Fenway Court: 1971

Fenway Court Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 1971

Fenway Court

~ENWAY

COURT

Isabella Stewart Gardner )\l[useum

Published by the Trus tees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated Boston, Massachusetts Copyright 1972 Designed by Larry Webster Type set and printed by Thomas Todd Co., Printers, Boston

Photographs by George Zinberg Frontispiece, pages 38 and 42 Larry Webster Pages 44, 50, and 53

Contents

3. Some Islamic Objects in the Gardner Museum 14. The Altarpiece from Pratovecchio 22 .

Horus : The Divine Falcon

28.

Chinese Snuff Bottles

Walter B. Denny

Philip Hendy

Judith E. Hanhisalo

Yasuko Horioka

33 . Provenance for a Silver Tankard

Frances L. Preston

39. New Greenhouses for the Gardner Museum

Anthony Hars

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorpora ted Forty-seventh Annual Report for the Year 1971 45. Report of the President

C. Peabo dy Gardner

46. Report of the Director

Rollin van N. Hadley

50 . Notes on the Organization of the Museum 51. Publications 52. Trustees and Staff

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Frg"rc l. " An hydraulic de\'ice" from the A"tomala of al-Jaz:ari, 1354, Syria or Egypt, inche , \\'. 9 1 inches (.-3 x .i6 meters), Inv 1 o. P19w5:i.

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Some Islamic Objects in the Gardner Museum

The very existence of a number of works of Islamic art in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Mu seum may come as a surprise to some of us . T!-te preeminen ce of fine examples o f painting from the various European traditions tends to obscure the fact that Mrs. Gardner's collection is a mor or less accurate reflection of th e breadth of American collecting in the decades from 1880 to 1920; the wise advice of her friend s Bernard Berenson and Denman Ross is to a considerable ex ten t responsible for the fact that Fenway ourt today contains no fewer than 26 examples of the various arts of the Islamic peoples through history, in addition to numerous examples of the arts of the Far East.

One of the reasons that the Islami c objects in the Gardner Museum may go unnoticed by the average visitor, in addition to the brilliance of the European paintings which form the larges t part of the collection, is the very nature of the Islamic works themselves. Paintings on panel or ca nvas have a self-contained aspect ; they hang in gi lded frames on walls in much the same way as they did in the palaces and churches for which they were originally intended . The Islamic objects, on the other hand, are seen out of context ; an illuminated manuscript page long si nce separated from its text and binding, a single tile from the wall of a Turkish mosque, or a tombstone uprooted from a Central Asian cemetery, all lose their sense of purpose when found naked and alone, and frequently the decorative nature of Islamic art makes a fragment or a portion of a larger composition more difficult to perceive aesthetically when it is taken out of context.

Further, many of the Islami c objects in Fenway Court were created not only with a purely visual purpose, but were meant for some specific practical use; an awareness of the function of such objects is a further prerequisi te to understanding and enjoyment. Recognition of these principles not only helps us better to perceive the intrinsic

qualities of th ese Islam i wo rks, but helps us to put them on a mo re quitable footing with the paintings whi h surro und them .

Defining what makes a n Islamic art work " Islami " is a diffi ult ta k W e use the term " Islamic" her in a ultural rath r than in a pure[ religious sen se, Islamic ivil ization en ompasses a religious and se ular ran ge of art and a rchitectur as comple and as nationally diverse as the art of the est; as 1 ith European a rt, ther are certain unifying fa ctors whi h JU ttfy the us of an all - ncompassing d s npttve t rm One of the most important omponent s f Islami c art has b en an i ono la sti c tradition, stemming from the Prophet Muhammad in the sev nth entury, which, like the Hebr w s tri ctur s again st "gra ven images," vie1 ed repres ntations of human or animal form s in art as potentially idolatrous, and hence a n off ns to G d . This tradition is in part respon sible for th r latively infrequent occuran e in Is lamic art of the human or animal form, and for the tendency to restrict such form s, when th y did appear, to a small scale or to incorpora tion into an object which served uses other than its function as an image . (For a discuss ion of the iconoclastic tradition, see Sir Thomas W . Arnold, Painting in ls/am, Oxford, 1928, h . 1 .) The same tradition is therefore in part respon sible for the flowering of what we call the " decorative arts" in Islamic land s, the association of artistic expression as an ad junct to the functions of floor covering, books, architectura l decoration, and tableware, to mention but a very few examples . In addition, the Islam ic tradition emphasized the importance of ca lligra phy; the Arabic script used in most Islamic languages was the vehicle by which the Word of God was expressed in hol y scrip tures, and those who practiced the art of writing occupied a high place among ar tis ts. This importance of writi ng may be in part reflected in the calligraph ic and linear aspect of so much Islamic art, of which the 3

sinuous " arabesque" designs are perhaps the most familiar examples.

Considering these predisposing factors, we may turn to a few of the Islamic art works in the Gardner Museum with the following questions: how did they appear in their original context, what is their use and meaning, and what is the genesis of the style and forms which we observe?

The pictorial image in Islamic art is most frequently encountered in illustrated manuscripts, and it is with a leaf from an Islamic book that we might begin. In 1914, Denman Ross and Bernard Berenson arranged for Mrs. Gardner's purchase of two leaves from an Arabic manuscript which had appeared on the New York market. One of these contains, in addition to five lines of text in Arabic, a painting of a curious mechanical device (Fig. 1). The subject of the painting and the text indicates that we have a page from a copy of one of the better-known Islamic books, the Book of Knowledge of M echnical Devices, better known as the Automata," written early in the thirteenth century by al-Jazarl. This individual was an engineer in residence at the court of the Ortokid dynasty in Diyarbekir, a northern Mesopotamian town situated in what is today south-eastern Turkey. Complete copies of the book in existence bear a dedication to Nasir ed-din Mahmud, who ruled from about 1200 to 1222 in Diyarbekir; it seems that the devices illustrated in the book actually existed, and the ruler asked their maker, al-Jazarl, to write a book on their construction and use. Evidently Mahmud's fascination with these machines was shared by other Islamic rulers in later centuries, for the book was copied a number of times; our miniature originally belonged to a copy made around 1354, either in Syria or Egypt, the bulk of which today is still found in an Istanbul library: it was copied from an earlier and finer manuscript of 1315 which is now dispersed.

(For further discussion, see R. Ettinghausen, Arab Painting, Geneva, 1962, pp. 95-96 ; Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Treatise of al-Jazari on Automata, Boston, 1924. R. M. Riefstahl in "The Date and Provenance of the Automata Miniatures," Art Bulletin, 11 (1929) discusses the manuscript, Aya Sofya 3606 from the first chapter of which the Gardner miniatures were taken; the text is translated into German in E. Wiedemann and F. Hauser, Ueber die Uhren im Bereich der islamischen Kultur, Halle, 1915.) /1

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One would imagine that the success of a " howto-do-it" book would be based largely on the clarity of the diagrams and instructions; accordingly, it should be possible through a look at this enigmatic machine to determine what its purpose was, and how it worked.

A first look tells us a number of things; the miniature is executed in bright colors on paper now yellowed with age, in a style which appears rather naive and unsophisticated. The tradition of linear perspective, upon which we have depended in the West since the fifteenth century, is absent; the painting is schematic in nature, half-way between a cross-section and a three-dimensional depiction. The artist used a ruler and compass as an aid, and drew the outlines in ink before filling in the colors. Curious symbols appear beside the component parts of the machine, and the shapes of the parts leave some doubts as to how everything knitted together. But there is a fairly simple and moderately consistent use of conventionalized representations which may help us to decipher the image.

The schematized representation in two values of blue indicates that we have here an hydraulic device, one which derives its power from flowing water. The water first appears in a vessel shown at the very top in cross-section, to which is attached a tiny figure of a man. It then drips through the bottom of the vessel into a curious triangular container inside a larger tank; the tank drains through the lower left-hand corner onto a paddle-wheel with cup-shaped vanes, which in turn empties into another tank with a drain in the lower right-hand corner.

We must imagine that this paddlewheel is then connected by a horizontal shaft through its center to the small cogwheel depicted in its center, which meshes with a larger, horizontal cogwheel depicted as a toothed lens-shaped object to the right, which in turn has a vertical shaft running through its center. In fact, we have here the " works" of a mechanical water clock. As the water slowly drips out of the topmost vessel, a descending float linked to the human figure causes it to move in some way in order to indicate the passage of time. The dripping water gradually fills the pivoted triangular container, until an hour passes and the weight of the water in the left side of the container causes it to tip over, spilling all of its water into the tank. The water rushes out of the drain onto the paddle wheel, .which begins

Fi gure 2. " A wate r clock" from the Automata of al-Jazarl, 1.354, Sy ria or Egypt, H . 1.5 r~ inches, W .

1.05/s inches (.39 x .27 meters), In v. No. P1.9w52 .

to r tat , transmitting pow r through the sma ll ogwh I onto th larg hon1onta l cogwheel, all of whi h b gin to r volv , providing power for something on the fac of the clock The tnangular ontainer 1s then r turned to an upnght position by a ount rwe1ght, having b en reli v d of th weight of its water, and begins to collect another h ur's worth of dripping wat r from the topmost vess I. Th se "wo rks" ar not comp! tely understandable, however, unle s w lan see the fa e of th I k itself; a se ond miniature from the same manu s ript hows su h a clotk fa e (Fig. 2). Her we s e a gr up f s ven mu si ians sea t d and s tanding at the f ot of a battlement d wall, above them appears a gold n fal on poised in heraldic fa shion above a goblet, whil on the parapet with it tw Ive crenellations a small figure looks down From the r ndering of th lock-work , the simple and somewhat naive d pi tion of the mu icians ome as no su rpri se, the harm of this little painting lies in 1t si mph 1ty, in its bnght olors, and m knowing what 1t portrays. hat ar two trumpet-player , two cymba l-play rs, two drum mers and a tympani st doing at the foot of th1 wall?

Being aware of th se ret of the lo k-works lurking behind the wall, and using th e te t as an aid, the purpose of the small or he tra be omes I ar. As the water dnps out of the top-most v ssel, the figure on the parapet, linked to a float in the vessel, moves across the wall, his r lativ position telling us the time of day. Should we be fortunate enough to pass by when th e hour is s truck, we are treated to a glockenspiel spectacle; when the triangular ontainer tips over and the gush of water sets the wheels in motion, a system of linkages not shown in either mmiature caus s trumpets to blow, cy mbal s to clash, and drums to reso und, as the golden falcon lean s over and drops a metal ball with a clang into the goblet. (See Wiedermann & Hauser, op. cit, p. 99 .) Adding the elements of movement and sound, our si mple miniatures take on new and delightful dimensions, and lose their enigmatic quality .

From these little paintings one begins to unders tand the fascination the "A utomata" volumes exercised in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Ortokid rulers in Diyarbekir seem to ha ve been the inheritors of the love of mechanical devices which we know was present in the Byza ntine court in Constantinople, where the sovereign 's throne was surrounded by twittering metal bird s and roaring gilded lion s; one thinks 5

Figure 3. Tombstone, ca. 1475, Herat, H . 45 inches, L. 141/4 inches, W . 123,1,i inches, (1.145 x .36 x .325 meters), Inv. No. S12w2.

as well of Leonardo's famous toys when looking at these images of mechanical devices.

Perhaps the finest Islamic object in the Gardner Museum, from the point of view of the refinement and quality of its decoration, is a fragmentary tombstone from eastern Persia, unfortunately now located beneath the north stairway on the ground floor (Fig. 3). Islamic burials were traditionally fairly simple, with the body of the deceased placed in a plain wooden coffin and buried in the earth, and traditions ascribed to the Prophet forbade the construction of elaborate tombs and above-ground burials as another potential source of idolatrous practices. Nevertheless, the dynastic pride of many Islamic rulers, coupled with persistent pre-Islamic burial traditions, overcame the religious restrictions to a degree, and the use of a flat tombstone perhaps symbolizing the coffin, placed above the grave, is known from fairly early Islamic times.

The Gardner tombstone has been published in exemplary form by Helmut von Erffa (" A Tombstone of the Timurid Period in the Gardner Museum of Boston," Ars Islamica XI-XII, 1946); certain features of the inscriptions and the style of decoration enabled him to attribute it to the eastern Persian city of Herat (today in Afghanistan) around the year 1475. Carved in a hard dark-grey stone, it was originally both longer and deeper than in its present-state, and the face which we see was the top of the stone, which lay horizontally on the ground above the burial. The main face contains the inscription " Judgement is to God" (Koran, sura XII, verse 66), carved in relief in elegant " plaited kufic" script in a panel at the top ; a field of curious bi-lobed stylized leaf forms dominate the main panel, while a smaller-scale arabesque of curling vines and leaves on a lower level serves as a background to the larger elements of decoration in each panel. Both are surrounded with a border in lower relief consisting of ros-

Figure 4. Drawing, ink on paper, XV century, Herat (?), Pr ivate collection.

ettes, stylized lotus-flowers, and small leaves on a meandering vine; the impress ion of the carving is animated and luxurious, with a complicated interplay of curves and overlapping forms lending a movement to the entire surface . The intricacy of the ca rving and the two distinct levels of the relief, in conjunction with light falling on the stone, create a sense of texture as well. Appealing at once to the intellect, the eye, and the sense of touch, the design defies the medium to produce an effect neither cold nor hard, but rather lively and three-dimensional.

