Conference | Imaging Religious Ceremonies in Early Modern Europe
From ArtHist.net:
Performing Theatricality and Imaging Religious Ceremonies in Early Modern Western Europe
Centre for Architecture and Art, Ghent University, Vandenhove, 15–17 May 2024
Registration due by 8 May 2024
Bernard Picard, Le Bairam ou la Paque des Mahometans (The Bairam or the Passover of the Muhammadans), from Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, volume 5: Cérémonies des mahométans, &c. (1737).
2023 marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of the early eighteenth-century book series Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, a work on all the world’s religions known to Europe at that time and originally published in seven volumes between 1723 and 1737 in Amsterdam. Edited by the exiled French Huguenot Jean Frederic Bernard, the original seven volumes of the Cérémonies knew a vast distribution across European readers in the Netherlands, France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire, among other countries. Its popularity was at least partly due to the impressive set of prints included within the books. After all, the engravings were for the most part manufactured by the exiled Parisian artist, Bernard Picart, who was known as one of Europe’s most distinguished engravers at that time.
More than ten years after the publication of some pioneering studies on the project—Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung (2006), The Book That Changed Europe (2010), and The First Global Vision of Religion (2010)—the intriguing ceremonies and customs of the various religions depicted in the books still capture the imagination. This is not only caused by their ingenuity regarding the comparative method of inquiry into religion in general, as earlier research widely acknowledged, but also because of their importance as an early modern compendium of imaging religious ceremonies. After all, as the title already indicates, the Cérémonies discusses global religious ceremonies and customs. It focuses on performing religion, instead of on religion as such.
In line with Picart and Bernard’s project, this conference aims to focus on the ways in which early modern Europeans related to religious ceremonies of all kinds, ranging from customs that were familiar to Western Europe’s everyday religious life, to rituals from peoples across the globe that were still rather alien to early modern Europeans. How did early modern Europeans perceive religious rituals practiced in other parts of the world, particularly those in overseas territories? To what extent did early modern knowledge production on religious customs contribute to the development of early anthropology and ethnography in the latter half of the eighteenth century? How did representations of religious rituals either endorse or challenge existing knowledge on various religious practices? In what ways did the early modern period witness a shift toward a more encyclopedic approach to representing the ceremonies and customs of various religions, and how did this reflect broader intellectual trends of the Enlightenment era?
Registration is available here»
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9.00 Keynote
• Inger Leemans (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) — Bernard Picart, Nil Volentibus Arduum, and the Concept of Imagineering
10.30 Panel 1 | Imag(in)ing Religious ‘Otherness’
1 Katherine Kelaidis (National Hellenic Museum / Center for Orthodox Christian Studies) — The Familiar Other: Re/Imagining Eastern Christian Religious Ceremony in Richard Chandler’s Journey to Mount Athos
2 Alexander McCargar (University of Vienna) — A Fascinating Enemy: Ottoman Depictions in the Work of Lodovica Ottavio Burnacini
3 Matthieu Guy Michel Somon (UC Louvain) — Scenes from the Religious Life according to Alessandro Magnasco
1.30 Panel 2 | Switching up Perspectives
4 Daniel Purdy (Pennsylvania State University) — The Spectacle of Chinese Idolatry: Dutch Book Illustrations contra Jesuit Accommodation
5 Philipp Stenzig (Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften) — Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes (1651–1731)
3.30 Panel 3 | Religious Ceremonies in New Spain
6 Luis Javier Cuesta Hernandez (Universidad Iberoamericana) — A Global History of Funeral Ceremonies for Philip IV of Spain: America and Africa
7 Tomas Macsotay (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) — Between Concealing and Domesticizing: Ceremony and Community in Dominican Spaces of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico)
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9.00 Keynote
Agnès Guiderdoni (Université Catholique de Louvain) — The Hagiographic Spectacle in Seventeenth-Century France
10.30 Panel 4 | Ceremony, Festivity, and Cultures of Commemoration
