Enfilade

From UCL Press: (also see the CraftValue project website). . .

Christine Casey and Melanie Hayes, eds., Enriching Architecture: Craft and Its Conservation in Anglo-Irish Building Production, 1660–1760 (London: UCL Press, 2023), 396 pages, ISBN: 978-1800083561 (hardback), £55 / ISBN: 978-1800083554 (paperback), £35. Available as a free PDF file here»

Refinement and enrichment of surfaces in stone, wood, and plaster is a fundamental aspect of early modern architecture which has been marginalised by architectural history. Enriching Architecture aims to retrieve and rehabilitate surface achievement as a vital element of early modern buildings in Britain and Ireland. Rejected by modernism, demeaned by the conceptual ‘turn’, and too often reduced to its representative or social functions, craft skill here is presented as a primary agent in architectural production. In contrast to the connoisseurial and developmental perspectives of the past, this book is concerned with how surfaces were designed, achieved, and experienced. Contributors draw upon the major rethinking of craft and materials within the wider cultural sphere in recent years to deconstruct traditional, oppositional ways of thinking about architectural production. This is not a craft for craft’s sake argument but an effort to embed the tangible findings of conservation and curatorial research within an evidence-led architectural history that illuminates the processes of early modern craftsmanship. The book explores broad themes of surface treatment such as wainscot, rustication, plasterwork, and staircase embellishment, together with chapters focused on virtuoso buildings and set pieces which illuminate these themes.

Christine Casey is Professor in Architectural History and a fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
Melanie Hayes is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the Irish Research Council CraftValue project at Trinity College Dublin.

C O N T E N T S

List of figures
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
Foreword by Glenn Adamson
Acknowledgements

Introduction, Enriching Architecture: Craft and Its Conservation in Anglo-Irish Architectural Production, 1660–1760 — Christine Casey and Melanie Hayes

Part 1 | Loss and Retrieval
1  ‘Onslow Palace’: New Evidence of Eighteenth-Century Craft Technique at Clandon Park — Sophie Chessum
2  Piercing the Surface: Virtuoso Wooden Staircases from Cassiobury Park and Eyrecourt Castle — Mechthild Baumeister and Andrew Tierney
3  Fragments of Eighteenth-Century Craftsmanship: The Pearson Collection — Peter Pearson
4  Experiments with Historic Light in Kensington Palace’s Early Eighteenth-Century Interiors — Lee Prosser
5  Retrieving Craft Practice on the Early Eighteenth-Century Building Site — Melanie Hayes
6  Conserving Craft in Eighteenth-Century Buildings: The Role of the Conservation Architect — Tony Barton

Part 2 | Design and Making
7  The Geometry of Rustication: An Eighteenth-Century Case Study — Edward McParland
8  The Rough and the Smooth: Stone Use in Dublin, 1720–60 — Patrick Wyse Jackson and Louise Caulfield
9  Drawing out a Surface in Lime and Hair — Jenny Saunt
10  ‘Agreeable to Live in’: The Wainscoted Interior in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland — Christine Casey
11  A Glorious Ascent: Staircase Design, Construction, and Craft in the Circle of Richard Castle — Andrew Tierney

Index

From Lund Humphries:

Rosalind P. Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 2023), 152 pages, ISBN: 978-1848225459, £45.

Catherine the Great’s audacious power grab in 1762 marked a watershed in imperial Russian history. During a momentous 34-year reign, her rapacious vision and intellectual curiosity led to vast territorial expansion, cultural advancement, and civic, educational and social reform. In this pioneering book, Rosalind Blakesley reveals the remarkable role women artists played in her pursuit of these ambitions. With challenging commissions for an elite cast of Russian patrons, their work underscores the extent to which cultural enrichment co-existed with the empress’s imperial designs.

Catherine’s acquisitions propelled renowned artists to new heights. The history paintings that she purchased from Angelica Kauffman brought the Swiss artist to the attention of keen new patrons, while Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun found in Russia safe refuge from the horrors of revolutionary France. Just as important were Catherine’s relationships with lesser-known artists. The young sculptor Marie-Anne Collot made the arduous journey from Paris to St Petersburg to assist on the equestrian monument to Peter the Great and enthralled Russian society with her portrait busts, while Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna, wife of Catherine’s troubled son Paul, sculpted cameos which the empress sent to distinguished correspondents abroad. With stories of extraordinary artistic endeavour intertwined with the intrigue of Catherine’s personal life, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great uncovers the impact of these and other artists at one of Europe’s most elaborate courts.

Rosalind Polly Blakesley, a prize-winning writer and academic, is Professor of Russian and European Art and a Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. A Trustee of the V&A and Syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum, she has authored books including The Russian Canvas (Yale University Press, 2016) and The Arts and Crafts Movement (Phaidon Press, 2006), and curated exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC.

C O N T E N T S

Conventions and Abbreviations

Introduction
1  Inscribing a Future Empress
2  Catherine Enthroned
3  The Academy and the Hermitage
4  A Parisian Find
5  The Chisel and the Mallet
6  Unexpected Treasures
7  The Doyenne of Rome
8  An Artist in the Family
9  The Triumphant Refugee
Epilogue

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Bibliography
Index

From Princeton UP:

Mary Beard, Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 392 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0691222363, $35. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, volume 60.

From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years.

What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book―against a background of today’s ‘sculpture wars’―Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the ‘Twelve Caesars’, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns.

Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority. From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Mary Beard is one of the world’s leading classicists and cultural commentators. A specialist in Roman history and art, she is professor of classics at the University of Cambridge and the author of bestselling and award-winning books, including SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome and Women and Power: A Manifesto. She has also written and presented many television programs, from Civilisations and Meet the Romans to The Shock of the Nude. She lives in Cambridge, England.

C O N T E N T S

List of Tables

Preface
1  The Emperor on the Mall: An Introduction
2  Who’s Who in the Twelve Caesars
3  Coins and Portraits, Ancient and Modern
4  The Twelve Caesars, More or Less
5  The Most Famous Caesars of Them All
6  Satire, Subversion, and Assassination
7  Caesar’s Wife . . . Above Suspicion?
8  Afterword

Acknowledgments

Appendix: The Verses underneath Aegidius Sadeler’s Series of Emperors and Empresses

Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index