Conference | 300th Anniversary of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees
From the conference website:
Eutopia Seated in the Brain: The 300th Anniversary of
Bernard de Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees
Coimbra University, Portugal, 27-29 November 2013
Proposals due by 5 September 2013
Dutch physician with a literary, humanist formation, Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) is known as a portraitist of manners, a satirist and a fine observer of socio-economic behavior. From the perspective of the literary genre, B. Mandeville was a cultivator of the satirical fable, continuing La Fontaine and P. Scarron. His moral and political thought falls into several lines of the development of the European Enlightenment. His originality was only fully recognized many centuries later. One of his criticisms is related to Shaftesbury’s appreciation of virtue and moral sense in the Characteristics. The possibility of the contribution of pleasure and virtue for the formation of the human society, emphasized again in F. Hutcheson’s Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees, was the controversial point in Mandeville’s point of view. From his peculiar idea about the combination of virtue and the pure self-interest in social behavior evolved his idea of society. The modern sense of ‘interest’ had in B. de Mandeville a former inventor. Additionally, B. Mandeville has questioned the meaning of the connection between conscious actions with defined purposes and the objective results in the market of the autonomous individual drives. His depiction of the creation of social wealth reveals the relative independence of the objective results of individual actions regarding the initial purposes of the conscious agents. Luxury was one of the subjects that B. Mandeville addressed clearly. He tried to explain the imaginary mechanisms allied to the formation of luxury in the nations that explain why luxury cannot result from actions motivated solely by virtue or vice. (more…)
Meadows Acquires Work Attributed to Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron
Press release (29 May 2013) from the Meadows Museum in Dallas:
Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron, St. Paul the Hermit (detail), ca. 1715, terracotta (Dallas: Meadows Museum, SMU)
The Meadows Museum has acquired the first terracotta sculpture attributed to Spanish Baroque master Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron. In-depth research conducted by museum staff members sheds new light on the identity of the bust-length sculpture’s subject and its historical significance. When the sculpture was initially offered to the Museum it was believed to depict St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. Meadows curators’ research, however, determined that the subject is in fact St. Paul the Hermit.
Villabrille y Ron is considered one of the most important Spanish sculptors of the Late Baroque period because of his mastery of technique. In addition, he taught another renowned sculptor of the period, Luis Salvador Carmona, and worked for the court in Madrid in the early eighteenth century. The quality of his work was such that he received commissions to create sculptures for some of the most important monuments in the city, such as the Puente de Toledo and the façade of the former Hospicio Provincial (now the Museo Municipal de Madrid). This sculpture is the first terracotta work to be attributed to Villabrille y Ron; not many examples of Spanish terracotta sculptures from the period have survived. Most of the works attributed to Villabrille y Ron are of polychromed wood or stone.
“Villabrille’s sculpture is a work of staggering realism and powerful emotion, and it provides an excellent complement to our already strong collection of works from the Baroque period,” said Mark A. Roglán, director of the Meadows Museum. “The acquisition of this prime example of Late Baroque sculpture will increase our ability to educate our visitors on this rich and versatile era in Spain by using objects that exemplify the style of the period. The students who use our Museum as a learning space and the visitors who come for pleasure will have an enriched experience because of this unique and beautiful example of Spanish sculpture.”
When the sculpture was initially offered to the Museum it was believed to depict St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church, who retired as a hermit to the Syrian Desert for three years’ penance. Meadows’ curators, however, took note of the subject’s prominently positioned woven reed garment, a vestment not present in any of the many other existing depictions of St. Jerome, and concluded the likeness had been misidentified. Their research determined that the subject is in fact St. Paul the Hermit, the first hermit saint of the Christian church, who is always shown as an old man wearing a woven reed garment made of palm leaves sewn together. Various experts in the field of early modern religious iconography, including George Washington University Professor Barbara von Barghahn and Richard P. Townsend, independent art historian, have confirmed the amended identification. (more…)
Updates at The William Blake Archive
30 May 2013
The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of Europe a Prophecy copy A. Only nine copies of Europe printed by Blake are extant. In 1794, the date on its title plate, Blake color printed copies B, C, D, E, F, and G; in 1795 he printed copies A and H, and in 1821 he printed copy K. All are in the Archive except copies C and F, which will be published next year to complete the history of this illuminated book. Europe consists of 18 plates, like its counterpart, America a Prophecy, produced the previous year, but most copies, including copy A, have 17 plates. Only copies H and K contain plate 3, a whimsical prefatory statement about the poem’s origin.
