Exhibition | The Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City
From the press release (6 March 2023), from the Château de Versailles:
The Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City: French-Chinese Relations in the 18th Century
Palace Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing, 1 April — 30 June 2024
Hong Kong Palace Museum, 18 December 2024 — 4 May 2025
Fontaine à parfum, porcelaine à glaçure céladon craquelé et céramique brune, Jingdezhen, début de l’époque Qianlong (1736–1795), monture en bronze doré, Paris, vers 1743 (Château de Versailles).
Initially scheduled for 2020 and postponed due to the pandemic, the exhibition entitled The Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City: French-Chinese Relations in the 18th Century will run from 1 April 2024 at the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum. On 6 April 2023, Palace of Versailles Chair Catherine Pégard and Xudong Wang, Chair of the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum, met at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to reiterate their enthusiasm in seeing this joint project through to completion before Presidents Xi and Macron.
The Palace of Versailles is honoured to be working with the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum in Beijing in organising this exhibition surrounding the relationship between France and China in the 18th century and due to run from 1 April to 30 June 2024. The exhibition is a more in-depth version of the one that was rolled out at the Palace of Versailles in 2014 to mark fifty years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, initially sparked by General de Gaulle on 27 January 1964.
Louis XIV put in place in the context of his relations with Emperor Kangxi, which took the form of initiatives such as French Jesuits dispatched to China in 1685 to serve at the Chinese court as mathematicians to the King. This process paved the way for the two nations to begin forging a relationship built on mutual trust and admiration, one that remains unfamiliar to many, and lasted until the 18th century. This special diplomatic relationship and mutual respect helped usher in French appreciation for modern China and Chinese artistry.
In France, the court’s love affair with China and Chinese art shines through in a variety of different ways, and four key phenomena: importing Chinese artworks and pieces; altering certain imported artworks, notably by adding gilt-bronze frames to porcelain pieces and using lacquered panels on French furniture; imitating Chinese products, such as the frenzied quest to track down the secret to making kaolin porcelain; and Chinese art’s marked influence on French art, particularly in the field of decorative arts. The exhibition will illustrate how Chinese art served as a bottomless source of inspiration for French artists and intellectuals, in everything from painting, art objects, and interior design to architecture, landscape design, literature, music and the sciences.
Meanwhile, in the Chinese court, many French Jesuits also followed after the arrival of the ‘Mathematicians of the king’ sent by Louis XIV in China, some of whom served the court for a long time. With them as the intermediary, French culture had an important influence on many fields such as science, art, architecture, medicine, mapping and so on in the Qing court. Therefore, juxtaposed with French Exhibits in the Exhibition are also clocks, scientific instruments, prints, porcelain, bronzes, books, and other objects from the Palace Museum collection, directly reflecting the achievements of exchanges and cultural exchanges between the two sides.
The exhibition in Beijing will bring together a selection of pieces taken from the Palace of Versailles and Palace Museum collections, designed to serve as broader examples of the veritable fascination for Chinese art that took root at the court of Versailles and among French enthusiasts. It showcases the efforts and achievements made by China and France to achieve mutual understanding and cultural exchanges in the 18th century, and vividly restores the splendid cultural and artistic exchanges between the two countries for more than a century.
Exhibition commissioned by Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, Curator at the Palace of Versailles, and Guo Fuxiang, Curator at the Palace Museum.
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Note (added 18 December 2024) — The posting was updated to include the Hong Kong venue.
New Book | The Borders of Chinese Architecture
From Harvard UP:
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, The Borders of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2022), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-0674241015, $57.
An internationally acclaimed expert explains why Chinese-style architecture has remained so consistent for two thousand years, no matter where it is built.
For the last two millennia, an overwhelming number of Chinese buildings have been elevated on platforms, supported by pillars, and covered by ceramic-tile roofs. Less obvious features, like the brackets connecting the pillars to roof frames, also have been remarkably constant. What makes the shared features more significant, however, is that they are present in Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and Islamic milieus; residential, funerary, and garden structures; in Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and elsewhere. How did Chinese-style architecture maintain such standardization for so long, even beyond China’s borders?
