Category: Research
New Release: Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print
December 6 2021
Picture: Lund Humphries
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Lund Humphries will be releasing Amy Golahny's latest book later this month entitled Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print: His Master Etching.
According to the book's blurb:
Always recognised as a master print from the moment of its appearance around 1649, the Hundred Guilder Print is one of Rembrandt's most compositionally complex and visually beautiful works.
This book gives a full overview of the fascinating story surrounding this print, from its genesis and market value to attitudes towards it in the present day. Focusing on the tradition of printmaking as well as the reception of the print in Rembrandt's time, Golahny explores the ways the artist made visual references to the work of such masters as Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, while uniquely combining aspects of Christ's ministry.
Rubens and His Global Enterprise
December 3 2021
Video: Getty Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a video I'll be trying to catch up with later (after I go and view some of the London OMP sales this afternoon). The Getty Museum have published this online lecture by curator Stephanie Schrader on Peter Paul Rubens and His Global Enterprise.
According to the blurb:
The 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens worked in Antwerp, a bustling center of global trade where various cultures came into contact. To understand how this impacted his work, curator Stephanie Schrader investigates two of his drawings in the Getty Museum’s collection: Man in Korean Costume and Head Study for Balthazar. Both artworks provide important examples of the various misunderstandings that arose when Rubens depicted people of African and Korean descent. By viewing these works from religious, mercantile, and political perspectives, Schrader provides a nuanced examination of appropriation and cultural translation.
New Release: François Boucher and the Art of Collecting
December 1 2021
Picture: Routledge
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's an interesting new release that I missed last month. Routledge have recently published a book entitled François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France by Jessica Priebe from the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Australia.
According to the blurb:
While earlier studies have focused predominantly on artist François Boucher’s artistic style and identity, this book presents the first full-length interdisciplinary study of Boucher’s prolific collection of around 13,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, porcelain, shells, minerals, and other imported curios.
It discusses the types of objects he collected, the networks through which he acquired them, and their spectacular display in his custom-designed studio at the Louvre, where he lived and worked for nearly two decades. This book explores the role his collection played in the development of his art, his studio, his friendships, and the burgeoning market for luxury goods in mid-eighteenth-century France. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Boucher’s artistic and collecting practices, which attracted both praise and criticism from period observers.
Burlington Magazine - Photography
December 1 2021
Picture: Private Collection via. The Burlington Magazine
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
December's edition of the The Burlington Magazine focuses on the art of Photography. As usual, there are many interesting pieces to be found, including articles on on the museum photographer Isabel Agnes Cowper, Maria Ponti Pasolini’s photographic archive, Nicéphore Niépce and the industry of photographic replication and Ilse Bing at Glyndebourne.
In fact, this month's edition contains my debut article for the magazine (please forgive the shameless plug). The article focuses on a photograph which fell out of a book whilst I was scouring through a private library. It turned out to be an unrecorded photograph of Ellen Terry by the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (pictured). Furthermore, it shows Terry in her wedding dress which was designed by William Holman Hunt. The photograph is, I believe, connected to George Frederic Watt's 1864 painting of Terry known as Choosing (NPG), which shows her in the same dress, necklace and profile pose. Find yourself a copy to read more.
Crack the code of egg-tempera paints
November 29 2021
Picture: Angewandte Chemie
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those readers who like an in-depth scientific analysis of painting materials, here's a recently published article that might be of interest.
This month's edition of the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie has an article on Connecting Rheological Properties and Molecular Dynamics of Egg-Tempera Paints based on Egg Yolk (paywall, unfortunately) penned by Dr. Agathe Fanost, Dr. Laurence de Viguerie, Dr. Guylaine Ducouret, Prof. Guillaume Mériguet, Dr. Philippe Walter, Helen Glanville, Dr. Anne-Laure Rollet, Prof. Maguy Jaber.
Confused by the title? According to the abstract:
Egg-tempera painting is a pictorial technique widely used in the Middle Ages, although poorly studied in its physico-chemical aspects until now. Here we show how NMR relaxometry and rheology can be combined to probe egg-tempera paints and shed new light on their structure and behavior. Based on recipes of the 15th century, model formulations with egg yolk and green earth have been reproduced to characterize the physicochemical properties of this paint at the mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. The rheological measurements highlight a synergetic effect between green earth and egg yolk, induced by the interactions between them and the structural organisation of the system. 1H NMR relaxometry emphasizes the presence and the structure of a network formed by the yolk and the pigment.
New Release: A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820
November 24 2021
Picture: Yale University Press
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Paul Mellon Centre have shared news of a new Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers 1714-1820 by David Alexander published by Yale University Press.
In case the title doesn't sell itself:
This biographical dictionary of engravers working on copper encompasses both those who produced fine art prints, and also those who engraved book illustrations for medical, technical and literary works, all of which played a more important part than is usually realised in spreading information in the age of Enlightenment. Some 4,000 biographical entries draw on much unpublished information, researched over four decades, notably records of apprenticeship, genealogy, insurance and bankruptcy as well as newspaper advertisements and contemporary accounts.