8 Maria João Pereira Coutinho (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) — Fiat Ignatio, Fida Ignatio: Visual and Performative Culture of Ignatius of Loyola’s Beatification Festivals in Brussels and Douai (1610)
9 Marek Walczak (Jagiellonian University) — ‘It Is a Memorial to Posterity that All These Adornments Have Been Set Up’: Glorification of the Past in the Celebrations Commemorating the Canonisation of St. John Cantius Held in Cracow in 1775
10 Ivo Raband (University of Hamburg) — 100 Years of Faith: The Festivities for the Centennial of the Recatholicization of Antwerp (1685)
1.30 Panel 5 | The Dramaturgy of the Pilgrimage
11 Barbara Uppenkamp and Anke Naujokat (Muthesisu Kunsthochschule Kiel & RWTH Aachen University) — The Heptagonal Pilgrimage Church in Scherpenheuvel and Its Three Image Programs
12 Jaroslaw Pietzrak (Pedagogical University of Kraków) — The Spectacle of Power: Religious Ceremonies and Rituals on the Court of Queen Maria Kazimiera d’Arquien Sobieska (1699–1714)
3.30 Panel 6 | Rituality and Ceremoniality in Late Medieval and Early Modern France
13 Margaret Aziza Pappano (Queen’s University) — The Priest in the Execution Ritual: Performing Pain and Penance in Late Medieval France
14 Joy Palacios (University of Calgary) — The Mass and Entertainments in Seventeenth-Century France’s Courtly Ritual System
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9.00 Keynote
Paola Von Wyss-Giacosa (University of Zurich) — Staging Religion(s) in the Early Enlightenment: Bernard Picart’s Frontispiece for Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
10.30 Panel 7 | Re-considering Picart and Bernard’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses I
15 Steff Nellis (Ghent University) — Aspects of Theatricality in Picart and Bernard’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses
16 Margaret Mansfield (University of California) — Encore! Encore! Picart’s Repetitions of Religious Excess and Austerity in India
17 Sara Petrella (University of Fribourg) — Embodying Americas: From Western Representations to Indigenous Material Culture
1.30 Panel 8 | Re-considering Picart and Bernard’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses II
18 Rachel Kupferman (Bar Ilan University) — The Twin Sets of The Kehilot Moshe Bible
19 Nicolas Kwiátkowski (UPF) — From the Son of Adam and Eve to an All-Devouring Deity: Ganesha in Early Modern European Culture
20 Pascal Rihouet (Rhode Island School of Design) — The Pope’s Triumph: Plagiarized Prints from Rome to Amsterdam
Maratti’s Birth of the Virgin Arrives at Notre Dame
From the press release (via Art Daily) . . .
Carlo Maratti, The Birth of the Virgin, ca. 1684, oil on canvas, 254 × 159 cm (South Bend: Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Notre Dame: On loan from the Cummins Collection L2024.001).
The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art announced the arrival and installation of a major altarpiece, The Birth of the Virgin, by the Italian Baroque painter Carlo Maratti. The painting is a long-term loan from the Cummins family.
Originally commissioned in 1681 or 1682 by the canons of the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, the painting shows attendants caring for the newborn Mary, who turns to look at us. In the background, Anne rests in bed, her husband Joachim at her side, his hands clasped in prayer. The church for which it was commissioned is and remains the German parish in Rome.
“Impressive for both its masterful execution and grand scale, Carlo Maratti’s Birth of the Virgin adds significantly to the collection of sacred art featured at the Raclin Murphy Museum,” said Cheryl Snay, curator of European and American Art before 1900. “Seventeenth-century patrons admired the baroque artist’s sensitive handling of this favorite subject matter, making him one of the leading painters in Rome. We are fortunate to be able to present such a coveted example to our community.”
Maratti is often seen as the last major artist of the classical tradition in Rome, which originated with Raphael and Michelangelo. From his studio in Rome, he executed numerous international commissions. In 1664, he became the director of the Accademia di San Luca, Rome.
The altarpiece hung in the church until 1685, when the canons decided to decline the commission as too costly. Maratti then sold the painting to Count Friedrich Christian von Schaumburg-Lippe, who moved it to his home in Germany. Numerous preparatory sketches for the altarpiece survive in Madrid, Windsor, and Düsseldorf.
“This extraordinary work of art by one of the great masters of the late Roman Baroque is an exquisite opportunity for all visiting the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” shares Museum Director Joseph Antenucci Becherer. “The generosity of the Cummins family celebrates the newly opened Museum and the ever-increasing role of the life of the arts at the University of Notre Dame and the entire region.”
