Marlene Dumas in Athens | Zurbarán | The Queen Mary psalter | Halsey Ricardo | Jewish country houses
We are currently seeking articles on contemporary printmaking for an upcoming issue of Burlington Contemporary Journal
Journal article submissions, which should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words, must be based on original, unpublished research. All articles will be subject to peer review.
Before submitting an article, potential contributors should send a 150-word synopsis to the Contemporary Art Editor, Kathryn Lloyd: lloyd@burlington.org.uk
For more information, please visit contemporary.burlington.org.uk/about
CALL FOR ARTICLES
Journal printmaking issue
Deadline: Monday 12th January 2026
Susan Watkins (American, 1875–1913), The 1830 Girl (Portrait of Miss M. P. in Louis Philippe Costume) (detail) 1900, Oil on canvas, Chrysler Museum of Art, Bequest of Goldsborough Serpell, 46.76.147
This exhibition is organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art and was supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts Norfolk, VA | Chrysler.org
SCHOOL OF VALLADOLID, LATE 16TH - EARLY 17 TH CENTURY
SAINT MICHAEL FIGHTING THE DRAGON
AUDAP & ASSOCIÉS, AUCTION ON 29 OCTOBER 2025
15–19 October 2025 | Regent’s Park, London
Bust of Lieutenant-
General Sir Herbert Taylor (1775–1839), by Samuel Joseph (1791–1850). 1830.
White marble, height 78 cm. TOMASSO, LONDON AND LEEDS
Charger. Gujarat, early 17th century. Mother-of-pearl with European silver-gilt mounts. 45 by 7.5 cm. Shown with a 17th-century Deccani brass stem cup.
Height 8.4 cm. FRANCESCA
GALLOWAY, LONDON
FRIEZE MASTERS 2025 opens in London’s Regent’s Park this October with its characteristically ambitious sweep across art history, positioning works from antiquity and the Renaissance alongside modern and post-war masters. The calibre of old-master specialists remains a defining strength of the fair: international dealers present works of exceptional rarity and condition, reinforcing Frieze Masters’ reputation as a forum for art-historical expertise.
This year’s edition also begins a new chapter under the directorship of Emanuela Tarizzo. With academic credentials from the Courtauld Institute of Art and professional experience at both Christie’s and Tomasso, Tarizzo brings an emphasis on scholarship, curatorial nous, and sustained relationships with institutions and collectors.
Compared with previous editions, the 2025 fair appears intent on deepening its curatorial propositions. Newly expanded thematic sections encourage a cross-historical reading of objects; in this way, Frieze Masters continues to probe what it means for art from the past to be seen, valued and reinterpreted in the present.
For more information, please visit frieze.com/fairs/frieze-masters
Bacchanal with satyrs and nymphs, by Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749). c.1723–25. Oil on canvas, 146 by 121 cm. ROBILANT+VOENA, LONDON, MILAN, PARIS AND NEW YORK
Alexander Beatson (1759–1833), by Katherine Read (1723–78).
Oil on canvas, 73.2 by 57.8 cm.
WEISS GALLERY, LONDON
Master Brownlow Bertie-Mathew (1820–34), by Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793–1872). 1832. Oil on canvas, 147 by 109 cm.
PHILIP MOULD & CO.
Old Master, 19th Century and Modern Drawings
JOHN MINTON (1917-1957)
The Hop Pickers, Kent
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, pencil and watercolour. Signed and dated John Minton 1945 at the upper right. 635 x 520 mm. (25 x 20½ in.)
Executed in 1945, this large and impressive sheet was executed during a period when Minton often visited ‘Marshalls’, the home of his friends Edie and Newton Lamont in the village of Chart Sutton in Kent. Almost certainly among a number of Minton’s Kent drawings that were included, the same year it was drawn, in an exhibition at the newly-opened Rowland, Browse and Delbanco Gallery in London, this drawing was later reproduced as one of eight colour plates in George Orwell’s The English People (1947), part of the Britain in Pictures series of books published between 1941 and 1950.
15–19 October 2025 | Regent’s Park, London
Study of boy wearing a cloth cap: study for ‘The Costardmongers’, by Eric Kennington (1888–1960). Black chalk and charcoal, with stumping. Laid down. 46 by 30.3 cm.
STEPHEN ONGPIN FINE ART, LONDON
The Brummer Egyptian bronze schist inlay head of cat Saite period, 26th dynasty, c.664–525 BCE. Bronze, 12 cm. Oil on canvas, 66 by 85 cm. KALLOS GALLERY, LONDON
Bust of woman with hat), by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). 1962.
Linocut, 74.6 by 61.6 cm.
SUSAN SHEEHAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
A garniture of five Augustus Rex vases, attributed to Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–54). Meissen, c.1735. Porcelain. TRIAS ART EXPERTS, MUNICH
Shipping in heavy seas, by Ludolf Backhuysen (1630–1708).
Oil on canvas, 44.5 by 58.5 cm.
JOHNNY VAN HAEFTEN, LONDON
A belt buckle with heart-shaped green glass. Visigothic Spain, c.525–60. Copper alloy, glass and garnet, 6 by 13 cm.
SAM FOGG, LONDON
Simon Luttichuys and Willem Kalf. 32⅝ x 32 ins. (85.5 x 81.5 cm)
15–19 October 2025 | Regent’s Park, London
FRIEZE LONDON celebrates the capital as a centre of contemporary culture, and returns in 2025 with an emphasis on bold curatorial innovation and artistic discovery. Curated sections include ‘Artist-toArtist’, which features six solo presentations nominated by another well-established artist; and ‘Echoes in the Present’, which focuses on the connections between artists from Brazil, Africa and their diasporas. Coinciding with the fair and running from 17th September to 2nd November, Frieze Sculpture presents fourteen international artists as part of their free public art initiative, bringing a programme of tours, activations and performances to Regent’s Park.
For more information, visit frieze.com/fairs/frieze-london
HIGHLIGHTS
Open wound: Surface with many holes #7, by Mira Lee (b.1988). 2025. Pigmented methylcellulose on construction netting, 150 by 90 cm. SPRÜTH MAGERS, BERLIN, LONDON, LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK
Stop Drop Open Up Shop N0924, Outside, by Alvaro Barrington (b.1983). 2025. Yarn, concrete and lock on burlap in steel frame; silkscreen, concrete and wooden stick on canvas in steel rebar frame, steel scaffold pole, 213 by 333 by 10 cm. EMALIN GALLERY, LONDON
Strap, cm:22. 166x15 (9), by June Crespo (b.1982). 2024. Aluminium cast, ceramic coat, steel and textiles. P420, BOLOGNA
Ghost (Substitutes), by Erwin Wurm (b.1954). 2022. Aluminium, paint, 300 by 87 by 56 cm. THADDAEUS ROPAC, LONDON, PARIS, SALZBURG, MILAN AND SEOUL
Piscean Dream IV, by Chioma Ebinama (b.1988). 2024. Watercolour, gouache, sumi ink and coffee on handmade paper, 100 by 140 cm. MAUREEN PALEY, LONDON
CHOSEN BY OUR CONTEMPORARY ART EDITOR, KATHRYN LLOYD
Installation view of Venom Voyage, by Christelle Oyiri (b.1992). 2025. GATHERING, LONDON
Willoughby Gerrish
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET (1814–1875)
Summer – The Gleaners (detail), before March 1853
Stamped, lower right, J.F.M
Pencil on paper, 10 x 7 in (25.4 x 17.8 cm)
PROVENANCE
J. Staats Forbes
Alfred Drury RA
Paul Drury
By direct decent
EXHIBITIONS
London, Leicester Galleries, ‘Staats Forbes Collection of One Hundred Drawings by Jean-Francois Millet’, 1906, no.49
London, Arts Council Gallery, ‘Drawings by Jean-Francois Millet’, 1956, p.29, no.37 (selected and catalogued by K. Clark for The Arts Council of Great Britain)
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, ‘Millet’s Gleaners’, 1978, no.8 (selected by R.L. Herbert), fig.11
LITERATURE
J.M. Cartwright: ‘The Drawings of Jean-François Millet in the Collection of Mr. James Staats-Forbes, Part 1’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. V, 1904, pp.47ff., 55, illus.
E. Moreau-Nelaton: Millet raconté par lui-même, Paris 1921, vol. II, fig.136
R.L. Herbert: Jean-François Millet, exh. cat., Grand Palais, Paris, 1975–76, p.144, and Hayward Gallery, London 1976, p.86
Alexandra Murphy: Jean-François Millet, Drawn into the Light, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, Mass., 1999, p.77
ASIAN ART IN LONDON
27 October–6 November 2025
Various locations, London
Meguro Chiyogaike (Chiyogaike pond, Meguro), from the series Meisho Edo hya (One hundred famous views of edo), by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). 1856. Woodblock print, first edition.
ANASTASIA VON SEIBOLD JAPANESE ART, 4 CROMWELL PLACE, SW7
A CHAMPION OF the UK’s Asian art market for almost three decades, Asian Art in London (AAL) returns to the capital this autumn with a programme of specialist exhibitions and auctions by twenty-eight respected dealers, galleries and auction houses. Its scope is broad: showcasing a variety of objets from the ancient period, through to modern and contemporary works. Visit www.asianartinlondon.com for more details.
HIGHLIGHTS CHOSEN BY OUR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT / PARTNERSHIPS EXECUTIVE, YI TING LEE
Chinese imperial porcelain blue and white handbell form baluster vase. 1662–1722. Height 20.4 cm. MARCHANT, KENSINGTON
CHURCH STREET, LONDON W8
cup
Painted pottery figurine of a female dancer Western Han dynasty, 206 BCE–9 CE. Height 55 cm. LAM & CO. ANTIQUITIES, ONLINE
Rama confronts Surphanaka and her demon army from the series Shangri Ramayana. Bahu or Jammu, India, c.1700–10. Tempera on paper, dimensions. ROB DEAN ART, ONLINE
Blue jar – letting go #2, by Choi Bo-ram (b.1985). 2024. Unglazed hand-built stoneware with cobalt blue, dimensions. LLOYD CHOI GALLERY, SOTHEBY’S NEW BOND STREET, LONDON W1A
Gold
with chased decoration. Xixia. Jin or Yuan dynasty, 12th–13th century. Overall dimensions 11.4 by 2.9 cm, cup diameter 9.4 cm. ESKENAZI, CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W1S
Guido RENI (1575-1642) David with the head of Goliath Canvas, 227 × 145,5 cm (89½ × 57¼ in.)
Provenance: Bought directly from the painter by the duke Francesco d’Este (1610-1658) ; Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) in his Palace of the Belvedere, Vienna ; Dukes of Savoy in their Turin palace until 1795 ; General Pierre Dupont de l’Etang (1765-1840) in his Hotel de Beauvau, Paris With his descendants until now.
Estimate: €2,000,000 - 4,000,000
Laurent de La Hyre
The
Banquet of the Lapiths
A major rediscovery of a lost French 17th century masterpiece, Oil on canvas, 204 x 270 cm. Mentionned in the posthumous estate inventory of the artist in 1657.
€ 500,000/800,000
Exceptional Auction in Orléans
Saturday November 15
Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza 1691–1765 Rome), An Offering to Aesculapius on the Isola Tiberina signed and dated lower center: I.P.PANINI/ROMAE/MDCCXXIV, oil on canvas, 102.5 x 92.5 cm €300,000 – 400,000, Auction 23 October 2025
For over 100 years, The Burlington Magazine has remained the de nitive resource for Art Historians as the world’s leading journal in the eld. Save up to £150 with 50% o all one-year subscriptions to the magazine, exclusively for academics. All print subscriptions now include digital access too, so you’ll have over 120 years of original research, new works and art-historical discoveries at your ngertips.
To take advantage of this deal, scan this QR code:
READ THE BEST WRITERS OF TOMORROW, TODAY
SUBSCRIBE NOW and get a limitededition Granta tote
FINE ART
TRINITY FINE ART
15 old bond street
15 old bond street
london w 1 s 4 ax www.trinityfineart.com
london w 1 s 4 ax www.trinityfineart.com
info @ trinityfineart.com +44 (0)20 7493 4916
@ trinityfineart.com +44 (0)20 7493 4916
Daniel Katz G allery
15 old bond street
FINE ART
from antiquity to the 2oth century
www.katz.art
Daniel Katz G allery from antiquity to the 2oth century www.katz.art
TRINITY FINE ART
15 old bond street
Daniel Katz G allery from antiquity to the 2oth century
london w www.trinityfineart.com trinityfineart.com +44 (0)20 7493 4916
NEW RARITET GALLERY
& 39 DUKE STREET, ST JAMES’S, LONDON +44 2078395666 WWW.PETERFINER.COM uy owse and b Br one-of-a-kind items online ms
Daniel Katz G allery from antiquity to the 2oth century www.katz.art
OLD MASTER PAINTINGS
PAINTINGS
From Renaissance to the 20th Century www.newraritetgallery.com
& faber
11 Duke Street | St James’ | London SW1Y 6BN
From Renaissance to the 20th Century www.newraritetgallery.com day & faber old master drawings www.dayfaber.com m
london w 1 s 4 ax www.trinityfineart.com info @ trinityfineart.com +44 (0)20 7493 4916 m
OLD MASTER PAINTINGS From Renaissance to the 20th Century www.newraritetgallery.com
Above Detail of Portrait of an unknown young woman, by JeanAuguste-Dominique Ingres. 1806. (p.990).
Above centre Virgin of Guadalupe. Hispano-Philippine workshop. c.1700–30. (p.1041).
Right Detail of The hay wain, by John Constable. 1821. (p.1005).
Exhibitions
1016 Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues by james cahill
1019 Simone Cantarini (1612–1648): Un giovane maestro tra Pesaro, Bologna e Roma by raffaella morselli
1022 The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt by amy golahny
1025 Millet: Life on the Land by hannah halliwell
Exhibition catalogues
1028 Master MS and his Age, G. Endrődi et al., eds by dušan buran
1031 Leonardo – Dürer: Renaissance Master Drawings on Colored Ground, R. Gleis, A. Gnann and C. Metzger by lucia tantardini
1033 La Rotonde de Saint-Bénigne: 1000 ans d’ histoire, F. Abert, A. Alexandre and C. Sapin, eds by hugh doherty
1036 Zurbarán: Réinventer un chef-d’œuvre, L. Virassamynaïken, ed. by guillaume kientz
1039 Tan lejos, tan cerca: Guadalupe de México en España, J. Cuadriello and P. Mues Orts, eds by cloe cavero de carondelet
1041 Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form, R. Moura, A. Heráclito and C. Courtney, eds by edward j. sullivan
Books
1044 Netherlandish and French Paintings 1400–1480: Critical Catalogue, K. Dyballa and S. Kemperdick, eds by lorne campbell
1046 Queen Mary Psalter, Royal MS 2 B VII. British Library, London: Facsimile Edition and Commentary, L. Dennison, N.J. Morgan and D. Russell by alixe bovey
1048 Le tecniche della pittura medievale: materiali, lavorazioni e percezione visiva, V. Caramico by machtelt brüggen israëls and angela cer asuolo
1049 Il caso Giorgione, B. Aikema by giorgio tagliaferro
1051 Abbild, Nachbildung, Trompe-l’œil: Textilien im Textil, E. Wetter, ed. by cybele tom
1052 Female Printmakers, Printsellers, and Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women, c.1700–1830, C.S. Martinez and C.E. Roman, eds by elena cooper
1053 Discover Manet & Eva Gonzalès, S. Herring and E. Capron, eds by emily a. beeny
1054 Halsey Ricardo: A Life in Arts and Crafts, M. Bertram by michael hall
1056 Jewish Country Houses, J. Carey and A. Green, eds by clive aslet
1057 International Departures: Art in India after Independence, D. Singh by tapati guha-thakurta
Obituary
1059 Andrew Saint (1957–2024) by colin thom
1060 among this month’s contributors
Editor
Christopher Baker
Deputy Editor
Alexandra Gajewski
Contemporary Art Editor
Kathryn Lloyd
Articles Editor
Christine Gardner-Dseagu
Assistant Reviews Editor
John Rattray
Editorial Assistant, Burlington Contemporary
Yi Ting Lee
Editorial Assistant
Rachel Dastgir
Art Editor
Tzortzis Rallis
Directors, BMPL
Caroline Campbell
Craig Clunas fba
Helen Jacobsen fsa
Nathanael Price
Andrea Rose cmg obe
Desmond Shawe-Taylor cvo, chairman
Anna Starling
Catherine Whistler
Contributing institutions
www.burlington.org.uk
www.contemporary.burlington.org.uk
14–16 Duke’s Road, London wc1h 9sz Tel: 020–7388 1228
Printed in Wales by Stephens & George, Merthyr Tydfil
Print issn 0007 6287
Online issn 2044 9925
The Burlington Magazine is owned and published by Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Registered in England, company no.790136. Registered charity in England and Wales no.29502. Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd is owned and supported by the Burlington Magazine Foundation CIO (charity no.1187286).
Managing Director
Andrew Dunn
Head of Partnerships
Sarah Bolwell
Head of Advertising
Jane Grylls
Head of Commercial Design & Production
Chris Hall
Marketing and Readership Manager
Hannah Daldry
Senior Marketing and Advertising Executive
Nicole Gilchrist-Reeves
Office Administrator
Sylvie Makower
Partnerships Executive Yi Ting Lee
Trustees, BMF CIO
Hugo Chapman
Sir Gabriele Finaldi
David Landau cbe
Sir Nicholas Penny fba fsa
Andrea Rose cmg obe
Karen Sanig
Desmond Shawe-Taylor cvo, chairman
Naoko Takahakate
Catherine Whistler
the burlington magazine foundation’s benefactors and supporters
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Fondation Custodia, Paris
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The J. Paul Getty Museum Director’s Council
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven The Frick Collection, New York
Dawn Ades cbe fba
Colin B. Bailey
Christopher Brown cbe
Richard Calvocoressi cbe
Lorne Campbell
Lynne Cooke
Elizabeth Cropper
Caroline Elam
David Franklin
Benefactors
Richard Mansell-Jones
Adrian Sassoon
The Rick Mather David Scrase Foundation
Supporters
Charles Booth-Clibborn
Tavolozza Foundation Thistle Trust
Commercial supporters
Bridgeman Images • John Sandoe Books Ltd
The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF)
Julian Gardner fsa
Elizabeth Goldring fsa frhists
Christopher Green fba
Michael Hall
Tanya Harrod
Simon Swynfen Jervis fsa
Rose Kerr
Felix Krämer
Past benefactors & supporters
The late Gilbert de Botton • Sir Harry Djanogly cbe
The late Francis Finlay • Nicholas and Judith Goodison’s Charitable Settlement • Daisaku Ikeda
The late Paul Z. Josefowitz • John Lewis obe
The late Timothy Llewellyn obe • The Michael Marks
Charitable Trust • The late Jan Mitchell • Mr and Mrs
Brian Pilkington • Mrs Frank E. Richardson • Sir Paul Ruddock fsa • Nancy Schwartz • Madame Andrée
Stassart • The late Saul P. Steinberg • Janet de Botton
Gifford Combs • The late Hester Diamond
Mark Fisch • The Lady Heseltine • The late Lord Rothschild om gbe fba • Patricia Wengraf
Paul Williamson obe fsa frhists consultative committee
Neil MacGregor om fsa
Shane McCausland
Elizabeth McGrath fba
Robin Middleton
Jennifer Montagu cbe lvo fba fsa
Peta Motture fsa
Sir Nicholas Penny fba fsa
Pierre Rosenberg
John-Paul Stonard
Deborah Swallow
Gary Tinterow
Julian Treuherz
Jeremy Warren fsa
Simon Watney
Sir Christopher White cvo fba
‘The Story of Art’ at 75
Gombrich’s the story of art is seventy-five years old this year. Its clarity of conception and expression, civilised values and the enormous benefits that have undoubtedly resulted from its publication should be a cause of continuing admiration and celebration.
During the Second World War E.H. Gombrich (1909–2001) was working chiefly for the BBC, intercepting radio broadcasts from Germany and undertaking translations. He was able, however, to maintain some of his art-historical interests and research. He gave a couple of lectures at the Warburg Institute, London, and published his important article on Nicolas Poussin’s Orion (1658; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) in this Magazine.2 Gombrich also returned to a project that he had started sketching out earlier in Vienna – a book on art for children, which was intended as a companion volume to his A Little History of the World. The proposal to write such a book was first suggested by Walter Neurath (1903–67) and Gombrich showed some draft chapters to the co-founder of Phaidon Press, the Hungarian-born British publisher Béla Horovitz (1898–1955), who in turn passed them to his sixteen-year-old daughter, Elly, to read. She said the book should be published and Gombrich was offered an advance of £50. Further chapters were written during the war but other responsibilities intervened and it was not until 1950 that the book was eventually published.3
The Story of Art was an immediate critical and popular success. It was quickly reviewed in this Magazine by Wilfred Blunt, in the context of a consideration of art history books for schools. He lamented that, when tackling such subjects, pupils had no attention span: ‘As a rule, the most they can stomach is a line or two of caption beneath the illustration – and even this with obvious reluctance and distaste’. He then proceeded to laud Gombrich’s work as ‘a quite admirable book [. . .] at a guinea, its production is a miracle’. He praised its lucidity and the manner in which it is written in a jargon-free lecture form, which would prove invaluable for teaching.4
It did soon achieve this role but also found many readers beyond classrooms. Gombrich later acknowledged that it transformed his status from being, as he expressed it – a poor foreign scholar – to a highly regarded public figure; he was soon appointed to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Oxford (1950–53) and numerous other accolades followed. He also noted how it resulted in him leading a ‘double life’, as a man known very widely as the author of The Story of Art and not as an academic, but at the same moment as a member of the scholarly community, many members of which had never read his extraordinarily successful book. To these two constituencies of admirers we should undoubtedly add a third: those – including probably many readers of this Magazine – who read the book and were inspired to pursue art-historical studies.
Translated into numerous languages and with many millions of copies sold, The Story of Art retains a formidable status. Sixteen editions were issued during Gombrich’s life and a pocket-sized one appeared in 2006, making it even more accessible. It was, however, and inevitably remains, a product
of its time and the world view at that moment of its brilliant author. Gombrich – who had a supreme sensitivity to issues of historic context, including his own – was fully aware of this. He later explained the mindset it reflected as the Bildung (a term he translated as ‘mental furniture’) he shared as a young man: a middle-class, cosmopolitan Viennese outlook that deeply valued the achievements of Raphael, Michelangelo, Dürer and Rembrandt, just as it did Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.5
It is, therefore, largely a ‘great men’ history of a sort that for some sits uncomfortably in our revisionist era. Later and recent narratives of art have rightly sought to broaden the canvas and include the achievements of a far wider range of artists and feature a more extensive global reach, as well as numerous different media. In spite of these key absences, Gombrich’s book arguably retains a persuasive power, which should still command our respect, about the fascination of art and its role in society and its civilising effects. With clear and eloquent prose, it rapidly draws you into a journey across the centuries using brilliant exemplars and ensures the reader becomes complicit in the curiosity and sense of wonder enjoyed by its author. The book also engages through the wit of Gombrich; in later editions the postscript, which briefly considers the changes and challenges brought about by modern and contemporary art, includes a 1958 cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker Magazine in which an artist is harangued, being asked angrily, ‘Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?’.
In the broader context of post-war Britain, the publication of The Story of Art should perhaps above all be seen as part of a much wider process of the democratisation of ‘high’ culture and the ideals such a development was underpinned by. This also found expression in other spheres, such as the great arts festivals that were established at the time, increased access to higher education and the gradual opening up of museums and galleries to large numbers of attentive visitors. Kenneth Clark’s publications and television programmes followed in its wake and formed part of the same confident trends.
There have been some celebrations of the 75th anniversary – a seminar at the Warburg Institute and a little warmly appreciative press coverage – but this delightfully informative and optimistic book is surely deserving of more.6
1 Obituary: E. McGrath and C. Elam: ‘E.H. Gombrich (1909–2001)’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 144 (2002), pp.111–13.
2 E.H. Gombrich: ‘The subject of Poussin’s Orion’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 84 (1944), pp.37–41.
3 E.H. Gombrich: A Lifelong Interest: Conversations on Art and Science with Didier Eribon, London 1993, pp.64–65.
4 W. Blunt: ‘Art history and the public schools’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 565 (1950), pp.117–18.
5 E.H. Gombrich: ‘Old masters and other household goods’, The Independent (6th January 1990), reprinted in R. Woodfield, ed.: The Essential Gombrich, London 1996, pp.37–39.
6 ‘The Story of Art at 75’, The Warburg Institute, London, 20th September 2025. See J. Wullschläger: ‘The Story of Art has sold 8mn copies – and is still a warning to us all’, Financial Times (11th June 2025), available at www.ft.com/content/ eeefe435-adcf-44f1-b8eb-9676a5c6cfad, accessed 12th September 2025.