It is the style of this tomb s tone which is the most fascinating aspect for us; although probably originating in Herat in the second half of the fifteenth century, it is an international style as well, common not only to the descendants of Tamurlane in their East Persian principalities, but to the Turkoman states on the western borders of Iran, and to the Ottoman state in Asia Minor and Thrace. Therefore, when we see similar designs

ca rved into an Ista nbul doorway of the same period, or in a mosque in Isfa han in central Persia, we are observing evidence of the movement of artists and s tyles fr om principality to principality across an Islami c world a t once politically fragmented and artistically to some ex tent unified. The most probable vecto r for the movement of the style is the a rtis t's design on paper; looking closely at the Gardner tombstone, in compariso n to a pen drawing of roughly the same period (Fig. 4), we see a number of common features. The main split-leaf elements in high relief in the tombstone are outlined by a thi cker line in the dra wi ng, while the freeness of the drawing has been di sciplined in the more severel y symmetrical stonecarving. The general type of decoration, what we might call an herbal arabesque, has a long lineage in Islamic art, but this particular style spread across the Islamic world in the fifteenth century, the Timurid court in Herat perhaps providing a ge nerating source.

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Figure 5. Tile, XV I century, Ottoman Turkish L. 93/4 inches, W . 8 3g inches (.25 x .215 meters) , In v. No. C7w3.

Figure 6. Montage made from C7w3 photographs.

Figure 7. Portion of an illuminated tughra of Murad III, ca. 1 5 80, Courtesy of the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul.

If the later part of the fifteenth century was a period of some stylistic unity in decorative art in the Islamic Middle East, by the second half of the next century, the various Islamic empires had developed certain quite distinctive styles centered in their various capitals. In 1885, Mrs. Gardner purchased in Boston a fragment of Ottoman Turkish wall tile which doubtless formerly constituted part of the wall-revetments of a sixteenth-century mosque or palace (Fig. 5). The tile, cut down on one edge from its original twenty-four centimeter square format, is again far removed from its original context, and an attempt to restore that context helps us better to understand the original effect. On a flawless white ground the fragment shows us a large grape leaf decorated with white tulip buds, tiny leaves, and other flowers, stemming from a swaying vine, while in the corners appear quarters of medallions containing tulips, carnations and hyacinths. The colors, a dark-blue, light-blue, green, turquoise, brilliant red, and smoky black, covered with a glossy transparent glaze, are rich and appealing. By reversing the image to supply some of the counterpart tiles in the overall pattern, and by restoring the missing

part of the tile, the sense of the original panel is restored, and it is seen that the quartered medallions actually dominate a composition in which the swaying ascending grapevines with their leaves serve as a unifying force (Fig. 6).

As with the tombstone, the source of the design is found in the work of designers from the court working with pen and brush on paper; although we know that tiles s uch as this were produced in the provincial Ottoman town of Iznik (formerly Nicaea) in Bithynia, the designs were drawn first by a salaried staff of calligraphers and designers working in the capital of Istanbul. Dating of Mrs. Gardner's tile to the eighties of the six teenth century is possible not only through comparison with existing dated wall revetments in Istanbul (see W . D enny's article in the Gardner Museum Calender of the Scheduled Even ts, Sept. 26, 1 965), but is illustrated even more clearly when compared with a small portion of illumination from a tughra or symbol of the Sultan's authority executed for Murad III in the eighties by one o f his court callig raphers (Fig. 7). The tulips, carnations, and hyacinths become in the second half of the sixteenth century a hallmark of Ottoman art, 9

Figure 8. Plate, Early XIII century, Kashan, Diameter 13 Vs inches (.35 meters), Inv. No. C15w10.

Figure 9. Plate painted in luster pigments, Signed Sayyid Shams al-Din, Dated 1210: Kashan, Diameter, 13Vs inches (.35 meters), Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.

appearing in textiles, metal-work, stone-carving, rugs, ceramics, and illumination, and the relation of two of these media is clearly shown in the present comparison.

The range of coloring and the richness of design in the Gardner tile are highly unusual; it is a puzzling fact that no similar tiles from what must have been a panel of some size have yet come to light either in Turkey or in the rich European collections of Ottoman ceramics. Thanks however to the modular and repetitive nature of such tile panels, we are fortunately able to reconstruct the field from a single tile; the almost exuberant nature of the coloring, the use of stippled dots of dark blue upon light blue, and the contrast of flowing and static parts of the design show us a paradox of variety within uniformity.

The tile and the tombstone point out to us the collective nature of much artistic production in Islamic lands. The collective work of artist and artisan is perhaps not so highly valued in the West, where our preference for the "original," the autograph work of art, underlines our need to establish the individuality and identity of the artist behind the work of art. Another object in the Gardner collection, this time a ceramic plate from the Persian city of Kashan executed early in the thirteenth century, points out yet another set of distinctions within the framework of the decorative arts, one which due to the lack of the artist's name is based on the somewhat elusive factor of quality (Fig. 8).

In 1912, Mrs. Gardner acquired through a leading New York dealer an example of what was then believed to be pottery produced in the Persian town of Rayy (Rhages) ; more recent scholarship has assigned it to the city of Kashan. (See R. Ettinghausen, " Evidence for the Identification of Kashan Pottery" in Ars lslamica, III, 1936.) The plate is slightly over thirteen inches in diameter, and like the Turkish tile is composed of a hard

white clay which provides an ideal paper-like smooth white surface on w hich the decorator then painted his designs. Rather than usin g many colors under a clear glaze, a technique n ot perfected until the sixteenth century by the Ottomans, the anonymous artist of the Gardner plate used instead a technique known as luster-painting, in which metallic pigm ents fired at low temperatures give a gold or copper-like quality to the painting. The design in the central medallion, a common one in Persian painting of the time, shows two lovers ; the young woman on the left is holding a harp, the sounding board of which appears as a white object by her pig-tails, while the young man listens on the right. The central medallion is surrounded by concentric bands of decoration, the main element of which con sists of calligraphic inscriptions, and small double-pointed cartouche forms decora te the circle around the medallion .

The designs forming the decoration of our plate have n ot met with the highest praise from connoisseurs, who have justly pointed to a sloppy quality in the writing, and a schematic rendering of the human forms which causes them to be lost in the decorative detail. Here again, however, the individual work cannot be fully understood until its context is made clearer. A close observation of the Gardner plate shows tha t the clay body was formed in a mold, and that the side of the plate which rises to the rim contain s twenty-nine indentations. Scholars h ave discovered a number of plates from the same mold, and it is in part by comparison with these other plates that judgements h ave been made on the quality of the Gardner plate. The competition is stiff indeed, for the virtually unquestioned masterpiece of Kashan luster-painting on pottery wares, today found in the Freer Gallery, was executed on a plate from the same mold (Fig. 9) . Thus our expectations for Kashan luster-painting may be said to be formed from the masterpieces of the genre.

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The enigmatic scene of the Freer plate has been discussed in some detail by scholars (see Ettinghausen & Guest, " The Iconography of a Kashan Luster Plate" in A rs Orienta/is, IV, 1961) ; it bears the date 1 210 and is signed by the artist, Sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) Shams al-Din of Kashan ; evidently Shams al-Din enjoyed a reputation beyond that of the ordinary pottery-decora tor and was sufficiently proud of his work to add his signature. But the preeminence of the Freer plate should not blind us to the merits of the Gardner plate, and the differences in the two objects point out again some of the results of a division of labor in artistic production. The " blanks" were turned out in the pottery a telier by skilled artisan s, and after being given a firs t firing were given to the various artists for decoration. Some artists produced masterpieces, and others, merely good ceramic decoration, but all were working within the same basic organization, and to essentially the same ends. It is left for us to speculate in a later age whether the merits and demerits we observe today,. seven and a half centuries later, were fully appreciated at the time the plates were m ade.

The last Islamic art work from the Gardner collection which we have ch osen to discuss suffers in a way from even stronger " competition" than the Kashan plate ; this is the large carpet in the Titian Room (Fig. 10) , located only a few feet away from Titian's Rape of Europa. Once again , the context is of vital importance; as presently seen, with its middle section folded under, and covered in part with furniture, the Gardner carpet faces us at a decided disadvantage.

Perhaps nowhere is the patience of the Islamic artisan demonstrated to better advantage than in what were certainly among the most important and largest art works created in the Islamic world.

The carpet-weaver has a task comparable in difficulty to that of the stone-carver, to which a re added the particular problems of the medium of knotted carpets. As with the artist who executed the tombstone and the Turkish tile, the weaver works from designs of ink on paper as a guide; he must then transfer a design whose essential components are curved lines, into a medium intrinsically even more recalcitrant than the hard Herat stone. The limitation is inherent to the technique, as Islamic rugs are composed of tiny knots of colored fiber arranged inexorably one after another, row after row, with all of the inherent quadrangular orderliness of a sheet of graph paper. To 12

create the sen se of movement and grace found in a curved line, the rug-weaver must use the finest " graph -paper" possible, so that a series of tiny righ t an gles takes on from a distance the appearance of curves seen in the paper original. In the larger fam ily of Islamic carpets, Mrs. Gardner's example is n ot of a surpassing fineness of weave, and yet there are 121 knots in each square inch, or about 17,400 knots in every square foot of a rug m easuring about 24 1 411 by 111 11 1/2 11 • With these b asic technical matters in mind, we can then ask how such a rug was regarded in its homeland at the time of weaving, and how it was meant to be used. Made either for export or for the home of a wealthy individual, such rugs were not covered with furniture to the extent that they are today, but were used almost in lieu of furniture as decoration for an interior. The labor of the weaver was held in sufficient respect that one always wore slippers when walking on such a rug; the wearing of street shoes on a rug, a legacy of the broadloom age, would have been regarded as unspeakably gauche. And yet we are faced with the fact that the ultimate destiny of this rug, despite the prodigious efforts involved in its making, was to be worn out.

The Gardner rug incorporates elements of a design which h as persisted into the present century in the rug-weaving of Persia, and it might be said that the designs of rugs such as this, together with those of other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century carpets, formed a sort of classical tradition which casts its shadow over the entire known history of Islamic carpet-weaving since the sixteenth century. Large palmette forms, some of them recalling those on our tombstone, together with curved feather-like leaves, smaller palmettes, and curious squiggly forms deriving from Chinese depictions of clouds, are woven in woolen knots of ivory, yellow, light and dark blue, a corrosive brown, a pinkish red, and a dark maroon which serves as the ground of the field.

The symmetrical design of the field is composed of two levels: the larger and more important ornaments appear to float above a less obtrusive network of smaller palmettes, flowers, and vines, similar to the scheme we have observed in the Herat tombstone and the Persian drawing.

Our rug is of a type generally termed a "court carpet," the implication being that designs again from a court a telier served as a model for the weaver's labors. Rugs of this type have traditionally been assigned either to Herat or to the

Figure 10. Rug, XVII century, Persia or India (detail), L. 24 feet 4 inches, W. 11 feet 11 V2 inches (7.42 x 3.65 meters), Inv. No. T26c1.

manufactories near the Safavid Persian capital of Isfahan in the seventeenth century; some scholars have recently argued that the actual weaving took place in the Indian subcontinent, either under the domination of the Mughals in the north, or in one of the Islamic principalities in the Deccan. A close look at our rug shows that the weave is not totally consistent with the original designs; insertion of three cotton wefts between each row of knots running across the rug has resulted in the design being slightly "stretched" lengthwise along the rug; this anomaly is particularly evident where a palmette has a forty-five degree axis of symmetry diagonally across the rug, and the symmetry is distorted. Several centuries of wear point out the varying vulnerability of wool dyed in different colors; the wool dyed blue has worn well, while wool made brittle by the dark-brown dye has worn away giving a relief effect today.

The six Islamic works of art from the Gardner Museum which we have examined in this essay

have certain common features ; they serve a decorative purpose, many are the result of collaboration between artist and artisan, and all have a practical significance of some sort. Isolated and alone, they may seem somewhat of a mystery to us, but provided with the proper context they come alive. The miniatures noisily herald the passing of another hour with a creak of cogwheels and a rattle of drums, and the tombstone evokes the stillness of holy ground in a Central Asian cemetery; the wall tile and the rug, placed in a mosque and palace, recall the luxury and wealth of Islamic power at its height, while the plate reflects a curious mixture of a vision of lovers combined with the function of a dinner-plate.

Practical and poetic at once, they communicate their visual messages across the barriers of time, culture, and language in a fashion still understandable in our time.

