New Book | Hidden Patrons: Women and Architectural Patronage
From Bloomsbury:
Amy Boyington, Hidden Patrons: Women and Architectural Patronage in Georgian Britain (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023), 328 pages, ISBN: 978-1350358614 (hardcover), £65 / ISBN: 978-1350358607 (paperback), / £20.
An enduring myth of Georgian architecture is that it was purely the pursuit of male architects and their wealthy male patrons. History states that it was men who owned grand estates and houses, who commissioned famous architects, and who embarked upon elaborate architectural schemes. Hidden Patrons dismantles this myth—revealing instead that women were at the heart of the architectural patronage of the day, exerting far more influence and agency than has previously been recognised. Architectural drawing and design, discourse, and patronage were interests shared by many women in the eighteenth century. Far from being the preserve of elite men, architecture was a passion shared by both sexes, intellectually and practically, as long as they possessed sufficient wealth and autonomy. In an accessible, readable account, Hidden Patrons uncovers the role of women as important patrons and designers of architecture and interiors in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. Exploring country houses, Georgian townhouses, villas, estates, and gardens, it analyses female patronage from across the architectural spectrum and examines the work of a range of pioneering women from grand duchesses to businesswomen to lowly courtesans. Re-examining well-known Georgian masterpieces alongside lesser-known architectural gems, Hidden Patrons unearths unseen archival material to provide a fascinating new view of the role of women in the architecture of the Georgian era.
Amy Boyington is a social and architectural historian, with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She serves as a trustee of the Georgian Group and is a popular Instagram and TikTok historian.
c o n t e n t s
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Text
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Country House
2 The Town House
3 The Villa
4 The Wider Estate, Garden Design, and Ornamental Buildings
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
New Book | Symbols and Forms in Jewish Art
From IRSA, the Institute for Art Historical Research (founded in Venice in 1979 as the Istituto per le Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte, the institute was relocated to Florence and then to Vienna, before arriving in its current home in Cracow). Orders can be placed via email, irsa@irsa.com.pl.
Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein, Symbols and Forms in Jewish Art, translated by Renata Stein (Cracow: IRSA, 2022), 212 pages, ISBN: 978-8389831354. With an essay on Wischnitzer’s life and work by Shalom Sabar.
This is an English translation of a classic study on the iconography of Jewish art by Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein (1885–1989), originally published in Berlin in 1935 as Symbole und Gestalten der jüdischen Kunst. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented the book from spreading, and its uncirculated print-run was almost entirely destroyed by the Nazis. The few surviving copies of the book that circulated among specialists, gained this highly innovative work on Jewish iconography a position of a classic study. The present English edition makes the legendary book by Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein available to wider audiences of international readers for the first time.
“Against all odds, two years after the Nazi party and Hitler rose to power, Symbole und Gestalten der jüdischen Kunst appeared in Berlin in the mid-1930s. Presenting the visual art of the Jewish people as a sophisticated humanistic achievement, this handsome, beautifully produced volume illustrates the deep meanings and the powerful symbols of the Jewish people over the ages. Moreover, the book’s thesis and the materials gathered in it are underlined by an implied aspiration: to strengthen Jewish identity and make the Jews of the time conscious and proud of their rich heritage. The author of this courageous book…, Rachel Wischnitzer (1885–1989), a modest woman, small in size, …contributed more than any other scholar of the first half of the twentieth century to the establishment and development of a new field of academic study—the history of Jewish art.” —From Shalom Sabar’s biographical essay
Rachel Wischnitzer (1885–1989) during her long life produced 344 publications, including books, scholarly articles, reviews of books, and exhibitions, as well as encyclopedia items. Together with her husband Mark, she edited the literary and artistic periodicals Rimon and Milgroim. The doyenne of historians of Jewish art, she was a pioneer in the field when she published in 1913 her first article on the ancient synagogue in Lutsk. Her wide interests drove her to study and publish about Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, synagogue architecture, Jewish and general iconography. Her major contribution to Jewish iconography was a courageous attempt to find a single theme to which all the paintings in the third century Synagogue at Dura Europos would adhere.