Waiting for ‘Three musicians’: G.F. and Erna Reber’s first Picassos
The beginnings of the pioneering and wide-ranging collecting of Pablo Picasso’s works by the German admirers of his art G.F. (Gottlieb Friedrich) and Erna Reber is fully assessed here for the first time, through a review of related archives, correspondence and photographs. The Rebers were among the artist’s chief patrons in the inter-war period and the evidence collected strengthens this status by adding to the known number of Picassos in their collection.
by anna jozefacka and luise mahler
In the summer of 1923 the German-language art magazine Der Querschnitt published Table in front of the window (1919; Museum Sammlung Rosengart, Lucerne), a Cubist still life by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) arranged on top of a scroll-legged pedestal table standing before an open window, beyond which the Mediterranean at Saint-Raphaël, rendered in more naturalistic manner, comes into view (Fig.2).1 While the watercolour demonstrates the transformations Picasso’s practice had undergone since before the First World War, the accompanying headline, ‘Aus der Reber’schen Picassosammlung’ (‘from Reber’s Picasso collection’), had nothing to offer on the subject of the artist’s style. Instead, it focuses exclusively on the still life’s owner, G.F. (Gottlieb Friedrich) Reber (1880–1959; Fig.3), naming him as a patron of the artist.2 The author of this short notice is unknown but was probably G.F.’s friend, the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), who fronted Der Querschnitt. It presents G.F., who was an avid collector of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, as a champion of Picasso. Table in front of the window is the first public avowal of G.F.’s support for Picasso, although it is a curiously understated example of his patronage – by 1923 the collector already owned major works by the artist, such as Three musicians (Fig.1). As frequently noted by art historians and critics, G.F. rose quickly to the top of the artist’s international coterie of buyers in the 1920s.3 The inventory that had rendered him Picasso’s principal patron between the two world wars counted at one point more than 160 drawings, etchings,
This article constitutes part of a larger study on the Rebers’s contemporary art collection. The authors thank the organisers of the 7th–8th December 2023 UNESCO Picasso Celebration 1973–2023 international symposium, especially Cécile Godefroy, for the invitation to present a portion of the present text. Its companion, currently in preparation, focuses on the dispersal of the Reber Picasso collection. Equal gratitude is due to colleagues and local archivists in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States, who have fielded requests with admirable grace, expertise and patience but who are too many to name.
1 At the time of publication, the exact
purchase date of the watercolour by G.F. Reber remains unknown. In 1920 Léonce Rosenberg promoted the work as part of his stock and in the context of Alfred Flechtheim’s galleries. See M. Raynal: Les Maitres du Cubisme: Pablo Picasso, Paris 1920, unpaginated, no.40, reproduced as Instruments de musique sur une table devant une fenêtre ouverte; and ‘Picassos Wandlung’, Die Dame 48, no.6 (1920), p.12, as Der Balkon. Thanks to Emma Ward for bringing the rare ‘édition ordinaire’ of Raynal’s publication to the present authors’ attention.
2 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the authors.
3 The foundational essays on G.F. as a
paintings, pastels, sculptures and watercolours, encompassing all the artist’s stylistic idioms between 1905 and 1927.4 In addition, his outsized role in the organisation of the artist’s 1932 retrospective is a well-known story. But exactly when, how and why G.F. developed this predilection for Picasso has remained unexamined, resulting in an incomplete picture of Picasso’s reception immediately following the First World War and a distorted notion of G.F. as a collector.5
To date, the notice published in Der Querschnitt has not been the subject of studies on G.F., which have primarily focused on the overall content of his art collection and tended to generalise rather than dissect the circumstances and chronology of his Picasso purchases. This propensity, in turn, led to an amplification of G.F.’s Cubist holdings (which, aside from Picasso, featured the work of Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger) and a misidentification of the critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940) as the main force behind the evolution of the collector’s corpus of contemporary art, which was dominated by Picasso.6 Although Einstein and G.F. frequented the same circles after the war, there is no evidence to support the suggestion that the two developed a closer rapport before 1925.7 On the contrary, the historic record suggests
collector of contemporary art are D. Kosinski: ‘G.F. Reber: collector of Cubism’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 133 (1991), pp.519–31; and P. Kropmanns and U. Fleckner: ‘Von kontinentaler
Bedeutung: Gottlieb Friedrich Reber und seine Sammlungen’, in A. Pophanken and F. Billeter, eds: Die Moderne und Ihre Sammler: Französische Kunst in deutschem Privatbesitz vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik, Berlin 2001, pp.347–407. Both include checklists of G.F.’s art holdings as they were known at the time.
4 Albeit with significantly diminished means, G.F. continued to acquire works by Picasso after the Second World War, Thomas Gruber in correspondence with
Luise Mahler on 26th April 2022.
5 An exception is C. Geelhaar: Picasso: Wegbereiter und Förderer seines Aufstiegs, 1899–1939, Zurich 1993, pp.149 and 285–86, no.159, which mentioned the acquisition of Three musicians 6 Kosinki, op. cit. (note 3); and Kropmanns and Fleckner, op. cit. (note 3).
7 C. Einstein and D.-H. Kahnweiler: Correspondance, 1921–1939, ed. L. Meffre, Marseille 1993, pp.156–57; and K.H. Kiefer and L. Meffre, eds: Carl Einstein: Briefwechsel 1904–1940, Berlin 2020, nos.266–67. For the initial scholarly treatment of the relationship between Einstein and G.F., see Kosinski, op. cit. (note 3), pp.522–26.
2. Der Querschnitt 3 (1923), following p.56, showing Picasso’s Table in front of the window
3. Portrait of G.F. Reber, by Frieda Riess. Before July 1927. Photograph. (Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn; ZADIK, Cologne).
4. Portrait of Erna Reber, by Frieda Riess. Before July 1927. Photograph. (Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn; ZADIK, Cologne).
that between 1922 and 1924 G.F.’s patronage of the entirety of Picasso’s output developed not in the context of a relationship with an art critic, historian or theorist, but instead was based on his own judgment, formed in dialogue with the European art dealers most invested in the artist’s work at this time: Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959) and his older brother, Léonce, as well as Flechtheim. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884–1979) and Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939), by comparison, played lesser roles in G.F.’s turn towards Picasso during these years. An even more important interlocutor was his wife, Erna (1885–1969; Fig.4). Notably, it is her vivid 1923 account of Picasso’s Three musicians as recently installed in their Lugano residence – quoted in full in this article for the first time – that attests to G.F.’s genuine commitment to the artist.
The son of a pastor, G.F. elevated his social standing through early professional success as a merchant in Bremen and then in Barmen (presentday Wuppertal). However, it was his marriage to Erna (née Sander) in 1907 that provided him with the means to turn to art in a serious fashion. The
The Reber Picasso collection
whom she corresponded directly.9 All this suggests that while G.F. handled the transactions and was the legal buyer, what is identified as the Reber collection ought to be considered as theirs and not his alone.10
newlyweds and their only child, Gisela (born that same year), first lived in Langerfeld (a borough of present-day Wuppertal), the location of the source of Erna’s family’s wealth, a distillery at Schwelmerstraße founded by and named after her maternal grandfather, Johann Casper Holzmann, and by then managed by her grandmother, Anna Maria Juliana Holzmann, and mother, Julia Ida Sander.8 Erna shared with her husband a serious interest in art and music. Rarely credited then and now, her role in assembling the Reber collection is still little understood. However, evidence dating to after the First World War points to her involvement with art dealers as well as her close connections with artists, critics, scholars and writers. The poet and Dadaist Hugo Ball, Einstein and the historian and writer Hans Mühlestein are but a few to whom Erna lent her support and with
8 See Amtliches Adreßbuch des Amtes Langerfeld, Langerfeld 1919, p.110. The authors thank Julia Schmidt of the Stadtarchiv Wuppertal and Joachim Friedl of the Stadtarchiv Munich for their invaluable research assistance.
9 Among the many tokens of
appreciation she received was a watercolour by Juan Gris titled Nature Morte ‘Les cahiers’ (1926; private collection), which the artist inscribed ‘A Madam [sic] Reber / Hommage amical 4–26 Juan Gris’ (‘To Madame Reber / Friendly tribute 4–26 Juan Gris’). See G. Tinterow, ed.: exh. cat.
If the focus on the Reber Picasso collection has rarely turned to the question of its origin, it is because other lines of inquiry have overshadowed the narrative of Picasso’s reception in the early 1920s. Two stand out in particular. First is the fate of the artist’s pre-war Cubist output, which was released onto the art market in large quantities through the Wilhelm Uhde and Galerie Kahnweiler sequestration sales in Paris between 1921 and 1923; second is the emergence of the United States as a new centre for marketing Picasso. G.F. played no part in either narrative. Born in Germany and residing primarily in Switzerland from 1919, he had no ties to the American art scene prior to the late 1920s. Similarly, he is not known to have been among the buyers at the sequestration sales, although some lots did eventually enter the Reber collection.11 Against this background, G.F.
Juan Gris (1887–1927), Madrid (Salas Pablo Ruiz Picasso del Ministerio de Cultura/Banco de Bilbao) 1985, p.372, no.188.
10 Perhaps the earliest mention of them as a collector couple is H.R. Hope, ed.: exh. cat. Georges Braque, New York (Museum of Modern Art) 1949, p.94.
11 See Kosinski, op. cit. (note 3), p.531. Vérane Tasseau, the leading expert on the subject of the Galerie Kahnweiler sales, in correspondence with Anna Jozefacka and Luise Mahler, 7th December 2022, stated that G.F. is not known as a buyer at these sales.
The Reber Picasso collection
5. Still life, by Pablo Picasso. 1918. Oil on canvas, 97 by 130.2 cm.
German art world, to leave volatile Germany for stable Switzerland. The family’s decision to relocate came just days before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28th June 1919, which held Germany liable for crushing reparation payments, and weeks after G.F. had escaped a kidnapping attempt in Munich.13 The Rebers settled into a spacious residence on the upper floor of a new apartment building at 3 via Clemente Maraini, overlooking Lake Lugano. Serviced by the trans-alpine railway line, the laid-back southern Swiss city did not impede G.F.’s business duties, social commitments and cultural and philanthropic endeavours; the surviving archival documentation attests to his frequent visits to Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France during the early 1920s to engage in these pursuits. He expanded his membership of artist organisations, agreed to exhibitions and long-term loans, donated at least one work to a museum, provided financial support to two academic institutions (which in turn earned him two university honours) and joined the Freemasons, all the while managing to maintain a lower public profile than before the war.14
becomes a singular figure for Picasso’s reception in the inter-war period. He represents a new type of collector, motivated by the diversity of the artist’s stylistic production and vested in a part of Europe that had promoted the artist since before the First World War by way of criticism, exhibitions, patronage and scholarship. An analysis of the very beginnings of the Reber Picasso collection, using archival documents and contemporary literature, offers some answers to the questions of how the artist’s work sustained a continuous interest after 1918, especially across central and eastern Europe. For G.F., the years following the First World War were momentous in various ways. By all accounts, he led a peripatetic life and kept a demanding schedule. He relocated from Barmen to Munich in November 1918 and by June 1921 he, Erna and Gisela had moved with some, if not all, of their extensive art collection to Lugano, Switzerland, via Lucerne and Ascona.12 Concerns for personal safety, as well as the fate of his art and the security of his other financial assets, probably led the family, like others in the
12 Stadtarchiv Munich, Personalmeldebogen for ‘Gottlieb Friedrich Reber’, number R52. Some of G.F.’s Cézannes may or may not have been on temporary loan in Munich at the time. Erna and Gisela registered with the municipality in Lugano on 6th June 1921, but G.F. was listed on Erna’s card as staying in the Swiss city only occasionally, Archivio storico della Città di Lugano, ‘Schede Controllo abitanti, 1919–1932’. According to their residence permits in Lucerne, the Rebers kept a pied-à-terre at the Schweizer Hof between 1919 and 1929, Stadtarchiv Luzern, Häuserverzeichnis and Journal der Einwohnerkontrolle, entry ‘Reber’. 13 H. Wolter: ‘Wer war Bruder Gottlieb Friedrich Reber’, in Deutscher Oberster Rat d. Freimaurer d. Alten u. Angenommenen Schott Ritus: Der schottische Ritus in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Frankfurt 1985/86, pp.111–20, at p.112.
14 For these various activities, see, for example, exh. cat. Ostern 1919, Potsdam (Galerie Alfred Flechtheim) 1919, pp.79–80; exh. cat. Wiedereröffnung – Ostern 1919: I. Ausstellung, Dusseldorf (Galerie Alfred Flechtheim) 1919, no.19; and exh. cat. Cézanne-Ausstellung: Cézannes Werke in deutschem Privatbesitz: Gemälde,
Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Berlin (Galerie Paul Cassirer) 1921, nos.20, 31 and 36.
In 1920 he donated Max Beckmann’s Der Kaiserdamm (1911) to the Kunsthalle Bremen, available at onlinekatalog.kunsthalle-bremen.de/ DE-MUS-027614/object/3255, accessed 22nd August 2025; Universitätsarchiv Tübingen, items 125/86,1 and 125/86,15; and for a record of the loan of at least some of his Cézanne paintings to the Neue Staatsgalerie München (presentday Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst in the Pinakothek der Moderne), item 117/291a, no.3a. G.F. became a Freemason in 1924. See Wolter op. cit. (note 13), pp.112–13.
15 Letter from Irmgart (sometimes spelled Irmgard) H. Fritsch to John Rewald, 29th May 1974, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Rewald Papers (RG 43), subgroup 43A5.2, box 48, folder 7, ‘Reber’. Fritsch fielded G.F.’s correspondence by February 1924. Her earliest known letter to Paul Rosenberg on behalf of the collector was written on 11th February 1924, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, Paul Rosenberg Archive (hereafter MoMA Rosenberg Archive), folder I.A.76, item 150.
Judging by the 1923 correspondence, his former assistant, Clara Lincke, had left the collector in or after October
As a collector so committed to French modern art, G.F. resumed visiting the French capital probably as soon as the Versailles agreement, which was put in effect from 10th January 1920, made it possible for German citizens to do so. In 1974 his lifelong assistant, Irmgart H. Fritsch, who started working for him in late 1923, recalled that he discovered Picasso in post-war Paris on the occasion of an exhibition at Paul Rosenberg’s gallery.15 G.F. had been a client of Rosenberg since before 1914 and it was only natural that he should seek re-acquaintance with the art dealer. Fritsch gave 1922 as the year of the encounter but Rosenberg had hosted such an exhibition one year earlier, in the spring of 1921. It is possible that Fritsch misremembered the exhibition’s location. In the late spring and early autumn of 1922 Rosenberg had facilitated a presentation of fortyfive of his Picassos at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie, Munich, followed by the Síň Mánesa (Mánes Hall), Prague.16 To date, however, no visit by G.F. to these exhibitions has been traced.17 It may have been the press reports on them or the illustrated catalogue for the Munich venue, with a preface by Rosenberg, that had piqued G.F.’s interest.18
Since the war, Rosenberg had expanded the representation in his gallery beyond Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists to living
1923. The last known letter from Lincke to Rosenberg is dated 2nd October 1923, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.73a, item 53.
16 A. Jozefacka and L. Mahler: ‘Reading Picasso in Munich and Prague in 1922’, Umění/Art 70, no.2 (2022), pp.156–92.
17 Visits that are recorded on G.F.’s client card for the Moderne Galerie took place on 19th September 1920 and 14th December 1923, see Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung, Cologne (ZADIK), Galerien Thannhauser, client catalogue, A77_ XIX_026_0026_002a-b. No visitor records for the Prague venue have been identified.
18 Exh. cat. Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Munich (Moderne Galerie) 1922.
19 Letter from Paul Rosenberg to John Quinn, 2nd October 1922, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division (hereafter NYPL Archives), John Quinn papers, correspondence ‘Paul Rosenberg’, box 4, folder 7.
20 Letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 17th October 1922, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, item 107. The word félicieuse, which G.F. used to describe the hour he spent with Rosenberg, does not exist in
French. As a native German speaker, he may have been thinking of the Italian felice or the French congratulatory salutation félicitation. For a different interpretation of the word, see F. Ferrari and A. Morrison: ‘Chronology’, in A. Umland with F. Ferrari and A. Morrison: exh. cat. Picasso in Fontainebleau, New York (Museum of Modern Art) 2023, pp.189–203, at p.197.
21 Receipt from Pablo Picasso to Paul Rosenberg, 4th April 1922, Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Literary and Historic Manuscripts, Rosenberg Collection of Artist Letters (hereafter Morgan Rosenberg Collection), MA 3500.376.
22 On the whereabouts of the two versions of Three musicians in 1921–22 and Picasso showing them to such collectors as John Quinn as well as insisting not to exhibit them abroad, see Ferrari and Morrison op. cit. (note 20), esp. pp.195–97.
23 Cables from Erna and G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, 14th and 21st November 1922 respectively, document the couple’s journey to France, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, items 108–09.
24 Cable from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, 11th December 1922, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, item 110.
6. Picasso’s Three musicians and Glass and fruit dish installed in G.F. Reber’s bedroom in Lugano. c.1925. Photograph probably by Irmgart H. Fritsch. (Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn; ZADIK, Cologne).
painters and sculptors, chief among them Picasso. G.F. learnt about this and discovered how increasingly stylistically diverse the artist had become. In addition to myriad Cubist idioms, at this time Picasso was also pursuing different kinds of recognisable representation, a decisive departure from the work on display at the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne as well as the artist’s 1913–14 retrospective that toured widely across German-speaking Europe. Given G.F.’s ties to the Sonderbund artist association, it is reasonable to assume that he visited the Picasso room at the exhibition. By bringing contemporary artists into the fold of his portfolio Rosenberg offered visitors to his gallery stark stylistic contrasts and the rare opportunity to see, for example, Paul Cezanne’s work next to Picasso’s latest creation.
According to the earliest post-war evidence preserved in Rosenberg’s archives, G.F. paid the dealer a visit at 21 rue la Boëtie sometime after 2nd October 1922, which left a deep impression on the collector.19 Once back in Lugano, he wrote to Rosenberg, thanking him for ‘the fortuitous hour I spent with you and your magnificent paintings’ and announcing his
return in about two weeks’ time.20 Since the letter also conveyed his wife’s greetings, it confirms that the Rebers visited Rosenberg together. What were these ‘magnificent paintings’ G.F. could not wait to see again? A cross section of Rosenberg’s available stock or exclusively works by Picasso? The selection of Picassos was reduced, as many were still out on tour. What was available instead were those works that had arrived since the shipment to Munich, among them, the twenty-five paintings purchased by Rosenberg from the artist on 4th April.21 In addition, considering G.F.’s use of the word ‘magnificent’ in combination with what transpired next, it is reasonable to speculate that Rosenberg had access to at least one of the two versions of the mural-size Three musicians and showed it to the Rebers.22
True to his word, G.F. and Erna returned to Paris later that November, ready to acquire paintings by Picasso.23 However, the deal that G.F. and Rosenberg struck did not go entirely smoothly. On 11th December, reacting to the dealer’s apparent change of heart, G.F. cabled Rosenberg from Basel en route to Paris, reminding him not only that it had been his offer he was accepting but also that he was arriving the following day.24 Relying on his experience as a collector and sometime marchand-amateur, G.F. took matters into his own hands and personally
The Reber Picasso collection
7. House in Aix (Jas de Bouffan), by Paul Cezanne. 1885–87. Oil on canvas, 60 by 73 cm. (Národní Galerie, Prague).
The Reber Picasso collection
9.
drew up their contract (held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York). In the two-page typed document dated 13th December, the collector agreed to part with two paintings by Cezanne and one by Édouard Manet in exchange for eleven Cubist paintings by Picasso and the sum of 103,700 French francs (Fr.) (Appendix and Fig.15).25 G.F. stipulated how Rosenberg was to transfer the money and pledged to fulfil his end of the bargain upon his return to Lugano. The eleven Picassos were the Philadelphia version of Three musicians and ten smaller paintings dating from 1914 to 1922; three came from Rosenberg’s April purchase and at least four, if not six, were part of the 1922 two-venue exhibition (Appendix). The inclusion of the latter allows for further speculation that G.F. already knew these works personally. Two paintings depicted a harlequin and eight were still lifes, including six of musical instruments (Fig.5); together, they provided a suitable framework for Three musicians
A letter he dispatched soon afterwards, which outlined additional details of the contract, also shows that G.F. was already preparing to make his next Picasso purchases.26 A notion put forth in the literature as early as 1931, implying his readiness to replace his existing collection with newer works after the First World War, aligns neither with his established track record of occasionally releasing items from his holdings back onto the market, including works by Cezanne for which his collection was known, nor with details about the December 1922 transaction recounted by Fritsch in 1974.27 When the time came for G.F. to buy Picassos, she asserted, Rosenberg grew difficult and demanded the collector give up his Post-Impressionist paintings in lieu of an all-cash payment.28 G.F. must have worried that Rosenberg’s push to modify the terms of their agreement by asking for more Post-Impressionists was an attempt to bolster the art dealer’s inventory of works for a hungry market. The collector had good reason. Within six months Rosenberg sold the Cezannes to his Parisian peers Galerie Barbazanges and Georges Bernheim, who in turn immediately sold them to Albert C. Barnes and the Czechoslovak national art collection in Prague (Fig.7), respectively, for a total sum of at least Fr. 450,000.29 G.F.’s conduct, therefore, points to nothing other than his openness to shaping a collection that was of vital importance and profound meaning to him. A wartime diary entry by the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe illustrates this. When conversing with Meier-Graefe in August 1917, G.F. admitted owing to Cezanne a feeling of ‘liberation’ and the ‘realization that a new and better era awaited after the war’.30 At this particular juncture, any release of a work of art must have been a carefully considered decision, which is not to say that the collector shied away from benefitting from such trades in
25 Contract between G.F. Reber and Paul Rosenberg, 13th December 1922, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, items 111–112.
26 Letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French and German, 16th December 1922, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, item 113. The letter contains two sections, each in a different hand. The first section is written in French by Clara Lincke, the second, in German, by the collector himself.
27 J. Meier-Graefe: ‘Die Sammlung Reber’, Frankfurter Zeitung 76, nos.786–87 (1931), pp.1–2, reprinted in
idem: Kunst-Schreiberei: Essays und Kunstkritik, ed. H. Schuhmann, Leipzig and Weimar 1987, pp.208–14.
28 See note 15.
29 For the sale of House in Aix (Jas de Bouffan), see the invoice from Georges Bernheim to Vincenc Kramář, 30th June 1923, Archiv hlavního města Prahy, Prague, 1349 Spolek výtvarných umělců Mánes Praha, 4062 Francouzské umění 19. a 20. století, syg. no.604, as La maison penchée, valued at Fr. 225,000; and P. Sadílková and L. HubatováVacková: ‘Chronologie’, in J. Calverie, et al.: Vincenc Kramář: Un théoricien et collectionneur du cubisme à Prague,
The Reber Picasso collection
kind. G.F. sold additional examples from his Post-Impressionist collection to Rosenberg in 1924, while he was acquiring yet more works by Picasso.31 Over the years he and Rosenberg settled on a pattern advantageous to them both. G.F.’s life circumstances would change in the aftermath of the 1929 world economic crisis, which forced the collector to sell large parts of his overall art holdings, and again in 1940, when he was exposed as a Freemason and subsequently stripped of his German citizenship.32
The establishment of G.F. as a serious patron of Picasso at the close of 1922 meant a major coup for Rosenberg. Perceived as controversial in his practice but also more expensive to purchase from, the artist needed to build a new clientele – an aim that was also advantageous to Picasso’s primary dealer. Rosenberg had made significant investments in promoting Picasso across Europe without immediate returns. The 1922 exhibitions in Munich and Prague yielded only two sales for works on paper.33 The sale of eleven paintings, including Three musicians, to a prestigious collector
Paris 2002, pp.191–310, esp. pp.249–51. For how this sale transpired in 1923, see A. Jozefacka and L. Mahler: ‘Two Picassos in Prague: Paul Rosenberg’s contribution’, forthcoming in the Bulletin of the National Gallery Prague For Barbazanges’s sale of Le Garçon au gilet rouge to Alfred Barnes on 7th July 1923, for either Fr. 225,000, 236,000, or 250,000, see A. Dombrowski, N. Ireson and S. Patry, eds: Cézanne in The Barnes Foundation, New York 2021, p.380, no.39.
30 J. Meier-Graefe: Julius Meier-Graefe Tagebuch 1903–1917 und weitere Dokumente, ed. C. Krahmer with I. Grüninger and J. Heisbourg, Göttingen 2009, p.287, ‘Auszug aus Tgb. II’.
31 Letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg concerning works by Corot and Renoir, 14th February 1924, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.76, item 151.
32 M. Hepp, ed.: Expatriation Lists as Published in the “Reichsanzeiger” 1933–1945, I, list 294, originally published in Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger 59 (12th March 1943), Munich, New York, London and Paris 1985, p.618.
33 Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.160, no.37.
10. Album page with views of various rooms in the Lugano residence showing works by Cezanne and Picasso. Photographs probably by Irmgart H. Fritsch. (Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn; ZADIK, Cologne).
