The Miniature: An (Online) International Conference
March 9 2022
Picture: crrs.ca
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies are holding a three-day online conference on the subject of The Miniature. As we might expect, the conference has a wide program of speakers from institutions across the globe. Presentations will be held online between 10th and 12th March 2022 and although conference is free to attend registration is still required beforehand.
A brief sample of some of the talks that will be featured:
“‘You will offer a ship of silver’: A Brief History of Medieval Votive Ships
“Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces as Miniatures”
“Miniatures Acting Out: Narratives and Statuettes in Early Modern Germany and the Low Countries”
“The Work of the World: Rarities in Miniature”
One of Gainsborough's Earliest Portraits up for Sale
March 9 2022
Picture: Cheffins
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news that the auction house Cheffins will be auctioning off one of Thomas Gainsborough's earliest portraits later this month. The portrait of an unknown lady was discovered by the art historian James Innes-Mulraine in 2016 where it was purchased at a provincial auction house catalogued as 'Circle of Arthur Devis'. Fortunately, research proved otherwise and the painting was eventually accepted by Hugh Belsey, compiler of the artist's portrait catalogue raisonné, as an early Gainsborough dating to c.1742.
The portrait will be sold on 23rd March 2022 carrying an estimate of £30,000 - £50,000.
Zamek Królewski show off their newly acquired Kauffman
March 9 2022
Video: Zamek Królewski
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Zamek Królewski (the Royal Castle) in Warsaw have put on a small exhibition to highlight a new acquisition. In 2021 the castle acquired a version of Angelica Kauffman's Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures.
The Warsaw picture was commissioned by Prince Stanisław Poniatowski, who was a traveller in Rome during the year 1788. As nephew to the King of Poland, Prince Stanisław was known for being serious collector of art. Fans of Kauffman will know that another version of the picture is held by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Renovated Collegio Alberoni Reopens
March 9 2022
Picture: finestresullarte.info
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that the newly renovated Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza, Italy, will be reopening to the public this weekend. In particular, vast interventions have been made to upgrade the apartments belonging to Cardinal Giulio Alberoni (1664–1752) who founded the college and collection of art. The most singular piece in the collection is a version of Antonello da Messina's Ecce Homo.
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Press photographs also show a rather intriguing approach to displaying Jan Provost's Madonna of the fountain and Glass with flowers within a niche:
Queen Victoria's Japanese Screens Rediscovered in the Royal Collection
March 8 2022
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Evening Standard have shared news that several Japanese painted screens have been rediscovered in The Royal Collection. These large screens, which were part of a diplomatic gift received in 1860, will be put on display for the first time later in April.
According to the article:
Eight pairs of screen paintings were sent by the Japanese shogun Tokugawa Iemochi shortly after Japan’s reopening to the West, following more than two centuries of deliberate isolation.
The opulent gift to Victoria marked a landmark treaty that reopened seven Japanese ports and cities to British trade and allowed a British diplomat to reside in Japan for the first time.
But the screens were wrongly catalogued as Japanese works by an unidentified artist when they arrived, and their links to Shogun Iemochi and their historical significance were lost.
It was also found that the pieces – featuring two to three layers of paper rather than the usual six to nine – were hastily produced, probably due to a huge fire in Edo Castle in Tokyo which would have destroyed the original versions before they could be sent to Victoria.
The RCT's exhibition Japan: Courts and Culture will open at the Queen's Gallery on 8th April 2022 and run until 12th March 2023.
A pair of Turners returning to the UK for first time in 100 Years
March 8 2022
Picture: The Frick Collection
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Guardian have shared news that the Frick Collection in New York will be loaning two paintings by JMW Turner to the National Gallery which haven't been seen in the UK for 100 years. The temporary loan will include Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening (pictured) and Harbour of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile which were purchased by Henry Clay Frick in 1914. The free Turner on Tour exhibition will run from November 2022 until February 2023.