Europe a Prophecy was the second of Blake’s “Continental Prophecies,” followed in 1795 by “Africa” and “Asia,” the two sections of The Song of Los. Important examples of all three books—America, Europe, The Song of Los—are in the Archive. Like the other illuminated books in the Archive, the text and images of Europe copy A are fully searchable and are supported by the Archive’s Compare feature. New protocols for transcription, which produce improved accuracy and fuller documentation in editors’ notes, have been applied to copy A and to all the Europe texts previously published.
Copy A, in the Yale Center for British Art, was printed on large leaves of paper as part of a deluxe set of illuminated books, which included America copy A, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy D, and The Book of Urizen copy B, all in the Archive. David Bindman has raised doubts about the coloring in Europe copy A, suspecting that it may have been added by a later hand, perhaps in the twentieth century. In our opinion the coloring was done by Blake and his wife Catherine. The coloring of the frontispiece, with thick dabs of reds and blacks seemingly uncharacteristic of Blake, was probably the result of his experimenting with opaque pigments to create effects similar to his color printing. We see similar opaque reds and blacks applied in like manner in impressions of plate 8 of The Song of Los, especially in copy C. These too were printed and finished in 1795, the year Blake produced his set of 12 large color printed drawings. The color washes of some of the other plates in Europe copy A, however, appear to be by Catherine Blake (see Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, 133-34). (more…)
Exhibition | Madame Elisabeth: The Tragic Fate of a Princess
From the exhibition website:
Madame Elisabeth (1764-1794): Une Princesse au Destin Tragique
Domaine de Madame Elisabeth, Versailles, 27 April — 21 July 2013
Curated by Juliette Trey
Who was the real Madame Elisabeth, the princess who never married and lived at Versailles with her brother Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette? When she turned nineteen, the King gave her the estate of Montreuil, a country house very close to the Palace of Versailles. Madame Elisabeth spent her days there in simple pursuits – music, science, painting, embroidery and games – surrounded by her friends. In 1789, when she was twenty-five years old, the age of majority for unmarried women, she was finally entitled to sleep at Montreuil. However, the events of the French Revolution dictated otherwise.
This first major exhibition devoted to Madame Elisabeth is located in two areas of the estate. In the Residence, the furniture and objects with which the Princess surrounded herself have been assembled for the first time, conjuring up the lifestyle at Montreuil. The Orangery traces the life of the princess and the history of the estate.
130 works and objects have been assembled, including paintings, drawings, furniture, objets d’art, costumes, jewellery, and archive plans and documents. They come from the Palace of Versailles and several public and private collections and some exhibits have never previously been displayed. The exhibition space design aims to recreate the intimate atmosphere of Montreuil during the era of Madame Elisabeth. A multi-sensory tour allows visitors to experience this directly via perfumes, music, handling materials, and listening to contemporary accounts.
This tribute to the young princess also offers an opportunity to learn about the art of 18th-century gardens. The grounds are laid out in the English landscape garden style and have retained their original feel, with a grotto and groves of trees. Beds of aromatic and medicinal plants have been recreated in front of the Orangery, conjuring up the figure of Lemonnier, Madame Elisabeth’s physician, who cultivated plants on the estate. The walk between the two exhibition venues is enlivened with topiary representing animals.
