New Book | Capability Brown: Designing the English Landscape
From Rizzoli:
John Phibbs, with photography by Joe Cornish, Capability Brown: Designing the English Landscape (New York: Rizzoli, 2016), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0847848836, $65.
In celebration of his 300th year, a definitive survey of Capability Brown’s most famous gardens and landscapes in Britain. Widely acknowledged as the most influential landscape designer of his age, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was to England what Frederick Law Olmsted was to America—responsible for shaping the very ideal of the nation’s parkland. Brown’s ambition was to bring out of a landscape the best of its potential rather than impose his own ideas upon it. His designs are organic, weaving gestures of color and perspective into the features that the country already afforded. So natural are his designs, and so perfectly do they complement the houses within them, that for many a Capability Brown landscape is the epitome of the English estate. His gardens and parklands—as much as the houses themselves—would become icons of British country life. Published to coincide with the tercentenary of his birth, this remarkable book illuminates fifteen of Brown’s most celebrated landscapes. To love the great English estates is to love the settings with which Brown surrounded them—from idyllic parklands at Milton and Broadlands to structured landscapes around iconic houses at Blenheim, Burghley, Wakefield, and Chatsworth. With photography commissioned for the book, and including rarely seen archival drawings that shed light on Brown’s process, this book serves as a guide to Britain’s most beloved landscapes and an exploration of the masterful mind behind their creation.
John Phibbs set up the Capability Brown 1716–2016 Partnership and is a renowned garden historian and author with more than thirty years’ experience in the management and restoration of historic landscapes. Joe Cornish is an award-winning landscape photographer and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society with a studio and gallery in Yorkshire, England.
New Book | Place-Making: The Art of Capability Brown, 1716–1783
This one is an interesting economic model of publication. Historic England is the publisher, but at least a portion of the funding depends upon supporters (‘subscribers’ to use the eighteenth-century term) pledging money at Unbound. Hearing John Phibbs pitch for the project in the 3-minute video is fascinating: in effect, the ‘elevator pitch’ is directed toward potential readers rather than an editor. –CH
John Phibbs, Place-Making: The Art of Capability Brown, 1716–1783 (London: Historic England, 2016), 320 pages, £50.
Capability Brown was a great artist, and this book shows what his artistry consisted of. His influence on the culture of England has been as great as that of Turner, Telford and Wordsworth.
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–1783) is the iconic figure at the head of the English landscape style, a tradition that has dominated landscape design in the western world. He was widely acclaimed for his genius in his own day, lived on personal terms with the king, a friend of five prime-ministers, and the great men of his day.
Two factors make his astonishing achievements relevant to us today: first the scale at which he worked and the prolixity of his commissions have given him a direct influence on some half a million acres of England and Wales (that’s an average size English county); and second, arising from that, Brown didn’t just transform the English countryside, he also transformed our idea of what it is to be English and what England is. His work is everywhere, but goes largely unnoticed, the phrase ‘Invisible in plain sight’ comes to mind. Even today though he has had biographers, his work has generated very little analysis.
Very little of what he wrote survives, but the reason why he isn’t noticed—and this point was made in his own day in the 18th century—is that his was such a naturalistic style that all his best work was mistaken for untouched nature. This has made it very difficult to see and understand, which leaves us in a strange situation today. Of the 250 or so country houses for which he designed parks, about 200 are still worth seeing, and millions of people every year visit the 140 that are at least occasionally open to the public. Yet if you were to ask any one of these visitors the simplest questions about the parks (‘what are they for?’, ‘how do they work?’, ‘why did they need so much grass?’ ‘what do they have to do with country houses?’, for example), they would look at you bemused, as if you had asked what mountains are for. For people who are used to English landscape, parks simply are what they are: parks have grass because they are parks.
This blindness to these obvious questions is not confined to the general public. Professional landscape architects, academics and those involved in landscape conservation would be no more able to answer them. It is not just that there is no consensus in understanding Capability Brown’s work, but there has been no attempt to understand it. Even the framework of language for understanding it is lacking. For all his acknowledged importance, Brown is a blank. This book for the first time answers these simple questions about the English landscape tradition and Brown’s place in it, but it aims primarily to make landscape legible, to show people where to stand, what to look at and how to see.
