This is complemented by a number of quality illustrations that allow readers to consider the details of many works that are rarely discussed in depth. . .
Mark K. Fulk, “Review of Adrian J. Wallbank, Dialogue, Didacticism and the Genres of Dispute: Literary Dialogue in an Age of Revolution (Pickering and Chatto, 2012),” pp. 578–79.
In his postscript, Adrian J. Wallbank explains that his project was meant to “open up multiple avenues for further research . . . into this seriously neglected literary genre” of the written dialogue, gesturing toward the beginnings of a history of “dialogic didacticism” in the Romantic era (217). The book meets these expectations well by revealing in elaborate detail this overlooked genre, and suggesting ways that Wallbank’s readings can help complement our approach to already canonical markers of the period. . .
Christopher Gibbs and a Remarkable Georgian Sofa
With its trompe-l’oeil needlework, this sofa is extraordinary (items depicted include a gameboard and cards, a box, a basket of yarn, a bird on a branch, and a bag). The one-page essay in The World of Interiors by the antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs, accompanied by stunning photographs, underscores just how compelling an object can be as a subject. -CH
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Christopher Gibbs, “Travels Since His Aunt,” The World of Interiors (June 2013): 144-49.
Discovered who knows where by Modernist muse Eugenia Errázuriz, this 18th-century sofa caught Christopher Gibbs’ eye over 50 years ago on a visit to her London home. With its extraordinary shape and trompe-l’oeil needlework, it subsequently attracted various owners before finding Christopher once more [via the antique dealer Edward Hurst]. Gibbs explains how it transports him back to a formative time, in the June issue of The World of Interiors. Photography: Tim Beddow.
Exhibition and Book | The Art of Living, Augsburg ca. 1780
The June 2013 issue of The World of Interiors features a remarkable album from the 1780s, believed to the the work of Balthasar Cornelius Koch. It was the subject of a 2010-11 exhibition in Augsburg; the catalogue is available in German.
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Michael Huey, “A Cabinet Curiosity,” The World of Interiors (June 2013): 150-57. The stuff of life, c1780, is laid bare in a handmade album documenting the décor and possessions of a prosperous goldsmith, and his family of servants, in 18th-century Augsburg. From watercolour to scraps of fabric, the enchanting tour, from pantry to salon, literally opens the doors on inner courtyards and armouries. The June issue of The World of Interiors uncovers shoes, nightcaps and lace — but no skeletons — in the closets.
. . . Part pen/ink and watercolour, part découpage (it incorporates copperplate engravings), part scrapbook (it also uses real historical fabrics and papers) and, in a sense, part diary, it records the everyday functions of the rooms of the house in full colour and significant detail. Included are a dining room; five salons (chose from green, white, ladies’, music and tea); five bedrooms (including those for the maids, the maternity room and one for a child); and five public or service spaces (halls, kitchen, pantry), with all their particular floorings, textiles, furnishings and other accoutrements. . . (156).
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From the museum’s website:
Die Kunst zu Wohnen: Ein Augsburger Klebealbum des 18. Jahrhunderts
Deutsche Barockgalerie im Schaezlerpalais, Augsburg, 24 November 2010 — 20 February 2011
Augsburg war seit dem 16. Jahrhundert nicht nur eine Hochburg für den Buchdruck und die grafischeProduktion, hier entstanden ebenfalls sogenannte “Klebealben”. Diese wurden angelegt, um Kindern und Heranwachsenden aus bürgerlichen Familien die Welt zu erklären.
Die Jugendlichen schnitten aus eigens zu diesem Zweck herausgegebenen Bögen historische oder biblische Figuren, Tiere oderberühmte Bauwerke aus und klebten sie in gedruckte Vorlagen ein. Auch andere Druckgrafiken, Buntpapiere oder sogar Stoffe wurden zerschnitten und in die Klebealben eingefügt.