c o n t e n t s
Foreword by Józef Grabski
Introduction
1 Divine Revelation
2 Kingdom
3 Doctrine
4 Priesthood
5 Judaism
6 Festivals and Customs
7 Messianic Hope
8 Time and the Universe
Shalom Sabar — Rachel Wischnitzer: Life and Work
Conference | Women in Architecture before 1800
From the conference website:
WoArch 2024: Women as Builders, Designers, and Critics of the Built Environment before 1800
Online and in-person, Palazzo Taverna, Rome, 25–27 January 2024
Organized by Shelley Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, and Francesca Riccardo
We are pleased to announce the first edition of the conference series WoArch (Women in Architecture) as an international symposium entitled Women as Builders, Designers, and Critics of the Built Environment before 1800, which will take place in Rome, 25–27 January 2024. Organized by the University of Arkansas Rome Center in collaboration with the School of Architecture + Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio, this symposium is also supported by the Women in Architecture Affiliate Group of the Society of Architectural Historians. The event will be hosted in person at the Rome Center in Palazzo Taverna, Rome, and will be live-streamed on the Rome Center YouTube channels.
For almost 30 years, the literature investigating women and the built environment before the modern era has focused on women’s patronage of architecture. This symposium is designed to open a discussion about what is missing from this conversation and yet can be found in the historical record: the roles that women of various social classes played in shaping architecture, landscapes, and cities in diverse parts of the world and the cultural and political implications of their activities. In part, the symposium calls for a re-interpretation of patronizing activities by women; and, from another point of view, it directs the spotlight toward women engaging in socio-political urban reform, creating networks of design influence, managing and participating in construction, and serving as the designer of the built environment across a broad geographic scope before modern industrialization.
For program details and speakers’ abstracts, please visit our webpage. For other queries, please write to Shelley Roff, shelley.roff@utsa.edu.
2 5 j a n u a r y | w o m e n a s b u i l d e r s a n d d e s i g n e r s
9.00 Introduction by Shelley E. Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, and Francesca Riccardo
9.20 Session 1: A Passion for Design
Moderator: Francesca Riccardo
• Alba Carballeira (Private Foundation, Spain), Building Knowledge: Princesse des Ursins’ Gesamtkunstwerk for Philip the V
• Rebecca Shields (Virginia Commonwealth University), Frances Stewart, the Duchess of Lennox and Richmond, and Richmond House
• Consuelo Lollobrigida (University of Arkansas Rome Center), The Influence of Borromini in Bricci’s Architectural Apprenticeship and Background
• Laura Hindelang (University of Bern), Female Architectural Agency Pre-1900: Conceptualizing Cross-Cultural Perspectives
• Izabela Kopania (Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences), Dutch-British Style for Cottage Architecture: Magdalena Morska’s Aesthetic Vision of Zarzecze Village
12.30 Archive Oratorio dei Filippini
14.20 Lunch
16.00 Session 2: Women Building the City
Moderator: María Elena Díez Jorge
• Mariana de Moura (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil), Women and Construction Know-How: Critical Fabulations from Self-Produced Sites
• Barry Stiefel (College of Charleston), To Carry Forty Pounds of Clay: Enslaved Black Women and Children Building Trades Workers in Early America
• Elizabeth Biggs (Trinity College Dublin) and Kirsty Wright (Historic Royal Palaces), Women Shaping the Palace of Westminster, ca. 1290–1700
• Nicoletta Marconi (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata), Unsuspected Presences: Women Workers on 16th–18th Century Roman Building Sites
• Gül Kale (Carleton University, Canada), Women as Shapers of Spatial Practices in Ottoman Istanbul
2 6 j a n u a r y | c o n n e c t i n g s p h e r e s o f i n f l u e n c e
9.00 Session 3: Critical Agents of Transformation
Moderator: Alba Carballeira
• Julie Beckers (University of Leuven), Rebuilding for Observance: Architectural Changes to Santa Maria di Monteluce in Perugia post Reform, ca. 1448–1485
