Enfilade

An account of painters in Ascoli working after Carlo Maratti, from Il Lavoro:

Valentina Coccia, Una Città, un’Accademia e l’Eredità Marattesca: La scuola ascolana di pittura tra XVII e XVIII secolo (Ancona: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2018), 234 pages, ISBN: 9788876638602, $50.

Era il 1834 quando Amico Ricci, con le sue Memorie storiche, aprì per la prima volta uno squarcio sulla realtà pittorica ascolana tra XVII e XVIII secolo, facendo riferimento all’Accademia aperta nella città di Ascoli Piceno da Ludovico Trasi, primo pittore di cultura barocca presente sul territorio e precoce divulgatore del linguaggio marattesco. Questo volume raccoglie il prezioso spunto offerto dallo studioso andando ad analizzare quel nutrito gruppo di artisti, finora pressoché ignoti, che aderirono a questa scuola (Luca Vitelli, Silvestro Mattei, Carlo Palucci, Giuseppe Angelini e Biagio Miniera), errone­amente considerati minori e secondari, in realtà laboriosi tessitori di quella fitta trama di sperimentazioni stilistiche, linguaggi e modelli sulla quale sono nate ed evolute le personalità più note—dal Trasi stesso, al Nardini, fino a Nicola Monti. Lo studio va dunque ad illuminare questa scuola pittorica—una scuola in dialogo costante con Roma e capace perciò di assorbirne i vitali impulsi figurativi—con numerose novità relative ai pittori e al loro operato, colmando il vuoto lasciato dalla letteratura artistica esistente in materia. Una scuola nella quale l’arte di Carlo Maratti risulta agire come una sorta di forza invisibile, che con maniacale operosità va ad insinuarsi nelle fessure di ogni tela, lungo lo scorrere di ogni pennellata, sin nelle più profonde trame del malconcio intreccio del più dimenticato stendardo processionale, riemergendo con sorprendente forza a rivendicare tutto il suo, indiscusso, primato.

From Taschen:

Massimo Listri, with an introductory essay by Georg Ruppelt and entries by Elisabeth Sladek, The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries (Cologne: Taschen, 2018), 560 pages, ISBN: 978-3836535243, $200.

From the mighty halls of ancient Alexandria to a camel bookmobile on the Kenyan-Somali border, human beings have had a long, enraptured relationship with libraries. Like no other concept and like no other space, the collection of knowledge, learning, and imagination offers a sense of infinite possibility. It’s the unrivaled realm of discovery, where every faded manuscript or mighty clothbound tome might reveal a provocative new idea, a far-flung fantasy, an ancient belief, a religious conviction, or a whole new way of being in the world. In this new photographic journey, Massimo Listri travels to some of the oldest and finest libraries to reveal their architectural, historical, and imaginative wonder. Through great wooden doors, up spiraling staircases, and along exquisite, shelf-lined corridors, he leads us through outstanding private, public, educational, and monastic libraries, dating as far back as 766. Between them, these medieval, classical, baroque, rococo, and 19th-century institutions hold some of the most precious records of human thought and deed, inscribed and printed in manuscripts, volumes, papyrus scrolls, and incunabula. In each, Listri’s poised images capture the library’s unique atmosphere, as much as their most prized holdings and design details.

Featured libraries include the papal collections of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Trinity College Library, home to the Book of Kells and Book of Durrow, and the priceless holdings of the Laurentian Library in Florence, the private library of the powerful House of Medici, designed by Michelangelo. With meticulous descriptions accompanying each featured library, we learn not only of the libraries’ astonishing holdings but also of their often lively, turbulent, or controversial pasts—like Altenburg Abbey in Austria, an outpost of imperial Catholicism repeatedly destroyed during the European wars of religion, or the Franciscan monastery in Lima, Peru, with its horde of archival Inquisition documents.

At once a bibliophile beauty pageant, an ode to knowledge, and an evocation of the particular magic of print, Massimo Listri, The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries is a cultural-historical pilgrimage to the heart of our halls of learning and the stories they tell. Text in English, French, and German.

Massimo Listri (b. 1953) is a Florence-based photographer whose work often presents interiors of great architectural and cultural importance. He has photographed ancient castles, villas, and palaces as well as hidden gardens, libraries, convents, monasteries, and universities. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous public and private institutions, including the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (2009), The Morgan Library and Museum in New York (2010), Vatican Museum in Rome (2014), Palazzo Reale in Turin (2014), and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Wien (2015). He has produced over 70 books.

After studying history, German language and literature, education and philosophy, Georg Ruppelt gained his PhD with a thesis on Friedrich Schiller. He subsequently worked as a librarian, becoming deputy director of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel in 1987 and director of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek in Hanover from 2002 to 2016. Ruppelt has published over 400 essays and 40 monographs on the subject of books, library science, and cultural history.