11. Album page with views of the small music room at the Lugano residence and the view from the terrace. Photographs probably by Irmgart H. Fritsch. (Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn; ZADIK, Cologne).
validated Rosenberg in the eyes of Picasso. It also reduced his dependency on the only leading buyer of his art at this time, the New York-based collector John Quinn (1870–1924). Although as keen on the entire range of Picasso’s work as G.F., Quinn did not consume the artist with the same voracious appetite and also refused offers from the artist himself, for example, for Three musicians. 34
The surviving letters and cables that passed between 21 rue la Boëtie and 3 via Clemente Maraini in the wake of the contract reveal the intensity of the Rebers’s newly found passion for Picasso, which was frustrated by delays in delivery. Despite the pressure that the couple put on Rosenberg, the paintings reached Lugano slowly and piecemeal. First to arrive, probably in early February, were the still lifes that were in Rosenberg’s gallery at the time of the contract, followed by those that eventually returned from Prague.35 The messages sent by G.F., Erna and Clara Lincke, Fritsch’s predecessor, make it clear that Three musicians was awaited especially eagerly. According to Rosenberg, the delay was due to Picasso’s decision to do some retouching but also probably to the fact that he had to first purchase the painting himself; the transaction between him and Picasso took place on 2nd February 1923, when the dealer acquired it for Fr. 14,000.36 On 13th February Lincke wrote to Rosenberg that ‘Monsieur Reber [. . .] will be back in Lugano in a few days. What a pleasure [it will be] for him, if, in the meantime, the “Musicians” would have arrived here’.37 ‘Please tell us when “Musicians” will leave’ and ‘We await “Musicians” impatiently’ read the collector’s cables of 20th February and 7th March respectively.38 Finally, Erna shared with Rosenberg her and her husband’s full appreciation for it on 24th March, shortly after the large canvas had at long last been installed in their Lugano residence (Fig.6):39
Dear Sir [Paul Rosenberg], For several days now we have had the honour and pleasure of giving refuge and protection to the Musicians, who now continue their grandiose music very well placed on the wall of my husband’s room. I never tire of listening to them while looking at them, and already early in the morning, at the first twilight, I see six white eyes that stare forcefully at me, leading me from one daydream to another. This formidable painting occupies me even more than the others, it has a great severe rhythm [,] does not hide its Spanish origin,
34 See note 22.
35 Cable from Václav Nebeský to Paul Rosenberg, 26th January 1923, and letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, 8th February 1923, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.73a, items 71 and 45.
36 For the retouches, see the letter from Paul Rosenberg to G.F. Reber, 10th February 1923, Christoph Pudelko Archiv, Bonn. Previously held in private hands and consulted as such by the authors, this archive has since moved to ZADIK. See also Geelhaar, op. cit. (note 5), pp.160 and 287, no.203. For the purchase date, see the receipt from Pablo Picasso to Paul Rosenberg, 2nd February 1923, Morgan Rosenberg Collection, MA 3500.379.
37 Letter from Clara Lincke to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 13th February
38 Cables from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 20th February and 7th March 1923, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.73a, items 47 and 48.
39 Letter from Erna Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 24th March 1923, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.73a, item 50. For a partial and varying translation, see Ferrari and Morrison, op. cit. (note 20), p.198. In M.G. Sarfatti: L’America, ricerca della felicita, Milan 1937, p.74, Sarfatti recounted her experience at the Rebers later on.
40 Kropmanns and Fleckner, op. cit. (note 3), pp.387 (Beckmann), 390 (Jawlensky) and 400 (Picasso); and R.A. Rabinow and J.S. Warman: ‘Selected chronology’, in R.A. Rabinow, D.W. Druick and M. Assante di Panzillo, eds: exh. cat.
and could frighten us if we were not continually comforted by the harmonious and noble lines and curves, and brightened by a discreet humour which makes me start the day in a great mood. Among the visits I receive I count as one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable that of Mrs [Margherita] Sarfatti from Milan, full of spirit and very good judgment. Hoping that spring will bring good luck to you and your family. I send you my sincere greetings. Erna Reber.
It would be false to equate G.F.’s unequivocal embrace of Picasso in December 1922 with his first foray into contemporary art or even the work of the artist himself. Prior to the war, G.F. was active in artists’ organisations such as the Sonderbund and had a habit of occasionally purchasing works by contemporary painters; he owned one work each by Max Beckmann (1884–1950) and Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941), and counted among a group of collectors who acquired Picasso’s Suite des saltimbanques, published by Vollard in 1913.40 While these acquisitions remain outliers, G.F. had other opportunities to buy more Picassos prior, during and after the First World War on which he passed.41 In view of this, the December 1922 purchase requires a different explanation. The correspondence quoted above suggests that it was the encounter with the ambitious programme of Three musicians, a culmination of Picasso’s latest research into the possibilities of Cubist expression, that finally tipped G.F. towards Picasso. The letter, sent just days after he struck the deal, shows that the Rebers’s admiration was overpowering. Whatever friction there had been over the terms of their contract, G.F. approached Rosenberg with a request for precise information about both his and the artist’s births with the express purpose of drawing up their respective astrological charts.42 ‘I am certain the revelations will be most interesting’, he wrote. With charts drawn up by February 1923, G.F. could pass on concrete advice: while Rosenberg was to conserve his strength, Picasso should expect a period of ‘grand glory’ in two years’ time.43 When Erna dispatched her 24th March letter to Rosenberg, she could not have fully foreseen where the enthusiasm of her and her husband was to lead. In 1923, but more so in 1924 and beyond, G.F. bought numerous Picassos from Rosenberg, his brother, Léonce, as well as from Flechtheim and Kahnweiler.44 He resumed buying Picassos from Vollard in January 1925, and perhaps even during the prior year. Archival and photographic records document the celerity and zeal with which the Rebers acquired works from Picasso’s œuvre. For example, Table in front of the window published in Der Querschnitt was among those that entered the collection by 1923. Among other purchases were works representative of critical phases in the development of Cubism, such as the Portrait of Clovis Sagot (1909; Hamburger Kunsthalle), the 1912 Still life (Fêtes de Céret), Woman in a chemise in an armchair (1913–14; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Bottle of Anis del Mono
Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-garde, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2006, pp.274–304, at p.287.
41 There was, for instance, an auction of the stock of Flechtheim’s pre-war gallery, which included six Picassos, sale, Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbig, Berlin, Galerie Flechtheim, moderne Gemälde, 5th June 1917, lots 203–08.
42 See note 26.
43 Letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 8th February 1923, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.73a, item 45.
44 For the January 1925 transaction, see Rabinow and Warman, op. cit. (note 40), p.292. In her 1974 letter, Fritsch noted that G.F. visited Vollard whenever he was in Paris. See note 15.
45 For Portrait of Clovis Sagot, see
the letter from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, 21st February 1924, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.76, item 153; for Woman in a chemise in an armchair, see the invoice from Léonce Rosenberg to Paul Rosenberg 11th February 1924, as well as a letter, 14th February 1924, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.C.19a, items 133–34, and folder I.C.30.b, item 142, respectively. For Still life (Fêtes de Céret) and Bottle of Anis del Mono, both are visible in photographs of the Lugano residence. See C. Zervos: Pablo Picasso, Paris 1942–54 (hereafter Z), II, pt. 1: 319; exh. pamphlet Eröffnungsausstellung: Deutsche und französische Kunst aus des XX. Jahrhunderts Beginn, Berlin (Galerie Flechtheim) 1921, no.91, as ‘Stilleben mit Festprogramm’; and Archiv Christoph Pudelko, Bonn / ZADIK.
The Reber Picasso collection
(1915; Detroit Institute of Art).45 They were complemented by exemplars of Picasso’s many recent recognisably representational styles, such as Italian woman with pitcher (Fig.9), Head of a woman (1921), Seated woman (Woman in a chemise) (1921; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart), the lithograph Toilet of Venus (1923) and Mother and child (Fig.8). G.F. owned them all by 1924.46
Among the extensive photographic documentation of the Lugano residence are seven pages from a formerly bound photo album, each with either four or five installation views taken by Fritsch and some annotated by her: ‘1924’, ‘Nov. 1924’ and ‘Winter 1924–25’ (Figs.10 and 11).47 The photographs vividly capture the ambiance of the couple’s home. Pasted on black cardboard, which has since bleached, the photographs reveal how the Rebers gradually incorporated Picasso’s Cubist and non-Cubist works into their existing collection and decor. As far as it has been reconstructed to date, the Rebers’s holdings included examples of ancient Greek and medieval art, early Chinese bronzes, Renaissance paintings, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury old masters, in addition to French Realist, Impressionist and Post-
46 For Italian woman with pitcher, see the letter from Irmgart H. Fritsch to Paul Rosenberg, 14th April 1924; and MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.76, item 158. For Toilet of Venus (Z V: 130), see Der Querschnitt 4 (1924), after p.317. Head of a woman (Z V: 356); Seated woman (Woman in a chemise) and Mother and child are visible in photographs of the Lugano residence, see Archiv Christoph Pudelko, Bonn /ZADIK.
47 These annotations notwithstanding, judging by the provenance of individual Picassos
visible in the Lugano residence photographs, some of them must date later than winter 1924–25. See, for example, photographs that show Roses (1906; Z XXII: 459), Nude sitting in an armchair (1906; Z XXII: 473) and Woman and harlequin (1915; Z II, pt. 2: 559), which G.F. acquired no sooner than 3rd April 1925 at the auction of Salon Bollag, Zurich.
48 Cable from G.F. Reber to Paul Rosenberg, in French, 18th November 1924, MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.76, item 165.
49 For the reproduction in Der
12. Der Querschnitt 6 (1926), following p.754, showing Picasso’s Saltimbanque seated with arms crossed, Cezanne’s Young man and skull and Reber seated.
Impressionist works. The photographs document well-appointed interiors arranged for comfort and convenience, a conventional example of affluent life. The dominance of the Rebers’s new artistic interest in each of the rooms is very clear. The ever-increasing number of Picassos entered into a close dialogue on the walls not only with Cezanne but also with numerous twoand three-dimensional works and furnishings from across a wide span of time, cultures and geography. In one instance, a room is documented in a moment of transition (Fig.11). The Sagot portrait and another thus far unidentified painting (not by Picasso) lean against a wall while awaiting a decision on their placement. The family expected more visitors and, as G.F. expressed in a cable to Rosenberg in November 1924, he was anxious to present the collection in the best possible light.48
The dealer who had first publicly proclaimed the genesis of G.F. as a patron of Picasso was Flechtheim; he had, however, until the early 1920s failed to convince the collector of the artist’s merit. He now, though, had cause to celebrate G.F.’s ideological breakthrough, which was a significant development for the dealer’s public relations efforts. As a convert to the collection of the work of living artists, G.F. was worth a lot, if not more than simply sales. Beyond the statement made in the summer of 1923, Flechtheim continued to acknowledge G.F.’s embrace of Picasso with increasing exuberance. By the following year, he published Toilet of Venus with a Reber collection credit line and, while planning an ultimately unrealised monographic exhibition of the artist at the Berlin branch of his gallery, Flechtheim referenced G.F. as one of only two private lenders to the exhibition.49 In March 1925 his Der Querschnitt advanced another promotion aiding the public image of G.F. as a patron of Picasso. This time the validation was more intimate as it included an acknowledgment of Erna, whose family wealth had helped to fund the collection and who took an active part in building it. A caption accompanying a half-length drawn portrait of a woman by Picasso identified her as the sitter.50 That same year, Three musicians and the Sagot portrait also appeared in Der Querschnitt with captions crediting G.F. as their owner.51 Finally, in October 1926, the journal revealed the expanded vision of the Rebers’s collecting interests in a one-page spread (Fig.12).52 The enthusiasm captured so vividly in the agreements for multi-lot Picasso purchases and in the views of the Lugano residence were distilled in three installation photographs selected to underline G.F.’s equal passion for Cezanne and Picasso. Drawing on three moments in time, the spread immortalises a form of convivenzia (a private union with art) among kindred spirits. Shown are Picasso’s Saltimbanque seated with arms crossed (1923; Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo) and Cezanne’s Young man and skull (1896–98; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) and G.F. himself.
If Margherita Sarfatti was one of the earliest visitors to Lugano rejoicing in the Picassos on display there, then Einstein was among the last to come to 3 via Clemente Maraini before the family moved
Querschnitt, see note 46. For the exhibition announcement, see exh. cat. Max Rappaport: Gedächtnis-Ausstellung, Berlin (Galerie Flechtheim) 1924, n.p. Planned for April 1925, it was billed as ‘Picasso (aus den Sammlungen von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Alfred Flechtheim und Reber)’.
50 Der Querschnitt 5 (1925), after p.208, as ‘Frau Erna Reber’. The work is Woman with turban (Sara Murphy) (1923; Z V: 369), see the related entry in the collection checklist in Kropmanns and Fleckner, op. cit. (note 3), p.407.
51 Der Querschnitt 5 (1925), after p.104 (Three musicians); and Der Querschnitt 5 (1925), after p.784 (Portrait of Clovis Sagot).
52 Der Querschnitt 6 (1926), after p.754.
53 According to the Rebers’s guest book, Einstein stayed with them from 16th December 1927 to 1st February 1928. See Archiv Christoph Pudelko, Bonn / ZADIK, cited in U. Fleckner: Carl Einstein und sein Jahrhundert: Fragmente einer intellektuellen Biographie, Berlin 2006, p.455, no.8. In early October 1927, Einstein had
to Lausanne. In the process of revising his 1926 survey Art of the 20th Century , including the chapter on Picasso, for its second edition, Einstein could not have asked for more avid conversationalists or a more inspiring setting.53 When the critic arrived in Lugano in late 1927 for an extended stay, the Reber Picasso collection had reached its full unparalleled breadth and depth. That year the art historian Oscar Schürer recognised G.F.’s achievement by dedicating his Picasso monograph to the collector and declaring the holdings ‘the decisive collection for the understanding of today’s Picasso’ (Fig.13).54 By then, the Rebers had added to their holdings, for example the iconic 1914 Glass of absinthe sculpture (Fig.14) and the commanding Two seated women (1920; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf) and Mother and child (1921; Art Institute of Chicago); these had all come from Quinn’s collection, which had been dissolved upon the American collector’s death in July 1924.55 Back in late 1922, when G.F. first began to acquire Picasso’s work, Einstein’s view of the artist was ambivalent at best – his stylistic diversity unnerved him. His understanding of both Cubism and Picasso shifted only once his mind became engrossed with Surrealism. G.F.’s warming to the patronage of a living artist has been commonly understood in hindsight rather than from the moment when both his and Erna’s Picasso story began in earnest. Such a retrospective view has distorted the image of his art holdings, suggesting, too simplistically, that they fall into two distinct collections, one replacing the other. However, as the installation photographs of and reportage on the Lugano residence attest, the turn to Picasso is distinguished by an expansion of his collection rather than an overhaul. G.F.’s undeniable interest in and pursuit of Cubist art has obscured the fact that his sudden turn towards Picasso in 1922 was unrelated to the Uhde and Galerie Kahnweiler sequestration sales and pre-war Cubism. Seeing Cubism broadly as the starting point of the collector’s move away from acquiring Cezannes has discouraged the exploration of alternative paths such as his admiration for late Cubism specifically or his unconstrained support of Picasso during a crucial juncture in the artist’s career, when the public view of him had yet again become controversial. Where the origin story of the Reber Picasso collection is concerned, it is more fruitful to look for answers in what G.F., Rosenberg and other art dealers invested in the artist had in common. G.F.’s evolution as a collector resembles Rosenberg’s own as a dealer. In his preface for the catalogue of the 1922 exhibition in Munich, Rosenberg emphasised the intellectual process that younger artists like Picasso engaged in to galvanise the work of their predecessors in a manner entirely their own.56 No one had undergone this process of layering creation upon creation with the same vigour as Picasso and no one had shown themselves to be as receptive to this process as G.F. As the collector put it in 1930: ‘I want to collect from eras of creative force’, no matter the chronological period.57
It would be a misunderstanding, however, to interpret this declaration as a blanket statement channelling the collector’s engagement with art on an aesthetic level alone. In fact, the evidence points to both G.F.’s
offered Erna a draft of his revised Picasso chapter but judging by a letter sent to Kahnweiler from Lugano in spring 1928, he was still at work on his text then. See C. Einstein: Carl Einstein: Briefwechsel 1904–1940, eds K.H. Kiefer and L. Meffre, Berlin 2020, letter nos.267 and 270.
54 O. Schürer: Pablo Picasso, Berlin and Leipzig 1927, p.30. Schürer’s assessment echoed that of Carl Sternheim, who the year prior had described the Rebers’s works as ‘Picasso’s most beautiful’ anywhere,
C. Sternheim: Lutetia: Berichte über europäische Politik, Kunst und Volksleben, Berlin 1926, p.45, quoted in Schürer, p.456, no.23.
55 The sculpture is visible on top of a bookshelf in a photograph of an office space at the Lugano residence, see Archiv Christoph Pudelko, Bonn/ ZADIK.
56 P. Rosenberg: ‘Pablo Ruiz Picasso’, in Pablo Ruiz Picasso 1922, op. cit. (note 18), pp.5–15.
57 G.F. Reber: ‘Hommage à Picasso!’, Documents 2, no.3 (1930), p.175, quoted in Kosinski op. cit. (note 3), p.524.
Picasso’s Still life with
head, Harlequin musician, Mother and child and Two seated women installed in the salon in the Lugano residence in or after 1926. Photographs probably by Irmgart H. Fritsch. (Christoph
and Erna’s deep intellectual and scholarly commitment to all the works with which they surrounded themselves. In addition to readily opening their art-filled home to artists, critics, scholars and writers immersed in contemporary European art, the Rebers engaged in similar dialogues when it came to aspects of their collecting of art from different time periods and cultural origins.58 In order to better understand this, a more inclusive approach to the couple’s intellectually grounded pursuit of art ought to be adopted in future research.
appendix
Identification of paintings listed in G.F. Reber’s 13th December 1922 contract with Paul Rosenberg. (MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, items 111–112).
The Picasso paintings cited below are arranged in the order and by the name they were listed in the contract. Their identification is based on the four- and three-digit numbers also recorded therein and which refer to the Galerie Paul Rosenberg inventory and photograph numbers respectively. In addition, the contract recorded two paintings by Cezanne and one by Manet, which are identified here following the Picassos.
58 They corresponded, for example, with Hans Mühlestein, who dedicated his 1929 monograph on Etruscan art to the couple, and lent works to the 1929 exhibition of Chinese art held in Berlin that same year.
59 See exh. cat. Pablo Picasso, Prague (Síň Mánesa) 1922, unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), pp.184–85, as ‘M 15 / probably P 6’.
60 MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder IV.A.1.a, p.13, ‘Liste de photographies’.
15. Contract drawn up by G.F. Reber and agreed upon by Paul Rosenberg, dated 13th December 1922. (Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, Paul Rosenberg Archive, folder I.A.71, items 111–12).
Drawn up by G.F., the contract does not indicate any values for individual paintings. This makes it difficult to estimate the exchange value the collector received for the two Cezannes and one Manet as well as the prices Rosenberg marked up for each of the eleven Picasso paintings at the time. What is known instead are sale and exchange values for works by Picasso documented in other archival and published sources. When applicable, references to these are given below.
Provided too are standard references identifying each painting as well as their present whereabouts. The current English titles as well as places and dates of execution are those provided by the current owners. When this information is unavailable it has been sourced from the respective catalogues raisonnés. The following abbreviations are used to indicate references:
RFW: J. Rewald with W. Feilchenfeldt and J. Warman: The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, a Catalogue Raisonné 2, New York 1996.
RW: D. Rouart and G. Wildenstein: Édouard Manet: Catalogue Raisonné 1, Lausanne and Paris 1975.
Z: C. Zervos: Pablo Picasso, Paris 1942–54, II, pt 2–IV.
61 Pablo Picasso, op. cit. (note 59), unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.183, as ‘M 1 / probably P 11’.
62 Pablo Ruiz Picasso 1922, op. cit. (note 18), unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.183, as ‘M 6 / probably P 20’.
63 Pablo Ruiz Picasso 1922, op. cit. (note 18), unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.184, as ‘M 10 and 17 / P 3 and 10’.
64 Pablo Ruiz Picasso 1922, op. cit. (note 18), unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.184, as ‘M 7 / P 22’.
65 See note 21.
The Reber Picasso collection
Paintings by Pablo Picasso purchased by G.F. Reber.
1. ‘3504/423 Guitare et encadrement’
Guitar. 1920. Oil on canvas, 89 by 116.3 cm. (Private collection).
Z IV: 191
Probably no.6, priced Fr. 15,000 in the 1922 exhibition in Prague.59 Titled Guitare et partition, the painting is registered in Rosenberg’s photo archive under the number ‘423’.60
2. ‘3362/206 “arlequin”’
Harlequin playing a guitar. 1914–18. Oil on canvas, 98 by 77 cm. (Private collection).
Z II, pt. 2: 518
Probably no.11, priced Fr. 15,000 in the 1922 exhibition in Prague.61
3. ‘[blank]/210 “arlequin”’ Harlequin. 1918. Oil on canvas, 145 by 65 cm. (Private collection).
Z III: 159
Probably no.20, priced Fr. 15,000 in the 1922 exhibition in Prague.62
4. ‘3652/422 “guitare rose et noir”’
Guitar. 1920. Oil on canvas, 61 by 50 cm. (Private collection).
Z IV: 216
Possibly no.3 or no.10, priced Fr. 5,500 and Fr. 8,500 respectively in the 1922 exhibition in Prague.63
5. ‘3503/454 “table et chaise”’ (Fig.5)
Still life. 1918. Oil on canvas, 97 by 130.2 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Z III: 257
No.22, priced Fr. 25,000 in the 1922 exhibition in Prague.64
6. ‘3725/638 “Pigeon”’
The pigeon. Early 1919. Oil on canvas, 46 by 55 cm. (Pérez Simón Collection, Mexico City).
Z III: 283
Titled ‘Ne Morte Pigeon’ and listed as a canvas size 10 under no.7 in a group lot of twenty-two works priced altogether Fr. 65,000 in a receipt from Picasso to Rosenberg, dated 4th April 1922.65 The painting is registered in Rosenberg’s photo archive under the number ‘638’.66
7. ‘3733/641 “tapis rouge”’
Guitar on a red cloth. 1922. Oil on canvas, 81 by 116 cm. (Private collection).
Z IV: 440
Titled ‘Ne Morte au tapis rouge’ and listed as a canvas size 50 under no.4 in a group lot of twenty-two works priced altogether Fr. 65,000 in a receipt from Picasso to Rosenberg, dated 4th April 1922.67 A painting of the same title and size is recorded in Rosenberg’s photo archive under the number ‘611’.68
8. ‘3735/643 “do [tapis] à fleurs”’
Glass and fruit dish. 1921 or 1922. Oil on canvas, 73 by 94 cm. (Private collection).
Z IV: 430
66 MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder IV.A.1.a, p.20, ‘Liste de photographies’.
67 See note 21.
68 MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder IV.A.1.a, p.22, ‘Liste de photographies’.
69 See note 21.
70 See note 68.
71 Pablo Ruiz Picasso 1922, op. cit. (note 18), unpaginated; and Jozefacka and Mahler, op. cit. (note 16), p.185, as ‘M17 and 10 /P 10 and P 3’.
72 Receipt from Pablo Picasso to Paul Rosenberg, 4th January 1921, Morgan
Titled ‘Ne Morte Violon au tapis à fleures [sic]’ and listed as a canvas size 30 under no.6 in a group lot of twenty-two works priced altogether Fr. 65,000 in a receipt from Picasso to Rosenberg, dated 4th April 1922.69
9. ‘3772/721 “les poissons”’
Fish, bottle and fruit dish (Poissons, bouteille et compotier). 1922 Oil on canvas, 81 by 100 cm. (Museum of Modern Art, Gunma).
Z IV: 409
Titled ‘bouteille, poisons, compotier’ the painting is registered in Rosenberg’s photo archive under the number ‘721’.70
10. ‘3517/443 “Guitare et compotier”’
Guitar. 1920. Oil on canvas, 65 by 92 cm. (Present whereabouts unknown).
Z IV: 198
P: no.10 and no.3, priced Fr. 8,500 and Fr. 5,500 respectively.71
Purchased by Rosenberg from Picasso on 4th January 1921 for Fr. 4,500.72
Titled ‘Guitare partition etc’, the painting is registered in Rosenberg’s photo archive under the number 443.73
11. ‘Grands Arlequins’
Three musicians. 1921. Oil on canvas, 204.5 by 188.3 cm. (Philadelphia Museum of Art).
Z IV: 332
Rosenberg acquired this version of the painting from Picasso on 2nd February 1923 for Fr. 14,000 after selling it to G.F.74 As an added point of reference, Picasso had offered a version of Three musicians to John Quinn for Fr. 35,000 in early 1922.75
Paintings by Paul Cezanne exchanged by G.F. Reber for paintings by Pablo Picasso and a cash sum.
1. ‘la maison penchée’ (Fig.6)
House in Aix (Jas de Bouffan). 1885–87. Oil on canvas, 60 by 73 cm. (Národní Galerie, Prague).
RFW 600
Upon receipt of the painting from G.F., Rosenberg transferred it to the Paris-based art dealer Georges Bernheim at an unknown date, who sold it to the Czechoslovak state collection art for Fr. 225,000 on 30th June 1923.76
2. ‘jeune home à la veste rouge’
Boy in a red vest. 1888–90. Oil on canvas, 66 by 55 cm. (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia).
RFW 656
Upon receipt of the painting from G.F., Rosenberg transferred it to Galerie Barbazanges at an unknown date and from there Albert C. Barnes purchased it for either Fr. 225,000, 236,000 or 250,000 by 7th July 1923.77
Painting by Edouard Manet exchanged by G.F. Reber for works by Pablo Picasso and a cash sum.
‘pêches et amandes’
Still life (Amandes, groseilles, pêches). c.1864. Oil on canvas, 17 by 22 cm. (Private collection).
RW 141
Rosenberg Collection, MA 3500.372.
73 MoMA Rosenberg Archive, folder IV.A.1.a, p.14, ‘Liste de photographies’.
74 Receipt from Picasso to Rosenberg 2nd February 1923. See Morgan Rosenberg Collection, MA 3500.379.
75 Letter from John Quinn to Henri-Pierre Roché, 5th March 1922, NYPL Archives, John Quinn Papers, Correspondence, 29th August 1921–26th July 1922, pp.332–36; esp. pp.359–63.