The monumental altarpiece is installed on the balcony flanked by the entrances to the Gallery of European Art before 1700 and the Mary, Queen of Families Chapel. Although the origins of a museum collection at the University date to 1875 and include many liturgical images, the scale and grandeur of this altarpiece is an exceptional addition.
Call for Papers | Beauty and Aesthetic Canons within Hispanic Painting
From Le Blog de l’ApAhAu:
A Beautiful Painting? Aesthetic Canons and Pictorial Production within Spanish Crown Territories, 16th–19th Centuries
Lo bello en la pintura? Cánones estéticos y producción pictórica en los territorios de la Corona española, siglos XVI–XIX
Une belle peinture? Canon(s) esthétique(s) et production picturale dans les territoires de la Couronne d’Espagne, XVIe–XIXe siècle
Paris, 9–11 December 2024
Proposals due by 30 April 2024
The beautiful in the field of Hispanic painting (in the sense of painting produced in the territories of the Spanish Crown) is a notion that is not precisely defined and debated regarding its fundamental character in art history in general, and this in favor of an approach that focuses mainly on the realistic canon of this painting. The Spanish Golden Age, religious painting, still life and its great names (Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera, etc.) are all linked to a form of realism or naturalism presented as the most characteristic feature of Spanish painting.
However, some recent publications on the Golden Age itself show a renewed interest and a new approach to the subject, which are also evidenced by the new directions of young researchers in the field of Hispanic painting of the 15th–19th centuries. Moreover, exciting works have already been devoted to the painting produced within colonial America, which highlight the importance of adopting a periodization in which 1700 is not a breaking point for American territories, research on painting in the colonial Philippines is hardly sketched out, and for the other territories of the Crown also it seems obvious that periodization cannot be a fixed given. Finally, a renewed interest in a historiographical approach to Spanish art history has emerged in the last decade. The history of Hispanic art is therefore undergoing a period of change.
This symposium is devoted to the question of the beautiful in painting produced within the territories of the Spanish Crown (Spain, but also Sicily, Naples, Milan, South Netherlands, Artois, Franche-Comté, as well as the American and Filipino territories) from the 16th century to the early 19th century. It aims to question both the way in which an ideal has been forged in the painting produced in these territories, often associated in historiography with a «realistic» or «naturalist» canon, with all the problems that these terms imply, and the way in which this canon was perceived and received, or even adapted, transformed to the different periods. What was considered beautiful in the paintings produced in the territories under Spanish rule during modern times? What was the aesthetic ideal of the painter and the viewer? Was beauty really the painters’ first objective? What about the 18th century, particularly after the dynastic change, and the arrival at the Court of artists from France and Italy? What about the 16th century?
From the historiographic point of view, have the paradigms of Beauty been so modified that they have made Spanish painting lose its signs of recognition (realism, predominance of the religious), and have made it forget? What place should be given in this context to the greatest names in painting (Morales, Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Goya, etc.)? Can we think of the history of Spanish art by giving them less space in the aesthetic canons associated with it?
This event is dedicated to young researchers, and more specifically to doctoral and postdoctoral students working on one of the aspects described above. These French researchers will be able to enter into dialogue with foreign doctoral students, in particular Spanish ones, who are of course also expected: their presence will make it possible to assess whether there are gaps in their approaches, particularly because of the historiographic traditions on which they are based.
Contribution proposals in the form of an abstract of a maximum of 200 words and a brief biographical profile must be sent before the 30th April 2024 to clemence.raccah@inha.fr, iris.romagne@louvre.fr, and cecile.vincent-cassy@cyu.fr. Travel and living expenses (3 nights) will be covered by the organization of the meeting.
Places
Maison du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, Charenton (9th December), Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, Vasari room (10th December), Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon, Paris (11th December)
Organization Committee
• Clémence Raccah (INHA)
• Iris Romagné (CY Université and Musée du Louvre)
• Cécile Vincent-Cassy (CY Cergy Paris Université)
Scientific Committee
• Luisa Elena Alcalá (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
• Charlotte Chastel-Rousseau (Musée du Louvre)
• Elsa Espin (CY Cergy Paris Université)
• Pablo González Tornel (Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia)
• Álvaro Molina Martín (UNED)
• Felipe Pereda (Harvard University)
• Cécile Vincent-Cassy (CY Cergy Paris Université)
Call for Papers | Historically Free African Americans in Representation
From ArtHist.net:
Historically Free African Americans in Visual and Spatial Representation
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 2–3 September 2024
Proposals due by 20 April 2024
Organized by Andrea Frohne
Art historians have overwhelmingly focused on representations of enslavement. In her 2015 book Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century, Jasmine Nichole Cobb calls for a “disentangling [of] Blackness from slavery within the shared space of the nation” (6). This workshop focuses on free African American people through art, visual culture, and studies of space. It investigates circumstances of freedom and the disconnection from slavery prior to the Civil War, representations of free people of colour and descendants in visual culture and studies of space into the 21st century, and 17th- and 18th-century White European immigration into Black America.
