Exhibition | The Remondini & Eighteenth-Century Print Culture
This is the last week for a small exhibition I worked on with one of my exceptional students, Paula Manni (having graduated with her B.A. in May, she’s currently an intern at the Detroit Institute of Arts). Pedagogically, the project was immensely gratifying and provided more evidence for me of just how much one can do with online projects at basically no (economic) costs whatsoever. While we developed the online component primarily for a popular audience (iPads were available in the gallery), I was thrilled to receive—just one week after the exhibition opened—an email from a UK museum that owns several prints from the same Prodigal Son series and to learn that their images have been manipulated and combined with other prints in really interesting ways, further highlighting the interactive character of these sorts of perspective views. The bibliography for the exhibition provides a useful starting point for anyone working on zograscopes and vue d’optique prints generally. Paula and I shall continue to update the site occasionally , so I would welcome suggestions for sources we should add. As is typically the case with any project involving Google, there are terrific, telling measures of assessment: search for ‘Remondini’ and ‘Prodigal’, and among the top results will be the Prodigal Son among the Harlots. -CH
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A Prodigal Story for the Marketplace: The Remondini and Eighteenth-Century Print Culture
The Center Art Gallery, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1 November — 17 December 2013
Curated by Craig Ashley Hanson and Paula Manni with Joel Zwart
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Founded in the mid-seventeenth century, the Remondini publishing firm produced prints and books on a massive scale for nearly two hundred years, marketing their paper commodities not only across Europe but also in the American colonies and parts of Asia. Based in Bassano, Italy (45 miles northwest of Venice), the firm targeted a large, popular audience. By offering a wide array of printed materials, ranging from religious pictures and texts, to genre scenes, to sweeping landscape views (often copying the works of others without permission), the firm appealed to the interests—and budgets—of an emerging middle class audience.
Highlighting Calvin College’s own Prodigal Son series of six etchings produced by the Remondini firm in the 1780s—copies after a series first published by Georg Balthasar Probst around 1770—this exhibition situates the prints within the visual culture of the period. While there is a tendency to address eighteenth-century prints as ‘art’ simply because of their age, exploration of the original publishing context allows us to see these pictures as both belonging within and contributing to an expanding popular culture that conflated entertainment, religion, and the marketplace. Most of the items included in the exhibition were never intended to be framed (much less hung on a gallery wall) but were instead expected to be handled and seen through perspective-enhancing viewing devices—variously described as diagonal mirrors, optical pillar machines, or (most commonly today) zograscopes.
Kenwood House Restored
From The Guardian:
Nicholas Lezard, “Kenwood House Restored,” The Guardian (13 December 2013).
The refurbishment of Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath is complete and its treasures are once again on show to the public. Nicholas Lezard in praise of a stately pile we all own.
Kenwood House, a classically styled Georgian villa perched on top of a hill on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, commanding a spectacular view over the City of London, might have ceased to be in the early years of the 20th century. In the place of the top-of-the-milk-coloured pile, freely available to all to wander through, there’d be the kind of proto-McMansions you see on the opposite side of Hampstead Lane, no access to the grounds, and the open space of Hampstead Heath would be many acres smaller. . . .
It is hard, from a contemporary view of the super-rich, for us to understand what could possibly have motivated the Earl of Iveagh, Edward Cecil Guinness, great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, to buy the house from the Earl of Mansfield, fill it with one of the most valuable art collections in the country, and then leave it for the free use of the public after his death. But then philanthropy had always been a Guinness tradition. . .
And philanthropy is an integral part of Kenwood’s tradition: the first Earl of Mansfield, Kenwood’s first significant owner, was responsible for a landmark judgment in 1772 that was a step towards the abolition of slavery; he also had a half-black great-niece, Dido Belle, whose freedom he carefully emphasised in his will. (You will see a reproduction of a portrait of her at Kenwood with her cousin, Elizabeth Murray, in which she smilingly touches her cheek just in case you had missed the fact of her skin colour.)
