Exhibition | Pastoral on Paper
Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Figures, Herdsman and Cattle at a Pool, and Distant Church, mid- to late 1780s, watercolor and gouache with lead white on beige laid paper, fixed with gum, varnished with mastic (The Clark, gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007.8.76).
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Pastoral on Paper
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 8 March — 15 June 2025
Curated by William Satloff, with Anne Leonard
The idyllic tranquility of the lives of shepherds became a prominent subject in literature, music, and the visual arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A new exhibition at the Clark Art Institute, Pastoral on Paper, explores artistic depictions of rural life by considering their representations of the people and animals who inhabited the landscapes. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper in the Clark’s Manton Research Center from March 8 until June 15, 2025.
Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Voyage of Jacob, 1677, oil on canvas (The Clark, 1955.42).
“The Clark’s works on paper collection is rich with beautiful drawings, etchings, and watercolors depicting these pastoral scenes,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “We were delighted when our graduate student intern William Satloff proposed the concept of an exhibition that would give us the opportunity to share so many of these exceptional works of art together. Many of the objects in this presentation have not been on view in quite some time, so it will be a wonderful opportunity for our visitors.”
Satloff, a member of the Class of 2025 in the Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art, curated the exhibition under the direction of Anne Leonard, the Clark’s Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Satloff has served as a curatorial intern at the Clark since 2023.
“In the Berkshires, we are fortunate to be surrounded by rolling hills, grazing cows, meandering streams, and picturesque barns,” said Satloff. “Moved by these same features, early modern artists created pastoral landscapes. The exquisite works in this exhibition offer an opportunity for us to reflect on our relationship with land both in art and in the world around us.”
Selected primarily from the Clark’s strong holdings of drawings by Claude Lorrain (French, 1604/5–1682) and Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) and supplemented with select loans of Dutch Italianate artworks, the exhibition analyzes pastoral imagery to examine how artists construct their own visions of an idealized landscape. This exhibition features thirty-eight works, including nine drawings, three etchings, and one painting by Claude (Lorrain is typically referred to by his first name) and ten Gainsborough drawings.
Claude perfected the genre of idealized landscape, consolidating the developments of sixteenth-century Italian landscape painters and fusing a sensitive observation of nature with the lofty nobility of classical values. He lived and worked in Rome from the 1620s until his death; there, he influenced the Dutch Italianates—northern European artists who traveled to Italy and embraced the local style of landscape painting. A century later Thomas Gainsborough developed a new kind of nostalgic, pastoral landscape, inflecting the naturalism of Claude and the Italianates with a yearning for the bygone days of a simpler country life.
a c c e s s i n g a r c a d i a
The term ‘Arcadia’ derives from the mountainous Greek province of the same name, and according to myth, it was the domain of Pan, the half-man, half-goat satyr who was revered as the god of pastures and woodlands. In antiquity, Arcadia was known for its population of pastoralists—cowherds, goatherds, shepherds, swineherds—who were celebrated across the ancient world for the skillful singing they did while tending their flocks. The Latin poet Virgil wrote an immensely influential set of ten poems, the Eclogues, about the herdsmen of Arcadia.
Agostino Carracci, Omnia Vincit Amor, 1599, engraving on paper (The Clark, gift of Mary Carswell, 2017.11.1).
During the Renaissance, the intellectual movement known as humanism brought renewed interest in the culture—and particularly the poetry—of ancient Greece and Rome. Although Renaissance humanism waned in the sixteenth century, Virgil’s pastoral poetry continued to inspire artists and writers through the nineteenth century and beyond. Over time, ‘Arcadia’ developed into a general term for an idealized vision of rural life.
Agostino Carracci’s (Italian, 1557–1602) engraving, Omnia vincit Amor (1599), is a visual pun derived from a famous line in Virgil’s tenth Eclogue: “Love conquers all.” Amor is the Latin name for Cupid, the god of desire and erotic love. Pan is both the Greek name of Faunus, the shepherd-god of pastures and woodlands, and the Greek word for “all,” which in Latin is “omnia.” Taken together, Cupid’s victorious combat with the goat-legged god becomes a visual translation of Virgil’s poetry.
Nicolaes Berchem, The Cows at the Watering Place (The Cow Drinking), 1680, etching on paper (The Clark, 2023.15).
In The Cows at the Watering Place (The Cow Drinking) (1680), Nicolaes Berchem (Dutch, 1620–1683) conjures a timeless scene of rural life, full of tranquility and contentment. A shepherd has brought his cows and goats to drink from a stream on a warm, bright day. The animals wade and drink in the water, and a group of people lounge leisurely along the bank. The shepherd, recognizable by his long pole, talks with a seated man who has come to fill his jug, while a woman washes her feet in the stream. An overgrown ruin occupies the midground. At the top of this structure, beneath the vines, is a shadowy relief carving of a knight on horseback slaying a monster—an ambiguous reference to a gallant past.
Christoffel Jegher (Flemish, 1596–1652/53) collaborated with the celebrated Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640) to produce the monumental woodcut Rest on the Flight into Egypt (after 1632), which corresponds closely to the right side of Rubens’s oil painting Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saints (1632–35). Jegher presents the Christ Child sleeping contentedly in the Virgin Mary’s arms at the edge of a dense forest. Two putti, or cherubs, wrestle with a lamb, while a third motions them to be quiet. In the background, Joseph slumbers at the base of a twisting tree while the donkey drinks from a brook.