76 See note 29.
77 Ibid
The Renaissance in the Kingdom of Naples: new perspectives on Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino
A polychrome wooden sculpture depicting St Stephen in S. Sebastiano, Forcelle (Tornimparte), is here attributed to the painter and sculptor Sebastiano di Cola, who was active in L’Aquila from 1480 to 1506. It can be demonstrated that the figure is the same as one mentioned in a contract from 1493. This provides a basis for reassessing aspects of the artistic milieu of fifteenth-century L’Aquila.
by rossella monopoli
In 1461 a powerful earthquake devastated L’Aquila, the third in the city’s relatively recent history.1 Founded in 1254, by the midfifteenth century L’Aquila was the second city of the kingdom of Naples and possessed extensive surrounding territories (contado).2 The catastrophe necessitated a comprehensive reconstruction, prompting many commissions. The result was a flowering of artistic production in the city and its region, leading to what is known as the Renaissance of L’Aquila. Unfortunately, identifying what was built and created at that time is difficult. The 1461 earthquake was not the last, and later ones – especially a highly destructive one in 1703 –razed the urban fabric again, periodically throwing the city into states of upheaval and leading to intermittent episodes of loss, displacement and decontextualisation of its cultural heritage.3
There are two important sources of evidence for the large number of painters and sculptors active in the city during the Renaissance of L’Aquila: the many unattributed works of art, on the one hand, and, on the other, the large number of surviving documents that describe commissions of works that are either lost, dispersed or destroyed. As a result, many of
I am particularly grateful to Michelle O’Malley for her invaluable advice and support and to Saverio Ricci for our fruitful discussions and for making my first encounter with the St Stephen possible. My thanks also go to Cristiana Pasqualetti, Alison Wright, Donal Cooper, Mauro Congeduti, Michele Maccherini, Francesca Borgo and Roberta Farrauti. The findings in this article are based on research undertaken for my PhD (Warburg Institute, University of London) and were presented at a public seminar at the Warburg Institute, London, in October 2021.
1 For contemporary accounts of the event by local chroniclers, see A. De Ritiis: Chronica Civitatis Aquilae, Archivio di Stato dell’Aquila (hereafter ASAq), S 72; and F. Angeluccio di Bazzano: Cronaca delle cose dell’Aquila dall’anno 1436 all’anno 1485, in A.L. Muratori, ed.: Antiquitates italiacae medii aevi, Milan 1742, VI, pp.883–926.
For transcriptions of the main excerpts, see C. De Matteis, ed.: L’Aquila Magnifica Citade: Fonti e Testimonianze dei secoli XIII–XVIII, L’Aquila, L’Aquila 2009, pp.170–75.
2 For studies of the city and its region (contado), see A. De Matteis: L’Aquila e il contado: Demografia e fiscalità (secoli XV–XVIII), Naples 1973, pp.3–28; and P. Terenzi: L’Aquila nel Regno: I rapporti politi tra città e monarchia nel Mezzogiorno tardomedievale, Naples 2015, pp.xlix–lxi.
3 Other connected factors limit the present state of knowledge on Aquilan art, most importantly perhaps the French raid of 1799 but also the scholarly neglect of L’Aquila, dismissed as peripheral because it lies outside the hegemonic axis of Florence, Venice and Rome; for a deconstruction of this approach, see S.J. Campbell: The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy, Chicago 2019.
the artists who were important contributors to the artistic flowering in fifteenth-century L’Aquila have never been properly researched. This article focuses on one of the most widely documented, the painter and sculptor Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino (active 1480–1506).4 Documents concerning Sebastiano di Cola’s activity suggest that the artist occupied an important position in L’Aquila and its contado 5 He was commissioned to work on prestigious sites by distinguished patrons. There are eight preserved documents related to his activity as an artist. Four concern paintings he produced for the city’s main churches: in 1480 he decorated a chapel in the cathedral of SS. Massimo and Giorgio, located near the door leading to the room of the confraternity of Saint Maximus;6 in 1488 Sebastiano undertook the commission to paint a Virgin of Mercy with four angels and Christ the Redeemer for a chapel of S. Domenico;7 in 1493 a contract obliged him to complete a work he had begun for Jacopo di Notar Nanni – the most distinguished patron of Renaissance art in L’Aquila – in S. Maria di Paganica;8 and in 1495 he was commissioned to paint a panel of St Francis receiving the stigmata for the chapel of the Third Order in S. Bernardino.9 The remaining four documents concern commissions of a
4 For the main publications on Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino, see V. Bindi: Artisti Abruzzesi: Pittori, scultori, architetti, maestri di musica, Fonditori, Cesellatori, Figuli, dagli antichi a moderni. Notizie e documenti, Naples 1883, pp.263–65; R. van Marle: The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1934, XV, pp.226–27; M. Chini: Silvestro Aquilano e l’arte in Aquila nella II metà del sec. XV, La Bodoniana, L’Aquila 1954, pp.225–30, at p.303; R. Cannatà: ‘Francesco da Montereale e la pittura a L’Aquila dalla fine del ‘400 alla prima metà del ‘500: Una proposta per il recupero e la conservazione’, Storia dell’Arte 41 (1981), pp.51–73, at p.54; F. Bologna: ‘Le arti nel monastero e nel territorio di Sant’Angelo d’Ocre’, in S. Cosimo, ed.: Sant’Angelo d’Ocre, Teramo 2009, pp.202–04; L. Arbace: I volti dell’Anima: Saturnino Gatti, Pescara 2012, pp.38–42; Vincenzo Di Gennaro’s subsection ‘La scultura abruzzese del
Rinascimento: la Scuola Aquilana’ in the article by idem, S.M. Pomante and G. De Angelis: ‘La scultura lignea policromata nella cultura artistica abruzzese (XIV–XVI secolo)’, in R. Morselli and C. Ortolani, eds: L’arte per l’arte: Patrimonio d’Abruzzo restituito dalla Fondazione Venanzio Crocetti Rome 2017, pp.13–68, at pp.37–49; and M. Maccherini: ‘Santa Maria ad Cryptas: la decorazione scultorea e pittorica nei secoli XV e XVI’, in idem and L. Pezzuto, eds: Santa Maria ad Cryptas: Storia, arte, restauri, Rome 2022, pp.97–111. 5 For published documents on the artist, see M. Chini: Documenti relativi ai pittori che operarono in Aquila fra il 1450 e il 1550 circa: Estratto dal Bullettino della R. Deputazione Abruzzese di Storia Patria, serie III –anno XVIII (1927), Aquila 1929, pp.31–46.
6 ASAq, notary Giovan Marino di Pizzoli, b.26, vol.XXI, fol.220v.
7 ASAq, notary Domenico di Niccolò di Pizzoli, b.11, vol. XXXII, fol.246r.
1. St Stephen, here attributed to Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino. 1493. Polychrome wood, height without base 155 cm. (S. Sebastiano, Forcelle; courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arte e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
diverse nature: in 1493 he was asked to produce a wooden sculpture and its wooden tabernacle with painted stories for Iacobo Ranerij of Rocca Santo Stefano, a village in the western contado of L’Aquila;10 in 1499 Sebastiano decorated a room of the house of Alessandro Petricca Pica in L’Aquila;11 in 1498 a payment was made to him by the Camera Aquilana, the city’s primary political institution, although the nature of the commission is unknown;12 and in 1502 Sebastiano was to receive money from the commune, together with the painter Giovanni Antonio Percossa, for unspecified works.13
This is a relatively rich archival legacy given the general lack of documentation concerning the commissioning of works in the area. Despite this, the corpus of works currently attributed to Sebastiano does not include a single documented work. Indeed, several of the works currently attributed to the artist are stylistically quite dissimilar and none can be regarded as definitive.14 The major impediment is that most of the commissions recorded in the archive do not survive since they relate to frescos executed in buildings that have been severely damaged over time by earthquakes and constantly repaired or reconstructed. There may be a few fortunate cases of works that have survived hidden under later repaints or subsequently applied whitewash, but the current post-earthquake conditions of these buildings do not allow for a proper investigation.15
The present study aims to shed new light on Sebastiano di Cola’s œuvre, using published but hitherto overlooked archival material. It demonstrates that the commission the artist received for a polychrome wooden sculpture of St Stephen relates to a surviving sculpture (Fig.1). This is, therefore, the first piece that can be securely ascribed to Sebastiano. The evident quality of this work challenges the traditional assessment of him as an artist of lesser ability. The discovery invites re-evaluating the artist’s position in the context of the artistic milieu of fifteenth-century L’Aquila, particularly in relation to the painter and sculptor Saturnino Gatti (c.1463–1518).16
The corpus of works ascribed to Sebastiano di Cola by nineteenthcentury scholars was extremely heterogeneous. In 1950 Ferdinando Bologna was the first to challenge this in a foundational article. Bologna removed a panel painting depicting St Francis receiving the stigmata (Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo – MuNDA, L’Aquila) from the œuvre. It had
8 ASAq, notary Nembrotto Mici da Lucoli, b.41, vol.XVI, fol.456v.
10 ASAq, notary Nembrotto Mici di Lucoli, b.41, vol.XVI, fol.231r.
11 The original contract is lost. See Chini, op. cit. (note 5), p.41.
12 ASAq, ACA, W23, fol.111r.
13 ASAq, ACA, W25, fol.62r.
14 Unfortunately, like other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century studies of art in L’Aquila, Bindi’s biography of Sebastiano is unreliable. His corpus of works of art related to the artist includes pieces that were clearly produced by different hands and that have since been attributed to other artists. See Bindi, op. cit. (note 4), pp.263–65. For different and more recent studies of Sebastiano, see Arbace, op. cit. (note 4), pp.39–42; and V. Di Gennaro: ‘La scultura lignea policromata nella cultura artistica abruzzese’, in Morselli and Ortolani, op. cit. (note 4), pp.13–49, at p.49 15 There is a possibility that the frescos commissioned for S. Maria di Paganica and the cathedral are such a case. These buildings suffered extensive damage in the 2009 earthquake and have since remained inaccessible, pending their restoration.
16 A more detailed reconsideration of the figure of Sebastiano di Cola as a painter will be offered in a future publication. For similar conclusions about the sources, published after the research for the current contribution had been completed, see G. Simone: ‘“In faucibus et introitu regni”: artisti aquilani di frontiera tra la fine del XV e il XVI secolo: opere e documenti’, in F. Giannini, ed.: Andrea Delitio e l’Arte del Quattrocento in Abruzzo, Pescara 2024, pp.275–94 and S. Ferrauti: ‘Ripensare l’Abruzzo: Novità su Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino’, Studi Medievali e Moderni 28 (2024), pp.315–45.
Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino
previously been connected with the commission recorded in the notarial deed of 1495. Instead, he attributed the work – together with the panel of the Blessed Giovanni of Capestrano with episodes of his life (Museo nazionale d’Abruzzo) – to an anonymous master whom he named the Master of S. Giovanni da Capestrano. Furthermore, Bologna confirmed the attribution to Sebastiano of a fresco of the Annunciation (Fig.2) in S. Maria ad Cryptas, Fossa, a town in the eastern part of the Aquilan contado. 17 This attribution had been first suggested by the nineteenth-century scholars Angelo Leosini and Vincenzo Bindi.18 Leosini and Bindi had noticed an inscription at the bottom of the scene, stating ‘Sebastiano painted this in 1486’.19 They were also aware that Fossa is close to Sebastiano di Cola’s hometown, Casentino, and that the period in which Sebastiano di Cola was active aligns well with the date of the painting. These two factors persuaded the scholars that the Sebastiano of the Fossa was identical with
17 F. Bologna: ‘Il Maestro di San Giovanni da Capestrano’, Proporzioni 3 (1950), pp.86–94.
18 A. Leosini: Monumenti Storici Artistici della Città di Aquila e suoi contorni, L’Aquila 1848, p.274; and Bindi, op. cit. (note 4), p.263.
19 ‘QUISTI SANTI ELLA CHAPELLA A [FACTO] PENGERE ANTON[I]O DE PAVLV DE FOSSA SEbASTIANO PISIT 1486’, transcription from Maccherini 2022, op. cit. (note 4), p.97.
20 See Cannatà, op. cit. (note 4), p.54,
note 18; and Maccherini 2022, op. cit. (note 4), pp.97–101.
21 Di Gennaro, op. cit. (note 4).
22 According to Bindi, op. cit. (note 4), p.263, Sebastiano was less gifted than painters like Francesco da Montereale, Saturnino Gatti and Giovanni Antonio da Lucoli, but still one of the main artists of the quattrocento in L’Aquila. See also Di Gennaro, op. cit. (note 8), p.49.
23 F. Bologna: ‘Le arti nel territorio e nel monastero di Sant’Angelo d’Ocre’, in C. Savastano, ed.: Sant’Angelo d’Ocre,
the Sebastiano di Cola known from the documents.20 Following Bologna’s endorsement, the Annunciation has been considered a reliable point of reference for establishing the artist’s hand. Recently, renewed attention has been paid to Sebastiano di Cola when Vincenzo Di Gennaro attributed two sculptures to the artist’s circle: a wooden St Sebastian from S. Maria del Ponte, Tione degli Abruzzi (Fig.9), and a terracotta Madonna adoring the Child (the Child of which is missing) from S. Leonardo, Beffi (both in the holdings of the Archiepiscopal Curia, L’Aquila).21
The quality of the painting in Fossa is evidently mediocre; therefore, Sebastiano di Cola has long been considered an artist of modest ability.22 However, recently Michele Maccherini observed surviving traces of underdrawing visible on the plaster underneath the paint and highlighted that this design is of high quality. He argued that the master was responsible only for the design and delegated the execution of the painting to an assistant. Bologna had previously observed that the Annunciation reveals a clear familiarity with the experiments in perspective made by followers of Piero della Francesca in Rome, notably by Antoniazzo
Castelli 2009, pp.184–207, at p.204; and Maccherini 2022, op. cit. (note 4), p.98.
27 A.L. Antinori: Annali degli Abruzzi, Bibl. S. Tommasi, L’Aquila, XVII–1, year 1493, MS, fol.155; and Bindi, op. cit. (note 4), p.264.
28 Chini, op. cit. (note 5), pp.36–37.
29 The transcription in Chini, op. cit. (note 5), p.36, is incorrect: he reads ‘San Leonardo della Valle ad tunicella’ as the name of a church located near a place called ‘tunicella’, but the correct transcription is ‘San Leonardo della Valle cum tunicella in[a]urata de auro ducat[orum]’, ‘cum tunicella’ being a reference to the tunic of the saint to be gilded.
30 ASAq, notary Nembrotto Mici di Lucoli, b.41, vol.XVI, fol.231r.
31 For similar cases in other centres
2. Annunciation, attributed to Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino. 1486. Fresco. (S. Maria ad Cryptas, Fossa; courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
Romano. He specifically linked the Fossa Annunciation to Antoniazzo’s fresco of the Annunciation in the Pantheon, Rome, and considered the St Ursula, painted on the intrados of the arch in the Fossa chapel, as a stylistic derivation from Piero. Maccherini, although stopping short of identifying direct parallels with the Pantheon Annunciation, acknowledges an echo of Antoniazzo’s artistic culture to be present in the work.23
Maccherini also supported the attribution to Sebastiano of a Deposition (Fig.3) in S. Maria del Soccorso, L’Aquila, which had been first proposed by Roberto Cannatà.24 The painting was executed for the Pica family before 1506, and Maccherini found supporting evidence in the fact that the family had hired Sebastiano di Cola at least once before, in 1499.25
Maccherini argued that the work shows a stylistic shift towards Gatti in Sebastiano di Cola’s work, at a time – twenty years after his work in Fossa – when Gatti’s style was popular, even predominant, in the territory.26
Maccherini’s re-evaluation of Sebastiano di Cola’s work is important, especially as it suggests that Sebastiano di Cola was a better painter than was previously thought. Nevertheless, the current state of knowledge about the artist remains tentative, lacking solid bases. The problem of a corpus of attributed works that is not reliable and the lack of documented works together pose significant obstacles to the reconstruction of the identity and career of the artist, both as a painter and as a sculptor. However, unnoticed by previous scholars is a high-quality wooden sculpture that can be ascribed to Sebastiano di Cola. It can be demonstrated that it is the figure specified in the commissioning document of 1493, which was published nearly a century ago. First referenced by Anton Ludovico Antinori in his eighteenth-century manuscripts and mentioned by Vincenzo Bindi in 1883,27 the original source was transcribed by Mario Chini in 1929.28 The document in question is a notarial protocol, which refers to a contract concluded in March 1493. It concerns a certain Iacobo Ranerij from the town of Rocca Santo Stefano in the western contado of L’Aquila, who commissioned Sebastiano di Cola to produce a sculpture of St Stephen for the church of S. Stefano in his hometown. The contract stipulates that the work should be made ‘of wood’ (‘de lignamine’) ‘and that it should have a wooden tabernacle, which ‘should be painted with four narratives’ (‘et pignere tabernaculum storiatum cum quatuor storiis’). The tunic of the saint was to be suitably gilded (‘cum tunicella inaurata de auro ducatorum’) and the painted images should be made with goodquality colours and gold where necessary (‘de coloribus finis et auro fino ubi est necesse’).29 A total of 14 ducats was to be paid for the work. This sum should be paid in a series of instalments, the last of which was to correspond to the date of delivery of the finished work, scheduled for 26th December of the same year, the feast of St Stephen (‘et dare et consignare eidem Iacobo perfectam in totum in die festus Sancti Stephani de mense decembris proxime future’).30
A key phrase in the contract demonstrates the way in which information about visual elements was conveyed: a reference work was indicated as a model for the dimensions of the sculpture to be created. Sebastiano di Cola was asked to make a figure similar in size to that of a wooden St Leonard displayed in a church dedicated to S. Leonardo
of the Italian peninsula, see M. O’Malley: The Business of Art: Contract and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy, New Haven 2005, pp.223–24.
32 In the pastoral visit of 1932, the bishop Gaudenzio Manuelli recorded that ‘la chiesa di S. Stefano ha un solo altare, con omonimo titolo, con nicchia e statua del Santo in legno’ (‘the church of S. Stefano had one altar dedicated to St Stephen, with a niche and a wooden sculpture of the saint’), Archivio Arcidiocesano dell’Aquila, Archivio
Vescovile, Vescovi e Arcivescovi, Visite pastorali, Gaudenzio Manuelli, b.839, vol.1.
33 The church belonged to the castrum of Rocca Santo Stefano, at that time dependent on the villa named Forcelle, as reported in the Libro dei fuochi of 1508, for which see De Matteis, op. cit. (note 1), p.247. For S. Sebastiano, Forcelle, see the catalogue record in Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, Diocesi di L’Aquila, Inventario dei beni culturali mobili, scheda OA, NCTN 90002581, no.5TT0005.
della Valle (‘ad staturam ymaginis Sancti Leonardi de la Valle’). Referring to a model or a prototype in commissioning contracts was common practice, often motivated – as in this case – by the practical need for the client to give the artist a clear and immediate idea of what they wanted. Reference to an existing – and, crucially, local – work of art was the easiest way to do this.31
The sculpture commissioned in the contract is clearly the St Stephen (Fig.1) currently displayed in the small church of S. Sebastiano, Forcelle, but originally, until 1932, located in the church of S. Stefano in the neighbouring village of Rocca Santo Stefano.32 The figure is 155 centimetres high with a base that is 5 centimetres high (both probably carved from the same piece of wood) and is positioned in a wall recess of the small single-vessel nave (aula unica) of S. Sebastiano, where it was probably moved at some point after 1932 in order to be preserved after the church of S. Stefano had been severely damaged by earthquakes and definitively abandoned.33 The saint is easily identifiable by the attribute of
3. Deposition, attributed to Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino. Before 1506. Fresco. (S. Maria del Soccorso, L’Aquila; courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino
Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino
the stone of his martyrdom embedded in his head. Young and beardless, he is represented standing facing forward, dressed as a deacon in a gilded dalmatic over a white alb. At the level of the chest and above the lower hem, the tunic is embellished with rectangular apparels. These are depicted with the help of incised lines that are traced with red pigment, imitating damask (Figs.4 and 5). He holds a book in his left hand, which he keeps close to his side. His right hand and part of the edge of the respective sleeve are missing. The sculpture is finely carved on the front and sides; the back is hollow (Fig.7), as was common; this fulfilled the dual technical and practical needs of reducing the risk of the wood becoming warped and reducing the weight of the sculpture. The head is carved in
4. Detail of Fig.1, showing the damask decoration on the chest of the dalmatic. (Photograph courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
5. Detail of Fig.1, showing the damask decoration near the bottom of the dalmatic. (Photograph courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
the round and painted on the back, except for a section on the back of the head (Fig.6), which has been roughly flattened and has a nail fixed in it, probably for attaching a halo crowning the saint’s head.
The flat, hollowed-out back suggests that the work was conceived for frontal viewing only and that it was originally part of a more complex structure in which it occupied a fixed position. This could have been the wooden tabernacle mentioned in the commissioning document, which must have consisted of a kind of niche that would have obscured the back of the sculpture and been equipped with lockable doors painted with stories concerning the saint. The use of a wooden and finely painted tabernacle with doors was a typical feature of this type of devotional object, which, despite commonly being considered as a medieval form, persisted in central Italy and especially in the territory of L’Aquila, into the Early Modern period, as several extant contracts of similar pieces demonstrate, although the survival of the tabernacles themselves is rare.34 In such objects painting, sculpture and the micro-architecture of the tabernacle are closely related, and it is unsurprising that the patron commissioned an artist who was both a painter and a wood sculptor.35
Crucial to the understanding of Sebastiano di Cola’s work is the refinement of both the carving and the painted decoration, the latter especially evident in the details of the dalmatic, despite the fact that some areas of repainting that can be observed around the perimeter of the figure’s eyes and eyebrows.36 Although some rigidity is evident in the decorative, even calligraphic, quality of the folds of the sleeves of the dalmatic, which do not move with the body, and the hand, which is flattened and hardly three-dimensional, the figure of the saint conveys a strong sense of vividness, achieved through the lifelike rendering of the young face with its soft complexion and delicate features, and the detail of the knee bent under the heavy fabric.37 The tender complexion of the young martyr with plump lips, a straight and regular nasal bridge and smooth cheeks, is the work of an accomplished master. Voluminous curls, soiled by the blood that gushes from the wound on the head, are elegantly carved to frame the face (Fig.8). The closely observed anatomical details of the neck, with its tense tendons, and of the surviving hand, enlivened by the presence of a vein in relief on the back are further evidence the sculptor’s ability.
It is surprising that a work of this quality has not received much attention, especially given that the identification of artists is one of the main concerns in scholarship on L’Aquila. Yet a careful historiographical and on-site investigation helps to understand the reasons for it. The sculpture was first mentioned in 1934 in the Inventario degli Oggetti d’Arte d’Italia, recorded as a wooden statue depicting St Stephen (‘height 1.50 m. The standing saint with a golden arabesque tunic carrying a book on his left’) standing in a wall recess on the high altar of S. Maria delle Grazie, Rocca Santo Stefano, and classified as a ‘seventeenth-century rustic sculpture’.38 Although the description suggests an identification with the figure of St Stephen, the record did not include a photo of the work itself. Together with the fact that the text is mistaken in both the date and location, this has obscured the correct identification. The niche behind the high altar of the church of S. Maria delle Grazie still hosts a wooden Madonna with
34 For further discussion of considerations concerning painted and sculpted objects, as well as of the polyvalent skills of Aquilan artists, see the author’s forthcoming doctoral dissertation, to be defended in 2026 at the Warburg Institute. For an example of a surviving tabernacle wing, probably from the early sixteenth century, see M. Moretti: Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo nel castello cinquecentesco dell’Aquila, L’Aquila
1968, p.81. For central Italian tabernacles, see C. Pasqualetti: ‘Central Italian tabernacula: a survey’, Medievalia: Revista d’Estudis Medievals 23 (2020), pp.183–230.
35 For the versatility of artists in fifteenth-century L’Aquila, see R. Monopoli: ‘Multimedia workshops in late Quattrocento-early Cinquecento L’Aquila’, in L. Goodson, M. O’Malley and M. Kwakkelstein, eds: Artists’ Workshop Practice
6. Detail of Fig.6, showing the back of the head. (Photograph courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
7. The back of Fig.1. (Photograph courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
8. Profile view of Fig.1, showing the facial features and hair. (Courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
Child. This figure and the niche in which it stands are smaller than the St Stephen. Therefore, the niche of S. Maria delle Grazie could have never held the St Stephen, and the authors of the Inventario must have confused the two pieces located in the two nearby churches during the collection of data for the survey, which involved several churches in the territory of the Provincia dell’Aquila. In the more accurate ministerial catalogue record of 2005, verified by Ferdinando Bologna, the sculpture was recorded as the work of an ‘Abruzzese workshop’, dating to the first half of the sixteenth century, located in Forcelle, in the church of S. Sebastiano, where it is still displayed today.39
The sculpture of St Stephen is strikingly close in appearance to the description of the work in the contract examined above, and there is no reason to doubt that it dates to the last decade of the quattrocento. Moreover, the former location of the sculpture corresponds to the
in the Renaissance, Leiden, forthcoming (2026).
36 Photos in the Archivio Restauri of the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Province di L’Aquila e Teramo, L’Aquila, show that before the restoration carried out 1997–99, the sculpture had suffered much damage to the pictorial surface, probably caused by falling pieces of plaster during one of the earthquakes that affected the territory.
37 The flattened hand is probably related to the choice of sculpting the hand from the same wood block, rather than adding a separate piece, as was done for the right hand, now lost.