For pre-Civil War processes and circumstances of legalising freedom, presentations may address free Black life from birth, manumission, or the Underground Railroad. Freedom at birth occurred when children born of free mothers were immediately free at birth regardless of racial categorisation. Second, manumission processes included documents or wills written by enslavers and enslaved people purchasing their and their family members’ own freedom. Third, freedom seekers escaped on the Underground Railroad into lands where slavery was illegal. Once liberated or free at birth, descendants of all of the above remained free through the centuries.
Presentations may focus on artworks made by free people of colour, such as sculptor Edmonia Lewis, portrait photographer J.P. Ball, landscape artist Robert S. Duncanson, and painters Henry Ossawa Turner and Edward Mitchell Bannister. How did their status as free play a role in their artistic careers or impact the content of their artworks? Papers may also focus on mobility and migration into free Black settlements across the United States and Canada. Topics include visual and spatial analyses of Black churches and schools, ownership of property shown in land surveys, rural roads named after free families of colour, or cemeteries in areas such as Black Philadelphia, Seneca Village in Manhattan, the Ohio River Valley (Lett Settlement, Tablertown, Berlin Crossroads, Cutler, Blackfork, Barnett Ridge), Beech Settlement in Indiana, Nicodemus in Kansas, Mecosta County in Michigan, Chestnut Ridge in West Virginia, Amherstburg in Ontario, Buxton in Ontario, etc.
Finally, with our location in Germany for the workshop, we seek to explore European migration into enslaving territories. What are the through lines of White families who become Black in the new world? They may have become enslavers who bore liberated children of colour. Or they may be indentured servants who bore free children of colour. Some free people of colour in the United States descended from German, British, Irish, and Scottish forebears. What are the global ramifications of such disrupted, disconnected genealogies? Overall, the workshop seeks to contribute new scholarship to the underrecognised subject of free African Americans and descendant populations in visual and spatial representation.
Please note that the language of the workshop is in English. Abstracts (fewer than 250 words) with short bio-notes (fewer than 150 words) for 25-minute presentations are invited for this in-person event at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Accommodations in Munich and meals during the workshop will be provided, and some support for travel may be available.
Andrea Frohne, Fellow Alumna of the Käte Hamburger Centre and Professor at Ohio University, is the workshop convener. To apply, please email Dr Frohne at frohne@ohio.edu by 20 April 2024. Decisions will be conveyed by 1 May.
Conference | American Historical Print Collectors Society
From the AHPCS website.:
American Historical Print Collectors Society 48th Annual Meeting
Williamstown, MA, 15–17 May 2024
Registration due by 15 April 2024
The 48th annual meeting of the American Historical Print Collectors Society—open to both members and non-members—will take place in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Williamstown, a charming college town, located in the shadow of Mount Greylock, the highest point in the Berkshire Mountains of northwestern Massachusetts, is home to Williams College and the Clark Art Institute. The surrounding area abounds historic associations and cultural attractions, including the homes and studios of artists Daniel Chester French and Norman Rockwell and authors Hermann Melville, William Cullen Bryant, and Edith Wharton. Nathaniel Hawthorne completed The House of the Seven Gables while living in a little red house now located on the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Center, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Other nearby attractions include Hancock Shaker Village, the Berkshire Atheneum, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA). The AHPCS has arranged special tours of several of the region’s outstanding cultural collections for this year’s annual meeting, as well as lining up a program of first-rate speakers, including Georgia Barnhill, Robert Emlen, Michael McCue, Rebecca Szantyr, and Christina Michelon.