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt examines the essential features of Chinese architecture and its global transmission and translation from the predynastic age to the eighteenth century. Across myriad political, social, and cultural contexts within China and throughout East Asia, certain design and construction principles endured. Builders never abandoned perishable wood in favor of more permanent building materials, even though Chinese engineers knew how to make brick and stone structures in the last millennium BCE. Chinese architecture the world over is also distinctive in that it was invariably accomplished by anonymous craftsmen. And Chinese buildings held consistently to the plan of the four-sided enclosure, which both afforded privacy and differentiated sacred interior space from an exterior understood as the sphere of profane activity. Finally, Chinese-style buildings have always and everywhere been organized along straight lines. Taking note of these and other fascinating uniformities, The Borders of Chinese Architecture offers an accessible and authoritative overview of a tradition studiously preserved across time and space.
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt is Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Chinese Architecture: A History (2019). Her work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, Getty Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society.
c o n t e n t s
Preface
Introduction: The Borders Problem
1 Chinese Architecture before China
2 Han
3 Architecture before Reunification
4 Seeing the Sixth Century as the Seventh and Eighth
5 Tang Internationalism
6 Defining Chinse Architecture and Borders during Liao
7 Western Xia, Song, Japn, Jin
8 A Revisionist History of Yuan Architecture
9 Ming
10 The Long Eighteenth Century
Afterword
New Report | Survey of Asian Ceramics, National Trust for Scotland
Large dish, porcelain, painted in underglaze blue, iron-red, and gold, Imari-type palette, made in Arita kilns, Japan, Edo period, c.1700–20
(National Trust for Scotland)
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The report was released early this year; Patricia Ferguson provides an introduction here. The full report is available (for free) as a PDF file here.
Patricia Ferguson, Survey of Asian Ceramics in the Collection of the National Trust for Scotland (National Trust for Scotland, 2023), 162 pages.
Between 2017 and 2019 the National Trust for Scotland delivered Project Reveal, a major collections project inventorying a collection of over 140,000 objects, distributed across 50 properties throughout Scotland. Encompassing major object groupings in the areas of fine and decorative art, household furniture and domestic life, these collections chart the experiences of people living in Scotland through 500 years of Scottish history, as well as demonstrating Scotland’s past relationships with the rest of the world.
This survey of Asian ceramics is a natural successor to Project Reveal. It delves deeper into the history and significance of a collection of circa 1,700 ceramic items. Undertaken by the independent researcher Patricia F. Ferguson this report sets out the survey findings, drawing together disparate existing research on the subject and contributing new collection research and knowledge. Focusing on key collections at nine different National Trust for Scotland properties, the report positions the collections within the broader context of historic ceramic production and collecting, with attention to influences such as: fashion and the role of royalty; production in and trade with China and Japan; and the growth of and changes in demand.
Patricia Ferguson is a ceramic specialist with an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. She has worked in London at the British Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum, and as Honorary Adviser on Ceramics to the National Trust (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland). She published Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces in 2016.
Conference | Exploring the Histories of Chinese Collections in Europe
Gotha Research Centre (Das Forschungszentrum Gotha ), Universität Erfurt, Thuringia (large grey building on the left).
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From ArtHist.net:
From Cabinets to Museums: Exploring the Histories of Chinese Collections in Europe
Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt, 10–11 January 2024
Organized by Emily Teo
An international workshop at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt, in cooperation with Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha
Chinese objects were acquired by European collectors for a variety of reasons: ranging from the aesthetic decoration of their residences, to using objects as a source of knowledge about foreign cultures. This workshop brings together historians and museum professionals to discuss the complex histories of Chinese collections in European contexts. Central to the workshop is the East Asian collection in Gotha. Around 1800, Duke August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1772–1822) founded the Chinese Cabinet, a rich and diverse collection of East Asian objects in Gotha’s Friedenstein Palace. Themes that will be explored include the global circulation of artwork, China-Mode in 18th-century Europe, and the practices of collecting and displaying Chinese objects in European collections. The goal of the workshop is to historicize these collections and to explore their interconnections, leading to new directions for research on East Asian collections in Europe. Registration and contact: Emily.teo@uni-erfurt.de
Shoes from the East Asian collection in Gotha, founded by Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg as the Chinese Cabinet around 1800 (Schloss Friedenstein, inv. no. ETH14S).