With its winding river, elegant trees, and grand Romanesque castle, the scene in Landscape with the Voyage of Jacob (1677) is an idealized vision of the countryside near Rome, where Claude spent most of his career. The tiny camels hint at a biblical story, perhaps Jacob’s journey into Canaan, but the other figures scattered across the landscape, such as the herdsman, cows, sheep, dog, and fishermen, give way to another revelation—that the painting is essentially a poetic celebration of the bounty of the natural world.
i d e a l i z e d l a n d s c a p e
Claude and Gainsborough were known to draw landscapes en plein air—meaning that they worked outdoors, directly from the natural environment. Though both artists studied natural features for inspiration, their approach to landscapes varied considerably. Claude’s idealized drawings featured a diffuse light and airy atmosphere aligned with the sensibilities of the Italian countryside. Gainsborough observed nature through a different lens, focusing on the English countryside. Still, each artist endeavored to draw a more pleasing, idealized landscape. Claude often added figures or trees in the foreground to create the illusion of deeper pictorial space. Gainsborough, too, would sometimes make adjustments to the observed landscape—for example, drawing a cluster of trees to one side to balance out the composition.
Claude was fascinated by how ancient and modern Rome melded in the landscape. The early Christian church of Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura (ca. 300s–600s) attracted Claude on more than one occasion. By the seventeenth century, it was surrounded by farms and open pastures. In A View of Sant’ Agnese Fuori le Mura (1650–55), instead of showing the church surrounded by grazing animals, Claude used hills and trees to obscure any sense of historical specificity. While the identifiable architecture indicates the place from where the artist sketched, the building’s late-antique style imparts a temporal mystique evocative of Arcadia.
Thomas Gainsborough, Extensive Wooded Landscape with a Bridge over a Gorge, Distant Village and Hills, ca. 1786, black and white chalks with stumping on beige laid paper, fixed with skim milk and/or gum (The Clark, 2007.8.75).
Claude often went on sketching expeditions around the Roman countryside in the company of fellow artists. On several occasions, he traveled west from Rome along the Tiber River to the town of Tivoli. Nestled in the Sabine Mountains, Tivoli had long been admired for its ancient ruins and scenic vistas. The German painter Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) recounted an excursion he and Claude made to Tivoli: “we began to paint entirely from nature […] the mountains, the grottoes, valleys, and deserted places, the terrible cascades of the Tiber, the temple of Sibyl, and the like.” The Cascades of Tivoli (ca. 1640), on view in this section of the exhibition, depicts such a scene.
Gainsborough usually sketched the English landscape outdoors directly from nature, such as with Extensive Wooded Landscape with a Bridge over a Gorge, Distant Village and Hills (ca. 1786). This practice prompted artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792) to remark that Gainsborough, his bitter rival, “did not look at nature with a poet’s eye.” As such he went against the prevalent tendency in eighteenth-century England, where most artists derived their landscapes from Virgil’s Eclogues and Claude’s idyllic Italian scenes. Fashionable collectors displayed paintings and prints of idealized Mediterranean landscapes in their homes, setting the trend of “Italian light on English walls.”
r u i n s a n d c o t t a g e s
In pastoral works, architecture is often placed in the midground or background to suggest human habitation of a landscape. In the seventeenth century, pastoral architecture took the form of ruins, indicating that ancient people once held dominion over the land. These ruined buildings—surrounded by overgrown trees and shrubbery—invite viewers to reflect on the greatness of past civilizations, the transience of their glory, and the sublime power of time and nature. In the eighteenth century, pastoral landscapes also came to include cottages, barns, and shacks. By including architectural features within pastoral landscapes, artists may sometimes be making moral, social, and political statements about rural life and land management.
Jean Jacques de Boissieu, The Entrance to a Forest with a Cottage on the Right, 1772, etching and drypoint on laid paper (The Clark, 1993.3).
In A Wooded Landscape with a Classical Temple (ca. 1645), Claude constructs an imaginary landscape by placing ancient-looking architecture amid dense foliage and rolling hills. Although the bridge visible in the background has been identified as Rome’s famous Milvian Bridge (completed in 109 BCE), there are no clear referents for either the fortress pictured behind the bridge or the classical temple on the left.
Bartholomeus Breenbergh’s (Dutch, 1598–1657) Ruins in a Landscape (ca. 1620s) is an early example of Northern European artists’ fascination with ancient architecture. In the shadow of the cavernous ruin, the figures look tiny. Trees grow atop the ruin, juxtaposing the persistence of nature with the ephemerality of Rome’s greatness. Breenbergh moved to Rome in 1619, where he helped found the Roman Society of Dutch and Flemish Painters called the Bentvueghels (active ca. 1620–1720). This intellectual and social group, famous for its drunken initiation rituals, included several prominent Italianate landscape painters, such as Jan Asselijn (Dutch, 1610–1652) and Karel Dujardin (Dutch, 1626–1678).
In Dujardin’s The Ruins of a Temple, in the Foreground Two Men and a Dog (1658), two figures overlook a ruin-strewn landscape from a distance, allowing viewers to insert themselves within the pastoral scene rather than observing it as a spectacle. One of the foreground figures sits with a notebook and a writing instrument in his hand, suggestive of the sketching tours that seventeenth-century artists took throughout the countryside around Rome. Though the figure is representative of the common practice of working outdoors, Dujardin actually created this etching in his studio in the Hague.