Das hier ausgestellte Klebealbum wurde nach 1780 für die Juwelierstochter Regina Barbara Waltherangelegt. Teile des Albums wie gezeichnete und kolorierte Figuren und Raumsituationen wurdenvermutlich bei dem Zimmerpolier Balthasar Cornelius Koch in Auftrag gegeben. Auf den Seiten blieb aber genügend Platz, so dass Regina Barbara selbst Figuren ausschneiden und einkleben konnte. Das Album stellt “die Kunst zu Wohnen” vor und verschafft den Betrachtern so bis heute einen Einblick in das Leben des Augsburger Bürgertums im
18. Jahrhundert. . .
More from the museum’s website»
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From the publisher:
Georg Haindl, Die Kunst zu Wohnen: Ein Augsburger Klebealbum des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-3422070400, 40€.
Als beliebte Alternativen zu den Puppenhäusern wurden in Augsburg als wichtiger Verlagsstadt des 18. Jahrhunderts so genannte „Klebealben” von liebenden Eltern für ihre Kinder angelegt. Sie zeigen neben zentralen Plätzen Augsburgs auch die Räume idealtypischer Bürgerhäuser, in die ausgeschnittene Darstellungen von Figuren, Möbeln oder Geschirren eingeklebt werden konnten. Als Ressource hierfür dienten nicht nur die Augsburger „Ausschneidebögen”, wie sie von den Verlagen Johann Martin Wills oder Martin Engelbrechts extra für diesen Zweck herausgegeben wurden, sondern auch Modejournale, Buntpapiere, Textilien oder alte Bücher, die zerschnitten wurden.
In der Publikation widmen sich mehrere Autoren einem besonders qualitätsvollen und gut erhaltenen Album, bei dem nicht Kinder, sondern Heranwachsende die Adressaten waren, um ihnen einen perfekt funktionierenden Haushalt vor Augen zu führen. Das Album wurde in den 1780er Jahren vermutlich von dem Zimmerpolier Balthasar Kornelius Koch gefertigt und zeigt durch seine additive Darstellungsweise wichtige Aspekte des bürgerlichen Lebens dieser Zeit in Augsburg – eine unschätzbare kulturhistorische Quelle.
The Historical Journal, March 2013
From The Historical Journal:
David Gilks, “Attitudes to the Displacement of Cultural Property in the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon,” The Historical Journal 56 (March 2013): 113-43.
Abstract: The French state expropriated an enormous quantity of cultural property from across Europe during the Wars of the Revolution and Napoleon, but much was returned in 1815 after the fall of the Empire. This article examines contemporary attitudes to the displacement of works of art, antiquities, scientific specimens, and rare books. The seizures were controversial: since they occurred at a time when plundering the vanquished was already considered questionable behaviour, they attracted opposition and needed to be justified. The article identifies the resulting repertoire of attitudes, arguing that this repertoire evolved with changing circumstances and was more varied than hitherto maintained. By situating this repertoire in a larger historical context, the article also reassesses the extent to which attitudes were derivative and innovative. It contends that the disputation as a whole did not amount to a decisive rupture in the treatment of foreign cultural property during wartime, but that it was nevertheless remarkable in two respects: concepts from hitherto unrelated subjects were applied to considerations about cultural property; and the perceived conditions under which cultural property could be legitimately transferred were revised.
2012-13 Clifford Prize | Messbarger on the Florentine Anatomical Venus
Anatomical Venus, ca. 1780, wax, Museum of Natural History in Florence
(Photo: Saulo Bambi)
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ASECS recently announced that the 2012-13 James L. Clifford Prize was awarded to Rebecca Messbarger for her article “The Re-Birth of Venus in Florence’s Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History” published by the Journal of the History of Collections (May 2012): 1-21.
Messbarger is the author of The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
The Burlington Magazine, March 2013
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 155 (March 2013)
E D I T O R I A L
• “Mind Your Language,” p. 151. The incorrect and exaggerated use of language in the art press.