Walter B. Denny

The Jiltarpiece from Pratovecchio In the forty years since the appearance of the Catalogue of Paintings in the Gardner Museum a provenance has been discovered for several pictures of which the early history was previously wrongly given or unknown. The most spectacular results have concerned pictures of the Spanish School - not unnaturally, because comparatively little work had been done on the early history of Peninsular painting. For the same reason, these discoveries about individual pictures have helped considerably to clarify its history. For instance, the identification of Bermejo's S. Engracia as the centerpiece of a large retable painted for Daroca, where much of it still hangs (see Berg in Fenway Court, Vol. 2 , No. 3, October 1968), makes it necessary to rewrite the largely supposititious story of the painter's life. It seems to place this picture firmly between the S. Martin retable, still at Daroca and still probably Bermejo's earliest known work, and his early masterpiece, the S. Domingo de Silos, with the seven Virtues, now in the Prado. It is known that when he contracted to paint this picture, in 1474, he was still living in Daroca and that, when there were negotiations for additions to it, in 1477, he had moved to Saragossa. The fact that the S. Engracia panel had come from Saragossa in the last century led to the belief that it was painted after., not before, the S. Domingo. Not only does Mrs. Gardner's pie-

ture now fall snugly into place in a clear sequence of development, but it shows that Bermejo came under strong Netherlandish influence while he was still living at Daroca. This makes far less likely, and less n ecessary, the visit by Bermejo to the Netherlands which Chandler Post and some Spanish historians have hypothesized.

It might be claimed that S. Engracia is even more effective as it is, as an isolated picture. This could hardly be said of The Dormition of the Virgin. After its awkward shape, perhaps what distinguishes this panel most among Mrs. Gardner's pictures is that she bought it in Boston. It had no provenance. (figs. 1-4) It was attributed at the start of the century by Berenson to Bartolommeo Caporali of Perugia, and catalogued as his in 1931. This picture could never have stood alone, its very existence needing explanation in the form of the original context. The awkward shape has resulted in an awkward composition.

Both need support; and the theme itself needs completion. The picture illustrates an early invented part of the rapidly grown medieval legend of the Life of the Virgin: how, while she was sleeping, rather than dead, on her bier surrounded by eleven sorrowing Disciples - S. Thomas arrived on the scene later - the Saviour appeared and took up her soul in the form of a little child.

Subsequently she ascended bodily into heaven,

Figure 1. THE DoRMITION OF THE VIRGIN, Tuscan School, tempera on panel, 12 'Vs x 75 l/s in.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. (formerly attributed to Bartolommeo Caporali)

where body and soul were reunited in Christ's arms. The Dormition of the Virgin and her Assumption were usually represented more or less together. Indeed, a generation earlier, Fra Angelico had put the two episodes one above the other in a single picture for S. Maria Novella in Florence which has come to rest in the same room at Fenway Court with Th e Dormition . The shape of The Dormition and the fact that its subject needs a complement strongly suggest that it comes from the predella of an altarpiece and, if that is the case, that the main theme of the altarpiece must have been the Virgin : not the Virgin with her Child, probably, but the Virgin of the Assumption.

Everything that could be desired in the way of original context was provided for this picture by the late Roberto Longhi. In an article in Paragone for March 1951 (p. 58) he stated categorically that it comes from the predella of an altarpiece which has been dispersed but was once in the convent church of S. Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio.

Pratovecchio is a village in the romantic district of the Casentino, the upper basin of the Amo river, to the east of Florence. Longhi proceeded to give his reasons in a long article in the same magazine for November 1952 (pp. 10-37) devoted to the reconstruction of an oeuvre for the painter of this altarpiece, whom he named after it

the Master of Pratovecchio. By far the greater part of the altarpiece had remained together, bought in Florence in 1857 for the National Gallery, London, with a large number of pictures from the Lombardi-Baldi collection. The Director of the National Gallery, Martin Davies, in his Catalogue of the Earlier Italian School (2nd ed., p. 524), says that the provenance from Pratovecchio was published in the Catalogue of 1859, and had therefore obviously been supplied to Charles Eastlake, the first Director, by the two dealers, Lombardi and Baldi, with whom he had negotiated the purchase.

This assemblage of pictures, all in one frame, named by Davies with succinct correctness Side Parts of an Altarpiece and attributed to the Tuscan School (No. 584), comprises in the first place a pair of Gothic-arched panels, each with two saints, which must have stood in the main tier on either side of a centrepiece (fig. 5). Only one of the saints, an unidentified bishop ostentatiously holding out a big book, looks towards the subject of the centre panel ; and he is looking upwards at whatever it was. This helps to confirm Longhi's supposition. The bishop's counterpart on the other side might well have provided a clue to the subject.

He is S. John Baptist. He is usually accompanied in Italian altarpieces on equal terms by S. John Evangelist; and, as S. John Evangelist is the patron Saint of the church which housed this altarpiece

Figu res 2-4 . detail s of Figure 1 : left, center and right.

Er rata - Fenway Court 19 71

P· P· P· P· P·

col. col. col. col.

33, col.

17' 17' 19' 21,

1, 1, 2' 1, 2'

figs. 6 and 7 should be transposed. line 3 from bottom: insert "formerly" after fig. 8. line 10 from top: omit sentence beginning "It may be line 21 from top: insert "formerly" after Assumption. line 5 from top: read right in place of left.

- it is likely to h ave been over the high altar he would h ave been a very likely subject for the centre p anel. H owever, th is is made rather unlikely by his appearance h ere on a smaller scale, in the upper tier of p anels (fig. 6). H e is mourning, and he is pendant to a figure of the mourning Virgin. A t least these two figures tell us plainly wha t was the subject of the centre panel of this upper tier. According to convention it must have been Christ on the Cross. Between these two tiers is a pair of roundels together forming, by a convention equally long established, an A nnunciation (fig. 7). The roundels seem to be set in the scant remain s of the original frame. The pastiglio work surrounding them is almost all that is left of it ; but it seems to h ave been part of the original arrangement that twelve figures of saints, on the same scale as those of the upper tier though the panels are n arrower, cover the square columns which support the fra me on either side : three on the front of each and three on the side, one above the other. The columns are thus unusually large. Also from 5. Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio com es a Virgin of the Assumption (fig. 8) in the Gallerie Fiorentine in Florence. Its exhibition at Arezzo in 1951 was the occasion of Longhi's conclusion that it must

"

be the m1ssmg centrepiece of the main tier. He was unable to do the same for the tier above ; but he found a predella painting in the Gardner Dormition of the Virgin.

Such a gift-horse, comprising not only a home of the right dimensions for this picture but the complement of its theme, can hardly be looked in the mouth. To the National Gallery, owning virtually an altarpiece without a centre, a picture of suitable composition for the place of honour from the same period and the very same church, seemed most attractive. There are difficulties, however.

The dimensions of the panel with The Virgin of the Assumption are not, in its present condition, exactly what are needed. It is said to be broader by 9 centimetres. There is no harm in that, provided that it was at least no shorter; but it is shorter now by 8 centimetres. It is not clear whether Longhi's assertion that the panel had obviously been cut is based on aesthetic considerations or on a physical examination. Aesthetic considerations make it certain that the reduction could have been made only at the foot. The fact is easily discovered, but at the moment of writing the check has not yet been made. There remains the question of authorship, though this does not clinch the argument concerning the composition 17

Figures 2-4. details of Figure 1: left, center and right.

- it is likely to have been over th e h igh altar he would have been a very likely subject for the centre panel. H owever, th is is made rather unlikely by h is appearance h ere on a smaller scale, in the upper tier of p anels (fig. 6) . He is mourning, and he is pendant to a figure of th e mourning Virgin. At leas t these t wo figures tell us plainly what w as the subject of the cen tre panel of this upper tier. Accordin g to convention it must have been Christ on the Cross. Between these two tiers is a p air of roundels togeth er forming, by a convention equally lon g establish ed, an Annunciation (fig. 7) . The roundels seem to be set in the scant remain s of the origin al frame. The pastiglio work surrounding them is almost all that is left of it; but it seem s to h ave b een part of the original arrangement that t welve figures of saints, on the same scale as those of the upper tier though the panels are narrower, cover the square columns which support the frame on either side : three on the front of each and three on the side, one above the other. The columns are thus unusually large. Also from S. G iovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio com es a V irgin of the Assumption (fig. 8) in the Gallerie Fioren tine in Florence. Its exhibition at A rezzo in 1951 was the occasion of Longhi's conclusion th at it must

be the missing centrepiece of th e main tier. He was unable to do the same for th e tier above; but he fou nd a predella pain ting in the Gardner D ormition of the Virgin.

Such a gift-h orse, comprising not only a home of the right dimen sions for this picture but the complement of its theme, can h ardly be looked in the mouth. To the Nation al Gallery, owning virtually an altarpiece without a centre, a picture of suitable composition for the place of honour from the same period and the very same church, seemed m ost attractive. There are difficulties, however .

The dimensions of the panel with The Virgin of the Assumption are not, in its p resent condition , exactly wha t are needed . It is said to be broader by 9 centimetres. There is no h arm in that, provided that it was at least no sh orter; but it is shorter now by 8 centimetres. It is not clear whether Longh i's assertion that the panel had obviously been cut is based on aesthetic considerations or on a physical examination. Aesthetic considerations m ake it certain that th e reduction could ha ve been m ade only at the foot. The fact is easily discovered, b ut at the m omen t of writing th e check h as not yet b een made. There remains the question of authorship, though this does not clinch the argument concerning the composition 17

Figure 5. SmE PARTS OF AN ALTARPIECE, Tuscan School, No. 584, tem pera on pan el, la rge pa n els: approx. 37 x 19 1/2 in. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London.

Figure 6. 5. GABRIEL, detail of Figure 5, diam. 5 lf.i in.

Figure 7. 5. JOHN EVANGELIST, detail of Figure 5, 123/ 4

of the altarpiece. There are many quattrocento altarpieces of which the panels are not all by the same hand. On the point of authorship I think Davies' scepticism is justified, though I believe that this, all-important, part of Longhi's reconstruction needs only a physical fact to confirm or deny it.

The case of the Fenway Court Dormition of the Virgin is different. Since it represents a tier by itself and we have only a limited idea of the original design of the frame, the question of dimensions is less important. In his reconstruction Longhi made The Dormition a predella painting which ran the whole width of the frame, even under the stout square columns at the sides with their figures of Saints. This would be unusual. In this case it does not seem possible, for the columns must have projected too far. Longhi, however, made little allowance in the frame for the stiles with pilasters which must have separated the centrepiece from the wings. These may well have been wide, to suit the unusual width of the side columns; but they do not need to have been exceptionally so to bring the outer edges of The Dormition into line below the outer edges of the two wings of the main tier.

The panel is thus suitable enough; but better fitting. still is the picture's subject. The Dormition and the Assumption demand each other as com-

x 7 in.

plements. These are strong arguments, while those on the other side are far from final. The first is a perhaps obscure point of monastic costume.

Davies has pointed out that the nuns of S. Giovanni Evangelista belonged to ~h e Camaldolese order and must normally have been habited entirely in white, whereas the nun who kneels in The Dormition as donor, and must have been a member of the convent which received her gift, wears a cloak and cowl of black. It may be possible to explain this by the badge of black which she also wears, on the sleeve of h er white frock.

It suggests that she was in mourning. Would a Camaldolese nun be allowed to wear this amount of black on such an occasion, commemorating the death of some person whom the altarpiece itself no doubt commemorates?

The authorship of The Dormition is a much more difficult question; but, for the reason given, it is less relevant to that of the provenance. In the Lombardi-Baldi collection the National Gallery panels were attributed to Andrea de! Castagna.

This is obviously euphemistic; but the tradition to which they belong is plainly that of the Florentine draughtsman-painters. The first thing remarkable about them, technically, is the pronounced linear element in their exaggerated modelling. The draperies of the mourning Virgin 19

Figure 8. VIRGIN OF THE ASSUMPTION, formerly G alleri e Fiorentine, Florence.

Figure 9路 MADONNA DEL BALDACHINO. Courtesy of the

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

and of S. John Evangelist are reminiscent of Donatello in their sculptural elaboration. Heads and hands and feet are drawn in the same way, the form exaggerated rather than blurred by the uncouthness of a probably provincial artist. This quality is one with a determination to make out of every figure a rugged personality. The painter has not been able to cope so well with the larger scale of the main tier, or with the problem of grouping - a problem with which some of his superiors were not always successful in such altarpieces; but each of the fourteen smaller full-length figures has a strongly pronounced individuality.