Pastoral on Paper is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by William Satloff, Class of 2025, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Exhibition | Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting
Saitō Motonari, Illustrations of Uji Tea Production, 1803, Edo period (1615–1868), handscroll (57 feet) of thirty-two sheets reformatted as a folding album (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023.237).
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Now on view at The Met:
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and
Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 August 2024 — 3 August 2025
Curated by John Carpenter
In East Asian cultures, the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting are traditionally referred to as the ‘Three Perfections’. This exhibition presents over 160 rare and precious works—all created in Japan over the course of nearly a millennium—that showcase the power and complexity of the three forms of art. Examples include folding screens with poems brushed on sumptuous decorated papers, dynamic calligraphy by Zen monks of medieval Kyoto, hanging scrolls with paintings and inscriptions alluding to Chinese and Japanese literary classics, ceramics used for tea gatherings, and much more. The majority of the works are among the more than 250 examples of Japanese painting and calligraphy donated or promised to The Met by Mary and Cheney Cowles, whose collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive assemblages of Japanese art outside Japan.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation Fund.
Information on the objects exhibited can be found here»
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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:
John Carpenter, with Tim Zhang, The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1588397805, $65.
In East Asian cultures, the integration of poetry, painting, and calligraphy, known as the ‘Three Perfections’, is considered the apex of artistic expression. This sumptuous book explores 1,000 years of Japanese art through more than 100 works—hanging scrolls, folding screens, handscrolls, and albums—from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. John T. Carpenter provides an engaging history of these interrelated disciplines and shows evidence of intellectual exchange between Chinese and Japanese artists in works with poetry in both languages, calligraphies in Chinese brushed by Japanese Zen monks, and examples of Japanese paintings pictorializing scenes from Chinese literature and legend. Many of the works featured, including Japanese poetic forms, Chinese verses, and Zen Buddhist sayings, are deciphered and translated here for the first time, providing readers with a better understanding of each work’s rich and layered meaning. Highlighting the talents of such masters as Musō Soseki, Sesson Shūkei, Jiun Onkō, Ryōkan Taigu, Ike no Taiga, and Yosa Buson, this book celebrates the power of brush-written calligraphy and its complex visual synergy with painted images.
John T. Carpenter is the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been with The Met since 2011. From 1999 to 2011, he taught the history of Japanese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and served as head of the London office of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He has published widely on Japanese art, especially in the areas of calligraphy, painting, and woodblock prints, and has helped organize numerous exhibitions at the Museum, including Designing Nature (2012–13), Brush Writing in the Arts of Japan (2013–14), Celebrating the Arts of Japan (2015–17), The Poetry of Nature (2018–2019), and The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated (2019).
Tim T. Zhang is Research Associate of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
c o n t e n t s
Director’s Foreword
Preface
Becoming a Collector of Japanese Art — Cheney Cowles
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Introduction
Inscribing and Painting Poetry: The Three Perfections in Japanese Art — John T. Carpenter
Catalogue
1 Courtly Calligraphy Styles: Transcribing Poetry in the Heian Palace
Entries 1–13
2 Spiritual Traces of Ink: Calligraphies by Medieval Zen Monks
Entries 14–31
3 Reinvigorating Classical Poetry: Brush Writing in Early Modern Times
Entries 32–59
4 Poems of Enlightenment: Edo-Period Zen Calligraphy
Entries 60–84
5 China-Themed Paintings: Literati Art of Later Edo Japan
Entries 85–111
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Credits
Exhibition | 100 Ideas of Happiness
Moon Jar, white porcelain, Joseon Dynasty, 18th century
(Seoul: National Museum of Korea)
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From the press release for the exhibition:
100 Ideas of Happiness: Art Treasures from Korea
Residenzschloss, Dresden, 15 March — 10 August 2025
For the first time in over 25 years, precious artifacts that give an overview of Korean art and cultural history are on display in Germany. The exhibition 100 Ideas of Happiness takes place thanks to a cooperation with the National Museum of Korea, which is supported by the Korea Foundation.
Embedded in the baroque Paraderäume (Royal State Apartments) and the Neues Grünes Gewölbe (New Green Vault) of the Dresden Residenzschloss (Royal Palace), the show opens up an exciting dialogue between cultures. The central theme is the timeless question of the various ideas of happiness—including the desire for eternal life, peace in this world and the next, inner strength or pure joie de vivre— as expressed in works of art through colours, symbols, and the choice of subject matter.
On display are around 180 outstanding individual objects and groups of objects, including valuable grave goods, precious jewellery, royal robes, and exquisite porcelain from several eras of Korean history. The objects give a multifaceted impression of Korea’s artistic traditions from the time of the ancient kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla (57 BC–935 AD) to the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897). Numerous loans are on show for the first time in Europe. The central themes of the presentation are ancient funerary traditions, the role of Buddhism and Confucianism as state-endorsed religions, the legacy of ceramic art, and the significance of the traditional Korean attire, the Hanbok, in the past and present.
A tour of the exhibition through the Paraderäume concludes with a selection of Korean artworks from the ethnographic collections of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections). These include folding screens, armour, and weapons collected by German travellers in Korea at the beginning of the 19th century. They offer valuable insights into Korea at that time and document the beginnings of a cultural exchange between Korea and Germany. An important item is the folding screen from the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig. Its title is 100 Ideas for Happiness and Longevity and gave the exhibition its name.
