New Book | Dans l’œil du connaisseur: Pierre-Jean Mariette
From PUR:
Valérie Kobi, Dans l’œil du connaisseur: Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) et la construction des savoirs en histoire de l’art (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017), 322 pages, ISBN: 978 27535 53149, 28€.
En partant du cas singulier du collectionneur Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), cet ouvrage vise à mieux définir les étapes qui jalonnent la formation des connaissances en histoire de l’art au xviiie siècle et, plus largement, à questionner le rôle joué par la figure du connaisseur dans cette dynamique. En somme, il s’agit de répondre aux interrogations suivantes : sur quels éléments repose la réputation de l’amateur et comment s’organise la reconnaissance de son autorité par ses pairs ? Quels sont les instruments, matériels ou intellectuels, déployés par l’expert ? Et, finalement, sous quelles formes se présente son savoir lorsqu’il se matérialise par l’écrit ?
Dans ce but, l’identité et l’activité de Mariette se trouvent ici interrogées à travers six chapitres thématiques scindés en deux parties. La première, intitulée La naissance d’un amateur, analyse l’émergence de la figure de l’amateur à travers trois moments-clés : la constitution d’une identité, le voyage d’Italie et l’insertion de l’érudit dans la République des Lettres. La seconde, dévouée aux Savoirs mis en œuvre, examine les modalités de la divulgation scientifique, de ses modèles théoriques à ses représentations visuelles.
Plus qu’un panorama exhaustif d’une pensée savante, le développement suivi enquête sur la façon dont le livre devient, au cours du xviiie siècle, un véritable laboratoire des savoirs ; un espace privilégié où se déroule, entre amateurs, le débat qui participe à l’élaboration d’une connaissance empirique dans le domaine de l’histoire de l’art. À cet égard, la présente étude pose non seulement un regard nouveau sur l’apport de Pierre-Jean Mariette au champ historique mais elle réfléchit aussi de manière originale aux pratiques socio-culturelles et aux enjeux esthétiques qui façonnent la discipline à l’époque des Lumières.
Valérie Kobi a reçu son doctorat en histoire de l’art de l’université de Neuchâtel (Suisse). Elle a été boursière à l’Institut suisse de Rome, au Getty Research Institute et à la Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Depuis mai 2015, elle mène ses recherches postdoctorales entre Bielefeld et Weimar dans le cadre du projet Parergonale Rahmungen. Zur Ästhetik wissenschaftlicher Dinge bei Goethe.
T A B L E D E S M A T I È R E S
Remerciements
Préface de Pascal Griener
Introduction
Première partie: La naissance d’un amateur
Destinée historiographique
Un œil poli: La formation d’un amateur entre préjugés et émancipation
Cultiver les muses: Transactions érudites et collaborations scientifiques au sein de la République des Lettres
Conclusion
Seconde partie: Les savoirs mis en œuvre
Le catalogue comme modèle de connaissance
L’esprit de l’original et les protocoles de la reproduction
Mariette et Bouchardon : la rhétorique d’une amitié
Conclusion
Conclusion générale
Annexes
Bibliographie
Index
Table des illustrations
A Visual History of Rome: The Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive
Francis Towne, The Colosseum from the Palatino, 1740; watercolor, 53.4 × 37.5 cm (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, Rodolfo Lanciani Collection, 16649 and Roma XI.1.I.15).
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Press release from Stanford, via Art Daily:
A team, which includes Stanford researchers, has created a new digital archive to study Rome’s transformation over the centuries. Images of Rome: The Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive, which went online in the spring, consists of almost 4,000 digitized drawings, prints, photographs, and sketches of Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries [with over 1,000 from the 18th century]. The pieces were collected by renowned Roman archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani (1845–1929), who sought to document the entire history of Rome’s archeology up to the end of the 19th century.
“Rome is a layered city,” said Erik Steiner, co-director of the Spatial History Project at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). “To be able to see that history you need to look through those layers, and this collection helps that process.”
The archive is a culmination of a two-year collaboration among CESTA, the Stanford University Libraries, University of Oregon, Dartmouth College, and the Italian government.
“This is part of our long-term ambition to bring one of the most documented cities in the world to the digital age,” Steiner said. “The project marries intense scholarly interest in Rome with best practices and tools built by the Stanford Libraries.”