For the last year or so, though, Kenwood House has been closed and under scaffolding: its slates cracked, its facade peeling. It had to be patched up before things got any worse. But what is interesting is the way it has been done: the restoration meant chipping through the layers of paint and gilt accumulated over centuries, and bringing back the house as it would have looked to the first earl. The surprise begins before you even enter: the creamy facade is now a more austere sandstone (or, rather, sandstone effect).
The idea is to make visitors feel that they are entering a home, and not a property from which yards of velvet ropes politely, but unambiguously, exclude them. We are to experience the place as the gentlemen and women of the 18th century would have; which was one of the ideals expressed in Lord Iveagh’s bequest. . . .
The full review is available here»
Alastair Smart’s review for The Telegraph (28 November 2013) is available here»
Patrick Baty was among those who consulted for the project (back in 2010 his blog featured a posting on the paint color Invisible Green for the fencing).
The Library or ‘Great Room’ at Kenwood House was built and decorated to Robert Adam designs between 1767 and 1770 as part of the Scottish architect’s remodeling of the villa. The photo on the left shows a 1960s restoration scheme, recently proved to be inaccurate. The current restoration, pictured on the right, depends upon over 400 paint chip samples, a newly discovered inventory, and some of Adam’s original drawings. Photos from English Heritage.
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The press release (26 November 2013) provides details, and here, Susan Jenkins, Senior Curator at English Heritage, together with Jane Findlay, Kenwood’s Audience Development Manager, offers a video introduction:
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From English Heritage:
When Lord Iveagh bequeathed Kenwood and his incredible art collection to the nation in 1927, he did so with the intention that it should be open and free for the public to enjoy. Today English Heritage, with generous support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a number of other donors, is furthering his legacy with a major programme of work—Caring for Kenwood. The work saw the house restored and re-presented to be enjoyed by generations to come.
On the new displays (with tense silently updated from future to present). . .
Eight rooms in Kenwood House are represented and reinterpreted. The rooms have been redecorated to focus on the two key areas of historic significance at Kenwood—the principal Adam Rooms and the Iveagh Bequest.
The Adam rooms are represented to show as accurately as possibly the original interior scheme designed and intended by Robert Adam, and visitors will be encouraged to relax and enjoy the new interiors, take in the view and discover the stories of Kenwood through new interpretation devices and archival material. The rooms displaying the Iveagh Bequest are presented to suggest an 18th-century gentleman’s lifestyle—in keeping with Lord Iveagh’s original wishes.
The new interpretive scheme highlights Kenwood’s equally fascinating social and political history, with links to law reform, slavery, brewing and philanthropy told through the lives of the people who lived and worked at Kenwood. With family trails, an interactive dolls house, original letters and architectural designs to leaf through there’s lots of way you can uncover Kenwood’s stories.
Our commemorative mug features a charming illustration of Kenwood House and the Dairy by Emma Bridgewater’s husband, Matthew. It is made of cream-coloured earthenware in Stoke-on Trent, home to pottery manufacturing since the 17th century. Each mug is individually hand-decorated, making each one unique. It is a lovely mug to use, as well as a great way to remember and preserve this important London landmark. This mug has been made exclusively for English Heritage with 50% of sales going directly towards the Caring for Kenwood project. Made in England; hand-decorated; dishwasher and microwave safe; .3 litre/half-pint capacity; 9cm high, 8.5cm wide, £20.
The British Library to Crowdsource a Million+ Images
This posting by Ben O’Steen, excerpted below, comes from the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Blog (12 December 2013); for the complete text and full links, readers should consult the original posting. The image above is my own fairly arbitrary selection: added to the BL’s Flickr site on 10 December 2013, this illustration of the Austrian Schloss Hof (enlarged in the 1720s) comes from page 457 of Az Osztrák-magyar monarchia irásban és képben (1885). Stay tuned for details of the project after the new year. —CH
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A Million First Steps
We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.