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Historic Deerfield
The meeting will begin on Wednesday with a full-day trip to Deerfield, Massachusetts, to visit Historic Deerfield, an outdoor museum that interprets the history and culture of western Massachusetts from the earliest English settlers through the arts and crafts movement. The visit will include special tours of the Flynt Center of New England Life and the Henry N. Flynt Library to view highlights of those collections, a buffet lunch at the Deerfield Inn, and ample time to explore the twelve historic buildings on the site.
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Williams College, Williams College Museum of Art
A continental breakfast will be provided before the morning session at the Williams Inn.
Morning session:
• Georgia Barnhill on illustrated books
• Robert Emlen on prints of the Shakers
• Michael McCue on Louis Harlow
• Christina Michelon on the Great Boston Fire
The session will be followed by a buffet lunch at the Inn. The afternoon will be spent at Williams College, a liberal arts college founded in 1793. While primarily an undergraduate institution, the college offers a graduate program in art history in conjunction with the Clark Art Institute and MassMOCA. The Williams College Museum of Art began collecting in the mid-nineteenth century and is especially well known for its collection of works by Maurice and Charles Prendergast, the largest collection of the Prendergasts’ works in existence. In addition to the WCMA, there will be a curator-led program at the Chapin Library, featuring its extensive collection of Americana, including prints, illustrated books, and ephemera. Back at the Williams Inn, a buffet dinner will be preceded by the Print Mart.
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The Clark Art Institute
Friday’s program at the Williams Inn will begin with a continental breakfast, followed by the annual business meeting. Following the meeting:
Rebecca Szantyr will deliver a talk on Atmosphere in Prints, focusing on the collections at the Clark Art Institute
Immediately after Rebecca’s talk, there will be a buffet lunch at the Clark, where the afternoon will be spent in curator-led tours of the exhibition Paper Cities, visits to the Manton Study Center to view a selection of American prints, and tours of the Williamstown Art Conservation Center (WACC).
The Clark Art Institute, which opened to the public in 1955, has expanded greatly through the years, adding to the collections donated by Sterling and Francine Clark, renovating the original museum building and adding the Manton Research Center and two new buildings designed by Tadao Ando, the Clark Center and the Lunder Center at Stone Hill.
That evening, the meeting will culminate with a plated dinner at the Williams Inn, followed by the annual auction to benefit the AHPCS.
For more information and to register, please visit the AHPCS website.
AHRC Studentship | The Status of Prints at the British Library
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From Birkbeck:
Re-evaluating the Status of Prints at the British Library
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship, The British Library and Birkbeck, University of London
Applications due by 29 April 2024
Birkbeck, University of London, and the British Library are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2024 under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. The focus of this project is on identifying, researching, and analysing the provenance, changing status, and visibility of about 500 books of prints in the British Library’s collection, using an 1812 unpublished finding list as a starting point. This project will be jointly supervised by Kate Retford at Birkbeck (Professor of History of Art, School of Historical Studies) and Felicity Myrone at the British Library (Lead Curator, Western Prints and Drawings). The student will spend time with both Birkbeck and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.
More information and directions for applying are available here»
Image: Giovanni Piranesi, Illustration of an aviary, from Le Antichità romane, opera di Giambatista Piranesi, etc. (London: British Library, c13091-59; shelfmark: 744.f.2 26).
Call for Papers | The Global History of Knowledge, 1450–1750
From ArtHist.net and Scientiae:
Scientiae Fall Conference: The Global History of Knowledge, 1450–1750
Brown University, Providence, 25–26 October 2024
Proposals due by 15 May 2024
Samuel de Champlain, Brief discours des choses plus remarquables que Samuel Champlain de Brouage á reconneues aux Indes occidentales, 1602, 35r (igre. Loupcervier Leopard). Providence: John Carter Brown Library, Codex Fr 1.
Scientiae is very pleased to announce its first fall conference. This event will take place at, and with support of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 October 2024. For this conference we have chosen the theme The Global History of Knowledge with a specific, but not exclusive, focus on the Americas and the Atlantic in the period 1450–1750. Historians of science, philosophers, literary scholars, art historians, and many other seemingly distant experts are encouraged to reflect together on the complexities of the early modern period. We are proud to announce a keynote address by Pablo F. Gómez (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
The organizing committee consists of Matthijs Jonker (Scientiae/Utrecht University), Tara Nummedal (Brown University), and Hal Cook (Brown University). Inquiries can be addressed to m.j.jonker@uu.nl.