The second exhibition venue within the Residenzschloss is located in the Sponsel Room of the Neues Grünes Gewölbe. Surrounded by the treasures of Augustus the Strong, a selection of precious gold jewellery from the royal tombs of the Silla Dynasty is displayed there. These objects—including the famous gold crown from Geumgwanchong, one of the most important royal tombs in Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla kingdom—are among Korea’s national treasures. An elaborately decorated belt made of pure gold, a wing-shaped headdress, and magnificent earrings and rings (presented in the exhibition as an ensemble for the first time in many years) also come from this tomb. They are cultural and historical testimonies to the great significance of the Silla Kingdom.
Claudia Brink and Sojin Baik, 100 Ideen von Glück: Kunstschätze aus Korea (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2025), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-3954988631, €34.
Conference | Sculpture between Britain and Italy, 1728–1854
Left: Joseph Wilton, Dr Antonio Cocchi, 1755 (London: V&A: A.9‐1966). Right: Raffaele Monti, The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy, 1861 (London: V&A: A.3-1964).
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From the conference programme:
Academy, Market, Industry
Sculptural Models, Themes, and Genres between Britain and Italy, 1728–1854
Online and in-person, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 16–17 May 2025
Organized by Adriano Aymonino, Kira d’Alburquerque, Albertina Ciani Sciolla, and Andrea Bacchi
This two‐day interdisciplinary conference, organised by the University of Buckingham, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Fondazione Federico Zeri, investigates the role played by British‐Italian artistic exchanges in shaping sculptural models, themes, and genres between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The conference adopts a longue durée approach, focusing on the century when these exchanges were most intense: from 1728, when the anglicised Flemish sculptors Laurent Delvaux and Peter Scheemakers travelled to Italy “to form and improve their studies,” to the 1854 opening of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, whose sculptural decoration was directed by the Milanese Raffaele Monti. Throughout this period, the two traditions became interdependent, developing an artistic dialogue that influenced sculptural models, themes, and genres not only in Italy and Britain but also across Europe and the territories of the expanding British Empire, from the Indian subcontinent to the Americas.
This conference adopts a typological approach, analysing how academic frameworks and patronage networks influenced the diffusion of sculptural models, themes, and genres, and how market dynamics—along with the industrial production of new materials—either reinforced or challenged these aspects. Papers will explore the evolution of established genres such as busts, ideal sculptures, funerary and public monuments, copies and adaptations after the Antique, as well as the diffusion of models and themes in decorative figurative sculpture, including reliefs, medallions, chimneypieces, and in smaller artworks such as gems, cameos, impressions, ivories, or in objects produced in porcelain, earthenware, and various new artificial ‘stones’. While concentrating on sculpture, the conference embraces an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate how the development of new models, themes, and genres reflected or shaped cultural and national identities, social values, evolving canons, and shifting audiences in the different contexts of Italy and the Anglophone world. Recent years have witnessed a surge in monographic publications and PhD dissertations by art historians, social historians, and scholars focused on material culture, examining individual artists and themes connected to this trans‐national movement. This conference aims to assess the current state of research and explore future directions in the discipline.
The conference is part of a series of events organised to celebrate the launch of a new edition of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny’s Taste and the Antique in December 2024. A further conference focused on the “Future of the Antique” will take place at the Warburg Institute and Institute of Classical Studies on 10–12 December 2025 (see the call for papers here).
Registration for online attendance is available here»
Registration for in-person attendance is available here»
f r i d a y , 1 6 m a y
10.00 Registration
10.30 Welcome and Introduction — Adriano Aymonino, Kira d’Alburquerque, and Albertina Ciani Sciolla
10.45 Session 1 | New Approaches to Old Genres and Themes
Moderator: Andrea Bacchi (Fondazione Federico Zeri‐Università di Bologna)
• Italy, By Way of Flanders: John Michael Rysbrack and Peter Scheemakers the Younger in England, ca. 1720–1750 — Emily Hirsch (Brown University)
• The Impact of British Collecting on Italian Artistic Trends: The Case of Filippo della Valle (1698–1768) — Camilla Parisi (Università Roma Tre)
• Antonio Cocchi and Joseph Wilton: The Charm of Antiquity and the ‘True Catholic Air’ — Mattia Ciani (Università degli Studi di Siena)
• ‘The insolence of this puppy!’: Evidence for the Complexities of Commissioning Models between England and Rome in the Mid-Eighteenth Century — Susan Jenkins (Westminster Abbey)
• Christopher Hewetson and the Evolution of the Portrait Bust in Late Eighteenth‐Century Rome — Matteo Maggiolo (Independent Scholar)
13.15 Lunch
14.45 Session 2 | Models, Themes, Genres, and Media Transfer
Moderator: Malcolm Baker (University of California, Riverside)
• Media Transfers and Transnational Exchange in Edme Bouchardon’s Roman Portraits, 1727–1732 — Karl Brose (University of Virginia)
• Giles Hussey and the Revival of Gem Engraving in Georgian Britain — Dominic Bate (Brown University)