Which brings me to the point of this release. We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these ‘unseen illustrations’. The images were plucked from the pages as part of the ‘Mechanical Curator’, a creation of the British Library Labs project. Each image is individually addressible, online, and Flickr provies an API to access it and the image’s associated description.
We may know which book, volume and page an image was drawn from, but we know nothing about a given image…
Next Steps
We plan to launch a crowdsourcing application at the beginning of next year, to help describe what the images portray. Our intention is to use this data to train automated classifiers that will run against the whole of the content. The data from this will be as openly licensed as is sensible (given the nature of crowdsourcing) and the code, as always, will be under an open licence.
The manifests of images, with descriptions of the works that they were taken from, are available on github and are also released under a public-domain ‘licence’. This set of metadata being on github should indicate that we fully intend people to work with it, to adapt it, and to push back improvements that should help others work with this release.
There are very few datasets of this nature free for any use and by putting it online we hope to stimulate and support research concerning printed illustrations, maps and other material not currently studied. Given that the images are derived from just 65,000 volumes and that the library holds many millions of items.
If you need help or would like to collaborate with us, please contact us on email, or twitter (or me personally, on any technical aspects)
The Initial Layout
The images have been tagged to aid browsing and to provide new views on the works themselves. They are tagged by publication year (eg 1764, 1864, 1884), by book (eg 003927270, 000149253), by author (eg Charles Dickens) and by other means.
This structure is helpful but we can do better! We want to collaborate with researchers and anyone else with a good idea for how to markup, classify and explore this set with an aim to improve the data and to improve and add to the tagging. We are looking to crowdsource information about what is depicted in the images themselves, as well as using analytical methods to interpret them as a whole.
We are very interested to hear what ideas and projects people use these images for and we would ideally like to collaborate with those who have been inspired to explore them.
Finally, while they have been released into the public domain, we would like to direct you to a post by Dan Cohen titled “CC0 (+BY)” [26 November 2013]. There is no obligation for you to attribute anything to us, but we’d appreciate it. The dataset will develop over time, and will improve after all! …
Ben O’Steen’s full posting—including links, contact information, and examples—is available here»
HBA Publication Grant
Historians of British Art Publication Grant
Proposals due by 15 January 2014
The Historians of British Art (HBA) invites applications for its Publication Grant. The organization grants a sum of $600 to offset publication costs for a book manuscript in the field of British art or visual culture that has been accepted by a publisher. Applicants must be current members of HBA. To apply, send a 500-word project description, publication information (name of press and projected publication date), budget, and CV to Renate Dohmen, Prize Committee Chair, HBA, brd4231@louisiana.edu. The deadline is January 15, 2014.
Exhibition | Vincoli d’Amore: Spose in Casa Gonzaga
From the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova:
Vincoli d’Amore: Spose in casa Gonzaga tra XV e XVIII secolo
Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 18 October 2013 — 6 January 2014
Curated by Paola Venturelli and Daniela Ferrari
Si inaugura venerdì 18 ottobre alle ore 16.30 nell’Atrio degli Arcieri la mostra Vincoli d’Amore. Spose in casa Gonzaga tra XV e XVIII secolo, a cura di Paola Venturelli e Daniela Ferrari e promossa dall’Archivio di Stato di Mantova in collaborazione con la Soprintendenza BSAE di Mantova. Insieme alle curatrici intervengono Giovanna Paolozzi Strozzi, Soprintendente e Direttore del Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Francesca Zaltieri, Assessore alla Cultura della Provincia di Mantova e Renata Casarin Presidente del Soroptimist International Club di Mantova.