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As it happens, the Cologne picture is the subject one of my favourite Ruskin anecdotes associated with the annual Royal Academy exhibitions. The following tale is said to have unfolded when the painting was hung in between two portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence at the RA in 1826:
The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, but it had a most injurious effect on the colour of the two portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified... On the morning of the opening of the exhibition, at the private view, a friend of Turner's who had seen the Cologne in all its splendour, led a group of expectant critics up to the picture. He started back from it in consternation. The golden sky had changed to a dun colour. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part of the room. "Turner, what have you been doing to your picture?" "Oh," muttered Turner in a low voice, "poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only lamp-black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition"
Upcoming Release: A Revolution on Canvas
March 8 2022
Picture: Yale University Press
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's an upcoming summer release that might be of interest. Yale University Press will be publishing Paris A. Spies Gans's new book A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 on 28th June 2022.
According to the publisher's blurb:
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, hundreds of women in London and Paris became professional artists, exhibiting and selling their work in unprecedented numbers. Many rose to the top of their nations’ artistic spheres and earned substantial incomes from their work, regularly navigating institutional inequalities expressly designed to exclude members of their sex. In the first collective, critical history of women artists in Britain and France during the Revolutionary era, Paris Spies-Gans explores how they engaged with and influenced the mainstream cultural currents of their societies at pivotal moments of revolutionary change.
Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the experiences of these narrative painters, portraitists, sculptors, and draughtswomen, this book challenges longstanding assumptions about women in the history of art. Importantly, it demonstrates that women built profitable artistic careers by creating works in nearly every genre practiced by men, in similar proportions and to aesthetic acclaim. It also reveals that hundreds of women studied with male artists, and even learned to draw from the nude. Where traditional histories have left a void, this generously illustrated book illuminates a lively world of artistic production.
Featuring an extensive range of these artists’ paintings, drawings, sculptures, and writings, alongside contemporary prints, satires, and works by their male peers, A Revolution on Canvas transforms our understanding of the opportunities and identities of women artists of the past.
Art History in Focus: London Art Week
March 8 2022
Picture: LAW
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
London Art Week are hosting an interesting selection of free online talks between 8th March and 18th March 2022 as part of their Art History in Focus series. The lectures will be held on Zoom and are entirely free (although registration is required).
Here is a list of the talks:
8th March - Why did so many female artists in pre-modern times focus on still-lifes? (such a shame it's already happened, but let's hope a YouTube recording might be available soon!)
9th March - Donatello - Celebrating the importance of the Renaissance master in the first major exhibition in nearly 40 years
10th March - The Académie Julian in the late 19th century and its influence on women artists internationally
16th March - The Grand Tour, the two Horaces and the Court of Florence (1740-1786) at Strawberry Hill
18th March - Grace, sprezzatura and new discoveries: Parmigianino at The Courtauld
The Art of Experiment: Parmigianino at The Courtauld
March 8 2022
Picture: Courtauld Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Courtauld Gallery in London opened their latest drawings exhibition a few days ago. The Art of Experiment: Parmigianino at The Courtauld will run in The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery (included within general admission) until 5th June 2022.
According to the gallery's website:
The Renaissance artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540), was celebrated for his graceful compositions and praised as the heir to Raphael (1483 – 1520). Parmigianino drew relentlessly during his short life: more than a thousand of his drawings have survived. They show the virtuoso artist, endlessly sketching out new ideas on paper. As well as drawing and painting, Parmigianino also experimented with printmaking, and is considered to have been the first to try the new medium of etching in Italy as well as pioneering the chiaroscuro woodcut technique.
This display will present an important group of twenty-two works by Parmigianino from The Courtauld’s collection. They include a sketch for the artist’s most ambitious painting, the Madonna of the Long Neck. Alongside it, there will be studies for his celebrated frescoes of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma, Italy – one of Parmigianino’s most significant commissions. A collaborative project which involved former and current research students at The Courtauld, the display and its accompanying catalogue will shed light on an artist who approached every technique with unprecedented freedom and produced innovative works which were studied and admired by artists and collectors in his lifetime and for centuries thereafter.