John Phibbs read Classics at Oxford and then developed the idea that historic parks and gardens could and should be recorded and analysed like any other works of art, and that this would be a sensible first step towards deciding what should happen to them next. This idea was widely adopted after the great storm of October 1987. John Phibbs himself spent the next five years building up his own practice in landscape management and assessing landscapes for English Heritage. It was an amazing education out of which came the realisations that Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was not only the most prolific but also the greatest of the English landscape gardeners, and that his work had long been misunderstood, largely because of the mischievous attacks made on it by the proponents of the Picturesque style, which arose after his death in reaction to his work. In this book John hopes to put right the wrongs that have been done to Brown’s reputation and to re-establish him in his rightful place as a figure of great significance in the characterisation of England and Wales.
New Book | Moving Heaven and Earth
From Unicorn Publishing:
Steffie Shields, Moving Heaven and Earth: Capability Brown’s Gift of Landscape (London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2016), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1910787151, £30.
Moving Heaven and Earth reveals the driven polymath behind the famous nickname. It explores both Brown’s artistic legacy and his pioneering work with water in the landscape. The book evaluates the rise of the English landscape garden in the climatic context of his designs and also forms a comprehensive guide for tours and visits. Approximately 350 clearly labelled colour photographs pin-point Brown’s enduring views and surprisingly vibrant planting palette.
Steffie Shields is a professional garden photographer, writer, and historic landscape consultant. Having researched ‘Capability’ Brown for over twenty-five years, she has now compiled a photographic archive of over 200 attributed works. She lectures country-wide, has appeared on Channel 4 television, and been an advisor for More 4. Her photographic awards include several commendations in the International Garden Photographer of the
Year competition.
New Book | Capability Brown and His Landscape Gardens
From the National Trust:
Sarah Rutherford, Capability Brown and His Landscape Gardens (National Trust, 2016), 192 pages, ISBN: 978:1909881549, £15.
One of the most remarkable men of the 18th century, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was known to many as ‘The Omnipotent Magician’ who could transform unpromising countryside into beautiful parks that seemed to be only the work of nature. His list of clients included half the House of Lords, six Prime Ministers and even royalty. Although his fame has dimmed, we still enjoy many of his works today at National Trust properties such as Croome Park, Petworth, Berrington, Stowe, Wimpole, Blenheim Palace, Highclere Castle (location of the ITV series Downton Abbey) and many more. In Capability Brown, author and garden historian Sarah Rutherford tells his triumphant story, uncovers his aims, and reveals why he was so successful. Illustrated throughout with colour photographs of contemporary sites, historical paintings, and garden plans, this is an accessible book for anyone who wants to know more about the man who changed the face of the nation and created landscape style which for many of us defines the English countryside.
Sarah Rutherford is an enthusiastic garden historian and Kew-trained gardener. She has a passion for Capability Brown and his landscape gardens and has visited and studied many to understand the man and his legendary capabilities. As a consultant she has been preparing conservation plans for over twelve years for all sorts of historic parks and gardens. She has written books on subjects as diverse as Victorian Asylums, Georgian Garden Buildings, and Botanic Gardens.
New Book | The English Landscape Garden in Europe
From Historic England:
Michael Symes, The English Landscape Garden in Europe (London: Historic England, 2016), 136 pages, ISBN: 978-1848023574, £25.
This book provides an overview of the extent to which the 18th-century English landscape garden spread through Europe and Russia. While this type of garden acted widely as an inspiration, it was not slavishly copied but adapted to local conditions, circumstances and agendas.
A garden ‘in the English style’ is commonly used to denote a landscape garden in Europe, while the term ‘landscape garden’ is used for layouts that are naturalistic in plan and resemble natural scenery, though they might be highly contrived and usually large in scale.
The landscape garden took hold in mainland Europe from about 1760. Due to the differing geopolitical character of several of the countries, and a distinct division between Catholic and Protestant, the notion of the landscape garden held different significance and was interpreted and applied variously in those countries: in other words, they found it a very flexible medium.
Each country is considered individually, with a special chapter devoted to ‘Le Jardin Anglo-Chinois’, since that constitutes a major issue of its own. The gardens have been chosen to illustrate the range and variety of applications of the landscape garden, though they are also those about which most is known in English.