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11.00 Tour of the Ducal Museum*
• Agnes Strehlau (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha)
14.00 Greeting
• Martin Mulsow (Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt)
• Tobias Pfeifer-Helke (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha)
14.15 Introduction
• Emily Teo (Gotha Research Centre)
14.30 Session 1 | Historical Collections
• Jean Theodore Royer (1737–1807) and His Chinese Collection: Thoughts on His Objectives and Collecting Strategies — Jan van Campen (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Noblesse Oblige — Francois Coulon (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes)
15.40 Coffee break
Object Workshop
16.15 Viewing East Asian Artefacts*
• Kerstin Volker-Saad and Agnes Strehlau (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha)
18.00 Evening Lecture
• Traces of Guangzhou: Craftsmanship, Material (Dis)Connections and Chinesische Kabinette — Anna Grasskamp (University of Oslo)
19.00 Workshop dinner, for invited participants
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9.30 Object Workshop
• Viewing Chinese Export Albums* — Ulrike Eydinger (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha)
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Session 2 | Transcultural Objects
• Gemstone Potted Landscapes: A Case Study for Exploring the 18th- and 19th-Century China-Europe Transcultural Materiality and Craftsmanship — Wen-ting Wu (National Taiwan University)
• From ’18 Stuck grose Vasen’ to ‘national wertvolles Kulturgut’: Chinese Monumental Vases and the History of Chinese Art History at the Dresden Porcelain Collection — Feng Schöneweiß (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut)
12.25 Lunch break
13.15 Session 3 | Chinese Architecture for European Princes
• Chinese Architecture at the Friedenstein Palace: Henri-Léonard Bertin, Herzog August von Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and the Influence of the Drawings from l’Essai sur l’architecture chinoise (1773) — Kee Il Choi Jr (University of Zürich)
• Just for Decoration or Made for Pedagogical Purposes? Murals with Scenes from the Life of Confucius in Oranienbaum Commissioned by Duke Franz of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817) — Dorothee Schaab-Hanke (University of Bamberg)
• Think Big: Augustus the Strong and His Collections of Asiatica — Cordula Bischoff (Independent Researcher)
15.00 Final remarks
* Workshop presentations and the evening lecture at the Gotha Research Centre are open to the public with registration. Due to space constraints, the museum tour and object workshops are open only to workshop speakers. Object workshops will be held at the Perthes Forum, a 10-minute walk from the Gotha Research Centre.
Exhibition | Shoes: Inside Out
Eighteenth-century women’s shoes (Hampshire Cultural Trust’s Collection).
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Now on view at The Arc:
Shoes: Inside Out
Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery, Basingstoke, Spring 2023
The Arc, Winchester, 24 November 2023 — 6 March 2024
From the functional and practical to the fashionable and extravagant, shoes have played an intriguing role in our social history and modern lives. They can tell us about a person’s work, leisure choices, status, and aspirations—but the story is not always straightforward. Conformity to gender stereotypes is blurred, power statements conceal repression, and the utilitarian merges with the frippery. Shoes: Inside Out is an exhibition featuring footwear from our past, as far back as 11 AD, to the present. Through the themes of work, protect, play, empower, transform, identify, and aspire, 70 pairs of shoes from Hampshire Cultural Trust’s Collection explore how shoes have shaped—and have been shaped by—society. From Georgian high society shoes to 1970s platforms and current high-end designer heels to everyday boots there is a shoe to fit all interests. Alongside the footwear, a display of high-definition x-rays of some of the shoes allow us to glimpse the story within, uncovering developments in the shoes’ construction and revealing an ethereal reminiscence of a life lived.