• Sol Pérez Martinez (ETH Zürich), Nuns Reporting the City: Convents, Urban Life, and Female Experiences of 1700s Chile
• Elena Rieger (ETH Zürich), Urban Living: Emilie von Berlepsch and the Late 18th-Century City
• Christina Contandriopoulos and Étienne Morasse-Choquette (Université du Québec à Montréal), “Woman Writing on the Art and Architecture in 18th-Century Paris
• Anne Hultzsch (ETH Zürich), Conversations at the Tea Table: Eliza Haywood and the Sites of Criticism
11.50 San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Galleria Spada, Palazzo Falconieri
13.45 Lunch
15.30 Session 4: The Politics of Gender in Building
Moderator: Consuelo Lollobrigida
• María Elena Díez Jorge (Universidad de Granada), The Prestige of Women through Architecture in 16th-Century Spain
• Ceren Göğüş (İstanbul Kültür University), Self-Representation of Ottoman Women through Public Projects
• Jaroslaw Pietrzak (University of the National Education Commission, Krakow), Polish Abbesses as Restorers of Churches and Monasteries in the 18th Century in the Light of Monastery Chronicles
• Konrad Niemira, (Museum of Literature / Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
• Sigrid de Jong (ETH Zürich), Women as Agents of Change: Female Interventions in Parisian Architecture
18.10 Keynote Address
• Anuradha Chatterjee (Dean of the School of Design and Innovation, RV University, India), Remembering (and Forgetting) Ahilya Bai Holkar’s Architectural Legacy
2 7 j a n u a r y | m a t r o n a g e i n a n e w l i g h t
9.30 Roundtable
Moderator: Shelley Roff
• Shelley Roff (University of Texas at San Antonio), Introduction: Matronage in a New Light
• Margaret Woodhull (University of Colorado, Denver), Women and Public Buildings around the Ancient Mediterranean: Some Thoughts on What and Why They Built
• Jyoti Pandey Sharma (School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi), Invisible Patrons and Stewardship of the Faith: The Begami Masjids (Mosques built by Mughal Ladies) of the Mughal Badshahi Shahar (Imperial City) Shahjanahabad
• Alper Metin (Università di Bologna ), Women Shaping the Ottoman Capital, from Saliha to Nakşıdil Sultan, 1730–1817
• Hannah Mawdsley and Eleanor Harding (National Trust, UK), Unpicking the Evidence of Elizabeth Murray’s Role in the Expansion of Ham House
• Mercedes Simal López (Universidad de Jaén), Elizabeth Farnese, Builder of the Majesty of Philip V
• Priscilla Sonnier (University College Dublin), ‘Noble Minded Sister’: Grizelda Steevens and Dublin’s Steevens’ Hospital, 1717–1733
• Danielle Willkens (Georgia Institute of Technology), Paper Patrons: Women of the Transatlantic Design Network
10.50 Discussion
11.30 Closing Remarks
Conference | York and the Georgian City
Nathan Drake, The New Terrace Walk, York, ca. 1756, oil on canvas, 76 × 107 cm
(York Art Gallery)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the York Georgian Society:
York and the Georgian City: Past, Present, and Future
King’s Manor, York, 18 May 2024
Joint conference presented by the York Georgian Society and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York
The aim of this conference is to re-evaluate the notion of York as a Georgian city, which was one of the founding premises of the York Georgian Society in 1939. It will examine to what extent York can be described as a ‘Georgian’ city, and whether that label is relevant or meaningful in the present day. Why not a medieval, or a Victorian city? Is ‘Georgian’ merely a paradigm for good taste?
Keynote Presentations
• Rosemary Sweet (University of Leicester), When Did York Become Georgian?
• Madeleine Pelling (historian, writer, and broadcaster), Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of 18th-Century Britain
Other talks will include Constance Halstead on Anne Lister, Rachel Feldberg on Jane Ewbank, Matt Jenkins on whether York is an archetypical Georgian city, and John Mee on Manchester College, York. The full programme will be posted nearer the event.
Standard ticket prices (which include morning coffee, a light lunch, afternoon tea, and a reception) are £25; with discounted rates available to students (£5) and YGS members and University of York Staff (£15). Tickets can be booked here.