C O N T E N T S
The Many Faces of the Landscape Garden
Exporting the English Garden
Le Jardin Anglo-Chinois
France
Germany
Russia
Poland
The Czech Republic
Sweden
Hungary
Italy
Other Countries
Exhibition | Fragonard: Un Provençal aux Pays-Bas
Now on view at the Villa-Musée Fragonard:
Fragonard: Un Provençal aux Pays-Bas
Villa-Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Grasse, 1 July — 30 September 2016
Grasse et Fragonard, l’association semble évidente et pourtant la réalité est plus complexe. Certes Jean-Honoré Fragonard naît à Grasse en 1732 dans une famille modeste d’ouvriers gantiers, cet artisanat grassois qui, depuis le XVIIe siècle, accompagne et est aussi pour partie à l’origine du développement de l’activité liée au parfum dans la ville. Mais dès ses six ans, en 1738, toute la famille quitte la ville pour s’installer à Paris. Par la suite nous n’avons ni témoignages ni documents écrits qui pourraient faire supposer un retour ou un séjour du peintre dans sa ville natale. Cela jusqu’en février 1790, où Alexandre Maubert, son cousin, consigne, avec précision dans son livre de compte, un loyer mensuel que Fragonard lui verse pour loger avec sa femme et sa belle-soeur, Marguerite Gérard, dans sa bastide à un jet de pierre de l’entrée de Grasse. L’année suivante les Fragonard retournent à Paris, leur présence est confirmée dans la capitale en août 1793 par un document bancaire. Rien n’établit ensuite que le peintre revienne à Grasse. Il meurt le 22 août 1806 après une promenade sur le Champs de Mars à Paris. Six ans puis une grosse année : certes deux périodes cruciales dans la vie du peintre, mais c’est au final assez peu.
Ajoutons à cela la théorie, paradoxalement uniquement défendue localement, avec aplomb, depuis les années 1980, que les travaux de décoration de la cage d’escalier de la Villa Maubert n’étaient pas de la main de Jean-Honoré mais de son fils, le musée Fragonard rebaptisé Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Provence en 1977, de trop rares expositions consacrées au peintre, une en 1957, une autre en 2006, voilà que progressivement semble s’éloigner la présence du peintre à Grasse. Pourtant la Villa Maubert, transformée en Villa Musée Fragonard par la ville, conserve un trésor. En ses murs ce sont les derniers feux créateurs du peintre en cette fin du XVIIIe siècle que l’on peut encore admirer aujourd’hui. Ce patrimoine, dont l’histoire est complexe et mal documentée, est unique et original, il justifie pleinement de mettre en lumière Jean- Honoré Fragonard dans la capitale des parfums.
Avec cette première exposition d’été, Un Provencal aux Pays-Bas, c’est ce que les musées de Grasse veulent réaffirmer en s’efforçant d’initier un nouveau cycle de travaux et de recherches consacré à cet enfant du pays grassois.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The catalogue is available from Artbooks.com:
Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Fragonard: Un Provençal aux Pays-Bas (Milan: Silvana, 2016), 32 pages, ISBN: 978-8836633388, $23.
Né à Grasse en 1732, à quelques lieues de la frontière italienne, Fragonard ne pouvait qu’être séduit par les paysages méditerranéens comme ses deux séjours dans la péninsule en témoignent. Mais le peintre a aussi exploré des territoires plus septentrionaux. A l’instar des amateurs de son temps, Fragonard fut très attiré par la peinture flamande et hollandaise du XVIIème siècle. Tout au long de sa carrière il entretint un dialogue fructueux avec les maîtres du passé, étudiant et copiant les toiles de Rembrandt et de Rubens, les paysages de Ruysdael. Il en vint même à absorber leur style et leur technique au point de les pasticher tout en restant lui-même. Cette pratique fut stimulée par des voyages, dont un documenté en 1773, qui le mena de Paris à Amsterdam en passant par Bruxelles, Malines, Anvers et La Haye. Les collections de la ville de Grasse, complétées par des prêts de collections publiques et privées, offrent l’occasion de se pencher sur cet aspect moins connu de l’auteur du Verrou et des Hasards heureux de l’escarpolette.
Exhibition | Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant
Jean Honoré Fragonard, Rinaldo in the Enchanted Forest, ca. 1763; brown wash over very light black chalk underdrawing; 33.5 × 45.7 cm
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.236).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release (2 August 2016) from The Met:
Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant—Works from New York Collections
The Metroplitan Museum of Art, New York, 6 October 2016 — 8 January 2017
Curated by Perrin Stein
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806)—one of the most forward-looking and inventive artists of the 18th century—was equally skilled in painting, drawing, and etching. Yet, unlike many old masters for whom drawing was a preparatory tool, Fragonard explored the potential of chalk, ink, and wash to create sheets that were works of art in their own right. As displays of virtuosity and an imaginative spirit, his drawings were highly prized from his own day to the present, and New York has long been a center for collecting these works.