New Book | Pockets: An Intimate History
We now have two books on pockets (Carlson’s joins that of Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux, published by Yale UP in 2019). From Hachette Book Group:
Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close (Algonquin Books, 2023), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1643751542, $35.
Who gets pockets, and why? It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.
Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. See: #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.
Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.
And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.) Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain ‘smart’ textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards. Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.
Hannah Carlson teaches dress history and material culture at the Rhode Island School of Design. After training as a conservator of costume and textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she received a PhD in material culture from Boston University. She has contributed articles to Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life; Dress; and MacGuffin: The Life of Things.
Exhibition | The Fabric of Democracy
La fête de la Fédération textile, 1790
(Musee de la Toile de Jouy)
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Now on view at the Fashion and Textile Museum:
The Fabric of Democracy: Propaganda Textiles from the French Revolution to Brexit
Fashion and Textile Museum, London, 29 September 2023 – 3 March 2024
Curated by design historian Amber Butchart, this exhibition explores printed propaganda textiles over more than two centuries. Discover how fabric designers and manufacturers have responded to political upheaval from the French Revolution through to Brexit.
The mechanisation of textile industries from the mid-18th century led to the development of printing techniques that could create more detailed imagery on cloth, quicker than ever before. These increasingly affordable processes ‘democratised’ textile decoration, allowing governments, regimes, and corporations to harness the power of print to communicate, from wartime slogans to revolutionary ideals.
While propaganda is usually associated with public art and monumental sculpture, this exhibition explores how fabrics have been used as a political medium both in the home and on the body, through furnishing and fashion. Find out how textiles were used as a tool of the state across the political spectrum, from communism to fascism. Discover how a fraternal crisis in the monarchy played out on cloth, and how democracies promote national identity through textile design. On display will be textiles from countries including Britain, America, Italy, Germany, and Austria—ranging from French toile de Jouy to Japanese robes from the Asia-Pacific war, to Cultural Revolution-era Chinese fabrics rarely exhibited in the UK.
Amber Butchart is a curator, writer, and broadcaster who specialises in the cultural and political history of textiles and dress. She is a former Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London and is a regular public lecturer across the UK’s leading arts institutions. She researches and presents documentaries for television and radio, including the six-part series A Stitch in Time for BBC Four that fused biography, art, and the history of fashion to explore the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore, and she is the history consultant and regular on-screen historian for BBC One’s Great British Sewing Bee. Amber is an external adviser for the National Crime Agency as a Forensic Garment Analyst, working on cases that require investigation of clothing and textiles. She has published five books on the history and culture of clothes, including The Fashion of Film, Nautical Chic, and a history of British fashion illustration for the British Library.
Exhibition | Boy’s Dress, 1760–1930
Now on view at the Fashion and Textile Museum:
Oh Boy! Boy’s Dress, 1760–1930
Fashion and Textile Museum, London, 29 September 2023 – 3 March 2024
The Fashion and Textile Museum is excited to present Oh Boy!, an exploration into historical boy’s dress. Curated by leading fashion historian Amy de la Haye, alongside renowned expert collector Alasdair Peebles, the exhibition presents an unrivalled collection of an often-undervalued area of fashion history, spread over two acts.
29 September — 16 December 2023
Act One: Breeched, No More Dresses explores the ceremony of entry into the masculine world, taking place after six years of age, as boys abandoned dresses in favour of breeches. Focusing on the period from 1760 to 1810, Act One presents a dimity gown and coat, a robust three-piece fustian breeches suit, and a block-printed skeleton suit, alongside other fascinating pieces.
21 December 2023 — 3 March 2024
Act Two: Ship Shape delves into the vogue for nautical wear dating from 1860 to 1930. Starting with a miniature suit that an admiral had made for his young son and including linen and wool serge suits, loosely inspired by naval dress, accompanied by accessories. The space will be imaginatively adorned, showcasing Alasdair’s skills as a decorative period interior painter and exploring the topic of collecting as narrative.