Exhibition | British Vision, 1700–1900, Selected Drawings and Prints
Joseph Farington, Dumbarton Rock from the South, 1788, pen and gray ink and watercolor; sheet: 38 × 68 cm
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Raymond Lifchez Living Trust Gift, 2014.148)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Now on view at The Met:
British Vision, 1700–1900: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 7 December 2023 — 5 March 2024
This rotation from the Department of Drawings and Prints celebrates recent additions to the collection by British artists who worked across two centuries, from 1700 to 1900. Landscape is a focus, with the genre becoming closely allied to the growing popularity of watercolor during this period. Around 1760, artists like Paul and Thomas Sandby, Francis Towne, and Thomas Jones began to explore the medium’s expressive potential. In the nineteenth century, dedicated watercolor societies were established and held regular exhibitions to promote their members’ work. Increasingly developed and poetically resonant compositions sought to challenge the preeminence of oil painting.
In this display, watercolors made rapidly out of doors by John Constable and Peter De Wint may be compared to finished compositions by John Brett, Samuel Palmer, and Alfred William Hunt. Travel’s ability to spur creativity is demonstrated by works that respond to sites in Britain, France, Italy, Caucasia, and North Africa. Nature studies, conversely, affirm how foreign flora became increasingly available at home. Finally, the sustained importance of the figure is represented by early chalk and pastel renderings by Joseph Wright of Derby and Allan Ramsay, vibrantly colored later portraits by David Wilkie and John Frederick Lewis, and representations of Black models by Lewis, William Henry Hunt, and Simeon Solomon.
Images of the works are available here»
Exhibition | James Gillray: Characters in Caricature
Now on view at Gainsborough’s House (which was just announced as the winner of The Georgian Group’s 2023 award for the ‘Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Context’). . .
James Gillray: Characters in Caricature
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, 11 November 2023 — 10 March 2024
Curated by Tim Clayton
James Gillray (1756–1815) was Georgian Britain’s funniest, most inventive, and most celebrated graphic satirist. His work transcends his own time and has continued to influence his successors of the modern age, from David Low to Martin Rowson. Tim Clayton, author of 2022’s definitive biography of James Gillray, brings the master satirist to life in an astonishing, colourful, and at times salacious exhibition, James Gillray: Characters in Caricature. This lively and daring exhibition examines how Gillray exposed the most notorious scandals of his time by focusing on the artist’s principal characters—household names to which he returned to again and again, from Emma Hamilton to the Emperor Napoleon.
Tim Clayton, James Gillray: Characters in Caricature (Sudbury: Gainsborough’s House Society, 2023), ISBN: 978-0946511693, £20.
Print Quarterly, December 2023
J. J. Grandville, after Francisco de Goya, And So Was His Grandfather (‘Hasta su abuelo’), 1834, graphite, over stylus indentations, 79 × 119 mm
(Nancy: Musée des Beaux-Arts)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 40.4 (December 2023)
a r t i c l e s
• Thea Goldring, “Beyond Siberia: Drawings by Le Prince for the Histoire Générale des Voyages,” pp. 391–406.
This article examines two signed and dated drawings by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734–1781) that were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012 and identifies their origins and purpose, proving Le Prince’s hitherto unknown participation in the Histoire Générale des Voyages project. The author discusses their relationship with the commissioned illustrations to Voyage en Sibérie by Jean Chappe d’Auteroche (1728–1769), as well as Le Prince’s contribution to other illustrated books. Throughout the paper, there is a detailed analysis of his common practice to appropriate and modify visual information from earlier sources, reworking them for illustrated travel texts.
Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Inuit Manner of Dress, 1769, pen and black ink, brush and grey wash, over black chalk, with additions in graphite, 170 × 120 mm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
• Paula Fayos-Pérez, “La Fontaine, Goya, Grandville: A Study of Visual and Literary Sources,” pp. 406–419.