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From the Versailles bookstore:
Juliette Trey, ed., Madame Elisabeth (1764-1794): Une Princesse au Destin Tragique (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013), 192 pages, 28€.
Although she was an obscure princess, Madame Élisabeth had an exceptional destiny. She never married and stayed with her elder brother, Louis XVI, who made her a present of the Montreuil estate on her 19th birthday: a country house only a few hundred metres from the Palace of Versailles.
This matchless horsewoman spent her days pleasantly there, surrounded by her friends who accompanied her on hunting outings or fishing trips. Passionately interested in mathematics and geography, and gifted in drawing, she never really interrupted her studies. Deeply pious, learned and sensible, Madame Élisabeth was also funny, cheerful and incredibly generous to everyone, heaping gifts on her friends and winning the affection of the inhabitants of Montreuil by her many acts of charity.
She showed great courage during the Revolution, refusing to go into exile in order to stay with her family. Imprisoned in the Temple with the royal family, she was guillotined just after reaching the age of thirty. A cult grew up around the memory of Madame Élisabeth which intensified after the Restoration and the return to power of her brothers from 1814 on.
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82nd & Fifth: One work. One curator. Two minutes at a time.
As art historians come around to moving pictures and expanding notions of audience, experiments from the Met (smartly packaged under the label 82nd & Fifth) are particularly interesting. -CH
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As introduced by Thomas Campbell:
[Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art] launched 82nd & Fifth, a new Web feature that asks one hundred curators from across the Museum to each talk about a work of art from the Met’s collection that changed the way they see the world. One work. One curator. Two minutes at a time.
82nd & Fifth speaks directly to my interest in linking historical art and culture to a broader conversation. The Met is located at 82nd & Fifth but its relevance is global, allowing people to better understand both themselves and the world around them in the broadest sense.
We live in a sea of constant information, and these two-minute, authoritative commentaries are a welcome way to get powerful and compelling content in quick doses. We hope they will intrigue audiences who love the Met and those who are new to art.
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In “Morning Catch” (episode #38), Jeff Munger addresses a broth bowl from Vincennes, ca. 1740-56.
In “Family” (episode #40), Perrin Stein discusses Jacques-Louis David’s Study for The Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 1787.
New Book | Green Retreats
From Cambridge UP:
Stephen Bending, Green Retreats: Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 319 pages, ISBN: 978-1107040021, $40.
Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture explores the world of eighteenth-century aristocratic women and the gardens they created, inhabited, visited, and imagined. It examines both the physical spaces created by women and the role of the garden (physical and imagined) in relation to female sociability, scandal, high politics, piety, the erotic, and the powerful but contradictory language of retirement with which women in the country were confronted. Combining a survey of cultural representations of the woman in the garden with case studies of four major women gardeners, it offers comprehensive readings of letters, journals and diaries, novels, poetry and physical landscape to demonstrate the complex cultural negotiations and manipulations women undertook when they gardened on a large scale. Detailed case studies include Elizabeth Montagu and the Bluestocking circle, the gardening neighbours Lady Caroline Holland and Lady Mary Coke, and the scandalous retirement of Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction
Part I:
1. ‘Gladly I leave the town’: Retirement
2. ‘No way qualified for retirement’: Disgrace
Part II:
3. Bluestocking Gardens: Elizabeth Montagu at Sandleford
4. Neighbours in Retreat: Lady Mary Coke and the Hollands
5. ‘Can you not forgive?’ Henrietta Knight at Barrells Hall
6. ‘Though very retired, I am very happy’
Symposium | Sculptural Mobilities
From the conference website:
Sculptural Mobilities
University College London, 3 July 2013
Tracing the flows of sculptural artworks between the Nordic Countries and Europe from the early modern period to the present day
A one-day symposium organised collaboratively by University College London’s Department of Scandinavian Studies, and Kingston University’s Visual and Material Culture Research Centre. This symposium is funded by the Henry Moore Foundation.