The exhibition Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant—Works from New York Collections, opening October 6 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will celebrate the artist’s achievements as a master draftsman. A similar brio and inventiveness mark the artist’s etchings, and examples of these will also be featured. Among the 100 works on paper on view, nearly half are from private collections, some of which will be shown publicly for the first time. The exhibition will thus provide a rare opportunity to see well-loved masterpieces alongside new discoveries and works that have long been out of the public eye.
Fragonard’s career took place in the later 18th century when the role of drawing was undergoing a critical transformation. No longer regarded solely as a step in the genesis of another work, drawings were appreciated by a growing audience as original works by the artist’s hand, precious manifestations of creative inspiration. As the century progressed, sheets by living artists appeared at public auctions with growing frequency, suggesting either that they were made for the market as independent works of art or that the value assigned to such works provided an incentive for artists to part with them.
The freedom and speed afforded by chalk or wash on paper were particularly suited to Fragonard’s improvisational talents and allowed his creative genius to shine. Among the subjects for which he is best known are joyful images of daily life, portraits, and landscapes, as well as episodes from the Bible and from diverse works of literature, ranging from the fantastic to the licentious. The frolicking children, young lovers, and sunlit gardens that sprang from his imagination are not weighed down by specificity or detail, but rather speak to the universality of such themes.
By uniting works in The Met collection with loans from other New York City museums and private collections, the exhibition will represent Fragonard’s entire range and achievement as a draftsman at the highest level. The selection will embrace the full spectrum of his career as well as all the genres in which he worked. In technique, they range from the most spontaneous sketches to highly worked studio pieces, intended to be framed and displayed.
The exhibition will follow the chronology of the artist’s life, from his early training in Paris in the studio of François Boucher, to his training at the French Academy in Rome, to his return to the French capital, and ultimately to his break with the official arts establishment. By spurning royal patronage in order to work for private clients, Fragonard gained the freedom to choose his own subjects and formats, thus contributing to our modern view of the artist as innovative and independent. Groupings within this chronological framework will illuminate Fragonard’s practice of revisiting themes and compositions he had already explored to create new works in a different medium or technique. Cross-fertilization and play between media were central to his working method.
A highlight will be the display of all five of the works on paper—three drawings, an etching, and a gouache—related to his famous composition The Little Park (Le petit parc). The constellation of works on this subject will be reunited for the first time since the artist’s lifetime, providing important insight into his working methods. Also on view will be many pairs of works whose compositions echo one another, experimental variations on themes, often in different media.
Jean Honoré Fragonard, A Gathering at Wood’s Edge, ca. 1770–73; red chalk, 37.5 × 49.2 cm
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.101).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Four major sheets acquired by The Met in recent years will also be featured. A Gathering at Woods’ Edge depicts a lush scene of well-dressed visitors finding respite at the shady entrance of a sunlit grove of trees, rendered in a vibrant yet precise manner in red chalk, also called sanguine. Later and equally masterful are two large-scale studies of fishermen drawn at the edge of the sea in Naples, where Fragonard visited in 1774. Acquired in 2009, Rinaldo in the Enchanted Forest is fueled more by imagination than by observation, as Fragonard used layers of fluidly applied gold-brown wash to produce, seemingly effortlessly, the dramatic tenor of a brave warrior battling magical creatures.
The exhibition is organized by Perrin Stein, Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints. Exhibition design is by Brian Oliver Butterfield, Senior Exhibition Designer; graphics are by Chelsea Amato, Graphic Designer; lighting is by Amy Nelson, Lighting Designer, all of the Museum’s Design Department.
Fragonard: Drawings Triumphant—Works from New York Collections is one of a series of exhibitions and programs organized to celebrate the centennial of the Department of Prints and Drawings at The Met, one of the most comprehensive and distinguished collections of works of art on paper in the world. The centennial began in January 2016.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Distributed by Yale UP:
Perrin Stein, with contributions by Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Eunice Williams, and Kelsey Brosnan, Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1588396013, $65.