A Bartolomeo Salvestrini donated to the Uffizi
March 7 2022
Picture: ansa.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence have shared news of the donation of Bartolommeo Salvestrini's (1599-1633) King Solomon Offering Incense to an Idol to the museum. The work, which is signed and dated 1626, was gifted to the gallery by Fabrizio and Francesco Guidi Bruscoli and is dedicated to the memory of Daniela Salvadori Guidi Bruscoli. It seems that this picture will be one of only a few examples by the Florentine artist held in Italian public collections.
Fashioning Masculinities at the V&A
March 7 2022
Picture: V&A
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Victoria & Albert Museum's (V&A) latest fashion exhibition Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear is set to open next week. According to the various press images released on their website, it seems that the show will feature several historic paintings which will help to bring to life this intriguing topic.
According to the museum's website:
Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear is the first major V&A exhibition to celebrate the power, artistry and diversity of masculine attire and appearance. Contemporary looks by legendary designers and rising stars will be displayed alongside historical treasures from the V&A's collections and landmark loans: classical sculptures, Renaissance paintings, iconic photographs, and powerful film and performance.
The exhibition showcases the variety of possible masculinities across the centuries from the Renaissance to the global contemporary: from looks by Gucci, Harris Reed, Grace Wales Bonner and Raf Simons, to paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola and Joshua Reynolds, contemporary artworks by David Hockney and Omar Victor Diop, to an extract from an all-male dance performance by Matthew Bourne's New Adventures.
The exhibition will run from 19th March 2022 until 6th November 2022 and its accompanying catalogue is already available for order on the museum's website.
Annibale Carracci. The Herrera Chapel
March 4 2022
Video: Museo Nacional del Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Prado in Madrid will be opening their latest exhibition in a few days' time. The delayed Annibale Carracci The frescoes from the Herrera Chapel will be opening on the 8th March 2022 and run until 12th June 2022.
Meat Company buy Triptych
March 4 2022
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news from Spain that one of the country's largest meat producers the Jorge Group have recently purchased a triptych at auction. The local church of Santa María in the Zaragoza town of Maluenda had sold the painting in 1946 to fund restoration works after a disastrous fire. The triptych, whose whereabouts was unknown since the 1946 sale, reappeared at auction in Madrid the other week where it was spotted by the art historian José Luis Cortés. The new owners of the artwork, which was catalogued as by a follower of Jan Gossaert, will now have the painting returned to Zaragoza where it will be put on display.
This is not Katherine Parr (ctd.)
March 4 2022
Picture: ITV
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
ITV have shared news that Hever Castle in Kent have discovered that their portrait of Katherine Parr depicts the wrong Katherine. Research has uncovered that it actually depicts King Henry VIII's first wife Katherine of Aragon and corresponds to a reidentified portrait in the NPG. Regular readers of AHN might remember that Bendor made this point no less than ten years ago on this very blog.
But of course, this story is really about promoting Hever Castle's upcoming exhibition Becoming Anne: Connections, Culture, Court which opens today and will run until November 2022.
Gwrych Castle acquires Portrait
March 3 2022
Picture: rhyljournal.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rhyl Journal in Wales have published news that the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust has acquired a portrait which was previously thought to be lost. The picture depicts Marianne Jones-Bateman (1799-1874), a figure who played an important part in the local history of neighbouring Abergele.
According to the article:
Mark Baker, chairperson of the trust, said: “She was a force of nature locally and her diaries, which are in the National Library of Wales, are a great source for learning about life in Abergele nearly 200 years ago.
“This portrait hung at Gwrych Castle from 1902 and disappeared from the records in 1928.
“We believe it dates to about 1825 and the time of Marianne's marriage.