This interdisciplinary symposium investigates the cultural mobility of sculptural artworks. Positioning the Nordic Countries as a contact zone of sculptural exchange, the project traces the flows of artworks to and from the Nordic Countries and Europe and examines the impacts these flows generate on both local/regional contexts of display and the nature of the sculptural artwork itself. Histories of sculpture within the Nordic region are arguably under-studied and the region’s influence upon and translation of influences from the wider Europe remain insufficiently traced. Our symposium emphasises the Nordic Countries’ important role as an interstice between the East, West and the North, and to bring to light individual histories of sculptural mobility from the early modern period onwards.
Stephen Greenblatt has defined cultural mobility as ‘the restless process through which texts, images, artefacts, and ideas are moved, disguised, translated, transformed, adapted, and reimagined in the ceaseless, resourceful work of culture.’ The sculptural artwork by contrast is often imagined as static and fixed, stable and immutable. To what extent is the sculptural artwork changed by transcultural recontextualisation? What is the potential for movement to compel a performative response within the moving object itself – what are the ways in which it is materially made to move via this process of transcultural exchange? Conversely, how do sculptures impact their new contexts of display? To what extent do moving sculptures confirm or critique the complexity, interdependence and instability of ‘localised’ cultures?
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T U E S D A Y , 2 J U L Y 2 0 1 3
7.30pm Thorvaldsen (1949) by Carl Theodor Dreyer (Wilkins Gustav Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL) — Screening and lecture by Claire Thomson (Lecturer in Scandinavian Film and Head of UCL Scandinavian Studies) followed by an informal reception in the Wilkins North Cloisters, UCL.
W E D N E S D A Y , 3 J U L Y 2 0 1 3
9.00 Sara Ayres and Elettra Carbone / Claire Thomson and Fran Lloyd — Introduction and welcome
9.30 Panel 1: Courtly Patronage and Sculptural Mobilities
• Francesco Freddolini (Assistant Professor of Art History at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada), Denmark and the International Mobility of Italian Sculpture, ca. 1709-1725
• Cynthia Osiecki (PhD Fellow, Interdisciplinary Research Training Group ‘Baltic Borderlands’ at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald), The Import of Flemish Sculpture into Sweden’s Courts in the Second Half
of the Sixteenth Century
• Kristoffer Neville (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University in Berlin), A Gothic Neptune: Georg Labenwolff’s Sculpture for the Danish Court, 1575-1583
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Panel 2: Danish Myth, Italian Maestro: The Unveiling of Bertel Thorvaldsen
• Stig Miss (Director of The Thorvaldsen Museum), The Making of Sculptural Awareness in Copenhagen: The Contribution of the Works of Thorvaldsen
• Elettra Carbone (Teaching Fellow in Norwegian, University College London), Reading Sculpture: The Remediation of Thorvaldsen’s Sculpture in Printed Culture
• David Bindman (Emeritus Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art, University College London), The Original Drawings for Thiele’s Biography of Thorvaldsen in the UCL Library
1.00 Lunch break — There will be time to view the one-day exhibition Rediscovered: Unique Thorvaldsen Portfolios held by UCL Special Collections alongside Karin Lowenadler’s Standing Male Nude (1936)
2.00 Panel 3: Post-War Sculptural Exchange between Britain and the Nordic Region
• Frances Lloyd (Associate Dean Research & Enterprise, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Kingston University), ‘Back in from the Cold’: Karin Jonzen’s Commissions for the World Health Organisation
• Christina Brandberg (PhD Candidate, University of Hull), Henry Moore in the Nordic Countries: The First Two One-Man Shows in 1952
• Sara Ayres (Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Kingston University), Transfiguring Memorials in Norway and Britain
3.30 Coffee break
4.00 Panel 4: Curatorial Mobilities
• Linda Hinners (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, National Museum, Stockholm), Establishing a Platform for National Sculpture Production: The Recruitment of French Sculptors to Sweden during the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries
• Liisa Lindgren (Senior Curator, Parliament of Finland, Helsinki), Sculpture Hand in Glove with Architecture: The Sculpture Collection at the Finnish Parliament
• Marjorie Trusted (Senior Curator of Sculpture, V&A), Medieval Scandinavia and Victorian South Kensington
5.30 Concluding remarks and final discussion, chaired by Marjorie Trusted
6.00 Drinks
7.00 Conference dinner for speakers and guests
New Acquisition | Getty Acquires Runge’s ‘Times of Day’
Press release (23 May 2013) from The Getty:
Philipp Otto Runge, Day, from Times of Day, 1805. Printmakers: E.G. Krüger and J. A Darnstedt. Etching and engraving
(Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute)
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) announced today the acquisition of a rare first edition, Times of Day by Philip Otto Runge (1777–1810). Published in 1805, this suite of four prints representing Morning, Evening, Day, and Night is widely recognized as a monument of German Romantic art.