Francesco Panini, Museo Vaticano, Museo Pio Clementino, 1775; watercolored pen and ink drawing, 72 × 51.2 cm (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, Rodolfo Lanciani Collection, Roma XI.61.II.69).
After Lanciani’s death in 1929, his library, which contains more than 21,000 items, was sold to the Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte (Italy’s National Institute of Archaeology and Art History) in Rome. Archaeologists, historians, architects, and other researchers who study ancient cities have used the collection to glean valuable information about Rome’s history and structure.
“These materials are very important and have been used by many different scholars, but access to them is quite limited,” said Roman archaeologist Giovanni Svevo, who also worked on the digital archive.
Viewing the archive requires a visit to the historic 15th-century Palazzo Venezia in central Rome. Lanciani’s collection is on the fourth floor and in its own dedicated room, which is open for only a few hours during weekdays. Only one folder from the collection can be viewed at a time. So the team—Steiner, Svevo, James Tice, a principal investigator on the project and an architecture professor at the University of Oregon, and Nicola Camerlenghi, an assistant professor of art history at Dartmouth College—set out to bring some of the collection onto the internet. Supported by a 2015 grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, they partnered with Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, and the National Institute to scan and create high-resolution images of each of the thousands of materials in the collection.
“Our collaboration with the Italian government on this project was very important,” Camerlenghi said. “It’s such a big help to scholars across the world when such teamwork can occur.”
Each digital object was categorized and tied to a descriptive set of data, so it could be properly stored and searched online. This part of the project demanded the most effort and care, the researchers said. The digital images and all associated descriptions are now permanently preserved in the Stanford Digital Repository.
“We believe this project is important for two reasons: it provides accessibility to a precious archival collection and, more broadly, it demonstrates a method whereby similar materials can be made available to scholars, students and the general public through the digital humanities,” Tice said.
Digitizing Lanciani’s collection is part of a larger effort to recreate the spatial history of Rome, a project named Mapping Rome, which Steiner and Tice began around 2004. As part of that effort, the team digitized the work of two 18th-century Italian architects, Giambattista Nolli and Giuseppe Vasi. They are also still working on completing the digitization of Lanciani’s famous Forma Urbis Romae, a cartographic map that traces Rome’s ancient ruins and its later developments. The map is 17 feet by 24 feet and is considered to have the most detailed information about Rome’s historical topography. The team envisions the end product to be an interactive map of Rome that links to the digitized archival materials.
“This is about telling a story of a place and reconstructing its past,” Steiner said. Beside allowing access to any scholar in the world, digitizing the archives also ensures their future preservation, Steiner emphasized. He said he hopes that more libraries and institutions around the world will devote time and funding to digitizing the humanities’ enormous body of historical documents.
“Nothing in the end would substitute holding primary documents in your hands, but you can answer a lot of scholarly questions by looking at them online in high resolution,” Camerlenghi said.
New Book | Settecento romano: Reti del Classicismo arcadico
From Viella and available from ArtBooks.com:
Beatrice Alfonzetti, ed., Settecento romano: Reti del Classicismo arcadico (Rome: Viella, 2017), 532 pages, ISBN: 978 88672 88571, 50€ / $75.
Questo libro—nato da una ricerca d’équipe composta da letterati, storici dell’architettura, dell’arte e della musica—propone per la prima volta di unificare sotto la categoria di Classicismo arcadico tutto ciò che si crea ed elabora a Roma dalla fondazione dell’Arcadia in avanti. Non valida, ad esempio, per Torino, questa estensione permette di superare le viete periodizzazioni come la divisone per secoli fra Sei e Settecento o fra il primo e il secondo Settecento; e ci consente finalmente di intravedere la continuità, tutta romana, fra l’idea del bello di Bellori, la ragione poetica di Gravina, il recupero del tragico di Alfieri e Monti, tutti attivi, dall’inizio alla fine del secolo, proprio a Roma, accanto a Mengs, Füssli, Winckelmann, David. Al centro l’Arcadia che, con le acclamazioni o iscrizioni di cardinali, principi, sovrani, letterati, artisti di passaggio o residenti a Roma, era riuscita nell’impresa di fondare una repubblica letteraria sovranazionale che guardava persino a Voltaire. Era all’avanguardia, allora, Roma nelle arti, nelle accademie, nelle biblioteche, nei teatri e nella letteratura sinora chiamata neoclassica.
