COV.JAN10.v.1:cover.june.pp.corr 15/12/2009 10:43 Page 1
JANUARY
2010 T H E B U RLINGTON MAG AZI NE
The Luck of Edenhall | A tondo attributed to Pontormo in S. Felicita, Florence Anne Seymour Damer‘s statue of George III in Edinburgh NO .
Old-master sources for a Jackson Pollock sketchbook of the late 1930s
1282
Art History Reviewed: John Elderfield on Alfred Barr’s ‘Matisse’
VOL . C L II
Barocci | Sacred Spain | Michelangelo | Sculpture in Painting | Wild Thing | O’Keeffe | Bacon | Ruscha USA
$35·50
January 2010
£15.50/€ 24
sept09moretti:Agnews 11/12/2009 12:12 Page 1
MORETTI Florence – London – New York
From the Gothic Tradition to the Early Renaissance New York, January 19 - February 12, 2010 Monday - Friday: 10am-6pm January 23-24, 2010: 11am-5pm
Mariotto di Nardo Florence, doc. 1394-1424
Madonna and Child, St Peter Martyr and St John the Baptist Panel, 107 x 58 cm (central), 99 x 44.3 (side)
43-44 New Bond Street London w1S 2Sa phone +44 (0)20 7491 0533 fax +44 (0)20 7491 0553 london@morettigallery.com
Piazza degli Ottaviani, 17/r 50123 Florence phone +39 055 2654277 fax +39 055 2396652 info@morettigallery.com www.morettigallery.com
24 East 80th Street New York, NY 10075 phone +1 212 249 4987 fax +1 212 755 0792 newyork@morettigallery.com
Galerie Canesso Tableaux anciens
Carlo Magini Fano (Italy), 720 - 806 ..................................................................................................................... .
Still Life with Eggs, Cabbage and Candlestick Still Life with Cup, Bottle, Clay Pot and Candlestick Oil on canvas, 60,5 × 78,3 cm (23 ⁷⁄₈ × 30 ⁷⁄₈ in)
26, rue Laffitte • 75009 Paris • Tel. + 33 1 40 22 61 71 • Fax + 33 1 40 22 61 81 • e-mail : contact@canesso.com • www.canesso.com
annonce Burlington.indd 1
7/12/09 13:50:19
jan10tomassoLHP:Agnews 11/12/2009 12:17 Page 1
TOMASSO BROTHERS F I N E A RT
Bardon Hall Weetwood Lane info@tomassobrothers.co.uk
Leeds LS16 8HJ
UK
Tel: +44 (0)113 275 5545 www.tomassobrothers.co.uk
jan10tomasso:Agnews 07/12/2009 16:27 Page 1
TOMASSO BROTHERS F I N E A RT
Bardon Hall Weetwood Lane info@tomassobrothers.co.uk
Leeds LS16 8HJ
UK
Tel: +44 (0)113 275 5545 www.tomassobrothers.co.uk
MasterDrawingsRoundup:Master Drawings Roundup 11/12/2009 12:35 Page 1
Master Drawings in New York New Year 2010 23 – 30 January |
A selection of highlights
Design for a lunette: a sibyl (recto), figure studies (verso), by Taddeo Zuccaro (1529–66). Pen and brown ink and wash (recto), red chalk (verso), 21 by 19.2 cm. THOMAS WILLIAMS FINE ART EXHIBITING AT: DICKINSON, 19 EAST 66TH STREET
Time and Truth, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, 22.2 by 21.1 cm. JEAN-LUC BARONI EXHIBITING AT: CARLTON HOBBS LLC, 60 EAST 93RD STREET
Landscape with shepherds, cattle and sheep, by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64). Oil on paper, 24.8 by 38.7 cm. DAVID TUNICK INC., 19 EAST 66TH STREET Leda and the swan, by Altobello Meloni (active in Cremona, 1497–1539). Red chalk, over stylus markings, 12 by 15.6 cm. MARGOT GORDON FINE ART EXHIBITING AT: SHEPHERD & DEROM GALLERIES, 58 EAST 79TH STREET
Marriage ceremony at a military encampment, by Charles Parrocel (1688–1752). Watercolour, 56 by 88.5 cm. STIEBEL, 252 EAST 68TH STREET
Italian park, by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). Brown ink and wash over black chalk, 35.5 by 46.5 cm. DIDIER AARON, 32 EAST 67TH STREET
jan10trinity:Arturo Cuellar March 2003 09/12/2009 15:40 Page 1
TRiNiTy F iNE A RT E u R O P E A N S C u l P T u R E A N d W O R k S O F A RT O l d M A S T E R PA i N T i N g S A N d d R AW i N g S PARTiCiPATiNg iN
Friday 22 – Saturday 30 January 2010
Don Pietro Belloni (Florence 1695 – circa 1760)
Orientals watching a Piper and a Monkey playing a Violin Scagliola, on a gesso ground, in a carved giltwood frame, 20.8 x 27 cm. PROVENANCE Florence, Medici collections (Palazzo Pitti)
23 EAST 73Rd STREET | NEW yORk | NEW yORk 20121 | TEl: 212 717 7273 | FAX: 212 717 7278 Email: mail@trinityfineart.com | www.trinityfineart.com
MasterDrawingsRoundup:Master Drawings Roundup 10/12/2009 11:13 Page 2
Master Drawings in New York New Year 2010 23 – 30 January |
Studies for three female heads (recto); studies for the bust of a woman and three forearms (verso), by Abraham Bloemaert (1564–1651). Black and white chalk (recto), red and white chalk (verso), 27.2 by 17 cm. TRINITY FINE ART INC. 23 EAST 73RD STREET
The Annunciation, by Giacinto Gimignani (1606–81). Pen and ink and wash, heightened with white, 40.2 by 25.9 cm. MIA WEINER EXHIBITING AT: L’ANTIQUAIRE AND THE CONNOISSEUR, 36 EAST 73RD STREET
Birdplay, by Max Beckmann (1884–1950). Pen and ink over charcoal, 44.5 by 56 cm. JILL NEWHOUSE GALLERY, 4 EAST 81ST STREET
A selection of highlights
Head of a youth, by Pietro Faccini (1562–1602). Black chalk, heightened with white, 17.6 by 13 cm. MARGOT GORDON FINE ART EXHIBITING AT: SHEPHERD & DEROM GALLERIES, 58 EAST 79TH STREET
A wigmaker’s shop, by Louis-Philippe Boitard (1884–1950). c.1748–50. Pen and ink and brown and grey wash, 22.5 by 31 cm. LOWELL LIBSON LTD EXHIBITING AT: MITCHELL-INNES & NASH, 1018 MADISON AVENUE
Salisbury Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace from the south-east, by John Constable R.A. (1776–1837). 1816. Pencil, 8.6 by 11.2 cm. W·S FINE ART LTD / ANDREW WYLD EXHIBITING AT: DICKINSON, 19 EAST 66TH STREET
jan10baronib:AQ_31815_J_Baroni 11/12/2009 11:09 Page 1
Exhibition of
Master Drawings and Paintings
at Carlton Hobbs LLC 60 East 93rd Street, New York, NY 10128
22nd January – 2nd February 2010 A selection of magnificent pieces of European 17th and 18th Century furniture and objects from the Carlton Hobbs collection will be on show to complement the works of art Portrait of Antonio Canova by Hugh Douglas Hamilton JEAN-LUC BARONI LTD. 7/8 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU. Tel: 020-7930 5347 Fax: 020-7839 8151 E-mail: info@jlbaroni.com
jan10pageVIII:Layout 1 11/12/2009 10:29 Page 1
Martin Johann Schmidt, Kremserschmidt (1718-1801) black chalk, pen & brown ink, brush & grey wash, white gouache heightening. 93/8 x 77/8“ (24 x 12.3 cm) provenance: Koloman Felner, Lambach (by 1779); Cloister Lambach, in 1818, Stoesel Collection, Vienna (?); William & Eugénie Suida.
Virgin Immaculate Triumphing Over Sin and Death, 1773 This drawing is preparatory for the main altarpiece in the Barmherzige Brüder Kirche, Linz. litt: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Central European Drawings, 1680-1800 Princeton, 1989, p.130 in footnote #4.
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jan10gordon:Margot Gordon Jan 2004 04/12/2009 11:34 Page 1
margot gordon fIne art
CIrCle of tItIan, xvI Century The Sacrifice of Isaac Black chalk, heightened with white, on blue-grey paper, 308 x 242 mm Provenance: e. Wauters (l. 911)
master drawings new york January 23 – february 20, 2010 shepherd & derom galleries 58 east 79 street, new york City
also By aPPoIntment tel: (212) 595-4969
jan10jstor:Agnews 11/12/2009 10:36 Page 1 J
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dec10williams:Thomas Williams March 2003 09/12/2009 09:12 Page 1
Thomas Williams fine art ltd
GioVaNNi FRaNCEsCo BaRBiERi, called GUERCiNo Cento 1591–1666 Bologna
Study of a Soldier and an Old Man Pen and brown ink and wash, 255 x 182 mm; 10 x 7 1/4 in
E x h i B i T i N G aT
Dickinson, 19 East 66th street, New York, NY 10065 | T +1 212 772 8083
22 olD BoND sTREET, loNDoN W1s 4PY T 020 7491 1485 info@thomaswilliamsfineart.com
F 020 7408 0197 www.thomaswilliamsfineart.com
jan10pageXII:Layout 1 14/12/2009 10:08 Page 1
Some special issues of in
2010 Fe b r u a r y Dutch and Flemish art March Art in Siena April and May Two issues on:
Art in Britain 16th to 21st century June Forgeries, copies, attributions
MEDieval and renaissance art
September* Twentieth-century art October* Art in Spain November* Sculpture December* Post-Impressionism marking the centenary of the First Post-Impressionist Exhibition, Grafton Galleries, London
A landmark publication to accompany the opening of the new Medieval and Renaissance galleries V&A Publishing www.vandabooks.com
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Joris van der Haagen ( 1824–1904) A Wooded Landscape with Travelers Oil on canvas, 411⁄2 by 54 inches (105.8 by 137.7 cm.)
Ja c k K i l g o r e & C o. 154 east 71 S T street new york, ny 10021 t e l ( 2 1 2 ) 6 5 0 - 1 1 4 9 f a x ( 2 1 2 ) 6 5 0 - 1 3 8 9 i n f o @ k i l g o r e g a l l e r y. c o m
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jan10pageXV:Layout 1 11/12/2009 09:56 Page 1
/VER MILLION RECORDS AND IMAGES 3EARCH THE #OLLECTIONS &ROM CERAMICS TO THEATRE PAINTINGS TO PRODUCT DESIGN THE 6 !´S EXTENSIVE COLLECTIONS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR THE FIRST TIME !CCESS CURATORIAL RECORDS AND SEARCH BY TYPE MAKER DATE MATERIAL ORIGIN OR LOCATION IN THE 6 ! OR SIMPLY BROWSE AN INFINITE WALL OF IMAGES
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XV
01 BURLINGTON 308x235mm v1 parchment:18 BURLINGTON / March 2006
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B A H M Q F A D
Master Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century
Bury Street, St. James’s, London Telephone Fax Email info@hazlittgoodenandfox.com And in New York by appointment Telephone Fax
JAN.Contents:cont.nov.pp.corr 11/12/2009 15:32 Page 1
VOLUME CLII • NUMBER
• JANUARY
2010
47
EDITORIAL
3
1282
The Ashmolean transformed
Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830–1880, I. Armstrong by SONIA SOLICARI
47
ARTICLES
4
New light on the Luck of Edenhall by GLYN DAVIES
7
Antonio del Ceraiuolo at la Crocetta and a note on Lorenzo di Credi’s niece by MEGHAN CALLAHAN
12
18
29
by GRACE BROCKINGTON
p.30
The ‘St Matthew’ tondo for the Capponi chapel in S. Felicita, Florence by JACK WASSERMAN
48
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
EXHIBITIONS
50
The Sacred Made Real by ROSEMARIE MULCAHY
‘My colossus, my overgrown child’: Anne Seymour Damer’s statue of George III in Edinburgh by JOHN M C LINTOCK
52
Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill by PATRICK ELLIOTT
54
Sketchbook III: Jackson Pollock’s homage to the old masters by NATALIE MARIA RONCONE
Ed Ruscha by JAMES BOADEN
p.21
56
The Artist’s Studio by MARINA VAIZEY
ART HISTORY REVIEWED VII
36
Symbolist Art in Poland, P. Kopszak and A. Szczerski
58
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s ‘Matisse. His Art and His Public’, 1951 by JOHN ELDERFIELD
Sculpture in Painting by BRANDON TAYLOR
59
Francis Bacon by MARTIN HAMMER
BOOKS
40
61
The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt 300 BC–AD 700, J. McKenzie
by ERIKA LANGMUIR
by SALLY-ANN ASHTON
40
41
43
Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome, P. Cavazzini
64
Georgia O’Keeffe
66
French drawings by PERRIN STEIN
by CARL BRANDON STREHLKE
The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art Treasure, N. Dacos
Michelangelo, architect in Rome
by DAVID ANFAM
p.9
Fernando Gallego and his workshop: the altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo, paintings from the collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, A.W. Dotseth, B.C. Anderson and M.A. Roglán, eds.
42
63
by FABRIZIO NEVOLA
Picturing Kingship. History and painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis, H. Stahl by MARTIN KAUFFMANN
Federico Barocci
by CHRISTIAN KLEINBUB
68
CALENDAR
72
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
by DONATELLA LIVIA SPARTI
43
44
La imagen religiosa en la Monarquía hispánica. Usos y espacios, M.C. de Carlos, P. Civil, F. Pereda and C. Vincent-Cassy, eds.
p.53
by ROSEMARIE MULCAHY
Next month’s issue:
Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani, B. de Dominici
February sees the annual issue on art in
by ERIKA LANGMUIR
45
46
Northern Europe with articles on
Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett. Vol.II: Italienische Zeichnungen 1450–1800, D. Klemm
Quentin Massys, Jan Gossaert,
by CHRIS FISCHER
Wouter Crabeth II, Ter Brugghen, Rubens
Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity, A.C. Braddock
Reviews of Memling, Elsheimer, Rembrandt, Ensor and Munch
by TREVOR FAIRBROTHER
p.55
Cover illustration: Interior of a studio, by Octave Tassaert. 1845. Canvas, 46 by 38 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris; exh. Compton Verney). Illustrated in this issue on p.56.
JAN.Masthead:Masthead 10/12/2009 12:21 Page 1
VOLUME CLII • NUMBER
1282
• JANUARY
2010
Editor: Richard Shone
Managing Director: Kate Trevelyan Kee
Deputy Editor: Bart Cornelis Associate Editor: Jane Martineau Production Editor: Alice Hopcraft Editorial Assistant: Anne Blood Contributing Editor: John-Paul Stonard Index Editor: Barbara Pezzini
Advertising & Development Director: Mark Scott Design & Production Manager : Chris Hall Circulation & Promotion Manager: Claire Sapsford Administrator: Bébhinn Cronin Administrative Assistant: Olivia Parker Accountant: Anita Duckenfield
Consultative Committee Dawn Ades OBE FBA David Anfam Colin B Bailey Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue GCVO FBA FSA David Bindman Claude Blair FSA Christopher Brown Richard Calvocoressi CBE Lorne Campbell Lynne Cooke Paul Crossley Caroline Elam David Franklin Julian Gardner FSA John Golding CBE FBA Sir Nicholas Goodison FBA FSA Christopher Green FBA Tanya Harrod Michael Hirst FBA John House Ian Jenkins FSA Simon Jervis FSA C M Kauffmann FBA Rose Kerr Alastair Laing Sir Denis Mahon CH CBE FBA Robin Middleton Jennifer Montagu LVO FBA Rosemarie Mulcahy Nicholas Penny Anthony Radcliffe FSA Dame Jessica Rawson CBE FBA J M Rogers FBA FSA Pierre Rosenberg Deborah Swallow Gary Tinterow Julian Treuherz Sir Christopher White CVO FBA Paul Williamson FSA Although the members of the Consultative Committee give invaluable assistance to the Editor on their respective subjects, they are not responsible for the general conduct of the magazine Attributions and descriptions relating to objects advertised in the magazine are the responsibility of the advertisers concerned
THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE FOUNDATION
Registered Charity in England & Wales (No. 295019), and incorporated in the State of New York, USA
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Contributing Institutions The Art Institute of Chicago The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute The Cleveland Museum of Art The Frick Collection The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Kimbell Art Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London
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The Burlington Magazine, 14-16 Duke’s Road, London WC1H 9SZ Tel: 020–7388 1228 | Fax: 020–7388 1229 | Email: burlington@burlington.org.uk Editorial: Tel: 020–7388 8157 | Fax: 020–7388 1230 | Email: editorial@burlington.org.uk
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Editorial The Ashmolean transformed THERE IS A sticky moment for anyone associated with this Magazine when they begin a visit to the newly extended and redisplayed Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In an introductory section to the collections in the lower ground-floor galleries, a showcase on fakes and forgeries contains an attractive silver reliquary head. The accompanying label notes that the head was published in the Burlington in 1919 as an Italian piece dating to the 1100s. Then owned by the prominent collector Henry Harris, it was subsequently acquired by the Ashmolean, where it was later discovered to be of composition metal only possible after c.1800. This nice example of the triumph of technical analysis over connoisseurship immediately puts visitors on their mettle. It and its surrounding tasters on conservation, the Museum’s history and ‘Exploring the Past’ make quite clear the multilayered nature of the new display of the Museum’s holdings, all coming under the capacious if somewhat anodyne heading ‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’. But first the building itself must be applauded. There is no doubt that the transformed Ashmolean is a major addition to the changing landscape of museums in Britain. The architect of the extension, Rick Mather, has provided a beautiful and ingenious solution to a difficult site. Behind the imposing porticoed building of 1845 by Charles Cockerell, all later additions have been demolished to make way for thirty-nine new galleries on five levels, as well as many of the services expected of an up-todate museum, such as an education centre and new conservation studios. A great bonus is the new glass entrance under the portico, the only feature that announces changes have taken place (for the new building is invisible from the street). A few paces straight ahead and one is in Mather territory rather than Cockerell’s. Two finely detailed, easily negotiable staircases run between the floors, offering intriguing views of the galleries at every stage. Although the new addition has no façades of its own, hemmed in, as it is, by earlier buildings, there is no sense of claustrophobia; all is light and airy. The galleries vary greatly in size and form – from extended treasure trove to the small and intimate – all with their own personalised lighting. Many of Cockerell’s older galleries – predominantly those given over to European painting – have been refurbished; one moves effortlessly between old and new, from upholstered familiarity to reassuring moderne. One or two commentators, with a just perceptible hint of criticism, have characterised the new building as ‘polite’. This is true – and is a great strength. Cockerell’s venerable edifice, like an imperious stage duchess turning a blind eye to life on Beaumont Street and the upstart Neo-Gothic of the Randolph Hotel, needed respect and politesse from a sprightly heir, hard on her heels. This Mather has shown admirably with neither fawning emulation nor a desire to shock. He is perhaps a shade restless but this can add to the excitement of discovery. The Ashmolean’s extraordinarily varied collections of art and archaeology, founded as they were on the Tradescants’ hoard of curiosities, had need of a building that could internally
accommodate this variety – from coins and clothes to pots and paintings – within a coherent concept of display. This is not a building into which a museum’s holdings have simply been decanted. The exhibition design firm Metaphor has developed the ‘innovative display strategy’, basing it on the idea that, across the centuries, cultures have overlapped and interacted. We are therefore on the somewhat stale ground of contemporary multiculturalism. What is perhaps new is the relative lack of emphasis on the religious dimension (although this is often taken care of on individual labels) and the playing down of formal and aesthetic connections in favour of materials and utility, trading routes and diplomatic exchange. Within its own terms it has been thoroughly thought through, with all curatorial hands on deck. The historic departmental divisions of the Ashmolean are interwoven in a story that is essentially material-based, culturally omnivorous and fully contextualised. Most of the works on show are anonymous – from modest craftsmen to obviously highly sophisticated but nameless artists. The textile collection is revealed for the first time; there are superb displays of Islamic and Chinese art, ceramics above all; tribute is paid to Ancient and Medieval Cyprus and India is comprehensibly visible (but there is virtually nothing on the civilisations of the Americas; travel is always East from Western Europe). By the third floor we are in the Renaissance; we whizz through Japan; there is an innovative room on Britain and Italy. But somewhere here might there not have been one especially prepared room for a selection from the Museum’s great collection of works on paper? Access to the Western Art Print Room is available only by request. Through many of these galleries runs a subtext that draws attention to the Museum’s history and benefactors and to the archaeologists responsible for unearthing so much that has come to rest in Oxford. Interesting as all this is, it can be distracting, breaking the spell of the objects themselves, already abundant and fully (if sometimes banally) labelled. Perhaps one room dedicated to this unpicking of the Museum’s history would have been sufficient. On the penultimate level (below a rooftop restaurant) we reach the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, predominantly showing paintings. Here, jumps in chronology and school are erratic – the paintings collection of the Ashmolean, unlike its drawings, is not one of its glories. The emphatic contextualisation controlling the earlier displays eases off, as though Metaphor and the curators had run out of breath. After the focused rooms on the Pre-Raphaelites, the Pissarro family and Sickert and his contemporaries, the gallery devoted to modern art is perfunctory and miscellaneous. More substantial works are needed here to quicken the pulse and end on a higher note. Four new, currently empty galleries for temporary exhibitions will come into their own later in the year. But what a relief it is to find no interventions by contemporary artists, no celebrity names to distract us from one of the greatest of all cabinets of curiosities now in its splendid new setting. the burlingto n m a g a z i n e
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New light on the Luck of Edenhall by GLYN DAVIES
DURING THE EIGHTEENTH and nineteenth centuries, the Luck of Edenhall (Fig.1) was one of the most famous medieval objects in England. It is a perfectly preserved example of Near Eastern glass-making, and survives along with a protective leather case made for it in western Europe, most probably in England (Fig.2). The glass comes from Edenhall, the Cumbrian seat of the Musgrave family, which gained the estate via marriage in the mid-fifteenth century.1 Today, the Luck is a key object in the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nothing has hitherto been known of the object’s history in England before the eighteenth century, but new evidence sheds light on its use and provenance. The object’s fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to the picturesque fairy tale attached to it. According to most versions of the legend, the family’s butler surprised a group of fairies frolicking near a well. The fairies disappeared, leaving behind the glass and uttering the prophetic words: ‘If this cup should break or fall, Farewell the luck of Eden Hall’. This appealing myth guaranteed an interest being taken in the object by eighteenth-century antiquarians. In the 1780s and 1790s the cup was seen by Francis Douce and Joseph Ritson, and a description of it was published in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1791 by ‘W.M.’, probably the print collector and antiquary Sir William Musgrave – a relation, but not a member of the Edenhall branch of the family.2 ‘W.M.’ mentioned the Luck’s brief appearance in some variants of the so-called Wharton ballad, a poem first published in 1728, but which became more widely known in the later eighteenth century through its inclusion in Joseph Ritson’s Select Collection of English Songs of 1783. This was the earliest known reference to the object.3 Since the acquisition of the Luck by the V. & A., scholarly consideration of it has been primarily restricted to what it can tell us about Islamic glass-making.4 Glasses of this sort appear in a number of medieval inventories as ‘à la façon de Damas’.5 Modern scholarship attributes such works to Syria or Egypt, with the Luck representing a type produced most probably in the later thirteenth century. Over sixty-eight pieces of such glass survive whole or in fragments in western Europe.6 Many of these are from locations in Germany and central Europe, although examples have also been found in England, Scandinavia, France and around the Mediterranean. Those that have survived whole have often done so in princely collections, and those that have not
I am grateful to Steve Bishop, Marian Campbell, Peter Frost-Pennington, Nick Humphrey, Francesco Lucchini, Sonja Marzinzik, Eva Oledzka, Matthew Richardson, Gail Solberg and Rowan Watson for advice and assistance in researching this article. 1 H. Doubleday and H. de Waldon, eds.: The Complete Peerage, IX, London 1936, p.437. 2 L. Jewitt: ‘The Luck of Edenhall’, The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist 19 (1878–79), pp.145–56, esp. pp.149–50. The visit is confirmed in Douce’s papers: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce d. 84/2, fols.175–77. J. Ritson: The Letters of Joseph Ritson, Esq., London 1833, II, p.187. For ‘W.M.’s description, see The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle (August 1791), p.721. 3 J. Ritson: A Select Collection of English Songs in three volumes, London 1783, II, pp.50–54.
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1. The Luck of Edenhall. Syria or Egypt, c.1200–90. Gilded and enamelled glass, 15.8 cm. high. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
have usually been excavated in secular and domestic contexts, as in the case of the fragments of a beaker found in 1960 at the bottom of a medieval well in Lübeck.7 Some of these glasses have leather cases to accompany them, such as one at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Cologne.8 We should not necessarily assume that such glasses came into Europe immediately after they were made. Some, such as a pair of glass beakers at the Dresden Green Vault, have later mounts that date to the late fifteenth century, demonstrating an interest in unusual goods of this sort at that time. The earliest documentary evidence concerning this pair of glasses puts them in the Dresden Kunstkammer in 1640, suggesting the princely 4
W.B. Honey: ‘A Syrian Glass Goblet’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 50 (1927), pp.289–96; and A. Wolf: ‘Orientalische Goldemailgläser im mittelalterlichen Europa’, Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 50/2 (2003), pp.489–611, esp. pp.588–89. 5 R.J. Charleston: ‘A 13th Century Syrian Glass Beaker Excavated in Lübeck’, in O. Ahlers et al., eds.: Lübeck 1226. Reichsfreiheit und frühe Stadt, Lübeck 1976, pp.321–38, esp. pp.329–30; and J.M. Rogers: ‘European inventories as a source for the distribution of Mamluk enamelled glass’, in R. Ward, ed.: Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East, London 1998, pp.69–73. 6 Wolf, op. cit. (note 4). 7 Charleston, op. cit. (note 5). 8 Wolf, op. cit. (note 4), pp.597–98; and A. Shalem: ‘Some speculations on the
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collecting of curiosities as a possible context for objects of this sort in the West.9 All this evidence can help us in reassessing the Luck of Edenhall. One recurring hypothesis about the Luck that should receive immediate attention is that it must once have functioned as a chalice. This idea has been in circulation since at least the 1790s10 and stems from the IHS symbol on the Luck’s leather case (Fig.2). It has been argued that the threat of border raiders in northern England in the later Middle Ages led to a relaxing of the Church’s rules on the materials for a chalice, and that the Luck would have been deemed a suitable replacement.11 Glass chalices, however, were expressly forbidden in canon law. As William Durandus explained in the thirteenth century, this was down to the fear of breakage and the consequent spillage of consecrated wine.12 Despite this, there are occasional references to glass chalices in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, usually in the context of bishops attempting to suppress their use. For example, in the 1320s or 1330s the archbishop of Pisa, Simone Salterelli, suppressed the use of glass or inferior metals for chalices in his diocese.13 Inventories of parish churches carried out in England during the Dissolution also provide very rare examples. For instance, the parish of Myndesley in Hertfordshire is listed as having a silver chalice, but a marginal note adds: ‘Their Chalise was stollen and now they ministre with a glass’.14 A glass beaker formerly in Douai was plausibly used as a chalice in the fourteenth century – tradition states that it was a gift to the cathedral as an endowment for eight priests.15 Its form was altered with metal mounts in order to give it a more chalicelike shape. Two similarly mounted Islamic glass beakers of this type survive, including the Palmer cup at the British Museum (Fig.3).16 The use of these glasses is unknown, but their chalicelike form makes them eminently more suitable for use in Communion than the Luck of Edenhall. The shape of the Luck’s medieval case precludes the idea that it was mounted in similar fashion. Given that the Luck would undoubtedly have been viewed as an extraordinary object in medieval northern England, then the idea that it may have replaced a silver chalice because of the fear of theft and pillage becomes self-contradictory. It was a highly desirable and valuable object in its own right. The IHS symbol on the case may relate to the use of Christ’s names as a form of protective charm, well documented in Europe in this period.17 Short and graphically striking, it was a popular option for such protective inscriptions, appearing, for example, on fifteenth-century English rings, sometimes along with Christ’s ‘titulus triumphalis’, INRI. The names of Christ could protect the wearer from harm. A number of English clothes-fastening hooks dating to the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are thus marked.18 The V. & A. has always described the case as dating to the fourteenth century. Indeed, comparisons for some of the decorative
motifs can certainly be found in early fourteenth-century leatherwork, such as a casket now in Passau.19 However, the script of the IHS inscription is undoubtedly fifteenth century in character. The letters are represented as if made from folded strips of paper or
original cases made to contain enamelled glass beakers for export’, in Ward, op. cit. (note 5), pp.64–68. 9 D. Syndram et al.: The Baroque Treasury at the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, Munich 2006, p.27. 10 For the argument in the 1790s, see The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle (November 1791), p.995; and ibid. (December 1791), p.1079. 11 M. Jones: ‘The Luck of Edenhall’, in T. Stanley, ed.: Palace and Mosque: Islamic art from the Middle East, London 2004, pp.108–09. 12 ‘Non ergo debet esse de vitro propter periculum effusionis . . .’; W. Durandus: Guillelmi Duranti Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. A. Davril and T.M. Thibodeau, Turnhout 1995, I, pp.45–46. 13 As recorded in a Vita by Vincenzio Fineschi now in Florence, Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS, Conventi Soppressi 471, F.5, fol.34r. 14 J.E. Cussans: Inventory of Furniture and Ornaments remaining in all the Parish Churches of Hertfordshire in the last year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth, Oxford 1873, pp.61–62. 15 E. Gerspach: L’Art de la Verrerie, Paris 1885, p.105; and Shalem, op. cit. (note 8), p.64. 16 For this group, see H. Tait: ‘The Palmer Cup and Related Glasses Exported to Europe in the Middle Ages’, in Ward, op. cit. (note 5), pp.50–55, esp. pp.50–51. 17 J. Evans: Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Oxford 1922, pp.130–32; and E. Duffy: The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional religion in England 1400–1580, London 1992, pp.282–87. 18 For example, UK Detector Finds Database, ref.12942. 19 G. Gall: Leder im europäischen Kunsthandwerk. Ein Handbuch für Sammler und Liebhaber, Braunschweig 1965, pp.46–47.
2. Case for the Luck of Edenhall. Probably England, c.1450–1500. Tooled leather, 18.1 cm. high (with lid). (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
3. The Palmer cup. Syria or Egypt, c.1200–50 (the glass); probably France, c.1250–1350 (the mount). Gilded and enamelled glass with silver gilt mounts and rock crystal, 26.8 cm. high. (British Museum, London).
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leather, a style known as ‘ribbon letters’, popular from the midfifteenth century to the 1530s. Similar letter forms were in use in northern England and Scotland, as in the IHS symbol on the Threave locket in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, which is almost identical to that on the Edenhall case (Fig.4).20 The evidence of the letter forms appears conclusive, suggesting that the case was made in the second half of the fifteenth century. If it was not a chalice, then what was the Luck of Edenhall? Probably, it had always been seen as a talisman of the Musgrave family’s fortunes. The tradition of magical cups that should not be broken is a long one in the North.21 In the twelfth century, the Augustinian historian William of Newburgh, writing at Bridlington priory, offered as a ‘story which I have known from my childhood’ an account of a man disturbing a fairy banquet in the side of a hill at midnight, and making off with a cup of ‘unknown material, unusual colour and strange form’ which was offered as a gift to Henry I, King of England, and which he passed on to David, King of Scotland.22 Other talismanic objects survive in Cumbria. Muncaster Castle, home to the Pennington family, possesses its own Luck – a late fifteenth-century Venetian glass bowl supposedly given to the family by Henry VI, and on which the fortunes of the Pennington family depend (Fig.5).23 At Workington Hall in the nineteenth century an agate cup was known as the Luck of Workington, supposedly a gift from Mary, Queen of Scots.24 Other Lucks have more recent pedigrees, such as the eighteenthcentury goblet inscribed ‘The Luck of Skirsgill’, sold at Sotheby’s in 1968.25 In the nineteenth century, a yeoman farmer in the town of Burrell Green called John Lamb had a brass dish known as the Luck of Burrell Green.26 Perhaps least convincingly, on the Isle of Man, an eighteenth-century glass, known since at least the 1860s as the Ballafletcher Drinking Glass, has been described as a fairy cup.27 It would be easy to dismiss all these traditions as products of the Romantic era. But in the case of the Luck of Edenhall, new documentary evidence shows that the tradition of its being a talisman to the Musgrave family dates back further than we might expect. In 1677 Sir Philip Musgrave made his will. He had been a lifelong royalist, spending much of his life in prison or under house arrest, only to see his fortunes revive under the Restoration monarchy.28 The long and detailed testament lists the property that he leaves to his son Richard Musgrave ‘for his use during his naturall life, and after his decease also to the next heire also of my name and family’. It begins with the contents of his study at Edenhall, and then specifies: ‘. . . our Souls ring of Gold that was my Great Grand father’s, and the Glass called the Luck of Edenhall’.29 This remarkable text shows that the glass was already known as the Luck of Edenhall, and clearly had been for some time, since it needs no further description. Its passing on to Richard 20
V. Glenn: Romanesque and Gothic Decorative Metalwork and Ivory Carvings in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh 2003, p.86. 21 For a summary, see E.S. Hartland: ‘Robberies from Fairyland’, The Archaeological Review 3 (1889), pp.39–52. 22 William of Newburgh: Historia Rerum Anglorum, Book 1, chapter 28; available online at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburghone.html#28, accessed 10th October 2009. 23 D. and S. Lysons: Magna Britannia; being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain, London 1816, IV, p.139; and Mannix and W. Whellan: History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cumberland, Beverley 1847, p.357. C.R. Beard: Lucks and Talismans: a chapter of popular superstition, London 1935, pp.89–97. 24 S.E. Fitch: The Luck of Edenhall, Scarborough 1880, pp.12–13. 25 Sale, Sotheby’s, London, Catalogue of English and Continental Glass, 22nd January 1968, lot 150. C.R. Hudleston: ‘The Luck of Skirsgill’, Transactions of the Cumberland
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4. The Threave locket. England or Scotland, c.1450–1500. Engraved silver, 2.7 cm. high. (National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh).
Musgrave is a key part of the transfer of the estate, along with Philip’s great-grandfather’s ring, as symbols of the Musgrave family line. The special status of the Luck is also suggested by the fact that no glass matching its description appears among the inventories of Edenhall’s furnishings made in 1690 and 1707.30 Nor is it mentioned in the inventory of goods attached to Philip Musgrave’s will. The Luck was a prized possession and heirloom, not merely a utilitarian or decorative object. The Luck was already known to antiquarians. It was drawn in the 1660s or 1670s by Thomas Machell, a member of the Oxford Philosophical Society and rector of Kirkby Thore in Westmorland. Most of Machell’s papers survive at Carlisle Cathedral, but a notebook, the ‘Liber Miscellaneus’, was in the possession of the book collector James Bindley in the early nineteenth century. The book was sold at Bindley’s death, and it has so far not been possible to trace its present whereabouts.31 Fortunately, Francis Douce took notes on its contents. According to him, the notebook contained a drawing of the Luck: ‘A full-page ink drawing of a glass beaker. Very badly drawn (clumsy, broken line, inadequate hatching). The profile of the top portion of the vessel (the lip and the rim) inaccurately recorded and closer in shape to the leather container’s shape than to the glass goblet itself. No ornament recorded, though the drawing attempts to indicate that the beaker is made of translucent glass’. Douce was certain that this was the Luck of Edenhall, an object that he himself had seen in the 1780s: ‘I think it is not correct according to my recollection and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society NS 68 (1968), pp.195–96. 26 Mannix and Whellan, op. cit. (note 23), p.306. 27 H.R. Oswald: Vestigia Insulae Manniae Antiquiora, Douglas 1860, p.189 and pl.IX, fig.3. Now at the Manx Museum (accession number 1954–1744). 28 G. Burton: The Life of Sir Philip Musgrave, Bart., Carlisle 1840. 29 Carlisle, Cumbria Record Office, Probate Records 1677, microfilm no.1323, Will of Sir Philip Musgrave, fol.1r. 30 Carlisle, Cumbria Record Office, D/MUS 6 (Box 112), inventories of 1690 and 1707. 31 A Catalogue of the Curious and Extensive Library of the Late James Bindley, Esq., London 1818, p.14, no.298. 32 For both quotations, see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce e. 64, fols.104–05. 33 Ibid., d. 84/2, fol.175.
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of it’.32 Douce mentions the drawing again in a series of notes on the Luck, in which he also ventures a date: ‘For a drawing of it taken by Mr Machell about 1666, see my M.N.B. [i.e. ‘Machell Note Book’] vol. VII’.33 Douce believed that the drawing dated to Machell’s undergraduate days because the notebook also contained a number of drawings of buildings in Oxford. The fairy story surrounding the Luck of Edenhall made it famous in the nineteenth century, yet also discouraged serious study of its English history. The earliest evidence for its presence in western Europe – the leather case with its protective inscription – dates from the fifteenth century, and we cannot be sure how long it had already been in England. Similar examples, such as the Dresden goblets, were passing into princely collections during the same period. The Luck of Muncaster, the only other Cumbrian Luck with a convincing pedigree, also dates from the fifteenth century. Edenhall itself came into the hands of the Musgraves in the midfifteenth century, and it is tempting to suppose that the family acquired the Luck at around the same date. Tales of fairy cups and horns were already common in the North, and it may be that the curiosity value of this old Syrian glass suggested that it might be interpreted in such a way. The talismanic significance of the Luck was certainly a commonplace by the mid-seventeenth century, and it was already known to historians such as Thomas Machell.
5. The Luck of Muncaster. Venice, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Moulded and gilded glass, diameter 14 cm.; 6.4 cm. high. (Private collection).
The Luck of Edenhall is a testament to the fascination that can be exerted by skilful craftsmanship and technical mastery, and its perfect state of preservation is (almost) miraculous.
Antonio del Ceraiuolo at la Crocetta and a note on Lorenzo di Credi’s niece by MEGHAN CALLAH AN
IN
1518 FRANCESCO DA CASTIGLIONE (1466–1542), a canon of S. Lorenzo, Florence, paid about 66 florins to Antonio del Ceraiuolo, also known as Antonio d’Arcangelo (died c.1527), for a panel depicting Christ on the road to Calvary (Fig.6). The painting was for the high altar of the church of the convent of la Crocetta in Florence in the section of the church reserved for the laity (hereafter called the exterior church; see Appendices 1 and 2 below).1 The money was paid on behalf of Francesco’s
spiritual charge, Suor Domenica da Paradiso (1473–1553), who founded the convent in 1511.2 The panel, now in the Antinori chapel of S. Spirito, Florence, was first connected to the convent of la Crocetta by Géza de’ Francovich, although he attributed it to Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio.3 Everett Fahy assigned it to Antonio on stylistic analysis, and subsequent art historians have followed him.4 The documents presented here provide the first evidence of its
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. I thank Sarah Blake McHam for her comments and suggestions and Simon Carter for his assistance; I am grateful to Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, Archbishop of Florence, for granting permission to enter the cloistered areas of the Crocetta to conduct research from 2003 to 2005 and the nuns of the convent for welcoming me. Research was carried out with the aid of the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship for Research in the Humanities in Original Sources from the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Rutgers University Bartlett-Cowdrey Fellowship and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship in the History of Art. 1 Antonio’s birth date is unknown; see Appendix 2 for documentation of his probable death date; see also M. Callahan: ‘The politics of architecture: Suor Domenica da Paradiso and her convent of la Crocetta in Post-Savonarolan Florence’, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Rutgers University, 2005), p.222. 2 Idem: ‘“In her name and with her money”, Suor Domenica da Paradiso’s Convent of la Crocetta in Florence’, in B. Deimling, J.K. Nelson and G. Radke, eds.: Italian Art, Society and Politics: A Festschrift for Rab Hatfield, New York 2007, pp.117–24. On Suor Domenica, see L. Polizzotto: ‘When Saints Fall Out: Women and the Savonarolan Reform in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly 46/3 (1993), pp.486–525; A. Valerio: Domenica da Paradiso, Profezia e Politica in una mistica del Rinascimento, Spoleto 1992; and I. Gagliardi: Sola con Dio: la missione di Domenica da Paradiso nella Firenze del Primo Cinquecento, Florence 2007. 3 G. de’ Francovich: ‘Benedetto Ghirlandaio’, Dedalo 6 (1925–26), p.737, note 5.
Before its arrival at S. Spirito, the painting was moved to the part of the church reserved for the nuns at la Crocetta, probably after the installation of Francesco Morandi’s The finding of the True Cross (Museo del Cenacolo di S. Salvi, Florence) in about 1585; see S. Padovani and S. Meloni Trkulja: Il cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto a San Salvi, Guida del Museo, Florence 1982, pp.34–36, fig.13; and A. Giovannetti: Francesco Morandi detto il Poppi, Florence 1995, p.104, fig.69. 4 E. Fahy: ‘Les cadres d’origine de retables florentins du Louvre’, La revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 26 (1976), p.14, note 9, citing F. Zeri: ‘Antonio del Ceraiuolo’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6/70 (1967), pp.139–54, although Zeri did not mention the Christ on the road to Calvary. For Antonio, see G. Vasari: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, eds. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, Florence 1984, V, p.442; and IV, p.249; B. Degenhart: ‘Die Schüler des Lorenzo di Credi’, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 9 (1932), pp.129–37, in which Degenhart identifies him as the ‘so-called Tommaso’; and A. Tamborino: ‘Considerazioni sull’attività di Antonio del Ceraiolo e proposte al suo catalogo’, Proporzioni 2–3 (2001–02), pp.104–22, although Christ on the road to Calvary is not included in her survey. The painting is reproduced in K. Harness: Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence, Chicago 2006, pp.216–17, fig.7.1 (but Harness, p.216, mistakenly states that ‘no contemporary source’ confirms the painting’s location in la Crocetta), and E. Capretti: ‘La pinacoteca sacra’, in C. Acidini Luchinat, ed.: La chiesa e il convento di Santo Spirito a Firenze, Florence 1996, pp.245 and 290, fig.15, and is mentioned by R. Bartoli: Biagio d’Antonio, Milan 1999, pp.231–32, no.125. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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original location and provide a secure dating for the panel. It is also noted in an inventory of the contents of the convent compiled by Francesco da Castiglione in 1518 and in one of the drafts of Suor Domenica’s biography that Francesco wrote in the hope that she would be canonised.5 A mystic Dominican tertiary with Savonarolan leanings, Suor Domenica commissioned very few works of art because she wished her convent to hold to the spirit of simplicity ordained by Savonarola in his effort to renew the Church. Antonio del Ceraiuolo’s straightforward composition, in which Christ is led to Calvary by a soldier who pulls a rope tied around Christ’s waist, would probably have pleased her. Antonio was a student of Lorenzo di Credi, and this may explain how he was awarded the commission,6 since Lorenzo was one of Suor Domenica’s earliest followers and Lorenzo’s niece Benedetta was a nun at la Crocetta (see Appendix 4).7
Documentation about Antonio is scarce, but a note from the archives of the convent of S. Lucia, Florence, may establish his date of death (see Appendix 3). On the death of ‘Antonio d’Arcangelo the painter’ in 1527, his sister, a nun at the convent, inherited about 29 florins.8 The payments for the Crocetta painting are recorded in a summary of miscellaneous convent expenses called the Giornaliere. Started in 1519, the account book was probably made in an attempt to systematise various receipts, since the payments for the painting were recorded about a year after it was finished. On 24th March 1518 Francesco da Castiglione paid the carpenter Michele di Cerviagio ten gold florins to make the panel and for the cost of the wood for the altarpiece. On 18th June 1518 30 florins were paid on Suor Domenica’s behalf to Antonio d’Arcangelo for the painting of the panel. Giovanni d’Antonio Francesco dello Scheggia was paid roughly 11 florins on 5th March 1518, for gilding the altarpiece (there is gilding on the robes and armour).9 Miscellaneous costs of 17 lire, the equivalent to just over two florins, brought the total cost to roughly 66 florins. Although the money was paid by Francesco, it was referred to as ‘for Suor Domenica’, which was typical of the way in which commissions were executed on her behalf. Florentine women were not allowed to conduct legal transactions without a mundualdus (a male representative or guardian), although they did not always use them.10 The majority of Suor Domenica’s documented financial transactions were executed on her behalf by men with the caveat that payments were made in her name and with her money.11 In the inventory of the contents of the convent, compiled on 29th November 1518, Francesco noted that its paintings and objects were given to the convent and the nuns by Suor Domenica.12 Christ on the road to Calvary is the first painting listed in the inventory and is described as the ‘panel above the high altar of the seculars’ church, painted with the story of the Saviour who carries the cross’.13 Conventual churches were divided into separate areas for laypeople and nuns; at la Crocetta, as in other conventual churches, the high altar, with an opening above the altar blocked by a large iron grate, separated the nuns from the laity. In this way the nuns could participate in the mass celebrated in the exterior church, while remaining cut off from the secular world. The nuns therefore would not have been able to see Antonio’s painting while mass was celebrated.14 In the inventory the high altarpiece was noted in conjunction with
5 Florence, Archivio del Monastero della Crocetta (hereafter cited as AMC), Libro di Conti, inserted folios entitled ‘Inventario dele cose ch[e] la Rxnda madre Vicaria Suora Domenica dona alsuo monasteriox di Sancta Croce, et ale sue suore’. The pages of the inventory were numbered by Francesco da Castiglione but start at no.15, suggesting that the folios came from a different book and were later inserted into the Libro di Conti. The drafts for Suor Domenica’s biography are held in the convent archives. Francesco is referred to as Francesco Onesti da Castiglione on the frontispieces of the drafts, but the name Onesti was only later applied to him and is a misnomer, which I shall discuss in a future article. 6 According to Vasari, op. cit. (note 4), V, p.125, another of Lorenzo di Credi’s students, Giovanni Antonio Sogliani (1492–1544), painted a Last Supper in oil for the convent’s refectory (untraced); see also W. and E. Paatz: Die Kirchen von Florenz, Frankfurt 1955, I, p.707; G. Benelli O.P.: Firenze nei Monumenti Domenicani, Guida Storica Illustrativa, Florence 1914, p.279; and S. Benjamin: ‘Female Religious Experience in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence: Suor Domenica dal Paradiso’, MA Thesis (University of Western Australia, undated), p.60. Callahan, op. cit. (note 1), p.229. Milanesi, in G. Vasari: Le vite d più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence 1878–85, V, p.125, note 2, indicates that in 1880 the painting still existed but was in bad condition. For Lorenzo di Credi,
see G. Dalli Regoli: Lorenzo di Credi, Milan 1966. 7 I discussed Lorenzo’s role as one of Suor Domenica’s followers in a paper given at the annual conference for the Association of Art Historians, held in London in April 2008, titled ‘The Spiritual Family of Lorenzo di Credi: the artist and Suor Domenica da Paradiso’. 8 See Callahan, op. cit. (note 1), p.229. Although it is unclear if this is the same Antonio, a link between Antonio and the convent through his sister’s presence might provide evidence for Tamborino’s theory that Antonio’s Christ in the house of Martha (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), painted in 1524, came from the convent of S. Lucia, Florence. See Tamborino, op. cit. (note 4), p.115; and Zeri, op. cit. (note 4), pp.141–43, figs.2 and 13. 9 On Giovanni Francesco d’Antonio, called lo Scheggia, see L. Tanfani Centofanti: Notizie di artisti tratte dai documenti pisani, Pisa 1897, pp.135 and 436–37; and L. Venturini: ‘Un altro pittore fiorentino nell’appartamento Borgia: Il Maestro del Tondo Borghese’, in M. Gregori, A. Paolucci and C. Acidini Luchinat, eds.: exh. cat. Maestri e botteghe: pittura a firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, Florence (Palazzo Strozzi) 1992–93, p.285. 10 K. Lowe: ‘Nuns and Choice: Artistic Decision-making in Medicean Florence’, in E. Marchand and A. Wright, eds.: With and Without the Medici, Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434–1530, Brookfield 1998, p.131; and T. Kuehn: Law, Family and
6. Christ on the road to Calvary, by Antonio del Ceraiuolo. 1518. Panel, c.190 by 190 cm. (S. Spirito, Florence).
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7. Christ on the road to Calvary, by Biagio d’Antonio. c.1500. Panel, c.191 by 191 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris).
8. Christ on the road to Calvary, by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. c.1505. Canvas, transferred from wood, 166.4 by 161.3 cm. (National Gallery, London).