This article considers how J.J. Grandville (1803–1847) was deeply influenced by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), particularly how the plates from the Caprichos inspired the former’s illustrations to Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables and other illustrated books. Incidentally, Goya had also previously derived his sources for the Caprichos and Desastres de la Guerra from earlier illustrations to La Fontaine’s 17th-century text. In doing so, the interconnection of literary and visual sources in both artists is revealed, highlighting their shared concern for public education and masked political undertones.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Tim Clayton, Review of David Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Yale University Press, 2021), pp. 442–43.
This review is just as much a praise of David Alexander’s research methods and resourcefulness as it is to the book’s groundbreaking contributions in this field. Clayton highlights the book’s revelations concerning invisible women engravers, who often worked alongside and carried on the business after their husbands had died. In keeping with Alexander’s wide area of focus, the book also includes native and foreign engravers in branches of the trade outside of fine art, leading to a far more expansive and representational dictionary than previous ones.
• Alexandra C. Axtmann, Review of Dominique Lerch, Kristina Mitalaité, Claire Rousseau and Isabelle Seruzier, eds., Les Images de Dévotion en Europe XVIe–XXIe Siècle. Une précieuse histoire (Bibliothèque Beauchesne, 2021), pp. 477–79.
This review summarises a copious book based on papers presented at a two-day conference in Paris in 2019 organized by the Dominican library of Le Saulchoir together with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. The content offers a European-wide perspective on small printed devotional prints that are often considered ‘kitsch’, enabling them to be studied with a variety of approaches concerning their creation, function, and reception up to the present day.
Call for Papers | In Motion: La Serenissima, Abruzzo, and the Adriatic
From ArtHist.net, which include the Call for Papers in Italian:
Art, Culture, and Politics in Motion: La Serenissima, Abruzzo, and the Adriatic Regions of the Kingdom of Naples, 16th–18th Centuries
Arte, cultura e politica in movimento: La Serenissima, l’Abruzzo e le regioni adriatiche del Regno di Napoli, XVI–XVIII secolo
Università degli Studi di Teramo, 10–11 April 2024
Organized by Martina Leone and Chiara Di Carlo
Proposals due by 4 February 2024
This call for studies stems from the ongoing research of two art historians and PhD students at the University of Teramo. Given the wide historiographical gaps on the subject, they propose to the scientific community, particularly to young researchers, two study days dedicated to the cultural and artistic circulation and the political and economic relations between the Republic of Venice, Abruzzo, and the Adriatic regions of the Kingdom of Naples (16th–18th centuries). There will be special but not exclusive attention to the movement of people, goods, works of art, ideas, collections, and documents, including in relation to the other side of the Adriatic Sea.
The 20th-century historiography has partly neglected the correspondence between Abruzzo and the territories of the Serenissima, instead focusing on the flourishing and proven connections between the Florentine-Aquilan and Roman-Aquilan figurative culture. Since the early 15th century, however, numerous testimonies have been known that confirm the migrations of Venetian artists to the territories of central Italy. In Abruzzo, the work of Jacobello da Fiore in Teramo, the sculpture of Girolamo Pittoni from Vicenza, and valuable 18th-century works by the Venetian artist Vincenzo Damini, prompt us to reconsider the entire situation. To enrich even more the debate are the reverse routes. We are witnessing not only migrations from North to Central Italy, but also displacements from the territories of Abruzzo to those of the Serenissima, as proven by the case of the 17th-century painter of Campli, Giovanni Battista Boncori.
With a chronological arc extended from the 16th to the 18th century, scholars from various fields (art history, modern history, economic history, gender history, book history, etc.) are invited to present unpublished and original contributions that shed light on the scope of Venetian figurative culture in Abruzzo and vice versa; on the exchange of documents and books within the two contexts; on the circulation of people, objects, materials and ideas, such as, the presence of local craftsmen active in both geographical areas. Like the maritime routes, carpenters, goldsmiths, woodworkers, potters, and collectors, represent an excellent starting point of investigation to highlight, once again, the correspondence between economic and social phenomena with artistic practice.
The submission of each contribution must include an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short curriculum vitae et studiorum of the applicant. The proposal must be sent to mleone@unite.it and cdicarlo@unite.it no later than Sunday, 4 February 2024. Scientific contributions will be published after peer review. The organising committee will provide the speakers with food for the entire duration of the conference and special agreements at accommodation facilities of the city of Teramo. The round trip transfer Rome-Teramo is funded for speakers coming from territories outside of Italy.