C O N T E N T S
Beatrice Alfonzetti, Introduzione
Parte prima
I. Il Classicismo restaurato
• Amedeo Quondam, Roma 1672: il Classicismo restaurato. L’idea del bello e il canone delle arti secondo Bellori
Parte seconda
I. L’Arcadia e la Roma di Clemente XI
• Valentina Gallo, La Basilissa: Cristina di Svezia in Arcadia
• Javier Gutiérrez Carou, Endimione fra Alessandro Guidi e Francesco de Lemene: drammaturgia, spettacolo, struttura dei finali
• Marina Formica, Dominare il tempo. Clemente XI e i tentativi di riforma del calendario
• Simone Caputo, Il ‘teatro della festa’ nella Roma di Clemente XI
II. Il Classicismo arcadico
• Franco Piperno, Architettura e musica nella Roma del Classicismo arcadico
• Angela Cipriani, Un secolo di premiazioni in Campidoglio (1696–1795). Le quattro arti liberali in mutuo soccorso
• Nicola Badolato, Il Ciro di Pietro Ottoboni e Alessandro Scarlatti e gli allestimenti operistici romani di Filippo Juvarra
• Massimo Zammerini, Architettura e scenografia nella Roma del Settecento
• Ilaria Delsere, L’Arcadia alla corte pontificia: la collaborazione tra Ludovico Sergardi e Antonio Valeri alla Fabbrica di San Pietro (1713–1726)
• Valter Curzi, Memoria dell’antico nella pittura di storia a Roma tra Seicento e Settecento: un contributo per la revisione storico-critica del Neoclassicismo
• Silvia Tatti, L’Arcadia di Crescimbeni e il trionfo della poesia: l’incoronazione in Campidoglio del 1725
• Alviera Bussotti, La recita del Temistocle di Michele Giuseppe Morei: tra Zeno e Metastasio
• Roberto Gigliucci, Il cardinale Pietro Ottoboni tra San Filippo Neri e San Casimiro
III. L’Arcadia: una rete transnazionale
• Maurizio Campanelli, I Sermones di Giovan Battista Casti (1762–1764)
• Elodie Oriol, Mecenatismo e sviluppo delle carriere musicali: il ruolo delle famiglie Acquaviva, Stuart e Albani nella Roma settecentesca
• Piermario Vescovo, Goldoni: vacanze romane
• Rosanna Cioffi, Tra Arcadia e Neoclassicismo. Da Maratti a Mengs nel segno di Shaftesbury e Winckelmann
• Marina Caffiero, Dal monastero al salotto alla tribuna. La mediazione culturale femminile nella Roma di metà Settecento
• Beatrice Alfonzetti, Poeti italiani e stranieri nelle adunanze arcadiche
• Andrea Fabiano, Astacide Tespio ovvero Poinsinet le Noyé (le Mystifié): un librettista comico francese in Arcadia
• Franca Sinopoli, Giovanni Battista Audiffredi e la realizzazione del modello di biblioteca universale
• Antonio Rostagno, Il ‘nuovo Dante’ nella musica. Dante e Petrarca in due manoscritti romani di Nicolò Antonio Zingarelli
• Orietta Rossi Pinelli, Gli artisti stranieri a Roma nel XVIII secolo
Indice dei nomi
New Book | Empire of the Senses
Scheduled for publication this fall from Brill:
Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite, eds., Empire of the Senses: Sensory Practices of Colonialism in Early America (Leiden: Brill, 2017), ISBN: 978 90043 40633, 135€ / $156.
Empire of the Senses brings together pathbreaking scholarship on the role the five senses played in early America. With perspectives from across the hemisphere, exploring individual senses and multi-sensory frameworks, the volume explores how sensory perception helped frame cultural encounters, colonial knowledge, and political relationships. From early French interpretations of intercultural touch, to English plans to restructure the scent of Jamaica, these essays elucidate different ways the expansion of rival European empires across the Americas involved a vast interconnected range of sensory experiences and practices. Empire of the Senses offers a new comparative perspective on the way European imperialism was constructed, operated, implemented and, sometimes, counteracted by rich and complex new sensory frameworks in the diverse contexts of early America.