• Antiquity in Dialogue: Eleanor Coade’s Artificial Stone and Global Exchanges — Miriam Al Jamil (Independent Scholar)
• Flaxman Models and Wedgwood Design Process — Catrin Jones (V&A Wedgwood Collection)
16.55 Session 3 | Book Presentations
• Introducing the New Edition of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (Brepols/Harvey Miller, 3 vols, December 2024) — Adriano Aymonino
• Introducing the European Sculpture in the Collection of His Majesty The King (Modern Art Press and Royal Collection Trust, 4 vols, Autumn 2025) — Jonathan Marsden
17.15 Closing Remarks
s a t u r d a y , 1 7 m a y
10.00 Registration
10.30 Welcome and Introduction — Adriano Aymonino, Kira d’Alburquerque, and Albertina Ciani Sciolla
10.45 Session 4 | New Genres, New Subjects
Moderator: Anne‐Lise Desmas (The J. Paul Getty Museum)
• Cockerell’s ‘Progetto’ and the Transformation of the Sculpted Pediment — Max Bryant (Minneapolis Institute of Art)
• Outside Mythology: Religious and Historical Themes in Anglo‐Roman Sculpture (Late Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Century) — Tiziano Casola (Independent Scholar)
• The Wounded Ideal: New Iconographies in Roman Sculpture around 1848 — Anna Frasca‐Rath (Universität Wien)
• Between Art and Industry: Raffaele Monti’s ‘Veiled Women’ — Albertina Ciani Sciolla (University of Buckingham)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Session 5 | Patronage, Industry, and the Dissemination of Renaissance and Modern Models
Moderator: Alison Yarrington (Loughborough University)
• The British Glory of Thorvaldsen and His School — Alessio Costarelli (Università degli Studi di Messina)
• The Sutherlands’ Patronage and Copies of ‘Renaissance’ Statues in Britain: from Florence to Trentham Hall and Sydenham — Giuseppe Rizzo (Gallerie degli Uffizi)
• Exhibiting Italian Neo‐Renaissance Sculpture in Great Britain: The Commissions of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry to Lorenzo Bartolini — Francesco Zagnoni (Università di Bologna)
• Genoese Casts from ‘Professor Varny’: Sculptural Exchanges between Genoa and England through the Work of Santo Varni — Matteo Salomone (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata)
16.30 Closing Remarks — Nicholas Penny (former Director, National Gallery, London)
Seminar | African Ivory: Past and Present
From the seminar flyer:
African Ivory: Past and Present
Huguenot Museum, Rochester, 4 June 2025
David Le Marchand, Susanna and the Elders, ca. 1720, African ivory (Rochester: Huguenot Museum). More information is available here.
Recent UK legislation—the Ivory Act of 2018 and the January 2025 amendment—makes the acquisition and loan of objects containing antique ivory challenging for regional and independent museums. This seminar hosted by the Huguenot Museum—following the acquisition, loan, and display of three ivory carvings by Huguenot sculptors—will share case studies, discuss best procedure in negotiating recent legislation, and consider approaches to press and marketing. To register, please send your name, email address, and institutional affiliation to Tessa Murdoch, chair@huguenotmuseum.org. The fee of £15 per person will include a buffet lunch. Payment can be made on the day in cash or card, or in advance by BACS transfer. Please note any dietary requirements.
p r o g r a m m e
11.00 Lucy Vigne (Independent Consultant) — Illicit Trade in African Ivory Today
11.40 Martin Levy, FSA — Ivory, the Antique Trade, and the Impact of Recent International Legislation
12.45 Lunch
1.35 Leanne Manfredi (V&A Purchase Grant Fund) and Mariam Rosser-Owen (Curator Middle East, Asia Department, V&A) — The Ivory Act of 2018 and Recent Amendments
Meeting the Challenges of the Ivory Act is a network led by the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to support curators at Prescribed Institutions who are required to assess applications for exemption to the Ivory Act.
2.15 Nigel Israel (Independent Scholar) — Identifying Ivories
3.30 Tea
New Book | Objects and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic
From Amsterdam UP:
Judith Noorman and Feike Dietz, eds., Objects, Commodities, and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic: Exploring Early Modern Materiality across Disciplines (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-9048562770, €129.
How did objects move between places and people, and how did they reshape the Republic’s arts, cultures and sciences? ‘Objects’ were vitally significant for the early modern Dutch Republic, which is known as an early consumer society, a place famous for its exhaustive production of books, visual arts, and scientific instruments. What happens when we push these objects and their materiality to the centre of our research? How do they invite us to develop new perspectives on the early modern Dutch Republic? And how do they contest the boundaries of the academic disciplines that have traditionally organized our scholarship?
In Objects, Commodities and Material Cultures, the interdisciplinary community of specialists around the Amsterdam Centre for the Study of Early Modernity innovatively explores the diverse early modern world of objects. Its contributors take a single object or commodity as a point of departure to study and discuss various aspects of early modern art, culture, and history: from natural objects to consumer goods, from knowledge instruments to artistic materials. The volume aims to unravel how objects have moved through regions, cultures, and ages, and how objects impacted people who lived and worked in the Dutch Republic.
Judith Noorman is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam and leads the Dutch Research Council project The Female Impact, 2021–2026. As Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity, she has organized the Object Colloquia Series, which laid the foundation for this book.