‘. . . other pictures, and all of their ornaments’ and valued at a total of 350 lire – equivalent to 50 florins.15 It is unclear why the painting was undervalued in this way when Francesco had paid out some of the money on behalf of Suor Domenica and would have known its cost. In Francesco’s draft for Suor Domenica’s biography the painting was described as depicting ‘the Saviour who carries the cross on his shoulders’ with a frame with gold columns, base and architrave.16 This frame is now lost, but probably was similar to its present frame which, as noted by Fahy, originally held a Way to Calvary by Biagio d’Antonio, executed for the Antinori family, but removed to France during the 1812 Napoleonic suppressions and now at the Louvre (Fig.7).17 Antonio del Ceraiuolo’s Way to Calvary seems to have been enlarged at top and bottom to make it fit the dimensions of its current frame.18
Fahy suggested that the Antinori family commissioned the painting for la Crocetta, and hired Ridolfo Ghirlandaio to paint a Way to Calvary for the church of S. Gallo (Fig.8), since the family seemed to have had a particular interest in that iconographical theme.19 In the case of the Crocetta painting, this theory can now be disproved. Antonio d’Arcangelo is recorded in the Florentine Libro Rosso dei Debitori e Creditori for the year 1520.20 Vasari mentioned him only twice, both times within the Lives of other artists, those of the Ghirlandaio family and of Domenico Puligo.21 According to Vasari, Antonio and Puligo were in Ridolfo Ghirlandaio’s workshop at the same time. Vasari noted only two paintings by Antonio; a Crucifixion with Sts Francis and the Magdalene in S. Iacopo tra’ i Fossi, and an Archangel Michael at SS. Annunziata,22 but he also commented that
Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy, Chicago 1991, p.219. 11 Callahan, op. cit. (note 2), p.112. 12 AMC, Libro di Conti, fol.15r. 13 Ibid. 14 Much has been written on nuns’ ability and inability to view the paintings that they commissioned or had given; see C. Bruzelius: ‘Hearing is Believing: Clarissan Architecture ca.1213–1340’, Gesta 31/2 (1992), pp.83–91; J. Gardner: ‘Nuns and Altarpieces: Agendas and Research’, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 30 (1995), pp.7–57; and S. Strocchia: ‘Sisters in Spirit: The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio and Their Consorority in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence’, Sixteenth Century Journal 33/3 (2002), pp.735–67. It is possible that the nuns entered the seculars’ church when it was closed to the public. Suor Domenica was known to hide under the high altar in the exterior church at night in times of stress; AMC, Francesco da Castiglione, MS 19, Vitae Venerandae Sponsae Christi Sororis Dominicae de Paradiso, segnato 2, fols.236v–237r. 15 AMC, Libro di Conti, fol.15r: ‘Tavola sopra laltare maggiore delachiesa de secularj, dipinta delahystoria del salvatore che porta la croce, et con altre pitture, et contutti esua ornamento, vale lire 350’. 16 Document cited at note 5 above, translated from Latin by Davide Baldi, fol.255v,
‘. . . Nel secondo anno, da quando aveva ottenuto il vicariato perpetuo, ornò l’ara, che aveva posto in onore del Salvatore Gesù Cristo, con una tavola lignea dipinta, colonne d’oro, base d’oro, un’architrave dorata. In essa si scorge il Salvatore che porta sulle spalle la croce . . .’; see also Callahan, op. cit. (note 1), p.222. 17 Fahy, op. cit. (note 4), p.14. 18 Ibid.; Fahy noted that the painting was enlarged at the top and bottom. 19 Ibid.; and repeated by Bartoli, op. cit. (note 4), p.126. For Ridolfo Ghirlandaio’s Way to Calvary, see C. Gould: The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools, London 1975, p.100; who attributed the Louvre painting of the same subject to Benedetto Ghirlandaio and that in S. Spirito to Michele Ghirlandaio. 20 See E. de Fernández Gimenez: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part Three, Cleveland 1982, p.330, no.146. 21 Vasari, op. cit. (note 4), V, p.442; and IV, p.249. 22 Ibid.; see also Zeri, op. cit. (note 4), p.140; and C. Gamba: ‘Ridolfo e Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio’, Dedalo 9 (1928), pp.544–46. The Crucifixion and the Archangel Michael are in the Museo del Cenacolo di S. Salvi in Florence; see Tamborino, op. cit. (note 4), p.108, and figs.128 and 148. See also Padovani and Meloni Trkulja, op. cit. (note 3), pp.23–25 and figs.5 and 6.
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9. Christ on the road to Calvary, by an anonymous artist. Woodcut, 8.5 by 10.5 cm. From Sermone o uero tractato della oratione a M.d.S. / Composto da Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara dellordine de frati predicatori, Florence c.1495. (Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco, Turin).
Antonio was a very successful painter with many commissions, and had invitations from ‘merchants and others to go to Spain or Hungary’ to paint.23 Although Antonio was Lorenzo di Credi’s student, Vasari did not mention him in Lorenzo’s biography, but credited the latter with teaching Antonio to make portraits from life, although, having studied heads drawn from life by the artist, he noted that Antonio was not particularly talented in disegno.24 Yet, notwithstanding the crooked noses, uneven lips and other deformities, Vasari believed that Antonio had an uncanny ability to express the spirit of the sitter.25 Antonio’s last name, Ceraiuolo, must refer to a family connection (probably on his father’s side) with the wax industry, which encompassed candle-making and the creation of ex-voto wax effigies, such as the ones that adorned SS. Annunziata, for which the Benintendi family was famous.26 It is worth remarking that Verrocchio, who trained Lorenzo di Credi, also worked with Orsino Benintendi, and thus workshop connections between Antonio’s family and Lorenzo’s could already have been formed by the 1460s.27 Evidence of the links with Ridolfo Ghirlandaio’s workshop that were mentioned by Vasari are strengthened through Antonio’s association with Giovanni Francesco d’Antonio, called lo Scheggia, who was paid for gilding the high altarpiece at la Crocetta. Vasari’s comment that Ghirlandaio inserted a portrait of lo Scheggia in his Way to Calvary suggests a close working relationship between Ridolfo and lo Scheggia.28 Lo Scheggia had been associated with the Ghirlandaio family since about 1495 when he was referred to as a garzone in Pisa with Davide and Benedetto Ghirlandaio.29 There seems, therefore, to have been a fairly fluid interchange between members of the workshops of Lorenzo di Credi and the Ghirlandaio family. The
three paintings by Biagio d’Antonio, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and Antonio del Ceraiuolo share the same theme, yet as Cecil Gould noted: ‘the three pictures differ considerably and none is in any sense a copy of another, though less direct connections are plausible’.30 There is no evidence as to who chose the theme for the high altarpiece at la Crocetta. Perhaps Suor Domenica or Francesco da Castiglione were influenced by having seen the altarpieces commissioned by the Antinori family in the churches of S. Gallo or S. Spirito. The subject of Christ on the Road to Calvary was unusual in early sixteenth-century Florence.31 The paintings by Biagio d’Antonio and Ridolfo Ghirlandaio both have rather crowded compositions that include riders wearing exotic helmets, foot soldiers, the Virgin Mary, St John the Evangelist and St Veronica. In contrast, the simple line of Antonio’s figures, fewer in number, creates a rather static composition. In all three paintings, Christ wears a long red robe and the crown of thorns. In Antonio’s version, the sorrowful expressions and gestures of St John the Evangelist and the Virgin Mary are restrained. A young veiled woman behind the Virgin may be one of the Marys or perhaps Veronica, while her unveiled companion’s reddish hair might suggest she is the Magdalene. Christ’s nimbed halo would seem archaic in a painting of 1518. A possible source for Antonio’s composition is a woodcut from about 1495 in a printed sermon of Savonarola in which Christ, shown wearing a nimbed halo, is dragged to Calvary by means of a cord placed around his neck (Fig.9).32 While the artist obscured Christ’s face by placing the cross on his near shoulder, the simplicity and directness of the composition find a parallel in Antonio’s treatment of the theme and, given Suor Domenica’s Savonarolan leanings, it would not be surprising to find the genesis of Antonio’s painting in a Savonarolan tract. Florentine interest in the theme, and the lasting influence of Savonarolan woodcuts on the friar’s Florentine followers long after his death, is a rich topic for future research. Appendix 1. Records of payment made for the panel, pigments, gold and painting of the altarpiece ‘Christ on the road to Calvary’ by Antonio del Ceraiuolo at la Crocetta. (Florence, Archivio dello Stato (hereafter cited as ASF), Conventi Religiosi Soppressi (hereafter cited as CRS), Convento della Crocetta, 107, 1, Giornaliere). [fol.2r] 23 aprile 1519 la tavola per laltare magiore della chiesa del monastero della vernerabil madre detta fiorini diccj x ino [= larghi in oro] pagati m[esser] Franco di castiglionj di danari della detta a michele di cereviagio legnaiolo p[or]to co[n]ta[n]tj da ddj [sic] 27 di marzo 1518 a questo di 1 come al q[uaderno] bianco Sto A. per la manifattura e legniame e di detta tavola fatta __________________a libro23 lire 70 soldi – [fol.2v] . . . addi 23 daprile 1519 Alla tavola perlatar maggiore della chiesa del monasterio della vernerabil madre ditta, fiorini trenta pagatj per la ditta madre & di sua danari a antonio darchangiolo dipitore p[or]to co[n]ta[n]tj daddi 18 di giugno 1518 aquem dj 1 come al quaderno Sto A 1 di piu partite, per ladipitura dell ditta tavola tolse adipigniere dallej a lbro 23 lire 210 soldi – alla sop[ra] ditta tavola, lire novantaquattro pli [piccioli], pagatj per la ditta madre a giovannj adanto franco dello Scegia p[or]to co[n]ta[n]tj dadj 5 dimarzo 1518 a questo
23
27
24
28
Vasari, op. cit. (note 4), IV, p.248. Ibid., pp.248–49. 25 Ibid., p.248. 26 A. Bellandi: ‘Plasticatori e ceraioli a Firenze tra Quattro e Cinquecento’, in F. Franceschi and G. Fossi, eds.: Arti Fiorentine. La grande storia dell’artigianato, Il Cinquecento, III, Florence 2000, pp.187–223.
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Ibid., pp.191–92. Vasari, op. cit. (note 4), V, p.439; and Gould, op. cit. (note 19), p.100. 29 Tanfani Centofanti, op. cit. (note 9), pp.135 and 436–37. 30 Gould, op. cit. (note 19), p.100. 31 Fahy, op. cit. (note 4), p.14: ‘Un tel fait était sûrement exceptionnel, car on trouve rarement ce thème traité séparément avant la fin du Quattrocento, en dehors des cycles de la
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dj ch[e] ta[n]tj ne spese ditto giovannj in oro & azurro & altro per dorare & ornare ditta tavola, come al querno Sto A 2 apare a libro 23 lire 94 soldi – alla ditta tavola, fiorini undicj xo inro pagatj perla sop[ra] ditta, a Giovanni dantofranco delloScegia [dello Scheggia], p[or]to co[n]ta[n]ti daddj 5 dimarzo 1518 aquesto di come al qrno Sto A 2 per la sua manifattura dello avere dorato ditto tavola a libroro 23 lire 77 soldi – alla ditta tavola lire dicasette [sic] pli [piccioli] pago la ditta adiverse persone p[er]messe du la ditta tavola & caltre [sic]cose meso ocorse ___a libro 23 lire 17 soldi_____ 2. Records of payments made for the panel, pigments, gold and painting of the altarpiece ‘Christ on the road to Calvary’ by Antonio del Ceraiuolo at la Crocetta. (Florence, AMC, Armadio 3, unnumbered MS, Libro di debitori e creditori, 1517–73). [fol.23r.] yhs 1519 Tavola p[er] lattar maggiore p[er] lachiesa delmonstjio della venerabil madre Suor Domenjca, dedare, addj 23 daprile 1519 F [fiorino] dieci lj [larghi] do[ro]in[oro] pagatj p[er] laditta madre & di sua danarj, a Michele dj cervagio legnjaiuolo p[or]to co[n]ta[n]tj, come algiornale A 2 p[er] lamanjfattura & legniame della ditta tavola fatta, posta ditta madre avere inqu[esto] __18 __________________[lire] 70 S [= soldi] _ Et dedare addj ditto l[lire] duge[n]todiccj pli [piccioli] pagatj p[er]la sop[ra] ditta a antonio dj archangelo dipi[n]tore p[or]tto co[n]t3[n]ti, come algiornale A 2 p[er] ladip¯ı[n]tura della ditta tavola, posta ditta madre avere inqu[esto]18 ____________[lire] 210 E addi ditto l [lire] nov3[n]aq[u]attro pL [piccioli] pagatj p[er] laditta a giovannj datonfranco delloscegia p[or]to co[n]t3[n]tj, come algiornale Sto A 25 ch[e] tantj naspesi in oro, azurro & altro, p[er] dorar ditta tavola posto ditta madre avere inq[uesto]18 l [lire] 94 soldi Et addj ditto F [fiorini] undicj o[ro] inj[oro] pagatj come disop[ra] a Giovannj dantofranco delloschegia, p[or]to co[n]a[n]ti, come algiornale Sto A 2 p[er]ladoratura delladitta tavola, posto ditta madre avere inq[uesto]18 _____________________[lire] 77 soldi Et adj ditto l [lire] dicassette pL [piccioli] pagati come disop[ra] adiverse p[er]sone p[er] messer su ditta tavola &altre cose ocorse come algoler [al giornaliere] posto lamadre inquesto 18 lire 17 soldi ____ [lire] 468 [in a later hand] ducati 66.soldi 6 [In the margin, by a later hand] ‘Pittura dlla Tavola del’Altar Maggre: nella q[ua]le è N. Sigre: ch[e] porta La Croce: qale oggi è nella Chiesa di detro dlle Monache. 3. Record of the money Suor Vittoria inherited in November 1527 from her brother, the painter Antonio d’Archangelo, after his death. (ASF, CRS 111, 40, Convento di S. Lucia, Debitori e Creditori segnato A, 1512–30). [fol.143r.] Rede di Antonio d’Archangelo dipitore deono dare Fi [fiorini] venti nove soldi 8 denari 6 aoro larghi per essere rimasta herede Suora victoria sorella di dco [detto] antonio et n[ost]ra suora prefexa, della quarta parte di epsa [sic] heredita cioe della 4° parte di 160 di monte di 2 percento a denari 42 el c[ent]o et per la 4 a parte di fl [fiorini] 100 di monte di 7 percento a denari 50½ el cento come si vede a libro dco R[icordan]ze Segnato A a ____ [sic] che sispese per al 4° parte a riscuotere dci [detti] danari soli 19 denari 6 che restorono fi 29 larghi doro lire 2 _____fl 29 lire 2 E piu deono dare lire ventidua soldi 1 per la 4° parte di paghe riscosse di dco monte ____Fi 3 lire 1 solid 1 [on the opposite page] Rede di contro deono havere a di 28 di novembre 1527 fi [fiorini] trenta dua larghi doro lire 3 soldi 1 e quali risosse per noi Giovannj di Lido. Lanio. n[ost]ro sindaco et procuratore reco dco [detto] giovani contanti flo 32 lire 3 soldi 1 4. Records of Benedetta Salvestri, nun at la Crocetta and niece of Lorenzo di Credi. (ASF, CRS, 107, 1, Giornaliere Libro A, 1518, 1520). [fol.3r] addj 9 dicembre 1520
Passion du Christ’. The theme was more prevalent north of the Alps, and the influence of Northern prints and paintings should also be considered. 32 Sermone o uero tractato della oratione a M.d.S. / Composto da Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara dellordine de frati predicatori, Florence c.1495. This copy is on the market; see Catalogo Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco di Umberto Pregliasco &C., Torino, Turin, March
Dalla Benedetta figluola fu di Giovannj Salvestrj, F [fiorini] cinqua[n]ta in oro largho per lej da Suora Lucrezia sua madre monaca nelle co[n]vertita, reco Lorenzo dj chredj suo zio disse si cavorno dj una casa venderno, e quali dj ditto alla sop[ra] schritta madre, per parte di limosina e fornjnj [fornizie] della ditta Benedetta cacptata [acceptata] in ditto monastjio allibro 36 lire 350 soldi ____ Dalla ditta Benedetta Fiorini qu3r3[n]ta largho doro per lej da Raffaelle Silvestri suo zio detto co[n]tatj alla ditta Madre per le cagione di sop[ra] alibro36 lire 280 soldi___ [fol. 3v] addj 11 daple 1521 Dalla benedetta di giovannj salvestrj Fiorini vd[n]tj in largho doro pago Lzo dicredj suo zio alla sop[ra] scritta madre infra danarj cotatj & cosa per co[n]to dilimosina della ditta Bartolomea [sic] a libro 36 lire140 soldi___ (Florence, AMC, Armadio 3, unnumbered MS, Libro di Debitori e creditori, 1517–73). yhs 1517 [fol.11] . . . 1520 Et a ddj 9 di dicd[m]bre .1520. F cinq3[n]ta d[oro] che ebe da lzo [Lorenzo] di chredj, p[er] Suora Lucrezia monacha nelle convertite & lej p[er] co[n]to di limosina & fonimjn[en]toj [sic] dalla Benedetta sua figiuola, aceptata in djtto monjio [monasterio], posta avere inq[uesto]36 l.[lire] 350 [soldi] – Et a ddj 9 ditti F [fiorini] q[u]r3[n]ta d[oro] ebe dj co[n]to[n]tj da Raffaello Salvestrj, p[er] co[n]to di limosina della Benedetta sua nipote sop[ra] nomjnata, posta av[ere] in q[est]36 l [lire] 280 [soldi] – [fol.11] Segue el dedare di co[n]tro 1521 Et de dare addj .11. dap[ri]le 1521 F [fiorini] ventj d[oro] inj[oro] ebe dico[n]to[n]ti da Lzo [Lorenzo] dicredi, p[er] co[n]tjo di sua limosina, posta avere in q[uesto]36 come al gior[na]le a 3 l [lire] 140 [soldi] – [fol.25] 1519 yhs 1519 Segue el de havere dico[n]tro 1525 Et dev hav[e]r[e] addi primo dagosto 1525 F sess3[n]ta l[ar]ghi doro p[er] loro dalla Benedetta, figliuola fu di Giovanni Salvestri, oggi Suor filicie, monaca p[ro]fessa in ditto monatio p[er] insino addi .7. daprile 1521 posta dare in q[uest] 36 di ta[n]tj era creditore la p[e]r co[n]to di sua limosina 1.[lire] 420 [soldi] – [fol.36r] . . . Benedetta dGiovanj Salvestrj di co[n]tro dedar, F [fiorini] cinq[u]3[n]ta d[oro] p[er] lej alla VeneL Madre Suor Domenjca, posta hax[ver]e in q[uesto] 65 & sono ch t3[n]ti si li fabun[e] p[er] co[n]to delfornimd[n]to fattoli diSuo dedenaarj di co[n]tro_______________l [lire] 350 soldi – E dedar F[fiorini] sess3[n]ta d[oro in oro] fattone creditore in q[uesto] 25 la VenL madre Suor Domenjca & suo monast[er]io p[er] limosina della ditta benedetta, oggi suor felicia, monaca p[r]ofessa in ditto monastrio p[er] insino addi .7. daprile 1521__[lire] 420 [soldi] [lire 770] [fol.36] . . . Benedetta figliuola fu di Giovanni Salvestri, deavere addj 9 di dicd[m]bre. 1520. F cinq[ua]3[n]ta d[oro] inj [in oro] p[er] lei da Suora Lucrezia sua madre, monaca in alle [sic] co[n]vertite. reco Lorenzo dichredj suo zio, & li detto co[n]t3[n]ti alla Venerbile Madre Suora Domenjca, posta dare in q[uesto] a 11 E sono p[er] parte di limosina e fornimentio della ditta B[ar]tolemea, aceptata, in ditto monasterio come al giornale [sic] Sto A a 3_______________l. [lire] 350 [soldi] – E addiditto F q[u]ar3[n]ta d[oro]inoro p[er] lej da Raffaello suo zio, pago co[n]t3[n]ti, alla sop[r]a scritta madre, posta dare in q[uesto] a 11 p[er] le cagionj di sop[ra] come al gior[naliere] a 3 lire_____ 280. [soldi] – E addj 11 dap[ri]le 1521 F ventj lgh [largi] doro paga Lzo dichredj allsop[ra]ditta, in danarj co[n]t3[n]ti & altre cose posta dare in q[uest]o 11 p[er] elemosina come di sop[ra] al gLe [giornaliere]4 lire 140____ lire 770
2004, no.89. Umberto Pregliasco noted that it was without any typographical notations, but considered it the work of the Florentine printer Lorenzo Mangiani and dated it 1495. I thank Mr Pregliasco for providing me with an image of the woodcut and for his kind permission to reproduce it.
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The ‘St Matthew’ tondo for the Capponi chapel in S. Felicita, Florence by JACK WASSERMAN
IT CAME AS a surprise to learn from Francesca Fiorelli Malesci’s book on the church of S. Felicita in Florence that the St Matthew tondo currently in a pendentive in the Capponi chapel is a twentieth-century copy of the original painting,1 which is now in the Laboratorio di Restauro of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence (Fig.10). Records there indicate that, together with the other three tondi of Evangelists from the chapel, the St Matthew had been held in deposit at an unspecified location since 1971 and brought to the Laboratorio di Restauro in 1973. The copy of the painting, which has an identical provenance, was installed in the Capponi chapel in 1975, probably together with the other three Evangelists.2 The St Matthew is expected to be returned to its original site. St Matthew (c.1526) shows the saint bust-length and leaning forwards, embracing the head of an angel, and gazing in the direction of the visitor in the chapel. Ugo Procacci in 1947 published a report on a restoration of the tondo that took place in 1935–36. With information he had received from Augusto Vermehren, the conservator, Procacci wrote that an X-ray made at the time of the restoration revealed a ‘very ruined’ painting underneath a thoroughly repainted surface, which he dated to the seventeenth century.3 The ruined painting, he pointed out, had been well restored after the removal of the overpaint, and the conservator distinguished his own intervention by using cross-hatching.4 The other three tondi, Procacci wrote, were in good condition and required relatively minor attention; it would seem, therefore, that X-rays of these tondi were considered unnecessary.5 More importantly, Procacci observed that the direction of the saint’s eyes in the X-ray was different from that in the ruined painting. He did not illustrate his report, however, and the X-ray could not be found when I began my study of the St Matthew (it has since been recovered) and another X-ray was made which contains information of much greater importance than that provided by Procacci in his report (Fig.11). Chiara Rossi Scarzanella, conservator at the Laboratorio di Restauro, has now published the results of her examination of the X-ray.6 My contribution
I am grateful to Cristina Acidini, formerly Soprintendente of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, for her encouragement in my study of the St Matthew; Giuliana Innocenti, who made it possible for me to study the painting and for helping me in giving permission to publish the photographs in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure; Chiara Rossi Scarzanella for patiently teaching me so much about conservation, for helping me interpret the X-ray and for her important observations concerning the content of the manuscript; Mirella Branca of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e per il Paesaggio per le Provincie di Firenze, Pistoia e Prato, for alerting me to the difficulty involved in installing the roundel in the chapel; and Don Mino, former prior of S. Felicita, for giving me continuous access to the Capponi chapel. Above all, I am beholden to Cristina François, archivist of the church, for bringing to my attention the two documents cited in the appendix. 1 F. Fiorelli Malesci: La Chiesa di Santa Felicita a Firenze, Florence 1986, p.210. 2 The copy was published for the first time, in colour, by E. Baccheschi: L’opera completa del Bronzino, Milan 1973, pl.2. For the date and authorship of the copy see note 3 below.
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10. St Matthew, by Jacopo Pontormo, after the restoration of 1973. 1526. Panel, diameter 77 cm. (Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence).
in our co-operative study is to discuss the tondo in its historical context, including an analysis of the work as it was before 1935–36; an elaboration of Rossi Scarzanella’s discoveries in her analysis of the X-ray; reflections on the authorship of the St Matthew; and speculation on its correct angle of installation when it is returned to the chapel – that is to say, how Pontormo intended the painting to be viewed. Procacci’s dating of the repainted surface to the seventeenth century is not stylistically tenable (Fig.12). Its anonymous character suggests it dates from the nineteenth century, and two unpublished documents in the church archives provide probable alternative 3
U. Procacci: exh. cat. Mostra di opere d’arte trasportata a Firenze durante la Guerra e di opera d’arte restaurate, Florence (Laboratorio di Restauro) 1947, pp.50–51. According to older restorers at the Laboratorio, the St Matthew copy was executed in 1935–36 by Teodosio Sokolov, Vermehren’s associate in the restoration of the original painting. My thanks to Chiara Rossi Scarzanella of the Laboratorio di Restauro of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, for this information. 4 Ibid., p.50. Giorgio Bonsanti has also written on the restoration in ‘Theory, Methodology and Practical Applications – Painting Conservation in Italy in the Twentieth Century’, in P.S. Garland, ed.: Early Italian Paintings: Approaches to Conservation (proceedings of a symposium at the Yale University Art Gallery, April 2002), New Haven and London 2003, p.82, fig.5.6 and pl.7. 5 Procacci, op. cit. (note 3), p.50. I do not know why the St Matthew alone of the tondi suffered so seriously. 6 C. Rossi Scarzanella: ‘Novità sul San Matteo di Pontormo’, OPD Restauro 19 (2007), pp.213–18. 7 The drawing is illustrated in C.H. Smyth: ‘Bronzino’s Earliest Works’, Art Bulletin
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12. Fig.10 as it was repainted in 1840 and before its restoration in 1935–36. (Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, Gabinetto Fotografico, Florence).
11. X-ray of Fig.10. 2007. (Archivio Fotografico dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence).
dates of either 1840 or 1876–77 (see Appendix 1 and 2 below). The document of 1876–77 (see Appendix 2) indicates only that there was some indecision as to how to install the four tondi after their restoration. The earlier document states that a painter restored the St Matthew (see Appendix 1). But whenever the restoration took place (probably in 1840), the restorer altered the saint’s anatomy (the right shoulder and torso) and introduced drapery over the right arm that is not present in the X-ray or in the ‘ruined’ state of the painting (Fig.13). Given its fragmentary condition, the limb must have been difficult to reconstruct. It seems that the model for the drapery was a drawing in the Uffizi of a semi-nude male with a garment draped over his right arm.7 The restorer may have considered the sketch a study for the St Matthew itself, as it was believed to be until very recently when it was shown to be a preparatory study for Bronzino’s St Sebastian in Madrid.8 The angel’s wing must also be the product of a restoration, since it is present in the dark area of the X-ray where the original paint is lost (Fig.11).9 The original tip of the wing survives in the white area at the bottom of the X-ray, where the paint is preserved, freshly and delicately applied (Fig.16).10 That restoration preceded the one made in the nineteenth century, when both the repainted and original parts of the wing were hidden under drapery. I would trace it back to a general renovation of the chapel that took place in 1722–23 (reported by Giovanni Balocchi), because to my knowledge there was no other restoration before those years or since then until 1840, 1876–77 and 1935–36.11 Procacci’s remark that the Evangelist’s glance in the X-ray is different from that in the painting falls far short of what the X-ray
discloses. Rossi Scarzanella observes that the entire composition of the tondo had evolved in two stages.12 I will summarise her findings by way of introducing evidence for a third stage provided by a rarely mentioned or illustrated anonymous sixteenthcentury drawing in the British Museum, London (Fig.14).13 The drawing should be considered a copy of a preliminary sketch for the painting, although it is too badly rubbed to permit conjecture as to whether it had been prepared in Pontormo’s studio.14
31/3 (1949), pp.184–209, fig.7. For the complex history of the sketch, see J. Cox Rearick: The drawings of Pontormo, New York 1981, I, p.382, no.A125. She notes in the bibliography on the sketch that it was first mentioned in 1890 by P. Ferri: Catalogo riassuntivo della raccolta di disegni antichi e moderni posseduta dalla R. Galleria degli Uffizi di Firenze, Rome 1890, I, p.119. 8 J. Cox Rearick: ‘A “St Sebastian” by Bronzino’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 129 (1987), p.158. 9 See Rossi Scarzanella, op. cit. (note 6), p.214. Evidently, the paint in the restoration was opaque and impenetrable to the X-ray. 10 The entire wing was repainted in 1935–36 without the use of cross-hatching; ibid., p.215. 11 G. Balocchi: Illustrazione dell’I. e R. chiesa parrocchiale di S. Felicita che può servire di guida all’osservatori, Florence 1828, p.41. There is no indication that other areas of the painting were damaged at the time this restoration took place. 12 Rossi Scarzanella, op. cit. (note 6), pp.215–16.
13 London, British Museum, Payne Knight Collection, Pp2, 102; see J. Cox Rearick: The Drawings of Pontormo, Princeton 1964, I, p.395, no.214, dates the drawing to the late sixteenth century as a copy after the painting (repeated in idem, op. cit. (note 7), I, p.395, no.214). The drawing was illustrated for the first time in A. Emiliani: Il Bronzino, Busto Arsizio 1960, pl.5, and subsequently in B. Berenson: I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, Milan 1961, fig.942 (but never in the English editions). 14 I thank Julien Stock and Hugo Chapman for advising me on the state of the drawing. F. Wickhoff: ‘Über einige italienische Zeichnungen im British Museum’, Jahrbuch der königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 20 (1899), p.21, writes that at the British Museum the drawing was attributed to Pontormo. Other historians attribute the drawing to Pontormo, specifically as preparatory for the St Matthew, but without further discussion; see F.M. Clapp: Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo. His Life and Work, New Haven, London and Oxford 1916, pp.49 and 123; B. Berenson: The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago 1938, II, no.2253a; and Smyth, op. cit. (note 7), p.189.
13. Fig.10 in its stripped state before repainting in 1935–36. (Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, Gabinetto Fotografico, Florence).
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15. Highlighted image in radiograph and graphic replica of X-ray image of Fig.10. (Archivio fotografico dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence).
14. Study for St Matthew, anonymous artist after Jacopo Pontormo. Later sixteenth century. Red chalk on paper, 20.7 by 16.5 cm. (British Museum, London).
16. Detail of Fig.10 showing the angel’s wing.
17. Detail of the saint’s right eye in Fig.11.
Among the reasons for assuming this are that the angel’s wing is merely sketched in and the drapery is unformed but for the beautiful fold at the left shoulder. In the first stage in the X-ray, the Evangelist is in deep contemplation as he turns his head upwards and slightly to the left (Fig.15); in the second, final stage, his head is lowered and he gazes in the direction of the observer. This change of position was accompanied by a change in the height of the right shoulder, which was first planned to be level with the left shoulder and to relate to the saint looking heavenwards. In the end, the shoulder was raised and brought to the height of the painted shoulder, which curves into a bulge. In my opinion, these changes were introduced to energise the figure and to avoid the monotony of having three saints look heavenwards and only one saint direct his attention at the observer standing in the chapel. The angel’s head and glance, which initially were inclined inwards and to the right, were, in the second stage, adjusted. The British Museum drawing (Fig.14) represents an interim stage between the two ideas shown in the X-ray. The shape and height of the saint’s right shoulder (the first level is visible just above the clavicle) and the shape of his arm are still evolving, and the angel’s eyes are directed to the right while his head
tilts inwards and leftwards, as in the final version. The X-ray and the painting show that the process of conceiving the St Matthew involved major compositional changes being made directly on the panel and also changes in details, such as lowering the lid of the right eye (Fig.17). The British Museum drawing demonstrates that major problems were addressed graphically during the painting process. Among these were the synchronisation of the saint’s and the angel’s head in parallel to create compositional stability. The Evangelist’s attribute, a quill pen held in his right hand, is present in the drawing but missing in the X-ray and in the painting; the other three Evangelists all have quills. The authorship of the St Matthew is still debated. Vasari made it an issue when he wrote in different places in the Lives of 1568 that Agnolo Bronzino, Pontormo’s assistant in the decoration of the Capponi chapel, painted one or two of the Evangelists, but did not indicate which were his.15 The existence of the painted copy of St Matthew in the chapel complicates the problem: it has been used to illustrate a number of recent publications on the tondo without its counterfeit nature being acknowledged. In all these instances it is attributed to Bronzino.16 But even before the advent of the copy, St Matthew was (and with a few exceptions still is) considered to be a work by Bronzino, or by Bronzino
15
that Pontormo and Bronzino worked together directly on the painting; K. Förster: Pontormo, Munich 1966, text to fig.51, believes that Pontormo made the drawing and Bronzino did the actual painting. The following attribute the original tondo exclusively to Bronzino: F. Goldschmidt: Pontormo, Rosso und Bronzino, Leipzig 1911, p.45; C. McCorquodale: Bronzino, London 1981, p.20; and Fiorelli Malesci, op. cit. (note 1), p.211; those that attribute it to Pontormo: J. Shearman: Pontormo’s altarpiece in S. Felicita, Newcastle upon Tyne 1971, p.23; P. Costamagna: Pontormo, Paris and
G. Vasari: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence 1878–85, IV, p.271; and VII, p.594. 16 Baccheschi, op. cit. (note 2), pl.2; L. Berti: Pontormo, Florence 1993, pl.248; M. Brock: Bronzino, Paris 2002, p.24; and M. Tazartes: Bronzino, Milan 2003, p.79. Fiorelli Malesci, op. cit. (note 1), figs.51 and 98, illustrates what she knows is a copy and attributes the original to Bronzino. 17 Smyth, op. cit. (note 7), p.210, and Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), I, p.257, believe
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working in collaboration with Pontormo.17 This attribution had seemed plausible in view of the drawing by Bronzino in the Uffizi. However, Pontormo’s authorship can be defended by comparing the painting with the three other Evangelists in the chapel: St Mark, unequivocally Bronzino’s (Fig.18),18 St Luke, here attributed to Pontormo, although its authorship is controversial (Fig.19),19 and St John, unquestionably Pontormo’s (Fig.20). St Mark reflects Bronzino at the point in his career when he was relying on, and even imitating, Pontormo’s art, including the other Evangelists. But as painted by Bronzino the pigment is dense and the figure large, heavy and ungainly: it spreads out laterally in an exaggerated attempt at monumentality. The saint leans slightly forward in an effort to convey motion, but remains inert. His body and face are constructed in broad and sharply divided planes of shadow and illumination, and the larger area of his face and upper right arm are frozen into place by an undifferentiated light. Also the drapery surrounding the saint’s shoulders, like the figure itself, is thick, heavy and static, its folds forming stylised ridges and valleys. St Luke, possibly the first of the group to be painted, is slender, tall and elegant. Its model is Pontormo’s own drawing of a patriarch with a scroll for the earlier fresco in the dome of the chapel, now lost.20 The lights and shadows are varied and transparent, and the drapery at the back and left shoulder is fine, coursing gracefully over the right shoulder in malleable folds. These features of St Luke are developed in St John, the masterpiece of the group. The paint was applied with a light touch and the conception is spontaneous. The drapery, with its crisp folds, flows around the back of the figure, ending in a flourish over the right shoulder. The saint, beautifully and solidly crafted with subtle and interpenetrating lights and shadows, emerges decisively and vigorously – his beard windblown – from the interior space, but firmly enclosed within the pictorial space by the parallel alignment of the torso and right arm to the picture plane. The St Matthew, although its preserved surfaces are surely not as they were before the painting was seriously damaged, nevertheless displays a comparably supple handling of the pigment, immediacy and vigorous movement towards the surface plane and graceful drapery (or what remains of it), especially the fold at the left shoulder (Fig.10).21 The treatment of light and shadow is far removed from the rigidity of Bronzino’s chiaroscuro, as is also the structure of Matthew’s head, a type that is sporadically seen in Pontormo’s earlier work and more commonly in his paintings of the mid-1520s. The head is precisely delineated as an oval and the surfaces of the face are sufficiently unmodulated as to almost deny the existence of an underlying bone structure. This abstract approach to anatomy is found also in the head in Pontormo’s contemporaneous study for a three-quarter-length portrait of a youth in the Uffizi of about 1525.22 Quite new in Pontormo’s art (in my opinion too subtle for Bronzino to achieve) is the enigmatic emotion registered on the saint’s face: the adjective ‘hallucinatory’ comes to mind. Craig Smyth, in attributing the painting to Pontormo,
Rome 1992, p.187; and E. Pilliod: Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori. A genealogy of Florentine Art, New Haven and London 2001, p.56. 18 A drawing in the Museum at Besançon is usually attributed to Bronzino and described as a preliminary sketch for St Mark. For discussions of the drawing, see Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), I, p.360; illustrated in Smyth, op. cit. (note 7), fig.6. 19 Most historians attributed the drawing to Bronzino. For details of the controversy up to 1992, see Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), I, p.257; and Costamagna, op. cit.
18. St Mark, by Agnolo Bronzino. 1526. Panel, diameter 77 cm. (Capponi chapel, S. Felicita, Florence).
19. St Luke, here attributed to Jacopo Pontormo. 1526. Panel, diameter 77 cm. (Capponi chapel, S. Felicita, Florence).
20. St John, by Jacopo Pontormo. 1526. Panel, diameter 77 cm. (Capponi chapel, S. Felicita, Florence).
(note 17), p.187. More recently Pilliod, op. cit. (note 17), p.61, attributed the St Luke to Bronzino; and Tazartes, op. cit. (note 16), p.78, to Pontormo. 20 Illustrated in Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), II, fig.251. 21 Craig Smyth, op. cit. (note 7), p.189, defended an attribution of the St Matthew entirely to Pontormo by noting that the painting shows ‘a fluid, swift touch, rich yet delicate and soft, with tiny strokes brushed lightly in many directions’. 22 Illustrated in Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), II, fig.219. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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21. Fig.10 with panel joints indicated at the vertical.
22. Fig.10 with panel joints indicated at the diagonal.
defined it as conveying ‘subdued pain and wonder’.23 The saint’s disquiet anticipates the more unnerving feelings conveyed by the Virgin and by the youth at Christ’s shoulder in the chapel altarpiece of 1526–27;24 so does the anatomy of his head and face. The British Museum drawing retains the Evangelist’s physiognomy and emotional intensity (Fig.14). The return of the St Matthew tondo to its former site in the Capponi chapel is anticipated, but delayed by uncertainty as to its proper orientation. We can expect little help from published photographs to resolve the problem of how Pontormo intended the painting to be viewed, because they were taken entirely in the conservation laboratory and so reflect the personal intent of the conservator. Almost invariably they show the saint leaning counterclockwise, as in Fig.10. In this case the poplar boards that comprise the support are oriented vertically (Fig.21), the painting thus sitting entirely on the centreboard. However, the arrangement is inconsistent with the findings of Roberta Olson in her book on Renaissance tondi;25 who points out that structural boards in Renaissance tondi are almost always positioned diagonally, with the seams angled ‘from lower left to the upper right’, to balance stress and lessen warping. Accordingly, the St Matthew tondo should be rotated clockwise, though in what degree is uncertain. A rotation of the tondo to the right at a 45 degree angle is not a satisfactory solution (Fig.22), as Rossi Scarzanella points out.26 Indeed, the figure so oriented is compositionally awkward. However, noting that the boards of tondi in the Renaissance were also occasionally arranged vertically and horizontally, she suggests that the intended position of the figure within the tondo would be obvious had the original compositional equilibrium of the painting been preserved. It is not, she concludes, because the
damaged right arm and elbow – the means by which Pontormo would have established compositional equilibrium – were arbitrarily reconstructed during the 1935–36 restoration.27 I believe that compositional equilibrium can be recovered with the help of the all-important British Museum drawing. It is, of course, possible that Pontormo was not concerned with problems of stress and warping, because of his irrational temperament or because he had braced the rear of the poplar boards of the tondo with a strip of wood placed on its horizontal diameter. Therefore, the question of the proper positioning of the figure in the circle should be studied in the context of Renaissance tondi in general and the tondi in the Capponi chapel in particular. In the Renaissance, compositions in circular formats, whether they represent the Virgin and Child, individual saints, allegorical children or portraits, display figures upright and centred or balanced in some manner, if more than one is represented.28 However, an upright posture for St Matthew, because he leans over energetically and because we are so accustomed by photographs to imagine him rotated counterclockwise (Fig.10), would not be easy to justify were it not for the British Museum copy in which the saint’s head and torso are centred and his arm and elbow are fully formed (Fig.14). But the saint’s elbow (the part of the limb that is particularly relevant to our discussion) does not touch the lower centre of the circular frame and does not visually anchor his inclined torso. Thus compositional equilibrium is denied at this stage in the evolution of the painting.29 The situation worsens with the tondo rotated either as in Fig.10 or as in Fig.22. In the latter, St Matthew’s elbow is still off-centre and he leans forward more precariously than in the drawing. In the former, the exaggerated backward twist of the
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29 Cox Rearick, op. cit. (note 7), p.395, no.A124, believes that the saint was originally exhibited as in the drawing. 30 In a photograph in the Archivio Fotografico dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, seemingly taken in the 1990s, the tondo is turned slightly clockwise, with the figure near the upper centre. In this case the tondo rests entirely on the central board, which would cause undue stress on the joints. For an illustration of the photograph, see Bonsanti, op. cit. (note 4), p.96, fig.5.6.
Smyth, op. cit. (note 7), p.189. Illustrated in Berti, op. cit. (note 16), pp.246 and 247. 25 R.J.M. Olson: The Florentine Tondo, Oxford and New York 2000, p.167. 26 Rossi Scarzanella, op. cit. (note 6), pp.217–18. 27 Ibid., p.217. 28 See Olson, op. cit. (note 25), figs.A64 and A64; and H. Saalman: Filippo Brunelleschi. The Buildings, London 1993, pl.242. 24
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body and the extreme diagonal thrust of the shoulders give the impression of a figure in endless rotation. Equilibrium is attained with the tondo turned so that the boards of the support slant from lower left to upper right to a lesser degree than in Fig.22. At the same time, as in the British Museum drawing, the saint’s head and torso are aligned on the vertical diameter of the circle and the diagonal thrust of his shoulders is reduced, with the elbow close enough to the lower centre to anchor the figure and establish equilibrium.30 My claim that St Matthew should be displayed upright and compositionally centred is corroborated in a comparison with the other three Evangelists. St Luke exemplifies this compositional standard, because the figure can only be installed vertically (Fig.19). Whether this holds for St Mark and St John is more problematic, because, like St Matthew, the figures seem not predisposed to be set up vertically. Nor has a study of the surfaces of these tondi and St Luke revealed the structures of their wooden supports. Photographs of the St Mark, most of which were taken in the Laboratorio di Restauro, show him leaning counterclockwise (Fig.18). On the other hand, photographs of the saint taken in situ in 1940–45, in 1968 and today (Fig.23) show him paired, correctly I think, with St Luke in his placement.31 The pairing of the two figures is, as I will presently explain, a matter of decorative consistency. Photographs of the St John also were mostly taken in the Laboratorio di Restauro. They show him largely leaning energetically to the right and looking without purpose over the frame of the altarpiece into the distance (Fig.20).32 Shearman rightly objected to this positioning of the saint, but I disagree with his alternative proposal (which he did not illustrate) that the saint should be turned so as to look down at the Virgin in the altarpiece below.33 In this case the composition would be acutely unbalanced. A more appropriate posture for the saint, I believe, is how he is currently seen in the pendentive by a visitor standing in the centre of the chapel (Fig.23). The direction of his gaze is appropriate for an author of a Gospel: he looks heavenwards (but not in the direction of the chapel dome) to seek inspiration for what he is to write about the life of Christ. As such, he behaves like St Luke. Moreover, although Pontormo created a symbiosis between John and the painting’s circular format, with the saint’s sloping posture and long, continuously arched drapery, the torso is at the central axis and the head very nearly so (not exceptional in tondi).34 Pontormo achieved compositional equilibrium in this way and with the arms arranged in a rectilinear configuration, the right one extending along the bottom of the painting. So, as we view them today in the chapel (the copy of the St Matthew is installed approximately as I propose for the original), the four Evangelists are physically complementary and establish a decorative harmony such as we have come to expect in the Renaissance. The Evangelists are basically centred: intersecting diagonal lines drawn across the vault would bisect all four figures (Fig.23). Two Evangelists – Luke and Mark – are positioned straight up on one side of the chapel. On the other
31
The 1940–45 photograph is illustrated in B. Paolozzi Strozzi: ‘Di un ramo di gigli del Pontormo e di molte finissimi pietre’, Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43 (1999), p.54, fig.4. The 1968 photograph is illustrated in H. Klotz: Filippo Brunelleschi: the early works and the medieval tradition, transl. H. Keith, London 1990, pl.VIII; and L.A. Waldman: ‘New light on the Capponi Chapel is S. Felicita’, The Art Bulletin 84 (2002), p.299, fig.6.
23. Vault of the Capponi chapel, S. Felicita, Florence, showing the copy of St Matthew in place (lower left).
side of the chapel John and Matthew are similarly upright, they lean over at the same angle and their right shoulders project up in the same way: the four Evangelists are complementary also psychologically: in diagonally opposite corners Matthew and Mark engage the visitor in the chapel, while John and Luke are absorbed in the contemplation of God. Appendix 1. Payment to Giuseppe Colpi, a carpenter, for taking down the altarpiece in the Capponi chapel and its frame for restoration by a painter, and subsequently replacing it in the chapel, and for removing the tondi from the vault and replacing them after their restoration. (Archivio Storico Parrocchiale di S. Felicita, MS 349, Il Patrimonio di S. Felicita (hereafer cited as ASPSF), 11th May to 9th October 1840). Il patrimonio di Santa Felicita, dare a Giuseppe Colpi felagname per gl’appresso lavori fatti dal 11 maggio al 9 ottobre 1840. Nella cappella della nobil casa Capponi smontato la tavola e suo cornicione dell’altare, e la detta tavola sistemata per restaurarsi dal pittore, e in seguito riporto e rimontatura di tutto al posto; e piu’ smontattura e rimontatura delle quattro tavole tonde che sono nelle quattro cantonate della volta in detta cappella, le quali sono state parimente restaurate dal pittore, tal lavoro fatto da no. 12 – uomini . . . Lire 96.23.4. 2. Members of the Capponi family discuss with the architect Roster where to place the four tondi and pass directions to the mason Giorgi Casimirro. (ASPSF, sezione Ammistrativa, MS 387, Entrate e Uscite, 1876–77). . . . e concertare i Signori Capponi con Arch. Roster dove esser migliore la positura de’ 4 tondi e passarne ordine al Giorgi. [= Giorgi Casimirro, muratore].
32 In one published photograph the tondo is turned radically counterclockwise so that the saint looks vertically upwards and flips backwards. For an illustration, see G. Nicco Fasola: Pontormo del cinquecento, Florence 1947, fig.22. 33 Shearman, op. cit. (note 17), p.21. 34 The Virgin’s head is often off-centre and her body centred in representations of the Holy Family in tondi.
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‘My colossus, my overgrown child’: Anne Seymour Damer’s statue of George III in Edinburgh by JOHN McLINTOCK
HORACE WALPOLE RECORDS that in the winter of 1787 his favourite cousin and goddaughter, the Hon. Anne Seymour Damer1 (1749–1828; Fig.24), ‘at the desire of her uncle Lord Frederick Campbell, [. . .] modelled for the new records office at Glasgow [sic] a statue of King George III seven feet high in clay, which she desires to execute in marble’ (Figs.25 and 26).2 In 1787 Damer was already an established amateur sculptor who in 1781 had executed Niobe, her first work in marble, and had been an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, since 1784.3 She had also only recently completed what were to become her best-known works, the masks of Thame and Isis for the keystones of the bridge at Henley-onThames, Oxfordshire (c.1784–86).4 Until then her works had comprised reduced-scale portrait busts – mostly of women or boys – animal sculptures and reliefs. Following the public success of her colossal masks, Damer’s talents were to be fully tested by what was to be her only over-life-sized freestanding full-length portrait. As a female sculptor, Damer was a highly unusual phenomenon in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,5 and her reputation has consequently been obscured by questions of gender, class, sexuality and professionalism.6 Amateur status was appropriate to her social position, both as a member of the nobility and as a woman. Indeed, without her privileged background, family and social connections and financial independence, it is highly unlikely that she could ever have explored and developed her skills as a sculptor. Lord Frederick Campbell (1729–1816),7 Damer’s maternal uncle, had, as Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, been instrumental in 1772 in securing the appointment of Robert8 and James Adam as architects of the new Register House (Fig.28) in Edinburgh, the first purpose-built public record repository in the British Isles. In 1787 this major enlightenment project was nearing completion and a public statue was both an expression of
On various aspects of this article I have benefited from discussions with Susan Benforado-Bakewell, Philip Ward-Jackson, Fiona Pearson and Graciela Ainsworth. I would like to thank Marjorie Trusted, Linda Ramsay, Alison Rosie and Margot Wright for their comments on an earlier version. The frequently cited publication The World and Fashionable Advertiser changed its name between October and December 1787 and is referred to throughout as The World. References are taken from several different sources including cuttings at the Paul Mellon Centre, London. 1 Walpole was a first cousin of Damer’s father, the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, and was, therefore, Damer’s first cousin once removed. In her childhood he had acted as Damer’s guardian during her parents’ absences abroad; and on his death in 1797 Walpole left her a life-rent of his beloved Strawberry Hill. The only published biography of Damer is the rather outmoded P. Noble: Anne Seymour Damer: a woman of art and fashion 1748–1828, London 1908; her life and art are comprehensively surveyed and analysed in S. Benforado: ‘Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828) sculptor’, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (University of New Mexico, 1986); for a subsequent reassessment of her artistic career, see A. Yarrington: ‘The female pygmalion: Anne Seymour Damer, Allan Cunningham and the writing of a woman sculptor’s life’, The Sculpture Journal 1 (1997), pp.32–44; her sexuality is examined by A. Elfenbein: Romantic genius: the prehistory of a homosexual role, Columbia 1999, pp.91–124; Damer’s life for the decade 1787–97 was recently the subject of a well-researched, fictionalised biography; E. Donoghue: Life mask, London 2004.