New Release: Peintures francaises - La collection du musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
November 22 2021
Picture: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes have this month released their latest complete catalogue of their collection of French paintings from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The catalogue was edited by curator Guillaume Kazerouni and features works by the likes of Boucher, Chardin, Vincent, Lagrenée, Amand, Doyen, Suvée, Varin, Lallemant, Tassel, La Hyre, Le Nain, La Tour, Vouet, Senelle, Blanchard, Baugin, Vignon, Stella, Corneille, Loir, Le Brun, Verdier, Coypel, La Fosse, Jouvenet, Boullogne and others.
Hermitage Recreates Sounds of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths
November 22 2021
Video: State Hermitage Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
As today is Saint Cecilia's Day, it seems only right that I share this brilliant new video produced by the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The video (featuring English subtitles) shows a recreation of the music found in a painting by the Master of the Female Half-Lengths.
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This painting and composition has intrigued me for many years, especially as there are a few known versions that have survived. I've always been intrigued by the open and empty lute case that is found hanging on the wall behind the players. It is so purposefully placed there one imagines it had a specific meaning. A suggestion perhaps that these women were unmarried (?) Other suggestions I've heard are far too graphic to be retold here.
'Rembrandt made a mess of his legal and financial life'
November 18 2021
Picture: donner.nl
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
'Rembrandt made a mess of his legal and financial life' is but one of the claims made in a new book by the Dutch Emeritus Professor of Private Law Bob Wessels. I'm sure this fact won't be too surprising to many readers of AHN.
The University of Leiden have published a rather interesting interview with Wessels which explains more about his research into Rembrandt's legal and financial dealings. The book also claims that ‘Rembrandt was a stubborn, socially inept shopaholic.'
Rembrandt's Money is out this month.
New Catalogue: German Paintings in the Städel Museum
November 12 2021
Picture: Städel Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (International Network of Curators of Dutch and Flemish Art) have shared news that the Städel Museum have published a new two volume catalogue of their German Paintings. The catalogue covers the period of 1550-1725 and was edited by Almut Pollmer-Schmidt with Christiane Weber and Fabian Wolf.
According to the brief write-up:
The two-volume catalogue includes new research on paintings by Adam Elsheimer, Georg Flegel, Johann Heinrich Roos and others who are closely related to their Dutch contemporaries. In addition, several paintings have been re-attributed to Dutch artists, including a self-portrait by Wallerant Vaillant (1623-1677).
All the works have been examined in detail from the perspective of both art history and painting technology based on the most recent scientific methods. The incorporation of the respective cultural-historical background gives rise to new insights regarding the creation, attribution, identification, or interpretation of the individual paintings. The overview provides insights into the history of the collection, exhibitions, and research, and opens up a panorama of multi-layered art production in early modern Germany.
New Release: Rubens in Repeat
November 12 2021
Picture: Getty Publications
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Getty Publication's latest November release is Aaron M. Hyman's book Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America.
According to the book's blurb:
This book examines the reception in Latin America of prints designed by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, showing how colonial artists used such designs to create all manner of artworks and, in the process, forged new frameworks for artistic creativity. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) never crossed the Atlantic himself, but his impact in colonial Latin America was profound. Prints made after the Flemish artist's designs were routinely sent from Europe to the Spanish Americas, where artists used them to make all manner of objects. Rubens in Repeat is the first comprehensive study of this transatlantic phenomenon, despite broad recognition that it was one of the most important forces to shape the artistic landscapes of the region. Copying, particularly in colonial contexts, has traditionally held negative implications that have discouraged its serious exploration. Yet analyzing the interpretation of printed sources and recontextualizing the resulting works within period discourse and their original spaces of display allow a new critical reassessment of this broad category of art produced in colonial Latin America-art that has all too easily been dismissed as derivative and thus unworthy of sustained interest and investigation. This book takes a new approach to the paradigms of artistic authorship that emerged alongside these complex creative responses, focusing on the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that the use of European prints was an essential component of the very framework in which colonial artists forged ideas about what it meant to be a creator.
Prado Downgrades Salvator Mundi
November 11 2021
Picture: Christie's
Posted by the Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper has published news that the Salvator Mundi has been downgraded in an upcoming exhibition catalogue published by the Prado Museum in Madrid. A new exhibition dedicated to Leonardo and the copy of the Mona Lisa will open at the museum in January 2022. The work has been catalogued as part of the section entitled 'attributed works, workshop or authorised and supervised by Leonardo.' More specifically, the catalogue essay by curator Ana Gonzáles Mozo states that there is 'no painted prototype' by Leonardo.