“In the 1870s, the house was said to house 'many interesting works of art, including several family portraits by Richard Wilson, and one by Beechey of Barbara Lisle Bowles, the great-great-great niece of Sir Isaac Newton'.
“We believe Marianne's portrait is by an artist called Henry William Pickersgill RA (1782-1875), who was a noted painter, and his sitters were all the notables of the day.
Magritte realises £59.4m
March 3 2022
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Despite the absolute horrors unfolding in Eastern Europe at the present, Sotheby's London managed to sell ReneÌ Magritte's L’empire des lumieÌ€res (1961) for a record-breaking £59.4m (inc. commission) last night. Both modern and contemporary sales realised high prices. The Now Evening Auction realised £29,982,500 (inc. commission) and the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction realised £192,161,150 (which included the Magritte, of course).
Neighbouring London auction house Phillips also made headlines by announcing they would be donating the entirety of their fees from the 20th-century and contemporary art evening auction in London to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. The donation from the Russian-owned auction house amounts to £5.8 million ($7.7 million) for the charity.
Upcoming Release: Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe
March 3 2022
Picture: Routledge
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The publishers Routledge will be releasing the following book later this month. Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe features a collection of essays edited by Sven Dupré and Jenny Boulboullé.
Here's a list of the essay titles featured within:
1 Introduction: Experts in the Interbellum
Part 1 Science, Authentication and Issues of Conservation
2 "We Cannot Splash Light onto Our Palettes": The 1893 Munich Exhibition and Congress and Its Public Demand for Research on Painting Materials and Techniques
3 A. P. Laurie and the Scientific Appreciation of Art
4 Seeing Through the (Old) Masters: The Crisis of Connoisseurship and the Emergence of Radiographic Art Expertise
5 Rome 1930, the International Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Artworks and Its Legacy in Italy
Part 2 Education and Professionalisation
6 Mending, Sticking, and Repairing: Reconstructing Conservation Expertise in Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
7 Wissenschaft, Vocation, or Bildung?: Debating the Sites and Aims of German Art History at the End of the Nineteenth Century
8 Education in the Art and Conservation Field in German Countries
9 Experiments in a Teaching Museum: The Fogg’s "Laboratory for Art"
Part 3 Museums and Institutions
10 Omnium Gatherum to a ‘Treasury of Art and Science’: The Development of Conservation Expertise at the Ashmolean Museum
11 The (In)visibility of the Paintings Restorers of the Rijksmuseum in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
12 Gemäldekunde. German Pioneers of the ‘Science of Painting’
13 Invention as Necessity: The Salvage of Italian Frescoes During World War II
14 Expertise, Multiple Actors, and Multiple Voices
The book will be released on 15th March 2022.
Musée des beaux arts de Lyon conserve and redisplay picture acquired in 1875
March 3 2022
Picture: Musée des beaux arts de Lyon via. Jean-Christophe Stuccilli
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The art historian and heritage conservation officer of the Musée des beaux arts de Lyon Jean-Christophe Stuccilli has shared news that the museum has conserved and redisplayed Sébastien-Melchior Cornu's (1804 - 1870) Augustus giving the constitution to Gaul. The work, dated to 1869, was acquired by the museum in 1875 but has never been on public display before.
Recent Release: Brilliant Bodies - Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy
March 3 2022
Picture: Penn State University Press
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a new release that might be of interest to some readers. Penn State University Press has just published Timothy McCall's new book Brilliant Bodies: Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy.
According to the book's blurb:
Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.
Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.
Sleeper Alert!
March 3 2022
Picture: La Suite Subastas
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News on Twitter this afternoon (via. auctionradar) that the following Portrait of a Man catalogued as 'Flemish School 15th - 16th century. In the Italian renaissance taste' realised €288,000 over its €8k - €12k estimate at the auction house La Suite Subastas in Barcelona today.
Update - @artidbits on Instagram has shared this image of a painting formerly in the Spiridon Collection in Rome which was later sold in Amsterdam in 1928. The exact relationship between these two paintings is unclear.