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24. Anne Seymour Damer, by William Greatbach, after Richard Cosway. Published 1857. Stipple engraving, 23 by 14 cm. (National Portrait Gallery, London).
gratitude to George III for approving the necessary funds,9 and a statement of loyalty to the Hanoverian monarchy in Scotland’s capital city (see Appendix 1 below).10 The Henley commission had come to Damer through her father, the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway,11 and her uncle would also have been keen to use his influence to promote her standing as a sculptor. Although it was not until 1830 that the charge of nepotism first appeared in print, there can be little doubt that the family relationship was a decisive factor in the offer of the commission.12 The choice of a London-based sculptor was not in itself surprising, as Scottish 2
Strawberry Hill Visitors’ Book (Yale University, New Haven), list of Damer’s works, c.1776–97, in W. Lewis, ed.: Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, London 1944, XII, p.272. 3 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), p.139. 4 Ibid., pp.151–54. 5 B. Read: Victorian sculpture, London 1983, p.79. Miss Charlotte Boyle (1769–1831) was regarded by contemporaries as the ‘nearest amateur rival’ to Damer as a female sculptor; see The Star (8th August 1791). Damer had herself trained a certain Miss Ogle in modelling; letter from Horace Walpole to Sir Horatio Mann, Saturday 7th May 1785; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XI, p.576. 6 See Yarrington, op. cit. (note 1), passim; and Elfenbein op. cit. (note 1), passim. 7 Lord Frederick Campbell was the second surviving son of the 4th Duke of Argyll. His sister, Lady Mary Campbell, Countess of Ailesbury, had a daughter, Lady Mary Bruce, by her first marriage to the 3rd Earl of Ailesbury (died 1747), and was the mother of Anne Damer by her second marriage to the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway in 1747. In 1757 Lady Mary Bruce married the 3rd Duke of Richmond. Campbell and Anne Damer enjoyed a close relationship as uncle and niece, and they were appointed joint executors by Walpole in his will; K. Garlick and A. Macintyre, eds.: The Diary of Joseph Farington, London and New Haven 1979, III, p.786. Both were born at the Campbell seat of Combe Bank, Kent, and both are buried in the family vault at the nearby Sundridge church. Campbell has also been credited with
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25. George III, by Anne Seymour Damer. 1790–94. Carrara marble and gilt metal, 270 by 119 by 88 cm. (General Register House, Edinburgh; photograph by M. Brooks).
26. Fig.25 viewed from behind.
patrons and public institutions regularly commissioned sculptures from London owing to the almost total absence of a Scottish sculpture trade in the eighteenth century.13 While most public works are well documented, with preliminary drawings, correspondence, bills and receipts, no mention of the statue has been discovered in the detailed accounts for the building of the Register House; indeed, the informal nature of
the commission means that such contractual records are unlikely ever to have existed.14 Any preliminary drawings15 would have been destroyed after Damer’s death at her request, along with the bulk of her correspondence, notebooks and other papers.16 Nor have the terracotta or original plaster model survived.17 We have therefore to rely on the correspondence and journals of contemporaries, the society and gossip columns of newspapers
presenting Giuseppe Cerrachi’s statue of Damer as the Muse of Sculpture to the British Museum; A. Dawson: Portrait sculpture. A catalogue of the British Museum collection, c.1675–1975, London 1999, pp.12 and 89. 8 Robert Adam and Lord Frederick Campbell were friends; Campbell was to be one of the pall-bearers at Adam’s funeral in 1792. Adam had first been consulted by Campbell about additions to Ardincaple Castle, Argyll, in 1764, although drawings were not produced until 1774. He also designed two new wings for Campbell’s seat at Combe Bank, Kent (1775–77); see D. King: The complete works of Robert and James Adam, Oxford 2001, pp.213, 214 and 220–22. 9 George III’s generosity had already been acknowledged in the inscription on the foundation stone of Register House laid in 1774: ‘CONSERVANDIS TABULIS PUBLICIS
Scottish patrons in the eighteenth century’, in F. Pearson, ed.: exh. cat. Virtue and vision: sculpture and Scotland 1540–1990, Edinburgh (National Galleries of Scotland) 1991, pp.46–48. 14 Lord Frederick Campbell’s private papers do not appear to have survived, perhaps as a result of the destructive fire in 1807 at Combe Bank. 15 In 1790 it was reported that Damer’s practice was to begin modelling without a preliminary sketch; The World (9th February 1790). 16 Damer’s will instructed her executors to destroy all her papers; see Annual biography and obituary, London 1829, XIII, pp.135–36. Damer’s surviving papers are divided between commonplace books and letters at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington; correspondence with Mary Berry at the British Library, London; letters at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; and letters to Sir Charles Hotham-Thompson at the Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull. 17 The executory sale of the contents of Damer’s library and studio at Upper Brook Street on 21st and 24th July 1828 included a number of unidentified ‘terracotta and plaster models and casts’; The Times (17th and 23rd July 1828). It has not been possible to trace the studio sale catalogue. She bequeathed her other property, York House, Twickenham, together with its studio and gallery, to her cousin Lady Johnston, wife of Sir Archibald Johnston; Annual biography and obituary, op. cit. (note 16), p.135.
POSITUM EST ANNO MVIILXXIV MUNIFICENTIA OPTIMI ET PIENTISSIMI REGIS GEORGII
R. and J. Adam: Works in Architecture, New York 1980, p.10. Around the same time a bronze group of George III and Father Thames (installed in 1789) was commissioned from John Bacon the Elder for Sir William Chambers’s near contemporary Somerset House, London. 11 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.81 and 82. 12 A. Cunningham: Lives of the most eminent British painters, sculptors and architects, 2nd ed., London 1830, III, p.260. 13 M. Baker: ‘Proper ornaments for a library or grotto. London sculptors and their TERTII’;
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and published guides to Edinburgh to construct an account of the commissioning and making of this work. However, a statue does appear in two drawings by Robert Adam which pre-date the commission. His sketch for the south elevation of Register House, probably dating from 1769 or 1770, has a robed statue in the middle bay above the main entrance (Fig.27).18 This may have been influenced by the abandoned Morton-Baldwin design of 1767, in which a classical statue stood in a niche under the portico.19 By the time the contract drawing was signed in 1772 the façade had been redesigned and the statue omitted (Fig.28). At the centre of the building is a top-lit domed rotunda (Fig.29), fifty feet in diameter and eighty feet in height (15.24 by 24.38 metres), an impressive public space designed to allow access to the ground and first floors and to house the public registers.20 The king’s statue is first shown in the centre of the rotunda in a pencil sketch added by Adam to an unfinished drawing (Fig.30) from the pre-1779 design phase. Encircled by the ground-floor arcade and protected by a railing, the crowned and robed figure rose on its pedestal to just below the level of the first-floor gallery.21 A lack of funds led to work being suspended in 1779, when the building was no more than a shell. When construction resumed in 1785, the earlier monumental design was simplified and the rotunda opened up by narrowing the gallery and replacing the supporting arcade with brackets.22 A contemporary drawing of the rotunda, while closely resembling the final
design, features a classical bust above the main doorway but no statue.23 This may not be particularly significant, however, as the statue was left out of an official engraving of the rotunda produced in 1800.24 The claim made in the New guide to the city of Edinburgh (1790) that it was ‘intended to place a statue of his present Majesty in front of the building, with a lion and unicorn above the centinels [i.e. sentries] boxes’ on the parapet wall, may refer to an earlier proposal, which had been rejected in favour of the rotunda.25 Throughout 1787 the commission was the subject of a series of puffs in The World and Fashionable Advertiser (hereafter The World), a scandal and gossip sheet which normally afforded Damer absurd praise. On 5th April it was reported that the king was sitting to Damer for a ‘bust’,26 and in May, that the clay model of a ‘colossal’ statue of the king, 7 feet 6 inches high without its pedestal (2.9 metres), was already nearly completed.27 When the king and queen visited Damer’s London studio the following month to see her at work on the full-scale model, they complimented her on the ‘steadiness of her hand and her feet’, as she clambered around the specially erected scaffold.28 Owing to the ‘exquisite’ nature of the clay model, it was confidently predicted that the finished work would rank among the ‘best sculpture of the age’.29 Indeed, there was already speculation that once completed, the statue might be engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, after having first been drawn by Lady Diana Beauclerk, another aristocratic artist whose work was extravagantly praised by Walpole.30 One of the principal ways in which the work of contemporary sculptors might be promoted and disseminated was through the circulation of such graphic reproductions.31 However, while a number of her other works of the 1780s and 1790s were engraved around this time, the George III was not to be one of them.32 The years from 1787 to 1790 were to be among the most personally eventful and artistically productive of Damer’s life. Then at the height of her creativity, she is known to have finished ten terracottas and eight marbles, and to have exhibited ten works at the Royal Academy.33 In April 1789 Walpole introduced Damer to Miss Mary Berry (1763–1852), with whom she quickly formed an intense and lasting romantic friendship.34 Following the suicide of her estranged husband the Hon. John Damer in 1776, Damer’s close friendships with women and her unconventional lifestyle as a female aristocrat, an artist and a ‘bluestocking’ had given rise to suspicions of lesbianism which were to pursue her intermittently for the rest of
18 Sketch of south elevation of Register House, Edinburgh; London, Sir John Soane’s Museum (hereafter cited as Soane), Adam vol.10/68. 19 For a description of the Morton-Baldwin design, see A. Tait: ‘The Register House: the Adam building’, in G. Donaldson and D. Withrington, eds.: The Scottish Historical Review 53 (1974), pp.118–19 and pl.3. 20 Adam, op. cit. (note 9), p.10. Top-lit domed rotundas were also employed by Robert and James Adam for the library at Lansdowne House and for the sculpture gallery at Newby House; see E. Harris: The genius of Robert Adam. His interiors, London 2001, pp.130, 131, 217 and 218. 21 Undated plan and section of Register House rotunda; Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland (hereafter cited as NAS), RHP6082/48. A similarly robed and crowned statue of the king occupies a niche in a design by Adam for a proposed arch at Hyde Park Corner (dated 1778); London, British Library, Maps K.Top 27.26 c2. 22 Adam, op. cit. (note 9), pl.31. 23 Sale, Sotheby’s, London, James Watt Sale, 20th March 2003, pp.134 and 135. 24 J. Basire: Longitudinal section through the centre line of the office for the Public Records of Scotland, Edinburgh 1800; NAS, RHP60835. 25 A new guide to the city of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 1790, p.63. The design for the screen wall was finalised in 1786 with no mention of a sculptural grouping. Figures of a lion and unicorn also appear at skyline level in Adam’s sketch plan and elevation of a
guardhouse for the Register House; Soane, Adam vol.1/69. 26 Leeds, Henry Moore Institute, R. Gunnis: ‘Dictionary of British Sculptors, with additions and annotations by John Physick’, typescript, supplement 3; and The World (5th April 1787). 27 Ibid. (5th May 1787). 28 Ibid. (9th June 1787). 29 Ibid. (14th June 1787). 30 Public Advertiser (17th May 1787): ‘When Mrs Damer has finished her grand statue of his Majesty – it is the eager wish of the World – and eager the World will be, for selfish gratification – to have a drawing made of it by Lady D. Beauclerk – and from thence, Bartolozzi to engrave’; see also The World (13th September 1787). 31 M. Baker: ‘Sculpture and its reproduction in the eighteenth century’, in A. Hughes and E. Ranfft, eds.: Sculpture and its reproductions, London 1997, pp.72 and 73. 32 Engravings of the following works are noted in Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), nos.19, 26 and 33, as dating from around this time: Two sleeping dogs (J. Clary, 1785); Osprey eagle (J. Roberts and J. Jones, 1790); and Thame (S. Girton and J. Parker: Boydell’s history of the principal rivers, London 1796, II, frontispiece). Her George III was not to be reproduced until 1908, when it appeared as a photographic plate in Noble’s biography of Damer; Noble, op. cit. (note 1), opposite p.75; it is also illustrated in M. Sanderson: ‘A proper repository’. The building of the General Register House, Edinburgh 1992, fig.15, p.11.
27. Sketch for south elevation of Register House, Edinburgh, by Robert Adam. Undated (1769 or after). Graphite, 28.5 by 43.8 cm. (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London).
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28. Elevation of the South Front of a Building for the Register Office in Scotland, by Robert Adam. 1772. Pen, ink and watercolour, 47.5 by 62.2 cm. (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh).
29. Section through the centre line of the Register Office from South to North at Edinburgh, by Robert Adam. Undated. Pen, ink and wash, 49.3 by 59.8 cm. (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London).
her life.35 She spent most of the season in London, but between July and September each year she would visit her parents at their Park Place estate in Berkshire, and her half-sister, the Duchess of Richmond, at Goodwood. Uncomfortable at formal events and large social gatherings, she preferred visiting the houses of family and friends and attending the theatre.36 April 1787 saw the beginning of Damer’s passion for private theatricals, with her debut as Mrs Lovemore in the comedy The Way to Keep Him on the stage of the Duke of Richmond’s new theatre at Richmond House.37 The decoration of the theatre was also under Damer’s supervision, and for the performance attended by the king and queen on 17th May, Mrs Lovemore’s apartment featured side panels painted with representations of her busts of her mother, Lady Ailesbury (c.1787), and her friend Lady Melbourne (c.1784).38 When in London, she was able to work in the studio of her house in Sackville Street where she lived from 1778 until late 1794.39 The studio was a sanctuary to which she might retreat and continue working even when receiving family, close friends and fashionable society.40 Her daily routine was to rise early, read for an hour, and then work in her studio until late morning,41 her gown protected by a ‘coarse dress’ or apron.42 During the summer months she would take advantage
of the longer days to resume her labours in the early evening.43 In the winter there was a stove to heat the studio.44 Work on the clay model of the king’s statue was finished by June 1788,45 and in August the sculptor visited Spa, near Liège, in the company of her ailing cousin Miss Caroline Campbell.46 On their return to England in September, Damer wrote from Park Place to her friend Edward Jerningham that she hoped to be in London by early November as she was ‘very impatient to be settled to my work’.47 As it turned out, she was back in London by 21st October 1788.48 On 15th April 1789 The World reported that the plaster cast of the king’s statue was ‘nearly finished’.49 A seven-foot-high terracotta model (2.1 metres) was produced soon after in preparation for work beginning on the marble.50 Such a large commission would have entailed a considerable outlay in terms of materials. In this case the marble – a single block weighing nine tons – arrived from Carrara in April 1789,51 at a cost of £300, including purchase and freight.52 A later story that a block of marble, which had originally been imported to Leith 150 years before for an aborted statue of Cromwell, was utilised for the George III has no basis in fact.53 In September 1789 we learn for the first time that the ‘figure is in the robes of Sovereignty, and upon a pedestal’.54 The following month, and with its usual
33 A. Graves: The Royal Academy of Arts. A complete dictionary of contributors 1769–1904, London 1905, p.236. 34 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), p.25. 35 In June 1791 William Combe, who had been one of the first to abuse Damer’s character in a satire published the year after the suicide of her husband, offered to reprint his works omitting all derogatory references to her. Initially inclined to accept his apology, she was eventually persuaded by Berry that to do this would be a mistake in that it might revive the original allegation; Elfenbein, op. cit. (note 1), pp.98 and 99. 36 Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XI, p.297; and T. Lewis, ed.: Journal and correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783 to 1852, 2nd ed., London 1866, I, p.349. 37 Noble, op. cit. (note 1), pp.95, 96 and 98. The ‘epilogue’, which had been specially written for Damer by General Burgoyne, alluded to her talents as a sculptor; An asylum for fugitive pieces, in prose or verse, London 1793, IX, pp.250–52. 38 The World (18th May 1787). The scenery painter was John Dixon (c.1740–1811), the former engraver. 39 Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XI, p.8, note 6; and XII, p.106, note 3. 40 K. Fitzlyon: The Memoirs of Princess Dashkov, London 1958, p.175: ‘For it was not in her boudoir that her friends found her – rather did they find her wrestling with a block of marble, trying to impart to it the shape she wanted. But it was a sanctum open only to her closest friends. She was very modest by nature and would never
parade her talents and her learning’; see also L. Melville: The Berry Papers, London 1914, pp.39, 40 and 49. 41 Ibid., pp.32, 34 and 40. 42 Edinburgh Advertiser (1st February 1799). 43 Melville, op. cit. (note 40), pp.29, 32 and 34. 44 Letter from Damer, London, to Edward Jerningham, October 1791; L. Bettany: Edward Jerningham and his friends, London 1919, p.184. 45 The World (23rd June 1788). 46 Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (8th August 1788). 47 Letter from Damer, Park Place, to Jerningham, 26th September 1788; Bettany, op. cit. (note 44), p.174. 48 Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (22nd October 1788). 49 The World (15th April 1789). 50 Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XII, p.274. 51 The World (14th April 1789). 52 Ibid. (24th April 1789). 53 H.R. Duff: Culloden Papers, London 1815, p.xxxix, note 65. A partially worked block of freestone reputedly intended for a civic statue of Cromwell was reportedly in an Edinburgh garden in 1802; see A. Campbell: A journey from Edinburgh through parts of North Britain, London 1802, I, p.195. 54 The World (30th September 1789). the burlington m a g a z i n e
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30. Detail of design for rotunda of General Register House, with sketch by Robert Adam of a crowned statue on pedestal. Undated (c.1776). Pen, ink and graphite, 49.8 by 60.4 cm. (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh).
excess, The World claimed that the statue was being ‘spoken of by connoisseurs as one of the finest productions of the age’.55 Walpole notes that Damer did not begin the task of carving the statue in marble until 1790.56 While professional sculptors, such as her friend John Flaxman,57 were increasingly content to rely on studio assistants to translate their models into marble with the aid of a pointing device, Damer seems to have resolved in the mid1780s to undertake all the carving herself.58 In a letter to his friend Horace Mann, dated 7th May 1785, Walpole proudly recounts how he persuaded his cousin to demonstrate publicly her skills as a sculptor by carving the Henley masks herself, instead of handing over the models to a trained sculptor, as was her intention.59 Freed from the financial constraints of running a business, she was able to retain direct control over all stages of production regardless of the impact on her work. While she was engaged in carving the statue between 1790 and 1793, Damer is not known to have finished any other work until she produced a terracotta bust of Mary Berry in late 1793. Her output was not to revive again until 1802, when she began a series devoted to modern heroes.
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Ibid. (9th November 1789). Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XII, p.274. 57 M. Whinney: Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830, London 1964, p.337. 58 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.152–54. 59 Letter from Walpole to Horace Mann, Saturday 7th May 1785; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XXV, pp.575–79. 60 Cunningham, op. cit. (note 12), III, p.252. 61 London, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, British Art Exhibition newscuttings (facsimiles), 1760–1793 (hereafter cited as PMC, BAE newscuttings), Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (9th February 1790); and The World (14th May 1790). 62 Ibid. (28th April and 1st May 1790). 63 These symptoms, from which Damer suffered for much of her life, appear to be consistent with hypothyroidism. She was convinced of the therapeutic value of her 56
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Denied access to the Royal Academy Schools’ life class as a woman, Damer had had to improvise her own training as a sculptor. Instructed in modelling by Giuseppe Cerrachi (1751–1801) and in stone-carving in the workshop of John Bacon the Elder (1740–99), she continued to develop her technique through her private study of antique sculpture in England and on the Continent.60 Perhaps as a consequence of the challenge posed by a full-length human subject, Damer now chose to complete her education as a sculptor by taking anatomy lessons from Dr William Cruickshank, the anatomist, in January or February 1790.61 A few months later Cruickshank was fulsomely praising the anatomical accuracy of the figures in his pupil’s recently completed bas-relief Coriolanus and Volumnia for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery.62 Throughout her long life, Damer was subject to chronic illhealth, and often complained of tiredness and the cold, damp English weather.63 A bout of illness followed by convalescence abroad meant that little progress was made on the statue between June 1790 and May 1791. After suffering from an unspecified ‘inflammation’ in June,64 Damer was reported to be resting at her parents’ Berkshire estate at the end of July 1790.65 Her return to London and to the ‘Promethean art’ in mid-September that same year, which was enthusiastically announced in The Times, was, however, to be shortlived.66 After cutting her leg in a bad fall from her ‘pedestal’ in early October 1790, Sir William Fordyce, her physician, ordered Damer to take a trip abroad to a warmer climate, as her health was too ‘delicate’ for a London winter.67 On 8th November she sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon, where she remained until 20th February the following year.68 She then crossed to Spain, where she visited Seville, Granada and Madrid, before returning to London through Bordeaux on 12th May 1791.69 On 24th May 1791 The Times reported that ‘Mrs Damer is returned in perfect health from her Spanish excursion – and, as lovers of the Fine Arts, it is our sincere wish that she may not again lose it, in pursuing the labours of her chisel – the statue of his Majesty will now, in all probability be completed’.70 In fact, the statue had had a narrow escape during her absence when a storm in early February 1791 brought a chimney crashing through the roof of her studio, damaging a few casts but fortunately leaving all but one of her own works, a terracotta Erinnys, untouched.71 Damer resumed work on the commission within days of her return to London and was soon complaining to Mary Berry of the large numbers of ‘turba nominum’, or society names, who crowded her studio.72 Those in Rome on the Grand Tour would often include a visit to the studio of Antonio Canova or another prominent sculptor in their itinerary. London sculptors followed this practice and opened their studios to polite society,
work; letter from Damer to Berry, 13th July 1791; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), pp.52–53. 64 Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XXXVIIII, p.473. Lady Mary Coke claimed that Damer had ‘made herself ill’ by attending her friend Charles James Fox’s speech at Westminster Hall; letter from Coke to the Earl of Strafford, Monday 7th June 1790; Edinburgh, National Register of Archives for Scotland, survey 859, vol.500. 65 The Times (27th July and 14th September 1790). 66 Ibid. (14th September 1790). 67 Letter from Walpole to Richard French, 20th October 1790; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XLII, pp.291 and 292. See also letter from Damer to Berry, 10th October 1790; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), p.26. Damer had injured a leg during her visit to Italy in May 1786; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XXV, p.654. 68 Ibid., XII, p.272; and XLII, p.292, note 4. 69 Noble, op. cit. (note 1), p.128; and The Times (2nd April 1790).
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enduring both the inconvenience and ill-informed comments in the hope of attracting potential patrons.73 While Damer may have seen an opportunity to demonstrate publicly that she did all the carving herself, the contemporary press appears to have had no doubts that she worked ‘without the smallest assistance from any other hand’.74 Damer’s ‘Spanish health’ did not last, and only two weeks after her return to England she took to her bed with a fever. She appears to have recovered by 8th June only to be badly shaken by another fall from her scaffold within a day or so of 20th June.75 She spent much of July recuperating at Park Place, before moving on to Goodwood and Felpham for August and September. Acutely aware that the commission was dragging on, Damer wrote to Mary Berry on 23rd September 1791 that she meant to stay at Strawberry Hill ‘only about a week or ten days and after that not be much out of town where I must settle to my work when I “can” work & get my “colossus” over, or it will never be finished’.76 In October she was able to tell Jerningham that she was indeed ‘settled to my work’.77 However, within the confines of her studio Damer had reservations about how the George III was turning out, and was prepared to consider making alterations even at this late stage in production. On Friday 14th October 1791 Damer wrote again from Park Place to Mary Berry, then in Paris, despairing that: My colossus, my overgrown child will not, for an age, be fit to present to you, nor can I myself form a certain judgement of it yet, for it should want space and position, and be like Punch and some other sovereigns, nothing off their own throne; but for this I can answer that you will not find me ‘blindly attached’ and now beforehand even entreat your severest criticism, it will more than probably be the only true criticism I shall hear. You will find me ready to alter what can be altered and to allow what can not, should it be a fault, however gross, such is my opinion of your ‘sixth sense’, that, had I been less unfortunately situated, I should even on that score alone often and often have entreated to see you and have asked your opinion, tho’ I confess that to the farrago of flattery and criticism I am constantly exposed to, I try to make myself as deaf as possible, yet not from conceit of the excellence of my talent – do not think that, for you would wrong me – merely from agreeing with you, in the scarcity of the ‘sixth sense’.78 The surviving correspondence between Damer and Berry reveals a preoccupation with their mutual feelings and health, with scant mention of sculpture or art. This letter, therefore, offers us a rare insight into Damer’s respect for Berry’s aesthetic judgment and her disregard for the uncritical praise of doting
70
Ibid. (24th May 1791). Letter from Walpole to Berry, 4th February 1791; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XI, p.190. On her return, Damer wrote to Berry that she ‘did not find much essential damage in my study, only everything moved, which has cost me time. My dog was not hurt; one scratch of an Erinnys, a little terra-cotta figure you may remember was broken, which I regret. I, however, have most of the pieces’; letter from Damer to Berry, 28th May 1791; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), p.36; and Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.200–02. 72 Letter from Damer to Berry, 27th May 1791; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), p.33. 73 Read, op. cit. (note 5), p.70. 74 Edinburgh Herald (3rd August 1795). 75 Letter from Walpole to Berry, 2nd June 1791; Lewis, op. cit. (note 2), XI, pp.281 and 282; and letters from Damer to Berry, 31st May 1791 and 20th June 1791; 71
31. Detail of Fig.25, showing crown and sceptre by Benjamin Vulliamy. 1794. Gilt metal, crown 32 by 35 by 36 cm. (General Register House, Edinburgh).
family and friends, most notably Walpole.79 Publicity for the commission was revived in January 1792 and visitors continued to throng her studio out of curiosity both about herself and the statue.80 Among them was Gouverneur Morris, the minister of the United States to France, who, following his visit in April 1792, observed that ‘it is a curious spectacle to see a delicate and fine woman with the chisel and mallet chipping a huge block of marble’.81 Between 20th July and 5th August 1793 the still incomplete sculpture was moved to the Leverian Museum in London and placed in the centre of the rotunda.82 The decision to exhibit the statue before the gilt-metal crown and sceptre (Fig.31) were
Melville, op. cit. (note 40), pp.38–42. 76 Ibid., p.77. 77 Letter from Damer, London, to Jerningham, October 1791; Bettany, op. cit. (note 44), p.184. 78 Melville, op. cit. (note 40), pp.86 and 87. 79 Damer may be referring here to the moral ‘sixth sense’ of good taste identified by abbé J.-B. Dubos in his Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 5th ed., Paris 1748, II, passim. 80 PMC, BAE newscuttings, The Oracle (25th January 1792). 81 A. Morris: Diary and letters of Gouverneur Morris, London 1838, I, p.527. Morris had first met Damer at a ‘drawing room’ held by Mrs Cosway in August 1789; ibid., I, pp.148 and 149. 82 The World (20th July and 5th August 1793). the burlington m a g a z i n e
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The decision to exhibit the George III at the Leverian Museum rather than at the Royal Academy is not as surprising as it might at first seem. In the annual exhibitions at Somerset House painting was then pre-eminent, with sculpture being relegated to the dark and inconvenient accommodation of the Life Academy.85 On the other hand, Sir Ashton Lever’s museum, famed for its natural history and ethnological collections, had recently moved into new premises near Blackfriars Bridge, where the rotunda would have provided a more impressive space for displaying the statue and one that resembled its intended location in Edinburgh. Our most reliable guide to the viewing of the statue, in the absence of contemporary reviews, is provided by a series of advertisements placed in the London press in 1793 and 1794 by John Parkinson, the Museum’s enterprising new owner, with the intention of stimulating interest among fashionable society and the middle
classes. Addressed to the ‘nobility, gentry and public at large’ these advertisements, when read together, state that the ‘statue of the king, By the Hon. Mrs DAMER [. . .] approaches to a Colossal Size, and is Nearly eight feet high. It stands upon a Pedestal, Five Feet in Heighth [sic]; and it was designed and executed By the Hon. Mrs Damer, in carrara marble’, that ‘this beautiful, and much admired piece of Sculpture’ was completed in 1794 ‘by the superb addition of a Crown and Sceptre of exquisite workmanship, the performance of Mr vallamy [sic]’, and was ‘to be finally placed in the Centre of the General Register House, which by the King’s Munificence, has been erected for the security of and better arrangement of the Records of Scotland’. A single admission charge of one shilling gave access to both the statue and the Museum.86 Royal approval was signalled by the visit of Queen Charlotte and the four elder princesses to inspect the statue on 20th August 1793. The royal suite, which included Lord Frederick Campbell and General Conway, was apparently ‘much astonished’ at the unfinished work, receiving it in ‘the most flattering terms’. During their two-hour stay at the museum they were provided with a cold collation by Damer.87 Although it was announced in May 1794 that the recently completed statue would be leaving the Leverian in the summer,88 and then between June and September that it would ‘remain a short time longer’89 at the Museum, it was only removed from exhibition in the weeks following 9th April 1795.90 Renewed interest in the work following the addition of the crown and sceptre probably accounts for this extension of its display in London. The statue eventually arrived at Leith at the very end of July 1795, when it was immediately transferred to the Register House.91 There it was attracting curious crowds even before it was finally installed on a pedestal in the centre of the rotunda on Wednesday 5th August 1795.92 Morris, who a few years before had visited Damer while she was working on the statue in her studio, was one of the very first to view it in Edinburgh. His diary entry for 23rd September 1795 records his impressions: ‘At the register office is placed Mrs Damer’s statue of the reigning king. It is colossal, and placed on a very low pedestal, which has a bad effect; besides, the performance itself is very tame’.93 While it might be expected that the pedestal had accompanied the statue from the Leverian, we do not know what it looked like or if there was an inscription. Indeed, as the statue was located immediately above the main heating vent for the rotunda, it is possible that Adam designed a new (lower) pedestal with pierced grills to allow the hot air to circulate, a device which he had already utilised in his sculpture gallery at Newby Hall. Indents in the marble on either side of the statue’s base may be evidence of fixings, perhaps where the former was concealed within the rim of the pedestal. Adam’s rough sketch (Fig.30) appears to show a
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32. Detail of Fig.25, showing inscription in ancient Greek. (General Register House, Edinburgh).
added in May 1794 is unexplained, and may have been a political response to the execution of Louis XVI on 21st January 1793.83 Walpole relates that in 1794 Damer continued to work on the crown’s marble cap in her studio, prompting the following witty exchange from her Whig friends: Mrs Damer, having sent her statue of the king to Sir Ashton Lever’s museum before the crown was finished, was one morning modelling the cap from a piece of red velvet. Lord Derby (violent in opposition) and Miss Farren the actress came in: He said ironically to Mrs Damer ‘So I see you are making the red cap of liberty!’ ‘Yes’ said Miss Farren admirably, ‘but your lordship will observe that it is within the limits of the crown’.84
Ibid. (5th May 1794); and Morning Chronicle (6th May 1794). H. Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting, eds. F.W. Hilles and P.B. Daghlian, New Haven 1937, V, p.238. 85 A. Yarrington: ‘Art in the dark: viewing and exhibiting sculpture at Somerset House’, in D.H. Solkin, ed.: exh. cat. Art on the line, London (Courtauld Institute of Art) 2001, pp.173–87. 86 See the weekly The World (August–November 1793, January, February, May and June 1794); True Briton (2nd November 1793); The Star (30th November 1793); the weekly Morning Post and Fashionable World (July, August and September 1794). Cutting from an unidentified English newspaper of 1794; London, V. & A., National Art Library, press cuttings, 1686–1835, III, p.679. 87 Lloyd’s Evening Post (21st August 1793); St James’s Chronicle (20th–22nd August 1793); and Morning Chronicle (22nd August 1793). 88 The World (7th May 1794).
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The Morning Post and Fashionable World (23rd June and 23rd September 1794). The Morning Chronicle (9th and 16th April 1795). 91 Ibid. (1st August 1795); and Glasgow Courier (1st August 1795). 92 Edinburgh Herald (8th August 1795). 93 Morris, op. cit. (note 81), II, p.123. 94 The statue was moved from the centre of the rotunda c.1810 to make way for a new heating system and then to the western passageway in the course of modifications to the Register House by Robert Reid in the late 1820s. 95 The Times (4th October 1793). The alleged gift was also reported in the Edinburgh Gazetteer (15th October 1793): ‘We are informed that the statue of our most gracious Sovereign, intended to adorn the Register-office of this city, is a present from Mr Dundas, whose modesty has induced him to prefer it to his own effigy’. 96 As one of the barons of Exchequer in Scotland, Dundas had been one of the various dignitaries present at the laying of the foundation stone of the Register House
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protective grate, but it is not known if this was ever executed. The pedestal was almost certainly lost by the late 1820s, by which time the statue had already been moved twice.94 In October 1793 it was announced in The Times that the ‘statue of his Majesty, intended to adorn the Rotunda of the Register-office in Edinburgh, is a present from Mr. Dundas’.95 Henry Dundas, who was then Home Secretary and de facto political manager of Scotland, was a longstanding friend and political ally of Lord Frederick Campbell.96 There is, however, no other evidence to substantiate his involvement in the commission.97 On the other hand, Damer, who is known to have presented her works to a number of institutions,98 was clearly identified as the donor in an anonymous inscription proposed in February 1794 (see Appendix 1), and a similar claim was made in a guide published in 1797.99 The statue portrays a standing figure of a still youthful king arrayed in his coronation robes and St Edward’s crown, carrying the sceptre-with-the-cross in his right hand and grasping the sword hilt with his left (Fig.25). The pose is twisted, with the right arm across the body and the left leg slightly advanced. It is carved from four sections of marble; one large block for the main statue, a smaller section for the top of the head, and two sections for the base of the train. The base is inscribed in Greek ‘ANNA DAMER E LONDINAIA EPOIEI ’ (‘Anne Damer of London fecit’; Fig.32) – a formula she seems to have first adopted in 1785. By signing her works in ancient Greek, Damer was declaring her allegiance to the ‘true’ or Greek style. Similarly, by eschewing a highly polished finish for what might be achieved by the rasp and chisel, Damer was deliberately following what she would have understood to be the practice of the Greek sculptors she so admired.100 Her colouristic use of textural effects can be seen in the treatment of the hair, the cape and lining of the robe, and on the base where the marks of the drill, claw chisel and rasp are clearly visible.101 Cunningham, who only grudgingly admitted Damer to his Lives, singles out her works in marble for particular criticism as being uneven in quality and often rudely carved.102 He did, however, concede that her modelling was superior to her carving, and subtle nuances in the surface finish may indeed have been lost in the translation of a figure moulded out of soft clay into one chiselled from hard marble. Never intended to be a true likeness of George III, the statue is rather an idealised study of the majesty of kingship. One commentator, however, had predicted that the finished statue would have ‘more identity than in statuary is usual’.103 Damer’s own views on the improving nature of portraiture are known to us through her observation on Richard Cosway’s study of herself (Fig.24), that ‘portraits should be better where they so easily can, particularly where they can not, as well’.104 In his Tenth Discourse (1780), Sir Joshua Reynolds had argued that
owing to the prominence of the figure in full-length sculpture, form and attitude were more important in conveying sentiment and character than facial expression.105 It was essential, therefore, that the pose ‘should be seen clearly, and without any ambiguity, at the first glance of the eye’.106 In this respect the unusual attitude of the George III presents us with a puzzle. As a lifelong Whig, Damer could not have been expected to portray George III in anything other than a politically conservative manner. The rigid stance may, therefore, symbolise strong government, or, more particularly, the king’s determined defence of the rights of the Crown against the growing authority of the prime minister and parliament. The pose, which has no known classical precedent, may have been copied from the now lost statue of George I (Fig.33), dated 1718, from the series of English and British monarchs decorating the courtyard of the second Royal Exchange building in London. This standing figure was also dressed in coronation robes and held the sceptre across its chest in a similar manner.107 The conceptual similarity between
on 27th June 1774; Edinburgh Evening Courant (27th June 1774). 97 No trace of the alleged gift of the statue has been found in Dundas’s own surviving accounts and correspondence in the papers of the Dundas family (viscounts Melville) in the NAS, (GD51) and Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland (multiple archival references). 98 While she regularly made gifts of her works to family and friends, Damer is also known to have presented works to institutions, e.g. a marble bust Self-portrait to the Uffizi, Florence (c.1785–86); a marble bust of Horatio, Viscount Nelson to the City of London (1803); and a bronze bust of Sir Joseph Banks, Bt., to the British Museum (1814). 99 A new guide to the city of Edinburgh, 3rd ed., Edinburgh 1797, p.68; see also L. Simond: Journal of a tour and residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811, Edinburgh 1817, I, p.358. 100 J. Winckelmann: Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, transl. H.
Fuseli, 2nd ed., London 1767, pp.268–69. 101 Technical observations on the tool marks and physical condition of the sculpture are taken from a recent condition report; G. Ainsworth: ‘Marble Statue of George III by Anne Seymour Damer’, dated 18th June 2007, NAS. 102 Cunningham, op. cit. (note 12), III, pp.272–73. While her bust of Nelson in marble was criticised for its deadness, the version in the more fluid bronze has been regarded as a more animated and successful portrait, alongside her other bronzes and bronze-painted terracottas and plasters; Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), p.242. 103 The World (2nd February 1790). 104 Letter from Damer to Berry, 16th May 1791; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), p.29. 105 J. Reynolds: Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London 1797, I, pp.21 and 23. 106 Ibid., p.29. 107 A. Saunders: The Royal Exchange, London 1997, p.178, fig.65d. The Guardian Royal Exchange collection of drawings is now owned by the Mercers’ Company, London.
33. Sketch of statue of George I from the old Royal Exchange, London, by John Carter. c.1790. Pencil. (Reproduced courtesy of the Mercers’ Company, London).
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Adam’s early schematic sketches and Damer’s George III suggests that she may have collaborated with the architect on the general design. Contemporary opinion also credited her uncle Campbell with a formative influence on the project (see Appendix 2). In late-eighteenth century England there was a close relationship between art and the theatre, with actors being expected to study history paintings and ancient sculpture.108 There is no evidence, however, that the somewhat theatrical stance was inspired by Damer’s recently developed interest in acting.109 While the figure is not in the antique costume advocated by Reynolds, Damer avoided the ‘ill effects of figures clothed in
modern dress’110 by portraying the king in traditional coronation robes and regalia. By concealing much of the figure’s anatomy, the choice of heavy robes would also have reduced the technical challenges to the sculptor. As an intimate of Walpole and regular visitor at Strawberry Hill from her early childhood, it would be surprising if Damer had not been influenced by the fashion for Gothic art which existed alongside Neo-classicism. Indeed, in 1791 she wrote to Berry, praising the ‘simplicity & beauty’ of the architecture of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, following a visit there with her father – ‘I hope you admire gothic [. . .] gothic, in the grand style, quite turns my head when ever I see it’.111 The importance of contour and the skilful rendering of drapery, which Winckelmann had identified in Greek art,112 were also fundamental to Gothic.113 The combination of the severely classical face with more typically Gothic features, such as long drapery lines and theatrical regalia, is an example of Damer’s harmonious blending of the two ‘primitive’ styles. In the earlier part of her career, Damer sought to model her works on antique prototypes. A resemblance has been noted between the androgynous features and treatment of the hair in her Miss Farren as Thalia (1789) and in the antique head of Antinous in the Lansdowne collection, which she almost certainly would have known.114 Instead of showing the king in his familiar short tie-wig, Damer loosely knots the hair behind the neck letting it hang down the back in a queue. The way in which the hair is parted in the centre, brought back over the ears, and knotted at the nape of the neck is reminiscent of the hairstyle of classical and Hellenistic goddesses.115 Two antique busts which Damer might have used as models are the Athena (Fig.34), which had entered the Townley collection in 1784,116 and the Athena of Velletri, which had entered the Lansdowne collection in c.1771.117 Townley’s Athena had recently been ‘restored’ in Rome by Carlo Albacini (1777–1858) with a bronze helmet, and the presence of a such a metal headdress may have provided Damer with a classical precedent for dressing the king’s hair.118 Her skilful and naturalistic rendering of human hair should not be surprising in someone who excelled in the carving of long-haired, or ‘shock’ dogs. The George III is Damer’s only original work to experiment with polychromy through the use of gilt-metal attachments. There may have been a practical reason for this as the cap of maintenance is formed from a separate piece of marble, and metal attachments were often used in ancient Greece to conceal such joins.119 Projecting features such as the crown and sceptre, if carved from the same block, would also have been delicate and therefore vulnerable to damage. In 1787, the same year in which she modelled the George III, Damer had ‘restored’ Walpole’s antique basalt head of Jupiter Serapis by providing a replacement breast, repairing some of the head’s curls and
108 Sarah
117 S.
34. Bust of Athena. Roman copy of a Greek original of 4th century BC. Marble, with bronze helmet and drapery added by Carlo Albacini, 81.5 cm. high. (British Museum, London).
Siddons and Charles Kemble were praised for modelling their acting styles on classical statuary; S. West: The image of the actor, London 1991, pp.119–22. 109 Noble, op. cit. (note 1), pp.95, 96 and 98. 110 Reynolds, op. cit. (note 105), I, p.26. 111 Letter from Damer to Berry, 18th October 1791; Melville, op. cit. (note 40), p.5. 112 Winckelmann, op. cit. (note 100), pp.22, 24 and 29. 113 M. Whinney: Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830, ed. J. Physick, London 1988, p.284. 114 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), p.196. 115 D. Kleiner: Roman sculpture, London and New Haven 1992, p.139. 116 G. Vaughan: ‘Albacini and his English patrons’, Journal of the History of Collections 3 (1991), pp.191–92.
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Howard: ‘Ancient busts and the Cavaceppi and Albacini casts’, Journal of the History of Collections 3 (1991), pp.203 and 215, note 18. 118 Ibid., p.190. 119 N. Penny: The materials of sculpture, London and New Haven 1993, p.78. 120 M. Baker: Figured in marble. The making and viewing of eighteenth-century sculpture, London 2000, p.90. 121 M. Norman and R. Cook: ‘Canova, colour and the classical ideal’, in K. Eustace, ed.: Canova ideal heads, Oxford 1997, pp.47–58; and Ainsworth, op. cit. (note 101). 122 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.72, 73, 89 and 199; and N. Penny: Catalogue of European sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum 1540 to the present day, Oxford 1992, III, p.33. 123 P. Pindar [J. Wolcot]: Peter’s pension. A solemn epistle to a sublime personage, 2nd ed.,
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replacing the god’s gilt-metal modius. In late-eighteenth century England such small castings would have been made by bronzeworkers specialising in the production of gilt-metal mounts for furniture and clocks.120 While the identity of the craftsman in this case is unknown, the gilt-metal crown (Fig.31) and sceptre of the George III are the result of her collaboration with Benjamin Vulliamy (1747–1811), clockmaker to the king. Surface cleaning in the past means that we cannot now tell if Damer followed the late-eighteenth century practice of applying a yellowish- or brownish-coloured wash to the harsh white surface of newly carved marble in order to create a patina.121 While she is not known to have adopted this practice in any of her other works, she would have been familiar with references in classical literature to the colouring of statues through her study of Plato and Pliny. Stylistically, George III may be seen as a transitional work. Originally modelled in 1787, the inclined head, idealised features, full and slightly parted lips, and blank expression are characteristic of Damer’s series of highly idealised imaginary heads, which also date from the 1780s. However, the use of modern dress and her characteristic attention to detail, evident in the great care taken over the accuracy of the state robes and regalia, anticipate her more naturalistic portrait busts of celebrated friends and acquaintances, such as Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Humphrey Davy, Charles James Fox, Viscount Nelson, Princess Caroline and Mrs Siddons, which she did not begin until 1802. Although the statue was designed to be viewed in the round, its predominantly frontal presentation is typical of Damer’s portrait sculpture.122 First publicly exhibited in London in 1793, when Britain was at war with revolutionary France and the government was clamping down on political reformers at home, it is perhaps not surprising that the initial reaction to the statue was from radical politicians rather than art critics. As early as 1788 the clay model of George III had already attracted the attention of satirists. John Wolcot, the prominent critic of George III and the Royal Academy, who wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, lampooned the ‘great she-statuary’ in the ode Peter’s pension for attempting to portray the king.123 In the very year that Damer began carving the statue, the staunch monarchist and political writer George Edwards dedicated his Royal and constitutional regeneration of Great Britain to Damer, over-praising her achievements both as a sculptor and an actor in an attempt to secure her support, as a leading Whig, a member of the ‘fashionable world’ and a prominent female, for his idiosyncratic scheme of political reform.124 Charles Pigott, a radical writer and champion of the French Revolution, who had presumably seen the George III on exhibition before his death on 24th June 1794, ridiculed both Damer and her
London 1788, argument and pp.23–24. Interestingly, the 3rd and 4th editions, also of 1788, are less confident about the statue’s resemblance to its subject, replacing ‘so strong a likeness’ with ‘a little likeness’, while the new edition of 1792 reverts to the former; ibid., new ed., London 1792, p.23. In the 1794 edition of Pindar’s collected works, the phrase has become ‘some little likeness’; idem: The works of Peter Pindar, Esqr, London 1794, II, p.167. 124 G. Edwards: The royal and constitutional regeneration of Great Britain, London 1790, I, pp.i–xxiv. 125 Pigott died in Westminster on 24th June 1794. 126 C. Pigott: Political dictionary, London 1795, p.137.
subject in his satirical Political Dictionary, which was published posthumously in 1795.125 Statue, – the solid representation of a living being. The Hon. Mrs Damer has gained much credit by her masterly execution of the king in a marble bust; which idea gave rise to the two following impromptu’s. I Lord! What a lumpish, senseless thing! And yet ‘tis very like the king! II Why strive to animate the marble rock His sacred majesty’s more like the block!126 Although it was reportedly received in London as a ‘great curiosity in modern sculpture, and highly extolled for the superior stile [sic] in which it has been executed’,127 no artistic review of the statue while it was on exhibition there has been traced. In contrast to the critical reception of the latest paintings by contemporary female artists like Maria Cosway and Angelica Kauffmann, Damer’s work appears not to have been seriously reviewed in the London press. As an independently minded aristocratic woman who took pride in her achievements in the traditionally male role of sculptor, Damer was likely to attract both admiration and abuse.128 The new breed of professional art critics, who were themselves often second-rate artists from lower middle-class backgrounds, were largely hostile to what they considered to be aristocratic dabbling in the arts.129 John Claude Nattes (c.1765–1839),130 the topographical watercolour artist, was typically dismissive in his pictorial guide to Scotland published in 1804: Within the building [Register House], and immediately under the dome, is a statue executed by Mrs Damer, and with as much success as might be expected of a female, who does not follow the art as a profession: but it were to be wished, that public buildings should be ornamented only with the works of the best artists.131 Writing in 1830, after Damer’s death, Cunningham, himself a former stonemason and Francis Chantrey’s secretary, echoed Nattes’s views: ‘. . . it seems to be generally admitted that there is nothing remarkable about the royal statue, further than the boldness of the lady in undertaking a work so tedious and laborious. It is, in truth, a cold, meagre and unsatisfactory performance’.132 Similar, largely gender-based, criticisms of this work (and to a lesser extent her other portraits) were to
127 Edinburgh
Herald (3rd August 1795). McCreery: The Satirical Gaze. Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England, Oxford 2004, pp.122–24. 129 Elfenbein, op. cit. (note 1), pp.98, 101, 102, 110 and 111. 130 Nattes, an artist of limited ability, was to be expelled from the Old Watercolour Society for exhibiting the works of others as his own; A. Flood: ‘Nattes, John Claude (c.1765–1839)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 2004, online ed., no.19180, accessed May 2007. 131 J. Nattes: Scotia depicta, London 1804, opposite pl.48. 132 Cunningham, op. cit. (note 12), III, p.260. 128 C.
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continue up until the mid-twentieth century.133 Since the late 1980s, however, Damer’s artistic reputation has begun to be reassessed, first by Susan Benforado in her catalogue raisonné, and more recently by Alison Yarrington.134 Damer’s only other known royal portraits are a wax medallion of the Emperor Augustus (1777) and a rather crudely executed terracotta bust of her friend Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales (1814).135 The equestrian statue in bronze of King Joseph I of Portugal, which Noble claims was ‘modelled and cast’136 by Damer at Lisbon in 1791, is actually the work of the Portuguese sculptor Joaquim Machado de Castro (1731–1822) and was inaugurated in the Parça do Comércio in 1775, where it can still be seen today.137 It is usually stated that her only other work on a similar or even larger scale is the Damerian Apollo, which is only known from a scurrilous print by William Holland of 1789.138 This statue is usually identified with the ten-feet-high nude figure of Apollo which stood over the New Drury Lane Theatre from 1794 until the destructive fire of 1809. The subject-matter of Holland’s print is consistent with attempts in London’s popular press from 1788 to 1794 to scandalise Damer by ridiculing her creative talent through the frivolous reporting of her works, both real and invented.139 It is surprising, therefore, that there is nothing in contemporary newspapers to link the Drury Lane Apollo – which appears not to have been attributed to any sculptor – with Damer.140 Significantly, Damer herself refers to the George III alone as her ‘colossus’ and ‘overgrown child’. While she continued to produce sculpture up until the end of her life,141 Damer was never again to attempt a work on such a monumental scale. Her George III was to be the only public statue erected to that monarch in Scotland.142 Until now, a lack of proper documentation has meant that this significant and little-understood sculpture has been largely overlooked.