We envision three ways to join:
• Individual, 20-minute papers: please submit a descriptive title, 200-word abstract, and one-page CV.
• Complete panels: same as above for each paper, plus 200-word rationale for the panel (maximum four presenters, including chair and/or respondent).
• Workshops or seminars: one-page CV for each session leader, plus 200-word plan explaining the topic’s suitability and its techniques or resources.
Please submit your proposal online before midnight, 15 May 2024, at scientiae.uk@gmail.com.
Providence has a good airport and is well-connected to New York City and Boston by train. The conference organizers look forward to welcoming you to Providence in October!
Print Quarterly, March 2024
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 41.1 (March 2024)
a r t i c l e s
• Przemysław Wątroba, “Jacques Rigaud’s Drawings in Warsaw of the Residences of Louis XIV,” pp. 23–32.
“In the collection of the last king of Poland, Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732–98), kept in the Print Room of the University of Warsaw Library, there is a renowned volume titled Recueil choisi des plus belles vues des palais et maisons royales de Paris et des environs containing a series of 106 engravings by Jacques Rigaud (1681–1754). . . . A set eight hitherto unpublished drawings by Rigaud [also in Warsaw and] formerly kept in Portfolio 174 are here presented as designs” for eight of the prints (23, 25).
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
Seven Creamware Plates, ca. 1808–36, diameters 20–23 cm, transfer-printed with various scenes, clockwise from top: Defoe’s Robinson, Choisy factory; Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Montereau factory; Perrault’s Fairies, Montereau factory; Fontaine’s Fable of the Fox and Grapes, Sèvres factory; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Judgement of Midas, Choisy factory; Chateaubriand’s Atala Found with Chactus by Father Aubry, Choisy factory; and at centre, Cottin’s Matilda Saved by Malek Adhel, Choisy factory (Germany, Peter-Christian Wegner Collection).
• Marzia Faietti, Review of Heather Madar, ed., Prints as Agents of Global Exchange: 1500–1800 (Amsterdam UP, 2021), pp. 37–39.
• Sheila McTighe, Review of Francesco Ceretti and Roberta D’Adda, eds., Immaginario Ceruti: Le stampe nel laboratorio del pittore (Skira, 2023), pp. 42–43. This catalogue accompanied an exhibition that explored the work of the painter Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767) and his reliance on printed images. “A complementary show of Ceruti’s paintings, Miseria & Nobiltà: Giacomo Ceruti nell’Europa del Settecento was also held in 2023 at the Museo Santa Giulia in Brescia, followed by a reduced version at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles during the second half of that year, Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye” (42).
• Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Review of Rebecca Whiteley, Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (University of Chicago Press, 2023), pp. 43–45.
• Antony Griffiths, Review of Chiara Travisonni with Luca Fiorentino and Andrea Muzzi, Pietro Giacomo Palmieri (Edifir, 2023), pp. 45–46. This monograph on the draughtsman and printmaker, Pietro Giacomo Palmieri (1737–1804), “will become the definitive source of information” for the artist and his work (46).
• Patricia Ferguson, Review of Peter-Christian Wegner, Literatur auf französischen Steingut-Tellern des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Georg Olms, 2022), pp. 46–47. Wegner addresses the popularity of subjects drawn from French literature for transfer-printed ceramics, starting in 1808. “While we await a larger in-depth survey of this engaging material, Wegner’s publication is a huge contribution to its appreciation” (46).
• Elizabeth Savage, Review of Christien Melzer and Georg Josef Dietz, Holzschnitt: 1400 bis heute (Hatje Cantz, 2022), pp. 48–50. This is the catalogue for an exhibition that “featured more than 100 prints from the Kupferstichkabinett [in Berlin], as well as what was effectively the first large-scale display of woodblocks from its enormous yet relatively little-known collection” (50).
Johann Christoph Weigel, Sheet for Découpage with Figures on Cloudlike Landscapes and a Fantastical Bird, c. 1700–25, from album Inventions Chinoises V, handcoloured engraving, 216 x 151 mm (Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett).
• Brief notice of Katy Barrett, Looking for Longitude: A Cultural History (Liverpool UP, 2022), p. 76. Rather than a retelling of the familiar story of accurately calculating longitude, this book “is a remarkably well-researched account of the ways in which this long-running sage impacted on many areas of public discourse, thought, and imagery” (76).