Spose di casa Gonzaga o spose giunte in casa Gonzaga lungo un arco di tempo che coincide con gli anni del dominio di questa grande dinastia, dagli inizi del XV secolo all’aprirsi del XVIII. Solo di alcune conosciamo le fattezze. Di poche gli interessi, i pensieri e le attitudini, rimanendo la maggior parte quasi priva di spessore storico e relegata nello sfondo della Grande Storia. Pedine, le cui mosse, abilmente studiate, porteranno tuttavia a costruire la Grande Storia dei Gonzaga. I loro matrimoni, voluti per allacciare vincoli di parentela con i principali casati, italiani o d’Oltralpe, erano infatti il frutto di oculate strategie dinastiche. Vincoli, qualche volta “d’amore”, anche spirituale – sull’imitazione del matrimonio mistico di Santa Caterina -, che cambiarono il panorama esistenziale delle nostre protagoniste.
La mostra è allestita negli ambienti in cui alcune delle protagoniste di questa esposizione hanno mosso i primi passi della loro vita coniugale. Presenti le duchesse Eleonora d’Asburgo ed Eleonora de’ Medici, ritratte nella supersite porzione della pala della Santissima Trinità, eseguita da Pieter Paul Rubens (ca. 1605), che domina la Sala degli Arcieri.
Oxford Art Journal, December 2013
From the latest issue of the Oxford Art Journal:
• Tim Ingold, “Lines in Time / Review of Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline (2010),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 463–64.
• Mechthild Fend, “Allegory and Fantasy: Portraiture Beyond Resemblance / Review of Sarah Betzer, Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, and History (2012) and Melissa Percival, Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting and Imagination (2012),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 465–67
• Richard Taws, “Ruins and Reputations / Review of Nina Dubin, Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (2010) and Elizabeth Mansfield, The Perfect Foil: François-André Vincent and the Revolution in French Painting (2012),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 467–70.
Scott Schaefer to Retire from the Getty
Press release (12 December 2013) from the Getty:
Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, announced today that Scott Schaefer, the Museum’s senior curator of Paintings since 1999, will retire on January 21, 2014. Schaefer joined the Museum in February 1999, following a distinguished career at Sotheby’s, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. Over the course of his career at the Getty, he contributed greatly to the growth of the Paintings collection, adding a total of 70 paintings and pastels, plus five sculptures during his four-year oversight of that department.
“Through his acquisitions, Scott has made an impact on every one of the Museum’s paintings galleries and, in particular, transformed our eighteenth-century French collection,” said Potts in announcing Schaefer’s retirement. “We will miss his discerning eye, keen intelligence
and above all his unswerving commitment to the Museum.”
Among his most important recent acquisitions are the Museum’s first paintings by Gauguin (Arii Matamoe, 1892, acquired 2008) and Watteau (The Italian Comedians, about 1720, acquired 2012), as well as Turner’s Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, 1839 (acquired 2011) and Rembrandt Laughing, around 1628, a rare self-portrait by one of the world’s most beloved artists that entered the collection just a few months ago. Among the sculptures he acquired are works by Riccio, Houdon, and Gauguin. Schaefer approached collecting for the Getty with a keen appreciation of “the greater museum of Los Angeles,” ensuring that Getty acquisitions complement those of other L.A. institutions. He also developed an active program of individual loans that has allowed a number of major works from private and public collections to be seen in the context of the Getty’s collection.
“I am extremely proud to have played a role in the formation of the Getty’s collections,” said Schaefer. “For a young museum like the Getty, developing the collection is an important pursuit, and the Trustees have been enormously supportive. My horizons have been immeasurably broadened and my education significantly deepened by my many colleagues at both the museum and the trust as a whole. For this I am enormously grateful.”
Under his leadership, the Paintings department undertook a dynamic exhibition and publications program that included Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits (2005), and the two special installations Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergère (2007) and Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (2013), which rank among the most visited presentations at the Getty Center. He has also played major roles in planning for the upcoming Ensor exhibition and next year’s late Turner exhibition being developed in conjunction with Tate Britain.
Internationally, Schaefer represented the Getty Museum on the art advisory council of the Internal Revenue Service, as chair of the vetting committee for Frieze Masters in London, and on the vetting committee of TEFAF Maastricht. Locally, he serves on the art council of the Century City Chamber of Commerce.