Daniela Hacke is Professor of Early Modern History at the Free University of Berlin. She has published monographs, translations and many articles on European Gender and Cultural History and is currently researching a History of the Senses in Venice.
Paul Musselwhite is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College. He researches and publishes on early British America and the development of plantation society.
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Making Sense of Colonial Encounters and New Worlds, Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite
I | Cultural Encounters
1 Touching on Communication: Visual and Textual Representations of Touch as Friendship in Early Colonial Encounters, Céline Carayon
2 Mission Soundscapes: Demons, Jesuits, and Sounds in Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista Espiritual (1639), Jutta Toelle
3 Singing with Strangers in Early Seventeenth-century New France, Michaela Ann Cameron
II | Colonial Subjectivity
4 The Pain of Senses Escaping: Eighteenth-century Europeans and the Sensory Challenges of the Caribbean, Annika Raapke
5 Color Visions: Perceiving Nature in the Portuguese Atlantic World, Marília dos Santos Lopes
III | Structures of Knowledge
6 Colonial Sensescapes: Thomas Harriot and the Production of Knowledge, Daniela Hacke
7 Merian and the Pineapple: Visual Representation of the Senses, Megan Baumhammer and Claire Kennedy
8 ‘Delightful a Fragrance’: Native American Olfactory Aesthetics within the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Botanical Community, Andrew Kettler
IV | Colonial Projects
9 The Aromas of Flora’s Wide Domains: Cultivating Gardens, Aromas, and Political Subjects in the Late Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic, Kate Mulry
10 Exploring Underwater Worlds: Diving in the Late Seventeenth-/Early Eighteenth-Century British Empire, Rebekka von Mallinckrodt
Index
V&A Opens New Courtyard and Entrance
The V&A’s Aston Webb screen from 1909, modified with five new openings on either side of the central arch, now connects the courtyard to Exhibition Road. Photograph: Hufton+Crow.
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Press release from the Victoria & Albert Museum:
The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter opened to the public on the evening of Friday 30 June 2017, creating a beautiful and unique new civic space for London and a world-class gallery space for the V&A’s internationally acclaimed exhibition programme. The project is designed by Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete and her practice, AL_A. The launch of the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter marks the beginning of a new era for the Museum as it prepares to expand its UK and international presence. The project is the Museum’s largest architectural intervention in over 100 years and offers a 21st-century interpretation of the V&A’s founding principles: to make works of art and design available to all, to educate, and to inspire designers and manufacturers today and in the future.
The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter took six years to realise and transforms the V&A’s former boilerhouse yard on London’s great cultural artery, Exhibition Road. This new entrance connects the Museum with its neighbours, reinforcing the Albertopolis vision of intellectual ambition and innovation and creates a sequence of major new spaces:
• The Sainsbury Gallery: a flexible, 1,100sq m column-free exhibition gallery that provides the V&A with a purpose-built space for its world-leading programme of temporary exhibitions
• The Sackler Courtyard: the world’s first porcelain public courtyard, paved in 11,000 handmade tiles that were inspired by the rich tradition of ceramics at the V&A
• The Blavatnik Hall: a new entrance into the V&A from Exhibition Road, which transforms how visitors experience and discover the Museum and its collections
• The Aston Webb Screen: visitors will now enter the V&A from the street through the 11 openings of newly created colonnade formed from the 1909 Aston Webb Screen.
REVEAL, a free, week-long public festival (30 June–7 July) celebrates the opening of the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter and offers a unique opportunity for the public to explore the Museum’s newly designed spaces before exhibition programming begins in the autumn. Art, performance, fashion, and family activities will bring the architecture and collections to life, reflecting on the V&A’s unique combination of heritage, modernity, and technology.
Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A said: “This is a landmark moment in our history. The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter is both the Museum’s largest architectural intervention in over one hundred years and the start of a new chapter of expansion, returning to our original mission at the same time as opening up the V&A for the future. With its mix of ingenuity and imagination, the V&A has always been a meeting point for historicism and modernity. The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter bridges the two by offering fresh insights into our historic building with pioneering new architecture, creating London’s leading exhibition space.”