“This remarkable set of engravings is a radical, personal expression from one of the leaders of the German Romantic movement,” said Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. “It is a landmark addition to the Getty Research Institute’s important prints collection.”
Runge, along with Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), was one of the leading painters and theorists of the German Romantic movement. He rejected the tradition of academic painting in favor of art that symbolically expressed the essential harmony of nature, humanity, and the divine. The complex iconography of Times of Day, which is very detailed, is meant to express the coming and departing of light—dawn, daytime, dusk, and darkness—and at the same time represents the organic process of conception, growth, decay and death.
“The elegance and purity of these images stands the test of time, expressing universal themes with grace and boldness,” said Louis Marchesano, curator of prints and drawings at the Getty Research Institute. “In his own time, Runge was praised and collected by important cultural figures such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
From 1802 until his untimely death in 1810 at the age of 33, Runge worked obsessively on these images, carefully articulating every aspect of their compositions and frames. Early in the planning stages, he made four large outline drawings in preparation for the four final images.
This first, small edition of the four engravings, published in 1805, reflects the delicacy of Runge’s carefully constructed preparatory drawings. Although the artist approved the production of a second, significantly larger edition, his original intent was not commercial. Runge shared his first edition with other artists and writers in order to disseminate his new artistic ideas and to announce his plans to create a large painting cycle based upon the designs. Those paintings were never completed; thus the prints are an important record of the artist’s goals.
The prints are now part of the GRI’s Special Collections, which comprise rare and unique collections in art history and visual culture from around the world, including more than 27,000 prints ranging from the Renaissance to the present.
At Christie’s | The Exceptional Sale
Press release (22 May 2013) from Christie’s:
The Exceptional Sale (#1140)
Christie’s, London, 4 July 2013
George II Silver Coffee-Pot, Mark of Paul de Lamerie, 1738. 10 3/4 in. (27.3 cm.) high. The arms are those of Lequesne impaling Knight, for Sir John Lequesne (1687-1741) and his wife Mary, née Knight, whom he married in 1738. Estimate: £3.5 million – 4.5 million. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd 2013.
With an estimated 1.6 billion cups of coffee being consumed worldwide each day, Christie’s London presents the most important coffee-pot ever to come to the market in The Exceptional Sale (#1140) on 4 July 2013 (estimate: £3.5 million – 4.5 million). This Rococo masterpiece by Paul de Lamerie (1688–1751) – the greatest silversmith working in Britain in the eighteenth century – is expected to become the most valuable piece of English silver ever to be sold at auction. The George II silver coffee-pot was created in 1738, for a successful merchant. This exceptional piece of craftsmanship has recently been the centerpiece of the British Silver exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Lamerie’s works have been prized above all others for the last two hundred and fifty years. He was apprenticed to his fellow Huguenot Pierre Platel in 1703, becoming free of his master in 1711. Within six years he was described as the King’s Silversmith. This coffee-pot is the masterpiece of de Lamerie’s highly developed Rococo period and is a tour-de-force of design and execution.