Feike Dietz is Professor of Global Dynamics of Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the relationship between early modern texts, knowledge, and reading, with special attention devoted to youth, women, and girls.
c o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements
1 Feike Dietz and Judith Noorman — Introduction: Objects, Commodities and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic
2 Weixuan Li and Lucas van der Deijl — The Anatomical Atlas: Govert Bidloo and Gerard de Lairesse’s Anatomia Humani Corporis (1685)
3 Djoeke van Netten — The Bullet and the Printing Press: Objects Celebrating the Battle of Gibraltar (1607)
4 Saskia Beranek — A Baluster: Amalia van Solms and the Global Trade in Japanese Lacquer
5 Lieke van Deinsen and Feike Dietz — The Graphometer and the Book: How Petronella Johanna de Timmerman (1723/1724–1786) Merged Science and Poetry
6 Hanneke Grootenboer, Cynthia Kok, and Marrigje Paijmans — Shells: Shaping Curiosity in the Dutch Republic
7 Gabri van Tussenbroek — The VOC Boardroom: A Forensic Investigation into the Built Environment
8 Maartje Stols-Witlox — The Muller: Insights into Practical Artistic Knowledge through Re-Making Experiments
9 Judith Noorman — Blue Paper: Its Life, Origin, History, and Artistic Exploration
List of illustrations with photo credits
Index
Call for Papers | Cemeteries as Part of the Landscape
From ArtHist.net:
Cemeteries as Part of the Landscape through the Centuries
Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, 5–6 November 2025
Proposals due by 31 May 2025
The Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences cordially invites you to participate in an international interdisciplinary conference focused on funerary culture, which will take place on 5 and 6 November 2025 in Prague. This conference builds upon a long-standing tradition of International Sessions on the Issue of Sepulchral Monuments, aiming to expand both the thematic and methodological scope of the discussion. This year’s theme is Cemeteries as Part of the Landscape through the Centuries, focusing on the role of burial grounds in social, urban, and natural environments. The conference seeks to create a space for scholars from various academic fields and methodological backgrounds and to offer a platform for discussing cemeteries’ historical, anthropological, artistic, and social aspects.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Cemeteries as part of the anthropological landscape — the role of cemeteries in collective memory and social identity
• Cemeteries as part of the cultural landscape — the role of burial sites in urban and natural environments, their preservation and transformation
• Cemeteries as part of the social landscape — the social role of burial grounds and their place within human communities
• The ‘sepulchralization’ of public space — from individual graves to family chapels, from churchyards to large cemeteries and memorial complexes, their development and functions across different cultural contexts
Contributions may address all aspects of the above topics, with a preference for materials or methodological approaches relating to Central Europe. We especially welcome contributions by early-career researchers, as well as studies on Jewish or Muslim sepulchral monuments, which may be included in a dedicated conference session. Conference languages: Czech, Slovak, German, and English. No conference fee will be charged.
Presentation formats
• Individual papers (20 minutes)
• Research reports (10 minutes)
• Panel presentations (including student panels)
Selected papers will be published in a collective volume within the Epigraphica & Sepulcralia—monographia series by Artefactum, the publishing house of the Institute of Art History, CAS. Other papers may be considered for publication in the journals Historie–Otázky–Problémy, Archivní časopis, or Studia historica et archivistica. The organizing committee reserves the right to select which papers will be published.
Please submit an abstract (max. 200 words) along with a short academic bio by 31 May 2025 to founova@udu.cas.cz. Authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by 15 June. We look forward to your contributions and engaging discussions.
On behalf of the organizing committee,
Vanda Fouňová, Eva Jarošová, Kristina Uhlíková
Institute of Art History, the Czech Academy of Sciences
Bethlehem’s Moravian District Added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List
Bell House Complex, built in 1746, 56 West Church Street, Bethlehem.
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Last year, the Historic Moravian Bethlehem District in Pennsylvania (consisting of nine buildings, four ruins, and a cemetery) was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Eve Kahn describes her visit to the city of Bethlehem (70 miles north of Philadelphia) in the latest issue of Preservation (Spring 2025) . . .
I am having a heady preservationist moment in mid-air. It’s a crystalline winter morning in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a city known for industriousness and architectural stewardship since the 1740s. I have been escorted up sinuous staircases to the domes belfry of Central Moravian Church’s Sanctuary, a gabled and stuccoed building that has welcome worshipers since it opened in 1806. From my perch overlooking Main Street, I admire the church’s well-kept tower clockfaces and its planes of gray slate roofing, supported by walls six feet thick. All around, Moravian setters’ 18th-century masonry buildings have adapted into bustling museums, businesses, and homes, cheek by jowl with their Victorian and Art Deco counterparts . . . (p. 21).
UNESCO designated the place [of Bethlehem] as part of what is officially called a “transnational serial property,” along with three 18th-century hamlets in Europe: Herrnhut in Germany, Gracehill in Northern Ireland, and Christiansfeld in Denmark. All were set up as Christian communities by members of the Moravian Church, a Protestant sect founded in the 1450s in what is not the Czech Republic. Fleeing persecution, the community dispersed, and in the 1700s a group of adherents revived the Moravian Church. They eventually scattered worldwide to worship and proselytize. In 1741, some especially intrepid Moravians settled on Pennsylvania acreage at the confluence of the Lehigh River and Monocacy Creek, on land that white explorers had recently swindled from the Lenape people (p. 22).
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From the National Park Service press release (26 July 2024) . . .
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland today applauded the selection of the Historic Moravian Bethlehem District in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List. The list highlights cultural and natural heritage sites around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.
“The United States is deeply honored to be included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List with the listing of the Historic Moravian Bethlehem District where visitors from around the world are able to learn about the rich history of Moravian settlements, their cultural tradition and spiritual ideals,” said Secretary Haaland. “This designation is a recognition of the incredible work of the National Park Service and its local partners to preserve an important part of American—and world—history.”