The Sackler Courtyard is the world’s first all-porcelain public courtyard and comprises over 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles, inspired by the rich tradition of ceramics at the V&A. This new public space for London also houses a café with furniture designed for the space by AL_A and manufactured by Moroso. The Sackler Courtyard reveals architecturally significant façades and details that have never previously been seen by the public. These include sgraffito decoration on the side of the Henry Cole Wing—a decorative Renaissance technique using multiple layers of coloured plaster created by the first art students at the Museum in the late 19th century. The stonework of the Aston Webb Screen retains the damage that World War II inflicted on the Museum, which is reflected in 11 sets of new metal gates, designed by AL_A. The gates have been manufactured with a pattern of perforations tracing the imprint of the shrapnel damage on the stonework as well as the Royal Crest in the central gate.
The Blavatnik Hall is a new space that will transform how visitors experience and discover the Museum and collections. Connecting the newly displayed Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Galleries of Buddhist Art and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Sculpture Galleries, The Blavatnik Hall gives views through to The John Madejski Garden, leads to a new shop, and connects to the historic Ceramic Staircase as well as the Sackler Centre for arts education, which reopens featuring the new John Lyon’s Charity Community Gallery.
The versatile, 1,100m sq column-free Sainsbury Gallery is one of the largest temporary exhibition galleries in the UK. This flexible exhibition space sits above a floor dedicated to art handling, conservation and preparation space. The new spaces reach as far as 18 metres below ground, directly beneath the Western Range of the V&A’s Grade I listed buildings: a daring engineering and construction challenge that is made visible to the public by steel columns and a beam painted in vivid international orange that are literally holding the weight of history and the Museum’s priceless collections above.
Amanda Levete said: “The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter is a reflection of the pioneering identity of the V&A and continues its mission of innovation into the twenty-first century. The Quarter reimagines the museum as an urban project, creating an exceptional place for London that will redefine the V&A’s relationship with the street and the public.”
Celebrating its 165th anniversary this summer, the V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. The completion of this major project marks an exciting moment of evolution for the V&A, a year after winning the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2016, and looking ahead to the opening of the V&A Gallery, Shekou as part of Design Society, in China this autumn and the V&A Museum of Design, Dundee next year.
The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter is the largest construction project undertaken by the V&A since its main buildings in South Kensington were completed in 1909. 22,500 cubic metres of earth were removed from the site and clay from the deepest excavations was carbon-dated to 50 million years old. At the height of construction, up to 60 truckloads of earth were removed from site per day, 99% of which was recycled. The new spaces have created more than 6,000sq m out of 2,200sq m of underused space. AL_A was commissioned to design the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter in 2011 following an international competition. Wates are the lead contractors delivering the project and Arup are the Structural and Building Services engineers.
Over £48 million has been raised for the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter thanks to the generosity of The Monument Trust, The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, The Headley Trust, The Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other donors including Peter Williams and Heather Acton and the Friends of the V&A.
The V&A’s new Sainsbury Gallery, a flexible, 1100sq m column-free gallery for temporary exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics opens September 30. Photograph: Hufton+Crow.
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Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright provides a review of the new space along with context for the expansion, including description of the 1997 proposal by Daniel Liebeskind to build a tower (Spiral) on the site—an idea which, failing to secure funding, was abandoned in 2004. In Wainwright’s words, “Having been drawn, Icarus-like, to the shining promise of starchitecture, and had its wings thoroughly scorched, the V&A decided to opt for the more modest option of going underground.”
Display | Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories
Now on view at The British Museum:
Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories
The British Museum, London, 11 May — 15 October 2017
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 25 September — 2 December 2018
This display provides glimpses into LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer) experience across time and around the world through the British Museum’s collection. The objects offer insights into to what the novelist E. M. Forster described as “a great unrecorded history.” Ranging chronologically from ancient history to the present day the objects often prompt questions, challenging the contemporary viewer to question the assumptions that they bring to objects from other cultures and the more distant past. The display draws on material from across the breadth of the Museum’s collection including coins, medals, and prints. As well as highlighting famous figures such as the poetess Sappho, and the emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, the display looks beyond Europe’s classical past to explore less familiar themes and stories.
This exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in July 1967. This legislation partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales and marks an important milestone in the campaign for equality.
The Ladies of Llangollen Chocolate Cups and Saucers, porcelain from Bristol China Manufactory, 1779–81, and Derby Porcelain Factory (replacements), 1790 (London: The British Museum, 1887,0307,VIII.34).