The coffee pot was commissioned by London based trader and fellow Huguenot Sir John Lequesne. As a child, Lequesne came to Britain as a refugee with his younger brother, fleeing Rouen like so many of his fellow Protestants. It was arranged by their father that they would lodge with a Spanish merchant in London; the brothers would never see their father again, he died tragically from an illness after having been imprisoned for his beliefs. The Lequesne brothers prospered; John became free of the Grocers’ Company and David the Salters’ Company. They later set up business together trading with the West Indies. John not only became an Alderman of the City but was also a director of the Bank of England, and was knighted by King George II in 1737. A successful marriage, bringing a dowry of £20,000, and an equally successful career enabled him to commission this most magnificent of coffee-pots from the greatest silversmith of the day. The coffee-pot, inspired by French forms and conceived in the new French Rococo style, speaks of his ancestry. Its presence in the ownership of a successful merchant epitomises the vibrancy of eighteenth-century trade in London.
The first London coffee house was opened in 1652 by a member the English Levant company which traded with Turkey. Pasqua Roseé had served in Smyrna (now Izmir) and had acquired a taste for the dark stimulant drink. Coffee’s many virtues, both real and imagined, were extolled by printed handbills; they also warned of a sleepless night if consumed too late. Each coffee house had its own particular clientele, some were literary, some political, others concerned with shipping and others finance. From the coffee house came the Gentleman’s Clubs and City institutions such as the insurance market Lloyds of London. These unofficial meeting places were disapproved of by the establishment; King Charles II tried to censure them in 1675 to no avail.
By the eighteenth century the practice had acquired polite acceptance and coffee was being consumed at home from silver and porcelain pots. It was usually served black and from long spouted vessels. There was also a fashion for taking it in the Turkish manner, with large quantities of sugar syrup used in the preparation. Contemporary accounts survive for ‘Turky Coffee Pots’ with short spouts, as used by Lamerie for the present coffee pot; the short spout meant viscous liquid flowed freely.
Summer Reading Idea | The Stockholm Octavo
From Harper Collins:
Karen Englemann, The Stockholm Octavo: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2012), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-0061995347, $27.
Life is close to perfect for Emil Larsson, a self-satisfied bureaucrat in 1791 Stockholm. He is a true man of The Town—drinker, card player, and contented bachelor. Until one evening, when Mrs. Sophia Sparrow, proprietor of an exclusive gaming parlor and fortune teller, shares with him a vision she has had—a golden path that will lead to love and connection for Emil. She offers to lay an Octavo for him, a spread of cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision—if he can find them. Emil begins his search, intrigued by the puzzle of his Octavo and the good fortune Mrs. Sparrow’s vision portends. But when Mrs. Sparrow wins a mysterious folding fan in a card game, the Octavo’s deeper powers are revealed. No longer just a game of the heart, collecting his Eight is now crucial to pulling his country back from the crumbling precipice of rebellion and chaos. Set against the luminous backdrop of late 18th-century Stockholm, as the winds of revolution rage through the great capitals of Europe, The Stockholm Octavo brings together a collection of characters both fictional and historical whose lives tangle in political conspiracy, love, and magic in a breathtaking debut that will leave readers spellbound.
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From Ron Charles’s review (4 December 2012) for The Washington Post:
Engelmann lived in Sweden for almost 10 years and worked as an art director for Ikea, which you might see reflected in her story’s careful attention to design. No sepia tones for these 200-year-old scenes. Every room here vibrates with color. Even a relatively modest shop, for instance, “was painted in broad horizontal stripes of cheery lemon and cream, and the white crown moldings were like sculpted meringue oozing against the ceiling.” And Engelmann is just as captivating with the gorgeous outfits these people don to entertain and impress one another at a time when clothing was a strict marker of class and status. The antique etchings sprinkled throughout these pages are a nice touch, too . . .
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