The Burlington Magazine, December 2013
The (long) eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 155 (December 2013)
E D I T O R I A L
• Richard Shone, “Home is Where the Art Is,” p. 807.
Houses once occupied by distinguished residents are a special strand of the heritage industry that increasingly dominates a nation in thrall to all aspects of the past. We are constantly being exhorted to save and preserve this or that—a factory, a view, a manor house, a pier, a site of outstanding natural beauty, the historic habitat of wildlife, or, indeed, of the famous dead. Some of the shrines we visit are more larded with authenticity than others. Inevitably, the further back in time the illustrious lives were lived, the fewer objects there are likely to be which were familiar to the inhabitants. Was this her chair; was this really his easel? The aspic of preservation continually wobbles between the authentic and the fake. We do not always know—are not always told—whether something is ‘of the same period’ or ‘similar to’ or a ‘replica of’ what may or may not have been originally there, under the eye, the hand, the bottom or the feet of the presiding genius. Much depends on the piety of heirs and descendants, the
changing ownership of the house and the fluctuating stakes of fame. . . .
The latest appeal for an artist’s house has much to recommend it and should attract supporters beyond British shores. It concerns the restoration and preservation of J.M.W. Turner’s rural retreat at Twickenham, west London. This is an exceptional project and not simply a matter of tidying up and putting a blue plaque on the front. Turner designed this house himself, and plans for it abound in sketchbooks of c.1810–12, after he had purchased two plots of land near the Thames. The intention is to remove later additions (not serious) and reveal its compact interior, obviously influenced by his friend John Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. For Turner, Sandycombe Lodge was for rest and recreation such as fishing (when he could ‘angle out the day’) and hosting friends on excursions for picnics, rather than for long residence and staying guests. Turner sold the house in 1826 and the adjoining meadow in 1848 (to the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway). Under the auspices of the Turner’s House Trust, the appeal for £2 million is well underway, with support already assured from the Heritage Lottery Fund, among many other organisations and private donors, although further funding is still needed.2 It is expected that the public will be able to visit in 2016.
2. For an entertaining and informative account of the house, see C. Parry-Wingfield, with Foreword by A. Wilton: J.M.W. Turner. The Artist and his House at Twickenham, London 2012. Donations can be sent to the Trust at 11 Montpelier Row, Twickenham, tw1 2nq, or at www.turnerintwickenham.org.uk.
The full editorial is available here»
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey and Fernando Guzmán, “The Rococo Altarpiece of St Ignatius: Chile’s Grandest Colonial Retable Rediscovered,” pp. 815–20.
An examination of the Rococo altarpiece of St Ignatius in Santiago, Chile, and of the European influences on this great retablo.
• David Pullins, “Dating and Attributing the Earliest Portrait of Benjamin Franklin,” pp. 821–22.
A re-evaluation of a painting now found to be the earliest known portrait of Benjamin Franklin, added to an earlier figure of a man by Robert Feke (c.1746–48).
R E V I E W S
• Elizabeth Goldring, Review of Laura Houliston, ed., The Suffolk Collection: A Catalogue of Paintings (English Heritage, 2012), p. 835.
• Michael Rosenthal, Review of Leo Costello, J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History (Ashgate, 2012), p. 836.
• Basile Baudez, Review of the exhibition Soufflot: Un architecte dans la lumière, pp. 850–51.
• Xavier F. Salomon, Review of the exhibition Il Gran Principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713) collezionista e mecenate, pp. 851–53.
• Angela Delaforce, Review of the exhibition Da Patriarcal à Capela Real de São João Baptista, pp. 855–56.
• Jamie Mulherron, Review of the exhibition Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800, pp. 856–58.