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The exhibition includes Chocolate Cups and Saucers that belonged to the Ladies of Llangollen:
Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831) and Eleanor Butler (1739–1829), known popularly as the Ladies of Llangollen, ran away in 1780 to set up home together, leaving their old aristocratic lives in Ireland behind them. They lived happily for 50 years in North Wales, challenging the conventions of their era and acquiring a celebrity-like status. These chocolate-cups are decorated with a view of their house on one side and their coats of arms on the other. The centre of each saucer is decorated with their entwined monograms. During the 1700s the concept of romantic friendships between women became common. Friends often wrote to one another using passionate language that to modern readers would imply a sexual relationship, but largely reflected social convention.
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Note (added 4 September 2018) — The posting was updated to include the Ashmolean as a venue, where the exhibition is entitled No Offence: Exploring LGBTQ+ Histories.
New Book | The Collector’s Cabinet and Miniature Pharmacy
Collector’s Cabinet with Miniature Apothecary’s Shop, 1730
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum)
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Press release (23 June 2017) from the Rijksmuseum. The English edition of the book should be be available from Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) in August.
Paul van Duin, ed., The Collector’s Cabinet and Miniature Pharmacy / Verzamelaarskast met miniatuurapotheek (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2017), 184 pages, ISBN: 978 949171 4610 (Dutch edition) / ISBN: 978 949171 4726 (English edition), 40€ / $60. Essays by Reinier Baarsen, Annette Bierman, Judith van der Brugge-Mulder, Gerhard Cadée, Roelof van Gelder, and Dave van Gompel.
In the last few years no fewer than 50 experts have been involved in conducting research on the only eighteenth-century miniature apothecary’s shop in the Netherlands. The Rijksmuseum is now presenting the results of this research and conservation project in an extensive publication, designed by Irma Boom and showing the miniature pharmacy and 56 secret drawers for the first time, at almost actual size.
This rare collector’s cabinet houses an abundance of curiosities including a fully fitted miniature apothecary’s shop containing more than three hundred Delftware pots, glass bottles, tiny wooden drawers, paintings, and gilded ornaments. Concealed beside and behind the miniature pharmacy are no fewer than 56 secret drawers, all but five of which contain the collection of nearly 2000 varieties of naturalia, including seeds, flowers, roots, animal parts, rocks, minerals, and fossils.
The research has now been completed, providing a far deeper understanding of the cabinet’s origins, its purpose, the exceptional naturalia it contains, and the collectors’ world it inhabited. We can now be fairly certain that the cabinet was made in Amsterdam in 1730 for a wealthy doctor or apothecary, as a curiosity for the entertainment of a select group of friends and fellow collectors. The study also revealed that most of the naturalia items form the original contents of the cabinet. The naturalia even include uraninite and two other minerals containing uranium—for safety reasons, these materials are now safely stored in lead caskets in the Rijksmuseum’s depot, in accordance with the regulations and permit issued under the Dutch Nuclear Energy Act.
The conservation and restoration work have for a large part returned the cabinet and miniature apothecary’s shop to their former glory, and this object is now one of the highlights of the eighteenth-century galleries in the Rijksmuseum.
With thanks to the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden University, and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research. The research, conservation, and publication were made possible by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Project.
New Book | The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art
From The University of Chicago Press:
Charlotte Sleigh, The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 256 pages, ISBN: 978 022644 7124, $45.
As children, our first encounters with the world’s animals do not arise during expeditions through faraway jungles or on perilous mountain treks. Instead, we meet these creatures between the pages of a book, on the floor of an obliging library. Down through the centuries, illustrated books have served as our paper zoos, both documenting the world’s extraordinary wildlife in exquisite detail and revealing, in hindsight, how our relationship to and understanding of these animals have evolved over time.
In this stunning book, historian of science Charlotte Sleigh draws on the ultimate bibliophile’s menagerie—the collections of the British Library—to present a lavishly illustrated homage to this historical collaboration between art and science. Gathering together a breathtaking range of nature illustrations from manuscripts, prints, drawings, and rare printed books from across the world, Sleigh brings us face to face (or face to tentacle) with images of butterflies, beetles, and spiders, of shells, fish, and coral polyps. Organized into four themed sections—exotic, native, domestic, and paradoxical—the images introduce us to some of the world’s most renowned natural history illustrators, from John James Audubon to Mark Catesby and Ernst Haeckel, as well as to lesser-known artists. In her accompanying text, Sleigh traces the story of the art of natural history from the Renaissance through the great age of exploration and into the nineteenth century, offering insight into the changing connections between the natural and human worlds.