133 Cunningham’s sentiments regarding the George III were echoed by Percy Noble in his biography of Damer in 1908: the ‘distinguished place’ it occupied owed more to the influence of her uncle than to its merits as a work of art; it was ‘roughly carved’ and chiefly notable for being a ‘gigantic work for a woman to undertake’; Noble, op. cit. (note 1), p.79. Maurice Grant labelled the George III as ‘nothing less than a disaster’ in his Dictionary of British Sculptors, from the XIIIth century to the XXth century, London 1953, p.72; the 1968 revision merely mentions the work without comment; ibid., ed. R. Gunnis, London 1968 (rev. ed.), p.120. It is entirely absent from both Whinney’s Sculpture in Britain, 1530–1830, published in 1964, and John Physick’s revised edition of 1988, by which time Damer’s reputation was in danger of becoming limited to that of a sculptor of animals; Whinney, op. cit. (note 57), p.173; and idem, op. cit. (note 113), pp.319–20. 134 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), p.96; and Yarrington, op. cit. (note 1), passim. 135 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.124–25 and 235–37. 136 Noble, op. cit. (note 1), p.127. 137 I am grateful to Maria João Vilhena of the Instituto Portugues de Museus for identifying this statue, the model for which could still be seen at the army foundries at the time of Damer’s stay in Lisbon. On 31st January 1791 she wrote to Mary Berry from Lisbon: ‘I returned from the morning party much fatigued and no more amused than I expected. It was to see the armouries and foundries, all of which I have seen and reseen at other places. I could not avoid going, as among other things I was to be shown the model of the statue in the Great Place here. The statue is colossal, of bronze, of Joseph I, the late King. It was modelled and cast at Lisbon, and though heavy, really is not without merit’; T. Lewis, op. cit. (note 36), I, p.334. 138 Benforado, op. cit. (note 1), pp.192–93; and Yarrington, op. cit. (note 1), p.39. Holland’s print inspired some anonymous verses: ‘On seeing the burlesque prints of the Damerian Apollo’ on 28th July 1789; The Poetry of the World, London 1791, III, p.24. 139 The following works are some of the fictions concocted for Damer by the popular press: Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (29th September 1789): ‘Mrs Damer
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Appendix 1. ‘The World’ (Saturday 1st February 1794). For the WORLD. The following elegant INSCRIPTION, from the pen of a Gentleman highly distinguished in the Republic of Letters, has been proposed for the admired Statue of the KING, by the Hon. Mrs. DAMER: Ad coercendam mortalltatis injuriam GEORGIO TERTIO, Regi Optimo, Maximo ANNA DAMER, Nobilis Angliae Matrona, Sculpsit-dicavit-deditScoti fideler posuere. 2. ‘The World’ (Saturday 5th May 1787). TON
Fine Arts Mrs. Damer’s great work, the Colossal statue of the King goes on admirably! – Admirably, both as to speed and perfection. That period of the work, the modelling in clay, is nearly complete. Then, of course, and without delay, it is to be begun in marble. The dimensions of the statue are in proportion to the height – which is seven feet six inches!exclusive of the pedestal. The destination of this very precious curiosity, is the Register [House] in Scotland – The beautiful new building of Adam. – What a building! – and what a decoration of it! – Lord Frederick Campbell, the Lord Register, of course, comes in for his share of the fame, attending the motives to this work, with art, taste, loyalty , &c. &c.
is eager to get all her works done that she may begin what she has long meditated – a whole length figure of “Sappho”. The figure is to be reclining on a bed, and is rather to express the soft languor of melting expectation, than the fervid animation of poetic enthusiasm’; Oracle Bell’s New World (13th November 1789): ‘Mrs DAMER [. . .] has been remarkably busy with her chissel on a block of dark-hued marble – It is not, however, the “Farnesian Hercules”, nor the “Belvidere Apollo”, but the “Listening Slave’”; The World (18th June 1791): ‘Mrs DAMER is said to have half finished a beautiful copy of the famous Apollo’; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (12th November 1791): ‘Mrs DAMER [. . .] has resumed her charming chisel on the bust of another Venus’; Morning Post (1st January 1793): ‘MR BURKE AND HIS DAGGER. Mrs Damer, wishing to exhibit the figure of a Gladiator, offers Mr Burke a suitable reward, if he will stand for half an hour . . .’; and ibid. (16th October 1793): ‘We hear that Mrs Damer is about to undertake a Colossal Statue of Hercules’. 140 See the report on the erection of statue and a detailed description of the new theatre in the Morning Post (1st and 13th March 1794, respectively). Interestingly, a statue of Apollo had earlier been moved from the rotunda of Vauxhall Gardens in 1788; Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (16th May 1788). 141 A bronze of her bust of Nelson was completed for the Duke of Clarence only a few days before Damer’s death on 28th May 1828; Cunningham, op. cit. (note 12), III, pp.263, 264 and 269. 142 A statue of George III, which was given to the City of Edinburgh in 1791 by Lord Bute for Adam’s new Edinburgh University building, cannot now be traced. It might, however, be identified with a mysterious bronze statue which turned up in a packing case in St Giles’s Cathedral in 1810 and is now in the City Chambers. ‘The Earl of Bute has made a present to the City of Edinburgh of a very fine statue of his present Majesty. It is intended to be placed in some conspicuous part of the New College, to which it will form a most elegant and proper ornament’; St James’s Chronicle or British Evening-Post (18th–21st June 1791). For similar reports, ºsee also Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (21st June 1791); and Public Advertiser (23rd June 1791).
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Sketchbook III: Jackson Pollock’s homage to the old masters by NATALIE MARIA RONCON E
of Jackson Pollock’s three sketchbooks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Lisa Mintz Messinger describes the third sketchbook as being ‘distinctive from the two earlier pads, even though they all may be relatively close in date’.1 Messinger underlines the evidence of Pollock’s ‘acute stress’ in tandem with his ‘overwhelmingly positive’ responses to the work of the Mexican muralists, in particular to José Clemente Orozco,2 and notes that ‘rather than making copies after other people’s work, as he did in sketchbooks I and II, Pollock now devised original compositions with stylistic and thematic elements broadly based on contemporary Mexican paintings’.3 In particular, Messinger champions Pollock’s triumph in Sketchbook III because he has made ‘a departure from conventional ideas about composition’ and because the body of work presents an ‘important transition that led Pollock to work from Benton and Orozco, through Picasso and Surrealism, and finally to Abstract Expressionism’.4 Pollock’s work undoubtedly draws on all these sources, and scholarly attention in recent years has focused on his relationship to the Mexican muralists5 and to Picasso and Cubism.6 But in many ways it becomes apparent that Pollock’s work was fuelled by his study of several European painters from the past. While this has been recognised from his drawings in Sketchbooks I and II, it has not been discussed in relation to Sketchbook III. In fact, Messinger’s essay in the Metropolitan Museum catalogue chooses to distance the drawings in Sketchbook III from the old masters, and in so doing glosses over those roots of the Abstract Expressionist movement that were decidedly un-American, specifically in regard to earlier European art. For example, in Sketchbook III, p.2r (Fig.35), Pollock presents a single composition in gouache with some graphite and coloured pencils. Although its imagery is abstracted and difficult to decipher, Messinger states that this drawing clearly derives from Orozco’s paintings solely on the strength of the white house with its two corners and single black window, and cites Orozco’s White house (1925–28; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City) as the source from which Pollock derived his image. As well as this, the work of André Masson is offered as another probable influence, in particular his In the tower of sleep (1938; Baltimore Museum of Art).7 No reference is made to the compositional structure of the drawing nor its recognisable depiction of animals. To the left of the image, Pollock has drawn a donkey and to the right are further jumbled images of animal-like heads and bodies with a female figure in magenta at the upper centre. The presence of the donkey and other cattle necessarily invoke references to an Adoration. The whole composition is encased in a pyramidal IN A DISCUSSION
1
L.M. Messinger: ‘Pollock studies the Mexican muralists and the Surrealists: sketchbook III’, in K. Baetjer, L.M. Messinger and N. Rosenthal: exh. cat. The Jackson Pollock Sketchbooks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1997, p.61. 2 Ibid., pp.61–63. 3 Ibid., p.61.
35. Sketchbook III, p.2r, by Jackson Pollock. Here dated to c.1937–39. Gouache, coloured pencil and graphite on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
36. Adoration of the shepherds, by El Greco. 1608. Canvas, 144.5 by 101.3 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
4
Ibid., p.82–83. R. Storr: ‘A piece of the action’, in K. Varnedoe and P. Karmel, eds.: Jackson Pollock New Approaches, New York 1999, pp.33–71. 6 P. Karmel: ‘A Sum of Destructions’, in ibid., pp.71–94. 7 Baetjer, Messinger and Rosenthal, op. cit. (note 1), p.67. 5
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37. Sketchbook III, p.4r, by Jackson Pollock. Here dated to 1937–39. Graphite and coloured pencil on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
39. Sketchbook III, p.16r, by Jackson Pollock. Here dated to c.1937–39. Coloured pencil on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
38. Sketchbook I, p.25v, by Jackson Pollock. c.1936–39. Pencil on paper, 45.7 by 39.5 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
configuration, which refers to traditional depictions of the Holy Family, in particular to El Greco’s Pietà (c.1576; Philadelphia Museum of Art) which was the source for Pollock’s drawing in Sketchbook I, p.6v. In terms of actual subject-matter, the central section of the gouache has been adapted from another painting by El Greco, copied by Pollock in Sketchbook I, p.10r and p.10v, the Adoration of the shepherds (Fig.36), which since 1905 has been in 8
F.V. O’Connor and E. Thaw: Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3: Drawings 1930–1956, New Haven and London 1978, pp.24 and 25, nos.411r and 411v. 9 Pollock owned no books on Tintoretto, but he is known to have revered him as
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the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Pollock would have seen it. A side-by-side comparison is suggestive, not only in terms of subject-matter, but also in stylistic and compositional traits, such as the sinuous curving shapes of the drapery in the El Greco still present in Pollock’s more abstract rendition, as well as in the traditional pyramidal composition. The lower foreground and top background of Pollock’s gouache are identical in colour and layout to El Greco’s. The colours of the Adoration become latticed in the Pollock; the yellow ochre to the left of the Pollock relates to that of the figure at left in the El Greco, and both figures are seen in animated poses with arms outstretched. The ox at lower centre in the El Greco is placed in the same position in the Pollock, albeit in a more abstracted form. El Greco’s donkey, at left, is sketched by Pollock also to the left but differs slightly in its position to the sleeping lamb in the foreground, articulated by a few strokes of milky gouache. In tonal quality they are both comparable, from the earthy tones of the background and foreground to the highlighted areas which enhance the focal points. The agitated drawing, attenuated figures, eye-cracking tonal shifts, brittle planes and unstable spaces articulate Pollock’s expressive take on El Greco’s ecstatic devotional painting. The robe of the Virgin in the Metropolitan canvas is executed in magenta, as is the centrally placed figure in Pollock’s drawing. Above this figure’s head is a flower, the colour and shape of which suggest an iris, often associated with the Virgin Mary. The flower’s leaves were connected with the sorrow of the Virgin at her son’s Crucifixion, making the iris, which Pollock appears to depict above the head of this figure, a clear indication that we are seeing an image of the Virgin. That the architectural setting of the El Greco is not indicated in the Pollock drawing is not unusual as he also chose to forego the settings in all the other sketches made after old-master paintings in Sketchbooks I and II, giving only schematic lines suggestive of an artist. All the other sketches after Tintoretto in Sketchbook I are taken from the artist’s work at the Scuola di S. Rocco, and were identified as such by the painter Harold Lehman (O’Connor and Thaw, New York 1995, p.81). As Baetjer notes in
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40. Crucifixion, by Jacopo Tintoretto. 1565. Canvas, c.5.5 by 12.2 m. (Scuola di S. Rocco, Venice).
place. Instead he paints a white house, with an indication of a second one to the right. It cannot be denied that Orozco painted similar structures, leading us to believe that the drawing is a classic Pollockian composition which successfully encapsulates antithetical ideals from both Renaissance and Mexican art. In the Jackson Pollock catalogue raisonné Francis V. O’Connor notes that the drawing in Sketchbook III, p.4r (Fig.37) was loose and therefore possibly not in sequence.8 This page is unique in that it is signed lower right in black ink, and that, coupled with O’Connor’s note, suggests that Pollock removed this sheet perhaps with a notion to exhibit it or give it away. Based strictly on the visual evidence of the drawings in Sketchbook III, I would suggest that the page is indeed out of sequence. The relation of this sheet to another drawing further on in the sketchbook, p.16r (Fig.39), strengthens the possibility that the sheet should be placed either immediately before or after this sketch. There are such strong connections in colour and style between the two drawings that they almost certainly share the same subject-matter. This is most notable in the configuration of a figure situated at top right in Fig.37, which is directly echoed in the figure straddling the cross in the later drawing (Fig.39). In addition, Pollock has also drawn a figure stretched out on the horizontal axis in the lower centre of both sketches. There is the suggestion of a Crucifixion in the first sketch which makes a bolder and clearer appearance in the other. In sum, the drawing on p.4r is a schematic rendition of the more complete Crucifixion sketch on p.16r. The first, more abstracted drawing (p.4r) employs strong graphic lines with heavily coloured areas and a rocky architectural setting at centre and lower right. There is a suggestion of drapery or material in the centre-right area, with cave-like settings encroaching on either side. Comparable sketches of drapery and grotto structures can be found in Sketchbooks I and II, under the auspices of paintings by El Greco: for example in I, p.7r and p.7v, Pollock draws El Greco’s Christ on the Mount of Olives, and on the verso he breaks down the composition into more abstract renditions with a particular reference to the drapery of the figure of Christ. However, the most compelling argument for Pollock’s sources in El Greco and other old masters is the accumulation of evidence found on p.25v of Sketchbook I (Fig.38) in relation to the highly finished sheet in III, p.16r. This connection has so far
gone unnoticed and is important in any discussion of whether or not this third sketchbook was executed some considerable time later than I and II. It would seem unlikely that Pollock would refer back to a sketch made at an earlier period, if, as was suggested, he had moved beyond such sources. In Sketchbook I, p.25v (Fig.38), Pollock’s figure on the left is indebted to Jacopo Tintoretto’s Christ and the woman taken in adultery (Palazzo Barberini, Rome). On the right of this is a Crucifixion which has not yet been identified but which is almost certainly derived from Tintoretto’s Crucifixion of 1565 in the Scuola di S. Rocco, Venice (Fig.40). It is this work that, in its diagonally orientated figures flanking the cross, left and right, is most clearly identifiable with Pollock’s drawing.9 Certain
idem, Messinger and Rosenthal, op. cit. (note 1), p43, Giuseppe Delogu published a pamphlet in 1937 with a multilingual text accompanying an album of forty
reproductions of the canvases at S. Rocco and it is possible that this publication was known to Pollock; included in this was the Crucifixion scene here alluded to.
41. Detail of the Isenheim altarpiece showing the Temptation of St Anthony, by Matthias Grünewald. 1515. Panel. (Unterlinden Museum, Colmar).
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42. Sketchbook II, p.12r, by Jackson Pollock. c.1937–39. Graphite pencil on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
44. Sketchbook III, p.9r, by Jackson Pollock. c.1937–39. Coloured pencil and graphite on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
43. Detail of The finding of the body of St Mark, by Jacopo Tintoretto. 1562–66. Canvas, 396 by 400 cm. (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).
liberties have been taken and the cross does not actually hold the body of Christ. In its place Pollock has drawn a figure which is extended across the top section of the crucifix exactly as he has done in Sketchbook III, p.4r and p.16r, strengthening the assumption that all three sketchbooks were executed in close conjunction with one another. In Fig.38 a reclining figure lies beneath the cross and is repeated in both drawings under consideration in Sketchbook III. This type of figure is often portrayed in old-master depictions of the Crucifixion as being that of the Virgin Mary, lying distraught or unconscious at the foot of the Cross. It is a feature of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion which poignantly isolates the grief-stricken Virgin recumbent beneath the crucifix. In addition to this, the drawing immediately below the Tintoretto in Sketchbook I, p.25v, an analytical study which again has not so far been identified, and which displays a group of agitated stick-figures that are horizontally bisected by three lines, is also transported and incorporated into the drawing on p.16r of Sketchbook III (Fig.39). The pattern is transferred to the left side and is repeated on the right from the top of the body straddling the cross, all the way down. Clearly then, Pollock has recycled two drawings from Sketchbook I to formulate this vision of an unholy Crucifixion. As Pollock is clearly also improvising in the first two sketchbooks, despite deriving his designs from what are evidently old-master sources, speculation must be
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Messinger, in ibid., p.75. O’Connor and Thaw, op. cit. (note 8), no.486.
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45. Sketchbook III, p.12r, by Jackson Pollock. c.1937–39. Coloured pencil on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
46. The three Crosses, by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1653. Etching (first state), 38.5 by 45 cm. (British Museum, London).
raised concerning the relationship between them and the sheet in Sketchbook III (Fig.39). This latter drawing, as already mentioned, is far more detailed and figurative than its counterpart. Executed in coloured pencils with heavy graphite outlining, it depicts a crucified Christ, and two female nudes. One, with a pregnant belly, rests in the lower area while the other straddles the cross, startlingly pierced by the crossbar which cuts into and through her abdomen. Flames spew from her buttocks and her head is adorned by a feathered headpiece. The crucified Christ is enclosed in what may be construed as a vaginal cavity. Gathered around the mesa and to the left of the page are Pollock’s recycled stick-figures, illustrating the soldiers and spectators so frequently present in paintings of the Crucifixion. The elongation of the Christ figure probably has its source in El Greco, as seen in a number of other drawings in Sketchbook I, such as p.6v, which derives from Christ on the Cross with the two Marys and St John (1588; National Gallery, Prague). The legs of the reclining nude are remarkably akin to the figure in Orozco’s fresco The Franciscan (c.1926–30; Museum of Modern Art, New York), a similarity that was noted by Messinger in the Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue,10 but the figure in Orozco’s work in no other way relates to the atmospheric psycho-sexual monstrosity of Pollock’s drawing. However, a similar swollen-bellied figure can be found in Matthias Grünewald’s Temptation of St Anthony (Fig.41), which forms part of the Isenheim altarpiece (1512–16). In this spectacular panel, Grünewald gives vivid life to the demons tormenting St Anthony in the wilderness. Some of the creatures have feathered heads and glassy bulging eyes; one, at lower left, has a swollen belly and festering skin, its position echoed in Pollock’s reclining figure. The feathered creature attacking St Anthony is clearly allegorical, a fantastical beast behaving as if human, or a human in the likeness of an
animal. Pollock’s feathered nude spanning the crossbar is shown as sexually explicit. In addition, in the Pollock drawing the disorganised, confused bodies of the hostile crowd, above and below the horizon and reiterated above and around the impaled figure in an insect-like buzz of activity, make reference to the Isenheim’s panel of the Virgin and Child. Although Pollock made no drawings directly after Grünewald in the first two sketchbooks, he had access to contemporary reproductions such as the Cahiers d’art special issue devoted to Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece in 1936, and, in September of the same year, the American Magazine of Art published an article on Grünewald’s Crucifixion. Two other important sources for Pollock were Picasso’s Crucifixion of 1930, published in the first issue of Cahiers d’art in 1932, and his later Crucifixion series after Grünewald (1932), which was reproduced in Minotaur in 1933. As has been previously noted by other scholars in regard to the sketchbooks, Pollock made use of books and articles strictly for illustrative purposes as he knew no foreign languages.11 A newly discovered page from Sketchbook III, p.9r (Fig.44), was removed from the book at some point before its exhibition in November 1957 at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, perhaps in connection with that show.12 In style and subjectmatter this drawing is closely related to others in the same sketchbook (pp.11, 12 and 14) and works of the same period.13 There is a suggestion of at least two figures, one representing Christ on the Cross and a further one supporting him. At lower-centre left two muscular legs are depicted in the act of walking. The cruciform shape that cuts diagonally across the top of the sheet seems to support a figure’s head in profile, its extended arm with a hand that culminates in Picassoesque linear waves at top right. Elements of this particularly complex figure drawing made their debut in Sketchbook II, p.12r (Fig.42). The relationship of these the burlington m a g a z i n e
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47. Massacre of the Innocents, by Jacopo Tintoretto. 1582–87. Canvas, 422 by 546 cm. (Scuola di S. Rocco, Venice).
48. The flood, by Michelangelo. 1508–12. Fresco. (Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome).
49. Sketchbook I, p.4r, by Jackson Pollock. c.1936–39. Graphite pencil and gouache on paper, 35.2 by 42.9 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
sheets has not previously been noted but the poses are again indisputably identical and provide further clarification that Pollock worked from the first two sketchbooks. The source for the lower part of a walking figure in Sketchbook II, p.12r, has remained unidentified and although it has been suggested that it may come from a work by El Greco,14 it has in fact been taken from Tintoretto’s painting The finding of the body of St Mark of 1562–66 (Fig.43). The figure Pollock has chosen to ‘lift’ is the woman standing at the right, reworking her precarious stance and voluminous drapery. Moreover, Pollock repeated this figure in Sketchbook III, p.9r, indicating that the three books were either completed within close proximity in time or that Pollock reworked certain preferred images at a somewhat later stage. In the later highly complex drawing (Sketchbook III, p.9r), Pollock has adopted the woman’s oscillating pose but expanded it to include a reference to Umberto Boccioni’s Unique forms of continuity in space (1913; bronze cast, 1931; Museum of Modern Art,
New York), in particular the sculptural modelling of the feet in the more complex drawing after this sculpture. In her essay on Sketchbooks I and II in the Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue Katharine Baetjer remarks that Pollock made only one sketch (Sketchbook I, p.22r) after a work by Rembrandt (The nightwatch; 1642; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).15 In Sketchbook III, p.12r (Fig.45), Pollock drew a Crucifixion scene which partly derives from Rembrandt’s etching of The three Crosses of 1653 (Fig.46), which he knew from a reproduction in his copy of the Magazine of Art,16 an issue conserved today in Pollock’s library at Springs, East Hampton. Since the Magazine dates from 1937 it is also important in ascertaining that Pollock’s Sketchbook III, as other identifications support, was executed at a date earlier than that of 1938–41, as suggested in the Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue.17 In this issue of the Magazine, Rembrandt’s series The Passion of our lord is reproduced on pp.203–07.
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Baetjer, in idem, Messinger and Rosenthal, op. cit. (note 1), p.38. Ibid., p.33. 16 Magazine of Art 30/4 (April 1937), pp.203–07. 17 Rosenthal, in Baetjer, Messinger and Rosenthal, op. cit. (note 1), p.20; and Messinger, in ibid., p.61.
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Baetjer, in ibid., p.47. A. Rosenberg: The Work of Rembrandt, New York 1909. 20 O’Connor and Thaw, op. cit. (note 8), p.58, suggested 1938–39 for the third sketchbook and Baetjer, Messinger and Rosenthal, op. cit. (note 1), p.61, extended this to 1941.
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A comparison between Pollock’s Crucifixion scene and that of Rembrandt shows that the figure on the far right in the Pollock is that of Rembrandt’s on the right in The three Crosses. The arrangement of Pollock’s central figure, seen in profile, its legs going from centre to lower right, differs in composition from the aforementioned etching as the body is depicted with arms to the side, precariously leaning on the diagonal as if in the process of being lifted, as would be seen perhaps in a Raising of the Cross or even a Deposition. This strong diagonal arrangement possibly derives from a work by Tintoretto, who favoured diagonally orientated shifts in his paintings and figures, a good example of this being the aforementioned S. Rocco Crucifixion. In relation to Rembrandt’s Three Crosses, one might also want to return to a vignette in Sketchbook I, p.4r (Fig.49). At lower left is a self-contained composition whose source has remained unidentified. Baetjer states that this religious scene was probably imagined by Pollock since the figures do not correspond to a known painting.18 As she notes, it cannot be a Deposition or a Lamentation as there are not sufficient figures to constitute either. This is certainly to the point, but we can go further and suggest that the drawing constitutes an amalgamation of elements taken from works by Rembrandt, Tintoretto and Michelangelo. The sheet depicts a group of mourners with a distant view of a Crucifixion on a hill (presumably Golgotha) in the background. The figures relate to Tintoretto’s Massacre of the Innocents (1582–87; Fig.47) and Michelangelo’s The flood (1508–12; Fig.48). It should be noted in support of this argument that drawings after Tintoretto’s Massacre and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel appear on the pages that flank this vignette and are executed in the same sepia and graphite. Pollock here returns to Rembrandt’s Three Crosses (Fig.46), but perhaps refers more particularly to Rembrandt’s Entombment in Munich (Fig.50), especially in its use of heavy black gouache and highlights, enclosed setting and the distant view of Golgotha. The painting is reproduced in Adolf Rosenberg’s The Work of Rembrandt,19 a copy of which Pollock owned. The mother and child in the foreground appear to derive both from Michelangelo’s Flood and Tintoretto’s Massacre. It is highly unusual that a child, or indeed a bare-breasted woman, would appear in a Crucifixion or Lamentation, and Pollock’s impetus for including such figures surely derives from the mother-andchild group sketched on the reverse of this sheet, which appears to be taken from Tintoretto and Michelangelo. The arm of the mother in Sketchbook I, p.4r (Fig.49) is shown in Michelangelesque muscular bulk extending across her chest, as does the arm of the standing woman with children (at left beneath the tree) in Michelangelo’s The flood. Stylistically, however, the oval shape of the mother’s head in Pollock’s drawing is accurately taken from another drawing by Pollock after a figure in Tintoretto’s Massacre which he made on the reverse of this page, Sketchbook I, p.4v (Fig.51). In sum, the correlated evidence presented in this article of the links between the drawings in Sketchbooks I and II with that of Sketchbook III, along with the periodical literature dating from the early to late 1930s, from which Pollock took images from the old masters, suggest that the previous dating of this sketchbook to 1938–41 is contestable and that an earlier date of 1937–39 is more apposite.20 In that sense the three sketchbooks might more productively be viewed as a ‘triptych’ of studies with closer connections than have hitherto been
50. Entombment, by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1639. Canvas, 92.3 by 69 cm. (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
51. Sketchbook I, p.4v, by Jackson Pollock. c.1936–39. Pencil on paper, 45.7 by 39.5 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
recognised. Accordingly, I have attempted to restore the balance and perspective of our understanding of the comparative influences across the three books. With the sources here identified for drawings in Sketchbook III – in which the Mexican influence, long recognised, is only one strand – we can appreciate the book as a far more complex and sustained dialectic approach, encompassing a variety of influences, not least that of the old masters. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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Art History Reviewed VII: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s ‘Matisse. His Art and His Public’, 1951 by JOHN ELDERFIELD
WHEN ALFRED H. BARR, JR.
was appointed founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1929, he abandoned his Harvard dissertation, ‘The Machine in Modern Art’. After being fired from that job in 1943 he changed the topic of his thesis and, three years later, Harvard accepted his book Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art as the first United States doctorate on a living artist. Although deeply influential, the Museum’s publications had traditionally been expanded exhibition catalogues, of which Benedict Nicolson fairly observed: ‘The narrative jumps abruptly from picture to picture, as though the reader were being conducted by an expert guide around the exhibition and had to make do with whatever happened to get hung on the walls’.1 Barr’s Picasso book was more than this, yet its 314 pages still bore signs of having begun as the 207-page catalogue of MoMA’s 1939 exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. This was apparently to become a pattern, for Barr next began work ‘with the modest intention of revising and bringing up to date the catalog of the Matisse exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1931’.2 But that sixty-one-page catalogue grew into a nearly six-hundred-page book. Picasso apparently was annoyed at how small it made his monograph seem. He meant, in size; in fact, the Matisse book made preceding studies of any modern artist seem smaller also in ambition and authority. ‘This book is a paragon’, wrote the then-anonymous Times Literary Supplement reviewer, John Richardson, ‘and quite the best monograph on a modern painter which has yet been published’.3 It may still be. Publications on Matisse began on 25th April 1896, when Roger Marx singled out the twenty-six-year-old student of Gustave Moreau for favourable mention in a review of that year’s Salon du Champs-de-Mars. But not until 1920, when Matisse was fifty and very famous, did the first monograph appear, a short study by his long-time friend and patron Marcel Sembat. The delay itself is not so worthy of comment: young artists were not then receiving mid-career retrospectives with lavish publications; even Picasso had to wait until 1921 for his first book, by Maurice Raynal. Nor should the timing be a surprise: if the First World War had inhibited art publishing in France, the years that followed saw it expand to the task of anointing national cultural achievement. What is pertinent to Matisse’s critical reputation is that growth of the monographic
literature on this perhaps greatest modernist painter coincided with his forsaking where his radicalism had carried him. For, while the heroic period of early Modernism closed for everybody at the end of the First World War – for Picasso and his followers as well as for Matisse and his – the change in Matisse’s art became its most public face. Matisse argued – with backing first from Sembat – that he had reshaped rather than abandoned his Modernism; yet his paintings of the early 1920s were not only condemned by avant-garde members of the artistic community, but also welcomed by the more traditional. And the embrace was worse than the rebuff. Matisse’s work had long been disparaged by establishment critics – often as ugly because incompetent, or affectedly ugly from a desire to shock; but now they loved what he was doing, and the avant-garde disliked it, because it was beautiful. Description of Matisse’s critical vicissitudes was to be among the novelties of Barr’s book, yet he knew that the great septuagenarian and his family would scrutinise his text; a clearer grasp of this particular subject now requires consulting Catherine Bock-Weiss’s indispensable Henri Matisse. A Guide to Research of 19964 and Jack Flam’s well-chosen anthology of critical writings.5 Both authors agree that Matisse’s own early statements affirming the clarity and composure of his art contributed to his critical diminishment, especially the famous remark in ‘Notes d’un peintre’ of 1908: ‘What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter [. . .] a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair that provides relaxation from physical fatigue’.6 The problems had begun before the First World War, when some in Picasso’s circle, André Salmon notably, sought to ingratiate themselves with him by attacking Matisse as a modiste decorator. Picasso would have none of it, especially as Matisse’s paintings equalled his in austerity during the War years. However, the grandest of these had never been shown in public. Therefore, in 1926, as he began to set aside his post-War détente, Matisse made a bold gesture: having broken with his long-time dealer Bernheim-Jeune, he exhibited three unseen paintings at Paul Guillaume’s gallery – Branch of lilacs and the magisterial The piano lesson and Bathers by a river – as if to declare his avant-garde pedigree. Unfortunately, this move proved insufficient to counter the talk of hedonistic beauty, especially when he failed to pay proper attention to the laudatory yet dismal picture books
We are grateful to the Azam Foundation for sponsoring this article. Matisse. His Art and His Public, 1951, and other books by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. mentioned in the text were published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The references to Barr’s place within U.S. art history draw upon J. Elderfield: ‘The Adventures of the Optic Nerve’, in J. Morrill, ed.: The Promotion of Knowledge. Lectures to Mark the Centenary of the British Academy, 1902–2002, Oxford 2004, pp.53–85, and I have referred at moments to my review of Pierre Schneider’s 1984 and J. Flam’s 1986 monographs;
J. Elderfield: ‘Matisse: Myth vs. Man’, Art in America 11/2 (1988), pp.297–302. 1 B. Nicolson: ‘Alfred H. Barr Jr., “Matisse. His Art and His Public” (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1951)’, Art Bulletin 34 (1952), pp.246–49. 2 A.H. Barr: Matisse. His Art and His Public, New York 1951, p.9. 3 [J. Richardson]: ‘Henri Matisse: A Twentieth-Century Master’, Times Literary Supplement (25th March 1955), pp.173–75, esp. p.175. 4 C. Bock-Weiss: Henri Matisse. A Guide to Research, New York 1996.
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‘with perfunctory prefaces and haphazard illustrations’,7 as Barr would describe them, which multiplied around the artist’s sixtieth birthday. Matters came to a head in 1931, when – revitalised by work on his Dance mural for the Barnes Foundation – Matisse discovered too late that he had neglected the preparations for his massive retrospective exhibition at the Galeries Georges Petit – owned by the Bernheims, whose unsold stock of paintings from the early 1920s overloaded the show. It was at this low moment that the twenty-nine-year-old director of the new Museum of Modern Art appeared, and, before the year was out, reshaped what he saw into the smaller, much more rigorous first oneperson exhibition of any artist at the Museum. Barr was not alone in seeing through the popular lightweight view of Matisse that settled into place after the Georges Petit show. For example, Roger Fry’s influential article of 1930, which Barr knew, joined Cézanne’s name to Matisse’s – rather than Picasso’s, as was becoming commonplace – and observed that the artist was returning to the premises of his ‘stark, structural’ work of 1910–17.8 Barr’s 1931 catalogue – and his book twenty years later – agreed that Matisse’s masterpieces came between 1905 and 1917 (Fig.52), and revealed his own attachment to the starkest and most structural, of 1913–17. Despite the 1926 Paul Guillaume display and the warm response to Barr’s 1931 exhibition, this weighting of value across the artist’s career was a minority opinion. It increasingly became so in France, as memory faded of the great paintings seen there only briefly, if directly at all, and now in the museums and private collections of Germany, Scandinavia, Russia and the United States – and, conversely, as illustrations proliferated of ‘graceful young women reclining on chaises longues’ in paintings that may have once seemed audacious but had come to seem as tame and pretty as their subjects. Nicolson, from whose review of Barr’s book I quote, wished that its author had allowed himself more than brief and guarded criticism of such works. Since, even as late as 1987, Norman Bryson was complaining of Matisse being a mere ‘decorator and hedonist’, he may have been right.9 However, Barr’s weightings are pretty obvious, and acknowledgment of the opposite sides of Matisse’s art was critical to his project. Matisse, in Barr’s 1931 reading, developed in cycles, from a Chardin-influenced, orderly monochrome of 1895 into a higherkeyed, Impressionist palette and more unruly designs – then back to ochre, sienna and structure around 1900, when the whole cycle repeated, returning with Fauvism to bright colour and informal layouts. In 1913 orderliness and a darker palette reappeared, again to give way, by 1918, to lighter tones and Impressionist influence, until signs of a return to structural sobriety appeared in the mid-1920s. This was all a bit forced, and even as ameliorated in 1951, it divided Matisse’s œuvre into too many watertight compartments: for example, Pointillism (1898–99), the proto-Fauve period (1899–1901), the dark period (1901–04), Neo-Impressionism (1904–05) and Fauvism (1906–07). ‘Do these “periods” accord with the facts?’ Richardson asked, and correctly replied: ‘The answer is no’.10
Barr’s desire to over-clarify did obfuscate at times, and his wish to counter the popular, light Matisse by emphasising his favoured austere artist created an implausible early dark period and disconnected the paintings of the First World War from his preceding as well as, more reasonably, succeeding production. Nonetheless, Barr’s inaugural reading of Matisse, which survived twenty years later, of an artist pulled to the structural, abstract and decorative, on the one hand, and the perceptual, realist and Impressionist on the other, was not only sound but also offered a good, pragmatic way of recasting and contextualising the observations, widely publicised in the later 1920s, that there were two different Matisses, modern and traditional. However, where most writers saw discontinuity between the two, Barr was interested in how one artist called Matisse could grow and gain through antithesis. Whether there are one or two Matisses is a question that continues to vex the study of the artist. Although Matisse more or less disappeared from Barr’s radar screen for the remainder of the 1930s, his interest in theorising artistic development in a broadly dialectical manner did not, producing the renowned 1936–37 exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. The now wearily over-examined genealogical chart he devised for the catalogue cover of the former makes him seem as neo-Darwinian as any palaeontologist of that period. However, still disentangling its knotted lines as Europe closed down in conflict, he seems finally to have realised that theoretical mapping had to be accompanied, indeed directed, by inductive study. The maturity of art history in the United States after the First World War had been aided, Erwin Panofsky pointed out in a famous study of this subject, by its cultural and geographical distance from Europe, which took the place of historical distance.11 This fostered objective discussion of European art unhampered by national rivalries and, in the case of modern art, stylistic allegiances. Barr’s highly schematic 1931 understanding of Matisse was made possible by the objectivity of distance. Returning to Matisse, he sought to maintain it, even while bridging that distance for the objectivity of first-hand information necessary to inductive study. It is no coincidence that his new campaign began in 1945, with the end of the Second World War in Europe, or that it accompanied a broad return to European subjects in academic U.S. art history after a retreat to concentrate on American art during the period of the War. Thus, as Barr was working on his book, there were in progress three doctoral dissertations on Cubism and one on Matisse. The Matisse dissertation, completed by Frank Trapp in 1952,12 was overwhelmed, even as it was being written, by the appearance of Barr’s monograph. How Trapp must have felt on first seeing it hardly bears imagining. Far more than any previous publication, Barr’s book on Matisse brought the big guns of North American institutional scholarship – with its special access to artists, archives, galleries, collectors and teams of researchers – to bear on a modern subject for the first time, to a deeply unsettling effect that continues to reverberate more than half a century later.
5
1987), p.328. 10 [Richardson], op. cit. (note 3), p.174. 11 E. Panofsky: ‘Three Decades of Art History in the United States: Impressions of a Transplanted European’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Papers in and on Art History by Erwin Panofsky, New York 1955, pp.321–46, esp. p.329. 12 F. Trapp: ‘The Paintings of Henri Matisse: Origins and Early Development, 1890–1917’, Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University 1952).
J. Flam: Matisse: A Retrospective, New York 1988. Matisse: ‘Notes d’un peintre’, La Grande Revue (1908), in J. Flam: Matisse on Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1995, pp.30–43, esp. p.42. 7 Barr, op. cit. (note 2), p.201. 8 The article was reprinted in book form as R. Fry: Henri-Matisse, London 1935, pp.24–25. 9 N. Bryson: ‘Signs of the Good Life’, Times Literary Supplement (27th March 6
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Barr largely dictated his book. (The Museum of Modern Art’s archives have the ‘Audiograph Electronic Soundwriter’ records, but warn us: ‘Machine on which to play these NOT available’.) This is, perhaps, why it comprises so many compartments – I count almost 350 separate units of text – which seem not to have been written in sequence. However, all are clearly labelled in the seven-page contents and organised in a logical, hierarchical manner: collected into sections, each devoted to a period of Matisse’s life, art or critical reputation, which are themselves arrayed within nine big, chronologically sequential parts. Pages of documentary photographs and three sets of seven-colour plates with analyses appear within the text. Following it are some four hundred monochrome plates (half of works up to and including 1916), endnotes, ten documentary appendices, the first substantial bibliography on Matisse (by Bernard Karpel), and notes on the shortcomings of some illustrations (‘lines between tiles are too black’, ‘sky too blue’, and so on). This may all sound exhausting, but the book is actually a charm to use. It now seems incredible that, before Barr, major paintings like Luxe, calme, et volupté and Conversation were unknown, most of the illustrated books were undiscussed, the work in the decorative arts neglected and fully half of the sculptures unpublished – even the critical Back and Jeanette series only incompletely and ineptly. Moreover, the great compositions then locked away in Moscow and Merion remained virtually unexamined, as more easily accessible but much less significant works were illustrated time and again. And even the most rudimentary archival research had not been attempted. As Barr rightly said: ‘Even if one brought together the thirty books already published on Matisse one could not get a complete or well-proportioned view of his work as a whole’. Barr’s key achievements were three-fold. First, he presented in one place Matisse as artist and man and his critical reception, across almost his entire career. Second, in doing so, he uncovered previously unknown pieces in the story of the whole – aggregating vast amounts of unrecorded, obscure or uncorrelated documentation as well as works of art and entire bodies of work that had been neglected, even that had unaccountably vanished – and compounded the pieces with extraordinary judiciousness and good sense. Third, he effected the necessary remedial task of illuminating the fundamental areas of confusion and ignorance about Matisse’s life and work, while providing an often month-by-month documented chronology of both. He thus moved the literature on Matisse from criticism to art history – and elevated it there above any previous study of any modern artist. The book was widely reviewed in an overwhelmingly positive way. Those accustomed or expecting to read art criticism, not art history, found it forbidding, and there were complaints of its impersonality, even monotony, and its stress on descriptive fact over analysis. On the other hand, Nicolson’s review from London intrepidly asserted: ‘It is characteristic of the best recent American writing on modern art that it hesitates to go
beyond documentation. This is a reaction against the distressing situation in Europe where the wildest statements, based on no historical evidence, are allowed to go unchallenged, because, in Europe, modern art is not normally treated as an academic study and everyone claims the right to give vent to his personal feelings’.13 Strong stuff, yet he proved the point in his own, increasingly far-fetched digression on Matisse and Gide before applauding Barr’s ‘refusal to be lured into the speculation in which I have been indulging’. In fact, Barr did indulge in speculation, as his descriptions branch into judgments, analyses and interpretations. Only, these branches are grafted to the stock of facts that allow the book to be used as an encyclopaedia. Specialists as well as generalists praised the book for its orderliness, completeness and virtual freedom from error. Barr, however, had insisted that it was ‘far from definitive. Its scholarship is only partially controlled and is therefore tentative; unquestionably much new material will eventually come to light . . .’. There was, indeed, a good scatter of minor slips and omissions (Richardson’s review caught some), and Barr was right, new material does continue to appear. But no author can be faulted for that, or for his book not covering the three years that its subject had yet to live. The sheer authority of his book has proved misleading in a few critical areas where Barr misread, or was misled by, his evidence, requiring from later scholars (including the present writer) some unnecessary mental gymnastics to accommodate facts that turned out to be wrong. Perhaps the most vexing of these was Barr’s proud publication of two letters of 1909 and 1912 from Shchukin to Matisse on his commissions for Dance and Music, of which Pierre Matisse had provided photographs. Unfortunately, someone switched the second sides of the two letters, and it was not until 1983 that Beverly Kean set matters straight. Rereading the book and perusing its reviews reinforces how novel was the weight afforded to documentation extremely imminent to the creation and creator of the works of art under examination. This had recently become a point of principle for Barr; in November 1941, he published a prominent defence of it to open the first issue of the College Art Association of America’s College Art Journal. ‘It is our century’, he proclaimed: ‘we have made it and we’ve got to study it, understand it, get some joy out of it, master it [. . .] And what opportunities are being lost! Graduate students can’t correspond with [. . .] van Eyck, Masolino or Vasari to clear up scholarly problems but they can air-mail Maillol or Siqueiros and write or phone for an appointment with Wright, André Breton (and so on)’.14 One demurring respondent thought that this would produce ‘documentation of a dubious sort’; another that a documented history is much easier to produce after artists are dead: they will not change their minds or talk back.15 Setting such objections aside, Barr launched his Matisse project with a sequence of detailed questionnaires, transmitted to the artist through his son Pierre, others through his wife and daughter, and yet others through the art historian John
13
L. Schmeckebier: Modern Art First, Not Last’, ibid. 1/3 (March 1942), pp.60–63. 16 P. Schneider: Matisse, New York 1984, p.9. 17 A. Blunt: ‘Matisse’s life and work’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 95 (1953), pp.399–400.
Nicolson, op. cit. (note 1), pp.247 and 249. A.H. Barr, Jr.: ‘Modern Art Makes History, Too’, College Art Journal 1/1 (January 1941), pp.3–6. 15 F.J. Mather, Jr.: ‘Old Art or New’, ibid. 1/2 (January 1942), pp.31–33; and 14
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Rewald, through one of Barr’s assistants, that assistant’s mother and so on. (Barr’s own command of the French language was poor.) The results are soberly recorded in his book’s endnotes; however, inspection of the completed questionnaires themselves and their related correspondence in the Museum of Modern Art’s archives reveals a process far less orderly and, on occasion, highly contingent. It increasingly became clear that Matisse and his family disliked the very specific questions coming across the Atlantic; they were unaccustomed to being grilled and were to remain far more comfortable with critical than with art-historical commentators. (It is no accident that the biggest book on Matisse is now the more than 750-page volume by Pierre Schneider (1984), who explicitly states that history is a ‘latent menace [. . .] that will constantly have to be warded off’).16 While Barr generally drew sound conclusions from the questionnaires, at times he was whistling in the dark. One reviewer alone picked up on this, and given what he was up to in the early 1950s, it is intriguing that his name was Anthony Blunt. Blunt’s review, in the December 1953 issue of this Magazine,17 began adamantly: ‘Mr Barr’s book is a warning to all art historians on the value of contemporary evidence and on the difficulty over settling the chronology of an artist’s work. Reading Mr Barr makes us more indulgent towards the incompleteness and unreliability of Vasari’. The review softened, yet held fast to an otherwise unmentioned problem: memories are fallible. Matisse could not remember when many paintings were made. He, his family and friends regularly disagreed about the date of events they had witnessed. Hence, ‘even with the closest collaboration and the best scholarship, errors of up to five or six years are liable to creep in’. In ‘the crucial and difficult period 1911–16’, the dates of less than twenty-five works can reliably be verified by external facts. The historian is, therefore, thrown back upon stylistic evidence, which caused Blunt to wonder whether at times ‘the chronology proposed by Mr. Barr has not in some way gone wrong’. Some paintings seem to ‘jump’ in Barr’s sequences, that is to say, ‘seem to bear no relation to their immediate neighbours in time’. This is a reasonable argument, yet it depends upon our sharing Blunt’s conviction of the futility of asking pointed questions and his insistence that proposed inconsistencies of action have to be mistakes. (And we now know, of course, that he was writing after interrogation by MI5 about the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald McLean in the very year that the book he was reviewing appeared.) But evidence of Matisse’s intransigence under questioning and the overall orderliness that Barr nevertheless created may well have led him along these paths. Barr’s Matisse does seem as precise and reasonable as Barr himself was, and it has been one of the tasks of later scholars to uncover the greater extent to which Matisse’s method allowed him to be inconsistent, to be not always a paragon of bourgeois respectability, to make big inductive leaps into the unknown, to be dark in spirit while light in his painting, to be distrustful of certainty and keep on taking different routes to get to the same place. Still, even though Barr’s book became, in this respect, a hurdle to be surmounted by new generations of scholars, by that same count it became the yardstick against which everything would be measured. It remains a great historical monument, as inseparable from our idea of Matisse – even if that idea is no longer Barr’s idea – as Coleridge’s Lectures are inseparable from our idea of Shakespeare.
52. (From left) René d’Harnoncourt, Mme Henri Bonnet, Alfred J. Barr, Jr., Jean Daridan of the French Embassy and Nelson Rockefeller at the opening of the exhibition Henri Matisse: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1951. (Museum of Modern Art Photographic Archive; photograph by Leo Trachtenberg). With The geranium, by Henri Matisse. 1906. Canvas, 100.3 by 81.5 cm. (Art Institute of Chicago).
Barr’s book raised the standards of Matisse scholarship, enlarged expectations of careful scrutiny of his art and its sources and created an appetite for yet more information and analysis. As a result, even the least ambitious of the succeeding publications, if meritorious, were greedily welcomed, while even the finest of them seemed anticlimactic. Clearly, Barr’s big book was taking time to assimilate. What finally re-energised Matisse studies, it is broadly accepted, were the big retrospectives: the Centenary Exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1970 and the even larger exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Both motivated more specialised publications and exhibitions on individual periods and media within Matisse’s work. They encouraged the production of catalogues raisonnés (but not yet for the paintings and drawings), museum collection catalogues, editions of the artist’s writings and statements and of some of his correspondence, and at last a reliable biography. And they attracted new generations of scholars who continue to expand our understanding of Matisse, asking questions about (for example) colonialism, feminism, iconography, nationalism, orientalism, patronage, primitivism and psychoanalysis that Barr could not have imagined asking and Matisse even trying to answer. Meanwhile, Barr’s ‘formalism’ and careful documentation seem newly relevant as studies in Matisse’s artistic methodology increase. Barr’s bibliography comprised 218 items; Bock’s 1996 bibliography, just one short of 1,400 works. The literature on Matisse must now be about ten times the size it was when Barr started writing. It is, ironically, probably because of, rather than despite this huge increase that there has not been, since 1951, any monograph with the same claim of completeness as Barr’s. Flam’s major publication, Matisse. The Man and His Art, 1869–1918 (New York 1986) may justifiably make that claim for the crucial and difficult period that it covers, and it is to be regretted that its anticipated companion volume was never produced. Of course, it too now requires some revision after more than twenty years, yet anybody coming new to Matisse could do no better than to begin by setting Barr’s and Flam’s books beside each other on a nearby shelf. Unfortunately, both of them are out of print. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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Books The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt BC–AD . By Judith McKenzie. 460 pp. incl. 85 col. + 539 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008), £55. ISBN 978–0–300–11555–0. Reviewed by SALLY-ANN ASHTON
a sizeable and well-illustrated addition to the Pelican History of Art series. The text is descriptive rather than overtly analytical, summarising much of the published research by the author and others. An underlying theme is the influence of Alexandrian architecture on other regions, a subject on which the author has written before. This is not the first monograph to collate evidence for the monuments of ancient Alexandria: Barbara Tkaczow’s publication Topography of Ancient Alexandria (An archaeological map) (1993) has been a standard point of reference for students. However, McKenzie’s book is in many ways more accessible and better produced. As its title suggests, the book focuses on the architecture of Alexandria. It is divided chronologically and includes helpful summaries in the introduction and at the start of each chapter. Part one considers how ancient Alexandria was lost and is illustrated by drawings and prints of the city’s landscape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. McKenzie then considers the surviving archaeological evidence, setting the scene for more detailed descriptions of the finds in chronological sequence. Part two considers evidence for Ptolemaic Alexandria, followed by sections on the influence of classical Alexandrian architecture outside Egypt, and a chapter on traditional Egyptian architecture of both the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. This vast and complex sequence of development cannot successfully be discussed in such a short space. To some extent McKenzie justifies this in her preface by stating that the majority of Alexandrian monuments were largely classical with some Egyptian influences. She makes mention of and illustrates some of the Egyptian material found during the recent underwater excavations in the Alexandrian harbour, but does not really explore this material to the same extent as she does the classical-style fragments. Archaeological evidence for this period of Alexandria’s history is limited, with only scant remains of the Ptolemaic city surviving. The author does her best to assemble later images of key monuments, and it is refreshing not to see artists’ impressions of how the city may have looked at this time based on little other than conjecture – a method that many books on Alexandria have employed.