According to the article:
Mozo proposes that another copy of Salvator Mundi, the so-called Ganay version (1505-15), is the closest to Leonardo’s lost original. Acquired by the marquis de Ganay in 1939, it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1999 and is now in an anonymous private collection. Mozo argues that the skilled workshop artist who painted the Ganay Salvator Mundi was also responsible for the Prado’s early copy of the Mona Lisa (1507-16). Although the catalogue includes a full-page image of the Ganay Salvator Mundi, the Cook version [the Christie's version that sold in 2015] is not even illustrated.
Jacob Backer's Euterpe Identified
November 10 2021
Picture: pubhist.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from the Netherlands that a music historian has identified the sitter in a painting by Jacob Backer (1608-1651). Long described as being a representation of the Muse Euterpe, scholar Thiemo Wind has managed to identify the sitter as Adriana van den Bergh. Adriana, a flute player, had a booklet of music dedicated to her as a young girl. Wind's explorations into the seventeenth century archives managed to find a specific reference to Backer's painting of the girl found in a document relating to the estate of her brothers. She eventually married a merchant Jan Verstegen, bore him nine children, and ended up bankrupt.
The painting survives in an unknown private collection having been sold from the Albert Vandervelden Foundation in the past.
Dostoevsky and the Old Masters
November 5 2021
Picture: Apollo
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apollo have published a short article online regarding the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky's interest in Old Master Paintings. The piece by Rosamund Bartlett explains the various paintings that held great significance for the writer, including works by the likes of Raphael, Holbein and Claude Lorrain.
Back of the Night Watch on View
November 5 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Ever been curious about what the back of Rembrandt's The Night Watch looks like? Well, The Rijksmuseum's latest phase of 'Operation Night Watch' has seen the arrangement of a new display to show the back of the canvas and stretcher. This rare opportunity is due to work by conservators to study the rear of the painting.
If you really want to see the back of the picture, then you only have until the 23rd November to do so!
Lecture: 'More perfect and excellent than men' - The Women Artists of Bologna
November 5 2021
Picture: NGA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
This year's Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art, hosted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., will feature the topic of “‘More perfect and excellent than men’: The Women Artists of Bologna presented by Babette Bohn. The live free lecture, broadcast via. Zoom, will be premiered today (5th November 2021) at 1pm (Eastern Time). Registration is required.
According to the blurb:
Early modern Bologna was exceptional for its many talented women artists. Thanks to a long-standing tradition of honoring accomplished women, several attentive artistic biographers, strong local interest in collecting women’s work, and permissive attitudes toward women studying with male artists who were not family members, Bologna was home to more women artists than any other city in early modern Italy. Bolognese women artists were unusual not only for their large numbers but also for their varied specializations and frequent public success. They painted altarpieces, nudes, mythologies, allegories, portraits, and self-portraits, creating sculptures, drawings, prints, embroidery, and paintings. This lecture challenges some common assumptions about women artists, suggesting productive approaches for future research.
Paul Mellon Centre Photo Archive Online 8th November
November 3 2021
Picture: PMC
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Paul Mellon Centre has announced that its new online digitized Photo Archive, which includes the The Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive and The Tate Photographic Archive, will be launched on Monday 8th November 2021. These archives contain roughly 150,000 reference photographs of British paintings, sculpture, drawings and prints.
Another Leiden Collection Rembrandt Catalogued
November 3 2021
Picture: The Leiden Collection
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Leiden Collection have announced that they have added another full catalogue for one of their paintings to their website.
Lara Yeager-Crasselt's note for Portrait of a Young Woman (“The Middendorf Rembrandt”) (pictured) is particularly interesting due to the discussion regarding the various changes in attribution over the years. The painting had been rejected by the Rembrandt Research Project in 1986 and was relegated to a work by an assistant working in the artist's studio. However, the note also goes on to explain the evolution in views surrounding the painting and Rembrandt's working method. The oil on panel has since been given back to Rembrandt in full.
2020 Release: Rembrandt: Studies in His Varied Approaches to Italian Art
November 2 2021
Picture: Brill
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Historians of Netherlandish Art have published an interesting online review of Amy Golahny's 2020 publication entitled Rembrandt: Studies in His Varied Approaches to Italian Art (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History).
To quote the opening paragraph of the review:
Constantijn Huygens’s oft-cited remarks about the young Rembrandt’s (and Lievens’s) disinterest in traveling to Italy, justified in part by the wealth of Italian art that could then be found in the Dutch Republic, have anchored a multitude of studies addressing Rembrandt’s engagement with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries south of the Alps. Over the course of more than three decades, Amy Golahny has contributed numerous publications to this literature.[1] Her latest book, Rembrandt: Studies in His Varied Approaches to Italian Art, encapsulates and builds on her previous studies to offer a comprehensive treatment of the subject.
Printing Plates Masterclass
November 2 2021
Picture: Twitter via @chiara_beta
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Weston Library and Ashmolean Museum will be hosting a rather interesting masterclass next February on the subject of printing with copper plates. The masterclass features lectures by respected scholars in the field and looks to be a must for those fascinated by prints. The masterclass will be held on 21st February 2022 and more details can be found here.