Exhibition | Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, 1663–1713
From the Uffizi:
The Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713): Collector and Patron of the Arts
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 26 June — 3 November 2013, extended until 6 January 2014
Curated by Riccardo Spinelli
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To mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713), the Galleria degli Uffizi is planning to devote a celebratory exhibition to this key figure who was one of the most important collectors and patrons of the arts in the entire history of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The son of Cosimo III and of Marguerite-Louise d’Orléans, Ferdinando nurtured two overriding interests, in the theatre and music and in the figurative arts, from a very early age. The exhibition sets out to convey the complexity of his interests and the innovative nature of his approach which drew the leading artists of the era (musicians, instrumentalists, painters and sculptors) to Florence between the end of the 17th century and the first decade of the 18th. The exhibition is broken down into sections illustrating the complex issues surrounding the prince’s cultural inclinations, while also presenting the buildings in which his patronage was played out.
An introductory iconographic section displays likenesses of the prince and of his family, with works by Giovan Battista Foggini, Justus Suttermans and Anton Domenico Gabbiani.
This is followed by a second section illustrating the early years of Ferdinando’s art collecting and patronage which focused in particular on his beloved villa at Pratolino where, alongside musicians, singers, costumiers and composers, he also hosted the Bibbiena family from Bologna, masters in the art of stage design. At the same time, the residence was being transformed in its interior decor and embellished with the work of Ferdinando’s favourite painters at the time, including Livio Mehus, Pier Dandini and Domenico Tempesti, all of whom were Tuscans, but also such “foreigners” as Crescenzio Onofri from Rome or Cristoforo Munari from northern Italy, all of them engaged in producing works closely linked to the villa and to the performances and other leisure activities that were held in it.
The third section is devoted to the renovation of Palazzo Pitti, of the Pergola Theatre and of the cathedral of Florence on the occasion of Ferdinando’s wedding to Princess Violante Beatrix of Bavaria in 1689. The ducal palace underwent radical transformation in its piano nobile, in the bridal couple’s apartments and in the mezzanines above, which were renovated in a spectacularly imaginative way, evinced in the exhibition by the memoirs and preparatory drawings of the artists who executed in the work (Luca Giordano, Diacinto Maria Marmi, Alessandro Gherardini, Giovan Battista Foggini and Anton Domenico Gabbiani). At the same time, the section also explores the ceremonies and festivities held in Florence to mark the prince’s wedding, using drawings and documents for the purpose.
The fourth section illustrates the prince’s growing interest in the figurative arts, both in contemporary sculpture and in painting, with the leading artists active at the time, many of whom were experts in such ‘modern’ late 17th-century genres of as still-life and portraiture. Thus this part of the exhibition contains both religious and secular works (by Carlo Dolci, Carlo Loth, Baldassarre Franceschini and Il Volterrano) and examples of ‘painted nature’ (by Jacopo Ligozzi, Bartolomeo Bimbi, Margherita Caffi, Fardella, Houbracken and Michelangelo Pace da Campidoglio). Of equal interest in the section is the presence of sumptuary objects, pieces of furniture and everyday items testifying to Ferdinando’s sophisticated tastes, with works by the leading engravers, marquetry inlayers and silversmiths then active at court.
The highly significant fifth section explores the tastes of the Grand Prince as collector, with some of the 16th- to 18th-century paintings removed from churches in Tuscany and elsewhere, including Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Harpies, Lanfranco’s Ectasy of St. Margaret of Cortona, Annibale Carracci’s Farnese Altarpiece, and lastly, the Madonna of the Long Neck by Parmigianino, one of Fernando’s most prestigious acquisitions in the field of Renaissance art as the 17th century drew to a close.
The sixth section is devoted to the grand prince’s favourite villa of all, Poggio a Caiano, whose decoration he renovated with the greatest magnificence. He chose a room on its piano nobile to house one of his most original collections comprising ‘works in miniature’, which is eloquently recreated in the exhibition through a selection paintings that once formed part of it, illustrating the prince’s catholic tastes in collecting.