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Part three opens with a chapter on the classical architecture of key cities and towns in Egypt. Like the preceding chapter on Egyptian architecture this is by no means an exhaustive account, but should offer newcomers to the subject an idea of life outside the capital city. The monumental architecture at Antinoopolis, the city founded by the Emperor Hadrian in honour of his lover Antinous, is discussed in some detail. However, the classical material appears somewhat in isolation, and while this was the main scope for the book, it would be refreshing to have seen a photograph, or reference at least, to the traditional mud-brick houses spread across the site. The remainder of this section of the book deals with evidence for the development of Alexandria during the Roman period, amalgamating written sources with the archae ological evidence. There are helpful maps and plans of the Roman city, shown alongside photographs and objects. It is in this section that McKenzie’s capabilities are most apparent. Her analysis of the architectural styles makes a useful contribution to scholarship. Elevations illustrate developments during this period offering links between the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Being less familiar with later periods of Alexandria’s architectural history, this reviewer found these sections the most enjoyable. Here, as earlier, the author considers the influence of Alexandrian architecture upon buildings in the Byzantine and early Islamic empires. The archaeological evidence is supported by written accounts and a brief, but useful, summary of the later periods of the city’s history. The chapter on the written sources relating to the churches of Late Antique Alexandria includes a map showing their relation to more ancient monuments, as well as drawings and photographs. The re-use of earlier material is also documented and includes the sarcophagus of the Thirtieth Dynasty king of Egypt Nectanebo II incorporated into a fountain in the courtyard of the Attarin mosque. The following two chapters consider ecclesiastical architecture outside Egypt and evidence for Alexandrian architectural scholarship during the Late Antique period. The former offers a detailed survey of the material, and the latter an interesting aside. McKenzie then turns her attention to the influence of the Alexandrian architecture of this period and its pictorial tradition overseas. In many respects this publication offers a chronological tour from the disparate fragments representing the splendour of the Ptolemaic city, through its Roman development and onto the wealth of remains from the later periods of its occupation. Throughout, Alexandria is placed within a wider context and not viewed in isolation, which is crucial for a city that functioned as a gateway for the Mediterranean to Africa. On the whole the main body of the book is well structured and it offers a good introductory survey of Alexandria, with reference to some of Egypt’s other towns and cities. While
there are some gaps in the literature and bibliography, this book offers a reliable starting-point for those interested in classical architecture in Egypt. Visitors to the city would also benefit from reading the book before they go and if a smaller format were ever produced it would work well as a guide to the modern metropolis that can be daunting and confusing to navigate.
Picturing Kingship. History and painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis. By Harvey Stahl. 464 pp. incl. 89 col. + 81 b. & w. ills. (Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA, 2008), $85. ISBN 978–0–271–02863–7. Reviewed by MARTIN KAUFFMANN THE CONNECTION OF the Latin manuscript known as the Psalter of St Louis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. lat.10525) to King Louis IX of France (reigned 1226–70) relies on the evidence of the manuscript’s calendar and heraldry. Beyond the royal association, the fame of the manuscript, attributed by Harvey Stahl to the mid-1260s, derives from its cycle of seventy-eight full-page miniatures of Old Testament subjects prefacing the Psalms and the eight large historiated initials which mark the major divisions of the text. Stahl’s first principal interest is the organisation of the artistic work in the prefatory cycle. The most sustained previous treatment was that of Robert Banner in his Manuscript painting in Paris during the reign of St. Louis (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977). Both authors observe a large number of variations in the physical structure and in the artistic technique and design of the early quires of the manuscript; but their individual attributions often differ, as in part does the underlying conceptual model. Branner identified about twenty professional illuminators’ workshops in Paris during Louis’s reign, each containing up to a dozen artists and sometimes functioning over several decades. By contrast, and in line with more recent work on the structure of the book trade, Stahl believes that most workshops were households in which an illuminator usually worked alone. His is a dynamic and humanised account, according to which the artists can be seen to vary their work and react to one another. Thus he writes about the second of the three phases into which he divides work on the cycle, in which a more regular structure of quires of four leaves appears, each containing the work of a single main artist: ‘In this second phase of production each artist changes and to some extent adopts the viewpoint and goals of the group, sometimes compromising or suppressing native tendencies and strengths to do so’ (p.70). In an intermediate chapter, Stahl pays attention to four separate aspects of the
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prefatory cycle. The first is the church architecture, which appears in the top half of each miniature. Its form is related to contemporary buildings, such as the south transept of Notre-Dame in Paris, but Stahl also identifies a theological function in this presence of the Church above the unfolding of Old Testament history. The second topic is that of pictorial sources. There are similarities of form and content with the Isabella Psalter in Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS.300), which may have been intended for Louis’s sister or daughter, but surprisingly few detailed connections to other manuscripts or monuments. Thirdly, Stahl pays attention to the French legends found on the reverse of each miniature (each opening, or ‘diptych’, of miniatures alternates with an opening containing only legends). Lastly, the style of the Psalter is related to the pictorial effects of Parisian art of the 1260s. The second principal focus of the book is the Old Testament imagery itself. The expansion of Old Testament narrative can be seen in several Psalters from the early thirteenth century onwards. Stahl links this to exegetical developments in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Paris, where allegorical and typological readings of the Old Testament were increasingly supplemented by a new interest in the literal and historical sense of the text. The cycle in the St Louis Psalter opens not with the Creation or Adam and Eve, but with the sacrifices of Cain and Abel; it ends with the accession of King Saul. Unlike some past writers, Stahl believes that nothing has been lost. Christian writers from St Augustine to Vincent of Beauvais saw the story of Cain and Abel as the beginning of human history. In analysing the presentation of the patriarchs and their descendants in the cycle as a whole, it is not difficult to identify themes of dynastic continuity, of the relation of regnum to sacerdotium and of the roles of leaders, priests and prophets. But the climax with the accession of Saul does present an interpretative challenge in a manuscript made for a king: after all, Saul lost God’s favour and ultimately his kingdom. Stahl daringly attributes the narrative uncertainties of the miniature, especially the absence of a divine response to the sacrifice of the people of Israel, to a deliberate desire for ambiguity – no anointed king can be assured of continuing in office. Finally, we reach the text of the Psalms, the opening of which is marked by a Beatus initial showing David spying on the naked Bathsheba, while below he kneels in prayer before Christ enthroned. The story could be viewed either allegorically, with David and Bathsheba as types for Christ and his Church, or morally, as a tale of royal fallibility, penance and forgiveness. It comes as a disappointment to find that the other historiated initials of the Psalter are not explored in equal depth. But Harvey Stahl died in 2002, and the book he had been working towards remained unfinished at his death; it has been brought to publication by his wife. In general this has been admirably done, and it is with
regret that the reviewer must note that parts of the scholarly apparatus, for instance the bibliography and the summary collation in Appendix 1, have not been edited to the same high standard as the rest of the book. In the introduction, Stahl expresses the hope that the Psalter will provide access to three intersecting subjects: the role of the visual in the private life of the king; the shaping of his devotional life; and the fictions of history, duty and kingship created for a ruler who transformed the French monarchy and was idealised as its most Christian king. But Louis’s own relation to the manuscript remains elusive. We do not know what his role was in its conception, and the images are not linked in any linear way to the events of his life: his crusading career is the éminence grise of the book. We should nevertheless be grateful for the richness and penetration of the book’s observations and contextual interpretations; it will remain a fitting monument to its author.
Fernando Gallego and his workshop: the altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo, paintings from the collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Edited by Amanda W. Dotseth, Barbara C. Anderson and Mark A. Roglán. 360 pp. incl. 165 col. + b. & w. ills. (Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2008), $75. ISBN 978–0–85667–651–2. Reviewed by CARL BRANDON STREHLKE
of the Ciudad Rodrigo retablo went through various hands before making their way to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson. Sold out of the diocese sometime before 1879 to José Fallola, manager of the Hotel de Paris in Madrid, the works were purchased from him by J.C. Robinson, former Keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who was then operating as a dealer. He sold them to Sir Francis Cook in 1882. During the Second World War, some of the panels were exhibited in Toledo, Ohio, and later at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London. In 1950 Knoedler’s negotiated their sale to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Claire Berry, Chief Conservator at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, who directed the recent restoration and exhaustive technical analysis of the panels, gives in her essay a fascinating account of an earlier treatment in the Kress laboratories in New York and Huckleberry Hill in Pennsylvania carried out by Mario Modestini and his largely Italian team of restorers, and although somewhat an aside in this book, which was published on the occasion of the retable’s exhibition at the Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, it is one of the best-published descriptions of how the
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Kress restoration team worked. The Kress collection was largely of Italian art: in the 1950s what were judged to be the best of the lot went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the rest was dispersed around the country. There were few Spanish paintings, and the acquisition at such a late date in its collecting history of a large retable, suggests that the Foundation thought that Spanish painting would have special resonance in the American south-west. The retable, which came from the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo, was once much larger than the now twenty-six extant panels; although the original size of the ensemble is not known, it seems clear that a few other panels not in Tucson came from the same structure. The only documentation about it is a seventeenth-century antiquarian’s statement that it once bore an inscription with the dates 1480–88. Robinson first attributed the retable to Fernando Gallego (documented 1468–1507) of Salamanca, the university city about ninety kilometres from Ciudad Rodrigo.1 Scholars subsequently recognised that at least one other major hand worked on the retable, and this has been identified as Maestro Bartolomé based solely on a signature of a comparable work in the Prado. Bartolomé and Gallego worked together on a number of other large-scale projects. As discussed in Amanda Dotseth’s and Barbara Anderson’s essays, for his compositions Bartolomé relied on German prints and illustrated books that were available in Salamanca. Anderson noted the iconography of the scene of Chaos in the retable on an illustration by Michael Wohlgemut and Hans Pleydenwurff in Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremburg chronicle of 1493, as well as correspondences between illustrations in that book and other scenes in the altarpiece. She proposed that the retable was refitted with new scenes after that date to conform to the millenarianism that then preoccupied intellectuals and churchmen in Castile, noting that the artist may have had access to the chronicle via Hieronymus Münzer, the Nuremberg physician and friend of Schedel, who visited Salamanca in January 1495. German printers had also already established themselves in the town. In Ciudad Rodrigo Cathedral’s accounts there are several unspecified payments in 1493 and 1494 to a Fernando de Salamanca and Bartolomé Garcia, presumably the two artists, which suggests work was going on at that time. Could it be that the recorded dates of 1480–88 are incorrect, and the altarpiece dates to the mid-1490s? The earlier dates represent a long range of years even for an altarpiece of this size, and may refer to other events in the cathedral such as a building programme. As this book makes clear, Spanish altarpieces were collaborative works precisely to ensure their efficient and timely production. Masterpieces also of carpentry, it would have been very difficult to integrate and change the sequence of scenes once a retable had been installed on the high altar. The book will long serve students of the Spanish retable for its abundance of technical the burlington m a g a z i n e
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material and, in particular, the fine illustrations of the infra-red reflectograms of each panel in which not only the differences between the two main painters are documented, but the process of preparation, which indicated a working method that left little to chance. I also particularly liked the charts of colour notes that were discovered in the infra-red examinations including such descriptions as oro mate, or matte gold, probably for gilt silver, and other tables documenting gilding, brushwork, facial and landscape types. The infra-red examinations followed those produced by the Prado of their two principal paintings by Gallego – the Pietà and Blessing Saviour. It is now time to examine the Prado’s Virgin and Child signed by Maestro Bartolomé. Anderson hints at a possible German origin for him noting the similarity of his style with a painting of the Three Graces in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, which is catalogued as Westphalian. This would be a future direction for study of this master who was obviously so attuned to German print sources. Pilar Silva Maroto’s essay on Gallego summarises a lifetime of work on the artist and on Hispano-Flemish painting in Isabelline Castile. She quotes from a contract of 1488 of a commission to two other artists, Juan Rodríquez and Sancho de Zamora, of what this meant to the Spanish public. The patroness María de Luna, duchess of the Infantado, wrote that she wanted ‘painted images of the highest order of the new art [. . .] fine colours polished with oil and elegant proceedings and countenances and gracious faces and foreigners’. The description also fits the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece, so brilliantly documented in this fine volume. 1 J.C. Robinson: ‘The Master of Flémalle and the painters of the school of Salamanca’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 7 (1905), pp.387–93.
The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art Treasure. By Nicole Dacos. Translated by Josephine Bacon. 352 pp. incl. 223 col. + 153 b. & w. ills. (Abbeville, New York and London, 2008), £70. ISBN 978–0–7892–1004–3. Reviewed by CHRISTIAN KLEINBUB R A P H A E L ’ S L O G G I A I N the Vatican Palace was once celebrated as one of the greatest works of the High Renaissance. Imitated widely, it set a standard for grand palace decorations well into the nineteenth century. But the Loggia’s imperfect state of preservation, and the fact that it is off limits to most visitors to the Vatican, has ensured that it is known today mainly to scholars, its relative obscu rity compounded by the vagaries of taste and by an indifferent photographic record. All this gives us reason to welcome Nicole Dacos’s new study of the Loggia in a
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53. Detail of a pilaster in the Loggia, by Raphael’s workshop. c.1517. Painted stucco. (Vatican Palace, Rome).
respectable English translation by Josephine Bacon. While this is not the first booklength study in English on the Loggia, as the publisher claims, it does provide scholars with an admirable introduction to its sources, subject-matter, execution and reception, each explored in a separate chapter and accompanied by an unrivalled series of colour photographs. The first chapter is probably the best, being a consideration of the Loggia’s ancient sources, from the architecture of the Loggia to its stucchi and famous grotesques (Fig.53; no.16), which, as is well known, were inspired by ancient prototypes in the Domus Aurea. The chapter amply demonstrates how Raphael worked to revive the sumptuousness of ancient Roman decorations through a remarkable modernisation of Antique forms. Beyond noting the Loggia’s ancient sources, Dacos finds a reason for some of the imagery in the personality of its patron, Leo X, who had a taste for family emblems, exotic animals, music and the hunt. Dacos explicitly resists seeing these diverse images as part of an esoteric or otherwise complex and unified programme, considering them instead as ‘improvised pieces’ constituting a dream world of fecund nature and antiquity reborn. Dacos draws closest to describing an overall meaning for the Loggia in her second chapter on the biblical scenes. By comparing Raphael’s bible to Michelangelo’s on the Sistine ceiling, she observes that the series presents biblical subjects of a milder, less violent nature than Michelangelo had done. She attributes the difference to the changing complexion of Roman religion at that time,
when a chastened return to Early Christian spirituality was prompted by the first stirrings of the Reformation. For her, Raphael’s bible is a massive Biblia pauperum, reflecting a new simplicity of the Church appropriate to its own troubled times. Given the dizzying complexity of the ensemble as a whole, the validity of this argument seemingly depends on whether one accepts the author’s earlier contention that the rest of the decoration, particularly the grotesques, are unserious and playful addenda, and thus entirely subordinate in terms of their content to the biblical scenes. The study of the later Raphael and his workshop has become something of a subject in its own right with its own experts and, for this select group of scholars, the presentation of several new attributions in the third chapter will be important. Rejecting recent attempts to attribute designs for the Loggia to Raphael himself, Dacos continues the work of assigning names to the diverse hands that, in her view, painted the various parts of the ensemble. One consequence of her approach is that Raphael’s personal contribution remains somewhat vaguely defined, being compared to the work of a composer conducting one of his own symphonies, but providing little in terms of evidence of his specific role in the co-ordination of the project. Having surveyed the Loggia’s historical fortunes in the last chapter, one may profitably return to ponder the questions raised by this interesting book. Above all, the reader may wish to consider, as Bernice Davidson did,1 whether the Loggia might really reflect such a casual approach to meaning, and whether it, apparently alone among Raphael’s ensembles, does not embody more than the sum of its parts. Even without presupposing a strict programme, one may still wonder if the Loggia’s astonishing ‘decorative’ surfaces offer more than delight, and whether its representation of the world and cosmos is not marked as much by its attempts to assimilate heterogeneity as promote orthodoxy in the way that Dacos’s treatment suggests. We may glimpse a desire to reconcile a variety of unexpected and seemingly incongruous things, from the stucco scenes of necromancy, to variations on Bacchic themes, to the sheer variety of unusual animals portrayed on its walls. In its mingling of natural, pagan and Christian themes, one may ask whether connections might be made between the Loggia and palace chambers like the studiolo, spaces for intellectual leisure that featured a similar celebration of the divine, human imagination and the world that highlighted rarity and variety, the very qualities that contemporaries most admired in the Loggia itself. In pursuing these and other lines of inquiry, Dacos’s book will serve as a foundation and reference point that, with its fund of remarkable photographs, proclaims the Loggia’s enduring historical, cultural and artistic importance. 1 B.F. Davidson: Raphael’s Bible: A Study of the Vatican Logge, University Park PA 1985.
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Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome. By Patrizia Cavazzini. 256 pp. incl. 18 col. + 53 b. & w. ills. (Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA, 2008), $80. ISBN 978–0–271–03215–3. Reviewed by DONATELLA LIVIA SPARTI S T U D Y D R A W S primarily on court records, which enable Patrizia Cavazzini to discern ‘patterns of production, collecting, and merchandising [. . .] that could be confirmed by other documents, mainly inven tories and early statutes of the artists Academy’ (p.10). The main conclusion is that the traditional belief that the diffusion of painting in seventeenth-century Rome was more limited than in the Netherlands is incorrect. ‘Celebrated paintings were produced and collected in a broader context, where myriad craftsmen operated for an extensive popular market [. . .] Paintings were not only elite products: as in Holland, they could be collected by artisans and professionals, as well as the laboring class, in part to follow fashion, in part to satisfy personal needs ranging from devotional to aesthetic to economic’ (pp.154–55). The argument is based on an analysis of different aspects of the ‘business’, each the subject of a chapter: ‘Artists and Craftsmen’, ‘Training’, ‘The Diffusion of Painting’ and ‘The Market’. The book reads well and is even entertaining, although, perhaps for lack of space, its documentary appendix only includes partial transcriptions. In several ways it complements Francis Haskell’s pioneering Patrons and Painters. Art and Society in Baroque Italy (1963) but, by extending the analysis beyond the very wealthy, Cavazzini demonstrates how this must, in part, be ‘rethought and modified’ (p.135). Cavazzini shows how modest collectors did not always follow patterns set by wealthier and more fashionable ones. ‘Portraits’ of live animals are already documented in 1610, and by 1625 some owners gave prominence to still lifes and battle pictures, while others grouped their pictures in themes. However, it is not clear how representative these examples are, because she ‘concentrated on those [notarial] offices that contained more inventories necessary for my project’ (p.11) – those transcribed in the appendix are not, in fact, ‘fairly typical examples’ (p.157). By using the term collector for anyone ‘owning ten to fifteen canvases’ (p.97), or even fewer (e.g. appendix nos.11–12 and 28), she blurs the distinction between the different reasons that people bought paintings. Cavazzini’s conclusions cannot always be accepted without qualification. For example, in the chapter on training, she states that ‘schools of painting and academies, public and private [. . .] replaced in part the old system of training’, yet concedes that ‘in Rome perhaps few painters ran proper schools, and the same word might well have been applied to what to us is little different from a workshop’ (pp.53–54). This is surely
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correct. ‘Scuola’ appears in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources both as a synonym for a ‘place of learning’, in the sense of workshops, as used on occasion by Vasari (‘Fra gl’altri che nella scuola di Giovanni e Nicola scultori pisani si esercitarono’), and as pictorial style, as, for example, in Cellini’s Autobiography (‘gloriosa scuola fiorentina’) or the Carraccis recommendation that young artists should learn from different ‘scuole’.1 There is no evidence that the Cavaliere d’Arpino, Domenichino or Pietro da Cortona ‘conducted schools’ in the sense of institutions (p.53). References to academies, Cavazzini reminds us, tend to mean ‘sessions of drawing from the nude’ and that ‘people attended simply to improve their skill’ (pp.72 and 76). But she does not explain why established artists also attended them and her suggestion that some of these academies included theoretical studies is not substantiated. The claim that drawing after nude models at the Accademia di S. Luca ‘became sporadic like the rest of the training there’ soon after its foundation (p.77) is difficult to reconcile with the existence of a ‘stanza per l’esercitio degli studij’ also referred to as ‘la gran sala Accademica, luogo destinato agli Studii, sì dell’Ignudo, come delle falde, e pieghe de’ panni, dell’Anotomia, di Prospettiva, di Lumi, ed Ombre, di Architettura . . .’.2 Indeed, life drawing is regularly mentioned. On 21st September 1664, for instance, it was decided ‘che l’accademia non si può più fare la mattina per il freddo . . .’;3 students sketched drapery instead (‘l’atto del modello’): displayed on a wooden, presumably life-size dummy, and academicians took turns in changing the ‘canovaccio per vestirlo’.4 Cavazzini’s claims that the Accademia elevated (or sought to elevate) the social status of artists and that, after the directorship of Zuccaro, it provided them with a theoretical background are uncorroborated. Equally questionable is the statement that dissections for artists’ benefit were ‘unheard of in Seicento Rome’ (p.73): there are references in printed and manuscript sources to artists, together with medical students, attending dissections performed by surgeons such as Bernardino Genga, Nicolas Larcher and Giovan Maria Castellani at the Hospital of S. Spirito, or by Giovan Guglielmo Riva at that of S. Maria della Consolazione and at his own home. Inevitably there are questions that Cavazzini does not ask, despite the richness of her book and the intelligence of her research. I shall mention one: in 1607 the Accademia forbade artists from tracing images (for training or otherwise; p.45) ‘se non sono di sua mano’.5 While Cavazzini is aware of the practice and assumes that these autograph duplicates sold as originals (pp.69 and 96), she does not ask how this affects our understanding of multiples: is it meaningful, in this context, to distinguish between originals and copies? 1 D.L. Sparti: ‘Copie dipinte nell’educazione artistica seicentesca in Italia’, in M. Deramaix, P. GalandHallyn, G. Vagenheim and J. Vignes, eds.: Les Académies dans L’Europe Humaniste: idéaux et pratiques, Geneva 2008, p.399.
2 Archivio dell’Accademia di S. Luca (hereafter cited as AASL), no.44, fol.32v; see D.L. Sparti: ‘Un nuovo documento per la serie di ritratti d’artisti dell’Accademia di San Luca’, in Studi in Onore del Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz per il suo centenario (1897–1997), Pisa 1996, p.333. 3 AASL, no.44, fol.17v. 4 AASL, no.42/A, fol.176r. 5 AASL, no.280; reiterated in 1627 under Urban VIII.
La imagen religiosa en la Monarquía hispánica. Usos y espacios. Edited and introduced by María Cruz de Carlos, Pierre Civil, Felipe Pereda and Cécile VincentCassy. 242 pp. incl. 58 b. & w. ills. (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, 2008), €31. ISBN 978–84–96820–12–8. Reviewed by ROSEMARIE MULCAHY
published here are the fruits of a three-day conference held at the Casa de Velázquez in 2005. This is an admirable achievement and exemplary of what a volume of published proceedings should be: clearly focused, based on new research and with full scholarly apparatus. The provision of abstracts in Spanish, French and English is most helpful. The use and meaning of sacred images in Spain and the Americas during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is the unifying theme. The wide-ranging introduction deftly summarises the growing use of interdisciplinary methodologies in the study of religious art – Aby Warburg, Peter Burke and David Freedberg are among those acknowledged as pioneers. Anthropologists and cultural historians are challenging the history of art with the history of images. The fact that in the process aesthetics, style and quality may be left out, is for another discussion. It should also be said that art historians have long been aware that in order to understand the aesthetic function of religious images they must be related to the ritual context for which they were produced. The material is divided into four sections: the conventual or monastic image; the politics of the image; the image in the public realm; the image and private devotion. Complete cycles of the life and miracles of the founders of the religious orders became a common feature of monasteries of the Baroque period in Spain and Latin America. In his essay (‘Ciclos pintados de la vida de los santos fundadores’) Alfonso Rodríguez de Ceballos suggests that these cycles were primarily intended for the edification of lay visitors – the religious were already well versed in the achievements of their founders – and were therefore usually installed in the cloisters nearest the entrance. Given the proliferation of monastic establishments in seventeenth-century Spain and Latin America, competition for devotees and donations was fierce. He concludes that the scarcity of examples to be found in female
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convents – the reformed Carmelites seem to have been an exception – is probably due to their rigorous rule of enclosure which forbade access by the laity. The cycle of twenty-five paintings representing scenes of martyrdom located in the upper cloister of the royal convent of the Encarnación have long been thought to be an anomaly for an enclosed order of Augustinian nuns. In her fascinating article (‘Un ciclo romano en la Encarnación de Madrid’) Cécile Vincent-Cassy examines the original ideological context of the commission and reveals a web of connections to the Jesuits. The convent’s founder, Queen Margarita of Austria, had close associations with the Jesuits – her confessor was the Austrian Richard Haller S.J. During the stay of the court in Valladolid from 1601 to 1606 the spirituality and religious politics of Philip III and his queen were greatly influenced by the Jesuit English College of S. Albano. The link between S. Albano and the Encarnación is provided by Luisa de Carvajal, who aspired to martyrdom and died in an English prison, and whose remains are preserved in the convent. The visual sources for the cycle, a combination of the frescos painted by Il Pomarancio at the end of the sixteenth century in the church of S. Stefano Rotondo, the Jesuit College in Rome, and the engravings made of them by Cavalieri in 1587, are forensically examined. The role that pictorial programmes played in the cult of sculpted images is most interestingly explored by Angel Aterido. Very little has survived of the elaborate pictorial decorations that provided a context for the viewing of sculpture during the Baroque period. By comparing two chapels built in Madrid in the mid-seventeenth century and dedicated to the Passion, the Cristo de la Buena Muerte in the Imperial College and the chapel of Cristo de los Dolores in the Venerable Third Order, he shows that the relationship was one of dialogue rather than of dependence. By casting his net of research widely (printed sources, dispersed paintings, engravings and plans) he comes up with some gems. The sculptures are reimagined in the context of the ceremonies for which they were commissioned: the first was designed as a setting of quiet intimacy, to encourage reflections on death; for the second, a more dramatic atmosphere was created in order to predispose the faithful to acts of mortification. Devotions to the Virgin Mary were many and varied and two of these are studied here in depth. The monastery of Guadalupe in Extremadura became one of the principal pilgrimage destinations in Europe. This was based on a strategy in which the image of the Virgin played the leading role. Françoise Crémoux analyses how the strategy to promote the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe worked. Of particular interest are the printed and manuscript accounts of its use and miracles. María Cruz de Carlos, in a most impressive piece of research, examines the devotion to the
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Virgen de la Expectación. Originally promoted by Queen Isabel de Borbón’s confessor, the Trinitarian Simón de Rojas, this Marian advocation, centred on the mystery of the Incarnation of the Virgin, offered women consolation and spiritual support during the anxious, and often difficult, time of pregnancy and childbirth. It became widespread in court circles during the first two decades of the seventeenth century and thousands of prints of the Virgin shown in her expectant state were distributed. It is interesting to view Pantoja’s portrait of Queen Margarita pregnant (Kunst historisches, Vienna) in this context. The function of copies was fundamental in encouraging and disseminating the devotion to religious images, and Luisa Elena Alcalá studies a particularly interesting aspect whereby black, brown or dark Madonnas were whitened. She takes the example of the Virgin of Loreto in New Spain, which was copied directly from the original and imported from Italy, where it was whitened by the Jesuits who were responsible for introducing the cult to the Americas. Javier Portús (‘Verdadero retrato y copia fallida’) considers the impossibility of capturing the essence of the originals. By studying the many legends associated with great artists who failed to adequately reproduce miraculous images, he reveals deep-rooted notions regarding the relationship between artistic aspirations and religious experience. As always, Portús makes excellent use of literary sources to provide an understanding of the mentality of the Golden Age. The seventeenth century saw the canonisation of several Spanish saints. The celebrations organised by the Jesuits in 1622 to mark the canonisation of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier were particularly splendid. Bernadette Majorana uses contemporary accounts (Relaciones) to recreate these extraordinary events. Ruth Olaizola also draws on Relaciones de Fiestas as well as Jesuit dramatic productions to bring to life the celebrations in Madrid. She analyses the relationship between pupils at Jesuit colleges and imagery and also the Jesuits’ premise that man is both actor and spectator. Fernando Quiles discusses the invention of the form and presentation of a new saint, or hagiographic creation, specifically in relation to Ferdinand III (canonised 1671), as well as three other, ultimately unsuccessful, candidates. The role of the cathedral chapter of Seville in promoting the candidates and the delicate balance between local interest and Rome is explored. Essays by Bonaventura Bassegoda, María José del Río, Elena Sánchez de Madariaga, Sara Nalle, Frédéric Cousinié and Lizzie Boubli also make interesting contributions to this most useful publication. As the editors point out, the study of the prolonged inheritance in Spain of images as vehicles of the sacred is one of the most attractive areas of research for the next generation of art historians. This volume, an essential addition to the bibliography of sacred art, will surely act as an encouragement and an inspiration.
Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani. By Bernardo De Dominici. Edited by Fiorella Sricchia Santoro and Andrea Zezza. Vol.1, 1250 pp. (Paparo Edizioni, Naples; Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Discipline Storiche ‘Ettore Lepore’, 2003), €120. ISBN 978–88–87111–42–1. Vols.2 and 3, 1624 pp. (Paparo Edizioni, Naples; Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Discipline Storiche ‘Ettore Lepore’; Seconda Università di Napoli, Dipartimento di Studio delle Componenti Culturali del Territorio, 2008), €150. ISBN 978–88–87111–79–8. Reviewed by ERIKA LANGMUIR
heroic editorial enterprise,1 that restores to Bernardo De Dominici’s ambitious œuvre – initiated in the 1720s but published between 1742 and 1745 – the dignity it deserves, without, however, minimising those aspects of invention and forgery that made the author a butt of scholarly reprobation in his own lifetime, and the publication a commercial failure.2 Bernardo (1683–1759) – son of the painter Raimondo De Dominici (d.1705), a pupil first of Mattia Preti, then of Luca Giordano – claimed to have studied with the German landscapist Franz Joachim Beich during the latter’s stay in Naples. He was employed as ‘Painter of Landscapes, Marine views and Bambocciate’ by the Duke and Duchess of Laurenzano, Niccolò Gaetani d’Aragona and Aurora Sanseverino, cultivated protagonists of Neapolitan high society and patrons of the arts. Their gallery of over seven hundred paintings was one of the richest and most varied in the city and helped to familiarise the author with different artists’ maniere. It is in the entourage of the Laurenzano that De Dominici met Francesco Solimena, whose biography is the ‘crowning glory’ of the Lives, and it was here that he first made contact with the intellectuals, antiquarians and connoisseurs who furnished him with information, allowed him the use of their libraries, and put him in touch with their international peers. For part of De Dominici’s difficulties in compiling the Lives was that he seems never to have left Naples, except for a trip to Malta when he was fourteen or fifteen – when he met the octogenarian Preti – and visits to the Laurenzano’s ducal palace in the province of Caserta. His knowledge of art was thus limited to what he could see in Neapolitan collections and public buildings, and what he could learn through reading or hearsay. The intense cosmopolitanism of Naples at this time was balanced by an equally ardent local patriotism. After some two hundred years of foreign rule and a concomitant desire for independence, the autonomy of the Kingdom of Naples was restored in 1734, with the ascent to the throne of Charles of Bourbon, son of Philip V of Spain. It is against this background that De Dominici’s grandiose scheme must be understood: to trace Neapolitan art from c.1250 to ‘the present year’ 1739; to
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affirm its continuity with the art of the city’s Greek founders, and, most importantly, to proclaim its primacy over the art of Florence eulogised by Vasari – his model and bête noire, whose culpable omission of Neapolitan artists, ‘combined with the negligence of [Neapolitan] writers and the voracity of time [. . .] has defrauded the fatherland of glory’.3 The first volume of the present edition includes Books 1 and 2 of De Dominici’s text, ending in the second decade of the seicento with the Lives of Giovan Battistello Caracciuolo and Belisario Corenzio. Caravaggio’s Neapolitan sojourn is dealt with in the former; his innovative manner, although accurately described and appreciated, is nonetheless deplored for its abandonment of ‘beautiful colours’ and its ‘ignoble’ naturalism, in contrast to the ‘noble and elegant’ manner of Annibale Carracci and his Bolognese followers. It is in the first Book in particular, and in the part of the second Book dealing with the sixteenth century, that De Dominici’s fiery campanilismo, his desire to outdo Vasari and the Florentines, lead him to invent imaginary artists and historic incidents, and to cite forged manuscripts in support of his thesis.4 As we proceed through his disproportionately long third book (vols.2 and 3 of this edition), dedicated to the seicento and to his own contemporaries, the author perforce abandons his duel with Vasari and relies increasingly on first-hand knowledge. The interest, both art historical and anecdotal,5 of the Lives markedly increases, with more accurate biographies and shrewd assessments of, among others, Ribera, Cavallino, Aniello Falcone, Stanzioni, Micco Spadaro, Salvator Rosa, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, the Neapolitan painters of still life, and Solimena, in whose ‘admirable pictures [. . .] there can be said united many of the perfections described in the Lives of other celebrated painters not only of our fatherland but also of other renowned cities’.6 Interestingly, De Dominici here defends not only Solimena’s own insistence on working from nature, but Neapolitan ‘ennobled’ naturalism more generally. Contradicting his earlier praise for Greco-Roman models, he even asserts that drawing from Antique statuary would have ‘cooled’ the ‘furor poetico’ of the great Luca Giordano.7 I have called this edition heroic. Everything in the text is clarified and explicated, commented on and/or footnoted in the light of exhaustive research and the most rigorous modern scholarship. Each biography is preceded by an illuminating foreword. Not only are the locations of surviving works, wrong attributions and lost works indicated, and all the persons mentioned identified; but sources are analysed, differing comments discussed, historical, political and social factors assessed. More unexpectedly, philological expertise is called in, demonstrating both the contamination of De Dominici’s language by Neapolitan dialect, and his dependence on Vasari’s formulae. This is a very major achievement, which, if it does not exactly rehabilitate De
Dominici, picks out his wheat from his chaff, and provides a trustworthy guide to a fascinating document at a significant moment of eighteenth-century European culture. 1 Unfortunately, a fourth volume containing the editors’ summings-up and an index has yet to find funding. The long gestation of the publication has meant that a bibliography is included both in vol.1 (2003), and vol.3 (2008), bringing the references up to date, although resulting in numerous overlaps. More debatable, however, was the decision to order the bibliographies chronologically rather than alphabetically by author, so that the same writers appear at various times on different pages, and the total of their contributions cannot be gauged. 2 The editors point out, however, that by the time the Lives was published, Herculaneum was being excavated, and the studiosi who had originally supported De Dominici were now dedicated to archaeology. Not all the attributions, furthermore, nor the value judgments expressed in the third book, would have pleased contemporary collectors and artists. 3 Vol.1, p.63. 4 De Dominici’s first mythical personage is the mosaicist, painter and sculptor Tauro, supposedly working for Constantine the Great in the fourth century (vol.1, pp.45–54). The fictitious Pietro and Tommaso de’ Stefani are said to be superior to their contemporary Cimabue owing to the presence in Naples of worthy Greco-Roman models, the city having been spared by the sixth-century Ostrogoth invader, Totila, whereas, according to De Dominici, he totally devastated Florence, thus severing its links with antiquity (vol.1, pp.16–17 and 68–96). The notary and painter Giovan Angelo Criscuolo (vol.1, pp.721–33), recorded from 1536 to 1579, is credited with a non-existent manuscript, Notizie de’ professori del disegno, excerpts from which are cited in support of De Dominici’s assertions throughout Books 1 and 2. Equally fraudulent is a manuscript attributed to Marco Pino – a tribute to Naples all the greater for being credited to a prestigious Tusco-Roman artist (vol.1, pp.14–15 and 33–37). 5 A particularly engaging anecdote recounts that Giordano was held in such high esteem by Pope Clement XI that he was allowed to come into his presence wearing glasses (vol.2, p.816). Anglophone readers may be flattered to learn that De Dominici believed ‘the English nation [to be] more than any other most inclined to painting’, as English Grand Tourists sought out drawings by Solimena (vol.3, p.1168). 6 Ibid., p.1098. 7 Ibid., pp.1172 and 1193.
Although Hamburg was for several decades home to such important art historians as Warburg, Panofsky and Saxl, its drawings collection has been largely neglected. Over six hundred drawings are published here for the first time; David Klemm’s task has been immense, and it is remarkable that he has been able to complete it in just six years. 578 drawings have been attributed and most of the remaining anonymous sheets have been dated and assigned to schools: no doubt more of them will eventually be attributed now they are published. While attribution is inevitably the chief concern of such a catalogue, the iconography of the drawings has also been considered. References to related works in other collections are manifold and add to the usefulness of the publication, but since many of them are unpublished, or difficult to find reproduced, it would have been convenient if some of them had been illustrated here. The provenance for each sheet has been traced very thoroughly and is supplemented by a short essay on the history of the collection. The hero is Georg Ernst Harzen (1790–1863) who bequeathed around 30,000 prints and drawings to his home town of Hamburg on condition that a public museum was erected to house them. Harzen had been both a dealer and a collector since the early 1820s, and his influence on the contents of several public collections on the Continent is worthy of more scholarly attention. He supplied drawings to the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett and the Albertina in Vienna. Among his many private customers were Hieronimus Klugkist, whose collection now constitutes the principal component of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Kunsthalle in Bremen, as well as C.A. Jensen, the Danish
Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett. Vol.II: Italienische Zeichnungen 1450–1800. By David Klemm. 1156 pp. incl. 365 col. + 992 b. & w. ills. (Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 2009), €249. ISBN 978–3–412–02261–3. Reviewed by CHRIS FISCHER
in the useful series of catalogues of drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Two volumes of the monumental publication (it weighs over eight kilos) are dedicated to 759 loose sheets; a third volume is devoted to an album of 286 drawings by Stefano della Bella.
THIS IS THE SECOND
54. Seated nude, by Pellegrino Tibaldi. 1550s. Red chalk on paper, 38.7 by 26.6 cm. (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). the burlington m a g a z i n e
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portrait painter (who also painted Harzen), and J.C. Spengler, steward of the Royal Kunstkammer in Copenhagen, both voracious collectors, many of whose drawings entered the print rooms of the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen and the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo. Unlike most German dealers, Harzen made purchases in London, where the supply was large. His special interest was Italian art, and some 320 sheets from his collection are by artists of that school. In accordance with the taste of his times Harzen was especially keen on drawings from the Renaissance. In more recent times the Kunsthalle has supplemented Harzen’s bequest with sheets from later centuries, mainly of inferior quality. The most important acquisitions are the sixteen drawings by Piranesi connected with his celebrated series of prints the Carceri, acquired in 1898, and the purchase in 1967 of a volume of 286 drawings by Stefano della Bella, the third largest group of that artist’s drawings in any collection. Since Harzen seldom bought more than one or two drawings by each artist, the collection embraces a wide range of old-master drawings, including two rare leaves from Marco Zoppo’s so-called ‘Madonna Sketchbook’, a finished drawing on parchment by Maso Finiguerra, sheets by Andrea Mantegna, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Filippo and Filippino Lippi, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Granacci, Pontormo, Parmigianino, Barocci, Campagnola (see the hitherto overlooked cat. no.96) and Federico Zuccari. There are three drawings by Salvator Rosa, one of which was bought recently, as well as fine drawings by Maratta and some beautiful sheets by Carlo Dolci. A monumental figure study by Pellegrino Tibaldi, preparatory for the decoration of Palazzo Poggi, Bologna (no.517), is closely related to a figure study in the Statens Museum in Copenhagen for the same decoration (inv.11160), which is probably the one that Julien Stock referred to vaguely as ‘in a Scandinavian collection’ (Fig.54). A somewhat surprising attribution is no.111, Friar Giovanni della Verna praying in La Verna (1615), which Klemm gives to Remigio Cantagallina on the evidence of two stylistically related drawings, one of which has an old attribution to that artist. I have recently come across a fourth drawing from the series formerly in the McCrindle collection, where it was attributed to Badalocchio, and now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. no.2009.4243). The Della Bella volume has attracted even less scholarly attention. It consists mainly of small sketchbook leaves on which this splendid draughtsman has jotted down spontaneous impressions of everyday life. But there are also copies from other artist’s works as well as ornaments and allegorical compositions. The album thus contains a wide variety of the techniques, motifs and styles employed by the artist. Some of the drawings have been used for Della Bella’s prints. The catalogue is divided by theme, largely following the distribution of the drawings in the album. Apart
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from giving us new insights into Della Bella’s working methods, especially in connection with the series of etchings of the Entrance of the Polish Ambassador in Paris (1645), and of the harbour of Livorno, the album testifies to the importance of other artists’ prints for Della Bella. He often copied prints of Antique statues, and Klemm has demonstrated that Della Bella made copies from Jean Jacques Boissard’s book of costumes of which there are specimens, not only in the Hamburg volume, but also in Paris and Rome. Although many of the drawings in Hamburg are not of the first rank, the comprehensiveness of the collection makes it significant and we should be grateful that yet another comparatively neglected collection has been brought to light with such fine scholarship.
Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity. By Alan C. Braddock. 291 pp. incl. 10 col. + 89 b. & w. ills. (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2009), £34.95. ISBN 978–0–520–25520–3. Reviewed by TREVOR FAIRBROTHER
in the title of this book amplifies a noun hailed in Raymond Williams’s Keywords as ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’; and the word ‘modernity’, hitched to the Victorian figurative artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), may throw down the gauntlet of unfavourable comparison. Braddock’s title puts one in mind of the adventure movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Will this volume tell of a fearless American confronting unknown perils? This inkling of Hollywoodstyle diversion is, of course, ridiculous, for Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity is a good example of current academic writing. The blurb on its dust jacket announces it as ‘the first book to situate Philadelphia’s greatest realist painter in relation to the historical discourse of cultural difference’. Although a professor of art history, Braddock gamely mines the history of anthropology in his quest for fresh hypotheses about Eakins’s art. He acknowledges that ‘cultures’ reflects the influence of Brad Evans, a professor of English and author of Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865–1920 (2005). Braddock’s toughest assertion is that we fall into anachronistic thinking if we uphold Eakins as an exemplary sympathiser of ‘oppressed minorities’. He favours the political over the personal: rebuffing ‘whimsical forms of psychological interpretation’ (p.40), he turns his back on recent assessments of the artist’s blustering bohemianism and erotically charged intimacies with friends, students and sitters. In three chronological chapters this book explores Eakins’s various encounters with foreign people, unfamiliar traditions and racial
THE WORD ‘CULTURES’
diversity. The first considers the artist’s emulation of the exoticising academic realism of Jean-Léon Gérôme in formative pictures of models and peasants in France and Spain. The second chapter, which examines the genre paintings of rowers, hunters, fishermen and male bathers made between 1871 and 1885, draws parallels with the burgeoning literary movement devoted to ‘local color’. Eakins’s ‘ignominious termination as professor and director of teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1886’ (p.39) marks the start of the third chapter. Here Braddock looks at the paintings of cowboys made after a therapeutic sojourn in the Dakota Territory, as well as a motley group of portraits of men and women interested in anthropology, primarily figures connected to the Free Museum of Science and Art, which opened at the University of Pennsylvania in 1889. The cover of this book features The dancing lesson (Fig.55), a sombre, scrutinising and oddly uneasy watercolour depicting three African-American minstrels (a boy, a youth and a man) at rehearsal. The author notes that Eakins’s original title (in 1878) was The negroes, and argues that the artist generally attempted to ‘assign generic ethnographic meanings to his subjects’ because he harboured ‘a somewhat strained and persistent desire [. . .] to represent different people as types, not simply as individuals’ (p.37). As he evokes an intellectual context in which to position Eakins’s attitudes to difference, Braddock brings to the fore the French critic and historian Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) and the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942). He allies the artist with Taine’s ‘premodern’ espousal of social evolutionary thinking and nationalism, and cautions against the temptation to connect Eakins to the modern anthropology, critical of assumptions concerning Western superiority, that Boas formulated in the 1910s. He argues that the ‘persistent scholarly claims about democracy and egalitarianism in [. . .] the art of Eakins seem not only problematic but insensitive’ (p.131). ‘Like most whites at the time’, claims Braddock, ‘Eakins viewed Native American subjects ambivalently at best’ (p.167). One pitfall of methodologies that hybridise diverse disciplines is a tendency to treat works of art as puppets in a show of rhetoric, highlighting those elements that best fit the role to hand. Thus Braddock occasionally dwells on what Eakins chose to omit from his pictures. For example, in the second chapter, after stating that ‘few sports in America have been whiter than rowing, especially in Philadelphia’, he seems to take pleasure in pointing out that Eakins ‘touted [the sport’s] monochromatic complexion’ (pp.127 and 131). He also notes that the artist overlooked the fact that the Schuylkill River was notoriously polluted. Obviously it would be a loss if Eakins had boycotted rowing as subject because the participants were racially homogeneous. Would his pictorial tributes to champion rowers impress us more if they also incorporated visual signs of industrial filth?
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55. The dancing lesson, by Thomas Eakins. 1878. Watercolour, 45.9 by 57.3 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
A kind of existential stalemate hangs over the analysis of Eakins’s full-length portrait of the gifted anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing. While Braddock deems it ‘one of the grandest and most extraordinary visual tributes ever painted by the artist’ (p.174), I find the composition stilted and the execution laboured. It shows a bemused white man wearing clothes and jewellery associated with his Zuni and New Mexican experiences, posing with Indian ceremonial objects associated with warfare. Eakins capitalised on the flamboyance of someone who became a celebrity after his initiation into the tribe – a landmark event that allowed him to do fieldwork as a participant observer. A century later Braddock recalls the meeting at which he showed a reproduction of the Eakins portrait to the Zuni tribal council: ‘they rolled their eyes with exasperation and patiently informed me that they found the work offensive’ (p.211).
Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830–1880. By Isobel Armstrong. 449 pp. incl. 88 b. & w. ills. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008), £30. ISBN 978–0–19–920520–2. Reviewed by SONIA SOLICARI
brilliant, and yet the cheapest [. . .] To that which is ordinary, it lends grace; and to that which is graceful it gives a double lustre. Like a good advertisement, it multiplies your stock’. In many ways this observation, offered in Anthony Trollope’s novel The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson (1862) and repeated in Victorian Glassworlds, encapsulates the spirit of Isobel Armstrong’s analysis of the cultural meaning of glass in the nineteenth century: a combination of function and allure, production and imagination. Never have the decorative and industrial arts seemed so fundamental to the ways in which a society quite literally views itself, as reflected through its language, literature and art,
‘GLASS IS MOST
and through its political endeavours, its technical feats and its consumerism. Taking the mid-nineteenth century as the pivotal point in the history of glass and ‘glass consciousness’, Armstrong expands her argument from the obligatory analysis of the Crystal Palace to, among many other subjects, factory tourism and the Victorian enthusiasm for optical toys and illusions that followed improvements in lens production. The journey from Osler’s fountain to magic lantern via the white-hot factory furnace is demanding at times but Armstrong proves a sure-footed guide, littering the path with recognisable landmarks, from Punch cartoons and trade catalogues to Academy paintings and contemporary poetry. Armstrong’s argument centres on the all-pervasiveness of the Victorian glassworld, ‘an environment of mass transparency’ that encompassed the middle-class drawing-room with windows ‘swagged, draped, tasselled, frilled, ruched’ as well as the more fantastical world of Burne-Jones’s Venus’s mirror or Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot. Central to Armstrong’s thesis is the relationship between ethereality and materiality: the ability of glass as molten matter to be given life by the worker’s breath, to be formed into the enticing shop window pane or broken into a glittering splinter. One of the most compelling chapters of the book is that which investigates the relationship between glass production and glass destruction – when breaking windows became both a visual and audible mode of political demonstration. Although there is something for everyone in Armstrong’s engaging and wide-ranging thesis, glass is placed within a primarily theoretical framework, drawing upon the work of cultural critics such as Walter Benjamin and the visionary Paul Scheerbart. Despite Armstrong’s impressive knowledge of historical glass production, her aim is to examine glass as metaphor – the negotiation of glass as barrier versus glass as medium. This struggle with transparency is viewed by Armstrong as a crucial step towards a nineteenth-century modernity embodied in self-reflection and as such, she seeks to draw out the underlying cultural shifts that accompanied industrial progress in the Victorian period. Armstrong does not tackle the relationship between glass and other areas of the deco rative/industrial arts, such as ceramics or metalwork. It would have been pertinent to have addressed these issues, exploring how the glass of the imagination sat within the materials-based taxonomies that were already emerging at international exhibitions and in museums. With her enthusiasm for the imaginative power of language Armstrong has created a work that is a pleasurable read as well as a rich anthology of source material. That Armstrong can veer so effortlessly between the practical and the theoretical is often as dazzling as the wonders of glass that she describes, yet this book has a truly cross-disciplinary appeal and adds a rich interpretative layer to the all-too-often prosaic study of glass.