• Emanuele Lugli, Review of Miriam Vogelaar, The Mokken Collection: Books and Manuscripts on Fencing before 1800 (MMIT Publishing, 2020), pp. 88–92.
• Nadine Orenstein, Review of Maureen Warren, ed., Paper Knives, Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, 2022), 92–96. “Never have these prints been so lavishly presented. The beautifully produced catalogue, winner of the 2023 IFPDA Book Award, exceptionally allocates plenty of space to the images. It allows the reader to see entire works along with accompanying text and provides space for multi-plate productions” (93).
• Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Review of Cordula Bischoff and Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, eds, La Chine: Die China-Sammlung Des 18. Jahrhunderts Im Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinett (Sandstein Verlag, 2021), 97–103. This “is the catalogue of an exhibition at the Dresden State Museum devoted to the Chinese works on paper and European chinoiserie prints acquired by the Saxon Electors before 1750” (97). It “was an ambitious project that took many years to come to fruition and required collaboration between colleagues in different disciplines with different working languages” (102).
New Book | Where Words and Images Meet
From Bloomsbury:
Ludmilla Jordanova and Florence Grant, eds., Where Words and Images Meet (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2024), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1350300569 (hardback), $120 / ISBN: 978-1350300552 (paperback), $40.
From 19th-century frontispieces to Soviet photo albums, from the relationships between portraits and biographies to museum labels, the book’s richly illustrated chapters open up historically specific connections between word and image to collective examination and fruitful analysis. Written by both established and emerging scholars in a range of interrelated fields, the chapters deliberately foreground previously overlooked topics as well as unfamiliar disciplinary approaches, to offer a stimulating and carefully developed framework for looking at these ubiquitous phenomena afresh. Where Words and Images Meet opens up for analysis and reflection the forms of attention, practices, skills and assumptions that underlie visual interpretation and meaning-making in the writing of history. By bringing the features of the materials we read and look at into focus, we can grasp more effectively the complex interrelationships involved, and enhance our practice and understanding.
Ludmilla Jordanova is Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University. She is also the author of History in Practice, 3rd Edition (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Florence Grant holds a PhD in History from King’s College London and is currently an independent writer and editor based in Western North Carolina.
c o n t e n t s
List of Plates
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I | Identifying with Books
Discussion
1 Fronts Matter: The Role of the Authorial Frontispiece in Germaine de Staël’s Corinne: or, Italy — Seren Nolan, Durham University
2 Othering the Ex-Libris: Israel Solomons (1860–1923) and the Invention of the Jewish Bookplate — Tom Stammers, Durham University
Bridge
Part II | Representing Authority
Discussion
3 Picturing Criminal Law in Old Regime France: Brunel, Known as Bétancourt, Being Led to the Scaffold (1670) — Tom Hamilton, Durham University
4 Word and Image in Popular Science— Joseph D. Martin, Durham University
Bridge
Part III | Order and Disorder
Discussion
5 Museum Labels: Word and Object on Display — Lola Sánchez-Jáuregui, University of Glasgow
6 Play with Literacy in Edward Lear’s Nonsense Alphabets — A. Robin Hoffman, Art Institute of Chicago
Bridge
Part IV | Authenticity and Interpretation
Discussion
7 On Taking Artists at Their Word: Artists’ Writings and Statements from 1850 to the Present — Lucy Whelan, University of Cambridge
8 Portraiture and Biography: Harmonious Marriage or Difficult Relationship? — Ludmilla Jordanova, Durham University
Bridge
Part V | Making, Compiling, Arranging
Discussion
9 Extra-Illustration in Early Twentieth-Century England — Ludmilla Jordanova, Durham University
10 Beyond the Caption: Words and Images in an Interwar Soviet Amateur Photograph Album — Antonia Miejluk, Durham University
Bridge
Part VI | Words in the Visual Field
Discussion
11 Word as Image: The Verbal in the Photograph — J. J. Long, Durham University
12 Text-Image Hybridity in Know Thyself and Early Modern English Print — Finola Finn, Independent Scholar, Germany
Bridge
Afterword: Word, Image, and Play
Bibliography
Index
Exhibition | William Blake’s Universe
From the press release for the exhibition:
William Blake’s Universe / William Blakes Universum
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 23 February — 19 May 2024
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 14 June — 8 September 2024
Curated by David Bindman and Esther Chadwick
Responding to the upheavals of revolution and war in Europe and the Americas, visionary artist, poet, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) produced an astonishing body of work that combined criticism of the contemporary world with his vision for universal redemption. But he wasn’t the only one. William Blake’s Universe is the first major exhibition to consider Blake’s position in a constellation of European artists and writers striving for renewed spirituality in art and life.
