Enfilade

The eighteenth century in the Journal of the History of Collections:

Journal of the History of Collections 31 (March 2019)

A R T I C L E S

• Lisa Beaven and Karen Lloyd, “Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri and His Collection in the Palazzo Altieri: The Evidence of the 1698 Death Inventory, Part II,” pp. 1–16. “This article is the second part of a study of the collection of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri (1623–1698) based on the evidence of his 1698 death inventory. Part I considered his paintings collection, housed on the first piano nobile of the palace. This study moves to the second piano nobile apartment and considers a broader range of material objects, including sculpture, tapestry, devotional objects, and naturalia, some of which (such as the American import, chocolate) reflect the globalization of the early modern world” (from the abstract).

• Noam Sienna, “‘Remarkable Objects of the Three . . . Main Religions’: Judaica in Early Modern European Collections,” pp. 17–29. “The diverse collections of early modern Europe, housed in cabinets of curiosities and Kunstkammern, attempted to capture the wonder of the world through specimens of nature, classical and other artefacts, scientific instruments, works of art, and rare and curious objects from around the world. While it is known that they included objects of ethnographic interest from the New World, Africa, and Asia, the place of Judaica in these collections remains largely unknown and unexplored. This article presents an analysis of the collection and display of Jewish objects in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries” (from the abstract).

• Renata Schellenberg, “The Literary Legacy of the Düsseldorfer Gemäldegalerie,” pp. 31–40. “This article explores a range of literary responses to the Düsseldorf picture gallery in the eighteenth century. It examines in particular the ways in which written accounts of experiencing the Düsseldorf collection reveal the contemporary understanding of its works of art and their modes of display. It investigates the ways in which texts bear witness not just to the art in the collection but also to the social interactions informing their representation to readers” (from the abstract).

• Sileas Wood, “‘After the Very Rare Original’: Artist and Antiquary the Revd John Brand,” pp. 41–52. “During the closing years of the eighteenth century, minister and antiquary the Revd John Brand (1744–1806) undertook an extraordinary project of creating facsimile drawn copies of rare prints, with which to illustrate James Granger’s Biographical History of England. Between 1790 and 1800 Brand personally created over 400 drawn copies of portrait prints which can be identified through his own annotations, a manuscript catalogue, and the catalogue of his posthumous sale. This paper will examine Brand’s surviving works, his processes and the ways in which his drawings were shaped by his status as an antiquary, amateur artist, and print collector” (from the abstract).

• Roberto González Ramos, “Treasures and Collections in the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso and University of Alcalá: Trophies, ‘Spolia Sancta’ and Museum,” pp. 111–30. “The Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso and University of Alcalá was an important cultural institution in the Hispanic world of the early modern era. Founded by Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros (1436–1517), it assembled an important group of symbolic objects, amongst them trophies, relics, images and mirabilia. The beatification of the founder led not only to a corresponding increase in the numbers of those objects, seen as relics, but also to their display in particular places, with the creation of a number of proto-museums. With the coming of the Enlightenment, a number of veritable museums were formed, with consequent changes in the values attributed to the symbolic items. From that time until the creation in 1836 of the University of Madrid, by making use of the assets and professorships of the University of Alcalá, the remaining symbolic objects were considered primarily as illustrating the history of the institution” (from the abstract).

• Marc Fecker, “Sir Philip Sassoon at 25 Park Lane: The Collection of an Early Twentieth-Century Connoisseur and Aesthete,” pp. 151–70. “Sir Philip Sassoon (1888–1939) housed the largest and most valuable part of his collection in his lavish Park Lane residence in London. It was demolished in the early 1960s and the collection is now dispersed. This paper reconstructs the collection at Park Lane, which consisted predominantly of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative art, as well as English eighteenth-century portraiture and works by contemporary artists, many of which were commissioned by Sassoon. It explores how he moulded the collection he inherited from his parents and his maternal grandparents, Gustave and Cécile de Rothschild, to his own taste, and to his own time, while continuing the Rothschild tradition” (from the abstract).

• Dora Thornton, “Baron Ferdinand Rothschild’s Sense of Family Origins and the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum,” pp. 181–98. “Baron Ferdinand Rothschild (1839–1898) is usually remembered for Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and for the Waddesdon Bequest, his splendid gift of Renaissance treasures to the British Museum, recently reinterpreted in a new gallery. The author analyses Baron Ferdinand’s unpublished reminiscences, revealing his interest in the history and mythology of the Rothschilds as a Frankfurt Jewish banking dynasty. The status and significance of Judaica in the Waddesdon Bequest and other family collections is also explored within the context of nineteenth-century collecting, the development of the art market and an emerging sense of a Jewish European history and identity” (from the abstract).

R E V I E W S

• Peter Mason, Review of Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey, eds, The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 199.

• Barbara Furlotti, Review of Adriano Amendola, Ritratti di bronzo: Il Medagliere Orsini dei Musei Capitolini di Roma (De Luca Editore d’Arte, 2017), p. 200. “By offering the first catalogue of the Medagliere Orsini, now preserved at the Musei Capitolini in Rome, this lavishly-illustrated volume enriches our knowledge of this prestigious noble clan from an original perspective. The first part of the book features three essays . . . The first essay reconstructs the complex history of the Orsini collection of ancient coins and modern medals between the death of the last Duke of Bracciano, Flavio Orsini (1620–1698), and the acquisition of what was left of the collection by the Municipio di Roma in 1902. The second essay focuses on the collecting interests of some members of the Orsini family [during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries]. . . The third essay, which is based on a large corpus of unpublished documents, offers interesting insights on Paolo Giordano II’s patronage and on the celebrative medals commissioned by Pope Benedict XIII Orsini (1649–1730). . .  The catalogue of the Medagliere Orsini occupies the second part of the book. It includes fifty-two entries dedicated to medals, and seventeen entries for plaquettes and seals” (199).

• Eloisa Dodero, Review of Klauss Fittschen and Johannes Bergemann, eds., Katalog der Skulpturen der Sammlung Wallmoden (Biering & Brinkmann, 2015), pp. 204–05. “The Wallmoden statues are still beautifully displayed in the Institute of Archaeology at Göttingen and the new catalogue . . . is an appropriate fulfilment of almost forty years of research on one of the oldest assemblages of ancient sculptures in Germany and an exceptional testimony of the eighteenth-century reception of ancient art. The collection, which formerly included also paintings, gems, books, drawings, plaster casts and copies after the Antique, was formed in the second half of the eighteenth century by General Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden (1736–1811), later Reichsgraf (Imperial Count) von Wallmoden-Gimborn, an illegitimate son of King George II of Great Britain” (204).

• Stephen Harris, Review of Sarah Easterby-Smith, Cultivating Commerce: Cultures of Botany in Britain and France, 1760–1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 206–07.

• Arthur MacGregor, Review of Margot Finn and Kate Smith, eds., The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 (UCL Press, 2018), pp. 207–08.