The painting is in the manner required by such drawings. It is tight and smooth. In The Dormition the modelling is slack and feeble. It is anything but sculptural. The painting suits it well enough, loosely applied and coarse. These differences of condition may have come to be exaggerated by others. Under much darkened old varnish the National Gallery pictures seem to be well preserved. The comparatively clean colours of the Gardner picture are considerably rubbed. But the dramatis personae there can never have had much character. Is it possible that the painter of Th e Dormition deliberately gave so little individuality to his disciples and distinguished them so little from the resurrected Christ in the hope that this would make for unity, doing the work of composition? Predella pictures are often of course painted in a more slapdash way than the panels above; but they are not usually so inferior to paintings on the pilasters of the frame. A solution to save Longhi's claim that The Dormition is by the same hand as the main part of the altarpiece from Pratovecchio would be that the predella was added at a later date, when the work of the painter had deteriorated. No such change of style seems to occur, however, in the considerable number of pictures which Longhi gathered together as the work of his 'Master of The Pratovecchio Altarpiece.' There is 20

only one picture among them which bears an obvious resemblance in certain respects to The Dormition: a miniature altarpiece (fig. 9) in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, which Longhi names the Madonna del Baldachino. In a letter to the Director of the Gardner Museum of 30 January 1950 Federico Zeri had already drawn attention to this resemblance. The picture h ad been attributed by Berenson to Boccatis; but Zeri gave it as his opinion that both pictures are Tuscan. Longhi, however, attached little importance to the Morgan Library picture, and n othing could be less like this or The Dormition than pictures which he attributed to his master more w illingly, like The Madonn a in a niche of the Fogg Museum or the triptych (from Poggibonsi in Tuscany) belonging to Mr. Hugh Satterlee in New York. These have close affinities in s tyle and iconography with the pictures in the National Gallery, and also help to reconcile it stylistically with the Virgin of the Assumption in Florence.

To accept as a likely provenance for Th e Dormition of the Virgin the predella of the altarpiece from S. Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio and not to accept the attribution of the painting to Longhi's 'Master of the Pratovecchio Altarpiece' is to be left with an awkward problem of nomenclature. Studio of the ' Master of the Pratovecchio Altarpiece?' That suggests that the said master designed it, and we cannot be sure that he did.

One would be justified in thus cataloguing the picture if only it were not for the resemblance to the little picture from the Morgan Library, which seems to bring one into the presence of a distinct personality, however feeble. It is not surprising that neither of these pictures has attracted the attention of art historians and that even those who have printed criticism of Longhi's ideas about his Master of Pratovecchio have omitted any mention of The Dormition. The attribution of this to the Umbrian painter Caporali was made by Berenson

at the beginning of the century and maintained by him for some fifty years; and when, because of this, I had studied Caporali's work with some care, I concluded that it could be an early picture by him under Florentine influence. As such it was therefore entered in the Catalogue of 1931. Berenson, however, accepted Longhi's reconstruction of the Pratovecchio altarpiece and seems to h ave had no doubts about the uniformity of its authorship.

From that, unfortunately, he proceeded to a tentative attribution which, had it not been qualified by a question mark in his latest Florentine lists of 1963, would h ave been perhaps the strangest that h e ever made. It is entered under Giovanni di Francesco. The only documented work by Giovanni di Francesco de! Cervelleria is a worn lunette of 1458-59 painted in fresco with The Eternal Father and Two Angels, with the heads of martyred innocents, over the door of the Innocenti church in Florence. Under the name of this painter Berenson finally gathered together a voluminous list of works. This includes not only the 'Carrand Triptych' in the Bargello, Florence, with all the other pictures attributed to its author at different times by Beren son and others, but the pictures grouped by various art historians under the 'Karlsruh e Master' and yet a third group by the ' Prato Master.' The Nativity, with SS. Jerome, Mary Magdalen and Eustace in the Kunsth alle at Karlsruhe and some of the frescoes in the Ch apel of the Assumption in Prato cathedral, which have been identified as by the Master of Prato are by a close follower, or more probably followers, of Paolo Uccello. They imitate with a good measure of su ccess at least his racy, elegant narrative and the fastidious precision of his craftsmanship. For work of much the same moment, they could h ardly be more different in expression, in style or in execution from The Dormition of the Virgin.

Philip H endy 21

Horus: The Divine 'Falcon

I am the Falcon who dwells amid the light, Who has control over his own light Who is invested with his own diadem Who can go to and fro to the limits of the sky .

Coffin Text, quoted by R. T. R. Clarke, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London : Thames and Hudson, 1959), p. 147

On April 13, 1895, Mrs. Gardner purchased an Egyptian statue of a hawk from the Galleria Sangiorgi, a shop in Rome. Presently situated in the central court of the Gardner Museum between the Roman mosaic pavement and the fountain, the small bird (1' 93/s" high, 1' 71/2" long, 91/4" wide) represents the ancient Egyptian god Horus, a deity whose origins go back at least to the beginning of recorded time. In true Egyptian style, the piece adheres to the shape of the granite block from which it was carved. Base and figure are of one piece and the legs are not freed from the block.

At one time the body was broken off a few inches above the top of the base, but has been repaired without much restoration. The head is quite flat, slightly concave on top. The heavy brow ridge, protruding eyes, and wide, short beak give a feeling of massiveness to the low face. A powerful chest, broad and curving, is framed by the wings.

Below, the small thin legs seem insufficient for their task although this apparent instability is counteracted by the large feet which are firmly planted in the base. Unlike some earlier Egyptian works, the hawk can be viewed from any angle and the transition from front to side is smooth.

There are symmetrical curves, one on either side, from the brow ridge around the contours of the wings into the tail feathers. The crossed ends of the tail feathers echo the splayed position of the feet, giving a rhythmic effect to the outline as seen from above. The overall effect is both graceful and imposing.

22

This hawk has been dated to the fourth century B.C., the age of the Ptolemies in Egypt.

Ptolemy I became satrap of Egypt in 323 B.C., placing the political power of that country firmly in the hands of the Greeks. The Egyptians reacted by keeping themselves separate from their Greek rulers, a t least during the first part of the Ptolemaic period, and by continuing their traditional forms of art. Figures of the Egyptian gods were produced in quantity, and the old conventions of sculpture, such as the adherence to the original sh ape of the block, were observed. Ptolemy showed respect for the Egyptian religion, and this production of traditional figures of the deities was not discouraged, although identification with Greek gods was often attempted, including an effort to reconcile the Hawk of Horus with the Eagle of Zeus. There are many examples of falcons from the Ptolemaic period in museums today, including basalt figures in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Probably the largest examples are the huge guardians of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, one of which has been mutilated. There is a magnificent bronze example of a crowned Horus, either from the Saite or Ptolemaic period, at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Mass.

A black granite hawk in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts offers an interesting comparison to this one. That monumental sculpture is about five and one half feet high (including base) and weighs well over a ton. An inscription on the base identifies it as Horus of Hierakonpolis, commissioned by Amenophis III, ca. 1400 B.C. Unlike the smaller figure, it wears a tall feather headdress.

Although heavily restored, this falcon is quite different in conception from the other. They are both block-like and massive, but the Ptolemaic sculptor sought a more detailed portrayal. The Boston Museum falcon has neither wings nor feet.

Its massive chest and heavy tail feathers are un-

Figure l. Egyptian Hawk of the Fourth Century B.C. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Figures 2 and 3. Side and back view of Figure 1.

Figu re 4. Fee t a nd tail fea ther s, deta il o f Figure

1.

Figure 5. H a wk, Horus wearing the Crown of upper a nd lowe r Egypt. Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, H a rvard University. Grenville L. Winthrop Bequest.

1943.1118.

decorated. The silhouette is less refined. Around its eyes are elaborate incised decorations, emphasizing the sacred nature of the falcon's eye adding to the somewhat abstract quality of the figure.

The base is quite high and is decorated with both hieroglyphic writing and architectural details.

Both falcons are impressive and moving, the older work through its effect of remote dignity and the smaller, more classical figure with its elegant, yet more accessible presence.

Who, then, is Horus, and why is he represented in the form of a hawk?

Do not oppose him - this form, this agent, this follower of Horus Who is at the frontier of the sky!

Horus has assumed his seats and his thrones And this one who is in his form ls himself a mighty one as the Divine Falcon.

Coffin Text, quoted in Clarke, p. 147.

This passage introduces a figure who is the archetype for Egyptian hawks - the Divine Falcon, who is Horus and who is not Horus at the same time.

Before heaven and earth were created by the god Atum, there was only the abyss and the beings in it, including the falcon. In many cases these beings became identified with later gods. In an early mythological cycle from Memphis a mysterious hawk ruled the world. His eyes were the sun and the moon which he opened and shut to bring about day and night. At Letopolis this god was called Horus the Sightless when neither the sun nor the moon was visible. Horus later became identified with this hawk god and his all-seeing eye remained an important Egyptian sacred symbol. In representations of Horus, as in this case, the eyes are often emphasized by their size and protrusion.

Representations of the hawk god are plentiful in all periods of Egyptian art. A neolithic drawing on pottery of ca. 5 000 B.C. shows a bird perched on a rudimentary throne ; this figure has been called a Horus. Falcons are present on b o th sides of the well-known Palette of Narmer (ca. 3100 B.C.) . Chephren, a Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, had himself depicted in monumental sculpture with the falcon perched on his shoulders, protecting him with its outstretched wings, thus signifying the intimate relation ship between the god and the power of the Pharaoh. The hieroglyph for Horus is also in the shape of a hawk.

Horus was not, however, always shown in the form of a falcon, nor need one assume immediately that a given hawk stands for Horus unless it bears one of his attributes, such as the double crown symbolic of rule over Upper and Lower Egypt. As early as the Second Dynasty (ca. 2900 B.C.) a figure of Horus with the head of a hawk and the body of a man had been created. The human-headed falcon also occurs occasionally.

Horus was depicted in completely human form, as a pharaoh enthroned, or as a child, alone or with his mother, the goddess Isis. When shown as a falcon, Horus could be unadorned, as in this example, or crowned in his role as pharaonic power source. He could also b e a falcon-headed lion, a falcon-headed crocodile, hound, fish, or griffin. Conversely, other gods besides Horus were sometimes represented as h awks . Re, Amun, Khonsu, O siris, Bastet and Anubis are a few examples of other gods who may assume the sh ape of a falcon.

However, since Horus and the Divine Falcon eventually became interchangeable, it is fair to identify the Gardner hawk with Horus. The question is, which Horus? To begin with , there were at least three gods of that name : Horus the Elder, Horus the Son of Isis, Horus the Child (also called Harpocrates). In different parts of Egypt different 25

Figure 6. Black Gra nite Falcon. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum Expedition - Sudan. 23.1470.

Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Bos ton.

Figure 7. Front view of Figure

I.

Fig ure 8 . Face, detail of Figure

1.

Horus-gods held sway. Hierakonpolis and Letopolis worshipped Horus the Elder ; Edfu p aid tribute to Horus the High God (a form of Horus the Son of Isis) who was sh own as either a winged sun disk, a falcon or a human hero ; H eliopolis revered Horus the Son of Isis. It is the Heliopolitan mythology which is the most familiar ; the tale of Osiris, his sister-wife Isis and their child H orus.

Horus the Elder also figures in this system as the uncle of the younger Horus.

Essentially, the Heliopolitan my thology tells of the murder of the god O siris by his rival Seth.

Osiris was shut up in a chest, which was throw n into the Nile and floated to Byblos. There a sycamore tree grew around the chest, disguisin g it. The king of Byblos, impressed by the magnitude of the tree, had it made into a pillar for h is palace.

Isis, recognizing the true nature of the pillar, recovered it from the king. But Seth found the coffin, dismembered the corpse and scattered the parts over all of Egypt. The faithful Isis gathered them together and reassembled her husb and's body. Then, by means of magic, she conceived a child by the dead Osiris, a son called Horus. Before her son's birth, Isis had secured a place for him in the Solar Boat with the other gods. At the moment of birth, however, Horus took the form of a falcon and flew into the sky beyond the Solar Boat. Ignoring the protests of the offended deities he soared on into the abyss beyond the sky.

This episode parallels an early m yth of the sun's origin in which the sun burst forth from a huge egg which a primeval being, a goose, had laid in the abyss. Horus, like the sun, flew into the sky at the moment of birth.

Figure 9. Chephren, The Living Horus. Reproduced in E. L. B. Terrace and H . G. Fischer, Treasures of Egyptian Art from the Cairo Museum, London, 1970.

M ean while, under Seth the world h ad fallen into a reign of terror which continued until Horus was old enough to oppose the tyrant. T hey fought viciously for a while, but finally agrPed to submit to the arbitration of the Council of Gods. The fi n al judgment was that Horus became the ruler of th e world while Seth was given con trol over storms. The newly crowned H orus went immediately to the Underworld to liberate the soul of his fa ther, and a new era began on earth .

Since Horus was the legitimate ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, as appointed by the Council of Gods, every ph araoh after h im was also a H orus. H orus became the spirit of living kingship and h is fa ther O siris that of th e dead . The monumental statue of Ch ephren as the Living Horus is the physical embodiment of this principle. Horus was the power of k ingsh ip, of light, of h ealing, and of the soul, which was seen as a human-headed hawk. He also was the sun god, an iden tity which he borrowed from the original Divine Falcon, and his victory over Seth is a reminder th at the sun always rises to conquer darkness. Thus, the m useum's hawk represents one of the oldest and most elemental Egyptian gods.

I would tell of the prowess of H orus And mak e known how grea t is the respect for h im H ow his horn has been sharpened against Seth T elling how H orus has taken com mand And is now equipped with the power of Atum.

Coffin Text, quoted in Clarke, p. 148.