But the story does not end there. From caterpillars to crabs, langurs to dugongs, stick insects to Old English pigs; from the sinuous tail feathers of birds of paradise to the lime-green wings of New Zealand’s enormous flightless parrot, the kakapo; from the crenellated plates of a tortoise’s shell to imagined likenesses of unicorns, mermaids, and dinosaurs, the story continues in this book. It is a Paper Zoo for all time.
Charlotte Sleigh is a reader in history at the University of Kent. She is the author of Ant, Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology, Literature and Science, and Frog.
New NGA Online Edition: French Paintings of the Eighteenth Century
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This new online component from the NGA in Washington, D.C. includes convenient access to lots of interesting material, including videos (under ‘related content’). It might be particularly useful for teachers looking to enrich course materials with digital offerings (and plenty of other things). –CH
In conjunction with the recently opened exhibition, America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting, the National Gallery has released a new offering in its NGA Online Editions series, Focus Section—French Paintings of the Eighteenth Century.
The web-based Online Editions series is part of an ongoing effort to digitize and provide open access to the Gallery’s permanent collection catalogs and will eventually document more than 5,000 works of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts. Focus Section—French Paintings of the Eighteenth Century includes essays devoted to 20 paintings and their four related artists’ biographies. Like other Online Editions, this iteration provides free and open access to illustrated scholarly entries, biographies of the artists, and technical summaries.
Other highlights of the features available to researchers include
• A customized reading environment: An adjustable split-screen ‘reader mode’ allows users to view scholarly text alongside images, notes, and comparative figures or to view them in line with the text.
• Compare and explore images: An image-comparison tool enables users to view primary and comparative images side by side or to explore technical images via overlay and cross-fading techniques.
• Ease of research: The Online Editions toolbar provides preformatted citations for an object or biography, easy export, and quick access to archived pages.
• Archived versions and permanent URLs: Immediate access to PDFs of earlier versions and the assurance of permanent web addresses are a convenience to students and scholars alike.
• Enhanced search capabilities: An interactive search index is driven by an evolving list of terms particular to each area of the collection.
The NGA Online Editions series presents the same authoritative, peer-reviewed scholarship found within the Gallery’s bound volumes but enriched with customized tools for a more dynamic research experience.
Frick Pittsburgh Unveils New Strategic Plan and Acquisitions Program
Manufacture de Monsieur le duc d’Angoulême, Paris, Pair of Vases, ca. 1785, porcelain with enamel and gilded decoration; each 9 × 5.5 × 5.25 inches (The Frick Pittsburgh Collection).
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Press release from The Frick Pittsburgh (via Art Daily) . . .
The Board of Trustees of The Frick Pittsburgh announces the adoption of a new five-year strategic plan, 2017–22 and Beyond, and the activation of a new acquisition program, resulting in the recent acquisition of new collection objects.
Strategic Plan
On Tuesday, June 20, Frick Board of Trustees Chair Charles R. (‘Chip’) Burke, Jr. and Executive Director Robin Nicholson presented the museum’s recently adopted strategic plan to more than 20 representatives from regional foundations assembled at The Duquesne Club in Downtown Pittsburgh. 2017–22 and Beyond is the result of a two-year planning process which began shortly after the late 2014 appointment of Mr. Nicholson as the institution’s third executive director. The process was led by the Board’s Strategic Planning Task Force, under the leadership of Chair, Trustee Louis L. Testoni. The new strategic plan features a revised ideology for the organization, encompassing new vision, values, and mission statements. These new guiding principles provide the foundation for three overarching institutional goals: audience growth, organizational efficiency, and long-term planning.
Mr. Burke, Chair of the Board of Trustees says, “We are excited about the clearly defined vision and direction articulated in the new strategic plan. In addition to laying the groundwork for the next 25 years, the plan reflects the commitment of The Frick’s board and staff to leverage and enhance the museum’s assets for the benefit of all visitors and program participants.”