Symbolist Art in Poland. By Piotr Kopszak and Andrezj Szczerski. Edited by Alison Smith. 40 pp. incl. 25 col. ills. (Tate Publishing, London, 2009), £6.99. ISBN 978–1–854–37853–8. Reviewed by GRACE BROCKINGTON SINCE POLAND JOINED the European Union in 2004, Britain has experienced an extraordinary influx of Polish immigrants. These new Europeans have imported their language, labour, shops and cuisine, noticeably changing Britain’s culture and economy within the space of a few months. After the estrangement of the Cold War, the political distance between Britain and Central Europe has collapsed. Poland has become a near neighbour, with all the optimism and unease that sudden proximity entails. Now is thus a good moment to investigate the longer history of AngloPolish relations. Symbolist Art in Poland, and the accompanying exhibition which took place at Tate Britain (14th March to 21st June 2009), offer an invaluable reminder that the two countries have enjoyed close connections before, and that encounters between British and Polish artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had an impact on both cultures. The Polish cultural renaissance known as Młoda Polska (‘Young Poland’) combined resurgent nationalism in the face of imperial persecution, with an aspiring internationalism that looked particularly to Britain as a model of progressive modernity. British artists responded to the romantic idea of a suffering nation living through its art, an image embodied by individuals like Joseph Conrad (Jósef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), and the angelically beautiful musician (later Prime Minister) Ignacy Jan Paderewski, whose admirers included Edward BurneJones, Violet Manners, Alfred Gilbert and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Alison Smith’s excellent essay on ‘British Symbolism and Polish Modernism’ urges us to ‘look beyond the Francocentric models of modern art’ that have dominated critical debate for much of the last century, and to pay more attention to the dialogue between Britain and central Europe that operated particularly through the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its offshoots. For example, Burne-Jones’s international reputation owed much to the masterly engravings after his work created by Feliks Jasin` ski, interpretations so subtle that each took about a year to produce. Jasin` ski’s Polish biographer, Léopold Wellisz, even suggested that he had improved on the original, an idea which conveys the creative independence of Polish responses to British art. As Smith observes, Symbolism was not slavishly imitated by Polish artists, but ‘transformed into a completely different language’. It became a distinctively Polish style, a vital expression of unity and reform in an oppressed and divided country.
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Art for art’s sake, which could seem so rarefied and apathetic, became highly political in the context of Polish nationalism: less a retreat from the world than a gesture of emancipation from academic and bourgeois conventions. Pater, Swinburne and Wilde were all translated into Polish, with Wilde’s Salome, illustrated by Beardsley, published in Warsaw in 1914. Poland’s modernising, revolutionary drive accounts for the eventual dissatisfaction voiced by some Polish artists with Arts and Crafts medievalism. On the other hand, British artist-craftsmen such as Walter Crane celebrated Poland as a preindustrial idyll, an unspoilt haven for folk art and communal living. Mediated through myth and misunderstanding, and eventually cut short by political antagonisms, the encounters between Britain and Poland around 1900 were nonetheless intense and creative. They are worth revisiting in this present moment of renewed interest in international Symbolism. In their essay ‘The Young Poland Movement: Art, Nation, Modernity’, Piotr Kopszak and Andrezj Szczerski offer an alternative to the conventional view of international modernism centred in Paris, through the idea of a decentred European internationalism based on cultural exchange between multiple sites. Such a localised model appealed particularly to countries like Poland which struggled to establish national independence while avoiding the self-inflicted blight of insularity. As the authors note, the process of national selfdefinition depended, almost paradoxically, on contact with other cultures, particularly those which were traditionally seen as marginal to Europe. An alliance of the peripheries developed, binding Poland both to geographical neighbours like the Czechs, and to far-flung kindred spirits like Britain and Scandinavia. Kopszak and Szczerski give a fascinating account of the Młoda Polska movement which energised Polish art, imbuing it with the urgency of national liberation and reform. In the late nineteenth century, Polish artists such as Jan Matejko and Stanisław Witkiewics, often educated in the cosmopolitan academies of Munich, Paris and St Petersburg, created a native school of art and architecture which celebrated Polish history, legend and landscape. They generated a sense of cultural autonomy which anticipated political independence, and which sought out parallels with a successful national style like British PreRaphaelitism. Symbolist Art in Poland makes a welcome contribution to the expanding field of crosscultural art history that Tate Britain has done so much to promote through recent exhibitions such as ‘Turner, Whistler, Monet’ and ‘Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec’ (both 2005). It rightly expands the geographical scope of the discussion, bringing into focus a neglected episode in British and Polish history, which bears significantly on the way Britain now imagines its relationship with Europe.
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Publications Received
Photography and Literature. By François Brunet. 176 pp. incl. 70 col. + 23 b. & w. ills. (Reaktion Books, London, 2009), $29.95. ISBN 978–1–86189–429–8. In this beautifully illustrated study, first published in English, the French art historian François Brunet analyses photography’s relationship with literature, from the period of William Henry Fox Talbot and Hippolyte Bayard to Cindy Sherman, Hervé Guibert and Jeff Wall. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, Brunet sketches photography’s encounters with literature from the point of view of photography and photographers. Brunet’s aim is to ‘draw attention to the coincidence of the invention of photography as a technically and socially based standard of (visual) truth, with [the] post-Romantic advent of literature as the culturally sanctioned expression of the creative self’. According to Brunet, most studies in this area foreground literature and neglect important publications such as Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature (1844), which emerges as a major element in Brunet’s account as a unique endeavour to amalgamate photography and text. Further, as Brunet demonstrates, it presents photography not only as a prosaic recorder of facts, but also as an expression of Romantic aesthetics. Through the notion of ‘photographic discourse’, Brunet traces the transformation of photography into a fully fledged medium with his own critical tradition. In the interplay with text, from Walter Benjamin to Roland Barthes, photography’s ‘uncanny realism’ is consecrated – as if literature gave a voice to the ‘optical unconscious’. From an art of light to an art of shadow, words have found in photographs a way to express the photogenic power of apparition.
As one would expect from the authors of Cubism and Culture (2001), whose previous publications have included studies of anarchism, Fascism and Bergsonian philosophy, key articles are placed vividly in their cultural and political context. In particular, the reader gains a clear sense of Cubism’s reception, both positive and negative, across the political spectrum, based on sources ranging from government documents, to the satirical or broadsheet press and specialist periodicals. Antliff and Leighten challenge the traditional divide between Picasso and Braque as ‘leaders’, supported by private galleries, and their diverse group of ‘followers’, who exhibited in Salons. Their selection demonstrates that the cultural influence of the latter group extended beyond French borders and gives due weight to their critical writings, which have often been attacked for their ‘anti-pictorial’ concern with literary, scientific or philosophical themes. Where the anthology remains conventional is in its cut-off date of 1914. Clearly, the editors had to make a choice about how to frame the vast range of material available. Their detailed coverage of a limited period gives a much richer sense of context than Fry’s chronologically broader but more schematic overview. However, their argument that a pre-War focus guards against the bias of later accounts of Cubism, unavoidably shaped by their own socio-political circumstances, is less convincing. This reasoning implies that most post-1914 accounts of Cubism are retrospective. As Christopher Green and others have shown, Cubism was actively debated and practised up until at least 1925. A similar anthology representing the artists, writers and dealers associated with ‘late’ Cubism, such as Juan Gris, Pierre Reverdy and Léonce Rosenberg, is therefore still required. In the meantime, with its insightful commentaries and useful bibliographic references accompanying each extract, this collection is indispensable to anyone interested in Cubism or the broader picture of early twentieth-century Modernism.
MURIEL PIC
LINDA GODDARD
A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914. Edited by Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten. 608 pp. incl. 54 b. & w. ills. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2008), £13. ISBN 978–0–226–02110–2. Mark Antliff’s and Patricia Leighten’s eagerly anticipated anthology of primary Cubist documents is a truly welcome resource for both scholar and student. It is the first comprehensive collection of criticism, manifestos and other documents related to the movement to appear in English translation since Edward Fry’s Cubism (1966). As such, it provides a much-needed fresh look at Cubist theory, revising the formalist bias of Fry’s selection and commentaries, and significantly expanding the range of material covered (with seventy-seven mostly unabridged articles to Fry’s selectively edited forty-eight).
Connell, Ward and Lucas: Modern movement architects in England 1929–1939. By Dennis Sharp and Sally Rendel. 224 pp. incl. 52 col. + 316 b. & w. ills. (Frances Lincoln Ltd., London, 2008), £35. ISBN 978–0–7112–2768–2. Throughout the 1930s, Connell, Ward and Lucas were leading designers of English country and suburban private houses. They deployed a language of uncompromising modernity inspired mainly by Le Corbusier and contemporary Dutch architects. They used large glazed areas and terraces to fill their interiors with light and air, provided modern facilities and employed advanced methods of concrete construction. The core of Dennis Sharp’s and Sally Rendel’s illuminating book is monographic sections on eighteen houses designed by the three architects, working
Modern art and architecture
56. Front view of High and Over, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, by Amyas Connell. 1929–31. (Photograph by Bernard Ashmole, courtesy of John Allan).
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individually or together. There are also chapters on their speculative and social housing and on other unrealised projects, on the architects’ early years and their careers after the dissolution of the practice in 1939. The descriptions of the genesis of each house show a tiny group of middle-class clients opposing the rising tide of ‘Tudorbethan’. The authors’ use of the local planning authorities’ documents and a wide range of contemporary sources illuminates an environment of traditionalism against which they often struggled. The detailed descriptions of the construction methods reflects the architects’ own preoccupation with new building technology. The story of each house is brought up to date, revealing varied fates from sympathetic restoration to demolition in defiance of planning regulations. The authority of Sharp’s and Rendel’s work will be invaluable to those seeking meaningful conservation of the buildings that remain. The practice developed distinctive responses working within the modernist idiom but reflecting their own backgrounds and the influence of their clientele. Sharp and Rendel suggest that the rather complex building envelope of, for example, the ‘Y’ plan of their bestknown house, Connell’s High and Over (Fig.56), is linked to Arts and Crafts exemplars, reflecting the architect’s early engagement with that tradition. The detailed descriptions of the families of each client and their way of life, carefully studied by the architects, may help explain the use of some rather conventional planning that sometimes seems remote from the fluidity of their Continental mentors. Connell, Ward and Lucas’s importance was recognised by their firm’s inclusion in Henry Russell Hitchcock’s 1937 exhibition Modern Architecture in England, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, at a moment when Hitchcock could claim that, with political developments having halted modernist development in much of Europe, ‘England leads the world in architectural activity’. Sharp’s and Rendel’s beautifully produced book enables us to reconsider the role that this practice played at a crucial period in the development of English and European Modernism. NICHOLAS BUENO DE MESQUIT A
Max Beckmann. Apokalypse. By Corinna Höper. 120 pp. incl. 50 col. ills. (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, and Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 2008), €29.90. ISBN 978–3–7774–7075–7. Max Beckmann created his Apokalypse series of lithographs while in Amsterdam during the Second World War. They were printed, however, in Frankfurt at the Bauer Type Foundry and published there in 1943, having been commissioned by the owner, Georg Hartmann. A unique set of twenty-seven hand-coloured proofs was acquired from a private collection by the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, alongside a set of uncoloured proofs and various collateral material. This book, published on the occasion of the exhibition of the proofs at the Staatsgalerie (13th December 2008 to 8th March 2009), reproduces the coloured and uncoloured versions, with full scholarly accounts of each work, and also includes detailed annexes with relevant citations from Beckmann’s letters and diaries. J .- P . S .
Lichtenstein Posters. By Jürgen Döring and Claus von der Osten. 151 pp. incl. 221 col. + 18 b. & w. ills. (Prestel Verlag, Munich, 2008), £24.99. ISBN 978–3–791–34192–7. This catalogue, produced in English and German, accompanied the recent exhibition of posters by Roy Lichtenstein at the Museum für Kunst in Hamburg. The range and presentation of images is impressive, introducing Lichtenstein’s comparatively less wellknown posters alongside his more celebrated paintings. The catalogue, which chronicles more than three decades of poster production, offers a reliable assessment of the developments not only within Lichtenstein’s style, but also of the changing cultural environment within which his art was produced. The essay by Jürgen Döring,
the curator of the exhibition, is extensive and informative, covering not only the artist’s prolific career, but more specifically, his trademark, the Benday dot. The latter pages of the catalogue contain reproductions of the Claus von der Osten collection of the posters, many of which were produced during the 1960s. With over two hundred high-quality coloured images and a large bold format, not only does this publication perfectly indulge the posters’ collective style, but also serves as a first-rate souvenir of the exhibition. JOANNA LEE
Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. By Michael Peppiatt. 456 pp. incl. 23 b. & w. ills. (Skyhouse Publishing, New York, 2009), $16.95. ISBN 978–0–300–14255–6. Francis Bacon loved to view the criminal underworld from a privileged position in grand restaurants. Like Proust’s Baron Charlus, whom he admired greatly, Bacon aggressively lived out his sexual fantasies. This sentimental right-wing gambler, who was reckless and resilient, remained always determinedly loyal to his friends. He was never outraged by reports of political atrocities, but was drawn to violent friendships, those states ‘in which two people pulled each other to pieces’ (p.257). Michael Peppiatt presents in detail Bacon’s frankly terrifying life. Clearing away the myths, some promulgated by the artist himself, others, he claims, produced by David Sylvester, he tells us how Bacon avoided service in the Second World War; why he created an odd ménage retaining his childhood nanny and surrounding himself ‘by an ideal re-creation of his family’ (p.125); and that he was fascinated by sexual jealousy and gangsters, admiring them because at least ‘they were really different from everybody else’ (p.268). We also learn how good Bacon was at self-promotion. But Peppiatt is much less successful at interpreting the paintings, or explaining why they proved so popular. Bacon first became famous, Peppiatt says, because ‘even to a public inured to the grim experiences of wartime, his images seemed unimaginably and unacceptably horrific’ (p.93). You need only juxtapose any Bacon to photographs of victims of the Blitz or Holocaust to see that this claim cannot be correct. Peppiatt puzzles over Bacon’s obsession with Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, as if it is not obvious that Catholicism fascinated an artist who so often denied that he had any interest in religion. (Peppiatt speculates, inconclusively, about a deathbed conversion.) Bacon, he reports, emptied the swastika ‘of its traditional connotations – and turned it [. . .] into a pictorial device’ (p.279). But that surely is not possible. Nor, for all of Bacon’s professed interest in art history, is it at all obvious how he extended ‘the capacities of modern painting to absorb tradition and myth’ (p.273). Peppiatt’s claim that Bacon was a great conversationalist has to be taken on faith, for he reports only frankly tedious remarks about the unavoidability of violence and the meaninglessness of life. The artist ‘believed passionately’, Peppiatt says, ‘in art’s supreme function in this life to give substance and meaning to what he called the “brief interlude between birth and the grave”’ (p.262). We never learn why he believed that his own art could do that. Bacon professed to be influenced by Nietzsche, but judging by this reportage, he never moved beyond a jejune fascination with nihilism. When Peppiatt praises Bacon’s paintings for ‘their capacity to confront afresh the eternal questions about existence head on’, functioning like ‘great art, crystallizing the past, foreshadowing the future’ (p.418) then his inability to take a critical perspective on his friend fatally undermines analysis. Bacon said that, ‘it would take a Proust to write his life’ (p.400). But Proust, for all of his personal identification with Baron Charlus, acknowledges that his character’s fascination with evil is only play-acting. The Baron is comic precisely because he does not recognise that he is only a self-deceived fantasist. Taking Bacon’s self-image at face value, Peppiatt fails to explain how such a personality struck a nerve, persuading distinguished commentators that he was the greatest living painter. DAVID CARRIER
Lived in London: Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind them. Edited by Emily Cole, with a foreword by Stephen Fry. 368 pp. incl. 200 col. + 250 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2009), £40. ISBN 978–0–300–14871–8. This excellently researched and well-produced book is a geographical account, from Hampstead to Wandsworth, of the English Heritage Blue Plaques (with some earlier examples) that currently decorate London buildings and commemorate their celebrated former residents, giving interest and surprise to walking around the city. A.H.
American museum catalogues Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery. Edited by Helen A. Cooper, with contributions by Robin Jaffee Frank, Elisabeth Hodermarsky and Patricia E. Kane. 368 pp. incl. 315 col. + 65 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008), £40. ISBN 978–0–300–12289–3. This exhibition catalogue was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, which opened at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (7th September 2008 to 4th January 2009), before travelling to Seattle Art Museum, Washington, and its current installation at Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (4th October 2009 to 10th January 2010). The catalogue and exhibition showcase the fine collection of American painting and decorative art from the Yale University Art Gallery. The catalogue includes an introduction by the American historian David McCullough and is divided into three sections entitled: ‘Expressions of Heritage’, ‘Citizenship and Democracy’ and ‘Cultural and Material Aspirations’. Each section is accompanied by an essay that addresses the manner in which the objects illuminate and are illuminated by their historical context and is followed by in-depth catalogue entries. Collecting African American Art. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. By John Hope Franklin and Alvia J. Wardlaw. 146 pp. incl. 99 col. + 9 b. & w. ills. (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009), £35. ISBN 978–0–300–15291–3. American Quilts and Coverlets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By Amelia Peck, with the assistance of Cynthia V.A. Schaffner. 320 pp. incl. 223 col. + 56 b. & w. ills. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009), £22.50. ISBN 978–0–300–15903–5. This is a revised and updated version of the catalogue first printed in 1990, including recent acquisitions and new photography. American Stories. Paintings of Everyday Life 1765–1915. Edited by H. Barbara Weinberg and Carrie Rebora Barratt. 222 pp. incl. 167 col. + 10 b. & w. ills. (Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, New York, New Haven and London, 2009), £45. ISBN 978–0–3001–5508–2. This catalogue was published in conjunction with a touring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (12th October 2009 to 24th January 2010), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (28th February to 23rd May 2010). It is divided into four chronological sections: ‘Inventing American Stories, 1765–1830’, ‘Stories for the Public, 1830–1860’, ‘Stories of War and Reconciliation, 1860–1877’ and ‘Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877–1915’, each of which traces the changes in the representation of ‘American life’. The book is beautifully illustrated and features the work of artists such as Copley, Peale, Sargent, Cassatt, Eakins, Sloan, Glackens and Bellows. A.B. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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The Sacred Made Real London and Washington by ROSEMARIE MULCAHY T H E I N T E N S E R E A L I S M of seventeenth-century Spanish painting is partly explained in terms of influences from Italy, in particular, tenebrism. However, during this period Spain was renowned for polychromed wood sculpture and, as the innovative exhibition The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600–1700 at the National Gallery, London (to 24th January; then at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; from 28th February to 31st May),1 shows, sculptors such as Juan Martínez Montañés, Juan de Mesa, Gregorio Fernández and Pedro de Mena are on a par with their painter contemporaries Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, Alonso Cano and Jusepe de Ribera. Owing to the guild structure and the division of labour, sculptors worked very closely with painters who, as part of their training, were taught the art of polychroming sculpture. This exhibition demonstrates that these working methods led to the development of a highly realistic style of painting that emphasises the three-dimensional. The collaboration between the two National Galleries has resulted in remarkably generous loans from the Museo del Prado, the Spanish Church, the Patrimonio Nacional, as well as from public and private collections in the
United States, Spain and England. Curated by Xavier Bray, the exhibition comprises thirtyfive works, many of them seen in Britain for the first time. The decision to limit the show numerically has resulted in an exhibition of exceptional clarity and quality – the best I have seen in years. There is nothing superfluous to distract from the main theme. The rooms of the Sainsbury Wing have been transformed by a rich dark-grey wall colouring and Caravaggesque lighting into tranquil spaces conducive to the contemplation of these devotional works. There are six thematic sections: the quest for reality, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, portraiture, St Francis in meditation and meditations on the passion and on death, but there are no intrusive explanatory panels – instead, a handy summary guide is provided. The installation creates interesting juxtapositions within each room, and also uses views into adjacent rooms to make exciting and revelatory connections. Before entering the exhibition, one is literally stopped in one’s tracks by a long view of Zurbarán’s amazingly life-like Christ on the Cross (cat. no.25; Art Institute of Chicago). Shown within an arched recess, as it would have originally been displayed, the spotlit image seems to hover against the dark background, dramatically demonstrating the powerful illusionism that so amazed and confounded contemporary viewers who saw it in a small chapel in the Dominican friary of S. Pablo in Seville. As the art historian and painter Antonio Palomino wrote, ‘. . . everyone who sees it, and does not know, believes it to be sculpture’. The dominant sculptor in Seville in the first half of the seventeenth century, Juan Martínez Montañés, is portrayed here by his friend Velázquez, working on a clay model of the head of Philip IV (no.1; Museo del
57. Dead Christ, by Gregorio Fernández. c.1625–30. Polychromed wood, glass, bark, ivory or bone, 46 by 191 by 74 cm. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, on loan to the Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, Valladolid; exh. National Gallery, London).
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58. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, by Juan Martínez Montañés. c.1628. Polychromed wood, 144 by 49 by 53 cm. (Church of the Anunciación, Seville University; exh. National Gallery, London).
Prado, Madrid). It is interesting to compare interpretations by these great masters of the quintessentially Sevillian subject, the Immaculate Conception. Velázquez’s portrayal (no.8; National Gallery, London) is revolutionary in its realism – his plump-faced Virgin is obviously painted from life – whereas Montañés, a more classical artist, portrays an ideal beauty, Mary as Queen of Heaven in all her splendour (no.9; Fig.58). The sumptuous and costly estofado technique (gilded, painted and scribed decoration to simulate fabric) creates a brilliant impact designed to inspire the faithful to religious fervour, as it still does. Francisco Pacheco, who frequently collaborated with Montañés, claimed the supremacy of painting over sculpture because, in his opinion, it was colour that brought a sculpture to life. The small panel of Christ on the Cross, dated 1614 (no.2; Instituto Gómez-Moreno, Granada), appears to illustrate his dogmatic writings on the use of four nails in the Crucifixion (Arte de la Pintura, Seville 1649). The anatomy is rendered correctly with tight brushwork, but the image lacks tension and emotion. Pacheco’s talent lay in his polychroming and in his theoretical and practical writings rather than his painting. By contrast, Zurbarán’s St Luke contemplating the Crucifixion (no.4; Museo del Prado) seems to invite the viewer to ponder what is real and what an illusion. Holding palette and brushes, he may have just finished painting a canvas or, as is suggested in the catalogue, polychroming a
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sculpture. One of the revelations of the show is the small but powerful crucifix attributed to Juan de Mesa, Montañés’s most talented pupil, who exceeded him in realism (no.3; Church of El Salvador, Seville). This may be a model for the life-size Cristo del Amor, commissioned from Mesa by the confraternity of that name, or made for private prayer or, perhaps, as an aid to preaching from the pulpit. Also attributed to Mesa is the Head of St John the Baptist (no.5; Seville Cathedral), which shows in gruesome anatomical detail the evidence of decapitation. The pallor of death is conveyed by greyish-green skin tones, and the lifeless eyes are partly visible beneath the swollen eyelids. The impact of this powerful work is somewhat diminished by being displayed on a silver base rather than on a platter, as originally intended. Outstanding among the examples of portraiture in Room 2 is the head of St John of God by the painter and sculptor Alonso Cano (no.6; Museo de Bellas Artes, Granada). The modulations of the contours of the face, the intense inward-looking expression, the lifelike tonality of the polychrome and the painterly transitions from the carved hair to the forehead, where strands of hair are loosely brushed in, make this a masterpiece. The importance of obtaining a true likeness of saints is demonstrated by the eloquent figures of the Jesuit saints Francis Borgia and Ignatius Loyola by Montañés (nos.14 and 15; Church of the Anunciación, Seville University). The physical appearance of St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, is based on his death mask, of which Pacheco, who polychromed the images, had a copy. These are impressive examples of imagenes de vestir; only the head and hands are 59. St Serapion, by Francisco de Zurbarán. 1628. Canvas, 120 by 104 cm. (Wadsworth Atheneum of Art, Hartford CT; exh. National Gallery, London).
carved, the rest is an articulated armature to enable the figures to be dressed for solemn occasions: the soutanes in sized cloth are thought to date from 1836. The saints flank the archway leading to Room 4, which frames a view of Velázquez’s Christ after the flagellation contemplated by the Christian Soul (no.19; National Gallery, London). The painting could be a visualisation of meditations on the Passion of Christ as recommended by St Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises. It is this kind of intelligent and thought-provoking installation that makes the exhibition so stimulating. St Francis in Meditation is the subject of the third room. The legend that when the saint’s tomb was opened his body was found to be miraculously preserved, and standing upright in ecstasy, gave rise to its representation in art. Two versions of the subject are shown here (nos.31; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, and 32; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), as well as the National Gallery’s St Francis in meditation (no.29), all by Zurbarán. For the viewer, the effect is of having entered the sepulchre by candlelight and come face to face with the saint. Undoubtedly, Zurbarán is the most sculptural of painters in his treatment of form and at his best when portraying the single figure. Closely relating to Zurbarán’s St Francis standing in ecstasy is the small sculpture (83 cm. high) by Pedro de Mena (no.33; Toledo Cathedral). With sharp ascetic features and glinting eyes it has a remarkably strong presence. Never before exhibited outside Toledo Cathedral, it has been conserved for the exhibition by the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España. Upon examination it was found that the face was carved separately, hollowed out like a mask and the
glass eyes inserted from behind before it was fitted into the cowl. The teeth are of ivory and the eyelashes of real hair. Pedro de Mena took full control over his work, both carving and painting his sculptures with a remarkable effect of animation. Another outstanding piece by Mena is his Ecce Homo, signed and dated 1673 (no.20; las Descalzas Reales, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid). The realistic portrayal of the scourged body of Christ and the expression of immense suffering silently endured are augmented by the luminous glass eyes and swollen eyelids. The polychrome is outstanding; the purple bruising under the skin is conveyed by the layering of blue and pink pigment and the rivulets of blood appear fresh due to the addition of resin. His Mary Magdalene meditating on the Crucifixion (no.23; Museo Nacional Colegio San Gregorio, Valladolid) steps forward and appears lost in controlled anguish. These two sculptures are among an impressive assembly of masterpieces representing meditations on the Passion of Christ (Room 4). It is regrettable, however, that the great carver of Passion subjects and the most important sculptor of the second half of the century, Pedro Roldán, is not represented. It is a rare privilege to see Velázquez’s Christ after the flagellation – evidently based on live models – in close proximity to Gregorio Fernández’s Ecce Homo (no.18; Museo Dioscesano y Catedralicio, Valladolid). The proportions and the graceful pose of Fernández’s Christ suggests an indebtedness to classical sculpture. When the loincloth (made of fabric stiffened with size) was temporarily removed during the recent restoration it revealed that the figure was conceived as totally naked, including the genitalia. The wounds and bruises on the back, freely brushed with blue, pink and red paint, appear distressingly real. We can compare the life-size images of Christ on the Cross by Juan Martínez Montañés and Francisco de Zurbarán (nos.24; Church of Santo Ángel, Seville, and 25; Art Institute of Chicago), and see just how sculpturally conceived Zurbarán’s painting is, and marvel at Montañés’s exquisite carving and the porcelain-like polychrome (revealed during the recent cleaning by the Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico). But ultimately these works, which were conceived to inspire prayer and devotion, succeed by their extraordinary power to move the emotions. The powerful impact of Gregorio Fernández’s Dead Christ (no.27; Fig.57) will be shocking to modern-day viewers. It is a rare experience to discover that art can have the power to move the viewer to feelings of awe and compassion. The angular lifeless body laid out on a white cloth has not yet been prepared for burial. The features are gaunt, the eyes and mouth partially open, the blood still oozing from the terrible wounds, particularly on the shoulder, the hands, feet and side. Yet for all the harrowing evidence of the Passion it is an image of serenity and beauty. Commissioned by the Jesuits in Madrid in the 1620s, it was intended to shock and stir the soul, but a work the burlington m a g a z i n e
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originated in Granada. There is also an imagen de vestir, of a Franciscan saint, attributed to his workshop (no.8). There are delightful small devotional images, including a pair, the Infant Christ and the Infant Baptist, by an artist influenced by José de Arce and attributed here to the Cordoban Felipe de Ribas (no.13; Fig.60); also a delicately carved Education of the Virgin by Luisa Roldana (no.16), which is similar to the small terracotta groups for which she is renowned. The catalogue has informative essays by experts in the field and is beautifully illustrated. The entries contain full discussions of the works. 1 Catalogue: The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600–1700. Edited by Xavier Bray, with essays by Xavier Bray, Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, Daphne Barbour and Judy Ozone. 208 pp. incl. 165 col. + 11 b. & w. ills. (National Gallery, London, 2009; distributed by Yale University Press), £35 (HB); £19.99 (PB). ISBN 978–1–85709–422–0 (HB); 978–1–85709–448–0 (PB). An excellent DVD, written and narrated by Leah Khariban and produced by the National Gallery, is also available; 40 mins. long with Spanish subtitles, £9.99. ISBN 978–1–85709–4664. 2 See J. Roda: ‘A “St John of the Cross” attributed to Francisco Antonio Gijón: a recent acquisition of the National Gallery of Art, Washington’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 147 (2005), pp.304–09. 3 Catalogue: The Mystery of Faith. An Eye on Spanish Sculpture 1550–1750. By Patrick Matthiesen, Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, José Luis Romero Torres and Andrea C. Gates. 295 pp. incl. 100 col. + 100 b. & w. ills. (Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., London, 2009), £80. ISBN 978–0–9555366–5–6.
60. Infant Christ and Infant Baptist, attributed to Felipe de Ribas. c.1640s. Polychromed wood, each 59 by 24 cm. (Exh. Matthiesen Gallery, London).
of this calibre goes beyond religion. It can be a metaphor for the sufferings of mankind and for the possibility of forgiveness and redemption. Jusepe de Ribera’s Lamentation over the dead Christ (no.28; National Gallery, London) is a reminder that the viewer’s role is also that of mourner. The exhibition ends with a single painting: Zurbarán’s St Serapion (no.35; Fig.59), displayed as though in the Sala de Profundis, the mortuary chapel in the Mercedarian monastery in Seville, where deceased monks were laid out before burial. There is little trace of the terrible martyrdom Serapion suffered. Instead, by choosing to concentrate on the voluminous white folds of the saint’s habit, the painter has created an image of deep tranquillity and a masterpiece of realism. The piece of paper with the saint’s name and the painter’s signature, affixed by a pin, seems to sum up the essence of this important and courageous exhibition and challenge the viewer to confront the relationship between reality and illusion. As part of The Sacred Made Real, in Room 1 of the main building there is an interesting and informative display of the processes and working methods involved in making a polychrome sculpture. It centres on the magni ficent and dramatic life-size St John of the Cross (no.17; 1675; National Gallery of Art, Washington), recently identified by José Roda as the work of Francisco Antonio Gijón.2 There
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is documentary material on view relating to its examination and conservation by Daphne Barbour and Judy Ozone. The Sevillian imaginero, or sculptor–painter of religious images, Darío Fernández, has made a bust-length copy of Gijón’s saint to show the various stages of its production. The catalogue contains an insightful and stimulating introductory essay by the exhibition’s curator, Xavier Bray; Alfonso Rodríguez de Ceballos S.J. writes illuminatingly on religion; and Daphne Barbour and Judy Ozone explain with admirable clarity sculptural techniques. The reproductions are superb and the photographs of the sculpture were especially taken for the exhibition with a grant from the Henry Moore Foundation. To coincide with The Sacred Made Real, the Matthiesen Gallery, London, in association with Coll y Cortés Fine Arts, Madrid, has organised a substantial exhibition of Spanish sculpture: The Mystery of Faith. An Eye on Spanish Sculpture 1550–1750, on view in London (to 29th January)3 and then in Madrid (8th April to 31st July). It is a remarkable achievement to have gathered together such a wide range of interesting work – thirty-one pieces from six different regions. Among the many fine works are four polychromed terracotta scenes of saints (cat. nos.2–5), attributed to the Hermanos García (c.1580–c.1634), a genre of sculpture incorporating pictorial compositions that
Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill London by PATRICK ELLIOTT IN THE EARLY part of the twentieth century Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Eric Gill so transformed British sculpture and led such extraordinary and interwoven lives, that it is surprising to find that the exhibition Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (to 24th January), is the first to focus specifically on their work.1 The exhibition’s title comes from Ezra Pound who, after meeting GaudierBrzeska for the first time, described him as a ‘bright-eyed wild thing’. The three sculptors make a compelling and entertaining group: Epstein, the bumptious son of Orthodox Jews, who was born in America and settled in London in 1905; the mercurial and prodigious Gaudier-Brzeska, who moved from France to England in 1911, with his girlfriend, Sophie Brzeska, who was twice his age and whom he passed off as his sister; and Gill, the priapic son of a Calvinist clergyman, whose chief themes were sex and religion. Their characters are so extreme and cartoonish that they might have been created for a West End play. The exhibition is installed in the Royal Academy’s Sackler Galleries, with works by
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61. Ecstasy, by Eric Gill. 1910–11. Portland stone, 137.2 by 45.7 by 22.8 cm. (Tate, London; exh. Royal Academy of Arts, London).
the three sculptors filling a room each. Gill occupies the first room, Gaudier-Brzeska the second and Epstein the third. Each one is represented by between about fifteen and twenty sculptures and a selection of drawings, all dating from between c.1909 and 1915. Twenty-five years ago, Gill would have been considered the least relevant of the three sculptors, his slightly gauche, neo-medieval style making him seem marginal and parochial. Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Gill, published in 1989, changed all that, and he is now infamous for his unorthodox sex
life, which embraced incest and animals. Entering his room with a sense of nervous expectation, one is immediately confronted by a big carved relief of a copulating couple (Ecstasy, or ‘Big group fucking’ as Gill called it; no.12; Fig.61), flanked by tender motherand-child groups and relief sculptures of the Crucifixion. It is a heady mix, only compounded by Gill’s rather stiff, ‘outsider’ style (the bodies are all out of proportion). If Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska sought to épater la bourgeoisie with their firebrand invective and Cubist planes, Gill shocks with his idiosyncratic vision of Christianity. His crucified Christs have miniscule genitalia while his female nudes are big-breasted and brazenly sexual. A bas-relief of the Virgin (no.36) has red-painted lips and nipples. Even the painted relief of Boxers (no.33) looks comically homoerotic (their gloves, shown in the adjacent preparatory drawing, have been removed in the sculpture). Whereas Epstein and GaudierBrzeska look like figures from a certain moment in the history of art, Gill’s work is so strange that it has a contemporary feel to it: he could figure in a mixed thematic show next to Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin and Andres Serrano. Gill was a passionate spokesman for direct carving before it became fashionable, and for him there was a direct correlation between the act of carving and the creative power of sex. It is unfortunate for Gill that his most ambitious projects from these pre-First World War years either remained unrealised or, like the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, cannot be borrowed; and that the one large work which can be lent, the Garden statue, now at Leighton House (no.16), is clumsy and badly weathered. There are no masterpieces here, but Gill still comes across as an arresting, if disturbing sculptor. He is a weird thing rather than a wild thing. Gaudier-Brzeska died at the age of twentythree, and exhibitions of his work inevitably raise thoughts of unrealised and unfocused talent. Here he stands up well next to Gill and Epstein, thanks largely to three key loans: the Tate’s magnificent Redstone dancer (no.62), Birds erect (no.86; Fig.62) from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Head of Ezra Pound (no.65) – not the original marble version now in the Nasher Collection in Dallas, but a perfectly adequate replica made in 1973. Throughout the exhibition it is abundantly clear that the selection has not been compromised by cost-cutting or expediency. Time after time the curator, Richard Cork, has opted for difficult foreign loans which contribute to an argument rather than for more convenient British loans which would simply fill a plinth. One particularly welcome inclusion is the carved plaster relief of Wrestlers (no.30), lent by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Tate’s posthumous Herculite cast might easily have been borrowed at negligible cost and effort, but here we have the crisper and more impressive original. It is unfortunate that the exhibition coincided with a Gaudier-Brzeska exhibition in France, which precluded the loan of the Centre
62. Birds erect, by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. 1914. Limestone, 67.6 by 26 by 31.4 cm. (Museum of Modern Art, New York; exh. Royal Academy of Arts, London).
Pompidou’s outstanding marble carving of a Seated woman. Gaudier-Brzeska’s œuvre contains many minor works and quite a few of them are on show here. Although the selection is weighted towards carvings, the large and imposing bronze busts of Horace Brodzky and Alfred Wolmark might profitably have been included, if only to emphasise that GaudierBrzeska did work effectively on a large scale. Epstein’s room is so bursting with sculptures that it almost has the appearance of a museum store. There are some stupendous loans. The Sunflower carving (no.50) has been borrowed from the National Gallery of New South Wales; a crouching Figure in flenite has been borrowed from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (no.49), and teams up with the related but larger work from the Tate; three versions of the Doves have travelled from collections in Washington, Jerusalem and London (nos.58–60); and, most dramatic of all, the giant marble carving Venus – second version (no.61; Fig.63) has been lent by Yale University Art Gallery, where it is seldom on view. As with Gill, procreation is a key theme. The show’s focus on carving and on the preWar years suits Epstein well, and he comes across as by far the most accomplished and the most ambitious of the three sculptors – which indeed he was. That said, his approach became somewhat formulaic during these pre-War years. Whereas Gaudier-Brzeska’s the burlington m a g a z i n e
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Ed Ruscha London by JAMES BOADEN
1950s the Californian poet Robert Duncan began to print his own works on a press he had inherited. He commented that his writing was greatly refined by knowing how much each word weighed in his hand: uttered at the beginning of the atomic age, such a statement seems impossibly anachronistic. It is easy to forget that at midcentury almost all printed words at some point had such a physical weight, which today has melted into air with digitisation. Perhaps paintings such as Ed Ruscha’s Hurting the word radio # 2 (1964; cat. ill. p.91) look even stranger today than they did at the time they were made. Here the word ‘Radio’ is painted in order to give the illusion of being made from polythene, which is twisted and ‘hurt’ by a pair of table-vices. Many of the works that make up Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting at the Hayward Gallery, London (to 10th January), take their lead from contemporary commercial typography. Scale is crucial to the earliest works in the exhibition; paintings such as Boss (1961; p.73), Annie (1962; p.74) and Noise (1963; p.9) show the words of their titles large as a shop sign, to be seen from the street – a jarring intrusion in the contemplative gallery space. Ruscha asks us to hear silent letters in the onomatopoeic paintings OOF (1962–63; p.81) and Scream (1964; p.87), while works with a steeply exaggerated perspective such as Large trademark with eight spotlights (1962; p.77; Fig.66) and Standard station (1966; p.93) seem to give velocity to the words that are spelled across their surface. Ruscha’s words demand the attention of their viewers through scale, and conjure a cognitive leap to imagine speed, sound or feeling within letters on canvas.
IN THE EARLY
63. Venus – second version, by Jacob Epstein. c.1914–16. Marble, 235.6 by 43.2 by 82.6 cm. (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; exh. Royal Academy of Arts, London).
best works twist and turn and develop in surprising ways as one moves around them, Epstein’s have very definite fronts, sides and backs. The one work which blows that observation, and indeed any observation, to pieces, is the amazing Rock drill of 1913 (no.94) which stands at the end of the room against a deep blue wall. (Epstein destroyed most of the original version, so this is a reconstruction made in the 1970s.) A masked figure, halfhuman, half-machine, sits on top of a giant drill, like something from a nightmare. Invariably mentioned in the context of the build-up to War, it is that rare thing, a work of art that actually frightens. An exhibition which began with Gill’s frisky lovers ends triumphantly with this almighty modernist bang. The catalogue contains little in the way of previously unpublished research, but Richard Cork writes so well and tells his story with such zest that the information feels new. Written in its entirety by Cork, this catalogue, unusually, accommodates the needs of specialists and non-specialists alike. 1
Catalogue: Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill. By Richard Cork. 192 pp. incl. 165 col. + b. & w. ills. (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009), £35 (HB); £19.95 (PB). ISBN 978–1–905711–46–8; 978–1–095711–47–5.
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Among these early works are a number of paintings that depict buildings in Los Angeles – such as the well-known Los Angeles County Museum on fire (1965–68; p.103). Ruscha’s paintings are often seen as inextricable from the city of Los Angeles in which they were made – the catalogue for the exhibition includes texts by two of the city’s prominent novelists, James Ellroy and Bruce Wagner, who often use the city as their main protagonist.1 Although the perspectival viewpoint in many of Ruscha’s works is the low-slung seat of the Cadillac, and many of the works stretch to the proportions of the cinema screen, these paintings rarely communicate any real sense of lived place. The grimy highways of LA are swept clean here: LACMA looks like an architect’s model, Norm’s La Cienega like a sound-stage – these images are as generic as a typeface. However, this sense of cool detachment is in tension with the array of technical accomplishment on display in the opening rooms, with Ruscha shifting from heavy impasto to dark, thin stain to slick reflective oil paint, as adept with angular geometries as formless flames. It is difficult to reconcile these paint surfaces with the de-skilling at work in Ruscha’s contemporary photographic books. Ruscha’s work throughout his career moved across a variety of media – photography (usually presented in book form), drawing and printmaking. As with the earlier work of Jasper Johns, various subjects moved through these different forms of representation and were altered in the translation. In 2000 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis organised an exhibition of Ruscha’s editioned works while the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, displayed Ruscha’s drawings and photography in two shows in 2005. The decision to stage an exhibition solely of Ruscha’s paintings, away from his work in other media, causes problems of interpretation. The books and prints established Ruscha as one of the earliest conceptual artists and the influence of these works stretches far and wide, which 64. It’s only vanishing cream, by Ed Ruscha. 1973. Shellac varnish on satin, 91.4 by 101.6 cm. (Courtesy of the artist; exh. Hayward Gallery, London).
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cannot be said for many of the paintings exhibited here. The absence of the books was particularly felt in the rather awkward section of the exhibition presenting work from 1967 to 1972. At that time Ruscha produced a number of small-scale paintings of incongruous objects floating against a gradated backdrop. Olives and non-prescription pills are suspended against a ground that translates the horizon-free spaces of Yves Tanguy or Salvador Dalí into the oranges and browns that characterised interior design of the early 1970s. These paintings look rather weak here – while one would expect that the small scale would work to draw the viewer in after so many larger pieces, the broad swathes of empty space prohibit such a response. The bizarre listing approach of these works makes a great deal more sense when they are seen alongside books such as Various Small Fires and Milk (1964) or Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968), which use a seemingly naive photographic style to record isolated everyday objects in neutral spaces to humorous effect. This concentration on the absurdity of the everyday is followed through in the ‘liquid word’ and the ‘stain paintings’, both of groups which date from the 1970s. In the ‘liquid word’ paintings Ruscha presents words as if they have been poured out in syrup, dribbled in shampoo or smeared in oil. The ‘stain paintings’ use unusual media such as shellac, Pepto-Bismol and egg yolk to spell out phrases such as Sand in the Vaseline (1974; p.111) or It’s only vanishing cream (1973; p.110; Fig.64) on tautened silken surfaces. This form of experimentation with materials was used by Ruscha across the media throughout the 1970s – many of the associated drawings can currently be seen in the ‘Artist Rooms’ display at Tate Modern. It is unsurprising to note a return to largescale paintings in conventional materials on canvas in the early 1980s, given the dominance within the market of painting at that time. Comparing these works with contemporary neo-expressionist painting establishes distinct differences. The continued use of text – now extended into cryptic phrases in a standardised font – undermines claims made to the superior communicative range of expressive paintwork, while the paint itself changes
66. Large trademark with eight spotlights, by Ed Ruscha. 1962. Canvas, 169 by 338.5 cm. (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; exh. Hayward Gallery, London).
from oil to a predominant acrylic. The dull, flat surfaces of these works, characteristic of that medium, seem to align the works with commercial designs for posters. Underneath the script Ruscha began to substantially develop the background imagery: words rest on a bed of street lamps picking out the lines of Los Angeles at night on a picturesque cornfield or a placid seascape. Particularly striking are a group of large-scale works from the late 1980s where the absence of words is the central focus. Images of fully rigged sailing ships, covered wagons and small, lonely churches are presented in black-on-white silhouette; long black rectangles around the images appear to be censored texts. Usually these black spaces correspond in length to the words of the work’s title, yet still an air of mystery pervades the image. They are lost pictures from a 1940s childhood spent at the movies watching swashbucklers and cowboys. Memories of the cinema also pervade the paintings in the Hayward’s upper galleries. Particularly striking are the paintings showing the end credits of films – huge frame enlargements showing scratches and dust spelling out The End (1991; p.147). These paintings manage to retain both a sentimental nostalgia and a melancholic atmosphere – calling to mind the waning of cinema-going as a communal activity.
65. The old Tech-Chem Building, by Ed Ruscha. 2003. Acrylic on canvas, 123 by 278.1 cm. (Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; exh. Hayward Gallery, London).
Ruscha presents numerous other examples of memento mori – clocks approaching midnight, shadows creeping up the walls, and in the final gallery, a selection of urban ruins. In 1992 the artist produced five bleak paintings in grubby grisaille depicting featureless structures, inscribed with their trade, against glowering skies – the works were collectively titled the Blue collar paintings. In 2005, representing the USA at the Venice Biennale, Ruscha produced a series of ironic pendant works which he called Course of empire. These mirror the compositions of the Blue collar works but see those buildings transformed – from Blue collar Tech Chem (1992; p.166) to a building marked FAT BOY under a reddening sky in The old Tech Chem Building (2005; p.167; Fig.65). This before-and-after strategy is taken further in the two most recent works in the show, Azteca and Azteca in decline (both 2007; pp.172–75). The first – across some eight metres of canvas – copies a mural Ruscha saw in Teotihuacán, Mexico, painted in colours radiating from a central point like fabric awnings. The second shows the same motif, with the coloured flags tattered and collapsed and with the surface of the work illusionistically painted to suggest that it is peeling away from its support. The cyclical thinking evident in the last room of the show is echoed in the exhibition of Ruscha’s latest work at Gagosian Gallery’s Davies Street space (closed 28th November). Here Ruscha returns to the late 1950s, when his career as an artist began, in order to illustrate Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road. Ruscha’s sumptuous tome, published in an edition of 350, uses photographs of old car parts, gas stations and diner meals to interrupt the flow of the text. These images are deeply inset into the page, causing their silhouettes to be raised out of the verso of the sheet. Printed in stately letterpress it is impossible not to feel the craft of the book and the weight of the word that brought so many of the artist’s works into being. 1 Catalogue: Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting. Edited by Ralph Rugoff. 192 pp. incl. 150 col. ills. (Hayward Publishing, London, 2009), £39.99 (HB). ISBN 978–1–85332–274–7.
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The Artist’s Studio Compton Verney and Norwich by MARINA VAIZEY
have always been fascinated by their own métier. Playwrights write plays about plays, novelists write novels about writers, poets write about inspiration. And artists, when not painting self-portraits in their studio have painted studios, imaginary or otherwise, often inserting themselves into the scene – from the fictionalised studio of Vermeer’s Allegory of Painting to Courbet’s overwhelming The studio of the painter. In the past few decades there have been several anthologies and surveys of the subject, including the well-titled Imagination’s Chamber.1 The ubiquity of photography and film has brought the artist’s studio to an ever-wider audience. While artists have traditionally depicted their own studios, an amplification in the twentieth century has been the determination of others to penetrate the mystery, mundane as it may sometimes be. Artists themselves are not above playing pranks in these serious spaces. Paul Gauguin was photographed by Alfonse Mucha playing the harmonium in Mucha’s studio.2 Bonnard was photographed in odalisque pose in Matisse’s Paris apartment, which also doubled as a studio. Picasso’s workplaces, moving from spacious chateau to spacious villa, have been endlessly memorialised by some of the best-known photographers of the day; Hans Namuth’s photographs promulgated in Life magazine, augmented later by his film of Jackson Pollock, certainly fundamentally contributed to the myth of Jack the Dripper. And there is what seems to be an endless spate of publications which typically combine interview and text with a telling photograph of the workplace. From Andy Warhol’s Factory to David Smith’s barn, the studio – the artist at work – has become inseparable in many instances from our notion of the artist’s work itself. The growing number of house museums testifies to this increasing interest: in Britain and Ireland alone, we have, among others, Barbara Hepworth’s home, garden and studio in St Ives; Leighton House in Kensington; Charleston in Sussex for Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell; the Victorian illustrator Linley Sambourne’s house in Kensington; and Henry Moore’s Hoglands, to name but four, while the creative chaos of Francis Bacon’s studio has been faithfully recreated at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, and Eduardo Paolozzi’s fantastical magpie conglomeration is an astonishment at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh. Yet Turner is quoted as saying that ‘lights and a room were absurdities’, and that a picture could be painted anywhere.3 Thus it comes as a genuine surprise to be told that, in spite of the burgeoning interest in the subject, the exhibition The Artist’s ARTISTS OF ALL KINDS
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67. Interior of a studio, by Octave Tassaert. 1845. Canvas, 46 by 38 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris; exh. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich).
Studio, recently at Compton Verney (closed 13th December) and soon to open at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (9th February to 18th May), is the first in England to be devoted to the subject, although there have been various photographic essays on nineteenth- and twentiethcentury artists’ studios shown with some regularity at the National Portrait Gallery.
