Enfilade

The sale of the Casino di Villa Ludovisi (Villa Aurora) has—understandably—generated lots of media attention (see the full announcement for press links), and at least some of the finds have involved the eighteenth century . . .

T. Corey Brennan, Inside the ‘World’s Most Expensive Home’: A Decade of Rutgers Research at the Villa Aurora in Rome
Online, 20 January 2022, noon (EST)

The Villa Aurora in Rome—for precisely 400 years the home of the papal Boncompagni Ludovisi family—will go on auction this month with an asking price of $532 million dollars. Called by one leading art historian a “sort of seventeenth-century Sistine Chapel,” the Villa Aurora boasts famous mural art by more than a dozen major artists, including a unique 1597 ceiling painting by Caravaggio. In this richly illustrated talk, Professor Corey Brennan will discuss this landmark sale, his decade-long collaboration with the owners—†HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi—and the discoveries inside the Villa made with over two dozen Rutgers undergraduate students. This virtual presentation, open to the public, will take place on Thursday, 20 January 2022, 12:00–1:00pm (EST). Registration information is available here.

Left: André-Charles Boulle, detail of a table, veneered in turtleshell and brass, with gilt-bronze mounts, ca. 1705 (London: The Wallace Collection, F56). Right: Abraham Bosse, ‘Cette figure vous montre comme on Imprime les planches de taille douce…’, 1642, etching (London: British Museum, R,8.15).

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This Sunday from The Furniture History Society:

Mia Jackson | André Charles Boulle as a Maker, Designer, and Publisher of Prints
The Furniture History Society Online Lecture, 5 December 2021,7pm (GMT) / 2pm (EST)

André-Charles Boulle, table, veneered in turtleshell and brass, with gilt-bronze mounts, ca. 1705 (London: The Wallace Collection, F56).

André-Charles Boulle’s interest in print-making was not limited only to his vast collection of works on paper. The cabinet-maker also designed, made, and sold prints and used print-making techniques in the workshop. Drawing on her doctoral research, Mia Jackson will explore Boulle’s role in print-making, print-publishing, and print-selling. She will discuss Boulle’s series of prints of furniture designs, which her research into publishing history allows her to date more precisely. She will also discuss Boulle’s print design for the Confraternity of St Anne at Carmes-Billettes, and the numerous copperplates that he owned and from which he sold impressions. Dr Jackson’s talk is free to members and £5 for non-members (via this link with code AVUJEN).

Mia Jackson (@theboullelady) has been Curator of Decorative Arts at Waddesdon Manor since 2017. She studied French and Philosophy at Oxford University and then earned an MA in eighteenth-century French decorative arts at the Courtauld Insitute of Art. Her doctoral thesis entitled “André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) and Paper: Prints and Drawings in the Workshop of an Ébéniste du Roi” was completed at Queen Mary University of London in 2016. She previously worked in the Prints and Drawings Department at The British Museum, at The Wallace Collection, and at English Heritage. She worked on the Riesener Project with The Wallace Collection and the Royal Collection, and is currently preparing a series of exhibitions on Alice de Rothschild with her colleagues at Waddesdon Manor.

From Penn Museum:

Patty Gerstenblith | Imperialism, Colonialism, Reparations, and the ‘Universal’ Museum
Penn Cultural Heritage Center Lecture
Thursday, 2 December 2021, 12.30–2.00pm (ET)

In this virtual lecture hosted by the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Patty Gerstenblith will discuss the concept of the ‘universal’ museum and its historical underpinnings. Dr. Gerstenblith will explore its origins across the arc of the 19th century, the inequities of the international legal system and its shortcomings, and the continuing justifications for the retention of looted cultural objects by European and North American museums and collectors.