Amy de la Haye is Professor of Dress History & Curatorship, and joint director of the Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion (LCF). Recent and current projects include Gluck: Art & Identity at Brighton Museum (2017), Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion at MFIT (2021), Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose at London’s Garden Museum (2022), Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain at Compton Verney (2023), and Making More Mischief… at LCF Stratford (2024). She has published extensively and writes for SHOWstudio. Formerly she served as curator of 20th-century dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum with exhibitions including the radical Streetstyle: from sidewalk to catwalk (1994).
Alasdair Peebles works as a freelance decorative painter, specialising in hand-painted wallpapers and the restoration of painted finishes in Historic houses. For the last thirty years, he has built a private collection focused exclusively on boy’s and youth’s clothes from 1750 to 1950. He is currently co-authoring a book on men’s and boys’ dress for Bloomsbury. He has lectured widely, regularly lends clothing to museums for exhibitions and works with costume designers on period film projects including Little Women and Mary Poppins.
Colloquium | Le stuc dans les grands décors en Europe
From ArtHist.net and the conference programme:
Le stuc dans les grands décors en France et en Europe, de la Renaissance à 1850
Online and in-person, Versailles, Paris, and Fontainebleau, 11–13 December 2023
L’objectif de ces journées est de faire le point sur les recherches en cours, les avancées dans les domaines de la restauration et de l’analyse scientifique, les découvertes effectuées à l’occasion de récents chantiers de restauration et définir des objets de recherches pluridisciplinaires. L’usage du stuc dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge a suscité l’intérêt des historiens de l’art et des scientifiques du patrimoine français. Par contre, hormis dans la sphère provençale et languedocienne, où le milieu universitaire est particulièrement actif sur le sujet des décors, le stuc demeure un champ d’étude encore trop peu exploré en France pour la période de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle.
Pourtant, le vaste sujet du stuc connaît en Europe un certain engouement, comme en témoignent le Centro Studi per la Storia dello Stucco in Età Moderna e Contemporanea, les publications du Rijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed des Pays-Bas, les colloques organisés par la Low Countries Sculpture Society et par l’université de Pardubice, en République Tchèque. La galerie Mazarin à la Bibliothèque nationale de France, la chambre de la duchesse d’Étampes, la galerie François Ier et la Porte Dorée à Fontainebleau, la galerie d’Apollon et l’appartement d’été d’Anne d’Autriche au Louvre ou encore la galerie des Glaces et le salon de Diane à Versailles sont autant de campagnes de restaurations récentes ou en cours qui concernent en partie le stuc. Elles sont l’opportunité de mettre en lumière la question du stuc dans les grands décors français en stuc, de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle.
Les trois journées d’études et de visites sont le premier évènement organisé par un nouveau groupe de recherche sur le décor en stuc dans les grandes demeures en France et en Europe de la Renaissance à 1850. L’objectif de ces journées est de faire le point sur les recherches en cours, les avancées dans les domaines de la restauration et de l’analyse scientifique, les découvertes effectuées à l’occasion de récents chantiers de restauration et définir des objets de recherches pluridisciplinaires. Langues: français et anglais.
Le colloque est retransmis en direct sur YouTube, où vous pourrez continuer à le visionner après l’événement. Il suffit de cliquer sur les liens ci-dessous.
Le lien de la chaîne YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GroupeStucs
1 e journée, Versailles: https://youtube.com/live/wrNoOIji2CM
2e journée, C2RMF: https://youtube.com/live/ijBg390diu0
3e journée, Fontainebleau: https://youtube.com/live/RYip3hmp164
Collaboration entre le château de Versailles, le château de Fontainebleau, le Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, le Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques, le musée du Louvre, le château de Compiègne et l’association Low Countries Sculpture asbl
À l’heure actuelle, le groupe rassemble plusieurs institutions muséales, patrimoniales et scientifiques : le musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, le musée national du château de Fontainebleau, le musée national du château de Compiègne, le musée du Louvre, la bibliothèque nationale de France, le château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, le Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, le Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques, le château de Vaux-le-Vicomte et l’association Low Countries Sculpture. Le groupe espère réunir une communauté d’historiens de l’art (conservateurs et universitaires), de restaurateurs, de scientifiques du patrimoine et d’artisans s’intéressant à ce sujet qui puisse à terme élaborer des programmes de recherches cohérents et devenir une référence pour les prochains chantiers de restauration concernant des décors de stuc.