The plan identifies three equal and interwoven components to the unique experience offered by The Frick: art, history, and nature—all of which, in turn, underpin the museum’s core ideology, or three ‘powers’: the power of art to inspire and educate, the power of the past to inform the future, and the power of beauty and place. Five strategies build on these principles with specific calls to action: to define and refine the many experiences that The Frick offers, invest in marketing to build audience and revenue, increase efficiency, acquire better information and data, and to think realistically about the future. The museum’s new mission statement aligns with the newly defined institutional ideology: “Continuing the legacy of Helen Clay Frick, we will offer one of the best experiences of art, history, and nature, in a welcoming environment that inspires and delights.”
Executive Director Nicholson comments, “Planning for the future provides an extraordinary opportunity for innovative and aspirational thinking about the role of museums and culture for future generations. The Frick’s new strategic plan thoughtfully addresses both the short- and long-term challenges faced by all cultural organizations in the United States. At the same time, it recognizes that nothing we do has any value unless it helps to ‘inspire and delight.'”
The complete strategic plan is available on The Frick’s website.
New Acquisition Program
Museum benefactress Helen Clay Frick envisioned The Frick to be a vital, growing museum that continues to acquire items that build on the strength of its collection. Building on the strategic goal of “defining and refining the Frick experience,” the museum recently activated a new acquisition program by holding its inaugural Collectors Dinner on April 25, 2017. Fifty members of The Frick Societies, a recognition group for individuals who support The Frick by contributing $1,000 or more annually, attended a black-tie event at The Frick Art Museum, during which three works of art were presented for potential acquisition. Guests were invited to vote for the objects of their choice. Receiving the most votes were a pair of late-18th-century Angoulême porcelain vases and Cream (2015), a color photographic print by Dutch artist Hendrik Kerstens. At its June 14, 2017 meeting, The Frick’s Board of Trustees approved these two objects for purchase.
Produced around 1785 by Manufacture de Monsieur le duc d’Angoulême, Paris, which operated from 1781 to 1793, the pair of exquisite porcelain vases feature enamel and gilded decoration. The vases are an extraordinary example of Parisian porcelain produced at the end of the ancien régime in France. The Manufacture le duc d’Angoulême was one of the few factories at the end of the 18th century to rival Sèvres in the quality of its porcelain and the technical excellence of its decoration. The vases enhance the museum’s collection of 18th-century French decorative art, complementing the fabulous examples of French furniture and paintings collected by Helen Clay Frick. The Frick owns two examples of furniture by Martin Carlin, which incorporate Sèvres porcelain plaques. Angoulême works are in the collections of other major museums: a vase related to the pair acquired by The Frick is in the collection of The British Museum. Tableware by Angoulême is also part of the collections of museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Winterthur. Mount Vernon owns a service by Angoulême purchased by George Washington in 1790.
Contemporary Dutch artist Hendrik Kerstens creates a dialogue between past and present through an almost hyper-conscious homage to the history of Dutch art combined with a slightly playful subversity. The artist began studying photography at age 40 and quickly became known for his interest in creating large-scale painterly photographs with an emphasis on light effects and the use of poses and props that echo the conventions found in Old Master painting, particularly of the 17th century. He began working with his daughter Paula as his subject in 1994. His 2007 photograph, Bag, in which she is posed with a plastic grocery bag on her head caused a sensation, winning the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize awarded by the National Portrait Gallery, London. Bag also attracted the attention of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who based his 2009 collection on the image. In Cream, Paula is posed against a dark background and beautifully lit, allowing for a painterly, Baroque sense of chiaroscuro and an emphasis on luminous skin tones. Kerstens typically injects his work with humor and disrupts his emulation of Old Masters through the interjection of unexpected materials or props—in this case, a coiffure of shaving cream. Cream is a compelling photograph that serves as a catalyst for conversation about painting and photography, past and present. Acquisition of this work enables The Frick to further explore ideas of portraiture and representation by providing a contemporary counterpoint to works in the collection, such as the Rubens Portrait of the Princess of Condé, as well as other examples of portraiture in the collection by Nattier, de Troy, Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds. Since gaining public attention through his Paula pictures, Kerstens has been commissioned to create commercial portraits for Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His work is widely represented in public and private collections in the Netherlands as well as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, the Pilara Family Foundation Collection in San Francisco, the Elton John Collection, the Alexander McQueen Collection, and others.
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