Organised in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and drawing on extensive research, this ambitious exhibition will explore the artist’s unexpected yet profound links with important European figures including pre-eminent German Romantic artists Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1820) and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). It will also place Blake within his artistic network in Britain, drawing parallels with the work of his peers, mentors, and followers including Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), John Flaxman (1755–1826), and Samuel Palmer (1805–1881).
Poster with detail of William Blake after Henry Fuseli, Head of a Damned Soul, ca. 1788–90, engraving and etching on paper (University of Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum).
Featuring around 180 paintings, drawings, and prints—including over 90 of those by Blake—this major exhibition marks the largest ever display of work from the Fitzwilliam’s world-class William Blake collection, with additional loans from the British Museum, Tate, Ashmolean and other institutions. Examples of the artist’s most iconic and much-loved works including Albion Rose (1794–96) and Europe: A Prophecy (1794), will be joined by rarely exhibited artworks from Blake’s oeuvre, including outstanding new acquisitions from the Sir Geoffrey Keynes bequest, displayed publicly for the first time since joining the Fitzwilliam collection. These include the trial frontispiece of Blake’s prophetic book Jerusalem (1804–1820) and his spectacular large drawing Free Version of the Laocoön (c.1825). Additional highlights include the unique first state of Joseph of Arimathea (1773), produced by Blake as an apprentice aged 16, shown alongside a reworked version of the same image, completed by Blake in his mature years.
Visitors will have a special opportunity to discover the work of Runge, one of Germany’s most important Romantic artists, who has been very rarely seen in the UK until now. Bringing together the largest number of Runge works in the UK to date, the exhibition will include the engravings from the Times of Day (1802–10) series, a defining work of German Romanticism. Representing not only the changing times of day, but the seasons, the ages of man and historical epochs, Runge obsessively returned to this important body of work, an extensive number of preparatory drawings and studies of which will be presented at the Fitzwilliam. Among the works on loan from the Hamburger Kunsthalle will be The Large Morning (1808–09), a fragmentary oil painting widely considered to be one of the most important works from Runge’s short career, cut short by his death aged 33.
Another highlight of the exhibition will be Caspar David Friedrich’s seven sepia drawings The Ages of Man (c.1826) on loan from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Thought to be inspired by Runge’s interest in visual representations of time, the exquisitely delicate series is associated with the themes of change in nature, the cyclical representation of time, and the temporality of human life.
William Blake’s Universe will unfold in three main sections—past, present and future—with an introductory display of artists’ portraits. ‘The Past: Antiquity and the Gothic’ will focus on the legacy of classical antiquity and Blake’s turn towards the Gothic as an alternative source of inspiration, as well as a spotlight section on Flaxman, an artistic mentor to Blake who gained great acclaim in Germany and across Europe. ‘The Present: Europe in Flames’ will concentrate on the responses of Blake and his close contemporaries in Britain to the revolutionary 1790s. The third section, ‘The Future: Spiritual Renewal’, will show how visions of redemption from a fallen world became a central concern for Blake and his contemporaries in the post-revolutionary period. Jacob Böhme’s mystical ideas about light and cosmic unity, which form a bridge between Blake and his German contemporaries, will be a central display.
William Blake’s Universe is curated by David Bindman, emeritus Durning-Lawrence professor of the History of Art at University College London, and Esther Chadwick, Lecturer in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship by the curators, as well as essays by leading academics Sarah Haggarty, Joseph Leo Koerner, Cecilia Muratori, William Vaughan, and James Vigus.
Curators David Bindman and Esther Chadwick said: “This is the first exhibition to show William Blake not as an isolated figure but as part of European-wide attempts to find a new spirituality in face of the revolutions and wars of his time. We are excited to be able to shed new light on Blake by placing his works in dialogue with wider trends and themes in European art of the Romantic period, including transformations of classical tradition, fascination with Christian mysticism, belief in the coming apocalypse, spiritual regeneration and national revival.”
David Bindman and Esther Chadwick, eds., William Blake’s Universe (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301272, £35 / $45.
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