The seventh section of the exhibition illustrates the prince’s taste for major Florentine statuary at the close of the 17th century, while in the sphere of painting it looks at the change in Ferdinando’s taste in favour of ‘foreign’ schools—far more modern than anything local artists could produce—such as the Venetian school (of which he was enamoured in his youth), the Bolognese school and the Ligurian school (with work by Crespi, Cassana, Fumiani, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Magnasco and Peruzzini) whose leading painters were summoned to Florence, where they produced some of their masterpieces specifically for the prince.
The final section is devoted to the last years of Ferdinando’s life, exploring the results and repercussions of his art patronage and collecting, and displaying the drawings for a celebratory monument that it was planned to erect in his memory, the sketches for that project, and material relating to his funeral.
Available from Artbooks.com:
Riccardo Spinelli, ed., Il gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713) Collezionista e Mecenate (Firenze: Giunti, 2013 ), 430 pages, ISBN: 978-8809786103, $77.50.
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This smaller exhibition was on view until recently at the Villa of Poggio a Caiano:
For the Grand Prince Ferdinando:
Still lifes, vedute, bambocciate and caramogi from the Medici Collections
Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano, 5 July — 5 November 2013
Curated by Maria Matilde Simari
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The Villa of Poggio a Caiano was one of the favourite residences of the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713), son of the Grand Duke Cosimo III and destined to succeed his father in the government of Tuscany. In concomitance with the major exhibition devoted to the Grand Prince in the Uffizi Gallery, the idea is to recall the figure of Ferdinando in the site of his favourite villa, too. It was here that Ferdinando spent the spring and autumn, riding his Berber horses, attending sophisticated concerts and operas performed in the theatre of the villa and devoting himself to the organisation of his own particular collection of miniature paintings, the so-called ‘Gabinetto di opere in piccolo’ which went on to become a famous example of a late seventeenth-century collection.
Significant evidence of Ferdinando’s commissions for the Villa of Poggio has fortunately survived in the large fresco dating to 1698 by Anton Domenico Gabbiani showing Cosimo de’ Medici being presented to Jupiter by Florence, which can be seen on the ceiling of the dining room on the first floor. This painting shows the celebratory and official side of court taste, but other aspects of the personality of Ferdinando, who was a curious man, interested in a wide range of artistic genres, also deserve to be explored.
An itinerary extending through fourteen rooms of the Still Life Museum is devoted to the Grand Prince as a collector of still lifes, highlighting the works that were certainly part of his collection. At the end of this itinerary is a room devoted to two different aspects of his tastes as a collector: the miniatures and the genre paintings, comprising in the latter group the views, the bambocciate and the grotesque and humorous paintings portraying pygmies and dwarves, or the whimsical caramogi.
The Grand Prince Ferdinando was attracted not only by great figure painting and by the works of the most famous painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Titian, Parmigianino and Sebastiano Ricci) but also by artists engaged in collateral aspects and genres that can certainly not be defined as minor, since they made a very particular and novel impression on seventeenth-century taste: the flower painters, the painters of vedute, the Dutch petits maîtres, the bamboccianti painters of everyday life and the caricaturists.
The inventory of the assets of the Grand Prince drawn up at his death in 1713 records no less than sixteen paintings depicting caramogi (deformed, dwarf-like figures) intent upon various games and activities, for one of which the author’s name is specifically mentioned: the Brescia artist Faustino Bocchi, a renowned specialist in ‘the painting of pygmies’ who appears to have sojourned at the grand ducal court, and whom Ferdinando may in any case have met during a trip to Veneto and Lombardy in 1688. His interest in this particular grotesque genre can be linked to the recollections of Ferdinando as a passionate lover of amusing sonnets, ‘burlette burlesche’, of poets in ottava rima, comedians and ham actors.
The small collection of works displayed in the room dedicated to the Grand Prince Ferdinando in the Still Life Museum of the Villa of Poggio a Caiano offers a synthetic overview of the vedute, the bambocciate and the caramogi that he loved, displaying works not normally visible to the public since they are conserved in the repositories of the Florentine Galleries and of other institutions. Also on display is an as yet unpublished painting by Bartolomeo Ligozzi on which the date and signature have been discovered.