Comite d’Organisation
Lionel Arsac (château de Versailles)
Oriane Beaufils (château de Fontainebleau)
Anne Bouquillon (C2RMF)
Ann Bourges (C2RMF)
Valérie Carpentier-Vanhaverbeke (musée du Louvre)
Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan (musée du Louvre)
Jean Ducasse-Lapeyrusse (LRMH)
Étienne Guibert (château de Compiègne)
Léon Lock (The Low Countries Sculpture Society)
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Château de Versailles, auditorium, cour d’Honneur, entrée sur la gauche du Pavillon Dufour (A)
9.50 Laurent Salome (directeur, château de Versailles), Mots de bienvenue
10.00 Lionel Arsac (conservateur du patrimoine, château de Versailles), Introduction
10.20 Session 1 | Le Stuc: état de la recherche, définitions
Présidence: Geneviève Bresc-Bautier (directrice honoraire du département des Sculptures, musée du Louvre)
• Serena Quagliaroli (université de Turin), and Giulia Spoltore (Università della Svizzera italiana), A Centre for the Study of Stucco
• Giacinta Jean (SUPSI, Mendrisio), Giovanni Nicoli (SUPSI, Mendrisio), and Jana Zapletová (Palacký University, Olomouc), Form and Material of Stucco Decoration: Developing Research Projects for a Better Understanding, Conservation, and Dissemination
• Sarah Munoz (université de Lausanne), Usages et techniques du stuc en France aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: considérations, savoir-faire et secrets d’atelier
• Cyril de Ricou (Atelier de Ricou, Paris) et Armelle Le Gendre (Atelier de Ricou, Paris), Regards croisés sur les stucs de Michel Anguier dans les appartements d’été d’Anne d’Autriche: l’apport des sources écrites et de l’analyse des matériaux
12.15 Pause déjeuner
13.45 Session 2 | Sculpteurs, stucateurs et gipiers
Présidence: Pascal Julien (université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès)
• Lionel Arsac (conservateur du patrimoine, château de Versailles), Le stuc dans les Grands Appartements de Versailles
• Magali Theron (université d’Aix-Marseille), Maîtres sculpteurs et/ou gipiers? Les auteurs des décors en gypserie à Marseille et Aix au XVIIe et début du XVIIIe siècle
15.20 Session 3 | Concevoire: modèles et transmissions
Présidence: Christine Casey (Trinity College Dublin)
• Alicia Adamczak-Gosset (Institut catholique de Paris), Le stuc en regard de la peinture: valeur iconographique et matérielle dans les décors de Jacques Sarazin et de Simon Vouet
• Léon Lock (The Low Countries Sculpture Society, Bruxelles/Mons), Le stuc dans les anciens Pays-Bas de 1650 à 1780: Réflexions sur la traduction de modèles gravés en hauts reliefs
• Giuseppe Dardanello (université de Turin), Stucco in Piedmont from the Late 17th to the mid-18th Century: Designers and Producers
• Barbara Rinn-Kupka (historienne de l’art indépendante, Cologne), French outside France: French Decoration Models in Central and Northern German Stuccowork from the 16th to the mid-18th Century
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Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF), auditorium, Palais du Louvre, porte des Lions, escalier de l’Horloge
8.30 Accueil
9.00 Jean-Michel Loyer-Hascoët (directeur, C2RMF), Mots de bienvenue
9.10 Anne Bouquillon (C2RMF) et Ann Bourges (C2RMF), Introduction
9.35 Session 4 | Échanges et diffusion (I)
Présidence: Muriel Barbier (directrice du patrimoine et des collections, château de Fontainebleau)
• Oriane Beaufils (conservatrice du patrimoine, château de Fontainebleau) et Émilie Checroun (conservatrice-restauratrice, Paris), Les stucs du château de Fontainebleau: modèles, méthodes et matérialité
• Grégoire Extermann (SUPSI, Mendrisio) et Alberto Felici (SUPSI, Mendrisio), Une décoration en stuc inédite à la Villa Imperiale de Pesaro: entre Italie, empire et monarchies
11.05 Session 5 | Échanges et diffusion (II)
Présidence: Oriane Beaufils (conservatrice du patrimoine, château de Fontainebleau)
• Serena Quagliaroli (université de Turin) and Giulia Spoltore (Università della Svizzera italiana), Some Italian-French Case Studies in mid-16th-Century Rome