The notion of the ‘universal’ museum developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the context of the founding of the British Museum, the Napoleonic Wars, European imperialism and colonialism, and the mantra of the rescue narrative, which justified the removal of cultural artifacts first from the Mediterranean region and later sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. Evaluating the right to cultural heritage through a human rights perspective, this lecture will analyze the process and elements of reparations and will propose a paradigm for the restitution of cultural objects that fall outside of the legal and ethical frameworks.

Patty Gerstenblith, Ph.D., J.D., is distinguished research professor at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago and faculty director of its Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law. She was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the Department of State and later by President Obama as its chair. She publishes and lectures widely on the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict and the interdiction of trafficking in archaeological materials. Her casebook Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Law is now in its fourth edition.

State Bed from Hampton Court Castle, ca. 1698 (New York: The Metropolitian Museum of Art, 68.217.1a), as installed in The Met’s newly renovated British Galleries. Photo by Coscia Joseph. As noted in the museum’s online entry: “In the style of Daniel Marot, this bed was made for Thomas, Baron Coningsby (1656–1729), for Hampton Court, Herefordshire, where it remained until 1925. The curtains, counterpane, headcloth, and some of the trims are modern copies of the originals.”

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From ArtHist.net:

Skill, Style, and Innovation:
British Furniture Making from the Restoration to the Arts and Crafts Movement
Online, The Furniture History Society, Wednesdays, 3 November — 1 December 2021

The Furniture History Society, UK, is organising a short course on British furniture makers from 3rd November to 1st December as part of its outreach and educational programme, for British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO). Each week three speakers will consider the history of furniture makers and making in Britain. Beginning with the Baroque period, the course will move chronologically through the centuries to conclude in December with the Arts and Crafts movement. In addition to dealing with the output of specific furniture makers, this course aims to provide an integrated account of the furniture trade in the context of the cultural, technical, and industrial developments that occurred in Britain during these three and a half centuries, while also acknowledging other significant factors such as the role of the patron and the involvement of artists and designers. The talks bring to life the careers and work of some of the most important makers of their time—including Gerrit Jensen in the late seventeenth century; Giles Grendey, William Vile, Thomas Chippendale, and John Linnell in the eighteenth century; Thomas Hope, J. C. Crace, and Charles Robert Ashbee in the nineteenth century; as well as less well-known makers, firms of furniture makers, designers, and architects.

Tickets can be purchased for individual weeks or for the entire course at a saving. To purchase tickets, please go to the EventBrite page. This course will be recorded, and the link to the recording will be sent to ticket holders after the event, though please note that Max Donnelly will not be recorded. We are grateful to the Paul Mellon Centre and the Foyle Foundation for their support.

The course runs from 4.00 to 7.30pm (GMT) every Wednesday as follows:

Week 1 | November 3 — British Baroque Furniture, 1660–1715

• Wolf Burchard (Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art), British Baroque Furniture and Furniture Makers
• Amy Lim (Oxford University), The Baroque Interior: Furnishing the Great London and Country Houses
• John Cross (Furniture historian and maker, specialist on the Jamaican furniture trade), The London Trade, ca. 1660–1720

Week 2 | November 10 — The Early Eighteenth Century and the Furniture Trade, 1715–1760

• Adriana Turpin (FHS Project Manager for BIFMO, International Department, IESA), Furniture for the London Merchants
• Jeremy Howard (Buckingham University), Fantasy and Exuberance: English Rococo Furniture Makers as Craftsmen and Designers
• Norbert Gutowski (Independent furniture maker and restorer, former Subject Leader at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, Sussex), Eighteenth-Century Furniture Techniques

Week 3 | November 17 — Architects, Furniture, and Patrons, 1760–1815

• Megan Aldrich (Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford), The Furniture Maker and the Architect in the Palladian and Neoclassical Periods
• Lucy Wood (Independent furniture historian, formerly curator at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Department of Furniture, Textiles, and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum), London Furniture Makers in the Time of Chippendale
• Rufus Bird (Former Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art, Royal Collections), ‘As Refined and Classical as Possible’: George IV and Other Patrons of British Furniture Makers in the Regency Period, 1800–1830