Judith E. H anhisalo

Chinese Snuff Bottles

Figure 1. Porcelain, H . 2 1/2 inches (.038 meters).

Ch' ien-lung period (1736-1795).

Figure 2. Porcelain, H. 31\r inches (.081 m e ters).

Chia-ch'ing period (1796-1820).

In the galleries of the Gardner Museum are many cases in which small objects of minor arts are displayed. One o f them is an early nineteenth century Italian vitrine in the Little Salon near the d oor leading to the Tapestry Room. Among the eighty items in it are eleven Chinese snuff bottles. Although there is n o provenance for these Chinese flasks, it is likely that Mrs. Gardner herself bought them when she and her husband visited China on their trip around the world in 1883. She writes in her travelog: " Peking, Wed., Sept. 26, 1883: In morning mist into Chinese City to some fun, snuff bottles and shops." (Museum Archives) Snuff bottles are small decorated bottles of various m a terials. Each bottle has a stopper to w hich is attached a tiny spoon for dipping out the snuff, a p owdered preparation of tobacco used for inhalation ur rubbing on the teeth and gums.

Some snuff bottles, large table bottles in particular, may come with saucers for use by guests.

Popular designs on Chinese snuff bottles include symbols for long life, happiness and prosperity, Chin ese characters with such meanings, or short poems in the same spirit.

The history of Chinese snuff bottles, like that of snuff boxes in Europe, followed the introduction of snuff taking in that country. Long before snuff was invented, tobacco had been cultivated by the Indians of North and South America. Ch ris topher Columbus and other early explorers of the New World must h ave seen the n a tives using tobacco. A physician from Spain h as been credited with introducing tobacco smoking to the Old World in the middle of the fifteenth century, and Jean Nicot (1530-1600), a French scholar, introduced tobacco to France in 15 59路 The genus Nicotiana was named in his honor.

Two Englishmen, Sir Ralph Lane (?-1603), first governor of Virgin ia, and Sir Francis Drake (1540?-1596), navigator and admiral, brought to

England in 1586 the materials and implements of tobacco smoking, and the habit became fashionable through the influence of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618). Shipwrecked Portuguese sailors who made an accidental landing in 1543 at Tanegashima, a small Japanese island off the south coast of Kyushu, soon started trade with Japan and among other things brought tobacco. Shortly thereafter tobacco reached China via Taiwan and Cochin China. (See S. Ishizaki, Nicotiana, Tokyo, 1957) The practice of inhaling snuff became common in England around the seventeenth century, and throughout the eighteenth century it was common both in Europe and in China. It is interesting that the Japanese favored tobacco smoking and the Chinese, snuff taking. The Edo period (1 6151867) of Japan became the great period of the tobacco pouches, inro (medicine cases) and netsuke (toggles) , because the merchants who were the ruling power of the Edo society, were the enthusiastic supporters of tobacco smoking and of these miniature objects of art obtained at reasonable prices. In Ching (Manchu) China (16441912), snuff taking was fashionable among the rich, and snuff bottles were often used as gifts.

Medicine bottles, slightly smaller in size, originally made to hold medicine and opiates were adapted to hold snuff. The production of snuff bottles gradually declined when cigarette smoking was introduced in China in the middle of the nineteenth century. Since that time, however, Chinese snuff bottles have been collected in increasing numbers by Westerners.

These eleven snuff bottles may be divided into five groups according to the material used.

Porcelain Bottles (Figures 1, 2, 3) : Figure 1 is an ovoidal bottle flattened front and back. Both front and back have the same decoration painted in enamel on white glaze ground: a deer under a tree and a crane on a rock with a stream between

Figure 3. Porcelain, H . 3lf.i inches (.083 m eters) . late XV III cen tury.

Figu re 4. Glass, H . 2 1/2 inches (.038 m eters).

Ea rly XIX century .

Figure 5. Glass, H . 21/2 inch es (.038 meters).

Early XIX century.

them. There is a floral design on the neck and two narrow sides. The stopper-cap is dense green jade, and the spoon, copper. On the bottom of the bottle is a mark in red which reads: " Ch' ien-lung nien chih" (made in the reign of Ch' ien-lung). Figure 2 is a slender, ovoidal bottle. The decoration on one side is two warriors on horseback, one in a river being pursued by the other. On the other side an emperor and his men in a boat are watching the warriors. It is carved in high relief, and painted in enamel. The stopper-cap is also porcelain. The ivory spoon is broken off. On the bottom of the bottle is a mark in red which reads: " Chia-ch' ing nien chih" (made in the reign of Chia-ch' ing) . Figure 3 is a bottle in gray-white moulded and reticulated porcelain. The decorations a re a dragon on one side and a phoenix among clouds on the other with a meander design around the neck. The green jade stoppercap has an ivory spoon.

Glass Bottles (Figures 4 through 7): Figure 4, a white bottle with an elongated ovoidal body, is glass in imitation of mutton fat jade. The stopper is a chip of red coral with a gilt metal rim, and the spoon, ivory. The incised decoration shows a dog sitting under a Chinese banana plant and a butterfly above. A Chinese inscription on the other side of the bottle reads: "The pure fragrance is all contained in the jade jar."

Figures 5 and 6 are glass overlay or cameo bottles.

A glass bottle of any color is dipped in glass of another color. After this outer layer has cooled, various designs are carved cutting away the outer layer to leave a relief. Figure 5 has a black overlay with a decoration of goldfish among lotuses on either side of the dense white body. The stoppercap is of pink glass. Figure 6 has a green overlay on a translucent brown ground. The design is a phoenix and a bamboo on one side and a phoenix, the sun and clouds on the reverse. The stopper-cap is blue-green glass and the spoon,

Figure 6. Glass, H. 2 1/2 inches (.038 meters).

Early XIX century.

I Figure 7. Glass, H . 3 U inches (.094 meters).

Early XIX century.

Figure 8. Rose quartz, H. 21'\ inches (.057 meters).

Early XIX cen tury.

Figure 9. Smoky quartz, H . 3fa- inches (.08 meters).

Early XIX century.

Figure

10.

Jade, H. 21/2 inches (.06 meters).

Ea rly XIX century.

ivory. Figure 7 is a milk glass bottle with a polychrome applique. Unlike certain more elaborate glass objects to which two to five layers of different colors are overlaid, the colors were applied in dabs, because they all lie in the same plane.

The decor a ti on on one side is two horses under a maple tree growing from a cliff with the inscription : " Picture of bathing horses." On the reverse side are two bats, a candlestick, a kettle, two cups, two squirrels, a peach-shaped jar, and a fungus. A fan and a bamboo tube and rod, two of the attributes of the Eight Taoist Immortals, are on the narrow sides of the bottle.

The stopper-cap is of red coral and the spoon, ivory.

Quartz Bottles (Figures 8 and 9) : Figure 8 is made of rose quartz, with a phoenix on a rock on the front and poppies and a butterfly on the back, both carved in low relief. The stoppercap is amethyst-colored glass and the spoon, horn. Figure 9 is a plain bottle made of smoky quartz penetrated by needle-shaped crystals of rutile, a variety of quartz commonly called Venus's-hair stone. The metal rimmed stoppercap is green jade mottled with white and the spoon, ivory.

Jade Bottle (Figure 10): Figure 10 is made with translucent green jade mottled with white, carved in low relief on both front and back with a heron (beak straight up) and lotuses among waves. The words, heron, lotus, and continuity are homophones (words having the same sound) in Chinese, and a picture of a heron and lotus hints at a wish for continuous success in the civil service examinations. In old China one had to pass an examination each time he wished to be promoted to the next rank. The stopper-cap with a silver rim is also green jade and the spoon, silver.

Metal Bottle (Figure 11) : Figure 11 is made of white metal (silver in color). The inner bottle is

incased by the outer metal which is decorated both front and b ack w ith leaf tendrils, engraved, perfora ted and joined at the sides. A ferocious mask in high relief with a ring in its mouth is on each sh oulder. Large medallions on the front and b ack are set with a large coral bead in the center surrounded by eight turquoise b eads (one m issing). The stopper-cap is set with six coral beads (one missing) and a single coral bead in the finial. The spoon is also white metal. The elaborate openwork and in set stones show it to be Tibetan .

The decora tion s of these snuff bottles are those wh ich are frequently used in Chinese art. The phoenix and the dragon are the m ost important mythological creatures in Ch in a. Quite contrar y to the gruesome mon ster of medieval imagination in th e W est, the Chinese dragon is the genius of strength and goodness. It is the spirit of life.

The phoenix is the Emperor of all birds, as the n ame " feng huang" (Emperor Bird) implies, and

Figure

11.

is the most honorable among the birds. Next to the phoenix, the crane is the most celebrated bird in Chinese symbolism, and a common emblem of longevity. The deer is an emblem of long life, and he is said to be the only animal who is able to find the sacred fungus of immortality. The horse is an emblem of speed and perseverance. The bat is the symbol of happiness because the words " bat" and " happiness" are homophones in Chinese. The lotus flower is much esteem ed in Oriental religions, as the symbol of purity and perfection, because it grows out of mud but is not defiled. Buddha is usually represented as seated on the sacred lotus. Ho H sien-ku, one of the Eight Immortals in Taoism, is represented as h olding a lotus-stem. Thus, most of the Chinese designs are chosen for their symbolic meaning. For this reason Chinese arts and crafts often lack individual expression but they reflect the thought and way of life of the Chinese people.

Yasuko Horioka

White metal, H . 23/4 inches (.0 7 meters).

Early XIX century.

Provenance for a Silver Tankard In the southwest comer of the Dutch room stands a tall wooden cabinet containing many articles of silver. One of these is a silver tankard located in the center of the bottom shelf. In Morris Carter's notebook of about 1922 in the Gardner Museum archives it is referred to as a "Norwegian peg tankard," but in 1929 the description was changed to a Danish tankard. It now appears that Mr. Carter was closer to the truth. From observation of the hallmarks and the style of the tankard, it is possible to say that it was made in Bergen, Norway by Hans Pettersen Blytt about 1740.

In the first half of the 18th century Norway was a part of the kingdom of Denmark sharing the same king, language and many of the same laws.

The main towns for the production of silver were Copenhagen in Denmark, and Bergen, Christiania (now Oslo) and Trondhjem in Norway. Of the last three, Bergen was the most important and has preserved the most silver. As the two countries were so close politically, it is not surprising to find similarities in the development of their silver; but the styles and hallmarks were distinctive enough in the 18th century to show the Norwegian provenance of this tankard.

Hallmarks punched into a piece of silver by means of a small stamp, normally after the object has been completed, are the usual means for establishing provenan路ce. They are very often marred and illegible through careless application or wear.

This tankard has five marks arranged in a cross in the center of the bottom (fig. 1). The center one is

very clear and is the m aker's mark, that of Hans Pettersen Blytt : a capital " HB" in an oval. Above it is the Bergen town mark, somewhat marred, a gate with seven balls underneath representing the seven hills surrounding the town. To the left of the " HB" is the month mark: the Zodiac symbol for the Crab (21 June to 22 July). The other two marks have not been identified. The one to the left of the " HB" resembles a " P" and could be an assayer's mark ; the one below may be a date mark consisting of the last two digits of the year the tankard was made. The identified marks are illustrated in Thv. Krohn-Hansen and Robert Kloster, Berge n Gullsmed Kunst Fra Laugstiden, Bergen, 1957.

The presence of so many marks indicates a date of after 1740. Prior to that year the use of h;illmarks in Bergen was not regulated. Maker's marks were used and sometimes a town mark in the form of a crowned " B." King Christian VI issued a decree in 1740 which provided for the regular use of several marks: those of the maker, year, month, town and assayer. The latter belonged to an official appointed by the king and was placed on a piece to show that it had been inspected and met the silver standard. In the same year the town mark of Bergen was changed from the crowned "B" to the gate with seven balls.

From 1568 until the mid-19th century the silver trade in Bergen was controlled by a guild. Any Figure 1. Detail of Figure on the bottom.

2,

showing the hallmarks

33

Figure 2. SILVER TANKARD c. 1740, Hans Pettersen Blytt, Bergen, Norway, active 1711-1759. H. 7I/2, diam. 5 I/ 2 inches (19.1, 14.0 centimeters). Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

man who wished to pra ti ea a silv rsmith, goldsmith or both had to submit t st pie es t th guild. The maker of this tankard, Hans P ttersen Blytt was born in Bergen in 1683. H was train d in the workshop of Jacob Pettersen. After five years as a traveling journeyman he returned and submitted his test pie es to the guild in 1711. The gold ones were reje t d, but the silver ones passed inspection and he became a member of the silversmiths' guild. Stylistically, he was most influenc d by the Reimers, a family of silversmiths, who had dominated the silver trade in Berg n for thre generations from 1640 to about 1720 and had introduced several new s tyles. Blytt was a prolific silversmith and many of his pie es have been preserved. Upon examination they reveal that, although he had a superior talent, he did not always take the time necessary for the highest quality.

At times the craftsmanship is slovenly or there are mistakes in the execution. In spite of this, Hans Pettersen Blytt had a successful workshop which his son Michael carried on after his death in 1759.