• Mickaël Zito (musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie de Besançon), Des Lacs à la Toscane, sur les traces des stucateurs Portogalli
12.05 Pause déjeuner
13.00 Session 6 | Grands décors: étude de cas de restauration (I)
Présidence: Jean Ducasse-Lapeyrusse (LRMH)
• Luca Baroni (Université Ca’Foscari, Venise – directeur, lieux culturels de la région des Marches du Nord), Stucco as Political Power: The Rediscovery and Restoration of the Decorative Cycle by Federico Brandani in the Ducal Palace of Montebello, ca. 1530–63
• Jan Verbeke (conservateur-restaurateur indépendant, Gand), The Plasterer Ian Christiaen Hansche in the Refectory of Park Abbey in Heverlee: The Meticulous Conservation and Restoration of the Monumental 1679 Stucco Ceiling
• Michael Gratton (atelier Tollis, Paris), Les décors de gypseries du Grand Salon du château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, étude des techniques de mise en œuvre et restauration
15.00 Session 7 | Grands décors: étude de cas de restauration (II)
Présidence: Fabrice Goubard (LPPI, CY Cergy Paris Université)
• Corrado De Giuli Morghen (Agence d’architecture Fabrica Traceorum, Marseille), Pierrick Rodriguez (conservateur des Monuments Historiques, DRAC PACA), et Margot Morisse (conservatrice-restauratrice du patrimoine), Le maître-autel et le retable du sculpteur Christophe Veyrier de l’église Notre-Dame de Nazareth à Trets (13), un témoignage précieux du baroque provençal
• Camille Jacquot (responsable du pôle patrimoine, château de Lunéville) et Annabelle Sansalone (conservatrice-restauratrice du patrimoine, Paris), Présentation des décors en plâtre dans l’antichambre de la Reine au château de Lunéville: contexte historique et mise en œuvre de l’ouvrage
• Wijnand Freling (architecte du patrimoine, Rocaille b.v., La Haye), Preserving a Monumental 18th-Century Stucco Ceiling in the Staircase of the Senate at the Binnenhof, the Centre of Government of the Netherlands in The Hague
17.00 Discussion sur le stuc: matérialité et caractérisation des matériaux
• Fabrice Goubard (LPPI, CY Cergy Paris Université)
• Anne Bouquillon (C2RMF)
• Ann Bourgès (C2RMF)
• Jean Ducasse-Lapeyrusse (LRMH)
18.00 Visite de la Galerie Dorée de la Banque de France
Arnaud Manas (chef du service historique, Banque de France)
Max. 35 personnes, sur inscription
m e r c r e d i , 1 3 d e c e m b r e 2 0 2 3
Château de Fontainebleau, salle des Colonnes
11.20 Accueil café
11.45 Oriane Beaufils (conservatrice du patrimoine, château de Fontainebleau), Introduction
12.00 Session 8 | Matériaux particuliers, reproductibilité
Présidence: Guilhem Scherf (département des Sculptures, musée du Louvre)
• François Gilles (université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne/Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris), Usage(s) du plâtre chez les sculpteurs en ornement parisiens au XVIIIe siècle
• Étienne Guibert (conservateur du patrimoine, château de Compiègne), Le stuc, un matériau économique et pratique dans les décors néoclassiques de Compiègne
13.00 Pause déjeuner
14.15 Session 9 | Quand le stuc est omniprésent
Présidence: Eckart Marchand (The Warburg Institute, université de Londres)
• Alexia Lebeurre (université de Bordeaux), La grande manière retrouvée: le stuc-marbre dans les demeures parisiennes de la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle
• Hugues Morisse (Lympia Architecture, Paris), Agir en diplomate. Quand le stuc s’exporte à l’étranger. Le cas de la légation de France à Belgrade dans l’entre-deux-guerres
• Johann Kräftner (architecte du patrimoine, ancien directeur, collections princières du Liechtenstein, Vienne/Vaduz), The Restoration of the Stucco in the Two Liechtenstein Palaces in Vienna
15.45 Conclusions et perspectives
• Valérie Carpentier-Vanhaverbeke (conservatrice du patrimoine, musée du Louvre)
• Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan (conservatrice en chef du patrimoine, musée du Louvre)