Elisabeth Sladek studied Art History, Classical Archaeology, and Judaic Studies, writing her dissertation at the Max Planck Institute in Rome. Her field is the history of Baroque art and architecture, and she is an active researcher and teacher in Vienna, Rome, and Zurich.

From Yale UP:

Brooke Newman, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0300225556, $65.

A major reassessment of the development of race and subjecthood in the British Atlantic

Focusing on Jamaica, Britain’s most valuable colony in the Americas by the mid-eighteenth century, Brooke Newman explores the relationship between racial classifications and the inherited rights and privileges associated with British subject status. Weaving together a diverse range of sources, she shows how colonial racial ideologies rooted in fictions of blood ancestry at once justified permanent, hereditary slavery for Africans and barred members of certain marginalized groups from laying claim to British liberties on the basis of hereditary status.

Brooke N. Newman is associate professor of history and associate director of the Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is coeditor of Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas and lives in Richmond, VA.

From Johns Hopkins UP:

Kimberly Alexander, Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1421425849, $40.

In Treasures Afoot, Kimberly Alexander introduces readers to the history of the Georgian shoe. Presenting a series of stories that reveal how shoes were made, sold, and worn during the long eighteenth century, Alexander traces the fortunes and misfortunes of wearers as their footwear was altered to accommodate poor health, flagging finances, and changing styles. She explores the lives and letters of clever apprentices, skilled cordwainers, wealthy merchants, and elegant brides, taking readers on a colorful journey from bustling London streets into ship cargo holds, New England shops, and, ultimately, to the homes of eager consumers.

We trek to the rugged Maine frontier in the 1740s, where an aspiring lady promenades in her London-made silk brocade pumps; sail to London in 1765 to listen in as Benjamin Franklin and John Hose caution Parliament on the catastrophic effects of British taxes on the shoe trade; move to Philadelphia in 1775 as John Hancock presides over the Second Continental Congress while still finding time to order shoes and stockings for his fiancée’s trousseau; and travel to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1789 to peer in on Sally Brewster Gerrish as she accompanies President George Washington to a dance wearing a brocaded silk buckle shoe featuring a cream ground and metallic threads.

Interweaving biography and material culture with full-color photographs, this fascinating book raises a number of fresh questions about everyday life in early America: What did eighteenth-century British Americans value? How did they present themselves? And how did these fashionable shoes reveal their hopes and dreams? Examining shoes that have been preserved in local, regional, and national collections, Treasures Afoot demonstrates how footwear captures an important moment in American history while revealing a burgeoning American identity.

Kimberly S. Alexander, a former curator at the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and Strawbery Banke, teaches material culture and museum studies at the University of New Hampshire.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1  The Cordwainers
2  Wedding Shoes
3  The Value of a London Label
4  Coveting Calamancos: From London to Lynn
5  The Cordwainer’s Lament: Benjamin Franklin and John Hose Testify on the Effects of the Stamp Act
6  ‘For My Use, Four Pair of Neat Shoes’: George Washington, Virginia Planter, and Mr. Didsbury, Boot- and Shoemaker of London
7  Boston’s Cordwainers Greet President Washington, 1789
Conclusion
Epilogue

Appendixes
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Distributed in the USA and Canada by The University of Chicago Press:

Kathryn Jones, European Silver in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2018), 552 pages, ISBN: 978-1909741379, £95 / $145.

The Royal Collection contains one of the finest ensembles of pre-twentieth-century European silver in the world. More than 350 works are catalogued in this volume, the majority being manufactured in France, Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands, with a smaller number of pieces from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An introduction on the history of collecting European silver is followed by catalogue entries on silver objects used for dining; serving and drinking tea, coffee, and chocolate; personal grooming; as well as desk accessories and church plates. Highlights include unusual German Kunstkammer objects acquired by George IV. A fascinating and beautifully illustrated survey, this is the first study of European silver in the Royal Collection for more than a hundred year, bringing together research and new information on the subject. It will be an invaluable resource for students and collectors alike.

Kathryn Jones is Curator of Decorative Arts, Royal Collection Trust.

C O N T E N T S

Preface by Jonathan Mardsen
Acknowledgements
Notes for the reader
Genealogical table
Maps

Introduction by Kathryn Jones
The Catalogue
Germany (cats 1–101)
Austria (cats 102–09)
The Netherlands (cats 110–34)
France (cats 135–202)
Italy (cats 203–08)
Sweden (cats 209–18)
Denmark (cats 219–49)
Russia (cats 250–304)
Other European Locations (cats 305–10)
Composite Pieces or Works of Unknown Origin (cats 311–35)

Concordance
Appendix: Coats of Arms, Crests, Ciphers, and Other Initials
Unpublished Manuscript Sources
Abbreviations and Bibliography
Exhibitions
Indexes
Photographic Acknowledgements