This designation is UNESCO’s 26th—and the first transnational World Heritage listing—in the United States. In addition to the Historic Moravian Bethlehem District, the listing of Moravian Church Settlements includes the historic settlements of Herrnhut, founded in 1722 in Germany, and Gracehill, established in 1759 in Northern Ireland. The three areas join as an extension of the Moravian settlement of Christiansfeld in Denmark, founded in 1773, which was added to the World Heritage List in 2015, to form a single World Heritage listing for Moravian Church Settlements.
“This well-deserved designation demonstrates the lasting, global influence of the Moravian Church and the preservation of some of America’s most treasured landmarks that support and illustrate our heritage and history,” said National Park Service Director Chuck Sams.
The Historic Moravian Bethlehem District is also a national historic landmark. Established in 1741 as a planned community, it was the religious and administrative center of Moravian activities in North America. Similar to the other three settlements, many of its buildings still serve their original purpose. In 2022, Secretary Haaland authorized the National Park Service (NPS) to develop a nomination of Moravian Church Settlements for World Heritage List consideration.
NPS supported this effort with the full cooperation of property owners, the City of Bethlehem, Bethlehem Area Moravians and Moravian University. NPS advised the Bethlehem World Heritage Commission and guided them through the technical requirements of the nomination process as well as communicated with the governments of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Denmark on the development of the nomination.
The NPS is the principal U.S. government agency responsible for implementing the World Heritage Convention in cooperation with the Department of State. The NPS manages all or part of 19 of the 26 U.S. sites. Inclusion of a site in the World Heritage List does not affect U.S. sovereignty or management of the sites.
Restoration of the Williamsburg Bray School Completed
Opened in 1760, the Bray School is believed to be the oldest surviving building in the United States for the education of Black children. As noted by Lauren Walser in her Preservation article, the school “taught a pro-slavery, faith-based curriculum based on the teachings of the Church of England.” Photo from the Instagram account of Bruce A. deArmond, which foregrounds historic architecture.
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The story of the recovery of the Bray School at Colonial Williamsburg is recounted in the latest issue of Preservation (Spring 2025). The formal dedication of the restored building took place on 1 November 2024. It opens to the public this spring. From Colonial Williamsburg:
The Williamsburg Bray School was one of the earliest institutions dedicated to Black education in North America. From 1760 to 1774, teacher Ann Wager likely taught hundreds of students between the ages of three and ten. Students learned the tenets of the Anglican Church and subjects including reading, and for girls, sewing. The Bray School’s deeply flawed purpose was to convince enslaved students to accept their circumstances as divinely ordained. Hidden in plain sight on the William & Mary campus for over 200 years, the Williamsburg Bray School now stands in Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area as the Foundation’s 89th original structure. . . .
The Bray School will be used as a focal point for research, scholarship, and dialogue regarding the complicated story of race, religion, and education in Williamsburg and in America.
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From Colonial Williamsburg:
Maureen Elgersman Lee and Nicole Brown, eds., The Williamsburg Bray School: A History through Records, Reflections, and Rediscovery (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, 2024), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-0879353032, $20.
Seven letters tracing the arc of the Williamsburg Bray School—from its founding in 1760 to its closing in 1774—provide the foundation for a collection of essays that explore the school’s history and its implications for the enslaved and free Black children who attended. These letters are some of the surviving correspondence between the Williamsburg school’s administrators and the Associates of Dr. Thomas Bray, a London-based Anglican charity whose charge was to minister to what it saw as the spiritual needs of African Americans. The essayists reflect on the evolution of the Williamsburg Bray School, offering a variety of perspectives on the school and the children who attended it. Some pieces reflect years of research and writing on the establishment of the school. Others, including writings from some of the descendants of these students, represent more recent opportunities to reflect on the school and its historical context. In addition to a short history of the school, a map that pinpoints where the children resided in Virginia’s colonial capital, and photographs of the historic letters, the book delves into the 21st-century discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School building, its subsequent move from the William & Mary campus to Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area, and the restoration of the structure that can help tell the complicated story of race, religion, and education in Williamsburg and early America. Author Antonio Bly also shares the poignant story of Isaac Bee, a student at the school who broke the bonds of his enslavement to a Williamsburg planter and rose up from slavery to freedom.
Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of the William & Mary Bray School Lab, holds both a master’s degree and a doctorate in African American Studies. She is an award-winning professor and author of numerous books and articles on the history of Blacks in the Americas.
Nicole Brown is Graduate Assistant for the William & Mary Bray School Lab and a PhD Candidate in American Studies at William & Mary; she was previously a Program Design Manager at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. As a first-person historical interpreter, Brown portrays a variety of women including Ann Wager, the 18th-century white teacher at the Williamsburg Bray School, and Monticello’s Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Brown’s ongoing academic research centers Black literacy in the Atlantic World via interdisciplinary and descendant-engaged scholarship.
Exhibition | Silver from Modest to Majestic
Daniel Garnier, Silver Chandelier, made in London, 1691–97, silver and iron (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Museum Purchase, 1938-42). Fashioned for King William III of England sometime between 1691 and 1697, this chandelier hung at St. James’s Palace in London. It is believed to have been sold for its silver value by King George III when it was seen as outdated. After remaining in private hands for more than a century, it was auctioned in 1924 to William Randolph Hearst, the prominent American newspaperman. Colonial Williamsburg acquired the chandelier shortly before WWII.