38 See M. Gabbrielli and L. Serra, eds: Inventario degli oggetti d’arte d’Italia, 4: Provincia di Aquila, L’Aquila 1934, p.237.
destination recorded in the contract, and the dimensions of the statue fit exactly the space of the only niche in the apse area of the recently restored church of S. Stefano, which is where the wooden figure was recorded during a pastoral visit of 1932.40 As far as the work’s relocation is concerned, S. Sebastiano, Forcelle, was part of the same parish as of S. Stefano, Rocca Santo Stefano. It is likely that the sculpture was moved to the parish’s alternative church after S. Stefano had been damaged and abandoned. Therefore, there is little doubt that the St Stephen corresponds to the one commissioned from Sebastiano di Cola by Iacobo Ranerij in 1493.
A further piece of evidence provides a final confirmation. This is the identification of the figure of St Leonard in S. Leonardo della Valle that is mentioned in the contract as a model for the St Stephen with a sculpture (Fig.11) showing the saint accompanied by small kneeling figure dressed in a short tunic – probably one of the prisoners that St Leonard rescued according to legend. It was acquired by the city’s Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo in 1967, when its previous location, the small oratory dedicated to St Leonard on the eastern side of the city next to the church of S. Agostino, was demolished.41 There is a possibility that the sculpture formerly belonged to S. Leonardo della Valle, L’Aquila, a church demolished probably before the end of the sixteenth century.42 The similar height of the two sculptures (both sculptures are 155 centimetres tall without the bases) and the fact that both wear gilded tunics supports this hypothesis. This piece has received little scholarly attention and the few contributions on the subject do not agree on a date. Mario Moretti
suggested the middle of the fourteenth century and attributed it to the author of the choir of S. Giusta.43 All other authors dated it to the fifteenth century or later: Guglielmo Matthiae argued that the St Leonard is a local work not earlier than the fifteenth century.44 Otto LehmannBrockhaus proposed the early sixteenth century, whereas Enzo Carli dated it to the beginning of the fifteenth century.45 The latter seems to be the most reliable dating. Although the figure preserves stylistic traits reminiscent of the late Gothic period, such as the narrow, elongated eyes and a certain hieratic rigidity, as a whole it nevertheless conveys the artist’s ability to locate the figure within space, a skill that was developed by Renaissance artists. As Carli highlighted, the sculpture has a delicate formal elegance, which he compared to the works of the Tuscan sculptor Francesco di Valdambrino (c.1375–1435).46
The identification of the St Stephen deepens current knowledge of Renaissance art in L’Aquila and provides an important foothold for reassessing Sebastiano di Cola as a sculptor and a painter. The quality of the figure aligns with the high reputation of Sebastiano di Cola that is indicated by the documentary evidence and challenges the notion of S ebastiano as an artist who was ‘less brilliant’ than his renowned
9. St Sebastian, attributed to Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino. Late 15th–early 16th century. Polychrome wood, height 145 cm. (Archiepiscopal Curia, L’Aquila; Photograph courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Provincie di L’Aquila e Teramo).
10. Resurrection of Christ, by Saturnino Gatti. 1491–94. Fresco. (S. Panfilo in Tornimparte; Bridgeman Images).
Aquilan colleagues.47 In this respect, the St Sebastian (Fig.9) and the Madonna that Di Gennaro recently attributed to the circle of Sebastiano di Cola need re-examining. Di Gennaro notes that the sculptures share an expressive emphasis on such body parts as the eyes and the feet, which are large in the case of the St Sebastian. Moreover, he highlights the marked roundness of the hands and of the abdomen of the Madonna However, in contrast to the Madonna and St Sebastian, the St Stephen is characterised by an obvious concern for verisimilitude and a more meticulous anatomical analysis, as is evident in the carefully defined strands of hair and the dimple under the mouth. In fact, there is little in the stylistic features of the Madonna and the St Sebastian that places them in the orbit of Sebastiano di Cola. The case of a terracotta Madonna and Child in S. Agata in Spelonga, Arquata del Tronto, in the nearby Marches, is slightly different.48 The sculpture bears an inscription on its base that attributes the work to ‘sebastiano aquilano’.49 Mario Chini dismissed the attribution to Sebastiano di Cola, noting that the name offered no precise indication of origin beyond the generic reference to L’Aquila, and suggesting instead that the Sebastiano mentioned was the patron rather than the sculptor.50 However, the resemblance of the facial features is truly remarkable, ranging from the rounded eyelids and the long, straight bridge of the nose to the full lips and the square and dimpled chin, suggesting that the attribution of the Madonna and Child to Sebastiano di Cola should be seriously considered.
The assessment of Sebastiano di Cola as a painter remains problematic and requires a revision of the conflicting positions so far held about him together with a reconsideration of both the documents and the paintings that have been attributed to his corpus. A starting point could be a panel from S. Bernardino showing St Francis receiving the stigmata (Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo), which may correspond to the 1495 commission. At present, the quality of his painting skills can be appreciated only – and even then, not in great detail – in the polychromy of the St Stephen. The lifelike quality and virtuosity of the St Stephen have affinities with the works of his most famous counterparts, which Chini called the ‘Scuola Aquilana’.51 More specifically, the work seems close to the style of Gatti.52 Gatti was particularly skilled in anatomical and physiognomic representation as well as in the psychology of his figures, as shown, for example, in the fresco of the Resurrection of Christ in S. Panfilo, Tornimparte (Fig.10) or in the figure on a panel showing the Blessed Vincent (S. Giuliano, L’Aquila). Although there is no documentary proof of a connection between these two artists, the visual and stylistic evidence of the St Stephen makes this an intriguing hypothesis, which, if confirmed by further investigation, could add valuable knowledge to our understanding of two important masters active in L’Aquila between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and shed new light on the
40 See note 22. At that time, the sculpture had already lost its tabernacle and had been moved into a niche that fitted the St Stephen exactly. An examination of the internal wall structure demonstrates that the niche was made on the occasion of a restoration of the church, probably carried out after one of the destructive earthquakes that occurred over the last centuries.
41 For the history of the building, see L. Lopez: L’Aquila: Le memorie, i monumenti, il dialetto. Guida alla città, L’Aquila 1988, p.172. The present author would like to thank Mauro
Congeduti for this reference.
42 The only surviving evidence of S. Leonardo della Valle, L’Aquila is a mention in the contract of 1493 and its presence on the city map of Girolamo Pico Fonticulano of 1575, see Biblioteca Salvatore Tommasi, Girolamo Pico Fonticulano, Geometria, MS 57, c.1575, c.184r. The present author is grateful to Mauro Congeduti for discussing this question with her.
43 Moretti, op. cit. (note 34), p.20; and idem: Guida al castello cinquecentesco dell’Aquila e al Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, L’Aquila 1971, p.80.
44 G. Matthiae: Il Castello dell’Aquila
dynamics of artistic production in the city.53 For now the recognition of the first work that is securely attributable to Sebastiano di Cola establishes a basis for a fuller understanding of one of the main artists of the late quattrocento in L’Aquila and, more generally, of Renaissance art in the second city of the Kingdom of Naples.
e il Museo Nazionale Abruzzese, Rome 1959, p.14.
45 O. Lehman Brockhaus: Abruzzen und Molise, Munich 1983, p.364; and E. Carli: L’Arte in Abruzzo, Venice 1998, pp.70–71.
46 Ibid., p.71.
47 Di Gennaro, op. cit. (note 4), p.49.
48 The sculpture was originally preserved in S. Maria, Collepiccioni. For its provenance, see L. Serra: Elenco di opere d’arte mobili delle Marche, Pesaro 1925, p.72.
49 ‘questa imagene de ella gloriosa vergene Maria a fatta sebastiano aquilano’.
50 M. Chini: Silvestro Aquilano e l’arte in Aquila nella seconda metà del secolo XV, L’Aquila 1954, at pp.445–46.
51 Di Gennaro, op. cit. (note 4), p.60.
52 For Gatti’s fresco cycle, see T.R. Mannetti, N. Chelli and G. Vecchioli: Saturnino Gatti nella chiesa di San Panfilo a Tornimparte, L’Aquila 1992. For the blessed Vincenzo, see F. Bologna: ‘Saturnino Gatti: un’opera’ in Paragone 5 (1950), pp.60–63.
53 In 1494 Sebastiano was appointed, alongside Silvestro dall’Aquila, to value the fresco cycle that Gatti had executed in S. Panfilo, Tornimparte; see Chini, op. cit. (note 3), p.64.
Sebastiano di Cola da Casentino
11. St Leonard with a praying prisoner. L’Aquila, early 15th century. Polychrome wood, height without base 155 cm. (Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, L’Aquila).
New proposals about Ingres’s
‘Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four’
Of all the self-portraits painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, that of 1804 now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, remains the most discussed. The focus of criticism when it was exhibited in 1806, the painting was taken up again and transformed by the artist during his old age. Here a revised sequence for these modifications is proposed and corrections are made to its earlier history.
by sylvain bédard
ean-auguste-dominique ingres’s Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four (Fig.1), now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, has long remained an enigma for art historians. Was the painting created in 1804 – when Ingres was aged twenty-four – and presented at the Salon of 1806, then modified sometime between 1850 and 1851? In his important monograph on the artist, written in 1911, Henry Lapauze noted that the Chantilly picture, which is known through numerous copies and documents, ‘reveals repaintings: through them, we can affirm that Ingres directly transformed the old portrait’.1 Research undertaken for the exhibition Ingres, l’artiste et ses princes at the Jeu de Paume, Château de Chantilly (3rd June–1st October 2023) confirmed Lapauze’s thesis. Based on a scientific examination of the painting carried out in 2021 by the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, Paris (C2RMF), Florence Viguier-Dutheil and Bruno Mottin were able to demonstrate that in the twilight years of his life Ingres did indeed profoundly transform his portrait in order to recast his youthful image. Infra-red reflectography of the painting revealed ‘an important underlying drawing which confirms the presence of the 1804 composition and its resumption by the artist’.2 Despite this confirmation, however, the full history of the portrait and the stages leading to its final transformation remain unclear. The present article attempts to answer some of these questions, and in so doing opens up new lines of inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the portrait’s early history.
Ingres’s painting belongs to a set of three portraits celebrating friendship, the others being that of Jean-Pierre-François Gilibert (1783–1850), the painter’s childhood friend in Montauban, painted in 1804 (Fig.2), and the portrait of the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850), his companion in Jacques-Louis David’s workshop, dated to around 1805–06 (Fig.3). These paintings were created while the three young men were together in Paris, linked by a frank camaraderie. The painter’s portrait was presented at the Salon of 1806 alongside the portraits of Madame and
1 H. Lapauze: Ingres, sa vie et son œuvre (1780–1867), d’après des documents inédits, Paris 1911, pp.46–47.
2 B. Mottin: ‘“L’Autoportrait”, une
étude de laboratoire’, in M. Deldicque and N. Garnier-Pelle, eds: exh. cat. Ingres, l’artiste et ses princes, Chantilly (Musée Condé) 2023, pp.38–43, at p.39.
Mademoiselle Rivière (both 1805; Musée du Louvre, Paris; the three under no.173 in the catalogue) and the much more important Napoleon I on his imperial throne (1806; Musée de l’Armée, Paris; no.172). At the opening of the Salon, on 15th September, Ingres left Paris for Rome, where, after successive stops, including Milan, Bologna and a week-long stay in Florence, he arrived on 11th October as a pensionnaire of the Académie de France. It was in the Villa Medici that he learned his submissions to the Louvre exhibition had been very poorly received by the Parisian critics, who particularly mocked his self-portrait. Their derision may be illustrated by this clearly ironic comment, published in the Mercure de France:
We see an artist in front of his easel. He holds a handkerchief in his hand which he places, we do not really know why, on a canvas that is still white, but intended, undoubtedly, to represent the most frightening objects, judging by the dark and fierce expression on his face. Over his shoulder is thrown a voluminous drapery which must prodigiously hinder him in the heat of the composition and in the sort of crisis that his genius seems to experience.3
When the Salon closed, the self-portrait, the only painting belonging to its author, was collected by Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier (1782–1853), who had been engaged to Ingres since June 1806 and was living in Paris with her parents. Forestier, a student of the painter Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768–1848), frequented the same artistic circles as Ingres at the time. The latter, who has been close to the Forestier family since at least 1804, promised Julie’s father, before his departure for Rome, that he would stay there no longer than one year.4
Laboratory studies conducted in 1960 and 1970 failed to confirm this. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s own.
3 ‘C’: ‘Salon de 1806’, Mercure de
France (11th October 1806), pp.74–80, at p.77.
4 See H. Lapauze: Le Roman d’amour de M. Ingres, Paris 1910, p.15.
At Ingres’s request Julie made a copy (Fig.4) of his portrait to be sent to the painter’s father, Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres, who lived in Montauban.5 Julie’s copy left Paris in July 1807, at the same time as two Views of Rome (both 1806; Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban) by Ingres, also copied by his fiancé. Upon receipt, Jean-Marie-Joseph wrote to Mr Forestier to compliment him:
Although I have high expectations of the talent of Miss [. . .] your daughter, I can say that it surpasses the idea that I had designed. Anyone who copies in this way must certainly deal with the genius that characterises great artists.6
Ingres’s father would have been in a position to judge the quality of the copy of his son’s portrait, having probably seen the original during a visit to the latter in Paris in 1804, when he also met the Forestier family.7 In the meantime, the engagement was broken off by Ingres, who now wanted to enjoy the four years of his term as a resident at the Villa Medici.8
After the death of Ingres’s father on 14th March 1814, an inventory was drawn up on 25th March of the contents of the apartment he occupied alone on the rue des Soubirous-bas in Montauban.9 As the family portraits were exempt from inheritance assessments, there is no
5 Letters from Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres to Mr Forestier, 12th January and 21st February 1802, reproduced in D. Ternois, ed.: Ingres: Lettres de France et d’Italie, 1804–1841, Paris 2011, p.130, letter 9, and p.146, letter 12. For the most complete provenance of this copy, see J. Foucart: ‘Quoi de neuf au musée Ingres?’, La Tribune de l’Art (11th July
2014), available at www. latribunedelart.com/quoi-de-neufau-musee-ingres-5180-5180-51805180?lang=fr, accessed 2nd September 2025.
6 Letter from Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres to Mr Forestier, 9th August 1807, reproduced in Ternois, op. cit. (note 5), p.176, letter A3.
7 Lapauze, op. cit. (note 4), p.15.
Opposite
4. Copy after Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four, by Marie-AnneJulie Forestier. 1807, retouched by Ingres c.1850. Oil on canvas, 65 by 53 cm. (Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban; photograph Marc Jeanneteau).
mention of the Forestier copy in this inventory.10 In a letter dated 27th February 1826 to Gilibert, who lived in Montauban, Ingres (who had by this time recently relocated to Paris), mentioned the portrait he had made of his friend, for which he would have liked to possess a sketch for the record, before adding: ‘Where did the copy of mine in Montauban go, and so many other studies?’.11 This letter precedes by a few months the artist’s visit to his hometown, from 12th to 22th November 1826, on the occasion of the placement, in Notre-Dame Cathedral, of his large painting Le Vœu de Louis XIII, the highlight of the 1824 Salon.
The most plausible explanation for the disappearance of the copy by Julie Forestier, which was with Ingres’s father until his death, is that the painting had been taken away by another member of the family, but
8 Letters from Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres to Mr Forestier reproduced in Ternois, op. cit (note 5), pp.167–70, letter 18 (2nd July 1807), and pp.170–05, letter 19 (8th August 1807).
9 On this inventory, see J.-C. Waquet: ‘Portrait d’un artiste mineur: JeanMarie-Joseph Ingres (1755–1814), d’après des documents inédits’, Bulletin
10 Also mentioned in the same list of objects: ‘eight studies or oil paintings, some with gilded frames, of different sizes, estimated twenty-four francs. –These studies were carried out by Mr Ingres fils’, ibid., p.39.
11 Ternois, op. cit. (note 5), pp.446–47, letter 92.
2. Portrait of Jean-François Gilibert, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1804. Oil on canvas, 99 by 81 cm. (Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban; photograph Roumagnac Photographe).
3. Portrait of Lorenzo Bartolini, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. c.1805–06. Oil on canvas, 98 by 80 cm. (Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban; photograph Roumagnac Photographe).
without Ingres, who was still in Rome at that time, being informed. The proof is that on his return from Italy, the painter knew nothing of the copy’s fate. Therefore, the painting was not ‘presumably bequeathed’ by Ingres’s father to his son, as might have been assumed.12 Lapauze wrote that the Forestier copy came to Ingres, but without specifying at what time or in what circumstances.13 The artist’s letter to Gilibert, dated February 1826, offers the beginning of an answer. The latter, who often served as go-between to Ingres and his family in Montauban, must certainly have enquired on site and quickly located the portrait with one of the painter’s relatives. Consequently, it was most probably during his stay in Montauban in the autumn of 1826 that Ingres came into possession of the work.
As for the original self-portrait, the initial agreement was that it would remain in the custody of the Forestier family until the painter’s return from Rome and his marriage to Julie. It might be imagined that after the engagement broke off in August 1807, Julie – no longer wishing to keep a work reminding her of her ex-fiancé – would have sent it to Montauban. However, Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres did not mention it in his correspondence with Mr Forestier, even though the productions of ‘mademoiselle Forestier’ in his home were commented upon.14 If the original of Ingres’s portrait had been in his father’s possession, he would have
12 See the entry by P. Conisbee in idem and G. Tinterow, eds: exh. cat. Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1999, no.11, p.75, under the section ‘Provenance’.
13 Lapauze, op. cit. (note 1), p.46.
14 Letter from Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres to Mr Forestier, 5th September 1807, reproduced in Ternois, op. cit. (note 5), p.179, letter A4.
15 Letter from Anne Moulet to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 5th August 1814, ibid., p.224, letter A7.
16 Lapauze, op. cit. (note 4), p.197, attributed the following to her: ‘When one has had the honour of being engaged to Mr Ingres,
surely pointed it out to his correspondent, if only out of politeness. Furthermore, Jean-Marie-Joseph’s widow, Anne Moulet, who was preparing to travel to Rome to see her son, confided to him in a letter dated 5th August 1814, saying:
Your studies and sketches – no doubt recovered from her late husband – and in particular the objects you asked me for are here; I will arrange them as you prescribe and will take them with me when I leave for Aix, which is scheduled between the 20th and the 25th.15
However, there is no mention here again of the Self-portrait of 1804, nor of the Forestier copy.
It appears that the original portrait from Ingres never made the journey to Montauban; instead, Julie chose to keep with her the image of the man she was never going to forget.16 It was a portrait she could legitimately claim, having not only recovered and preserved it, but also copied it. So when exactly did Ingres regain possession of his painting?
The most satisfactory hypothesis is that he received it directly from Julie shortly after the triumph of his Vœu de Louis XIII at the Salon of 1824, a success that would encourage his prompt return to Paris. This scenario would explain why in his letter to Gilibert of February 1826 the artist asked only after the copy.
There is no documentary evidence of a meeting between the two ex-fiancés. However, Julie had been ill since 1819 and therefore unable to produce any work to ensure her livelihood. In 1821 she offered for sale to the royal administration a copy by her of a Holy Family by Raphael, hoping at the same time to obtain a pension from the government. Failing, she wrote to the Marquis de Lauriston, ministre de la Maison du Roi, on whom depended the Direction des Musée Royaux, explaining her dire situation and decision to sell the ‘small furniture that remains to me’.17 The copy was successfully sold for 2,000 francs and the work sent to Audour (Saône-et-Loire) to decorate the municipal church.18 Julie sought on 20th April 1822, and again on 25th October and 1st November 1824, to have the government acquire three other paintings, an indication that her financial situation was dire.19 It seems likely that the ex-couple met under these circumstances, and that Forestier took the opportunity to return the original self-portrait.
Now in possession of both versions, it appears that Ingres rarely displayed them. When his first biographers refer to his youthful portrait, it is only to cite it as being in the Musée Condé; it was widely documented in the Salon of 1855, the Paris Universal Exhibition of the same year (cat. no.3373) and at the painter’s posthumous exhibition, presented at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in April 1867 (cat. no.95).20 Among the critics who saw the original at the Salon of 1806, and were therefore able to differentiate one version from the other, few were still alive after 1850. Only Étienne-Jean Delécluze, the important art critic of the Journal des Débats, a classmate of Ingres and his studio neighbour at the Capucines convent from 1801 to 1806 where the self-portrait was painted, would have been able to make such a distinction.21 However, in his long report of the Salon of 1855, published the following year, in which he recalled that ‘M. Ingres presented a series of works completed from 1804 to 1853’, he did not
one does not marry’.
17 H. Naef: Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D Ingres, Bern 1977–80, I, p.134.
18 Ibid., p.135. We do not know whether Julie ultimately received the pension, or on what basis she had presented this request to the government.
19 Ibid., pp.135–36.
20 Notably E. Saglio: ‘Un nouveau tableau de M. Ingres: Liste complète de ses œuvres’, La Correspondance littéraire I (5th February 1857), p.76; and T. Gautier: ‘Ingres’, L’Artiste, Nouvelle Série I (5th April 1857), pp.3–6, at p.3.
21 See E.-J. Delécluze: Louis David, son école et son temps, Paris 1855,
5. Copy after Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four. (From Bulletin du Musée Ingres 8 (January 1961), p.6, fig.4).
Ingres’s 1804 self-portrait
6. Mr Ingres à 24 ans, by Étienne-Achille Réveil, c.1850–51. Engraving, 32 by 28 cm. (From A. Magimel: Œuvres de J.-A. Ingres, membre de l’Institut, gravées au trait sur acier par Ale Réveil, 1800–1851, Paris 1851, plate 1).
address the problem, only noting the Condé painting, still in the painter’s possession at the time, as being one of his first works.22
Confusion seems to have continued to swirl around the two compositions. As Lapauze noted, ‘nothing in Ingres’ papers informs us: there is no allusion anywhere to these transformations [of his Self-portrait]’, despite the fact that the artist usually liked to talk to those close to him about the subject of his current paintings.23 There is no mention of the Chantilly version of his portrait in his Cahier X, a list of his painted works written from 1851 to 1866, which only mentions the original from 1804 (‘mon portrait’) without further details.24 As for the inscription placed at the very top of the Condé painting, ‘EFF. J.-A. Ingres Por — Fit Pais 1804’ – it seems to have been intended to reinforce the idea that this was indeed the painting exhibited at the Salon almost half a century earlier.
Marked by the poor reception given to his portrait in 1806, and certainly aware of the validity of some of the criticisms it received, the artist decided to remake history, substituting his first composition for a new image of himself; this time ‘very pontificating [. . .] an Ingres too proud and distant, sure and umbrageous at will, darkly haughty and
critical edition by J.-P. Mouilleseaux, Paris 1983, pp.297–98 (here cited); also S. Lemeux-Fraitot: ‘Ingres et “l’atelier sans maître” du couvent des Capucines’, in M. Korchane, ed.: exh. cat. Ingres avant Ingres: Dessiner pour peindre, Orléans (Musée des Beaux-Arts) 2021–22, pp.181–99. 22 É.-J. Delécluze: Les Beaux-Arts
dans les Deux Mondes en 1855 Paris 1856, p.201.
23 Lapauze, op. cit. (note 1), p.46.
24 G. Vigne: Ingres, Paris 1995, includes a reproduction and transcription of the entire notebook, see Appendix, ‘Le cahier X’, pp.326–40, at p.327 (page 22 of the notebook, left column).
starched’,25 more in agreement with the Monsieur Ingres that he had become to his contemporaries.
Eugène Emmanuel Amaury-Duval (1808–85), Ingres’s first Parisian pupil, mentioned the youthful self-portrait in his book L’atelier d’Ingres (1878), but seems to conflate it with the later version now in the Musée Condé. Relating his meeting with Ingres in 1825, he wrote that the latter had probably only recently gotten out of bed, wearing only a ‘petit carrick’ as in his ‘autoportrait de 1808 [sic]’.26 Writing from memory, Amaury-Duval may have been thinking of the Chantilly portrait, in which the painter is dressed in the short brown coat known to be popular with artists. None of the painter’s other students, some of whom were his close collaborators –Hippolyte and Paul Flandrin, Paul and Raymond Balze, Henri Lehmann and Auguste Pichon – mentioned the original painting, or its copy by Forestier, although both were probably visible in the master’s atelier. There is, however, another copy (Fig.5) of the 1804 self-portrait, undoubtedly made by a student, which until now has remained on the periphery of academic study. Reproduced by error in the January 1961 issue of Bulletin du Musée Ingres instead of the Forestier copy, the painting does not appear to be otherwise documented.27 In it, Ingres has an unappealing appearance, with a grimacing head and tanned complexion, standing out harshly against the white background of a large canvas. This appears to be the work of an unskilled copyist – the hand, holding the chalk point, appears small, the coat hanging on the shoulder is too loose, and the canvas placed on the easel is out of proportion – it is as though the composition aligns with the criticisms formulated about the 1804 self-portrait on the occasion of the Salon of 1806, such as:
When one has the advantage of being an artist and of having talent, why paint oneself in such an unfavourable aspect? [. .
.] You see a swarthy head, black hair which makes a stain on a white canvas, a coat [un surtout] planted on a shoulder whose shape it hides.28
Returning to the process of revision, it was around the middle of 1851 that Ingres put the finishing touches to the transformation of his Self-portrait A terminus ante quem is confirmed by the work directed by his friend Albert Magimel, Œuvres de J.-A. Ingres, membre de l’Institut, gravées au trait sur acier par Ale Réveil, 1800–1851, published on 1st November 1851, where the 1804 painting appears as we see it today (Fig.6).