The anthology focuses almost entirely on British artists, with paintings, drawings, prints and photographs drawn mostly from British collections. There is the foreign oddity: a truly grim early Cézanne, The stove in the studio; the marvellous (if understated and presumably never completed), experimental Rembrandt print from the British Museum, The artist drawing from the model; and the quintessential scene of la vie bohème depicted in Octave Tassaert’s Interior of a studio, on loan from the Musée du Louvre (Fig.67). There are perhaps surprisingly a number of downbeat meditations: Cornelis Gijsbrecht’s Trompe l’œil: Studio wall with vanitas still life (c.1660; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull) places a semi-toothless skull below a peeling canvas and above a palette replete with unattractively oozing ripples of oil paint. Giles Waterfield, the co-curator of the exhibition, tells us that artists’ studios are almost by definition hardly private, but often filled with visitors, models, colleagues, assistants and often menageries (dogs make their appearance, although few artists have emulated Rossetti’s taste for short-lived exotics, including that most charming of burrowers, a rather sorrowful wombat). There is much implied conviviality in the notion of the studio, so it is rather disconcerting that the painfully dour (but subtly grand) 1930s steel-grey Studio interior by William Coldstream has been chosen as the cover of the accompanying book. The show has been divided into nine units, each accompanied by a storyboard; they range
68. The artist in his studio with his man Gibbs, by George Morland. c.1802. Canvas, 63.5 by 76.2 cm. (Nottingham City Museums and Galleries; exh. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich).
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from myths and self-display to examinations of the work place, the academy, the model, society coming to visit, not to mention the romantic and bohemian notion of the suffering artist starving in his picturesque and sometimes sordid garret. One of the most devastating paintings on view is that of the understated, self-inflicted tragedy of the painter George Morland, drowning in debt and alcohol in his stark The artist in his studio with his man Gibbs (not to mention two dogs who look in far better health; Fig.68), painted in 1802, two years before his early death aged forty-one. On a happier note the studio, as well as being grist to the artist’s palette, was of course a place to market work, as attested by Victorian grandeur and, nowadays, by the ubiquitous artists’ Open House weekends. A Victorian notion of a good day out is exemplified by the colourful hubbub imagined by E.M. Ward in 1865 as Hogarth’s studio in 1739, a wellappointed interior replete with fashionable ladies, elegant children, a pair of crutches on the Oriental rug presumably belonging to the orphan in red admiring her benefactor, Coram, a portrayal of Hogarth behind his selfportrait bowdlerised as the artist, and a portrait of Captain Coram on the easel. The whole exhibition is a visual essay on a huge subject; it is vitiated by two possibly inescapable conditions of the premises of its concept. Images are used as much as documents as they are works of art in their own right, and are at times impossibly varied in size, scale, medium and import, making for a
69. A studio in Montparnasse, by C.R.W. Nevinson. 1926. Canvas, 127 by 76.2 cm. (Tate, London; exh. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich).
70. The shelf: object and shadow in front view, by Rodrigo Moynihan. 1982–83. Canvas, 71.1 by 91.5 cm. (Tate, London; exh. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich).
confused presentation. Thus we have photographs, objects, manuscripts and books – from Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth (1944) to the lively Private View,4 the book that encapsulated the growing British art boom of the 1960s, with its many studio photographs by Lord Snowdon who, incidentally, emerges in this show as an unusually sensitive and perceptive chronicler of the artist at home. There is a space devoted to the complicated musings of Art and Language, specially commissioned works, an artist-in-residence and the usual appurtenances of education outreach, lectures and workshops, and an absorbing selection of films on artists at work. In the large variety on view anything that might make a point has been seized upon. Thus for whatever reason the quality is extraordinarily variable, the minor jostling with the major, where curiosities, although sometimes genuinely surprising and illuminating, compete for attention with a few outstanding works of art. One feels that the organisers had to make do with what they could get; and what they could get, in many an instance, is lacking in exuberance; art is represented as a joyless lot. A genuinely sparkling subject has become oddly subdued, even dull. It is a guilt-free pleasure to at least find something as refreshing as Andrew Graham’s photograph of Duncan Grant’s Charleston studio and bedroom, summing up a life’s delight in art. Yes there are a few masterly inclusions, from Gwen John’s exquisite and poetic Corner of the artist’s room, Paris, to the photo-
graphs of Bruce Bernard, the light-filled A studio in Montparnasse (Fig.69) by C.R.W. Nevinson, and, in some welcome cases, a reminder of the high quality of still underrated artists such as Rodrigo Moynihan, represented by one of his late series of studio still lifes The shelf: object and shadow in front view (Fig.70). There is wit too, as in Lisa Milroy’s elegant comic-book meditation on A day in the studio. But by and large the whole impression is a curious hotchpotch, shown in a rather confusing maze: at Compton Verney the visitor had to walk through two rooms of Chinese antiquities to get to the last four sections of the show. The fascinating and well-researched essays in the catalogue outweigh in intrinsic interest the exhibition itself. It would, however, have been helpful to include a bibliography. 1 A. Bellony-Rewald and M. Peppiatt: Imagination’s Chamber. Artists in Their Studio, London 1983. 2 J. Mucha, M. Henderson and A. Sharf: Mucha, London 1976, p.131, no.147. 3 Catalogue: The Artist’s Studio. Edited by Giles Waterfield, with contributions by Giles Waterfield, Martin Postle, John Milner, Antonia Harrison, Stephen Bayley and Robert McNab. 103 pp. incl. 70 col. + b. & w. ills. (Hogarth Arts/Compton Verney, 2009), £20 (PB). ISBN 978–0–9554063–3–1. The writers examine the phenomenon of the studio from differing viewpoints – from physical location to purpose – over four hundred years, and this is a necessary publication, opening up possibilities for research beyond the constrictions of the exhibition itself. 4 B. Robertson, J. Russell and Lord Snowdon: Private View, London 1965.
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Sculpture in Painting Leeds by BRANDON TAYLOR W E H A V E C O M E to view the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, as courageous enough to mount significant historical and thematic exhibitions that are unlikely to be mounted elsewhere, and Sculpture in Painting (to 10th January), curated by Penelope Curtis, the newly appointed Director of Tate Britain, is a fine example. Ostensibly concerned with the appearance of sculpture in paintings, the exhibition in fact presents – with two notable exceptions – works from the mid-eighteenth to the early twenty-first century that in one way or another revive the various febrile and sometimes comic debates of the so-called paragone (comparison) between painting and sculpture, that reached a peak of intensity in the time of Paolo Pino, Benedetto Varchi, Vincenzo Borghini and, of course, Vasari in mid-sixteenth century Italy. Later paintings notoriously perpetuate, with ingenuity, some aspect of those arguments. Thus Hogarth’s The painter and his pug of 1745 (Fig.71), as Martin Postle points out in the catalogue,1 is to be read as a modern paragone in showing the complete painted portrait resting on a table, itself littered with books, palette and pipe, upon which also sits Hogarth’s dog; in this sense it becomes a
71. The painter and his pug, by William Hogarth. 1745. Canvas, 108 by 87.5 cm. (Tate, London; exh. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds).
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friendly riposte to Louis François Roubiliac’s presence in London, and the consequent rise in popularity of the portrait bust. Meanwhile a painted portrait of Roubiliac by Andrea Soldi of 1751 and another by Adrien Carpentiers (in the Institute’s ancillary research exhibition, Subject/Sitter/Maker: Portraits from an Eighteenth-Century Artistic Circle), inaugurate a type that lies at the heart of the painting–sculpture dialectic, namely a three-way dialogue between painter, a painted sculptor and the subject of the sculptor’s current project. In this vein we are shown Lemuel Francis Abbott’s painting of Nollekens with his own bust, thus inviting close comparison of painted versus sculpted portraiture; and, as if to show the appeal of the genre, Boris Taslitzky’s Head of Géricault by Lipchitz of 1937, in which a painter pays homage to a sculptor, who in turn paid homage to another painter, within a single multi-layered work. The well-known paragone problem of the coloured, and hence ‘living’ mimeticism of painting versus the colourless and hence ‘lifeless’ simulation afforded by sculpture, and the vivifying effects upon sculptures of their inclusion in painting, is the preoccupation of the majority of works in the exhibition. Close by the double-portrait of Nollekens, we are offered Etienne Aubry’s fine portrait of the sculptor Louis-Claude Vassé of 1771, which renders wonderfully tactile the sculptor’s maroon-coloured cloak, while showing Vassé fingering with both hands his monochrome
72. Petrifying self-portrait, by Giorgio de Chirico. 1922. Canvas, 75 by 62 cm. (Private collection; exh. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds).
grey model as he stares intently elsewhere. Indeed the painting comments philosophically on tactility as such. Tactility, it will be recalled, had been the theme of blind men exploring sculptures by hand, in paintings by Ribera, Luca Giordano, Bernhard Rode and others, all painted within the setting of the paragone sophistry – long since dismissed by Leonardo – to the effect that since a blind man could enumerate the details of a sculpture it was therefore more ‘real’ than painting, which in its turn, and even for the sighted, was no more than a ‘deception’.2 But if a full treatment of the theme of tactility was missing from this exhibition – further signalled by the absence of paintings by Cézanne, Matisse and pre-eminently Picasso (surely the greatest master of the modern paragone) – we have instead a typically de Chiricoesque conceit, his 1922 Petrifying self-portrait (Fig.72), an image that reprises an earlier metaphysical preoccupation with silent statues while returning to the sixteenth-cen tury style of parapet-leaning portraits in which the subject fixes the viewer with, as in this case, a petrifying stare. Elsewhere we are shown two paintings of reverse petrification, namely Ovid’s Pygmalion myth, in which the aristocratic artist brings his marble sculpture slowly to life by the force of his passions and hence allegorises the power of the artist to endow matter with animation and even the power to love. These are Louis Gauffier’s Pygmalion and Galatea of 1797 and Franz von Stuck’s Pygmalion of 1926, expertly expounded in the catalogue by Richard Wrigley and Vicky Greenaway respectively. Both paintings expose a subtext of any modern view of the paragone, that while painted verticality lent itself to a signification of the statuesque and the sculptural, painted horizontality more usually characterised the fluid and the painterly. This in turn suggests – as the exhibition recognises – that while the statuesque painted figure in Gavin Hamilton’s Elizabeth Gunning,
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Francis Bacon Dublin and Compton Verney by MARTIN HAMMER
to the day after the artist’s birth in Dublin, Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty, at the Dublin City Gallery, Hugh Lane (to 7th March),1 is a very different exhibition from the recent ‘greatest hits’ treatment in London, Madrid and New York.2 Most memorably, it features a cluster of such rarely seen pictures as Study for a figure (1944–45), a variation on the left-hand panel of Three studies for figures at the base of a Crucifixion. Close inspection suggests that this was also originally painted with an orange backdrop, but finished with a setting and curtains in Sickertian khaki and a vase of flowers that show how Bacon was already pressing fabric into the paint to create surface textures. The 1950s yield the beautifully insubstantial Untitled (man at washbasin) (Fig.74) and a pair of unusual seascapes. Head of a woman (1960), with its tentative intimations of Bacon’s mature idiom, is paired with the sumptuous Seated figure from 1962, a close relative of the Three studies for a Crucifixion (Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York) that inaugurated his re-engagement with the triptych. Such loans from private collections are augmented by a few, more familiar works to offer a concise survey of Bacon’s evolution, although the hang in these four galleries is neither chronological nor always visually cohesive. A dozen or so pictures remind us, then, that Bacon at his best had a way with paint and a technical inventiveness which put him into the most elevated company among modern painters. Confronted by his drawings, unfinished canvases, and pictures where that flair eventually deserted him (as in a couple of the late portraits shown here), one also feels that he was capable of a greater ineptness than any other figure of comparable accomplishment. During his lifetime, Bacon wisely kept such secondary material out of sight, doubtless destroying far more than ended up in Dublin. The paintings are the icing on what is essentially a presentation in extenso of material from Bacon’s studio, famously transplanted to the Hugh Lane Gallery to be reinvented as a shrine to the artist. Of the some seven thousand catalogued items, a good number are shown here in nine further spaces that impose conceptual order and the visual tidiness of the display case onto Bacon’s cultivated chaos. These spaces variously address the photography of Edweard Muybridge, John Deakin and Peter Beard; books on artists and plates torn from them; unfinished and slashed canvases; sketches and handwritten notes; a miscellaneous selection of wild animal, sporting, medical and streetscene photographic imagery; and a visual record of Bacon’s own changing physical OPENING ONE HUNDRED YEARS
73. Portrait of a lady (‘La Schiavona’), by Titian. c.1510–12. Canvas, 119.9 by 100.4 cm. (National Gallery, London; exh. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds).
Duchess of Hamilton (1752–53) can be reckoned almost as a trope of sculpture, the polychrome frieze depicted in Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Phidias showing the Parthenon frieze to his friends of 1868, or Frederic Leighton’s 1880 Selfportrait, in the background of which we see the Parthenon’s monochrome survival, recognise the shallow carved relief par excellence as by its nature pictorial. It was the Cubist revolution of a generation later that finally demonstrated that the paragone in its sixteenth-century form could be finally transcended in favour of a conception of the art-object in which flatness and objecthood could be combined. Wisely in this regard, the exhibition does not venture that far. If it had done, it would have raised the question of how pictorial relief projecting forwards from the picture-plane and effortlessly combining two and three dimensions came to instantiate a sizeable percentage of what we know as modern art. The effective signal for that discussion, and pride of place in Sculpture in Painting, undoubtedly goes to Titian’s Portrait of a lady (‘La Schiavona’) of 1510–12, on loan from the National Gallery, London (Fig.73). This testifies to the painter’s almost instinctive preoccupation with the need to contain the depth-creating qualities of painted forms within the mode at that time, known in Venice as mezzo rilievo, or medium relief, a type used by Titian’s rival Tullio Lombardo and already dismissed by Leonardo in his Treatise on Painting as incapable – despite sculpture’s contrary claim – of showing no more
than a single frontal view of its subject. The widely accepted thesis that Titian was responding to the paragone debate of his day is also amendable to a reading that brings him within the scope of a modern, and therefore formal understanding of how paintings work. From his early Jacopo Pesaro presented by Pope Alexander VI to St Peter (Antwerp) of 1502–12 right through to his magisterial late works, Titian’s depiction of bodily or clothing forms close to the pictorial surface, and asserted there as somehow necessarily pictorial, render him fraternal with major projects of the twentieth century that abjured depth in painting as an ideologically unwelcome concealment of painting’s material means. It was in a different register altogether with William Dyce’s Titian preparing to make his first essay in colouring of 1856–57 (Aberdeen), which illusionistically purports to capture the moment at which, according to fiction, the boy-painter contemplates a colourless statue of the Virgin, hand-picked flowers at the ready, which he would soon squeeze to make pigments suitable for the painter’s task. A modernist ideology that claimed the inseparability of meaning from matter, and vice-versa, became Cubism’s gift to the world and, years later, Constructivism’s legacy. If only by implication, Sculpture in Painting anticipates that momentous historical turn. 1 Catalogue: Sculpture in Painting. Edited by Penelope Curtis. 141 pp. incl. 29 col. ills. (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2009), £20. ISBN 978–1–905462–28–5. 2 P. Hecht: ‘The paragone debate: ten illustrations and a comment’, Simiolus 14 (1984), pp.125–36.
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74. Untitled (man at washbasin), by Francis Bacon. c.1953. Canvas, 171 by 135 cm. (Private collection; exh. Dublin City Gallery, Hugh Lane).
appearance. It is of course very difficult to display such archival material, the real interest of which is the light it sheds on the actual art. Curiously, in Dublin, one starts by discerning hints of Bacon as Andy Warhol when confronted by grid-like arrangements of Deakin’s many photographs of Lucian Freud, George Dyer, Isobel Rawsthorne (Fig.75) et al., displayed in wall-mounted perspex boxes, recalling the many expressions of Warhol’s Ethel Scull; or Bacon as Ed Ruscha in the display of repetitive and identically framed sheets extracted from books by Muybridge; or even Bacon as a distant cousin to Lucio Fontana in the roomful of pictures to which he took the knife. Such associations were obviously unintended, but nevertheless arise from the interwoven displays of such heterogeneous types of object, all apparently aspiring to the condition of art. The accompanying book clarifies these curatorial decisions. Only the paintings proper are individually catalogued, although the discussions here are fairly routine (and the colour plates truly dreadful). Do we need to be told again that Figure in a landscape (1945) was based on a snapshot of Eric Hall, even though a photograph by Marius Maxwell of a buffalo was just as much ‘the primary source’;3 or that the curved spaces in many backgrounds echo Georgian interiors that Bacon
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experienced as a lad? Such devotion to the horse’s mouth is at odds with the more independent lines of inquiry pursued elsewhere. The latter includes important research by
75. Isobel Rawsthorne, by John Deakin. c.1965. Photograph, dimensions variable. (Exh. Dublin City Gallery, Hugh Lane).
younger scholars such as Jessica O’Donnell, Marcel Finke and Rebecca Daniels on Bacon’s appropriations from photography, especially by Deakin, and a fascinating account by Joanne Shepard of what technical investigation (conducted on the slashed pictures) is beginning to reveal about Bacon’s working methods. Although studio material has featured in numerous exhibitions over the past decade, the co-curator of the present show, Martin Harrison, quarrels with ‘certain critics’ who ‘have maintained an implacable resistance to this vast archive, arguing that the urge to investigate Bacon’s aims and methods is inimical to a deeper understanding of the paintings’. Such investigation is just as relevant, he argues, as studying traditional artist’s sketches, since for Bacon ‘this base material functioned in an equivalent way’. Harrison observes that the unwillingness to acknowledge this has always reflected a vestigial snobbery in Britain about photography. Now, by implication, we can aspire to a more judicious grasp of how the photographic image operated within Bacon’s creative processes. Certainly, thanks to the researches of Harrison and others, it is more apparent than ever that in the paintings he was constantly adapting overall compositions and specific details from a disparate array of photographic images. Theorising that process of transformation remains a key task for scholars, who should study what is preserved in Dublin and elsewhere, but be willing to assume that other photographic sources may be documented only by the pictures themselves.4 It is currently maintained, especially here, that the alchemic process went further and that Bacon’s creativity is somehow illuminated by the fact that much of the photographic material in the archive ended up torn, cut up, folded, its configurations occasionally held in position by paperclips, sometimes overpainted or annotated, and generally worn and trampled upon. The evidence that such physical distressing informed the configurations in Bacon’s pictures is at present quite limited. Finke cleverly demonstrates that a couple of foldings enabled Bacon to hold up photos in one hand, while painting with the other. But these are exceptional cases within a sea of origami. Did Bacon always, or even usually, have meaningful ‘artistic’ objectives in mind when manhandling images? For the sake of argument, one could equally say that manipulating photographs as physical objects turned into a species of compulsive behaviour. The Dublin archive certainly shows that he (or someone) frequently did exactly the same thing to ordinary newspaper cuttings, and nobody has yet argued that they have any bearing on the paintings.5 Perhaps this was what Bacon did with his hands while standing in front of a picture in progress, and thinking about what to do next? Possibly the activity was on a par with buying endless books containing reproductions of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X, or editions of Muybridge – or for that matter with gambling,
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and going to the Colony Room and Wheeler’s restaurant. It also matched his obsessive toying with certain key concepts that he saw as fundamental to his art. Above all, and more interestingly of course, it echoed the unusually compulsive traits inherent in his studio procedures, such as returning again and again to specific images, formats and pictorial devices. It was a strict regime of habit and repetition that gave Bacon the room to work on other levels, to paraphrase what Jasper Johns said of his own use of the American flag. At any rate, it seems overstated and too literal to argue that Bacon’s studio sweepings functioned in the way that preparatory drawings did for other artists, which in turn justifies the aestheticised presentation. The effect rather is an insistence that the artist’s genius infused everything, however banal, that he touched or jotted down. Of course the best way to enable productive engagement with the studio archive would be to make the Hugh Lane’s comprehensive database available online.6 This would greatly facilitate further identification and dating of the numerous images Bacon extracted from books and magazines, which might then yield insights about the imaginative scrutiny that fed into the pictures. In the meantime, this is a fascinating and provocative exhibition, and an antidote perhaps for those who found the recent retrospective too grand and predictable. It consolidates Dublin’s position as a centre of Bacon research, in alliance with an unusually proactive artist’s estate. And the Yeatsian title is brilliant, if loaded, in its suggestion that Bacon may have assimilated some cultural Irishness from the circumstance of his birth. 1 Catalogue: Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty. With texts by Rebecca Daniels, Barbara Dawson, Marcel Finke, Martin Harrison, Jessica O’Donnell, Joanna Shepard and Logan Sisley. 224 pp. incl. 212 col. + 15 b. & w. ills. (Steidl, Göttingen, 2009), £19. ISBN 978–3–86930–027–6. The exhibition travels to Compton Verney, Warwickshire (27th March to 20th June). 2 Reviewed by Dexter Dalwood in this Magazine, 150 (2008), pp.841–42. 3 Noted in M. Hammer: Bacon and Sutherland, New Haven and London 2005, p.24. Bacon’s interest in this particular Maxwell image is confirmed by the presence in his studio of a heavily thumbed sheet extracted from Stalking Big Game with a Camera in Equatorial Africa; see M. Harrison and R. Daniels: Incunabula, London 2008, p.139. 4 For a new contribution not based on support from the studio archive, see M. Hammer and C. Stephens: ‘“Seeing the story of one’s time”: appropriations from Nazi photography in the work of Francis Bacon’, Visual Culture in Britain 10 (November 2009), pp.317–53. 5 My thanks to the Hugh Lane Gallery staff for allowing me access to the database of the studio archive. 6 Many sheets are identified in Harrison and Daniels, op. cit. (note 3). I would add that the photograph of an elaborate system of windows and reflections, shown but not reproduced in the catalogue, is derived from L. Moholy-Nagy: Vision in Motion, Chicago 1947, p.201. This reinforces Bacon’s known connection with the milieu of Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, for whom this was a cult book.
Federico Barocci Siena by ERIKA LANGMUIR DESPITE FEDERICO BAROCCI’S contemporary fame and lasting influence, he remains, in mainstream art history, the missing link between the cinquecento of Correggio, Raphael and Titian, and the seicento of Rubens, Van Dyck and Bernini. It is this widespread ignorance of the painter and his importance which the exhibition Federico Barocci, 1535–1612, L’incanto del colore, Una lezione per due secoli at S. Maria della Scala, Siena (to 10th January), seeks to remedy, unfortunately with only partial success. Dimly lit – unusually, the drawings and prints are more clearly visible than the paintings – displayed in ways confusing to a viewer who has not already read the hefty catalogue,1 with little regard to chronology, and inadequate wall panels and labels, it is a disorientating experience.2 Yet once one’s eyes have adapted to the churchy gloom,3 the newly restored splendour of the Perugia Deposition (cat. no.1; Fig.76) and the Perdono di Assisi (1574–76; no.2) leads one to succumb to the artist’s spell. Like almost no one else, Barocci reconciles the materiality of paint with colour and light, disegno with colorito. He combines modern innovation with a return to the canons of the High Renaissance. Meditative stillness coexists in his altarpieces with narrative action,
76. Deposition, by Federico Barocci. 1567–69. Canvas, 412 by 232 cm. (Cappella di S. Bernardino, Cattedrale di S. Lorenzo, Perugia; exh. S. Maria della Scala, Siena).
77. Study of a man’s head, eyes gazing upwards, by Federico Barocci. 1580–83. Charcoal, red and white pastel on grey-blue tinted paper, 30.8 by 22.8 cm. (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa; exh. S. Maria della Scala, Siena).
pathos with joy, transcendence with naturalism. In the Deposition, impervious to the heightened feelings and the high winds that agitate the other figures and their cangiante draperies, a workman, carrying pincers and the crown of thorns, stolidly picks his way down a ladder. Examples of similar incongruities, harmoniously resolved, can be multiplied ad infinitum: an apparently mundane still life of hammer, pincers, nails, crown of thorns, vase and cloth, is laid out on the tomb slab in the foreground of the Senigallia Entombment (no.8; Fig.78), a free interpretation of Raphael’s Baglioni Entombment, while a delicate, virtually unblemished dead Christ and a shimmering Magdalene commune, more about resurrection than about death or grief. Behind them, like the Heavenly Jerusalem, rises the ducal palace of Urbino, ethereal in the sunset. The Stigmatisation of St Francis from Urbino (no.60), later requisitioned, like the Deposition, by Napoleon’s commissars, is set in a minutely studied nocturnal landscape; in the foreground, the hypnotic radiance of the seraph slows down to timelessness the moment of the miracle. Not wounds but metal nail heads appear in the palms of the ecstatic Francis, himself the vision of a rapt Brother Leo telling his rosary beads. The Franciscan tertiary Beata Michelina Metelli (c.1590–1600; no.83), alone in ecstasy on Mount Calvary – a work that is the source of the Baroque imagery of the ‘double vision’ in which the spectator is granted a vision of the visionary – is painted in exquisite tints modulating her windswept grey habit and ochre cloak, yet the details of the costume are humbly realistic, and only Michelina’s own expression,4 and the faintest hint of cherub faces where light breaks through the storm clouds, signal a supernatural event. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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Some viewers today, allergic to emotional excess, dismiss the painter, himself a Franciscan tertiary, as a propagandist for sentimental, feminised Catholic Reformation religiosity. It is true that he painted, in addition to a few portraits, only one non-devotional work – albeit in two versions, of which only one survives: The flight of Aeneas from Troy in the Galleria Borghese (1598; no.73). But the acute states of mind that Barocci chronicles and seeks to evoke in viewers can also be interpreted in secular, and more universal, terms: angst, a longing for redemptive consolation and the desire to lose/find oneself in surrender to a transcendent love. He does not shed blood. Occasionally, as in the Madonna della Gatta (nos.112 and 113) or the numerous variants of ‘The Madonna of the cherries’ (nos.114 and 115), he represents a poignantly idealised domestic felicity. Attentive viewing of the paintings, and of the artist’s scrupulously numerous preparatory drawings, later avidly collected – individual figures studied from life, bozzetti, modelli, cartoons, in a wide variety of media, including the coloured pastels of which he was a pioneer (e.g. no.94; Fig.77), reveals the disciplined vigour and truthfulness of Barocci’s draughtsmanship, and the daring, optically experimental character of his colourism.5 Like a musician, he reprises motifs, such as a kneeling figure in profil perdu, or with eyes raised to heaven, but in fresh, ever-changing chromatic contexts. Born in Urbino in 1535, long after Francesco Maria I della Rovere, heir to the childless Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, had transferred the duchy’s capital to Pesaro in 1523, Barocci grew up within sight of perhaps the most magnificent ruler’s palace of the Renaissance, then abandoned but once the setting of an illustrious court, in a town forsaken by power and fortune, colonised instead by Franciscan piety. From 1561 to 1563 he was in Rome, collaborating with others on the decoration of the casino of Pius IV in the Vatican. Having fallen dramatically ill, fearful that he had been poisoned by envious rivals, he returned to his native town, virtually never to leave it again. Here he was nursed, here he endured chronic physical illness – which has tentatively been diagnosed as a gastric or duodenal ulcer – and spiritual anguish. Urbino and its palace became the permanent stage of his inner life and art as they were of his physical existence.6 Francesco Maria II della Rovere, whom Barocci brilliantly portrayed in 1572 on his triumphant return from the Battle of Lepanto at the age of twenty-three (no.90), and who succeeded his father to the dukedom in 1574, became the artist’s patron, virtually his agent. As pious, studious and melancholy as Barocci, he shielded the latter from clients remonstrating with the painter’s notorious slowness, while at the same time channelling his commissions to diplomatic ends. Despite his poor health, Barocci proved to be an efficient manager of a workshop and an effective publicist of his compositions, partly through his own innovative etchings (nos.31, 40, 56 and 60), partly by encouraging
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78. Entombment of Christ, by Federico Barocci. 1579–82. Canvas, 295 by 187 cm. (Chiesa della Confraternita del S. Sacramento e Croce, Senigallia; exh. S. Maria della Scala, Siena).
others to reproduce his works. Through his ‘mail-order’ practice from a remote and isolated corner of Italy, Federico Barocci not only memorably interpreted the new devotions of the post-Tridentine Roman Church,7 but also affected the course of European art in both Reformed and Catholic countries. 1 Catalogue: Federico Barocci, 1535–1612, L’incanto del colore, Una lezione per due secoli. Edited by Alessandra Giannotti and Claudio Pizzorusso, with contributions by Claudio Pizzorusso and 54 others. 432 pp. incl. 270 col. ills. (Silvana Editoriale, Milan, 2009), €35. ISBN 978–88–3661423–3. Like the exhibition itself, the catalogue seems to be an appendix to the monographic exhibition curated by Andrea Emiliani in Bologna in 1975, and the exhibition of Barocci’s drawings held in Florence in the same year; it is difficult at times to know for whom it is intended. It includes twenty-six specialised short essays that deal with aspects of Barocci’s own art – given their brevity, few of these develop their themes in depth, relying heavily on references to earlier bibliography. There are, inevitably, repetitions and contradictions among them. Marzia Faietti, for example (pp.76–81), rightly queries the authority of Bellori’s 1672 account of the sequence of Barocci’s preparatory drawings for paintings – an account unquestioningly accepted by Alessandra Giannotti (pp.24–35) and by the other authors. Most of them quote Bellori, Baglione, Mancini etc., without any of these early sources being reprinted
whole, although Andrea Zezza introduces an unpublished anonymous Notizia tracing the artist’s works through to 1590. Neither the catalogue nor the exhibition includes a summary biography or chronology of the artist. In the catalogue’s favour, on the other hand, are its copious reproductions of works not in the exhibition, some relating to preparatory drawings or reproductive prints on display, others, such as the Madonna del Popolo, painted for Arezzo where it arrived in 1579, crucial to the artist’s impact on Florentine art in particular. The cross-referencing of this mass of material is impeccable. 2 In order to allow the viewer to sample ‘un libero florilegio’ of artists presumed to have been influenced by Barocci, the organisers have interspersed the latter’s paintings with works by others. The derivation of The blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni invoking the Virgin’s protection for the city of Siena by Francesco Vanni (no.3) from Barocci’s Perdono di Assisi (no.2) is manifest; Vanni, the Sienese pasticheur of Barocci, is explicitly ‘privileged’ in the exhibition. But that a Lamentation by Van Dyck (no.4), one by Strozzi (no.5), a third by Rubens (no.6) and a fourth by Cigoli (no.7) should precede works with which they have no obvious stylistic relationship – Barocci’s Entombment of 1579–82 from Senigallia (no.8), followed in turn by the Lamentation of 1600–12 left unfinished at the painter’s death, now in Bologna (no.9) – is an antidote to viewers’ concentration. 3 That the ‘churchiness’ of the lighting may be intentional is suggested by the labelling of the exhibition’s opening section INTROIBO, meaning ‘I shall enter’, the first word of the Latin mass before 1556.
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EXHIBITIONS 4 The painter Simone Cantarini is recorded by Malvasia as a great admirer of this work, and especially of Barocci’s technique in representing Michelina’s raised eyes, ‘finiti in più volte, e per via di velature, perché acquistassero un certo acqueo, un lucido, un diafano’; cited in the entry for no.83. The same effect, however, is visible not only in oils but also in the artist’s drawings, e.g. Fig.77. 5 The artist’s brother Simone was famous for constructing clocks and other precision instruments. Scientific and technological experimentation had been a specialism of Urbino since the days of the ‘mathematical Renaissance’ of Duke Federico da Montefeltro. 6 Andrea Emiliani, in the catalogue’s introductory essay (pp.15–22), stresses the artist’s profound identification of the ghostly ducal palace, its interiors and surroundings, with Christological scenes; it appears consistently in the background of paintings of both Passion and Consolation. Maria Rosaria Valazzi writes (pp.36–47) that Barocci drew from his native town the ‘linfa vitale’ of his life and art; more prosaically, she traces his training to contemporary artists active at the della Rovere court: Battista Franco, Francesco Menzocchi, Girolamo and Bartolomeo Genga. 7 The first painting commissioned from Barocci for a Roman church, S. Maria in Valicella, or the Chiesa Nuova, was the Visitation (1583–86; no.15). Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians, spent time in prayer and contemplation before this tender but unostentatious image, simple in composition yet psychologically complex in its depiction of Elizabeth’s and Mary’s embrace.
Michelangelo, architect in Rome Rome by FABRIZIO NEVOLA
Michelangelo architetto a Roma at the Musei Capitolini, Rome (to 7th February), could hardly be more appropriate: the Palazzo dei Conservatori was designed by Michelangelo, as was the Capitoline square on which it stands. The core of the exhibition is thirty drawings by Michelangelo with a Roman connection, studies of antiquities or designs or fragmentary details of buildings that are wholly or partially attributed to him, all lent by the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. The combination of an ideal setting and such a fascinating body of works by so great a master should have prompted the organisers to deliver a scintillating display, yet despite their scholarly good intentions – reflected in the well-produced catalogue – to view the show is rather a disappointment. The exhibition offers a clear, didactic narrative route structured around a chronologically ordered sequence of the architectural projects that Michelangelo worked on in Rome, from the early aedicular window of the chapel of Sts Cosmas and Damian at Castel S. Angelo (after 1516) to the Porta Pia designs dated to his final years (1561–64). As is well known, Vasari reports in his Life that the temperamental artist burned many of his drawings before his death. This is obviously a critical problem for Michelangelo studies, but
THE SETTING OF
79. Model for the south apse of St Peter’s, by assistants of Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1556–57. Wood, 90.5 by 50 by 20 cm. (Fabbrica di S. Pietro, Vatican City; exh. Musei Capitolini, Rome).
also a problem in an exhibition structured around chance survivals, which cannot alone tell the full story of the richly inventive treatment of architecture that characterises Michelangelo’s Roman œuvre, particularly as the Casa Buonarroti material was not supplemented by other loans. Instead, the curators turned to secondary graphic evidence – mostly in the form of etchings – to link the drawings to the buildings with which they are associated. This too raises considerable difficulties, for many of the projects with which Michelangelo was involved were completed years after his death, and their graphic rep resentation became an important tool in the often warring camps that emerged to support one or other solution as ‘true’ to the master’s original plans. Perhaps the best-known instance of this is the development of the Capitoline itself, for which the curators have assembled a significant number of the many prints that document the project from its inception, with the installation of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the oval plinth, through to the Duperac print showing the star paving design, only installed centuries after Michelangelo’s death. These are hung out of sequence, thus confusing what is already rather a complex debate, although Anna Bedon’s catalogue essay, itself a revision of her recent monograph,1 lucidly sets out the chronology for the project’s development. Some important new contributions to Michelangelo studies are brought together, perhaps most effectively in the catalogue, to provide a timely reassessment of the architect’s Roman works. A recently discovered fragment of an autograph drawing of one of the architraves from St Peter’s dome cornice is shown for the first time (cat. no.69); its installation in a tall cabinet makes both drawing and explanatory text exceptionally hard to view, although Vitale Zanchettin’s catalogue essay helps set it into the broader context of the dome project as a whole. The drawing was found in the fabbrica archive of St Peter’s, which also preserves the magnificent 1:15
scaled wooden model for the dome. This was not on show, but a smaller one made for the vault of the south apse was displayed (no.54; Fig.79); such models go a long way towards making architectural drawings more appealing and intelligible and might have been used more extensively throughout the show. Another significant contribution is the reappraisal of Michelangelo’s active role in the design and execution of the Cappella Sforza at S. Maria Maggiore and the remodelling of the Baths of Diocletian as S. Maria degli Angeli, although here the graphic evidence is so scarce that the discussion was confined to the catalogue essays. The highlights of the show are the sequences of drawings for two of the projects
80. Study for the plan of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, by Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1559. Stylus, compass marks, red and black chalk, pen and ink, ink wash and lead white, 42.5 by 29.7 cm. (Casa Buonarroti, Florence; exh. Musei Capitolini, Rome).
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projects associated with the architect in Rome, many of which do not feature in the exhibition at all (fortifications, bridge designs, minor residential palace projects, etc.). So this well-illustrated volume makes a valuable contribution to the vast literature on Michelangelo by bringing together the current research on the extensive architectural activity in Rome of an artist who claimed, as late as the 1540s, that ‘non sono architectore’.3 1 A. Bedon: Il Campidoglio. Storia di un monumento civile di Roma papale, Milan 2008; reviewed by the present author in this Magazine, 151 (2009), pp.620–21. 2 Catalogue: Michelangelo architetto a Roma. Edited by Mauro Mussolin, with Clara Altavista. 360 pp. incl. 124 col. + 200 b. & w. ills. (Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2009), €35. ISBN 978–88–3661501–8. 3 Quoted in C. Elam: ‘Funzione, tipo e ricezione dei disegni di architettura di Michelangelo’, in idem, ed.: exh. cat. Michelangelo e il disegno di architettura, Vicenza (Palazzo Barbaran da Porto) and Florence (Casa Buonarroti) 2006–07, p.43; reviewed in this Magazine, 149 (2007), pp.206–07.
81. Study for the Porta Pia, by Michelangelo Buonarroti. c.1561. Pen and ink, black chalk, ink wash and lead white, 44.2 by 28.2 cm. (Casa Buonarroti, Florence; exh. Musei Capitolini, Rome).
Georgia O’Keeffe New York, Washington and Santa Fe by DAVID ANFAM
that occupied Michelangelo in his last years: the church of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the Porta Pia. For the former, a set of five possible solutions was provided in the form of finished floor plans, where layers of dense overdrawing reveal the artist’s working and reworking of the design (no.77; Fig.80). This layering of ink, black and red chalk, brown wash and lead white results in drawings that almost achieve the three-dimensional mass of built objects, an effect which is even more marked in the extraordinary drawings for Porta Pia (no.94; Fig.81). It is perhaps only with this project, displayed as the last section of the show, that the exhibition manages to convey the mastery of Michelangelo as an architectural designer and draughtsman whose ideas were in constant evolution. A sequence of drawings that starts with sketches and details that develop the gate’s boldly innovative design follows through to the two fully worked up drawings (nos.94 and 95; Casa Buonarroti, nos.106A and 102A). Again the actual completion of the project dated from after Michelangelo’s death, but here the drawings – and consequently the exhibition itself – convey the power and vigour of the artist in the final months of his life. Christof Thoenes’s subtle essay, which opens the catalogue, does much to capture the remarkable qualities of these exceptional drawings. This exhibition only really achieves the professed goal of its title, to focus on the role of Michelangelo as an architect, between the covers of its catalogue.2 This is a volume of essays without a catalogue of exhibited works; it opens with four thematic essays followed by others which cover all the major and minor
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paid to certain modern American artists, such as Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keeffe, threatens to mask, like a brand name, the intrinsic quality of their work. It is not just the proliferation of posters, postcards, calendars, coffee-table books, biographies, television programmes, films and numerous exhibitions, but also the degree to which public acclaim insinuates that their art is at root somehow populist. Of course, high modernist elitism – the presumption that ‘serious’ painting and sculpture must
be ‘difficult’ – lurks here. However, part of the fascination of Hopper, Pollock and Warhol stems precisely from the fact that they did not pander outright to mercantile hype (although the last succumbed to it). On the contrary, their achievement remains as elusive as it is distinctive, laden with ambiguities and tricky to reduce to any fixed message or core. By comparison, O’Keeffe’s massive popularity is relatively explicable. The exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction, currently at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (to 17th January), seeks to present a tougher facet of her œuvre, the artist’s abstract images, even as its aggregate necessarily courts the box office.1 By laudably aiming to rescue O’Keeffe from mass consumption for a scholarly purview, the curatorial concept of this exhibition perforce walks an intellectual tightrope. Packing the Whitney’s third floor, nearly 150 graphics, canvases, photographs, sculptures and documentary items confirm how, far from being an ‘in-focus’ selection, this is a hawkish blockbuster cloaked in learned garb. The crowds of visitors in New York included an exceptionally high percentage of children, enthralled by various teachers and gallery staff (not to mention the bright hues and eye-catching patterns before their eyes). This situation reflected an unusually large set of educational programmes ‘for families and kids’ in which they would, to quote the press package, find ‘curves, squiggles and giggles’. Apparently, for parents, O’Keeffe is becoming the thinking person’s Walt Disney. If indeed O’Keeffe’s compositions do sometimes evoke passages in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), then it nevertheless attests to her primacy and influence. Yet there is a deeper lesson to be learnt. As Fantasia’s visual–musical mix popularised earlier avant-garde ideas about synaesthesia, so O’Keeffe’s vision sprang from aesthetic tenets entrenched in the nineteenth century. The wonder is that 82. Evening star no.IV, by Georgia O’Keeffe. 1917. Watercolour on paper, 22.5 by 30.5 cm. (Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; exh. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).
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83. Early abstraction, by Georgia O’Keeffe. 1915. Charcoal on paper, 61 by 47.3 cm. (Milwaukee Art Museum; exh. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).
she managed to sustain these fin-de-siècle origins for seven decades, extending from before the First World War through to the era of cyberspace. The catalogue’s compact essays reiterate O’Keeffe’s debt to the theories of her mentor, Arthur Wesley Dow. In turn, Dow’s thinking voiced the Arts and Crafts movement’s concern for individuality and the Pateresque ideal that the image should aspire to the condition of music. Consequently, there is a sense in which O’Keeffe – notwithstanding Alfred Stieglitz’s marketing her in the early 1920s as a modern, sexually liberated woman – never quite threw off the mantle of the previous century. Striking as O’Keeffe’s first abstractions of 1915 may look, their grisaille, mystery and sinuous curves exude a Symbolist aura: Jan Toorop, as it were, finessed for the New World. O’Keeffe’s genius was to purge this morbid European inheritance, invigorating it with large doses of oxygen drawn from the Great American Outdoors. Notwithstanding, her landscape-inspired creations from as late as the 1950s and after still occasionally retained a hint of Whistlerian moody mistiness. The difference is that O’Keeffe excised Aestheticism’s haze with the precision of a ranch-hand’s lasso. On a different note, a few of Stieglitz’s celebrated photographs of his lover taken in 1918 portray the artist pouting and posing with the faintly ludicrous theatricality of a silent movie vamp.2 Some of O’Keeffe’s own paintings now seem similarly dated – congruent with the streamlining, flair and strong rhythmic pulse of Jazz Age moderne. A broader problem running through the exhibition is the lax definition of ‘abstraction’. For example, the first painting in the entranceway at the Whitney is Sky above clouds
III (1963; cat. no.142). This vista resembles what the title declares: a panorama, albeit mildly stylised, of sky and clouds seen from an airplane. This is a far cry from the non-objectivity of, say, Malevich’s Black square or even the mature Mondrian, let alone of contemporaneous American art, such as that of Morris Louis or Agnes Martin. In fact, O’Keeffe’s abstraction almost always required an anchor in reality, following a Yankee pragmatism that distilled what she called ‘the unknown’ from the commonplace. Furthermore, the show’s first entry, Early abstraction (no.1; Fig.83) speaks volumes, although none of the catalogue essayists identifies it. Plainly, this charcoal drawing depicts the scroll of a musical instrument, even to the tuning pegs in the box above the neck. In subsequent drawings and watercolours, the motif transforms into a volute a little reminiscent of Brancusi’s Princess X, a plant- or wave-like presence and, in Blue II (1916; no.14), a foetus (shades of Brancusi’s The newborn?). Thereafter, the sometime ‘scroll’ seems to have mutated, via the twin curves of the Blue series (nos.17–20), into the brightly tinted Series I canvases of 1918 (nos.45–47). Thence it was a short step for this form to turn hollow or concave as the orifices of the two superb Music – pink and blue paintings (1918; nos.48–49) – breakthroughs that announced the many erotic renditions of
clefts and apertures that segued into the 1920s, becoming perhaps O’Keeffe’s bestknown icon. Crucially, if the musical instrument’s scroll is acknowledged as seminal to this pictorial progression, then its ultimate transformation into an abstracted detail or metonym for the female anatomy echoes the well-worn analogy, familiar from Cubism and elsewhere, that has long associated the body of a guitar or violin with the female body. To support such a reading, we need only recall the work that especially caught O’Keeffe’s attention when, in January 1915, she first ventured into Stieglitz’s 291 gallery: Picasso’s charcoal Violin (1912). The size of Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction tends to expose the weaknesses alongside the strengths of its subject in ways that a smaller display can sidestep.3 Watercolours such as the Evening star suite (nos.38–42; Fig.82) and Morning sky (1916; no.43), are magnificent landmarks in the pageant of American abstraction. Furthermore, their daring fluency implies that Stieglitz’s decision in 1918 to steer O’Keeffe towards oils – as a dealer he could only harbour one watercolourist, John Marin – was deleterious. Rarely has an artist who prized the tangible evinced less feeling for tactile painterliness. No matter whether O’Keeffe portrayed flowers, mountains, an adobe wall or a sunset, her dry handling 84. Red canna, by Georgia O’Keeffe. 1925/26. Canvas mounted on masonite, 91.4 by 76 cm. (University of Arizona, Tucson; exh. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).
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managed to reduce them to the same trimmed contours and inert surfaces. Whenever she overcame this attrition by dint of sheer chromaticism, as in the resplendent Red canna (no.90; Fig.84) or the antithetically sombre Black place canvases of 1944 (nos.131–35), she triumphed.4 As Elizabeth Hutton Turner puts it in her catalogue essay, ‘colour becomes the verb of the painting’. Yet too often O’Keeffe’s cropping, simplification and flatness render her less a painter in the fullest meaning of the word than, au fond, a graphic designer. Not for nothing did her career begin with fashion illustrations. This is one reason why her works function brilliantly as posters. It also explains the cinematic look of various paintings, as though they were monochrome mise-en-scène sketches for frame shots meticulously transcribed into Technicolor pigment.5 At times, the results pack a terrific punch – witness the mesmeric Jack-in-the-pulpit sequence (nos.118–22), the equally wonderful, enigmatic quietism of New York – night’s grey folds (no.93), and the two oils inspired by the hole of a pelvis (1944–45; nos.129–30), which appear as forerunners to James Turrell’s skyspaces. However, at other moments the impression is of a painter who might have been better suited to a different, more decorative discipline altogether.6 This is the interior designer’s fate that Demuth’s words to O’Keeffe in 1926 inadvertently yet tellingly invoked: ‘When we have our houses you must do my music room – just allow that red and yellow ‘cana’ [sic] one to spread until it fills the room’. 1 Catalogue: Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction. Edited by Barbara Haskell, with contributions by Barbara Haskell, Barbara Buhler Lynes, Sasha Nicholas, Bruce Robertson and Elizabeth Hutton Turner. 246 pp. incl. 202 col. + 26 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009), $65 (HB). ISBN 978–0–300–14817–6. After showing at the Phillips Collection, Washington (6th February to 9th May), the exhibition travels to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe (28th May to 17th September). 2 Although hitherto unremarked in the literature, it is possible that the absurdity of Stieglitz’s photographs of O’Keeffe stimulated Marcel Duchamp’s parodistic pose in Man Ray’s photographic portrait of him as Rrose Sélavy. 3 For example, the excellent exhibition Dove/ O’Keeffe: Circles of Influence, at the Stirling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown MA (7th June to 7th September 2009). 4 The funereal quality of these paintings and the grim vortices of the two Piece of wood compositions (1942) suggest that they belong to a wartime mood – in effect, paysages moralisés. 5 Routinely, O’Keeffe’s compositional strategies elicit comparison with the photographs of Paul Strand and others, but could the cinema have also been an influence? For instance, D.W. Griffith had exploited the emotional intensity of the close-up from as early as 1911 onwards, while O’Keeffe’s juxtaposition of the very nearby and the faraway, as well as her framing effects, find parallels in Eisenstein’s montage principles (Battleship Potemkin made a considerable impact at its December 1926 New York debut). 6 Significantly, in 1926 O’Keeffe was commissioned by the Cheney Bros. Silk Company.