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From the press release (3 April 2025) for the exhibition:
Silver from Modest to Majestic
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 24 May 2025 — 24 May 2028
Work is currently underway at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg on a new exhibition featuring more than 120 objects from the museum’s extensive collection of 17th- to 19th-century silver. Silver from Modest to Majestic will be on view in the museum’s newly relocated Mary Jewett Gaiser Silver Gallery, on the main floor of the museum until 24 May 2028.
The exhibition’s scope is wide-ranging, from a 49-lb chandelier made for a monarch to a simple spoon made by a Williamsburg silversmith, all displayed in brilliantly lit cases against dark blue backgrounds. While silver has long been associated with wealth and aristocracy, the items featured in this exhibition were crafted for use in nearly every setting imaginable ranging from churches, classrooms, and kitchens to businesses, battlefields, and bedrooms. One thing that every piece on display has in common is a powerful story. Some are objects of great beauty created with the highest level of skill, while others have lengthy pedigrees. Knowing who made a piece and who used it lets Colonial Williamsburg curators pinpoint that object in a time and a place, and then bring it forward through history, allowing it to tell its tale.
“Collecting objects where we know the ‘who, when, and where’ of their manufacture, plus their provenance, allows us to exhibit silver items which transcend the differences between artistic, historical, and functional,” said Erik Goldstein, Colonial Williamsburg’s senior curator of mechanical arts, metals and numismatics. “These particular objects are the pinnacle of early silver, no matter how humble they may be.”
This new exhibition replaces the museum’s previous silver exhibition, Silver from Mine to Masterpiece, which was on view from 2015 to 2023. While the former exhibition had a larger percentage of British silver, nearly half of the objects on display in the new exhibition are examples of early American-made silver, many of which were created for everyday use by ordinary people. Early colonists originally relied on imported British silver wares, but over time, the innovation, skill, and entrepreneurship of those early American tradespeople resulted in the establishment of a robust and exciting cohort of American silversmiths producing items that were touched by everyone from elite to enslaved individuals.
“Our collection of British silver is justly famous, but our decision to build a collection of American silver terrifically advances the museums’ goal of telling the varied stories of so many different craftspeople and consumers, each of whom influenced the tastes and styles of colonial America,” said Grahame Long, executive director of collections and deputy chief curator.
Punch Ladle, possibly made in Williamsburg, ca.1740–70, silver and wood (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Gift of A. Jefferson Lewis III in memory of Elizabeth Neville Miller and Margaret Prentis Miller Conner, 2023-101; photo by Jason Copes). This worn and lovingly preserved ladle, believed to have been made locally, descended in the Prentis family of Williamsburg.
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Visitors to Colonial Williamsburg will experience firsthand how the pieces featured in Silver from Modest to Majestic connect to the lives of Williamsburg’s 18th-century residents. One item in the exhibition—a silver punch ladle, owned by the Prentis family of Williamsburg and passed down in the family for 250 years—served as the model for a reproduction punch ladle created by Williamsburg’s silversmiths that visitors will find in the corner cupboard at the Williamsburg Bray School after it opens to the public in June 2025. Archaeological records show that Ann Wager, headmistress of the Williamsburg Bray School, had punch wares.
“Having the Prentis family’s original ladle gave us a wonderful opportunity to reproduce a piece that we know was used by an 18th-century Williamsburg family and put it in the context of the Bray School where it helps to tell that story,” said Goldstein.
Caddy Spoon, marked by Hester Bateman (1708–1794), London, 1789–90, silver (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Gift of Mr. E. Palmer Taylor, 1998-92; photo by Jason Copes). Many now-anonymous British women worked in the silversmithing trade, producing small items like buttons or finishing and polishing larger wares. Standing out is Hester Bateman, who ran a thriving silversmith business after the death of her husband. She specialized in affordable items aimed at the rising middle class. When Bateman retired in 1790, the business was carried on by her sons and one of her daughters-in-law.
Other recently acquired highlights of the silver exhibition include the earliest-known Virginia-made horse racing trophy awarded to a horse named Madison in 1810; an Indian Peace medal struck by the U.S Mint during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency as a diplomatic gift for a Native American chief; and a church communion cup made in Massachusetts around 1670, the earliest piece of American silver in the Foundation’s collection. These pieces will join some of the extraordinary older items from the collection including a cache of British silver made between 1765 and 1771, which was discovered in 1961 in a field near Suffolk, Virginia. While the origins of the buried treasure, and the reason that no one ever returned to retrieve it, remain unknown to this day, this collection is a reminder of the high monetary—and not just aesthetic―value of silver in early America.
The objects on display in Silver from Modest to Majestic represent the work of a few dozen known silversmiths including Paul Revere (1735–1818), a hero of the American Revolution who learned the trade of silversmithing from his father; Myer Myers (1723–1795), the son of a Jewish refugee who became known as the leading silversmith of New York; and Hester Bateman (1708–1794), a female silversmith in London who ran a thriving business after the death of her husband, specializing in affordable items aimed at the rising middle class. Many items in the exhibition are unmarked, made by unknown makers including enslaved silversmiths. Even the items that are credited to known makers could have been made by smiths employed, apprenticed, or enslaved to the master of the shop. To learn exactly how the items in Silver from Modest to Majestic were created, visitors to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg can visit the Silversmith shop in Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area where artisan historians preserve the trade by practicing it as their 18th-century counterparts would have.
This exhibition is generously funded by The Mary Jewett Gaiser Silver Study Gallery Endowment. Admission to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg is free.
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