The period between 1849 and 1850 was one of mourning for Ingres. His wife Madeleine died on 27th July 1849, at the age of sixty-six, leaving him distraught to such a degree that his friends expressed deep concern for him. The painter François-Marius Granet, whom he had known in Rome, died on 21st November of the same year. Gilibert, who had been ill for a long time, died in turn on 13th April 1850. Finally, Bartolini, with whom admittedly relations had cooled, had died in Florence earlier that year, on 20th January. These losses were, for Ingres, reminders of his own mortality. Aged seventy, the artist sought to prepare for his own departure; as he wrote later to Gilibert’s daughter Pauline, who had become his confidante:
Wanting, so to speak, to live in the memory of men as much as possible, I set out to finish a quantity of old large and small canvases,
25 Foucart, op. cit. (note 5).
26 E.E. Amaury-Duval: L’Atelier d’Ingres, Paris 1878, ed. D. Ternois, Paris 1993, p.73.
27 See L. Burroughs: ‘Un portrait d’Ingres jeune’, Bulletin du Musée Ingres 8 (January 1961), pp.3–8, at p.6, fig.4. The caption, placed under the illustration, however, relates to Julie’s copy. The original article by L. Burroughs: ‘A portrait of Ingres as a young man’, The Metropolitan Museum Bulletin summer 1960), pp.1–7, does not include this mix of images.
28 P.-J.-B. Chaussard: Le Pausanias français; état des arts du dessin en France à l’ouverture du XIXe siècle. Salon de 1806, Paris 1806, p.180.
and to do so with ardour that astonishes everyone and make[s] people say that I paint better than ever!29
By reflecting on his œuvre, particularly during the preparation of Magimel’s book, Ingres was led to rethink certain paintings and to complete or rework others; he began with the 1804 self-portrait, so unloved by critics.
First to tackle was the Forestier copy, which must have been similar to the anonymous copy discussed above (Fig.5). Ingres reduced the immense square of the canvas placed on the easel, thus preventing the artist’s head from standing out too vividly against the white background. He sought to soften the ‘swarthy head’, removing that ‘dark and fierce’ air noted by the critics in 1806. He also minimised the importance of the surtout, which had been considered excessive by the same critics. Finally, the arrival of Gilibert’s portrait in Paris, which he wanted to have reproduced in Magimel’s volume,30 inspired him to add the features of his friend to the empty canvas, thus correcting the strange gesture of erasing a blank support with his handkerchief.
Modifications to the Forestier copy are recorded in a photograph (Fig.7) taken shortly after by Charles Marville, who often collaborated with the painter to preserve the memory of some of his paintings or to fix
29 D. Ternois, ed.: Ingres: Lettres 1841–1867. De L’Âge d’or à Homère déifié, Paris 2016, II, p.701, letter 654 (6th September 1854).
30 He made the request to Pauline on 26th September 1850, who immediately sent it to Paris, ibid., I, p.505, letter 502 (the portrait is reproduced on plate 7 in the book by Magimel).
31 In his list of the paintings by Ingres, which accompanies O. Merson: Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages [. . .] et le Catalogue des œuvres du maître, Paris
1867, p.101, E. Bellier de la Chavignerie wrote: ‘Portrait of Ingres at the age of twenty-four years (Salon of 1855); property of H.I.H. Prince Napoléon. Miss Forestier made an excellent copy which remained in her family for a long time, touched up by the master (reproduced in Magimel)’, see also J. Foucart, op. cit. (note 5), note 9. This is the first time that Julie is associated with the 1804 self-portrait. It was actually the original of Ingres’s portrait, as already noted by J. Foucart, that
7. Photograph of Julie Forestier’s copy of Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four (retouched by Ingres c.1850), by Charles Marville. c.1850. Proof on albumen paper, laminated on cardboard, 20.8 by 17.5 cm. (École nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; photograph Beaux-Arts de Paris).
8. Details of Figs.7 and 4.
the transitional states of others.31 A comparison between the photograph and the Montauban portrait shows many similarities (Fig.8).32 Only the head, which had been partly reworked shortly after the painting was first completed, differed: the face is now more emaciated (a slight pentimento is still visible in the greenish background near the left cheek), the nose is less arched, the lips are fuller – above all, a more inviting look is achieved. The artist, however, took care beforehand to make a tracing (Figs.9 and 10) of his old figure, which he gave to his second wife, Delphine Ramel, although not without having sought, in passing, to make his features yet more attractive. The contours of Gilibert’s portrait, probably traced lightly with chalk only on the Forestier copy, are no longer visible.
An etching (Fig.12) was also produced based on the Marville photograph. It appears to be a unique proof that was offered in 1968 to the Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban, by the Centenary of Ingres committee.33 Jean-Louis Potrelle (1788–after 1824), a student of the engraver PierreAlexandre Tardieu, had been put forward as the probable author of this work.34 Claiming second place in the Prix de Rome for engraving in 1806, Potrelle, whose father was a print dealer in Paris, was at the time closely linked to Ingres as well as Bartolini. He made the engraving of the portrait of the latter (Fig.11), produced shortly after the completion of the painting. Perhaps it was in gratitude for this last work that in 1806 Ingres drew a portrait of an unknown young woman (Fig.14), a sister or perhaps a fiancée of the engraver, which he then offered to his friend.35 This is, however, an admittedly unreliable attribution: Potrelle’s professional activity seemed to cease after 1824 and the date of his death is unknown. Ingres himself could have transposed the photographic image directly onto a varnished plate with the aid of a pantograph, which he and his collaborators had used to prepare the engravings for Magimel’s book.36 This is most evident in the contours of the figure of Gilibert, which align perfectly. The print also bears traces of correction by the painter’s hand, all concentrated in the area of the head, indicating that a new printing of the plate was probably planned (although it was never executed). In the meantime, Ingres had decided on a much more radical transformation of his composition.
10. Photographic montage of Figs.7 and 9.
There is yet another version (Fig.13), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, of the 1804 self-portrait, which can be placed between the Forestier copy, once it was reworked by Ingres, and the Chantilly painting.37 This work is critical in the sequence because it includes the improvements already planned to the 1804 original, while anticipating others yet to come. The sitter here displays a more concentrated air, which is also conveyed in the Chantilly version. The surtout has been replaced by the brown carrick, with its superimposed collars, which are much more elegant, and for which
remained with the Forestiers, and not Julie’s copy.
32 An idea put forward by Lapauze, op. cit. (note 1), p.46, and taken up by S.L. Siegfried: ‘Ingres and his critics, 1806–1824’, unpublished PhD thesis (Harvard University, 1980), p.95, note 9, cited by G. Tinterow in idem and Conisbee, op. cit. (note 12), p.456, note 8, no.147, who refuses the connection.
33 See G. Vigne: Dessins d’Ingres. Catalogue raisonné des dessins du musée de Montauban, Paris 1995, p.483,
no.2679. It seems that Ingres specialists were unaware of its existence until its acquisition by the museum.
34 See Tinterow, op. cit. (note 32), p.457, note 9.
35 The drawing, absent from the catalogue of portraits by Naef, op. cit (note 17), went on sale at Sotheby’s, New York, Old Master Drawings Including the Collection of Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, 31st January 2018, lot 203. It is signed ‘Ingres delavit à son ami Potrelle / 1806’.
Ingres then carried out studies in graphite (Fig.17).38 Another modification is the presence of a second easel on the far right, where the artist’s palette is hung. It is probable that, at this stage of his work, Ingres had already decided to remove the first easel, and consequently, the gesture of the left arm wiping the canvas, which, in the Condé version, would be brought towards the chest.
It is after this last operation that Ingres undertook the recasting of the original of his portrait, the final stage of a revision process that began as early as 1850. Lapauze spoke in 1911 of ‘repainting’, i.e. covering the old composition. The scientific examination of the C2RMF in 2021 revealed a much more radical transformation of the work: Florence ViguierDutheil wrote that Ingres went ‘to great means to make disappear what he wanted to change on his canvas’, while Bruno Mottin spoke of a rather ‘brutal’ intervention.39 Using solvents, the artist scraped away ‘the first garment and the background’ but also probably the head, which he would almost completely redo, thereby leaving almost nothing of his old composition.40
Mottin also pointed out ‘the surprising presence of a canvas inlay in the lower right corner, whose irregular cut carefully follows the contour of the easel shelf’.41 What is the purpose of this addition? It is possible that
36 Letter from Delphine Ramel to her uncle Charles Marcotte d’Argenteuil, 5th October 1855, reproduced in Ternois, op. cit. (note 29), II, p.742, letter 683. Ingres also produced an etching of a portrait of Monseigneur Courtois de Pressigny (1816; Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban), see Vigne, op. cit. (note 33), p.472, no.2641.
37 Regarding this copy, see Burroughs, op. cit. (note 27); and Tinterow, op. cit (note 32), pp.454–58, no.147. See also Foucart, op. cit. (note 5), at note 6, and
F. Viguier-Dutheil: ‘Un portrait pour toujours’, in Deldicque and Garnier-Pelle, eds.: exh. cat. Ingres, l’artiste et ses princes, Chantilly (Musée Condé) 2023, pp.20–37, at p.33. The painting is signed ‘Ingres/1804’, a probable indication of an important intervention by the master.
38 Vigne, op. cit. (note 33), p.483, no.2681; see also nos.2680 and 2682.
11. Portrait of Lorenzo Bartolini, after Ingres, by Jean-Louis Potrelle. c.1806. Engraving, 35.7 by 28 cm. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris).
12. Copy after Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four, here attributed to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. c.1850. Etching, graphite and white gouache on paper, 47.4 by 29.8 cm. (Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban; photograph Marc Jeanneteau).
13. Ingres (1780–1867) as a young man, by Laurence-Augustine Jubé Héquet (Madame Héquet). c.1850–60. Oil on canvas, 86.4 by 69.8 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Opposite
14. Portrait of an unknown young woman, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1806. Graphite on paper, 26.9 by 20.5 cm. (Private collection).
this version was a study that first served as a model for the New York copy, which, to save time and effort, Ingres then cut out and transferred onto the Condé painting. Laboratory examination has shown that the dimensions of this canvas had been modified. These were originally supposed to be quite close to those of the portraits of Gilibert and Bertolini, which measure 99 by 81 and 98 by 80 centimetres respectively. However, the Condé painting is now only 77 by 63 centimetres; two strips of canvas having been cut, one, on the left, of 10 centimetres, the other, at the bottom, of 25 centimetres, which gives, as original measurements, approximately 102 by 73 centimetres.42 This reduction was made after Atala Varcollier (née Stamaty; 1803–85), a pupil and friend of Ingres, had made her own copy (Fig.15) of the Chantilly painting, revealing more of the base of the earlier composition, much like in the New York version (Fig.13).43 Did Ingres find it
42 Ibid., p.39.
43 Sale, Sotheby’s, Paris, Design, 4th May 2016, no.184; current location unknown. On Varcollier, see M.-H. Lavallée, G. Vigne and L. de l’Estoile:
exh. cat. Les Élèves d’Ingres, Montauban (Musée Ingres), Besançon (Musée des Beaux-Arts) 1999–2000, p.200, where the year 1855 is indicated for his death.
1804 self-portrait
Ingres’s 1804 self-portrait
Opposite
15. Copy of Ingres’s Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four, by Atala Varcollier. After 1851. Oil on canvas, 92 by 73 cm. (Private collection).
16. Detail of Fig.1, showing a medallion on a chain.
17. Study of a carrick for Self-portrait at the age of twenty-four, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. c.1850–51. Graphite on paper, 16.7 by 12.9 cm. (Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban; photograph Marc Jeanneteau).
more effective to truncate his composition, making it tighter and perhaps more harmonious?44
Would it not have been simpler for Ingres to paint a completely new picture? In Ingres’s mind, the Chantilly canvas, despite major modifications, remained that of 1804, to which he was sentimentally attached. This could explain his melancholic tone when writing to Frédéric Reiset, the intermediary in the exchange of the painting with Prince Napoléon in 1860:
If I had not been bound by my commitment with you to give to the prince my portrait, I could not have held it at the moment of parting with this dear portrait which is no longer part of his family. The sacrifice is great, I admit, for the peaceful emotion that still grips me.45
It is striking that Ingres expressed regret for a ‘dear portrait’ leaving ‘his family’ which, except for the frame and the canvas, was then not more than nine years old. As Henri Lemonnier, a former curator at Chantilly, expressed: ‘could we not see it rather as the revival of a youthful memory, perhaps of youthful love, about an old retouched portrait (as Lapauze thought), under the repaintings of which, the artist found something of the past?’.46 There is an overlooked detail in the Chantilly version that supports such a reading: the painter presses a medallion against his heart with his left hand, a ring on its middle finger; a delicate chain stands out against the white of his shirt (Fig.16). Had Ingres imagined here a miniature portrait of his fiancée Julie, painted by his father Joseph, whose specialty it was, as a way of reviving a certain past?
In July 1851 Ingres donated part of his collections to the City of Montauban.47 Although the newly completed Condé painting was not part of this donation, the artist was already planning to offer it to his compatriotes On 21st January 1851 he wrote to Pauline Gilibert, saying he hoped that his friend’s portrait would one day join his own at the Montauban museum: ‘I think a lot about the future, and after there are no more relative[s], which I cannot however foresee, I would be happy if this portrait belonged to the City and appeared next to mine’.48 If it had entered the Musée Ingres in 1937, bequeathed by the eldest and last survivor of Pauline’s three daughters, the revised 1804 self-portrait, which Ingres wanted to leave as an official image among the Montaubanais, would not have ended its journey in Chantilly. However, after Ingres had reluctantly ceded the latter to Prince Napoléon in 1860, the artist hoped to acquire Varcollier’s copy (Fig.15) to send to Montauban instead.49 This did not happen either. Ultimately, it was the Forestier copy, of which we still do not know exactly how it left Ingres’s home after his death, which, by a play of fate, found itself exposed on the banks of the River Tarn in the company of portraits of his friends Gilibert and Bartolini (the latter painting entered the Musée Ingres in 1975, bequeathed by the second wife and widow of Lapauze).50 This epilogue would probably not have displeased the painter after all.
44 A later copy by Palmyre Granger Meurice, 85 by 65 cm., current location unknown, reproduces the exact layout of the Chantilly painting, see ViguierDutheil, op. cit. (note 37), p.35, fig.14.
45 Letter from Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres to Frédéric Reiset, 7th April 1860, reproduced in Ternois, op. cit. (note 29), II, p.868, letter 769.
46 H. Lemonnier: ‘Au musée Condé: Le portrait d’Ingres par lui-même, 1804 (?)’, Institut de France. Académie des Beaux-Arts. Bulletin 4 (July–December 1926), pp.208–17, at p.216.
47 See J.-M. Garric: Le musée Ingres de Montauban: Histoire d’une institution, Albias 1993, pp.33–36; and G. Vigne: Collections du musée Ingres: II. Ingres.
Autour des peintures du musée de Montauban, Montauban 2007, pp.11–15.
48 Letter from Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres to Pauline Gilibert, 21st January 1851, reproduced in Ternois, op. cit. (note 29), II, p.527, letter 513.
49 See Lapauze, op. cit. (note 1), p.48.
50 It is possible that Ingres’s widow, Delphine Ramel, asked Étienne-François Haro, a supplier to painters, restorer and painting expert who had already purchased Ingres’s workshop funds on 13th October 1866, to discreetly sell the work, keeping silent the name of Julie Forestier. Edgar Degas, unaware of the creator, purchased the copy thirty years later in 1898.
Scraps of genius, taste and skill: works by John Constable in the Mason album
An album emerged at auction in 2020 and was acquired by Colchester and Ipswich Museums. It included hitherto unknown and very early works by John Constable and was compiled by the Mason family, the artist’s relatives in Colchester. These juvenilia are assessed here and placed in the context of Constable’s artistic evolution and his wide social circle.
by emma roodhouse
In december 2020 a curious album appeared in a sale at Sotheby’s, London (Fig.1).1 Among its 171 pages are poetry, riddles, prints, watercolours, portraits, letters, observations of nature, depictions of a Grand Tour and copies after old masters, all by different hands and ranging in date from around 1790 to 1862. It includes four previously unrecorded early works by John Constable (1776–1837) and appears to have been compiled by the Mason family, the artist’s relatives in Colchester.2 Colchester and Ipswich Museums quickly obtained the necessary funding and acquired it.3 The album was conserved in 2020 and its contents can be subdivided into different categories, featuring a large selection of drawings, watercolours and prints that are currently undergoing further research.4 They include: watercolours from the 1850s of travels in Yorkshire; depictions of Italy from the 1860s; a set of handcoloured etchings by Henry Bunbury, dated 1787; etchings after Thomas Gainsborough and unknown printmakers; and various poems.
The four works by Constable, all executed on paper and created at the very beginning of his artistic development, comprise two portraits and two landscapes. They were intended for private study and, eventually, shared only with close family. These sketches were not arranged chronologically within the album, nor were they grouped together, making it difficult to determine when they were added.
Constable was aged only seventeen when he took up watercolour and painted A rural landscape (Fig.5), which depicts a covered wagon being led by three horses over a stone bridge towards a thatched cottage and is the earliest work in the group. At this early stage Constable was working without formal training or the encouragement of his family, who expected him to enter the family business of operating mills and transporting grain. Early topographical studies such as this by the artist are rare. It is signed and dated 5th April 1794 and heralds his emerging fascination with the
1 Sale, Sotheby’s, London, Old Master and British Works on Paper, 26th November–4th December 2020, lot 208. The album will feature in an exhibition at Christchurch Mansion in 2026, when Ipswich celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Constable, see www.ipswich. cimuseums.org.uk/visit/christchurch-
mansion, accessed 15th September 2025. The present author is grateful to Anne Lyles, Susan Morris and Neil Jeffares, and to Museum Conservation Ltd for the conservation of the album.
2 The drawings are available at www.sothebys.com/en/buy/ auction/2020/old-master-britishworks-on-paper/the-mason-family-
Opposite 1. The Mason family album before conservation. c.1794–1860s. 30.5 by 26 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
rural landscape. In the same year Constable embarked on a sketching tour of Norfolk, seeking out artists and private collections in an effort to educate himself. The drawing may have been copied from a print, and the location remains unidentified, although the bridge bears a resemblance to the late medieval packhorse bridge at Moulton, Suffolk. It is pasted above a cut-out pink paper leaf inscribed with text dated 1823, a format favoured by the album’s owners for recording short poems and riddles, suggesting that the drawing was later repurposed in this context of domestic amusement.
Chronologically, the next drawing in this group is Deserted cottage (Fig.4), which was executed in grey wash with watercolour and iron gall ink and was found loose in the album. It demonstrates Constable’s growing confidence in using watercolour and wash to evoke light and shade – particularly when compared to his earlier effort in 1794. His sketches from 1796 feature rural cottages, often rendered in pen and ink, and this drawing may be dated slightly later as it appears to have informed one of Constable’s early etchings.5 The choice of subject was probably inspired by Constable’s meeting with the artist and antiquarian John Thomas Smith (1766–1833) in 1796. At the time, Constable was staying in Edmonton with his maternal relatives, the Allen family, who were meant to be encouraging him into the family business. Instead, the location fostered his aspirations of becoming a professional artist, through encounters with such artists as Smith and John Cranch (1751–1821). Both men offered practical guidance, recommending reading lists, materials and printmaking techniques. In exchange, Constable sent Smith drawings of dilapidated cottages that would later contribute to Smith’s book Remarks on Rural Scenery, which was published in 1797. Although none of Constable’s sketches were ultimately
album-1794-1862, accessed 4th September 2025.
3 Inv. no.IPSMG:R.2021.1.1–171. This acquisition was made possible by support from Arts Council England / V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Art Fund, the Friends of the Ipswich Museums and Ipswich Borough Council’s Felix Cobbold Bequest.
4 E. Roodhouse and C. Howgego, eds: exh. cat. Creating Constable, Colchester (Colchester and Ipswich Museums), p.224.
5 See, for example, an etching titled An old thatched cottege with hedge and paling in front (c.1800; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; inv. no.E.4-1888).
included in the final volume, Smith did benefit from Constable’s social network, securing subscribers from Essex and Suffolk.
In Deserted cottage, Constable echoed Smith’s wash technique, which is particularly evident when the work is compared to Smith’s drawing Near Deptford (1797; British Museum, London), which had been prepared for inclusion in Remarks.6 Constable used ink to articulate texture in the thatched roof and fence posts, and to add gentle colour to the chimney with a wispy line of smoke extending into the sky.
The next Constable drawing in the album is a small portrait (Fig.8), drawn in graphite on paper and watermarked 1801, which was found loose and inserted near page 117. The sitter can be identified as
3. St Mary’s House, Colchester. (Photograph the author).
Opposite
4. Deserted cottage, by John Constable. Ink on paper, 14 by 19 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
5. A rural landscape, by John Constable. 1794. Watercolour on paper, 15.1 by 20.1 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
Abram Constable (1783–1862), Constable’s younger brother, who later assumed responsibility for the family business and finances as part of an arrangement that significantly eased the burden on John and enabled him to pursue his career as an artist. The drawing shows Abram in profile and bears close resemblance to an oil portrait (Fig.6) in the Ipswich Borough Council collections, thought to have been painted around 1806.7 At that time, Abram was in his twenties and both the sketch and the oil painting reflect Constable’s affection for his brother, as they portray him as a handsome and alert young man.
Constable produced several portraits in graphite and watercolour in 1806, including his own self-portrait in profile (1806; Tate), which remained for many years in his family collection.8 The bond between the Mason family and the wider Constable circle may help explain the inclusion of Abram’s portrait in this album, as Abram held the Masons in high regard, and this connection could well have motivated its placement among other works that reflect familial and social ties.
The final work by Constable to be considered here was placed at page 112 in the album: it is a portrait of the seventeen-year-old Jane Anne Mason (1792–1876), Constable’s second cousin (Fig.7). Executed in graphite and inscribed with the date 1809 by an unknown hand, the drawing presents Jane Anne facing the viewer directly, with gentle curls framing a youthful face and large, expressive eyes. Her dress is loosely sketched with a high neckline. This sketch is located adjacent to a letter (Fig.10) dated 18th March 1814, written by Jane Anne to her younger brother, William Mason IV (1797–1840). The letter comprises three pages of text on a large sheet folded in two, most of which is taken up with Jane’s own drawings of Pembroke and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. These were copied after etchings published by Edward Harding (1755–1840) in 1801 and serve as visual aids to her written advice on educational choices. In the letter, the twenty-two-year-old Jane Anne offered guidance to her younger brother, reflecting her intellectual engagement with his education.
Constable painted an oil portrait of Jane Anne (Fig.9), which is usually dated to around 1808.9 However, the drawing, inscribed with the date 1809, depicts a slightly younger version of Jane Anne than in the oil portrait. This difference suggests that the dating of both works may need to be reconsidered. In June 1808 Abram informed John that the Masons would be coming to London, which could have prompted the idea for a portrait in oil. Alternatively, the drawing may have been created during Constable’s visit to Colchester in October 1808.
Jane Anne grew up in Colchester and maintained close ties with both John and Abram Constable. In September 1815 she married James Inglis (1782–1830) at St Mary’s Church, adjacent to her childhood home. The couple had six children during their fifteen-year marriage. The eldest, Jane Anne Inglis (1816–71), known as ‘Miss Inglis’, showed a keen interest in art and benefited from Constable’s guidance and access to his art collection.10
In 1828 Jane Anne became godmother to Constable’s youngest child, Lionel Bicknell (1828–87). Both Jane Anne and John suffered the loss of their spouse around that time; Constable’s wife died in 1828, and on 23rd October 1829 Abram wrote to his brother to report the ‘serious illness’ of Mr Inglis: ‘dear Jane will be in trouble and great trouble, as they are much in debt [. . .] What a lamentable state is Mrs Inglis in’.11 James died in 1830 and the children were sent to live with Jane’s parents in Colchester. There, Miss Inglis’s devotion to drawing prompted her grandmother Anne Mason
6 Inv. no.1992,1003.148.
7 Ipswich Borough Council Collection, inv. no.IPSMG:R.1925.25
8 Inv.no.T03899.
9 Inv.no.GAC16867.
10 Letter from Anne Mason to John Constable, 22nd November
1833, in R.B. Beckett: John Constable’s Correspondence: The Family at East Bergholt 1807–1837, Ipswich 1962, p.278.
11 Letter from Abram Constable to John Constable, 23rd October 1829, in Beckett, op. cit. (note 10), p.257.
2. St Mary’s House, by William Mason. 1818. Graphite on paper, 22 by 27.6 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
Constable sketches in the Mason album
to write to her cousin John Constable, requesting the loan of a painting by Claude Lorrain (1600–82) for her granddaughter to copy, saying that ‘you could not bestow us a greater kindness than to grant us the loan of the valuable picture’.12
In August 1834 Constable wrote to Miss Inglis requesting the return of the work by Claude if she had finished with it, as he wished to use it in a forthcoming lecture on the history of landscape painting. Returning the painting, the elder Jane Anne Inglis wrote on her daughter’s behalf: ‘I cannot find words to thank you [. . .] we shall rejoice to see you if you come into Suffolk’.13 In this context, the drawing of Jane Anne in the album gains the status of a treasured recollection of her youth before married life, which was filled with many children and various financial pressures.
It is worth exploring further the 1814 letter from Jane Anne to her brother William in the album, as it introduces another notable East Anglian family connected to the early development of Constable’s career: the Cobbolds. In the letter (Fig.10), Jane Anne mentions that the family had been consulting ‘Mr Cobbold’ regarding William’s university choices. Their chief concern was William’s happiness and comfort; they were reluctant to impose a decision upon him. Ultimately, he followed in his father’s footsteps by entering the legal profession, receiving his articles of clerkship on 24th November 1817.