The date of this tankard can be determined as the evolution of style in Bergen tankards is documented. Prior to 1650 the Renaissance s tyle was popular and tankards were tall, thin, fairly plain and rested on a flat base. The Baroque tankards were larger in relation to height, richer in ornamentation and rested on three feet. In Bergen the ornamentation was usually restricted to the lid and to those areas on the body where the legs and handle joined. From about 1670 to the 169o's the most popular Baroque style was the "floral," characterized by a predominance of naturalistic plant designs. Gradually as the designs became more standardized, interest in Bergen shifted to another Baroque style, the Regence, so called because of the association with the French Baroque style and the designer Jean Berain at the time of the French Regency of 1715-1723.

The importation of the Regence style is usually

Figure J . Detar! of the ltd of Figure

2.

redited to Johannes Reimers, Jr. (active 1704;725) who had worked as an itinerant JOUrneyman in Fran e prior to JOining his family's shop in Bergen. The Rcgence style is marked by the use of acanthus leaves, ribbon-like motifs, scallopshells, garlands, cherubs and grotesque half-figures. About ;750 this style was superseded in Bergen by the Rococo. With the introduction of coffee and tea, tankards went out of fashion. They continued to be made for another century, but their design remained traditional and fairly plain without reflecting the newes t trends.

Upon observation it is possible to place this tankard firmly within the Regence style and thus in the first half of the 18th century. The shape of the body, curve of the hollow handle and the location of the decoration are all typical of the Regence works of Bergen (fig. 2). The ornamentation of the body where it is joined to the legs and handle is made up of acanthus leaves entwined around slightly raised C-scrolls; the whole being 35

set off from the plain portion s of the tankard by a ch ased background. The decoration on the lid provides the best stylistic comparison with other works (fig. 3). The edge is plain as is the center circle, except for an inscription and a border of engraved leaves. The rest of the lid is chased with delicate acanthus leaves interweaving with geometric curves. Three scallop shells and three cherubs' h eads are alternately worked into the design. The same decorative scheme except for the cherubs' heads can be seen on a tankard (now in the Stavanger Museum) by Hans Pettersen Blytt dated about 1720 (fig. 4). A similar scheme can also be seen on two silver caskets, one by Johannes Reimers, Jr., the other (now in the Kunstindus trimuseum, O slo) by h is brother, Harman A. Reimers (active 1709-1721). The thin wavy lines around the lip of the tankard body and lid are also common to pieces by Blytt and the Reimers.

The handle of this tankard h as three main points of interest, the first being the thumb-piece.

This is in the form of a lion passant crowned, holding in his paws a curved axe. The lion is the symbol of Norway and h e holds the axe of St. Olav, king of Norway from 1016 to 1028, and, after his death, the national hero and patron saint.

The whole of the thumb-piece has b een cast separately and soldered onto the handle. It is quite unusual to find the Norwegian lion used in this way. M any tankards have a lion as thumb-piece though, normally, it is a lion sejant erect or salient holding a ball and placed parallel to the handle.

But the previously mentioned tankard by Hans Blytt has a thumb-piece almost identical to this.

On the handle just below the hinge is one of the grotesque h alf-figures common to the Regence Baroque style. Here it is a h ead which has been . cast and soldered on, the head of the wine god Bacchus with vine leaves on his head and grapes for hair. Two objects are crossed under his chin

Figure 4. S1L VER TANKARD c. 1720, Hans Pettersen Blytt. H. 71\i, diam. 51/2 inches (18.3, 14.1 centimeters).

Stavanger Museum, Stavanger, Norway.

Figure 5. Front view of Figure

2.

which appear to be wine goblets. Although there are other examples of a grotesque head decorating a handle, few are so detailed or appropriate, and most do not represent a specific figure. There is a small cherub at the base of the handle, on the flat portion curving out from the body above the rear foot. It, like the lion and the Bacchus, is soldered on. This representation, familiar in the fine arts since the 14th century, has a small h ead and three pairs of large, crossed wings instead of a body.

The tankard has several inscriptions which may or may not have been added after the date of manufacture. The inscription in the center of the tankard lid is engraved in script and reads: Det Heeles Tarv Ved Soefart Fremes Essentially it means " Navigation furthers the interests of the whole (society) ." The language is Danish, but in the early 18th century this was the official language of both Norway and Denmark.

Affirming the inscription, the front of the tankard is engraved with a picture of a sailing ship, all sails set, running out before the wind (fig. 5). The flag at her stern is Danish, also common to both countries before 1814. The whole picture is framed in an engraved cartouche decorated with leaves.

Three sets of initials are engraved on the surface by means of small dots. " JFD" is found right below the ship and " H :L. :" and D :L. :" on the bottom near the hallmarks. These initials probably belonged to different owners of the tankard.

Also engraved on the bottom is the inscription : " W 75 lod." This refers to the weight of the tankard, about 1085 grams. It is possible Blytt was responsible for the weight inscription, but more probably it was done by a later owner or a dealer.

The interior of the tankard is plain and quite rough. On the handle side there is a ~ertical row of six raised pegs which were soldered on after the piece was completed. When the capacity of the

tankard was measured it was fou nd to hold roughly two quarts, or about .32 liters between each peg. The arran gement of the pegs and the total capacity correspond with the definition of a "peg tankard." This type was very popular in Norway and Denmark from the 17th century and was used when a number of people were drinking from one vessel. The tankard would be filled to the top peg and each of six participants would drink from one peg to the next.

Although the marks indicate that this tankard was made after 1740, the style places it between 1720 and 1730. Several possibilities occur: first, that some of the hallmarks were added some time after the completion of the tankard is not likely.

Hans Blytt would have placed his mark on a piece as soon as it was finished as was the custom among silversmiths, and the neatness of the arrangem ent of the five marks suggests that they all were applied at once. There is, however, no reason why any of these hallmarks might not have been in use before 17 40. Year and Zodiac month marks h ad been used in Copenhagen since 1685 and they would have been well known to Blytt. The gate and seven balls are found on the Bergen coat of arms, and might h ave been used as a h allmark for the town even before the formal decree. The possible assayer's mark is more difficult as the post of assayer did not exist until 1740. Since the Bergen guild had opposed its establishment, the presence of an assayer's mark, if proved, would indicate a later da te. Another possibility suggests that the tankard was made by Hans Blytt after 1740 but in the style popular twenty years earlier.

This is perhaps the most logical theory sin ce Blytt would have been fifty-seven in 1740 and would h ave tended to make a tankard in the style he had used as a younger man . Therefore the tankard may be dated about 1740 on the basis of its hallmark and its style.

Frances L. Preston 37

New 9reenhouses for The 9ardner Museum

A charming lady from the Mid-West confessed not long ago that she always plans her visits to her numerous grandchildren near Boston with the appearance of the nasturtiums in the court of the Gardner Museum.

The famous nasturtiums are vines some 20 feet in length that hang down from pots on the third floor balconies, and these are added to the flowers in the central Court for a brief six weeks in the spring.

The nasturtiums, like the other flowers that add so much to the visitor's pleasure, are a tradition carried on by the trustees in the spirit of the museum's founder. Flowers were part of Isabella Stewart Gardner's life long before she was a patron of music, collector, or a figure of renown in Boston. After her marriage to Jack Gardner in 1860, her father, a New York businessman, built a house for the young couple on recently filled land, which was an extension of Beacon Street.

Over the front door was a bay window and that was kept filled with flowers for the delight of those passing by as well as for the residents.

Most of these flowers came from the greenhouses at Green Hill, the summer house of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Gardner, Senior. On the death of the elder Mr. Gardner, Green Hill passed to Isabella and Jack Gardner.

After the completion of the Gardner Museum in 1903 those greenhouses supplied the court until Isabella's death in 1924. As Green Hill had passed to her great-nephew, G . Peabody Gardner and his wife, the trustees purchased the greenhouses and the gardener's cottage from the Moses Williams estate in 1925.

These greenhouses in Brookline, some 10,000 square feet under glass, are owned and operated by the museum to supply the famous court-garden with fresh flowers - to the great delight of not only the charming ladies from the Mid-West but people from all walks of life. Visitors to the mu-

seum find that pleasures of the senses induced by the sight and fragrance of flowers greatly enhance the pleasures of the mind - and the memories of the latter become so much more lasting because of the memories of the former.

Thus, the flowers and the collection of the museum are intertwined forever. But the source of supply five miles away in Brookline posed many problems.

A study in December 1970 by the Architects (James Lawrence, F.A.I.A., Architect, and Anthony Hars, A.I.A., Project Architect) proved that it was possible to transfer 10,000 square feet of greenhouse to the Rose Garden, but the light conditions were far from favorable. Furthermore, a lovely feature of the museum, the familiar Rose Garden, would have been lost. And the cost would have been quite high.

The Architects proceeded with further studies, including trips to Longwood Gardens, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and the Coe Estate, on Long Island, to study the latest developments in noncommercial greenhouses.

Planning began in earnest when the trustees decided to acquire two adjacent parcels of land and thereby provided space which allowed much of the Rose Garden to remain and offered better light conditions for the greenhouses.

Extensive studies were made by the Architects of the shade patterns on the available site. Future building programs of the neighboring institutions (Boston Sta te College and Simmons College) were considered at length. Nothing prohibitive was unearthed and the area bounded by Evansway and Tetlow Street, south of the present Garage Building, emerged as the prime location on which to build. The basic criterion was maximum sunshine, even if that m eant, especially in the summer, considerable sh ading and possibly some cooling.

In this particular section of the city, no less than others, vandalism is a serious threat to the various 39

institutions' maintenance budgets. In the case of a school or an office a broken window means a nuisance to both the superintendent and the room's occupant. In the case of greenhouses it might mean serious losses.

Standard designs had to be discarded almost immediately. Glass is much too breakable and all standard frames with vertical sides and low pitched roofs are designed to accommodate glass.

Experiments, notably in the Denver area, with fiberglass substituted for glass failed. Condensation on the inside, rain and snow on the outside did not run off because of the different surface characteristic of the new material, creating a rain forest, especially in the winter. An A-frame would have answered the problem of pitch but at a sacrifice of headroom near the edges.

A rather steep arch proved to be most advantageous for the basic structure and the best looking. For the "skin," 3/s inch Plexiglas 3 feet wide was selected. Not as hard as some other plastics like " Lexan," it comes in a variety of thicknesses and sizes suitable for arches.

For the arches themselves, laminated wood, southern pine, treated and stained, proved to be much more economical than extruded aluminum in tubular or angular shapes bent to specifications.

Size, height and span, as well as square footage, was the next problem. After going through a number of alternatives with a horticultural consultant the 12 foot wide house was chosen, the ridge about 13 feet above floor level, a 4 foot wide concrete aisle at the center, flanked by flowerbenches on both sides. The houses provide about 6,ooo square feet of growing space.

All standard ventilating systems of greenhouses depend on reasonably clear air as obviously no greenhouse operation can survive if the leaves of the plants have to be wiped off every day and chemicals injurious to growth are introduced.

40

To keep out soot and air pollution each house was designed with entirely individual heating and ventilating units. Two small gas-fired boilers generate steam. This system does not use any of the traditional systems of ridge or side vents, relying strictly on power-fans, intake and exhaust, for ventilation.

Photos taken in the early 20's while Mrs. Gardner was in residence show large plants such as palms and banana trees. That luxuriant mediterranean foilage gradually gave way to the more subdued atmosphere of the present arrangements.

Palms were quite difficult to handle, and suffered attacks of various kinds. Nevertheless, it was felt that the possibility of growing taller plants for the court, not necessarily palms, should be explored.

From the earliest sketches, the architects included at least one house or area with a ceiling height approaching 40 feet or so. The scheme preceding the final one had a treehouse near the museum building, linked to the rest of the greenhouses by a lean-to along the easterly face of the Evansway wall of the garden.

This treehouse would have served a double purpose : on one hand, the growing and holding of trees for the court; on the other hand, a transition between the Museum to the rest of the greenhouses, possibly open to the public. But, as the Court itself has always been the center of the display and the treehouse would have occupied a very pleasant outside garden, there was reluctance to pursue the designs particularly when cost estimates made it a luxury. Instead the design of the houses included one house in which the floor was dropped 2 feet to accommodate taller plants.

The final proposal for the greenhouses thus consisted of a long house of about 158 feet and, perpendicular to this, 6 shorter houses of 52 feet each.

In order to preserve the variety of plants presently offered by the Brookline greenhouses the horti-

cultural consultant drew up a careful grouping of the various species according to recommended night temperatures and the available bench space of 3400 square feet. On paper it looked like this: Long House (Night Temp. 50°, 1150 square feet) Jasmine, Cyclamen, Azalea, Pelargonium, Oleander, Camellia, Lemon Tree, Orange Tree, Fuchsia, Fatsia.

+

0

Greenhouses No. 1 2 (Night Temp. 60, 750 square feet) Begonia, Poinsettia, Coleus, Nasturtium, Orchids, Violets, Crotons, Ferns, Ivy, Anthurium.