16.10 Réception de clôture
Call for Papers | Collecting, Growing, and Exploring
From ArtHist.net:
Collecting, Growing, and Exploring in Early Modernity
EPHE Sorbonne, Paris 11 June 2024
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitis and Catherine Powell-Warren
Proposals due by 15 January 2024
Thomas Bardwell, Portrait of a Girl in a Yellow Dress Holding a Shell, 1756, oil on canvas, 126 × 101 cm (sold at Bonhams, 2 December 2010).
The last few decades have produced a number of studies devoted to the relationship between collecting and science, highlighting the relationship between a growing interest in botany and the fascination with the collection of naturalia, especially from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. These objects of natural origins aroused the admiration of enthusiasts and scientists alike. This passion for collecting reached various corners of society: the academic garden at Leiden University included an ambulacrum that housed dried plant specimens, fossils, and taxidermized animals (Egmond 2010); artists kept collections of rarities not only for use in the studio, but also to satisfy their personal curiosity (Rijks 2022); and Petronella de la Court’s shell collection was represented in her prized dollhouse, and mentioned several times in Georg Eberhard Rumphius’ seminal text D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer (Powell-Warren 2023). Indeed, the interest in collecting even spawned its own genre of still life painting. The interest in such wonders of nature and the desire to possess them often went beyond the ‘simple’ collecting of specimens, dried samples, or shells obtained through exchanges and purchases. In fact, they could often go so far as to push those who possessed gardens or parks to engage in botanical experiments that led to attempts to grow tropical flowers and fruits even if it was in unfavourable climates and hostile terrain, and even to promote scientific expeditions to study and collect specimens in distant and exotic lands.
More recent scholarship has addressed several issues regarding collecting practices, the intersection between collecting and science, and even the participation of women in collecting. Among other ground-breaking works, the following spring to mind: Possessing Nature (Findlen 1994); Visible Empire: Colonial Botany and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Bleichmar 2012); Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World (Bleichmar and Martin, eds.) 2015); Conchophilia (Bass et al. 2021); Rarities of these Lands (Swan 2021); and Women and the Art and Science of Collecting (Leis and Wells, eds.) 2021).
What remains un- or underexplored, however, is the extent to which—if at all—collecting and scientific experimentation and exploration were related in the early modern period. Thus, this workshop aims to focus attention on the collections of naturalia, on the one hand, and on the attempts to grow exotic plants in Europe and the adventurous journeys that the search for tropical plants and animals they encouraged, on the other. The organizers of this workshop, Maddalena Bellavitis and Catherine Powell-Warren, invite interdisciplinary contributions addressing the topic from the perspective of each discipline, from art history to material culture, from botany to gastronomy, from travel literature to cartography. Proposals that feature a female figure as protagonist are particularly encouraged, as the importance of the female contribution to this topic, although demonstrated, remains under-researched and under-published. To be considered for participation, please provide a single PDF document containing (in English) a short bio and a one-page proposal for a 20-minute presentation of original, unpublished research. Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by 15 January 2024. Participants will be notified at the beginning of February.
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