One of the most forward-looking artists in 18th-century France, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) is considered the preeminent draftsman of his time. This fresh assessment of the artist focuses on the role of drawing in his creative process and showcases Fragonard’s mastery and experimentation with drawing in a range of media, from vivid red chalk to luminous brown wash, as well as etching, watercolor, and gouache. Unlike many old master painters, Fragonard explored the potential of drawings as works of art in their own right, ones that permitted him to work with great freedom and allowed his genius to shine. The drawings featured here come from public and private collections in New York, balancing a mix of well-loved masterpieces, new discoveries, and works that have long been out of the public eye.
Perrin Stein is a curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey is an independent art historian based in Paris. Eunice Williams is an independent scholar. Kelsey Brosnan is research assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Exhibition | Rembrandt’s Shadow: England and the Black Art
Upcoming exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart:
Rembrandt’s Shadow: England and the Black Art
Rembrandts Schatten: England und die Schwarze Kunst
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 18 September 2016 — 8 January 2017
Richard Earlom, after Joseph Wright of Derby, An Iron Forge, detail, 1771, mezzotint (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart).
The œuvre of Rembrandt (1606–1669) was of key importance for the development of English art in the eighteenth century. The expressive orchestration of light in his paintings and particularly the radical chiaroscuro of his etchings were compared to the mezzotint, a method that emerged later and advanced to become the quintessential English printing technique (the ‘English Manner’). Also referred to as the ‘black art’ on account of its strong light-dark contrasts, the mezzotint has always possessed a mysterious and magical quality. Particularly Rembrandt’s portraits had a great influence on England’s most prominent artists, for example Sir Joshua Reynolds. Rembrandt’s self-portraits, for their part, came to serve as models of artistic self-staging par excellence, and were often quoted. Rembrandt’s Shadow will thus embrace a compositional as well as a temporal component: the masterful chiaroscuro of his art and its aftereffect in eighteenth-century England.
Call for Participants | Color Printing and the Global Eighteenth Century
This working group will meet at the RBS-Mellon Conference Bibliography among the Disciplines in October 2017.
Color Printing and the Global Eighteenth Century
Philadelphia, 12–15 October 2017
Proposals due by 25 October 2016
Organizers: Marie-Stephanie Delamaire (Winterthur Museum) and Jeannie Kenmotsu (Royal Ontario Museum)
The long eighteenth century was a period of major breakthroughs in the domain of color printing in several parts of the world. In Asia and Europe, various relief and intaglio techniques were adapted to full color printing and achieved widespread uses in the visual arts. Multiple-block color printing techniques were explored in seventeenth-century Chinese painting manuals; these relief techniques were later seen in Japanese sheet prints and illustrated books on a far greater scale in the eighteenth century, from the poetry anthologies illustrated by Katsuma Ryūsui to Suzuki Harunobu’s vividly colored ‘brocade pictures’. Printing à la poupée was practiced in the Low Countries, Italy, Britain, and France among others for decorative printing as well as lavishly illustrated botanical and ornithological volumes such as those of Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Jacob Christoph Le Blon and his successors experimented with multiple-plate intaglio printing, and produced color prints in collaboration with leading artists.
Although scholars have increasingly studied eighteenth-century knowledge of the properties, meanings, and uses of colors, the materials and practices involved in the production and reception of color-printed images have received comparatively less attention. This project will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines and fields (printing history, book history, critical bibliography, history of art, history of technology, etc.) to explore the proliferation of color-printed images in the long eighteenth century. How do we understand the emergence of widespread color-printing practices across the globe approximately at the same time? What were the economic, social, or political factors that facilitated color printing as a major medium for visual creation? What were the taxonomic, semantic, and aesthetic consequences of printing in color as opposed to hand painting in color? We encourage submissions that engage with the specific material practices of color-printed images that emerged in Europe and Asia between the second half of the seventeenth century up to the early nineteenth century, while reflecting on the broader questions they raise with regards to our knowledge of the period and the validity of current approaches.
Possible topics might include but are not limited to: the production and consumption of color-printed images; color printing as a mode of cultural exchange; the materiality of color printmaking and the production of knowledge (including, but not limited to, spheres of natural history, the fine arts, mapmaking, color theory, and connoisseurship etc.); book illustration versus sheet prints; the relationship between printing in color and painting; conservation issues particular to color-printed works as they relate to methods and approaches to historical inquiry; changes in disciplinary perspectives concerning color printing and the eighteen century.