The show is rounded off by a selection of ancient manuscripts and printed books connected with the eclectic personality of Ferdinando: a cultured, passionate and curious collector who is also remembered as a cordial and affable man with a great sense of humour. As one of the manuscript memoirs recalls: “With his departure, spirit and joy too took their leave of Florence and Tuscany.”
Exhibition | Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond
From The Holburne Museum:
Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond
The Holburne Museum, Bath, 25 January — 5 May 2014
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, dates TBA
Joseph Wright, Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the
Islands in the Bay of Naples, ca. 1776–80 (London: Tate)
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I have taken the Liberty to give this Letter of Introduction to my Friend Mr. Wright of Derby, Who since his Return from Italy is come to Bath, & Designs to settle there.
Erasmus Darwin, 22 November 1775
Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–1797) lived and worked in Bath between November 1775 and June 1777. This brief and little-known episode in Wright’s life marked a crossroads in his career; yet it has never been explored in detail. Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond will place Wright in the context of the many artists, musicians, writers, business people and scientists living and working in the Georgian spa and present for the first time a comprehensive view of his life and work during those eighteen months. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will also go ‘beyond’ to examine the effect of his time in Bath and his travels in Italy on Wright’s later work.
Joseph Wright, The Rev. Dr. Thomas Wilson and his adopted Daughter Miss Catherine Sophia Macaulay, 1776 (Chawton House Library)
Wright came to Bath to paint portraits, hoping to build on the success of Thomas Gainsborough who had recently left for London. The exhibition will include the three remaining portraits that the artist certainly made in Bath, including his painting of the elderly Rev. Thomas Wilson with the young daughter of Catharine Macaulay, the radical historian.
Whilst in Bath Wright worked up landscape studies he had made in Italy, producing spectacular views of Vesuvius in Eruption and the dazzling firework displays of Rome, the highlight of a visit to the artist’s studio in Brock Street. It was whilst in Bath that he first began to explore subjects from sentimental contemporary literature, which in turn have a strong impact on his portrait composition, and the exhibition will include some of his most beautiful depictions of figures alone in the landscape.
We are grateful to Derby Museum, which holds the world’s largest and finest collection of Wright’s work, for its generous loans to this exhibition which will include The Indian Widow, The Alchymist and some beautiful drawings. Other lenders include the National Gallery, Musée du Louvre, Tate, the British Museum, the Walker Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum. This exhibition will travel to Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
A study day is scheduled for 24 February 2014.
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From I. B. Tauris:
Amina Wright, Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2014), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-1781300213, £16 / $30.
Joseph Wright (1734–1797) arrived in Bath from his native Derby in November 1775. Recently returned from a tour of Italy, he came to the fashionable spa town to re-establish his business as a portrait painter, hoping to fill the vacancy left by Thomas Gainsborough the previous year. This book, the first to examine Wright’s little-known Bath period, places the artist in the context of a city then at the height of its unique cultural significance. Using rarely-seen illustrations of his work, it considers his attempts to conquer a saturated portrait market with images of local celebrities, and his use of domestic spaces for public exhibition. His celebrated views of fireworks in Rome and the terrors of Vesuvius were first shown in Bath. Beautifully illustrated and highly readable, Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond sheds new light on a key moment in this important English artist’s career, deepening our understanding of his life and work as a whole.
Amina Wright is Senior Curator at the Holburne Museum in Bath, UK, and has been Curator of Fine Art there since 2001. She was closely involved in the Holburne’s major redevelopment project, completed in 2011, as well as a number of exhibitions relating to British eighteenth-century painting, drawings and Georgian Bath. Previous publications include the exhibition catalogues Pictures of Innocence: Children in Portraits from Hogarth to Lawrence (2005) and Pickpocketing the Rich: Portrait Painting in Bath 1720–1800 (2002).
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