Possible but not exclusive lines of studies:
• Artistic influences between the Republic of Venice, Abruzzo, and the Adriatic regions of the Kingdom of Naples
• Circulation of people, ideas, and knowledge, also in relation to the Balkan side
• Carpenters, goldsmiths, woodworkers, and potters: the minor arts and the processing of local materials
• Circulation of drawings, engravings, and models
• Circulation of books and texts and the role of printing works
• Transmission of information (political, economic, etc.): correspondence, inventories, and dispatches
• Political and religious propaganda between the Holy See, the Republic of Venice, and the Kingdom of Naples
• The formation of collections of naturalia and mirabilia
• The movement of the economy: trade and commercial routes along the Adriatic
• Circulation of cults and religious men
Scientific Committee
Prof. Massimo Carlo Giannini (University of Teramo – Complutense University of Madrid)
Prof. Luca Siracusano (University of Teramo)
Prof.ssa Francesca Fausta Gallo (University of Teramo)
Prof. Giorgio Fossaluzza (University of Verona)
Prof. Adriano Ghisetti Giavarina (University ‘G. d’Annunzio’ of Chieti-Pescara)
Prof. Michele Maccherini (University of L’Aquila)
Prof. Egidio Ivetic (University of Padua)
New Book | The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll
Published by Reaktion and also distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Shane McCausland, The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 299 pages, ISBN: 978-1789147964, £35 / $50.
The Chinese picture-scroll, a long painting or calligraphic work held within a horizontal scrolling mount, has been China’s pre-eminent aesthetic format for the last two millennia. This first extended history of the picture-scroll explores its extraordinary longevity, and its adaptability to social, political, and technological change. The book describes what the picture-scroll demands of a viewer, how China’s artists grappled with its cultural power, and how collectors and connoisseurs have left their marks on scrolls for later generations to judge. The return to mass appeal of scrolling—a media technology that seemed long outdated yet persists in our digital age—provides urgent and fascinating context to this book.
Shane McCausland is Percival David Professor of the History of Art at SOAS University of London. His many books include The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368 (Reaktion Books, 2014), and he has curated numerous exhibitions in Europe, North America, and China.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction
1 On Origins and Uses over the First Millennium
2 Inscribing the Artist and the Collector: The Picture-Scroll in the Song–Liao–Jin Period
3 Handscrolls in Mongol Palaces
4 Musing on Shadows: Reading the Ming Picture-Scroll
5 Qing: Reading the ‘Baroque’ Handscroll
6 Modernist Uses of the Chinese Picture-Scroll
7 The Medium of Silent Poetry in the Late Modern World
References
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Index
New Book | East Asian Aesthetics and the Space of Painting
Isabelle Tillerot’s Orient et ornement: l’espace à l’oeuvre ou le lieu de la peinture was published in 2018; an English edition will soon be available from The Getty:
Isabelle Tillerot, East Asian Aesthetics and the Space of Painting in Eighteenth-Century Europe, translated by Chris Miller (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2024), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1606067970 (paperback), $70.
This volume offers the first critical account of how European imports of East Asian textiles, porcelain, and lacquers, along with newly published descriptions of the Chinese garden, inspired a revolution in the role of painting in early modern Europe. With particular focus on French interiors, Isabelle Tillerot reveals how a European enthusiasm for East Asian culture and a demand for novelty transformed the dynamic between painting and decor. Models of space, landscape, and horizon, as shown in Chinese and Japanese objects and their ornamentation, disrupted prevailing design concepts in Europe. With paintings no longer functioning as pictorial windows, they began to be viewed as discrete images displayed on a wall—and with that, their status changed from decorative device to autonomous work of art. This study presents a detailed history of this transformation, revealing how an aesthetic free from the constraints of symmetry and geometrized order upended paradigms of display, enabling European painting to come into its own.
Isabelle Tillerot is an independent scholar of eighteenth-century French art.
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