Participants should be able to commit to attending all sessions of the working group:
Thursday, 12 October 2017, 2:00–5:00pm
Friday, 13 October 2017, 10:45am–12:15pm
Saturday, 14 October 2017, 8:30–10:00am
Participants should further be able to commit to meeting again one year after the conference to work toward a publication of the results of the working group. In their statements of interest, participants should indicate their availability to meet during the year following the conference (e.g., will you be abroad—if so, when, and do you anticipate that you will have sufficient internet connectivity to meet virtually?).
In order to be considered please submit proposals for participation by 25 October 2016 here. Proposals should include a brief 2-page CV and a statement of interest of no more than 500 words, outlining your relevant research, what you hope to contribute toward the group, and what you hope to take away from it (including potential project ideas you hope the group may pursue).
Bibliography Among the Disciplines, a four-day international conference, will bring together scholarly professionals poised to address current problems pertaining to the study of textual artifacts that cross scholarly, pedagogical, professional, and curatorial domains. The conference will explore theories and methods common to the object-oriented disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology, but new to bibliography. The program aims to promote focused cross-disciplinary exchange and future scholarly collaborations. Bibliography Among the Disciplines is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and organized by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School.
Exhibition | Ecclesiastical Textiles from the Age of Maria Theresa
Blue Vestments: chasuble (detail), donated by Maria Theresia (1717–1780), produced in Vienna, 1778; h. 106 cm, w. 73 cm
(KHM-Museumsverband)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release for the exhibition now on view at the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer Wien:
Praise of God: Ecclesiastical Textiles from the Age of Maria Theresia
Gottes Lob: Kirchliche Textilien aus der Zeit Maria Theresias
Imperial Treasury, Vienna, 4 May 2016 — 12 February 2017
The Ecclesiastical Treasury house’s important holdings of 18th-century liturgical vestments cannot be on permanent display for conservation reasons. The majority of these precious textiles were donated by Emperor Charles VI (1685–1740), his wife Elisabeth Christine (1691–1750) and their daughter Maria Theresia (1717–1780). At the time it was customary to use costly French or Italian fabrics, lavishly embellished with embroidery, for such vestments. Imperial robes were also occasionally reworked into such robes.
The exhibition offers insights into the wealth and exceptional quality of the Imperial Treasury’s holdings of precious vestments, which reflect the Pietas Austriaca, the deep piety of the House of Habsburg. The museum has also included a selection of contemporary ecclesiastical garments produced after designs by the artists Christof Cremer and Stephan Hann. They document the high standard liturgical vestments are still expected to meet today as they continue to form a seminal part of the celebration of Mass. In connection with the exhibition, the museum has also decided to confront three modern copes produced after designs by Christof Cremer with historical vestments in a display installed in the so-called Paramentengang (vestment corridor) in the Ecclesiastical Treasury. This is the first time that contemporary art is displayed in the Treasury since it was newly installed and reopened in the 1980s.
The extensive holdings of the Ecclesiastical Treasury in Vienna are largely unknown to the general public; they comprise mainly vestments and liturgical textiles that were used to celebrate Mass or during religious festivities. Totalling around 1,700 artefacts, the collection includes both sets of vestments and individual textiles. Many of these precious garments were donated by members of the House of Habsburg who for centuries ruled the Holy Roman Empire. The pomp and circumstance associated with this high office is reflected in the costliness of these sumptuous textiles, the finest of which date from the Baroque, the apogee of Habsburg piety. Unlike medieval ecclesiastical textiles, baroque vestments generally feature not figurative but purely ornamental decorations. Precious secular silks adorned with a variety of designs frequently function as the base material, which is then elaborately embellished with appliqués, lace or gold-, silver- and silk embroidery to produce opulent textile works of art.
The leading benefactress in the 18th century was Maria Theresa (1717–1780). She donated precious textiles for use in the imperial palace chapel and the chapels of the different imperial summer residences at Schönbrunn, Laxenburg and Hetzendorf, as well as in St. Augustine’s church in Vienna. The latter evolved into a major stage for Habsburg piety. Here newly-appointed bishops were invested. All these places were lavishly appointed with sumptuous ecclesiastical textiles.
Contemporary sources clearly document the seminal role played by high-quality vestments during the Baroque. Many of these artefacts have been preserved in the Ecclesiastical Treasury because of their preciousness and the prominent benefactors who donated them. A selection is on show in this exhibition.
Katja Schmitz-von Ledebur, Gottes Lob: Kirchliche Textilien aus der Zeit Maria Theresias (Vienna, 2016), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-3990201145, €15.
Enfilade 
leave a comment