Week 4 | November 24 — The Development of Furniture Firms, Historicism, and Reform, 1815–1860

• Max Bryant (University of Cambridge), Beyond Hope: Architects and Furniture in the Age of Historicism and Reform
• Ann Davies (MA Courtauld Institute of Art), Furniture for the Great Exhibition 1851
• Max Donnelly (Curator of Nineteenth-Century Furniture in the Department of Furniture, Textiles, and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum), Furniture at the London International Exhibition, 1862 — not included in the recording

Week 5 | December 1 — From Manufacture to the Arts and Crafts, 1860–1914

• Clive Edwards (Emeritus Professor of Design History, Loughborough University), Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Furniture Production
• Matthew Winterbottom (Curator of Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), At Home in Antiquity: Furniture Designed by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• Annette Carruthers (Former Curator, Decorative Arts, Leicester and Cheltenham Museums), Arts and Crafts Furniture Makers and Designers

From The Wallace Collection:

Yuriko Jackall, The Fragonard Project
Zoom Webinar and YouTube, The Wallace Collection, London, 18 November 2021, 13.00 GMT

Between 2019 and 2021, five of the Wallace Collection’s eight paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard were cleaned and restored. This project has led to new discoveries about Fragonard’s working methods and provides the possibility for new interpretations of his work. Join our Head of Curatorial and Curator of French Paintings, Dr Yuriko Jackall, as she discusses this project and gives her reading of The Swing and its place in Fragonard’s career. She will also describe the long shadow of Fragonard’s influence, and how the ups and downs of his glittering career indelibly shaped the way in which we understand his art and the rococo aesthetic today. Thursday, 18 November 2021, 13.00 GMT.

This talk will be hosted online through Zoom and YouTube. Please click here to register for Zoom.

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From the press release for the project:

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (The Swing), detail, after conservation, 1767–68, oil on canvas, 81 × 64 cm (London: The Wallace Collection).

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting, The Swing, is the most iconic painting of the entire Rococo movement and one of the Wallace Collection’s most famous works of art. It has been admired for centuries for its romantic composition, skilful brushwork, and masterly use of colour. References to The Swing can be found in literature, contemporary art, design, and cinema. It is sought out and admired by thousands of visitors to the museum each year.

Despite its fame, relatively little is known about the painting. The circumstances of its commission are vague, with Fragonard opting to undertake a painting that other ‘academic’ painters had refused on account of its scandalous theme. Fragonard’s methods in building the composition are also unclear. In addition to this, the paint surface was previously obscured by yellowed varnish and old retouching had become visible.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, throughout the summer of 2021 The Swing underwent intricate, sensitive highly skilled conservation and technical analysis for the first time. Uniquely, the conservation treatment has taken place in house at the Wallace Collection, with one of its conservation studios temporarily transformed especially for the purpose. The work has been undertaken by Martin Wyld, former Head of Conservation at the National Gallery, where he worked for more than 40 years restoring works by artists such as Leonardo and Velazquez.

Investigations have shed light on the mysteries surrounding The Swing and developed our understanding of Fragonard and his methods as an artist. The removal of the yellowed varnish has transformed the painting. The white lace of the young girl’s dress is now crisp, the composition has taken on a new sense of depth, background details are now apparent, and the overall freshness and texture of the artist’s paint surface has been restored. Little underdrawing or preparatory studies have been identified. Fragonard appears to have worked confidently and skilfully, directly on the canvas, to create The Swing, his finest masterpiece. The painting is being reinstalled in the specially relit galleries in November 2021, alongside the other seven Fragonard works in the Wallace Collection, allowing visitors to see for the first time how the artist developed across his career.

The return of The Swing is accompanied by a special season of events, which encompasses free public talks with special guests, a focused study course, and a book signing. The Collection has documented the conservation process and commissioned an insightful film exploring Fragonard and The Swing’s influence.