+

Greenhouses No. 3, 4, 5, 6 (Night Temp.

45 °, 1500 square feet) Chrysanthemum, Lilies, Cineraria, Calceolaria, Snapdragon, Geranium, Nerine, Crab Cactus, Hydrangea, Browallia.

.,,,

Instead of the present fixed schedules for delivery, the flowers and plants will be transferred to the Court itself as the need arises using specially designed 3-wheeled carts. These carts will be used within the houses as ramps connect all levels.

This project, the largest undertaking by the Trustees since Mrs. Gardner's death in 1924, stands as a veritable oasis in a densely crowded city area. The greenhouses are now part of the outside gardens of a museum that is itself an architectural creation without parallel, and they serve a collection of fine arts where galleries open onto a year round garden, where the visitor may experience the beauty of nature and the art of man at the same moment.

Anthony Hars

..... .

•

. I LEOKND I

M& I •

• u 1L O t •O

..... ......

o o••••HOu••• 7

C:Ol..O • • • • • O

.

. .: i ;

0000000

41

BASIC DATA: SCOPE:

6,ooo square feet of greenhouses with auxiliary areas for Receiving, Work Room, Boiler Room, Storage and Parking.

MATERIALS:

Foundation: Concrete foundation walls, extending 2' above finished floor, on wood piles and a grid of concrete grade beams.

Superstructure: Laminated wood arches (southern pine treated, stained) with Plexiglas skin."

0

MECHANICAL:

Individual heating and ventilating units connected to boiler plant. Boilers: 2 gas-fired steam boilers.

INTERIOR:

Galvanized steel benches (grilles) on concrete blocks.

42

CREDITS : Architect, James Lawrence, F.A.I.A., Boston, Massachusetts Project Architect: Anthony Hars, A.I.A. Consulting Engineers: Cleverdon, Varney & Pike, Boston, Massachusetts Contractor : Bailey and Joyce, Cambridge, Massachusetts Horticultural Consultant: Everitt Miller, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania OPENING DATE:

May,1972

by Henri Matisse, oil on canvas, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

THE TERRACE, ST. TROPEZ,

28 lf.i

x

22 3,1.i

inches. Cleaned during

1971.

Report of the President

Late in 1969 a plan was presented to the Trustees and adopted by them involving the moving of the greenhouse activities from Brookline to the Museum's grounds in Boston. It soon became evident that this would be difficult if not impossible without acquiring adjacent land belonging to the Powers School on Evans Way. This was purchased in the spring of 1971 and after the school year ended the building was razed and construction begun on n ew greenhouses as an attempt to move the old ones from Brookline would have been costly and unsatisfactory.

It was also decided to make some major changes in the office wing and working areas of the Museum, thus involving the Museum in the largest structural undertaking ever. Work on these projects went on during the year and it is expected the new greenhouses will be in operation and the major changes completed by late April or early May1972.

The attendance during the year was slightly more than in 1970 and happily the use by Boston Public Schools increased appreciably.

All in all it has been an exciting yea r and we are again grateful to the Director and all our staff, including John Sullivan who retired July 1st after forty-six years of remarkable service as head gardener.

G. Peabody Gardner President

45

Report of the Director

With an annual attendance of around 150 ,000 fo r the last seven years, and almost h alf of that on Sundays, the museum revised its schedule in September to provide more h ours on weekdays and to simplify the informa tion sought by the public. From first reports, it appears that this has been successful in dis tributing attendan ce throughout the week, and in allowing more casual visiting.

From September th rough June, the museum is closed on Mo ndays, open from 1-5 :3 0 on the other six days, except Tuesdays when the hours are extended to 9 :30. In July and August, the museum will be closed Sundays and M ondays, and at 5 :30 on T uesdays. As in the past, the m useum is closed on national holidays.

Visitors are often surprised to learn tha t the museum was incorporated in 1900 and public hours were provided fo r, if capriciously, during Mrs. Gardner's life time. Following h er death in 1 9 2 4 , the museum was open four days a week, closed the en tire mon th of A ugus t. The music was introd uced on a regula r sch edule a fe w years after that when the Trustees were anxious to attract new visitors. In the la te fifties, to meet a rising demand for visits a t o ther times, guided tours were offered on closed days during most of the year.

In an other move intended to favor those who come to see the collection, the music program s were shifted to 4 p .m. on Thursday and Sunday and to 8 p .m. on T uesday evenings. Th e Thursd ay progra m is one-h alf hour, the o thers one hour in leng th, providing a to tal of two and oneh alf hours a week from September th rough June.

T h is compares favora bly wi th the former schedule of two hours a week, September through July.

The 1971 concerts presented in the T apestry Room included an unusually varied range of programs and performing groups. Chamber

music concerts given each Tuesday evening have been almost as well attended as the Sunday afternoon concerts. The first programs in several new kinds of concerts were also begun - a series of children's concerts, with participation by the a udience, a series of orchestral concerts, and a series of string quartet programs - and these h ave offered seldom-heard music to the public.

Generou s grants from the Music Performance T rust Fund h ave enabled the museum to extend the music sch eduling to include larger ensembles.

In addition to establish ed names, the museum is pleased to schedule many young musicians for their Boston debuts.

The construction of new greenhouses, described in a separa te article, followed a renovation in the offi ce wing which moved the laborato ry into larger quarters, establish ed the library in a separate room and made adjustments to the offices and kitchen . A second project in the main building, and nea r completion at year' s end, will provide the public with an easy access from the Ch inese Loggia to a new sales desk and wash rooms.

A Green Room for musicians, also available to the staff, was placed off of the widened elevator corridor. Guards' locker and lunch rooms and a n ew textile workroom, much needed, are included in the designs.

A small collection of oriental objects, mostly of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was sold from storage, by order of the Trustees, at the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. As these objects could n ot be shown in the museum, the space made available through the sale was put to good use at the time of the renovations described above.

Lights were added to the museum's grounds fo r security and in some galleries for the benefit of the visiting public. More will be done as the opportunity arises. Any change causes

strains on staff who maintain and guard the collection but those have been met with a minimum adjustment, and no slackening in faithful service.

In other ways the museum took steps to be of greater service while avoiding unmanageable numbers within our limited space. Together with staff from the Boston Public Schools, the museum's staff arranged special programs for small groups in music appreciation (two concerts), advanced Italian, and the cultural history of Florence during the Renaissance. The last of these, six sessions, was repeated again this winter for the Copley Square School, while other such programs are now under discussion and will be offered during the spring.

Despite the upheaval, the laboratory continued the work of conservation, cleaning, examination, and reporting. The Chigi Botticelli was treated extensively, a thick layer of varnish removed, and loose paint attached. The Matisse was cleaned, and panels by Bacchiacca and Giambono were given the attention needed. To arrest deterioration of the large stone altarpiece at the north end of the West Cloister, a chemical was sprayed on the surface. A more difficult task continues on the fifteenth century stone retable in the North Cloister where paint of a later date is removed in small areas manually. Other kinds of repairs were made on fifty-one pieces of furniture, fifteen books, five wooden objects, five pieces of leather, two Japanese screens, four drawings and three pieces of china. Full reports are kept in the laboratory files with a summary in the museum's inventory and notes.

Sir Philip Hendy spent two months in Boston in connection with his revisions to the Catalogue of Paintings (European and American) which will be published in 1973. Work on a small book of Oriental and Islamic objects and the Catalogue of Sculpture (European and American) was carried forward toward publication in a year or two. All of this research draws on laboratory examinations, as an accurate definition of materials and condition is an essential part of the description of an object.

With forty-six years of distinguished service, John Sullivan, head gardener, retired on the first of July. A group of Trustees and the director wished him farewell, and a statement read by the president, recounting his service and the prizes won by his flowers, will be on display in the new greenhouse. The splendor of the Court,

now famous, has been an affirmation of his ability; this past year was no exception. His able successor is Robert MacKenzie who has been his assistant since 1960. John J. Kennedy, maintenance foreman, retired on 31 December. He will continue on the staff as a guard, and the museum will benefit from the same loyalty and skill displayed during the past thirty-five years .

The director continued as the unofficial secretary for The Fenway Group which now includes nine neighboring institutions. Monthly meetings seek ways of securing improved service from governmental agencies, and afford members a chance to exchange information and assist one another.

Two lectures on the museum were given by the director, the first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, the other at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, for a series presented

by New York University.

Return at the Sales Desk was: 1971 Books $ 2,760.55 Guides and Information Folders 3,555.20 Cards 4'494-15 Color Transparencies 1,716.25 Miscellaneous 971.68

Total

$13,497.83

3,080.65 4,206.65 2,370.90 676.27 $13,363.92

Attendance was slightly greater than in 1970: Weekdays Sundays Closed-day tours (omitted after August) Special visits during closed hours Total

1971 83,496 58,107

1970 75,711 62,247

3,713

4,789

3,267

4,016

148,583

146,763

Included in those fi gures were the following: Open evening tour (January through July) Boston Public Schools Schools outside Boston Colleges and Technical Schools Other Organizations

Groups

Persons

7 39 95

115 1,056 3'484

44 44

879 1,003 47

Special visits were permitted to fifteen organizations. Those of more than one hundred persons were : (100) Business Associates Club 15 April Friends of the Beacon 7 May (300) Hill Nursery School Boston Symphony Orchestra (105) 10 May International Newspaper 16 May (250) Association Raytheon Advanced 7 June (200) Management Association American Association of 7 October Textile Chemists and Co loris ts (346) Emmanuel College 8 October (614) Class of 1973 American Vacuum Society (379) JO October 5 November New England Branch of (251) the Orton Society 10 November Reception for the Massachusetts Antioquian Committee given by Governor and Mrs. Francis Sargent (157) 7 December Massachusetts Heart Association Reception for Volunteer Workers (340) At the service in memory of Isabella Stewart Gardner on Wednesday, 14 April, the celebrant was the Reverend Father Alfred L. Pederson, S.S.J.E. Music was provided by members of the Saint Paul Choir School, Cambridge.

Three of the Staff have retired : John J. Kennedy, maintenance foreman, 31 December; Vincenzina Romano, conservation technician, 16 July ; John F. Sullivan, head gardener at the greenhouse, 30 June.

Five have resigned : Harold J. Edgett, guard, 20 December; Dorothy E. Galliher, conservation technician, 19 November; Janet M. Gardner, Secretary for Administration, 15 January; Edward P . Naylor, November; Ivy Williamson, maintenance technician, 24 December.

Seventeen have been engaged for regular duties: Loren L. Benson, sales clerk, 1 September; Walter A. Benson, guard, 1 September; Jeremiah J. Clifford, guard, 1 September; Edward F. Conley, guard, 1 November; Bernard Doherty, guard, 20 October; Benjamin J. Donahue, guard, 1 September; Dennis Fitzgerald, guard, 1 September; John W. Fleming, guard, 1 September; John H. Holland, guard, 1 October; Thomas J. Jennings, guard, 24 November; Patrick J. Kearney, guard, 1 September; Garen Lindsay, gardener, 17 May; Noreen A. O'Leary, conservation technician, 22 November; Frances L. Preston, Associate Secretary for Administration, 18 January; John C. Rihner, guard, 25 February; Joseph Rajunas, guard, 1 September; Patrick H . Slevin, 1 September.

On restricted schedules were: Sherryl Baker, Dennis Crowley, Roosevelt Harris, Joseph Kiarsis, Eric Ladd, John Maretti, Liana Cheney.

Rollin van N . Hadley

THE MADONNA AND CHILD OF THE EUCHARIST, by Alessandro Botticelli, tempera on panel, 33 x Cleaned during 1971. Isabella Stewart Ga rdner Museum, Boston.

24

3

/4 inches.

Note on the Organization of the Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated (Museum Corporation), a Massachusetts charitable corporation, is the sole trustee under the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Upon her death in 1924, Mrs. Gardner left to seven individual trustees the property which now constitutes the Museum - Fenway Court and the works of art she had collected there, some of which were owned by her directly and some by a corporation of which she owned all the capital stock, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated (Fenway Corporation).

She also gave her trustees an endowment fund for the support of the Museum.

In 1936 the individual trustees under Mrs. Gardner's will organized the Museum Corporation and resigned as trustees under the will. The Museum Corporation was appointed by the Probate Court to be successor trustee in their stead and now holds all the trust property, consisting of the real estate, the collection (owned either directly or through Fen way Corporation) , and the endowment.

Under the By-laws of the Museum Corporation it is managed by a board of seven trustees who have the power to fill vacancies in their own number. The officers, elected annually by the trustees, are a President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. A Finance Committee of at least two members appointed by the trustees is responsible for the Museum' s investments.

Under the terms of Mrs. Gardner' s will full authority over the Museum, the collection, and the staff is vested in the Director, who is appointed and subject to removal by her trustees (now the Museum Corporation).

THE DUTCH ROOM,

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Publications

GENERAL CATALOGUE, by Gilbert W. Longstreet An itinerary catalogue of the collection, with brief descriptions of all the objects.