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French drawings Washington by PERRIN STEIN
collections of French drawings in the United States, that of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, was for many years the least published and, aside from the famous sheets which have appeared in monographic loan exhibitions, the least well known. The welcome end to that era comes in the form of the handsome exhibition at the Gallery, Renaissance to Revolution, French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500–1800 (to 31st January), and the thoroughly researched catalogue that accompanies it.1 In line with recent trends in museum publishing, the Gallery chose to publish representative highlights rather than a complete catalogue of the permanent collection, a solution which – while not ideal for scholars – does serve a wide swathe of the Gallery’s audience quite well, as it allows the best works to be published in a fairly opulent manner with full scholarly apparatus. Moreover, the concurrent improvements in online databases – and the National Gallery of Art has long been a leader in this area – offer an effective means to complement printed exhibition catalogues. As a result, full measure can now be taken of this part of the national collection, at once venerable and surprisingly young, with many important drawings added in recent years and making their debut here. Margaret Morgan Grasselli, the curator of the exhibition, not only wrote the catalogue, but is largely responsible, along with Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, for building Washington’s collection through acquisitions and gifts; a stunning ninety of the 117 entries in the catalogue are for works which entered the Gallery during her nearly thirty-year tenure. It is a running joke in museums that every acquisition either fills a gap or builds on strength, but that proves true here, as Grasselli and Robison have filled some major art-historical lacunae while also adding works that augment the unique character of the permanent collection, which is AMONG THE MAJOR
rich in drawings for book illustration and highly finished composition drawings. In a series of stately galleries, with painted panels softening the stone interiors, the installation balances chronology, thematic groupings and aesthetics, sometimes separating works by an individual artist to make comparative points. Vitrines in the last two galleries allow the display of a number of the collection’s treasures which happen to be in bound form: eighteenth-century albums of sketches of Rome and studies for book illustration, often with the published book displayed alongside, hors catalogue. In the catalogue, the entries follow an approximate chronological order and are preceded by an essay tracing the history of the collection. The story is engaging rather than perfunctory in Grasselli’s telling, especially as gifts, promised gifts and bequests account for more than half of the exhibited works and her knowledge of the majority of the donors is first-hand. The distinctive core of the collection, 350 drawings for eighteenth-century book illustrations, came to the Gallery as a gift of Joseph E. Widener in 1942, just one year after the Museum’s founding, and still accounts for over a third of the French drawings. The cadre of benefactors grew steadily over time, and Grasselli’s essay details the debts owed to, among others, Mrs Gertrude Laughlin Chanler, Julius S. Held, Dr Armand Hammer and Ian Woodner. Woodner’s daughters, Dian and Andrea, are among a group of collectors who continue to support the Museum with such notable gifts as François Quesnel’s Portrait of a noblewoman (cat. no.9; gift of Andrea Woodner; Fig.87), Hubert Robert’s The oval fountain in the gardens of the Villa d’Este, Tivoli (no.84; gift of Mr and Mrs Neil Phillips and Mr and Mrs Ivan Phillips), and FrançoisAndré Vincent’s The drawing lesson (no.100; anonymous partial and promised gift). As Grasselli is the first to admit, the collection still has some way to go to achieve art-historical balance. The sixteenth-century group, though small, is a stellar part of the collection, transformed by a number of rare and beautiful sheets from the Woodner collection. Acquisitions in this area continue to be made, including the purchase in 2006 of an exquisitely well-preserved watercolour by Jean 85. A man reclining and a woman seated on the ground, by Antoine Watteau. c.1716. Red, black and white chalk on brown paper, 24.1 by 34.9 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
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Poyet, The coronation of Solomon by the spring of Gihon (no.1), which stops visitors short at the entrance to the exhibition, although works by the major figures of the second School of Fontainebleau such as Toussaint Dubreuil (1561–1602) and Martin Fréminet (1567–1619) continue to be desiderata. The seventeenth century remains the collection’s weak point, although some excellent examples have been acquired, from Simon Vouet’s breathtaking Creusa carrying the gods of Troy (no.17) to a characteristic late work by Laurent de La Hyre, The presentation in the Temple (no.20) and Adam Frans van der Meulen’s French troops before Salins and the surrounding hills (no.27), an impressive large-scale study for a print, with figures on horseback drawn over a counterproof of a detailed landscape study. Claude Lorrain is represented by four varied examples of his draughtsmanship, although the appreciation of his contemporary Nicolas Poussin must rest on a single small schematic sketch of a landscape executed in his late, shaky hand. A charming genre scene of honey-gathering, attributed in the catalogue to Jacques Stella (no.19; Fig.86), a painter in Poussin’s circle, is instead by Claude Simpol (1666–1716), part of a series representing the months of the year that was reattributed by Jamie Mulherron in 2008.2 Other artists one would wish to see include Philippe de Champaigne, Eustache Le Sueur, Sébastien Bourdon, Charles Le Brun and Jean Jouvenet – a daunting shopping list, given the everdwindling supply. In the third gallery one comes to the eighteenth century, and here riches abound. Grasselli, who is a specialist in the drawings of Watteau, has selected six examples to suggest the range of his draughtsmanship. Watteau’s achievement, especially in the unhesitating freedom and naturalism of his trois crayons figure studies (no.40; Fig.85), is set off to great effect by the homage Grasselli pays to his immediate predecessors in an illuminating grouping of works in the same technique by Michel Corneille II, Charles de La Fosse and Antoine Coypel (nos.29, 32–33 and 35–36). Other Rococo masters who have long been favourites of American collectors – Boucher, Fragonard, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Robert and Greuze – 86. October: honey-gathering, here attributed to Claude Simpol. c.1700. Ink and wash, with white goauche, 22.7 by 30.1 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
and collecting in America, where the admiration for French art was often born out of a love for French literature, elegance and joie de vivre. A few comments on individual drawings follow:
87. Portrait of a noblewoman (Madame de Pellegars?), by François Quesnel. c.1590–95. Black and red chalk with white chalk highlighting, 29 by 23.2 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
are likewise represented by superb examples, as are the so-called petits maîtres, responsible for the many designs for book illustrations. Less in evidence are examples by history painters and First Painters to the King, such as François Le Moyne, Charles-Antoine Coypel, Carle Vanloo and Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre – esteemed by their contemporaries but less remembered today, especially beyond French borders. Finally, the still relatively small collection of Neo-classical drawings is anchored by David’s Roman Album No.4, acquired in 1998 (no.112), and Etienne-Louis Boullée’s soaring vision for a metropolitan church (no.107), acquired in 1991. By bringing the holdings of French drawings at the National Gallery into the spotlight, Renaissance to Revolution presents a collection which, almost seventy years after the Gallery’s founding, has attained an impressive level of maturity. Notwithstanding recent purchases by the Gallery’s curators to redress art-historical imbalances, it remains a collection distinguished by its high percentage of gifts and as such offers a reflection on the history of taste
no.13: Studies of horses, by Jacques Callot. The collector’s mark, Lugt 2736, listed as unidentified by Lugt in 1956, appears on a number of Callot’s sheets of horse studies after Tempesta. In the Callot literature, it is often placed chronologically after John Thane in the provenance, despite the fact that it also appears on sheets William Fawkener bequeathed to the British Museum in 1769. Unpublished research by Julian Brooks has linked the heraldic device on Lugt 2736 with the coat of arms of the Brandi family in Florence, suggesting that Callot’s horse sketches were in a Florentine collection before he left the Medici court (email correspondence of 28th August 2009). See also the present author’s entry on Callot’s Study of a horse, in L. WolkSimon, ed.: exh. cat. An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) forthcoming 2010; C. Whistler: ‘Artists, Collectors and the Appreciation of Florentine Drawings of the Early Seventeenth Century’, in J. Brooks: exh. cat. Graceful and True, Drawings in Florence c.1600, Oxford (Ashmolean Museum), London (P. & D. Colnaghi) and Nottingham (Djanogly Art Gallery) 2003–04, pp.14 and 20, note 29; and C. Monbeig Goguel: ‘Les artistes florentins collectionneurs de dessins de Giorgio Vasari’, in idem, ed.: L’Artiste collectionneur de Dessin I. De Giorgio Vasari à aujourd’hui. Rencontres internationales du Salon du Dessin, 22 et 23 mars 2006, Milan 2006, pp.42 and 60, note 44. no.19: October: honey-gathering, by Jacques Stella. For another example of a set of drawings reattributed to Claude Simpol on the basis of prints, see P. Stein and M. Tavener Holmes: exh. cat. Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1999, nos.2a–b. no.21: Landscape with a river, by Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain. My colleague Stijn Alsteens has pointed out to me that the bridge depicted in this drawing was identified as the Ponte Acquoria near Tivoli by Lisa Oehler in 1997; see L. Oehler: Rom in der Graphik des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1997, p.63. no.77: Family promenade in the park, by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin. The transparent quality of the gouache, applied in long loopy brushstrokes over an equally loopy pen-and-ink underdrawing, differs from the more dabbing and opaque application of gouache in the National Gallery of Art’s masterpiece by Baudouin, The honest model (no.78). Further study of the artist is needed before this attribution can be confirmed. no.106: Hexagonal temple in an Italianate landscape, by Louis-Gustave Taraval. Another study for the same building, with variations in the architecture, background and figures, was sold at auction in Paris in 2008; Millon & Associés, Paris, Collection d’un grand amateur de dessins d’architecture, 26th June 2008, lot 38. no.112: Roman Album No.4, by Jacques-Louis David. Roman Album No.5, the most recent one to be discovered, was thoroughly catalogued and published in P. Rosenberg and B. Peronnet: ‘Un album inédit de David’, Revue de l’Art 142 (2003–04), pp.45–83. 1 Catalogue: Renaissance to Revolution, French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500–1800. By Margaret Morgan Grasselli. 310 pp. incl. 239 col. + 7 b. & w. ills. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2009), $75. ISBN 978–1–84822–043–0. 2 See J. Mulherron: ‘Claude Simpol’s “Divertissemens” for Jean Mariette’, Print Quarterly 25 (2008), pp.23–36. Mulherron was not aware of Washington’s drawing at the time he wrote this article. Grasselli has changed the attribution on the wall label and has written an article on the drawing; M. Grasselli: ‘Tanging the Bees: A Curious Apiarian Practice in a Drawing by Claude Simpol’, Master Drawings 47 (2009), pp.443–46.
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Calendar London Alan Cristea. New editions and acquisitions are on view in both galleries to 26th January. Alison Jacques. Works by André Butzer can be seen to 9th January. Works by Ryan Mosley are on view from 13th January to 13th February (Fig.88). Barbican. The Curve has been transformed into a Second World War bunker by the Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski; to 10th January. Bloomberg Space. Video and sculptural works by Dorothy Cross explore pearl farming; and works by Ian Kiaer, both can be seen to 16th January. British Museum. Completing its series of exhibitions exploring power and empire, the Museum examines the rule of Moctezuma II, the last elected Aztec Emperor; to 24th January. An exhibition examines printmaking in Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century; to 5th April; to be reviewed. Camden Arts Centre. A solo exhibition of work by Eva Hesse is on view here to 7th March. Courtauld Gallery. Frank Auerbach’s paintings of postWar London building sites are here to 17th January. Dulwich Picture Gallery. Drawing Attention: Tiepolo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso & more presents a selection of 100 drawings from the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; to 27th January. Estorick Collection. An exhibition exploring the representation and analysis of movement in the visual arts and science; 13th January to 18th April. Fleming Collection. Paintings by the Scottish Colourists from the collection are on view from 19th January to 1st April. Gagosian Gallery. At Davies Street, an exhibition of seven new paintings by Howard Hodgkin is on view to 23rd January. Works by Mark Tansey are on display coterminously at Britannia Street. Haunch of Venison. Works by the British artist and designer Stuart Haygarth are on view to 31st January. Hauser & Wirth. At Southwood Garden, Piccadilly, sculptures by Hans Josephsohn are on display to 22nd January. Hayward Gallery. A retrospective of works by Ed Ruscha is here to 10th January (then in Munich and Stockholm); it is reviewed on p.54 above. Helly Nahmad. A superb exhibition of works by Monet from all periods and mostly from private collections runs here to 26th February. Karsten Schubert. A retrospective of work by Bob Law is on view here and at Thomas Dane to 16th January. Marlborough Fine Art. Silhouettes and filigree ceramics and papercuts by Charlotte Hodes are on display here to 7th January. Matthiesen Gallery. An exhibition of Spanish sculpture 1550–1750 (11th to 29th January) coincides with the National Gallery’s The Sacred Made Real. National Gallery. The Sacred Made Real, reviewed on p.50 above, runs to 24th January (then in Washington). To coincide with the exhibition, a special display examining the technical challenges of making a polychrome sculpture is on view in Room 1. See also Matthiesen Gallery above. Parasol Unit. A group show of work by Cecily Brown, Hans Josephsohn, Shaun McDowell, Katy Moran and Maaike Schoorel; to 7th February. Pilar Corrias. Works by Ulla von Brandenburg are on view to 30th January. Queen’s Gallery. The exhibition tracing the history of the ‘conversation piece’, seen previously in Edinburgh and reviewed in the October issue, is on view here to 14th February. Raven Row. An exhibition of film projections by the German artist Harun Farocki; to 7th February. Redfern Gallery. An eightieth-birthday retrospective of early paintings by Anne Dunn is on view here to 28th January.
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Royal Academy. An exhibition examining the radical transformation of British sculpture at the beginning of the twentieth century focuses on the work of Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill; to 24th January; it is reviewed on p.52 above. A landmark exhibition of work by Van Gogh, the first in London for over forty years, centres on the artist’s letters, some 35 of which will be on display; 23rd January to 18th April. An exhibition documenting the work of the architect Richard MacCormac; to 17th March. Serpentine Gallery. Design Real looks at industrial, scientific and domestic design; to 7th February. Simon Lee. Wall-mounted sculptures by Donald Judd from the 1960s and 1970s are on view to 29th January. Sir John Soane’s Museum. The use of classical orders in architecture since antiquity is the theme of an exhibition running here to 30th January. South London Gallery. An installtion by Michael Landy in which people can apply to discard failed works of art in a giant bin; 29th January to 14th March. Tate Britain. The show exploring Turner’s responses to the work both of European predecessors and British contemporaries runs to 31st January; it was reviewed in the November issue. A major survey of paintings by Chris Ofili is on view here from 27th January to 16th May. This year’s Turner Prize was won by the painter Richard Wright. Tate Modern. Pop Life: Art in a Material World examines how artists since the 1980s have cultivated their public persona as a product; to 17th January. An exhibition of work by the pioneering conceptual artist John Baldessari; to 10th January. Timothy Taylor. Works on paper by Philip Guston can be seen from 13th January to 20th February. Victoria and Albert Museum. The new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries are now open to the public. The exhibition Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts runs to 17th January. Wallace Collection. During refurbishment of the west gallery of the museum, a sizeable selection of nineteenth-century paintings is temporarily on view in the exhibition space in the basement. 25 new paintings by Damien Hirst, recycling motifs from Francis Bacon, are on view to 24th January. Whitechapel. An exhibition of photography from 1840 to the present from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is on view from 21st January to 11th April. White Cube. Paintings by Damien Hirst are on display at both galleries; to 30th January. Wilkinson. Works by Jimmy de Sana and by Jacob Dahl Jürgensen are on view to 17th January.
88. In bloom, by Ryan Mosley. 2009. Canvas, 50 by 40 cm. (Exh. Alison Jacques, London).
Great Britain and Ireland Bedford, Bedford Castle. A large exhibition of works by Edward Bawden, from the archive of his works donated by the artist to the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, is on show here for the first time; to 31st January. Belfast, Ulster Museum. Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed: The Imagery of Sean Scully is on view here to 14th February. Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts. 17thcentury Dutch paintings from the Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, are shown alongside Dutch paintings from the Barber; to 28th February. Birmingham, Ikon Gallery. The first exhibition in England of works by the Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken is on view here to 24th January. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum. An exhibition of recent acquisitions of drawings and prints runs to 24th January. The leading international authority on Renaissance medals in the post-War period, Graham Pollard (1929–2007), spent his entire career at the Fitzwilliam Museum, rising from a gallery attendant to become Deputy Director, and his contribution to the field is explored through the two collections that he built up during his life: the Museum’s collection and his own private collection; to 31st January. A collection-based exhibition explores the work of Sargent, Sickert and Spencer; to 5th April. Cardiff, National Museum. Rembrandt’s Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet is on loan here from Penrhyn Castle to 21st March. The Museum has acquired Pablo Picasso’s Still Life with porròn (1948; Fig.89). Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery. On the centenary of the birth of Francis Bacon, the exhibition Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty provides an overview of and new insights into Bacon’s work; to 7th March (then in Compton Verney); it is reviewed on p.59 above. Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art. 150 master photographs from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, depicting New York City; to 7th February. Edinburgh, Dean Gallery. Seen earlier in London, the BP Portrait Award 2009 is on view here while the Portrait Gallery is closed for refurbishment; to 21st February. Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery. The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing features the work of eleven contemporary artists; to 10th January. Thereafter works by Toby Paterson; 30th January to 28th March. Edinburgh, Inverleith House. An exhibition of sculptures by Karla Black is here to 14th February. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland. The exhibition devoted to Paul Sandby, already seen in Nottingham and reviewed in the November issue, is here to 7th February (then in London). An exhibition exploring Peter Lely’s enormous collection of paintings, drawings and prints runs here to 14th February. Edinburgh, Queen’s Gallery. An exhibition of photographs by Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley of Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic mark the centenary of Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole; to 11th April. Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Galleries. An exhibition of drawings by Laura Oldfield Ford is on display here to 30th January. Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery. Paintings by Luke Kendall are on view from 16th January to 6th March. Leeds, Henry Moore Institute. Sculpture in Painting, reviewed on p.58 above, runs to 10th January. Leeds, Temple Newsam House. Wonderwall: 300 Years of Wallpaper; to 9th May. Liverpool, Tate. The artist Michael Landy has curated an exhibition that juxtaposes his own works with those of Jean Tinguely, by whose concepts of autodestruction Landy has been inspired; to 10th January. Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic traces in depth the impact of different black cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the early twentieth century to the present; 29th January to 25th April.
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89. Still life with porròn, by Pablo Picasso. 1948. Canvas, 50.3 by 61 cm. (National Museum Wales, Cardiff). Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. An exhibition of paintings by Aubrey Williams reflects the meeting of Atlantic and black Atlantic cultures in Europe, the Caribbean, North and South America; 15th January to 11th April. Manchester Art Gallery. The exhibition Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism is on view here to 10th January; it was reviewed in the November issue. Fantasies, Follies and Disasters: The Prints of Francisco de Goya is here to 31st January. Middlesbrough, Institute of Modern Art. An exhibition of drawings by Ellsworth Kelly is on view here to 21st February. Newlyn, The Exchange. A solo exhibition of video works by Marcus Coates is on display here to 30th January. Nottingham Contemporary. A major retrospective of the early work of David Hockney, from 1960 to 1968, inaugurates this new museum; to 24th January; to be reviewed. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. The Museum has reopened after a major redevelopment of its building; see the Editorial on p.3 above. Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery. How drapery and clothes enrobe the human figure and how to depict the varied qualities of material is explored in a display of drawings from the permanent collection; to 7th February. Oxford, Museum of Modern Art. A survey of video works by Mirosław Balka and an installation by Pawel Althamer are both on view to 7th March. Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius is the curious title of a monographic loan exhibition devoted to the Plympton-born artist; to 20th February. St Ives, Tate. The exhibition The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art explores the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on British art since the turn of the twentieth century; to 10th January. The first major survey of paintings by Dexter Dalwood, incorporating a selection of works on paper, is on display here from 23rd January to 3rd May. Salford, The Lowry. An exhibition of paintings by L.S. Lowry and by Maggi Hambling on the theme of the sea runs here to 31st January. Salisbury, Roche Court. Sculptures by Sarah Staton and by Nina Saunders are on display here to 31st January. Southampton, City Art Gallery. An exhibition of prints by Howard Hodgkin, including the two monumental works As Time Goes By, seen recently in London, is on view to 14th February. Windsor, Windsor Castle, Drawings Gallery. An exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne includes works by Holbein; to 18th April. Woking, The Lightbox. An exhibition of works by Jenny Holzer is on view here to 14th February.
Amsterdam, Hermitage. The opening exhibition at this revamped and expanded outpost of the Hermitage explores life and art at the Russian court in the 19th century; to 31st January. Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis. Rembrandt Reflected: A Glimpse into the Artist’s Mind explores the fact that Rembrandt’s etchings were always the reverse of what the artist could see before him when he was drawing with the etching needle on the plate; to 21st March. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. A survey of winter landscapes by Hendrick Avercamp; to 15th February (then in Washington); to be reviewed. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition Alfred Stevens, previously in Brussels and reviewed in the September issue, is here to 24th January. 15 years of research into Van Gogh’s correspondence culminates in the launch of a website detailing the results of this work, the publication of a six-volume edition in three languages and the exhibition Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks; to 3rd January. Antwerp, Rubenshuis. Room for Art in 17th-century Antwerp explores art collecting in 17th-century Antwerp through three paintings by Willem van Haecht depicting the art collection of Cornelis van der Geest; to 28th February (then in The Hague). Athens, Byzantine and Christian Museum. Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image; to 10th January. Athens, National Gallery. The birth of Neoclassicism in France. Masterpieces from the Musée du Louvre; to 11th January. Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró. Works by František Kupka from the Centre Pompidou, Paris; to 24th January. Barcelona, Museu d’Art Contemporani. A large survey of work by John Cage is on view here to 10th January (then in Høvikodden). Basel, Fondation Beyeler. A substantial survey exhibition of works by Jenny Holzer; to 24th January. Work by Günther Förg; to 28th February. Basel, Kunstmuseum. From Dürer to Gober: 101 Master Drawings from the Kupferstichkabinett; to 24th January. New research into works in the permanent collection is presented in Frans II. Francken, Die Anbetung der Könige, und andere Entdeckungen; to 28th February. Bassano del Grappa, Museo Civico. While the exact birthdate of Jacopo Bassano is uncertain, his home town is celebrating his 500th birthday with a major exhibition of his and his family’s work from 16th January to 3rd May; to be reviewed. Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie. The monographic exhibition devoted to Carl Gustav Carus, previously seen in Dresden, runs here to 10th January. Berlin, Berlinische Galerie. An exhibition of work made in Berlin since 1989 assesses the impact of that momentous year; to 31st January. Berlin, Brücke-Museum. An exhibition focusing on the work of Fritz Bleyl runs here to 25th April. Berlin, Charlottenburg. Cranach and Renaissance Art under the House of Hohenzollern; to 24th January. Berlin, Deutsche Guggenheim. Paintings by Julie Mehretu are on view here to 10th January. An exhibition examining the concept of utopia from the Nazarenes to the Bauhaus goes on view from 22nd January to 11th April. Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum. Following showings in Los Angeles and Nuremberg, the exhibition Kunst und Kalter Krieg. Deutsche Positionen 1945–1989 (known by the more divisive title ‘Art of Two Germanys’ for the U.S. display) can be seen here to 10th January. Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof. Seen earlier in London, The Saints, by the American artist Paul Pfeiffer, is a multi-media installation recreating the 1966 World Cup final; to 28th March. Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie. A solo exhibition of work by Thomas Demand; to 17th January. Bern, Kunstmuseum. Paintings by Giovanni Giacometti; to 21st February; to be reviewed. Bielefeld, Kunsthalle. An exhibition of work by the German Impressionists; to 31st January.
Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum. Seen earlier in New York, the exhibition devoted to the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright, reviewed in the September issue, is on view here to 14th February. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes. An exhibition devoted to the early work of Murillo runs here to 17th January (then in Seville); to be reviewed. Bologna, MAMBO. The Arte Povera artist Gilberto Zorio is the subject of a retrospective on view here to 7th February. Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico. An exhibition here reconstructs Federico Zeri’s intellectual biography through the paintings for which he found sound attributions and through his collection of photographs of works of art and archaeological sites; to 10th January. Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. A retrospective of work by Markus Lüpertz; to 17th January. Bordeaux, Capc-Musée d’Art Contemporain. An exhibition of works by Ilya Kabakov is on view here to 7th February. Bregenz, Kunsthaus. An exhibition of work by Tony Oursler can be seen here to 17th January. Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia. The exhibitions Inca and Beyond Baroque: Signs of Identity in Latin American art document the Pre- and Post-Columbian civilisations in Peru; to 27th June. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts. From Botticelli to Titian: Masterpieces of Two Centuries of Italian Art includes some 80 loans from international collections; to 14th February. The Alchemy of Beauty: Parmigianino – Drawings and Prints runs to 15th March. Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts. A loan exhibition devoted to Fragonard drawings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon; to 18th January. Castelfranco Veneto, Museo Casa Giorgione. On the 500th anniversary of his death, Giorgione is being celebrated in his home town with an exhibition of ‘about half his works’, together with a generous selection of those by his confrères including Bellini, Cima, Sebastiano and Titian; to 11th April; to be reviewed. Catania, Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Palazzo Valle. Burri e Fontana: Materia e Spazio confronts the work of these two artists; to 14th March. Catanzaro, Museo Marca. Antoni Tàpies Materia focuses on the artist’s large-scale work over the last three decades; to 14th March. Cologne, Museum für Angewandte Kunst. On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the Meissen factory on 23rd January 1710, a display of some 280 pieces from a German private collection goes on show here one day too late on 24th January (to 25th April). Cologne, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst. Das Herz der Erleuchtung. Buddhistische Kunst aus China (550–600); to 10th January. Cologne, Museum Ludwig. A large exhibition of works by the Austrian artist Franz West, from 1972 to the present, is on view here to 14th March. Drawings and prints by Mary Heilmann are on view from 23rd January to 11th April. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst. Works by Christian Lemmerz are on view to 6th March. An exhibition devoted to Haarlem Mannerist prints runs to 17th January. Dresden, Semperbau. An exhibition of works by Georg Baselitz reflects on the artist’s relationship with Dresden; to 28th February. Duisburg, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum. A major exhibition of works by Alberto Giacometti comprises some 120 of the sculptor’s works; from 31st January to 18th April. Düsseldorf, K. A survey of paintings by the Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal is on view here to 10th January. Düsseldorf, Museum Kunst Palast. Seen earlier in London, a survey exhibition of work by Per Kirkeby, is on view here to 10th January. Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum. An ambitious, threepart exhibition examining the work of El Lissitzky; to 5th September. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe. The exhibition of works by Nicolaas Verkolje; to 24th January. Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti. The Boldini exhibition, reviewed in the December issue, runs to 10th January (then in Williamstown). Florence, Palazzo Strozzi. Trompe l’œil from Antiquity to the present day is the theme of an exhibition running here to 10th January. Florence, Uffizi. The recent refurbishment and arrangement of the Tribuna is the focus of a show running to 30th June. At the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Federico Zuccari’s work on themes of calumny, envy and truth are explored in an exhibition running to 28th February. Forlì, Musei di San Domenico. Flowers: Nature and Symbol from the Seicento to Van Gogh; 24th January to 20th June. Frankfurt, Liebieghaus. An international loan exhibition here explores the work of Houdon and his contemporaries; to 28th February (then in Montpellier). Frankfurt, Museum für Angewandte Kunst. A monographic exhibition devoted to the cabinetmaker André Charles Boulle; to 31st January. Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle. A retrospective of works by László Moholy-Nagy, including the artist’s Raum der Gegenwart of 1930; to 7th February. Frankfurt, Städel Museum. A monographic show devoted to Botticelli runs here to 28th February; to be reviewed. Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. Art and its markets: Flemish and Dutch painting of the 17th and 18th century presents new research into this part of the Museum’s permanent collection; to 29th August; to be reviewed. Geneva, Musée Rath. A selection of works by Alberto Giacometti focuses on his work made during the mid1940s; to 21st February. Genoa, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce. Così vicina così lontana examines art in Albania before and after 1990 and the effect of regime change on art; to 7th February. Genoa, Palazzo Ducale. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of Russia taken in 1954 are on show here to 14th February. An exhibition devoted to work in all media by the Bauhaus artist Otto Hofmann (1907–96) runs to 14th February. Genoa, Wolfsoniana. An exhibition of Futurist ceramics and graphic work runs here to 11th April. Gorizia, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia. Here and at the Castello di Gorizia, an exhibition examines the importance for Marinetti of the frontier region of Venezia Giulia; to 28th February. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum. In celebration of Judith Leyster’s 400th anniversary, an exhibition here focuses on the artist’s Self-portrait from Washington, where this show was seen previously, and includes additional loans of works by the artist; to 9th May. Haarlem, Teylers Museum. Here, and at the Singer Museum, Laren, the monographic show devoted to the work of Anton Mauve runs to 14th January. The Hague, Gemeentemuseum. An exhibition comparing works by Cézanne, Picasso a nd Mondrian is on view here to 24th January. An exhibition on Delftware coincides with the launch of the website www.delftsaardewerk.nl; to 11th April. The Hague, Mauritshuis. The exhibition devoted to Philips Wouwerman, seen previously in Kassel, runs here to 28th February; to be reviewed. Hamburg, Kunsthalle. The third instalment of a tripartite exhibition of works by Sigmar Polke is on view to 17th January. Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. A major survey of contemporary art from around the world runs here to 10th January. The video installation Homo Sapiens Sapiens by Pipilotti Rist is on view here from 7th January to 25th April. Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Meisterblätter Laufzeit; 24th January to 5th April.
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90. St Jerome with an angel, by Anthony van Dyck. 1618–21. Canvas, 168.3 by 134.7 cm. (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam). Leon, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon. Current exhibitions include works by Ugo Rondinone, Jorge Galindo and Kyong Park; all to 10th January. Lille, Roubaix, La Piscine. The first exhibition in France to examine the influence of the Bloomsbury Group ranges works by Bell, Grant and Fry alongside French associates such as Derain, Bussy, Henri Doucet and Marchand; to 28th February. Madrid, Fundación Juan March. An international loan exhibition explores Caspar David Friedrich’s drawings in relation to his paintings; to 10th January. Madrid, Museo del Prado. The exhibition devoted to Juan Bautista Maíno is on view here to 31st January; to be reviewed. Dutch Painters in the Prado brings together a sizeable group of the most important Dutch paintings from the permanent collection on the occasion of the publication of the first catalogue of this part of the Museum’s holdings, largely unknown to the wider public; to 15th April. The Rijksmuseum’s more than 4 metres long Company of Captain Reinier Reael, better known as the ‘Meagre Company’, by Frans Hals and Pieter Codde, is on loan here to 28th February. Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The exhibition Rodchenko y Popova. Defining constructivism is on view here to 22nd February. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Here and at the Fundación Caja Madrid, Tears of Eros explores the relationship between sexual desire and the death instinct in the visual arts spanning Rubens to Rodin; to 31st January. A display focuses on the Museum’s famous grisailles by Jan van Eyck; to 31st January. Malaga, Museo Picasso. A retrospective of work by Sophie Taeuber-Arp; to 24th January. Mantua, Casa del Mantegna. Futurism and Dada: from Marinetti to Tzara; to 28th February. Milan, Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese (Palazzo delle Stelline). An exhibition devoted to the work of Maurice Henry runs here to 14th March. Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Seta, Oro, Cremisi illustrates the technological innovations in silk production promoted in Milan by the Visconti and Sforza families; to 21st February; to be reviewed. Milan, Palazzo Reale. A major Edward Hopper exhibition runs to 24th January (then in Rome). The exhibition Japan: Power and Splendour, 1568–1868, runs to 8th March. Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera. Crivelli and the Brera concentrates on the artist’s great pale of the 1480s; to 28th March.
Milan, Spazio Oberdan. Two of Gabriele Basilico’s photographic works, Milano ritratti di Fabbriche 1978–1980 and Mosca Verticale 2007–2008, are on show here to 31st January. Montpellier, Musée Fabre. A monographic exhibition devoted to Jean Raoux; to 14th April; to be reviewed. Munich, Alte Pinakothek. The completion of a complex and lengthy restoration of Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Family is celebrated in a display which also includes another version of the painting from the Louvre; to 6th January. Rubens challenges the Old Masters: Inspiration and Reinvention examines the copies Rubens made of the work of other painters; to 7th February. The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the Alte Pinakothek; 28th January to 18th April. Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne. Prints by Daniel Hopfer are on view here to 31st January. Naples, Alfonso Artiaco. Gilbert & George’s Jack Freak Pictures are on show here to 6th February. Naples, Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE). Barok: arte, Scienza, Fede e Tecnologia nell’età contemporanea draws parallels between artists of the seicento and the present day and includes Hirst’s Heaven; to 5th April. Recent photographs taken in Naples by Johnny Shand Kydd are on view to 15th February. Naples, Museo di Capodimonte. Here and at the Certosa di S. Martino, the Castel S. Elmo, the Museo Duca di Martina, the Museo Pignatelli and the Palazzo Reale, Return to the Baroque: from Caravaggio to Vanvitelli, curated by Nicola Spinosa, surveys arts in all media in an international loan exhibition; to 11th April; to be reviewed. Recent tapestries designed by William Kentridge are on view to 20th January. Nîmes, Carré d’Art. Seen earlier in London, the exhibition of paintings by Michael Raedecker runs here from 29th January to 25th April. Concurrently, an exhibition of textile works by Isa Melsheimer. Orléans, Museum of Fine Arts. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Collections of the Centre Pompidou; to 10th January Padua, Civici Musei agli Eremitani. A loan exhibition of paintings from the Fondazione Longhi, Florence, runs to 28th March. Padua, Galleria Civica Cavour. Futurist sculpture 1909–1944: homage to Mino Rosso is another in the series of celebrations of Futurism’s centenary; to 31st January. Padua, Palazzo Zabarella. Telemaco Signorini’s works are shown alongside those by contemporaries such as Van Gogh, Degas, Caillebotte and others in a show that was reviewed in the December issue; to 31st January. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou. A comprehensive survey of Surrealist photography made between 1920 and 1940 runs here to 11th January (then in Winterthur and Madrid). The work of Pierre Soulages is celebrated in an exhibition running to 10th March. Paris, Galerie des Gobelins. Trésors des Habsbourgs d’Espagne, chefs-d’œuvre de la la tapisserie de la Renaissance; to 7th March. Paris, Grand Palais. Following displays by Anselm Kiefer and Richard Serra, the third edition of ‘Monumenta’ features a gigantic work by Christian Boltanski titled Personnes; 13th January to 21st February. Paris, Institut Néerlandais. Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen are on loan here to 24th January. Paris, Jeu de Paume. An exhibition examining the cinematic work of Fellini is accompanied by installations devised by Francesco Vezolli; to 17th January. Paris, Musée de la Vie Romantique. The exhibition Souvenirs d’italie (1600–1850): Chefs-d’œuvre du Petit Palais is here to 17th January. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, previously in Boston and reviewed in the November issue, runs to 4th January. An exhibition devoted to drawings by Battista Franco runs to 22nd February. La collection Georges Pébereau: Maîtres du dessin européen du XVIe au XXe siècle; to 22nd February.
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Paris, Musée du Luxembourg. Work of Louis Comfort Tiffany; to 17th January. Paris, Musée Eugène Delacroix. Une passion pour Delacroix: la collection Karen B. Cohen; to 5th April. Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André. A loan exhibition of works by artists such as Memling and Van Eyck from the Muzeul National Brukenthal, Sibiu, Romania, runs to 11th January. Paris, Musée Rodin. The first exhibition exploring the relationship between Matisse and Rodin runs to 28th February; to be reviewed. Paris, Pinacothèque. De Rembrandt à Vermeer is a loan exhibition of paintings from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; to 7th February. Passariano, Villa Manin. The age of Courbet and Manet: the spread of realism and Impressionism through central and eastern Europe; to 7th March. Piacenza, Galleria d’arte moderna Ricci Oddi. An exhibition devoted to small-scale paintings by the Macchiaioli and post-Macchiaioli; to 2nd May. Pont-Aven, Musée. An exhibition of paintings by Serge Poliakoff (1900–69) is on view here from 30th January to 30th May. Rancate (Mendrisio), Canton Ticino, Pinacoteca cantonale Giovanni Züst. The collection assembled by Riccardo Molo (1883–1934) of 19th-century Italian painters, from Fattori to Segantini, is on public view for the first time; to 10th January. Rimini, Castel Sismondo. Paintings spanning Rembrandt to Picasso from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are on loan here to 14th March. Rome, Gagosian Gallery. Monumental sculpture by Alexander Calder is on view here to 30th January. Rome, Galleria Borghese. 20 paintings by Francis Bacon, including two triptychs, are placed side by side with Caravaggio’s work; to 24th January. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e contemporanea. A retrospective devoted to Sandro Chia runs to 28th February. Rome, MACRO. An exhibition of works by Urs Lüthi is on view here to 21st March. Rome, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori. An exhibition devoted to Michelangelo’s drawings for his architectural projects in Rome, reviewed on p.63 above, runs to 7th February. Rome, Museo Mario Praz. An exhibition of the Roman drawings of Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de Crissé (1782–1859) from the collection of the Louvre is on show here to 13th February. Rome, Palazzo della Cancelleria. Another celebration of Galileo, this one ironically sponsored by the Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze, among others, is here to 31st January. Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni. A large exhibition of works by Alexander Calder; to 14th February. Rome, Scuderie Papali al Quirinale. A survey of Roman art spanning the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD is on view to 17th January. Rotterdam, Kunsthal. Modern Life. Edward Hopper and his Time places works by Hopper alongside a large selection of works by O’Keeffe, Feininger and Grant Wood among others, drawn from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; to 17th January. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. A display compares the Museum’s St Jerome with Angel by Anthony van Dyck (Fig.90) with a second version in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, now that both works have recently been restored; to 14th February. Rovereto, Museo d’Arte moderna e contemporanea. Masterpieces of modern art from the Winterthur collection are on show here to 10th January. Salzburg, Museum der Moderne. A survey exhibition of work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner runs here to 14th February. Siena, S. Maria della Scala. The exhibition devoted to Federico Barocci, reviewed on p.63 above, runs to 10th January. Stockholm, Moderna Museet. An exhibition juxtaposing works by Dalí and Francesco Vezolli runs here to 17th January.
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum. An exhibition of work by Caspar David Friedrich introduces the Swedish public to an artist who is not at all represented in Swedish public collections; to 10th January. Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie. The first monographic exhibition in Germany devoted to the work of Edward Burne-Jones; to 7th February. An exhibition devoted to the prints and drawings of Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (1609–1682/83) runs here to 7th March. Toulouse, Les Abattoirs. Early works by Miquel Barceló, from 1973 to 1984, comprise an exhibition on view here to 28th February. Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts. An exhibition of work by Max Ernst runs to 18th January. Trento, MART, Palazzo delle Albere. Eugenio Prati (1842–1907), between Scapigliatura and Symbolism runs to 25th April. Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’arte Contemporanea. An exhibition exploring the kinetic art of Gianni Colombo runs here to 10th January. Turin, GAM. An exhibition of works by Ian Kiaer is on view here to 31st January. Turin, Palazzo Madama. Three 18th-century porcelain dinner services made for the Tsars by the manufactories of Berlin, Sèvres and Wedgwood are on loan from the Hermitage collections; to 14th February. Valenica, Museo de Bellas Artes. Valencia, The Splendour of the Renaissance in Aragon, previously in Bilbao, presents a selection of some 100 works on loan from the Museo de Zaragoza; to 17th January (then in Zaragoza); to be reviewed. Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Jean Baptiste Vanmour: a painter from Valenciennes in Constantinople is here to 7th February; to be reviewed. Venice, Museo Correr. 19th-century drawings of Venice, many hitherto unpublished, and including works by Giacomo Guardi and Ippolito Caffi, are on show here to 11th April. Venice, Palazzo Grassi. Mapping the Studio: Artists from the Pinault collection runs to 6th June. Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia. The idea that Corot can be seen as the ‘father’ of modern art is explored here in an exhibition of 115 works spanning Poussin to Picasso; to 7th March. Vicenza, Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari. The depiction of women on vases from Attica and Magna Grecia in the collection of Intesa Sanpaolo is the theme of an exhibition running here to 11th April. Vienna, Albertina. The exhibition Impressionismus. Wie das licht auf die Leinwand kam is on view here to 10th January. Vienna, Belvedere. An exhibition on the work of Franz Anton Maulbertsch; to 17th January. Vienna, Essl Collection. 25 recent paintings by the German artist Daniel Richter are here to 10th January. Vienna, Kunsthalle. 1989: The End of History or Beginning of the Future?; to 7th February. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. After having clocked up countless air miles over the last decade, Vermeer’s Art of Painting is enjoying time at home at the Museum in a display with loans that puts it into context; 25th January to 25th April. Charles the Bold (1433–77): Art, War and Courtly Splendour, previously in Bern and Bruges and reviewed in the July issue, runs here to 10th January. Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum. A loan exhibition here explores art at the court of Rudolf II in Prague, with a special focus on two recently acquired works by Hans von Aachen and Joseph Heintz the Elder; to 12th January. An exhibition exploring the picture frame from the late medieval period to the 19th century runs here to 12th January. Vienna, MUMOK. The exhibition Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in Eastern European Art is on view here to 14th February. A major survey exhibition of works by Zoe Leonard (b.1961) is on view here to 21st February. Zürich, Kunsthaus. A loan exhibition of drawings and paintings, Georges Seurat: Figure in Space, runs to 17th January (then in Frankfurt).
New York Brooklyn Museum. An exhibition of 124 watercolours from a set of 350 by James Tissot, depicting detailed scenes from the New Testament, all in the Museum’s collection, are displayed for the first time in two decades; to 17th January. Frick Collection. Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop shows the Frick’s recently acquired maiolica dish with the Judgment of Paris along with five related works on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; to 17th January. Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection; to 10th January (then in Paris). Gagosian. At Madison Avenue, works by Elisa Sighicelli are on view from 14th January to 6th March. Jewish Museum. An exhibition examining how Man Ray’s work was shaped by his turn-of-the-century American-Jewish immigrant experience runs here to 14th March. Marian Goodman. New works by Gerhard Richter, including paintings from the 2008 ‘Sindbad’ cycle, are on view to 9th January. Matthew Marks. New works by Fischli & Weiss are on view to 16th January. Metropolitan Museum of Art. An exhibition devoted to Bronzino’s drawings includes some 60 examples from European and American collections and runs from 20th January to 18th April; to be reviewed. An exhibition exploring scenes of everyday life in American painting (1765–1915) runs to 24th January. Moretti Fine Art. From the Gothic to the Early Renaissance; 19th January to 12th February. Morgan Library. The Library’s Hours of Catherine of Cleves, disbound for the occasion so that more than 100 pages can be viewed separately, is on show in an exhibition seen earlier in Nijmegen; 22nd January to 2nd May. There is a concurrent display of Flemish manuscripts from the Morgan. 16th-century drawings from the permanent collection are on display from 22nd January to 9th May. Museum of Modern Art. A display of six late paintings by Monet, made at Giverny, including four from the collection, are on show for the first time since the Museum’s reopening in 2004; to 12th April; it was reviewed in the November issue. Seen earlier in Berlin, the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, can be seen here to 25th January. A retrospective exhibition of works by the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco is on view here to 1st March (then in Basel and Paris); to be reviewed. Neue Galerie. From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sabarsky Collection honours the life and work of the museum’s co-founder; to 15th February. New Museum of Contemporary Art. Works by Urs Fischer are on view to 24th January. Onassis Cultural Center. The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete traces the influences of Byzantine and Renaissance art on artist’s workshops in 15th- and 16th-century Crete; to 27th February. Pace Wildenstein. At W. nd St., an exhibition of works by Zhang Huan can be seen to 30th January. Richard L. Feigen. The London dealers Sam Fogg and Richard Feigen join forces in the show Medieval Art and the Contemporary Spirit; to 5th February. Solomon Guggenheim Museum. Seen earlier in Munich and Paris, the extensive retrospective of works by Kandinsky is on view here to 13th January; it was reviewed in the July issue. A new commissioned work by Anish Kapoor, Memory, is on display to 28th March. Organised as part of the Museum’s 50th anniversary celebrations, two major projects by Tino Sehgal, involving interactive performances within the rotunda run from 29th January to 10th March. Whitney Museum of American Art. Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction is on view here to 17th January; it is reviewed on p.64 above. An exhibition of works by Roni Horn is on view to 31st January. the burlington m a g a z i n e
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North America Atlanta, High Museum of Art. Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius comprises some 50 works, including more than 20 sketches and studies by Leonardo, some of which will be on view in the United States for the first time; to 21st February. Austin, Blanton Museum of Art. The display reconstructing Veronese’s Petrobelli altarpiece, seen earlier in London and Ottawa, is on view here to 7th February. Birmingham Museum of Art. The touring exhibition Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery has its last showing here to 10th January. Chicago, Art Institute. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus from the National Gallery, London, is here (to 15th January) as a reciprocal loan for the Institute’s Crucifixion by Zurbarán, which is on show in the National Gallery’s The Sacred made Real exhibition. Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago runs to 31st January. Evanstone, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art. A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections; 15th January to 14th March. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum. From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern (Fig.91); to 21st March. Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum. An exhibition here focuses on two paintings acquired in the 1960s as by Rembrandt but now considered as ‘workshop of Rembrandt’ and puts them into context through works on loan from public and private collections in the United States and Canada; to 24th January. Houston, Menil Collection. An exhibition exploring the fragmented human body in art spanning late medieval to the 20th century; to 28th February. Houston, Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition The Moon, previously in Cologne and reviewed in the September issue, runs here to 10th January. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. An exhibition of multiples by Joseph Beuys is on view to 30th June. The monographic show devoted to Luis Meléndez, previously in Washington, is here to 3rd January (then in Boston). Los Angeles, Getty Villa. Collector’s Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities; to 8th February. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, a timehonoured exercise in connoisseurship, explores the differences between Rembrandt’s drawings and those of more than 14 pupils and followers; to 28th February. There is a concurrent display of Dutch drawings from the Getty collections. New Haven, Yale Center for British Art. An exhibition devoted to Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill includes many objects that were in Walpole’s collection; to 3rd January (then in London); to be reviewed. Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada. Maurice Denis: Journeys examines the artist’s work as a book illustrator; 13th January to 30th April. Philadelphia, Museum of Art. A retrospective of work by Arshile Gorky is here to 10th January (then in London and Los Angeles); to be reviewed. Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art. The Ailsa Mellon Bruce Galleries have reopened after renovation, with displays of American and European decorative arts from the mid-18th century to the present day. Poughkeepsie, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. At the Heart of Progress: Coal, Iron, and Steam since 1750 – Industrial Imagery from the John P. Eckblad Collection goes on view from 22nd January to 21st March. Saint Louis, Art Museum. Yinka Shonibare: Mother and Father worked hard so I can play runs here to 14th March. San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art. Some 400 works from the collection are assembled for an exhibition celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Museum’s founding; to 16th January. Sarasota, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Venice in the Age of Canaletto; to 10th January. Seattle Art Museum. Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti; to 11th April.
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Madrid, ARCO; 17th to 21st February. Maastricht, TEFAF; 12th to 21st March. New York, Master Drawings; 24th to 31st January. New York, The Armory Show; 4th to 7th March. Palm Beach, American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF); 3rd to 8th February. Paris, Salon du Dessin; 23rd to 29th March.
Notes on contributors
91. Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, by Vincent van Gogh. 1888. Canvas, 38.1 by 46 cm. (Private collection; exh. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). Syracuse, Everson Museum of Art. Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales is on view to 3rd January (then in Washington and Albuquerque). Venice, L.A. Louvre. 3 x 3 is an exhibition of paintings by Imi Knoebel, Robert Mangold and Jason Martin; and sculptures by Richard Deacon, Joel Shapiro and Peter Shelton; 14th January to 13th February. Washington, National Gallery of Art. Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500–1800, reviewed on p.66 above, is on view here to 31st January. 45 proofs for lithographs, etchings and screenprints by Jasper Johns; to 4th April. From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection comprises French and American late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, bequeathed in 1962; 31st January to 31st July.
Australia Canberra, National Gallery of Australia. Masterpieces from Paris is a loan exhibition of works from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, by artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, Bonnard, B Monet, Denis and Vuillard; to 5th April. Melbourne, Heide Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition Cubism and Australian Art runs to 8th April. Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales. The retrospective devoted to Rupert Bunny (1864–1947) runs to 30th January; to be reviewed. Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art. Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson is on view here to 11th April.
January sales New York, Christie’s. American decorative arts, silver and Chinese export porcelain (21st, 22nd and 25th); The collection of Benjamin F. Edwards III: silver, furniture, Delft, brass, export and carpets (26th); Oldmaster paintings and 19th-century art (27th); The Peter Tillou collection (28th). New York, Sotheby’s. Chinese export porcelain from the private collection of Elinor Gordon (23rd); Old-master drawings (27th); Old-master paintings, including European works of art (28th); European terracotta and bronze sculpture from the Arthur M. Sackler collections (29th); Old-master and 19th-century paintings (30th).
Forthcoming fairs Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair (BRAFA); 22nd to 31st January. London, / International Art Fair; 18th to 21st February. London, BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair; 17th to 23rd March.
David Anfam is Commissioning Editor for Fine Art, Phaidon Press, London. Sally-Ann Ashton is Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. James Boaden is a Lecturer at the University of York. Grace Brockington is a Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Bristol. Meghan Callahan is an independent art historian. Her current research focuses on Suor Domenica da Paradiso and Lorenzo di Credi. Glyn Davies is a research fellow and member of the Concept Team for the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. John Elderfield is Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Patrick Elliott is Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Trevor Fairbrother is an independent art historian who is currently working on an exhibition about the artist–photographer F. Holland Day. Chris Fischer is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Master Drawings at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Martin Hammer is Reader in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. Martin Kauffmann is Curator of medieval manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Christian Kleinbub is Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. Erika Langmuir is the author of the National Gallery’s Companion Guide and other Gallery publications. John McLintock is responsible for the collection of architectural drawings and cartographic plans at the National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh. Rosemarie Mulcahy is an independent art historian. She is currently researching polychromed wood sculpture in Seville. Fabrizio Nevola is Senior Lecturer in the History of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath. Natalie Roncone is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Sonia Solicari is a Curator of Ceramics and Glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Donatella Livia Sparti is Associate Professor in the History of Art at Syracuse University, London Programme. Perrin Stein is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Carl Brandon Strehlke is working on an exhibition on fifteenth-century painting in the Kingdom of Aragón. Brandon Taylor is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at Southampton University and Senior Research Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art, Southampton Solent University. Marina Vaizey is the former editor of Art Quarterly and The Review for the National Art Collections Fund. Jack Wasserman is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Temple University, Philadelphia.
Correction In Nancy Ireson’s article ‘George Frampton, the Art Workers’ Guild and “the enemy alien in our midst’”, published in the November 2009 issue (pp.763–67), the work illustrated in Fig.38 as whereabouts unknown is, in fact, in the collections of the Art Workers’ Guild, London.