The wealth of the Cobbolds derived from their brewing business in Ipswich. John Cobbold was the head of the brewery and his second
6. Abram Constable, by John Constable. c.1806. Oil on canvas, 76 by 63.5 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
7. Jane Anne Mason, by John Constable. 1809. Graphite on paper, 27.9 by 20.3 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
8. Abram Constable, by John Constable. c.1801. Graphite on paper, 20.9 by 16.7 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
Jane Anne
, by
10. Letter from Jane Anne Mason to William Mason, 18th March 1814. Graphite on paper, each page 23 by 18.5 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council) .
wife, Elizabeth Cobbold (1766–1824), was a novelist, poet, artist and natural scientist. She played a significant role in cultivating the local arts scene and took a particular interest in mentoring young artists. Constable benefited from her encouragement, gaining access to her art collection and hospitality in the 1790s. Writing to Smith from the Cobbolds house in Ipswich on 18th August 1799, Constable remarked: ‘I believe I may be here a fortnight longer. Tis a most delightfull country for a landscape painter, I fancy I see Gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree’.14 During this same visit, Constable was introduced to the Quaker poet Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), who later provided him with a letter of introduction to the influential Royal Academician Joseph Farington (1747–1821). This connection proved instrumental in facilitating Constable’s entry into the London art world and the Royal Academy of Art.
The Cobbolds also feature elsewhere in the Mason family album. In addition to the 1814 letter, the album includes handwritten copies of Elizabeth Cobbold’s poetry, composed around the same period. There is also an ink sketch of the Revd J. Cobbold’s house in Woolpit, signed
12 Letter cited in note 10.
13 Letter from Jane Anne Inglis to John Constable, 30th August 1834, in Beckett, op. cit. (note 10), pp.283–84.
15 Inv. nos.IPSMG: R.2021.1.117 and IPSMG: R.2021.1.121.
16 Inv. no.IPSMG: R.2021.1.148.
17 Inv. no.IPSMG:R.2021.1.152
14 Letter from John Constable to John Thomas Smith, 18th August 1799, in R.B. Beckett, ed.: John Constable’s Correspondence, Early Friends and Maria Bicknell (Mrs. Constable), Ipswich 1964, p.16.
18 Inv. nos.IPSMG: 2021.1.21, IPSMG: 2021.1.48 and IPSMG: R.2021.1.139.
sketches in the Mason album
9.
Inglis (née Mason)
John Constable. c.1808. Oil on canvas, 77 by 64.3 cm. (Government Art Collection, London).
‘W.M., 1814’. This Cobbold was probably a relative of John Cobbold of Ipswich and may have been the same individual referred to in Jane Anne’s letter.
The creation of the album spans over seventy years, with contributions from various members of the Mason and Inglis families. The Mason family were related to the Constables through the marriage of William Mason of Colchester (1768–1840) and Anne Parminter (1769–1857), John’s first cousin on his father’s side, in 1792. William and Anne lived in Colchester and had strong ties with Golding and Ann Constable and their children, particularly John and Abram. Anne had been born in Wormingford, Essex, the daughter of Judith Constable (1731–1800) and Thomas Parminter (1718–84). Judith, in turn, was the older sister of Golding Constable (John Constable’s father) and the siblings’ children therefore grew up as friends as well as cousins.
William Mason’s father, also named William (d.1802), was a prominent solicitor in Colchester, serving as the alderman of the town and mayor in 1796. He later became captain commandant of the Loyal Colchester Volunteers. It was perhaps inevitable that his son would follow in his legal footsteps. Upon his father’s death in 1802, the younger William was
appointed as the town clerk and later became an alderman in 1818. He continued to cultivate his father’s law firm, which eventually became Ellison’s Solicitors, which is still in operation today.
The Masons resided in St Mary’s House (Figs.2 and 3), near the Church of St Mary-ad-Murum (now the Colchester Art Centre). The album contains at least one drawing of their home and another of the church, supporting the idea that it was created to preserve art and keepsakes for the family. It is likely that the album was further enriched by Anne and William’s daughter, Jane Anne, or by her children during their time in Colchester with their grandparents, after the death of their father. Drawings by both the Mason and Inglis families indicate that it was gradually added to by multiple contributors over the years. Among these are two portraits: one inscribed ‘Miss E Inglis 1801’ and another stylistically similar one.15 There are also works that could be attributed to Jane Anne’s sons. The first is a highly competent pencil drawing of a harbour scene
11. Two drawings and notes from Maria Louisa (‘Minna’) Constable to Inglis, probably Jane Anne Mason (née Inglis), and her mother Anne Mason, 19th April 1850. Graphite on paper, 10.2 by 7.6 and 11.4 by 9.2 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
12. Handwritten copy of Inscription for a scrapbook, by Elizabeth Cobbold. Ink on paper, 31.5 by 26 cm. (Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Ipswich Borough Council).
featuring a pub, titled the Duke of Wellington (1837), inscribed ‘WMI 1837’ –most likely the initials of the fifteen-year-old William Mason Inglis.16 The second is a watercolour depicting a house adorned with bunting, initialled ‘T.I 11/62’ – at this time, Thomas Inglis was thirty-eight years old.17 Further evidence in the album that it belonged to the Mason and Inglis families includes the pencil drawing of St Mary’s House by ‘W. Mason. March 1818’ (Fig.2); a handwritten note from ‘Mrs PB’ to ‘W. Mason’, dated 1812, inviting him to dinner; and a pencil drawing of St Mary-ad-Murum, Colchester.18
Constable stayed at St Mary’s House on several occasions, often sketching the house and its surroundings. In October 1808 he created a drawing of the Roman walls and church behind the house (private collection),19 a view he would revisit in his 1813 and 1817 sketchbooks.20 Constable was on especially good terms with the Mason family and grew particularly close to Jane Anne and William. However, by the time he returned in 1817, Jane Anne had married and no longer lived with her parents.
Constable knew Colchester well due to his frequent visits to family and friends. For example, he was acquainted with the Strutt family, particularly Benjamin Strutt (1754–1827), who had his own art collection,
19 St Mary-ad-Murum, Colchester, inscribed ‘Colchester. St. Mary’s / Octr. 29.1808’.
20 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. no.317-1888, intact sketchbook used
in Suffolk and Essex 1813; and inv. no.301-1888, St Mary-ad-Murum Church, Colchester, inscribed ‘Augst. 9 181[?]’.
21 Inv. nos.IPSMG:R.2021.1.126 and IPSMG:R.2021.1.130.
and his son Jacob George Strutt, (1784–1867), who aspired to become an artist. Colchester’s proximity to Wivenhoe Park, the seat of Constable’s early patron General Francis Slater Rebow (1770–1845), as well as other notable landmarks, provided ample inspiration for the artist’s sketches. The Mason family home was an ideal base for numerous short visits to the area and it is likely that Constable left behind sketches for the family to include in their albums.
The four works by Constable in the Mason album should not be viewed in isolation. Rather, they form part of a rich resource full of familial connections. These attachments can be seen in two final works (Fig.11). One is a watercolour sketch of a wood warbler on a note inscribed ‘From Minna to dear cousin Inglis with her love April 19th 1850’; while the other is a sketch of a cowslip inscribed ‘for dear Aunt Mason from Minna, April 18th 1850’.21 These notes were shared between the Masons/Inglis and Constables and written by Constable’s second child, Maria Louise, who was known as Minna.
The album provides a remarkable glimpse of the wider family of which Constable was a part, hinting at the personal significance particular places seem to have held for him. It shifts focus to the social setting of Constable’s art, his personal life and the familial roots in East Anglia. In the handwritten Inscription for a scrapbook (Fig.12) in the Mason album, Elizabeth Cobbold encourages us to look again at this unique assembly of delicate oddments:
But gentle Reader! pray engage Benevolence to turn the page, And you shall find, look where you will, Some scrap of Genius, Taste or Skill.
Elizth Cobbold Holy Wells, Ipswich.
appendix
The children of the Mason and Inglis families who potentially contributed to the Mason album.
The firstborn, Jane Anne Inglis, married the Revd Thomas Garnham Luard at St Mary-ad-Murum, on 19th May 1847; they had one son, Thomas Inglis Luard, who was baptised on 25th March 1849. Jane Anne died in July 1871, in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire.
The couple’s second child was the younger James Inglis (1819–87), who trained in law and died in Colchester. Their third child, Helen Inglis (1820–1900), was born in Croydon and later married a banker, John Bawtree, in Colchester in July 1842, when she was twenty-one years old. Helen and John had four daughters, all of whom were born and died in Colchester: Helen Bawtree (1845–1906); Margareta Anne (1853–85); Charlotte Mary (1854–95); and Lucy Jane (1861–1927).
The fourth child of James and Jane Anne Inglis was William Mason Inglis (1822–54), who died while serving at the Siege of Sevastopol in Crimea. A memorial in St Mary-ad-Murum records that he was a captain in the Royal Engineers, and that he was lost in the wreck of the Prince off Balaklava on 14th November 1854 at the age of thirty-two.
Fifth-born Thomas Inglis (1824–88) married Ellen Dorothy Jessopp on 19 July 1855 in Waltham Abbey, Essex. Thomas was a soldier and executor of his mother’s will along with his brother James, and died on 2nd September 1888 in Blackheath, Kent, at the age of sixty-three. The sixth child, Robert Lewis Inglis (c.1828–43) was born in St Marylebone, Middlesex. He died as a teenager on 14th December 1843 in Colchester and was buried there.
Discussing John Constable: an interview with Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley’s deep appreciation of the work of John Constable throughout her career and respect for his achievement is here explored in an insightful interview. Conducted by Amy Concannon, Manton Senior Curator, Historic British Art, at Tate, the discussion touches on the artists’ parallel approaches to light, colour and technique.
by bridget riley and amy concannon
Bridget riley has long held an affection for the work of John Constable (1776–1837). Most recently, it has found a public expression in her mural Messengers (Fig.1) in the National Gallery, London, where the artist (b.1931) was a trustee from 1981 to 1988. Some of her thoughts on Constable were printed in this Magazine within the context of an interview conducted by E.H. Gombrich, which had been transcribed from a discussion aired on BBC Radio 3 in connection with Riley’s 1992 exhibition According to Sensation: Paintings 1982–1992, at the Hayward Gallery, London.1
Ahead of the exhibition Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals at Tate Britain, London (27th November 2025–12th April 2026), its curator, Amy Concannon, talked to Riley about her interest in Constable. This interview took place in two locations: the National Gallery, in front of Constable’s The hay wain, and in Riley’s studio.
amy concannon: Your knowledge about and passion for Constable is very evident to me. Shall we talk about when you first encountered his painting or what drew you to Constable’s work?
bridget riley: There were two or even three early encounters with Constable. When I was thirteen years old in Cornwall, my family were living in a cottage far from the city. The war was on and all normal life was suspended. My aunt was living with us and she had been an art student at Goldsmiths art school. My mother had a great feeling for nature –she had an ‘eye’! We would go for long walks and she encouraged me to look around – at the seas, skies and landscape – and I quickly learnt to appreciate all that could be seen.
My father’s elder brother, who had served in the First World War but was not in the Second, sent me a book for my thirteenth birthday. This book was a large volume on masterpieces of British painting. I still have
1 B. Riley and E.H. Gombrich: ‘The use of colour and its effect: the how and the why’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 136 (1994), pp.427–29.
2 Letter from John Constable to John
Dunthorne, 29th May 1802, quoted in R.B. Beckett, ed.: John Constable’s Correspondence, Ipswich 1962–68, II, p.31.
3 J. Constable: ‘Notes of six lectures,
it. It was published by Foyles, who must have realised there were very few publications about English painting and set out to produce one. This book, which is about six inches thick, has beautiful illustrations and a very large number of these – the largest, in fact, out of all the artists – were of works by Constable. I saw in them a landscape very different from the Cornish landscape, with its grandeur and drama. His landscapes seemed quite remote from what I knew of the countryside, and I found them so assured, restful and so at ease. I saw in them Shakespeare’s ‘green and pleasant land’.
ac: How did your understanding of Constable develop as you became an artist yourself?
br: My interest in Constable grew as I developed my own work. On my first trip to America in 1965, I saw The white horse (Fig.2) in the Frick Collection of old master paintings. I was absolutely thrilled to come across it.
ac: It is wonderful to think of you in New York for the first time, and in the 1960s, and coming across Constable. What made seeing this work so thrilling? Was it the painting itself? Was it seeing this very British artist on the walls of a famous New York art gallery?
br: What was thrilling was that it was extremely good. It was clearly a great painting, and I had not seen a reproduction of it beforehand, so it was a surprise. It is a striking, bold composition in which the white of the horse stands out in strong contrast to the many shades of green around it. It is carried out with such conviction, seeming ease and mastery. Nothing escapes attention, from the beautiful, clouded sky to the foliage and its reflection in the water. No wonder French painters like Géricault and Delacroix saw in Constable a new way forward for painting, making nature the subject rather than just a background. I am
delivered by Constable,on landscape painting’, in C.R. Leslie, ed.: Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq. R.A., London 1951, pp.289–333, at p.278, emphasis in original.
4 B. Riley and E.H. Gombrich: ‘Perceptions and the use of colour’, in idem: Dialogues on Art, London 1995, pp.33–50, at p.33.
fascinated by the history of The white horse – that Constable sent this painting to Lille, a year after showing The hay wain (Fig.3) in Paris. And again, it won him a gold medal. What a pity it is that Constable never went to France to experience first-hand the enthusiasm with which his work was met there. Sadly, Constable thought that he had enough trouble at home and did not want to risk going abroad to get another basinful from critics over there!
ac: It is so interesting to hear you say that the painting seems to have been painted with ease because, reading Constable’s letters, he was not always at ease when painting. He would often worry that a work was not good enough and went back to canvases to rework them. Of course, this was not helped by the critical reception he received, as you mentioned, particularly concerning his ‘finish’ (or lack thereof), his palette-knife heavy technique and his white highlights, which were ridiculed as ‘Constable’s snow’.
br: He was developing a new way of painting and therefore taking risks and laying himself open to criticism. The lack of ‘finish’ was a reference to his breaking the smooth surface into separate brush strokes. He simply painted as he felt he must. As he said, ‘there is room enough for a natural peinture’.2 By this he meant that there was a place for an artist who makes nature the true subject of his painting, which it had not been before, and who paints nature in a way that respects its changing forms. Landscape had been used as background material in compositional facture, painted in very smooth and polished ways. Constable’s views on painting were presented in lectures he gave at Hampstead, where he told
his audience, ‘In such an age as this, painting should be understood, not looked on with blind wonder, nor considered only as a poetic aspiration, but as a pursuit, legitimate, scientific and mechanical’.3
I was once interviewed by the distinguished art historian E.H. Gombrich, who asked me my views on Constable’s statement that ‘painting is a science and should be pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature’ and that ‘pictures may be regarded as experiments in that science’.4 At the time of the interview, my work was being linked to the science of optics, so I said that while I had always loved Constable, I could not quite agree that painting was a science or at least not what I understood by science. However, the science of Constable’s time was closer to an enquiry into the laws of nature, and, in this sense, Constable’s paintings could be regarded as experiments in that science. He was working at a time when Newton and Goethe were both making experiments with light, although differently – they had two different ways of splitting the spectrum. It was also the age of steam and gravity, when discoveries were being made and theories exchanged – indeed, Constable’s ideas were travelling across the Channel. He was seeking to understand the world, yes, but he was also seeking to make paintings that move us, and that do not blindly copy either other works of art or nature itself. His knowledge of atmospheric phenomena, of cloud formations, set him free to respond in a fresh and original way to nature. He set great store on observation and in his drawings he often notes the time of day and the weather conditions just as the Impressionist painters would do later.
Riley and Gabriele Finaldi looking at Messengers in 2019.
Bridget Riley; National Gallery, London).
Bridget Riley on John Constable
ac: ‘Fresh’ is a very pertinent word in relation to Constable’s work. We have talked before about Constable’s obsession with freshness, with sparkle. These were words that he used. Do you feel that he achieves that sparkling quality of light in this work?
br: Yes, I do. You are right – freshness is the strong sensation one gets from looking at his painting, the freshness of nature itself. You can see this when you look at The hay wain, a work that I have loved for a long time, along with many, many people. Freshness is also in his technique – it’s not been tidied up. The surface of the painting has not been sealed. This was new. Landscape painting of earlier times had been like something seen through a window – it was smoothly finished. Constable’s painting has ‘broken colour’, broken marks. Its lack of smoothness gives it an immediacy that brings it closer to our own experience of being outside in the country. The light is right – it does not feel artificial.
ac: So, as a painter, is it the light that you look at first?
br: Yes. This painting, The hay wain, is very much to do with light. In fact, its original title was Landscape – noon. So, the time of the day and the subject was in the original title. I love how he painted these big flat fields,
called locally ‘flats’. They receive these wonderful light, long horizontal passages of light (Fig.4). Then there is a wonderful burst of reflected light underneath the tree and through the transparency of the leaves (Fig.5) – a major point of focus in this painting.
I came to Constable through Monet. Constable and Monet, both of these two great painters, took landscape painting to new heights and new intimacies. Monet talked about the envelope of light – he worked extremely consciously with the behaviour of light. I think that Constable anticipated this in his use of light. Even in the sky, he painted clouds in shadow and clouds in bright light, and all that light is reflected down into the water. There you can see the reflection of the clouds, the glitter, the shine of light and how it strikes Willy Lott’s little cottage. But most of all, we see the light through the opening-out of the tree. It is an open form. Very probably, he was drawing it, and if so, he would have drawn the principle masses, which he would have hatched diagonally and followed up with cross hatching, thereby adding a depth of tonality and darkness to the part nearest the house. This led to his understanding of tone –chiaroscuro, the light and dark of nature. Openness is another strong sensation of the painting – it opens out into this enormous distance, an ‘easeful space’, and then closes in to focus on events in the foreground like the dog and the people in the hay wain.
ac: That openness is also in his technique. Looking closely at a Constable painting, you see whether each brush mark contains two or three or more
2. The white horse, by John Constable. 1818–19. Oil on canvas, 131.4 by 188.3 cm. (Frick Collection, New York).
colours – as you say, it is broken colour. Is the surface and that broken colour what you find exciting about Constable’s work?
br: Yes, it is. These marks, which have not been smoothed into a contiguous shape or form, make us look closely and the eye explores. The broken marks become different kinds of trees, different kinds of transparencies – of rushes and plants by the water and the water itself. What was also new were the colours that made up these marks, which told and conveyed so much. Many of these are earth colours such as yellow and red ochres, but some contain small touches of pure colour, such as viridian. There are at least two blues here, a couple of yellows and, of course, white but no black – and there will be no black added to any of the mixtures of these colours. These marks may be small touches, like dots, but each of them will be a particular colour. And so, the Impressionist painters following Constable practised a form of analysis called Divisionism, which meant separating and identifying the particular colours that make up the lively brush marks. The promise being that, in the long run, if you could identify these separate colours you could reassemble them and make a fresh painting knowing what your weapons are.
ac: I really love what you said about lively marks.
br: Yes, they are lively, but they are also masterly – because as well as liveliness, there is also utter control. Constable was in complete control
of his brush marks, understanding what he had on his brush and knowing how to apply it.
ac: If you were to bring a younger painter with you to look at this picture, what would you show them first?
br: I would ask them to tell me what they saw because it is then their looking that matters. So, if I asked them what they saw, rather than told them what I see, I think this would be more meaningful for them. Then they might say, this part here is surprising – an amazingly bright white, very close to this incredible yellow. I would hope they would appreciate and enjoy Constable’s remarkable use of colour.
ac: You used the word ‘heights’ before. Let’s focus on the sky – Constable said that the sky in any picture should be its ‘chief organ of sentiment’. One of the things that Constable is famous for today is his paintings of clouds – his ‘Skying’, as he called it. Is the sky in The hay wain a difficult skyscape? Is that difficult to create and paint?
br: His time working in his father’s mill would have helped him in this. It had been part of his job to understand the weather and to be able to
Bridget Riley on John Constable
3. The hay wain, by John Constable. 1821. Oil on canvas, 130.2 by 185.4 cm. (National Gallery, London; Bridgeman Images).
Bridget Riley on John Constable
read the clouds. When it was looking too stormy, he would have to close the mill down so the big sails were not damaged.
He talked about ‘the lanes of the clouds’. I understand this to mean the passages of air between higher and lower clouds. He also talked about light, falling from above the cloud and below the cloud, which, especially if it is heavy with rain, forms a lurid substance that actually is shadow. Constable built his skies. His clouds are very carefully placed in their own perspective and this recession is also completely natural. The area on the right is so well understood – how this sky moves up over you.
ac: And I imagine that is quite difficult to achieve unless you have studied the sky as much as he had.
br: It shows Constable’s masterly brushwork because so much is moving all the time – assembling and dissolving – and so you cannot depict it because it is all so powerful and fleeting, but Constable managed to evoke it.
ac: And I wondered if we could talk about feeling, because Constable said that for him ‘painting was but another word for feeling’. And do you sense the soul and the feeling in this painting? Is this something that speaks to you?
br: Yes, it does. I feel his love of nature and I think it is very powerfully present in this painting. As Benjamin West said to Constable, ‘You must have loved nature very much before you could have painted this’.5
ac: I think this is why Constable’s work still appeals to people today – they are paintings made with feeling and so evocative.
br: Yes, I feel this when I walk towards this painting.
ac: Earlier you used a lovely phrase, ‘paint what has to be painted’. Coming back to how your work has developed, is there any aspect of dialogue or conversation between your work and his?
br: He is one of my heroes and I admire him greatly. I too regard painting as a pursuit, which is legitimate, perspicacious, felt and agile. I think of his integrity, which is the spirit of his work. As a painter you cannot afford to deceive yourself. He loved working, and I love working.
Bridget Riley on John Constable
4 and 5. Details of Fig.3.
5 Letter from John Constable to Maria Bicknell, quoted in Beckett, op. cit. (note 2), II, p.65.
Theodoor van Loon’s sketch of St Anne and her family with angels and St Gertrude
by SABINE VAN SPRANG
in june 2022 christie’s offered for sale an oil sketch titled The Holy Family with St Anne, other saints and angels (Fig.2) by Theodoor van Loon (c.1582–1649).1 This shorter notice presents evidence that the sketch was made by Van Loon as a preparatory model for his now lost altarpiece, painted around 1628, for the chapel of St Anne in S. Maria dell’Anima, Rome. Its peculiar iconography lends credence to the hypothesis that the German pontifical herbalist Johannes Faber (also Johan Schmidt) was behind the commission.
The sketch shows the Virgin, depicted on the left at a slight angle, presenting the Child Jesus to St Anne, who is seated on the right with a basket of grapes on her lap. At the feet of the Virgin, a cherub seen in profile holds a phylactery, while a cat has crept between the two saints. Behind them is a holy abbess, identified here as St Gertrude of Nivelles, holding a crosier, its position slightly modified; beside her stands St Joachim, an angel playing an instrument and, beneath two twirling cherubs and slightly in the background, St Joseph handling a plane on a carpenter’s bench. The emphasis is clearly placed on the filial and tender bond that unites the Virgin and Jesus to St Anne, who is about to offer grapes, which convey Eucharistic symbolism, to her grandson, while her daughter gently places a hand on her shoulder. The significance of this trinitarian reunion is underscored by the gaze of the angel towards Joachim, who spreads his arms in joy behind him.
There is no doubt that the sketch is by Van Loon: the robust, plump figures, the pot-bellied cherubs, the milky flesh and weighty draperies, painted with opaque layers, are all characteristic of his style. The somewhat heavy execution, which lacks fluidity in places (for example, the baby Jesus), is also found in other oil sketches by Van Loon, including a sketch on paper for the Assumption (1622; Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium)2 and the modello on canvas for St Anne with her family and St John the Baptist (Fig.1).3 In both works, the same technique has been used to underline the details of the faces –the arches of the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nose,
the mouth – with a dark, somewhat heavy line, and to work the flat areas of the clothes with nervously drawn white highlights.