. . . A recent article in the Guardian [Andy Beckett, “A User’s Guide to Artspeak,” The Guardian (27 January 2013)] reported on a private initiative by two Americans, an artist and a critic/sociologist, who have investigated the language of contemporary art description, culled from wall labels and gallery press releases from 1999 onwards [David Levine and Alix Rule, “International Art English,” Triple Canopy 16 (July 2012)]. Their survey is analytic rather than satiric, and they trace the origins of what they call ‘International Art English’ to much French post- structuralist theory. They make excellent, deadpan fun of the commercial gallery press release which now goes well beyond its earlier professional constituency to reach a broad emailed audience. At the Burlington, where we receive thousands of such releases each year from many countries, we can testify to the universality of this artspeak obscurantism. But even in the more comprehensible releases, for exhibitions or books, the clichés mount up: the works are ‘brand new’; the exhibits are ‘iconic’; the paintings are ‘vibrant’ (and also, of course, ‘masterful’); the artist is never less than ‘award winning’; and the new book (invariably a ‘comprehensive overview’) is ‘groundbreaking’, ‘lavishly illustrated’ and ‘thought-provoking’. These all accumulate into a prose of deadly conformity. . . Keep reading here»
A R T I C L E S
• Perrin Stein, “Greuze’s L’Accordée de Village: A Rediscovered Première Pensée,” pp. 162-66. The rediscovery of a watercolour study (c.1761) of Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s L’Accordée de Village.
R E V I E W S
• Antony Griffiths, Review of Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes (London: Archetype Books, 2012), p. 177.
This monument book is the result of twenty-five years’ work on the part of the author who has produced a text far ahead of anything yet written on this aspect of printmaking. . . His conclusions have an authority that immediately makes this a standard work, and it can confidently be recommended to any reader. . .
• Claudia Nordhoff, Review of the exhibition Johann Christian Reinhart (1761–1847): Ein deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom,” pp. 199-200.
Chrisman-Campbell, “When Fashion Set Sail” at Worn Through
It’s been too long since I’ve noted offerings at Worn Through, a blog that addresses apparel from an academic perspective. In addition to a Call for Papers for the Annual Meeting of the Costume Society of America (Midwest Region) on the theme of Uncommon Beauty, recent postings include an interesting contribution from Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell on maritime headdresses: “When Fashion Set Sail.” -CH
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Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, “When Fashion Set Sail,” Worn Through (20 March 2013).
Anonymous, Coëffure à l’Indépendance ou le Triomphe de la liberté, ca. 1778, Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt
One of the most iconic images of eighteenth-century extravagance is a fashion plate depicting a lady wearing a miniature ship in her powdered and pomaded hair.
But this much-misunderstood hairstyle was not just an eye-catching novelty. It was one of many ship-shaped headdresses that celebrated specific French naval victories and, more importantly, advertised their wearers’ patriotism and political acumen.
Far from being the whimsical caprice of bored aristocrats, these maritime modes were directly inspired by one of the defining political and philosophical issues of the day: America’s struggle for independence, in which France was a key military and political ally.
The full posting is available here»
Spring 2013 Issue of ‘Renaissance Quarterly’
The eighteenth century in the current issue of Renaissance Quarterly:
Paula Findlen, “The 2012 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: The Eighteenth-Century Invention of the Renaissance: Lessons from the Uffizi,” Renaissance Quarterly 66 (Spring 2013): 1-34.
This essay explores the role that the eighteenth-century Uffizi gallery played in the invention of the Renaissance. Under the Habsburg-Lorraine rulers, and especially during the reign of Grand Duke Peter Leopold (r. 1765–90), changes to the Medici collections and the gallery’s organization transformed an early modern cabinet of curiosities, paintings, and antiquities into a space in which a historical narrative of art, inspired by rereadings of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives, became visible in a building he designed. A succession of Uffizi personnel was increasingly preoccupied with how to see renaissance, and more specifically Tuscan rinascita, in the collections. The struggles between the director Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni and his vice-director Luigi Lanzi highlight how different understandings of the Renaissance emerged in dialogue with antiquarianism and medievalism. At the end of the eighteenth century the Uffizi would definitively become a museum of the Renaissance to inspire new forms of historical writing in the age of Michelet and Burckhardt.
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