Cloth bound $2.50 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) packing $ .50 (foreign) CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITED PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS, by Philip Hendy A descriptive catalogue, with biographies of the artists and reproductions of the paintings.

Cloth bound $2.50 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) $ .60 (foreign) packing DRAWINGS/ ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, edited by Rollin van N. Hadley A small group of notable drawings ranging in date from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century; illustrated with 38 pix., frontispiece in color.

Paper bound $2.50 Postage and $ .25 (domestic) packing $ .35 (foreign) ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AND FENWAY COURT, by Morris Carter A biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a history of the formation of her collection, by the first director of the museum; illustrated.

Cloth bound $3.50 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) $ .50 (foreign) packing MUSEUM GUIDE For the use of visitors; illustrated; 98 pp.

Paper bound $ -75 Postage and $ .25 (domestic) $ .35 (foreign) packing

TITIAN'S RAPE OF EUROPA, by Arthur Pope A study of the composition and the mode of representation of this and related paintings ; illustrated.

Paper bound $1.95 Cloth bound $2.95 Postage and $ .25 (domestic) packing $ .30 (foreign) FENWA Y COURT A small illustrated journal, each issue on one subject. A list of 22 subjects will be sent on request.

30 cents per issue (Library discount offered only on set of 22 issues.)

TREASURES FROM THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, by George L. Stout (Crown Publishers, New York) An illustrated history of the museum and its collection by its second director.

Cloth bound $10.00 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) packing $ .50 (foreign) MRS. JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp (Little, Brown, Boston) A recent biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Cloth bound $6.95 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) packing $ .50 (foreign)

*Mail orders will be shipped by 4th class, library rate (domestic) or surface rates (foreign). Please make check or money order payable to I. S. G. M. Libraries and other educational institutions are offered a 40% discount.

51

Trustees

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated Sole Trustee under the wi ll of Isabella Stewart Gardner President G. Peabody Gardner Vice-President and Secretary Malcolm D. Perkins Treasurer John Lowell Gardner

Elliot Forbes Mason Hammond Francis W. H a tch, Jr. James Lawrence, Jr.

Staff*

Director Emeritus George L. Stout

SECURITY AND MA I NTENANCE

Supervisor of Buildings John F. Niland Director Security Foremen Rollin van N. Hadley Patrick T . Niland Assistant to the Director Patrick J. Naughton Linda V. Hewitt Maintenance Foreman Secretary for John J. Kennedy Administration Shop T echnician Beverly J. Cha tham Michael Finnerty Associate Secretary for Maintenance and Watch Administration Robert Anderson Frances L. Preston Flora A. Berry Director of Music Patrick Burns Johanna Giwosky George E. Coleman William Evans Research Associates Robert French Paula M. Kozol Thomas Little Yasuko Horioka Dennis S. Mahoney Docen ts Yvonne Mercer Anne D . Bergquist Joseph Miniutti Judith E. Hanhisalo Elwin F. Rich Jessie M . Stua rt Alfred J. Smith Nicholas A. Tranquillo Guards Photographer Walter Benson Joseph B. Pratt Stanley F. Bentley Sales Clerk Jeremiah Clifford Carl R. Erla ndson Edward Conley Loren Benson Bernard Doherty Benjamin Donahue COLLECTION Alfred J. Donnell Conservator Denni s Fitzgerald James W. Howard, Jr. John W. Fleming Conservator of Textiles Anthony Flynn Yvonne A. A. Cox Michael Flynn Assistant Restorer Thomas F. Flynn Leo V. Klos Albert B. Gordon Conservation Technicians Henry L. Gormley Marjorie Bullock Noreen O ' Leary Patricia Peterson Ana Wertelecki

ADM I N I STRATION

*on regular duty 31 December 1971

52

Edward Gray John H. Holland Harold R. Holm Patrick Hurley Thomas Jennings Patrick J. Kearney Patrick McDonough John F. McElhinney Daniel J. McGuire Charles A. McStravick Edward P. Naylor Charles R. Parsons Joseph Rajunas Clement F. Reardon John F. Reardon Thomas D . Reynolds John C. Rihner Martin J. Roper Patrick Slevin David A. Twomey Walter J. Westwood G ARDENING

Head Gardener (Greenhouse) Robert M. Mackenzie Head Gardener (Museum) John A . Madden Gardeners Michael Cogavin Martin Davis Charles P. Healy, Jr. Stanley Kozak Garen Lindsay

Report of the Treasurer STATEMENT OF ASSETS AND FUND BALANCES DECEMBER 31, 1971AND1970

ASSETS

1971

CAsH

$

INVESTMENTS (Note 1): Bonds (quoted market price at December 31, 1971: $4,652,830) Stocks (quoted market price at December 31, 1971: $u,358,345)

5,480,553 $11,680,059

$10,739,913

4,015,000

4,015,000

49,000

49,000

$ 4,430,400 101,658

$ 4,430,000 101,658

$ 4,532,058 $ 179,892

$ 4,532,058 $

$16,511,591

$15,309,265

27,653

24,000

$16,483,938

$15,285,265

$

$

MusEUM PROPERTY, primarily at appraised values (Note 2): Land and buildings

All the outstanding shares of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated, representing Contents of Museum building Lot and greenhouse Adjacent land, at cost AovANCEs TowARD SPECIAL PROJECT (Note 6) Total assets LEss -

reserve for Federal income taxes

FUND BALANCES OPERATING (Note 3) GENERAL PENSION (Note 4) MAINTENANCE AND DEPRECIATION

54,156

34,008

14,502,723

13,263,518

1,134,586

1,163,701

792,473

824,038

$16,483,938

$15,285,265

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND EXPENDITURES AND ALLOCATION TO FUNDS FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1971 AND 1970

INVESTMENT INCOME: Interest from bonds Dividends from stocks OPERATING EXPENDITURES: Museum operating expenses Maintenance and security Gardening and grounds Music Care of collections and paintings Administration Insurance Compensation of managing trustees Professional services Greenhouse consulting fees Pensions (Note 4) Sale of publications and other items at Museum*

1971

1970

$

335,032 340,392

$261,344 333,244

$

675,424

$594,588

$

221,583 62,442 34,629 46,780 114,745 11,663 4,060 21,874

$204'483 57,008 35,713 42,545 109,092 14'327 3,980 18,825 10,525 20,000 (19,918)

29,115 (19,000) $

527,891

$496,580

EXCESS OF INVESTMENT INCOME OVER OPERATING EXPENDITURES

$

147,533

$ 98,008

NON-OPERATING INCOME (EXPENDITURES) Renovations to Museum building

$ (161,565)

Extraordinary income, net (Note 5) Net non-operating expenditures PROVISION FOR FEDERAL INCOME TAX (Note 7) EXCESS OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURES EXCESS OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURES CAPITAL GAINS (LossEs) ON INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS, net ALLOCATED TO FUNDS AS FOLLOWS: Operating (Note 3) General Pension (net of pensions paid) (Note 4) Maintenance and Depreciation

45,306 $ (116,259) ,26,500 $ 4,774

$ 74,008

$

4,774

$ 74,008

1,193,899

(28,793)

$ 24,000

$ 1,198,673

$ 45,215

$

$ 34,008 (28,793)

20,148 1,239,205 (29,115) (31,565)

$ 1,198,673

*Sales Desk: 1971 -

$

$14,914.55 1970 - $13,363.92 The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

40,000 $ 45,215

STATEMENT OF FUND BALANCES FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1971 AND 1970 Operating (Note 3)

General (Note 5)

Pension (Note 4)

Maintenance and Depreciation

Total

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1969 Excess of income over expenditures Allocation - Maintenance and Depreciation Capital losses on investments, net Transfer (Note 3)

$ 193,026

$13,292,311

$1,163,701

$ 591,012

$15,240,050

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1970 Excess of income over expenditures Allocation - Maintenance and Depreciation Pension (Note 4) Net non-operating expenditures Capital gains on investments, net

$ 34,008

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971

$ 54,156

74,008

74,008

(40,000)

40,000 (28,793)

(28,793)

(193,026)

193,026 $13,263,518

$1,163,701

$ 824,038

4,774

$15,285,265 4,774

(130,000) 29,115

130,000 (29,115)

116,259

45,306

(161,565)

1,193,899 $14,502,723

1,193,899 $1,134,586

$ 792'473

$16'483,938

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

STATEMENTS OF CHANGES IN FINANCIAL POSITION FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1971 AND 1970 Funds on Cost Basis

Unrealized Gains

Total Funds Including Unrealized Gains

CASH AND INVESTMENTS MUSEUM PROPERTY

$10,809,650 4,430'400

$14,577,247 4,430'400

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1969 Excess of investment income over operating expenditures Provision for Federal income taxes Realized capital losses Net increase in quoted market price of investments

$15,240,050 98,008 (24,000) (28,793)

$19,007,647 98,008 (24,000)

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1970 Balance consists of: Cash and investments Museum property Reserve for Federal income tax BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1970 Excess of investment income over operating expenditures Net non-operating expenditures (Note 5) Provision for Federal income taxes Realized capital gains on investments, net Net increase in quoted market price of investments

212,755

$4,009,145

$19,294'410

$10,777,207 4,532,058 (24,000)

$14,786,352 4,532,058 (24,000)

$15,285,265

$19,294,410

147,533 (116,259) (26,500) 1,193,899

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971 Balance consists of: Cash and investments Museum property Advances toward special project (Note 6) Reserve for Federal income taxes BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971

28,793 212,755

147,533 (116,259) (26,500) (1,193,899) 1,515,870 $4,331,116

1,515,870 $20,815,054

$11,799,641 4,532,058 179,892 (27,653)

$16,130,757 4,53 2,o58 179,892 (27,653)

$16,483,g38

$20,815,054

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

NOTES TO STATEMENTS DECEMBER 31, 1971

1.

Investments

Investment securities held in the general fund are stated at cost, less amortization of bond premium, if acquired subsequent to December 24, 19?6路 If held on that date they are carried at market values shown in the Trustee' s inventory.

2.

7. Federal Income Taxes During 1971 the Museum was classified as a Private!

Operating Foundation with the Internal Revenue Service. Based on said classification, the Museum is required to pay a Federal income tax, at the rate of 4%, on its net investment income. As defined by the Tax Reform Act of 1969, such net investment income subject to tax includes net capital gains as determined under particular provisions of the Reform Act. In 1971, the Museum did not have any net capital gains subject to tax.

Museum Property

The Museum land and buildings, together with all the shares of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated (representing the contents of the Museum building, lot and greenhouse) are stated at appraised values as shown in the Trustee's inventory as of December 24, 1936.

3. Restriction upon Surplus in Operating Fund The Trustees are directed under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner to pay to certain named hospitals any surplus of income which, in the opinion of the Director and Trustees, will not be needed for the proper and reasonable maintenance of the Museum.

These amounts, if any, are payable at the end of successive five-year periods, the n!!xt of which ends in 1974.

The last such period ended December 31, 1969, and the Director and Trustees determined that there was no surplus income for the period 1965-1969 which, in their opinion, would not be needed for the purposes of the Museum. Accordingly, the five-year accumulative surplus of $193,026 as of December 31, 1969 was transferred to the maintenance and depreciation fund during 1970.

4. Pension Fund The Museum has no formal pension arrangements with employees. The Trustees made discretionary payments of $29,115 to certain retired employees during the year ended December 31, 1971. These payments were allocated to the Pension Fund.

5. Extraordinary Income During 1971, the Museum received approximately $52,000 from the consignment sale of certain artifacts which were not on exhibit at the Museum, and approximately $10,700 from the Ford Foundation for the cataloging of its collection. It also incurred expenses in connection with an appraisal made of the contents of the Museum. The net of these and other items of income and expense ($45,306) was allocated to the General Fund.

6. Advances Toward Special Project

Construction was begun during 1971 for a new greenhouse adjacent to the Museum which will replace the present greenhouse complex in Brookline.

Costs are being deferred until construction is completed, at which time the present greenhouse will be sold.

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS

To the Trustees, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner: We have examined the statement of assets and fund balances of THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, INCORPORATED (a Massachusetts corporation, not for profit), TRUSTEE UNDER THE WILL OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER as of December 31, 1971, and the related statements of income and expenditures, allocation to funds, fund balances, and changes in financial position for the year then ended. Our examination was made in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, and accordingly included such tests of the accounting records and such other auditing procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We have previously examined and reported on the statements for the preceding year.

The accounts of the Museum are maintained on the cash basis, except for Federal income taxes, and the accompanying statements have been prepared on this modified basis. The Museum has consistently followed the practice of charging to expense capital assets acquired subsequent to December 24, 1936, and of making no provision for the depreciation of Museum property. Allocations to the maintenance and depreciation fund are credited thereto when authorized by the Trustees.

In our opinion, the accompanying statements present fairly the assets and fund balances of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner as of December 31, 1971, and its income and expenditures, allocation to funds, fund balances, and changes in financial position for the year then ended, in accordance with the method of accounting specified above, applied on a basis consistent with that of the preceding year.

ARTHUR ANDERSEN & Co.

Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1972.