Given its marouflage, it is likely that St Anne and her family with angels and St Gertrude was cut down slightly on one or more edges. The pyramidal composition and the tight grouping of figures indicate that it is one of Van Loon’s mature works. The figures of the Virgin and St Joseph are reminiscent, if more schematic, of those in his Holy Family (Fig.3), which also features grapes and a plane, the traditional symbols of Christ’s coming sacrifice.4 The kneeling angel in the foreground is almost identical to the angel touching the spire of St Ursula in the foreground of Van Loon’s Coronation of St Ursula (1626; St John the Baptist at the Béguinage, Brussels).5 Also, the woven basket can be found in several of his paintings: for example, the Assumption (1622; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels); the Mystical marriage of St Catherine (c.1623–28; Perm State Art Gallery);
the Adoration of the Shepherds (c.1623–28; Musée du Louvre, Paris, and St Catherine’s, Brussels) and St Anne and her family with St John the Baptist (c.1623–28; private collection).6
Born in Erkelenz (Guelders) around 1582, Van Loon spent most of his career in the southern Netherlands.7 This did not prevent him from making several journeys to Italy. He is first mentioned in Rome in 1602, where he stayed until at least 1608. He then returned, probably briefly, in 1617. He is mentioned again as being in Rome between December 1627 and March 1628 to collect relics of Philip Neri from the Oratorians of S. Maria in Vallicella for the church of OnzeLieve-Vrouw van Scherpenheuvel, near Diest. Finally, Van Loon travelled to Italy sometime before the end of 1631 and the beginning of 1632. Van Loon was most probably commissioned to paint an altarpiece devoted to St Anne for the eponymous chapel in S. Maria dell’Anima during his third stay in Rome. In his historical guide to the sanctuary, published in 1909, the rector Joseph Lohninger mentions two payments to Van Loon for a ‘quadro di Santa Anna’ (and ‘two jobs’) for a total sum of 200 ecus, dated 11th September 1628 and 3rd March 1629 respectively.8 Van Loon’s altarpiece did not remain in the chapel for very long and its whereabouts are now unknown. As early as 1640, Giacinto Gimignani had painted another St Anne Trinitarian for the chapel (still in situ), which had been commissioned by the executors of the will of Jean (Johannes) Savenier, Apostolic Secretary of Liège (d.1638), who had extended the chapel’s dedication to the Immaculate Conception.9 Antonio Boschetto suggested that Van Loon’s version could be the painting that once belonged to Alfred Weiss (Castle of Laudon, Purkersdorf; now private collection); however, he mistakenly described the subject as the Birth of the Virgin, whereas it is in fact the birth of Samson, as has since been demonstrated.10 Van Loon’s altarpiece appears to have adorned the sacristy of the church for a time: an inventory drawn up in 1660 records ‘a painting depicting St Anne, 12 palms high by 8 wide [approximately 267.6 by 178 centimetres], unframed and by the hand of Teodoro Vanltan’ (‘un quadro di Santa Anna, alto dodeci palmi e largo otto, senza cornice, di mano di Teodoro Vanltan’).11 This is the last known mention of the painting and its location.12 Although this reference is too vague to allow us to form a precise idea of its composition, in his Historia S. Gertrudis principis virginis (1637), Abbot Joseph Geldolph van Ryckel mentioned the presence in S. Maria dell’Anima of the ‘well-known images’ of St Anne and St Gertrude, painted ‘some years ago’ by the hand of ‘Appellea Theodori Belgae’, a reference that has eluded scholars until now.13 There is no doubt
1. St Anne with her family and St John the Baptist, by Theodoor van Loon. Oil on canvas, 37 by 27 cm. (Private collection).
that this appellation refers to Van Loon. As Abbot of S. Gertrude, Leuven, Van Ryckel was familiar with the œuvre of the painter, some of whose canvases he had admired in the church of St John the Baptist at the Béguinage, and praised in his monumental Vita S. Beggae (1631), which recounted the life of the sister of St Gertrude.14 Moreover, the epithet ‘Apelles of the Netherlands’ had already been used by his good friend, the Leuven humanist Erycius Puteanus, in a letter to the painter in 1612.15 As Van Ryckel never left the Netherlands, it is likely that he obtained his information on the ‘images’ of S. Maria dell’Anima from Puteanus, one of the dedicatees of the Vita S. Beggae and Van Loon’s closest supporter throughout his career.16
The images of St Anne and St Gertrude mentioned by Van Ryckel must have appeared in the same painting. This can be deduced from Irene Baldriga’s discovery of the mention of an ‘altar painting of Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child Jesus, Saint Joseph, Saint Joachim and Saint Gertrude, without frame’ (‘una pittura d’altare dove sta depinte S. Anna, la Madonna con il Bambino Jesu, S. Giuseppe, S. Joachim e S. Gertruda, senza cornice’) in the 1653 Instrumenta of S. Maria dell’Anima.17 In the catalogue of the first monographic exhibition on Van Loon in 2018, Anne Delvingt had already suggested that this might be a reference to Van Loon’s altarpiece.18 The iconography of the painting mentioned in 1653 exactly matches that of Van Loon’s sketch discussed here; therefore, it seems probable that it is indeed the preparatory model for his altarpiece. The sketch’s late style, typical of the artist in the years after 1623, reinforces this hypothesis, as does the presence of St Gertrude, who is a unique figure in the painter’s œuvre.
The life of St Gertrude has been the subject of several hagiographic accounts. According to her Vita prima, written around 670 by a monk from the abbey of Nivelles, Gertrude, an educated and cultured woman who lived in the seventh century, sent emissaries to Rome and to ‘overseas lands’ (probably Ireland) in search of relics and sacred works for her monastery. On one of their journeys, a threatening sea monster was quelled after they prayed to the abbess. This miracle is the origin of the saint’s oldest patronage: that of travellers and, by extension, pilgrims and the needy, whom, according to her Vita, she gladly welcomed to her monastery.19 Her cult quickly spread and her relics were widely dispersed from the eleventh century onwards, particularly in German-speaking regions, where she became
the patron saint of many hospices and houses of pilgrimage.20 In Bamberg, for example, Bishop Otto van Bamberg built a hospice dedicated to St Gertrude as early as 1137.21 In addition to her patronage of travellers and pilgrims, she later became the patron saint of the dying and of cemeteries, a protector against a number of diseases and epidemics – including the plague – and, from the fifteenth century onwards, the patron saint of gardeners, invoked to protect against the invasion of rodents.22 This is why,
in addition to her habit and her attributes as abbess, which can be seen in Van Loon’s sketch, St Gertrude is often depicted in the company of mice or rats that climb up her dress or her crook (Fig.4).
According to Abbot Van Ryckel, at S. Maria dell’Anima St Gertrude was invoked as a protector of travellers as the church had an adjoining hospice that was originally intended for pilgrims from the Holy Roman Empire.23 However, apart from Van Ryckel, no other
2. St Anne and her family with angels and St Gertrude, by Theodoor van Loon. c.1628. Oil on paper laid on panel, 31.7 by 21.9 cm. (Present location unknown).
source mentions the cult of St Gertrude in relation to the church.24 Perhaps Van Ryckel, whose aim was to promote devotion to the saint, extrapolated her importance to the church and that her inclusion in the altarpiece relates more to the person who commissioned it than to its location.
According to Irene Baldriga, the circumstances surrounding the commission for the altarpiece suggest that it came from the entourage of Johannes Faber, a long-standing acquaintance of Van Loon, whose wife, Anna Hyzler (d.1627), was buried in front of the altar of St Anne.25 Born in Bamberg in 1574 to Protestant parents who died of the plague the following year, Faber was adopted by his cousin Philipp Schmidt and brought up in the Catholic faith. Trained as a physician in Würzburg, Faber then moved to Rome to perfect his skills at the hospital of S. Spirito in Sassia. In 1600 he was promoted to papal herbalist (semplicista) and curator of medicinal plants in the Vatican gardens.26 In 1611 he also became a member of the famous Accademia dei Lincei, an academy of sciences founded by Prince Federico Cesi in 1603, and in 1615 he was appointed provost and administrator of the Confraternity of the German Nation at S. Maria dell’Anima, an office he held until 1627.27
It is not known when Faber and Van Loon first met but it must have taken place during the painter’s first stay in Rome, probably, as Baldriga has suggested, through the circle of Flemish and German expatriate painters with whom Faber was well acquainted. Faber had cured Peter Paul Rubens of a serious case of pleurisy in 1606 and was particularly close to Adam Elsheimer, whose
3. Holy Family, by Theodoor van Loon. c.1623–28. Oil on canvas, 124 by 187 cm. (M Leuven).
4. St Gertrude of Nivelles, by Theodoor Matham after Abraham van Diepenbeeck. 1615. Engraving, 25.7 by 13.7 cm. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
wedding he had witnessed.28 The pontifical herbalist also maintained contacts with Jacob de Hase (c.1575–1634) and probably Anthonie van Os (c.1578–1647), Van Loon’s first two roommates in Rome:29 in the archives of the Accademia dei Lincei, Van Os appears as an adviser at the sale of a series of works by Elsheimer, and De Hase as a signatory to a deed of gift relating to Faber’s last wishes.30
Van Loon’s name appears several times from 1614 onwards in the correspondence between Faber and Justus Ryckius (Josse de Rycke, 1587–1627), a Ghent philologist, poet, archaeologist and friend of Puteanus who, as a young licentiate, had lived in Italy from 1606 to 1612 and was closely involved in the activities of the Accademia dei Lincei.31 As Baldriga has noted, Faber often ended his letters with a friendly thought for Van Loon.32 In December 1622 Van Loon wrote directly from Brussels to Faber, whom he called ‘padrone mio’, asking him to commit him to some work and expressing his desire to return to the peaceful Rome as soon as possible, given that the war had spread to the Netherlands and that he was still ‘free and unattached’ (‘solo, sciolto e libero’).33 If Faber could find a way for him to return to the city, Van Loon promised to paint a counterpart to the ‘Little St John’ already in his possession, proof that Faber appreciated the artist’s work on a personal level. Van Loon also mentioned
several ‘friends’ to whom he would like to pay his respects, including Monsignor Mandera (Peter Mander von Neuhausen) and the priest Hendrik Gravius (Graevius). Both were members of the German Confraternity of S. Maria dell’Anima.34
Moreover, Mandera had played a key role alongside Faber in commissioning, between 1616 and 1618, two projects in S. Maria dell’Anima from the painter Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620): the restoration of Giulio Romano’s Sacra Conversazione, which then adorned the Fugger chapel, and the creation of an altarpiece depicting the miracle of St Benno and the key.35 In doing so, they acted as the executors of the will of Johannes Lambacher (1557–1615), an agent of the powerful Fugger banking family, with whom Faber was also in regular contact.36 This commission in turn prompted the Liège patrician Lambertus Ursinus de Vivariis (Lamberto Ursino de Vivariis) to ask Saraceni to paint a Martyrdom of St Lambert (Fig.6), intended for his own chapel in S. Maria dell’Anima.37
Given the close ties between Faber and Van Loon, it is possible that Van Loon and Saraceni met while the latter was working in S. Maria dell’Anima. By Easter 1617 Van Loon was back in Rome, staying with Van Os and the painter Willem I van Nieulandt, whom he had also met during his first stay in Rome.38 In
addition, in 1617 Van Loon had also produced an altarpiece of the martyrdom of St Lambert for St Lambert’s, Woluwé-Saint-Lambert in Brussels (Fig.5).39 While speculative, the fact that Saraceni and Van Loon, who moved in the same circles, each painted an altarpiece with this relatively rare subject one year apart, is worthy of note.
In any case, Saraceni’s Miracle of St Benno and the key and Martyrdom of St Lambert may have prompted Faber to include a saint venerated in his hometown, St Gertrude, in the altarpiece entrusted to Van Loon. Apart from a hospice, Bamberg had five churches, including the cathedral, which possessed relics of the saint.40 According to Mireille Madou, the importance acquired by St Gertrude in Bamberg, an imperial residence, can be explained by the fact that the abbess was attached to the Carolingian House to which Cunégonde, the
5. Martyrdom of St Lambert, by Theodoor van Loon. 1617. Oil on canvas, 265 by 225 cm. (St Lambert’s Church, Woluwé-Saint-Lambert).
6. Martyrdom of St Lambert, by Carlo Sacareni. 1618. Oil on canvas, 308 by 117 cm (S. Maria dell’Anima, Rome; Bridgeman Images).
wife of Henry II of Bavaria, claimed to be related.41 Yet Faber was not only a renowned physician and herbalist but also, thanks to his position at the papal court, a key figure in the defence of the interests of the Holy German Empire. As a result, he came into contact not only with cardinal circles sympathetic to the cause but also with German personalities visiting Rome, such as the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg (later also Bishop of Würzburg), Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen (1575–1622), who was considered an agent of the empire.42 By commissioning an altarpiece featuring the figure of St Gertrude, Faber may have intended to pay homage to the imperial circles at the Roman Curia and his birthplace, while also discreetly underlining his privileged position. In addition, St Gertrude was invoked against the plague – from which Faber’s parents had died – and as the protector of the dying and of cemeteries. With the burial site of Faber’s wife in front of an altarpiece dedicated to St Anne, her name saint, the presence of St Gertude becomes even more logical.
Van Loon’s sketch St Anne and her family with angels and St Gertrude enriches the catalogue
of this still relatively rare painter and makes it possible to specify the subject and composition of his only known Roman commission. Therefore, it provides a better understanding of the environment in which Van Loon’s œuvre evolved in Rome and the type of relationships that he developed there.
appendix
Archivio di Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome, DI (Libro di Mandati), T. 1, fols.88r and 90r.
Al maestro Teodoro van Loon pittore dare centos per un quadro ed due lavori fatto per la nostra Chiesa, in questo dì 11 settembre 1628. date 100
Al maestro Teodoro van Loon pittore fiamingo dare cento per resto del quadro di Santa Anna, ed due lavori meritati, che constane, in questo dì 3 marzo 1629. date 100
1 Sale, Christie’s, online, Old Masters: No Reserves, 2nd–16th June 2022, lot 5.
2 See S. van Sprang, ed.: exh. cat. Théodore van Loon, Brussels (Bozar) 2018, pp.180–83, no.35.
3 See the entry by A. Delvingt in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.200–01, no.43.
4 Delvingt in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.188–89, no.38.
5 See E. Nagelsmit: ‘Les retables de Theodoor van Loon commandés par les béguines pour l’église du Grand Béguinage à Bruxelles’, in S. van Sprang, ed.: Theodoor van Loon, ‘Pictor ingenius’ et contemporain de Rubens (Cahier des Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 10), Brussels and Ghent 2011, pp.63–77.
6 Van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.180–83, nos.34–35; p.50; pp.196–97, no.41; and pp.200–01, no.43.
7 For Van Loon’s biography and earlier bibliographical references, see S. van Sprang: ‘À la recherche de Théodore van Loon, entre Rome et Bruxelles’, in idem, op. cit. (note 2), pp.19–34.
8 J. Lohninger: Sta Maria dell’Anima: Die deutsche Nationalkirche in Rom. Bau- und kunstgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, Rome 1909, p.128. Lohninger erroneously states that the first payment was made in November (see Appendix). T. Cornil: ‘Théodore van Loon et la peinture italienne’, Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome 17 (1936), p.196, noted that these payments were lost. The present author thanks Andrea Pagano, archivist at S. Maria dell’Anima, for help in locating these payments.
9 Lohninger, op. cit. (note 8), pp.128–31.
10 A. Boschetto: ‘Di Theodoor van Loon e dei suoi dipinti a Montaigu’, Paragone 239 (1970), pp.42–59, at p.51; I. Baldriga: ‘Entre l’Italie et les Pays-Bas méridionaux: le parcours artistique et culturel de Théodore van Loon’, in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.19–39, at pp.38–39; and Delvingt in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.184–85, no.36.
11 C.G. Hoogewerff: Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, The Hague 1911, II, p.725, ‘Hoc est inventarium omnium et singulorum bonorum mobilium [. . .] existentium in sacristia Venerabilis Ecclesiae Beatae Mariae de Anima [February 1660], fol.20r. See also Lohninger, op. cit. (note 8), p.122; and Cornil, op. cit. (note 8), p.196. 12 In a subsequent inventory drawn up between 1680
and 1700, reference is made to a large, framed painting of St Anne, of ‘good workmanship’, Hoogewerff, op. cit. (note 11), p.727, and reported by Cornil, op. cit. (note 8), pp.196–97, but, as already suggested by Hoogewerff, this is probably the painting still in place, the Education of the Virgin, attributed to Gilles Hallet.
13 J.G. van Ryckel: Historia S. Gertrudis principis virginis, primae Nivellenensis abbatissae Brussels 1637, p.554.
14 Idem: Vita S. Beggae, ducissae Brabantiae Andetennensium, Begginarum et Beggardorum fundatricis. . ., Leuven 1631, p.199: ‘exquisitissimis imaginibus conspicuum, penicillo & industriâ Theod. Vanloensis depictis’. See Nagelsmit, op. cit. (note 5), p.63.
15 E. Puteanus: Epistolarum atticarum centuria singularis et nova, Cologne 1681, p.374, letter 35, quoted in Cornil, op. cit. (note 8), p.190.
16 For the friendship between Puteanus and Van Loon, see van Sprang, op. cit. (note 7).
17 Archivio di S. Maria dell’Anima, Rome, Instrumenta, Littera B, Tomo 6, fol.21, 15th April 1653. See I. Baldriga: ‘Van Loon, Caravage et la peinture à Rome au début du XVIIe siècle’, in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.37–49, at p.47, no.27.
18 A. Delvingt in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.200–01, no.43.
19 For St Gertrude, see M. Madou: De heilige Gertrudis van Nijvel, Brussels 1975.
20 Ibid., pp.44–49.
21 Ibid., p.62.
22 Ibid.
23 Van Ryckel, op. cit. (note 13), p.554.
24 The present author would like to thank Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, who has worked for many years on the presence of foreign religious communities in Rome, for helping with this research. See Foreigners in Early Modern Italian Cities, available at www.biblhertz.it/en/ roma-communis-patria, accessed 3rd September 2025.
25 Johannes was buried alongside her in September 1629, Archivio di S. Maria dell’Anima, Rome, Libro dei Morti, fol.51, also mentioned in Baldriga, op. cit. (note 10), p.38; idem, op. cit. (note 17), p.47, no.27, and A. Mercantini: Inventario del fondo Johannes Faber della Biblioteca dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana, Rome 2013, p.xiii.
26 S. Brevaglieri: Natural desiderio di sapere, Roma
A recently identified Scottish portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by Katherine Read
by EDWARD CORP
there is a set of three portraits showing the exiled King James III (1701–66; Fig.2) and his two sons, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88; Fig.4) and Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York (1725–1807; Fig.3), which are here attributed to Katherine Read (1723–78) and were painted while she was living in Rome between 1750 and 1753.1 The paintings, which are all in a Somerset collection, have similar dimensions and are framed within painted stone ovals, which have chips and carvings; it seems evident that they were made to be displayed together.
Despite the portraits’ compositional similarities, they are not of the same interest or quality. Of the three, the portrait of Prince Charles is the best. It is also the one that can be most positively attributed to Read. The two others are copies of what were, at the time, the most recent portraits available in Rome of James III and Prince Henry: an oil painting of the king dating to 1740 by Domenico Duprà (1689–1770); and a pastel of the prince by Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–88) and dated to 1746–47. The one of Prince Charles also
barocca fra vecchi e nuovi mondi (La corte dei papi), Rome 2019, pp.83–94.
27 Mercantini, op. cit. (note 25), p.ii.
28 I. Baldriga: ‘Noti sui rapporti di committenza a Roma nel primo Seicento: collezionismo scientifico e mecenatismo di Giovanni Faber Linceo’, in S. Denesi Squarzina, ed.: Natura morta, pittura di paesaggio e il collezionismo a Roma nella prima metà del Seicento, Italia Fiandre, Olanda: il terreno elaborazione dei generi, Rome 1996, pp.123–38, at p.124, no.3.
29 See van Sprang, op. cit. (note 7), p.20, with previous references.
30 Bibliotheca Corsiniana, Rome, Fondo Faber, T. 412, fol.155r, Baldriga, op. cit. (note 28), pp.130–31; and idem, op. cit. (note 10), p.27.
31 Van Loon’s name appears in their correspondence in 1614, 1615, 1616 and 1624, see Baldriga, op. cit. (note 28), p.130; and idem, op. cit. (note 10), pp.24–25.
32 Baldriga, op. cit. (note 10), p.25.
33 Cornil, op. cit. (note 8), p.193; and D. Bodart: ‘Une lettre inédite de Théodore van Loon’, Bulletin de la Classe des Beaux-Arts de l’Académie royale de Belgique 55 (1973), pp.95–102.
34 Bodart, op. cit. (note 33), p.97.
35 L. Lorizzo: ‘Carlo Saraceni a S. Maria dell’Anima, Il restauro della pala Fugger e la decorazione della cappella di S. Benno sotto una nuova luce’, Storia dell’arte 134 (2013), pp.59–74; and idem: ‘Laboratorio Santa Maria dell’Anima: Carlo Saraceni e gli altri artisti attivi nella chiesa teutonica di Roma tra il 1614 e il 1620’, in M.G. Aurigemma, ed.: exh. cat. Carlo Saraceni 1579–1620: un Veneziano tra Roma e l’Europa Rome (Palazzo Venezia) 2014, pp.147–57.
36 Lorizzo, op. cit. (note 35), 2013, pp.59–61. On Faber and the Fugger, see Brevaglieri, op. cit. (note 26).
37 Lorizzo, op. cit. (note 35), 2014, pp.150–51.
38 Van Sprang, op. cit. (note 7), p.29.
39 See Delvingt in van Sprang, op. cit. (note 2), pp.146–47, no.18.
40 Madou, op. cit. (note 19), p.46.
41 Ibid., p. 61.
42 Brevaglieri, op. cit. (note 26), p.87; I. Fosi: Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners in Baroque Rome, Leyde 2020, pp.86–87; and N. Golvers: Johann Schreck Terrentius, J.S.: His European Network and the Origin of the Jesuit Library in Peking, Turnhout 2020, pp.62 and 139.
derives from a pastel portrait by La Tour, but it is not merely a copy; rather, it is a complete reinterpretation. It is also the only known portrait of Prince Charles that shows him as a Knight of the Order of the Thistle and not as a Knight of both the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Thistle. It therefore comes as no surprise that it was produced by a Scottish painter. The only extant original portrait of Prince Charles by a Scottish painter is a work by Allan Ramsay that shows the prince wearing the Garter with no evidence of the Thistle (1745; National Galleries of Scotland: Portrait, Edinburgh); this is because that portrait was specifically intended to be taken into England. It is reasonable to assume that these three portraits were painted in Rome because the original portraits of both King James and Prince Henry were in the Palazzo del Re, where the Stuart court was based, and also because the set was owned and eventually given away by Prince Henry.2 The most recent portrait of Prince Charles available in Rome at that time had been painted by Duprà in 1740; since then,
Charles had gone to France, led the Jacobite rising of 1745–46 in Scotland and been painted by La Tour in Paris in 1747–48. Yet La Tour’s portrait was not available in Rome, and there is only one painter in the city who could have seen it and produced this reinterpretation. That painter was Katherine Read, who left Scotland in 1746 and went to study with La Tour in Paris.
While Read was with La Tour, he painted pastel potraits of both princes. The portrait of Prince Henry (1746–47; National Galleries of Scotland: Portrait, Edinburgh) was exhibited at the Paris Salon in August 1747, shortly after he had returned to Rome, where he was made a cardinal. When the Salon closed, the portrait was sent to him in Rome.3 The portrait of Prince Charles (1747–48; now lost) was exhibited at the Paris Salon in August 1748 but kept in Paris when it closed. This means that Read was able to study the two portraits both when they were being painted and when they were exhibited, and in that same year she made a copy in oil of each of them.4 There can be no doubt, therefore, that Read was very familiar with La Tour’s portrait of Prince Charles and may be presumed to have brought working drawings with her when she went from Paris to Rome in 1750.
Read remained in Rome until June 1753 and documentary evidence demonstrates that no copy of La Tour’s portrait of Prince Charles was sent there until October 1754.5 The fact that she was the only person in Rome who could possibly have made a copy is important – the reinterpretation of the original portrait could only have been painted by someone who had actually seen and met the mature prince both in Scotland, where he often did not wear a wig as he was on a miltary campaign, and in Paris after his return from Scotland. As the observant schoolteacher Andrew Henderson noted upon the prince’s entry to Holyroodhouse in September 1745, he was:
A tall young man, about five feet ten inches, of a ruddy complexion, high nosed, large rolling brown eyes, long visage, red-haired, but at that time wore a pale periwig. He was in Highland habit, wore a blue sash, wrought with gold, that came over his shoulder.6
While Read was still in Paris, some miniatures of La Tour’s portrait of Prince Charles were made by Jean Daniel Kamm in 1749 and 1750. It is unlikely that one of these miniatures was sent to Rome, and there is no mention in the
Stuart Papers of sending one as part of the correspondence between Paris and Rome. If one had been sent, or even taken by Read herself, it is extremely improbable that any painter in Rome would have been commissioned to make a full-sized oil portrait from it, and no other painter in Rome would have had the personal acquaintance with the mature Prince Charles to make such a radical reinterpretation of such a small portrait.
La Tour’s original pastel portrait of Prince Charles was kept in Paris until 1752, when it was sent to the prince in Avignon and kept by him before and after his return to Rome in 1766. Although there is no trace of it after his death, there are, however, several oil copies that were made in Paris before 1752.7 In all these copies, as well as the miniatures by Kamm, the prince’s jaw is marginally less prominent than it is in both Read’s copy and the reinterpretation. Read also gave Prince Charles a different and more elaborate Italian-style armour, changed the position of his left arm and altered the shape of his ruff. She also omitted two elements found in the oil copies of La Tour’s original pastel: the green ribbon of the Order of the Thistle around the prince’s neck; and the ermine-lined cloak over his right shoulder and arm, with the star of the Order of the Garter visible on the cloak behind his back. Read replaced the cloak with a red glow in the backgound, possibly to indicate that the prince had seen action in several pitched battles. Read painted Prince Charles with his own hair instead of a wig and made him look much more dynamic and dashing
than La Tour had chosen to do. Only someone who had seen and met Prince Charles, as she had in Scotland and France, could have known and painted him with his own hair. The effect of these changes is to present a portrait that is significantly different to the oil copies and miniatures of La Tour’s original pastel portrait.
The portrait of Charles makes an interesting comparison with Read’s selfportrait, now in a private collection, which has been dated to before she went to Rome in 1750.8 Both have the same unusual background lighting and are framed in a painted oval. Moreover, although the self-portrait shows Read looking right and the one of Charles shows him looking left, the poses are in fact the same in reverse, except that Read has not included Charles’s arm below the elbow.
The portrait of Prince Henry is much less dynamic than the one of Charles, but it is very similar to the portrait of him that Read had previously painted in Paris (1748; private collection). Although it is a copy of the original pastel of 1746–47 by La Tour, which showed Henry wearing armour, Read’s portrait depicts the prince in the scarlet robes of a cardinal to reflect his new status after returning to Rome. The portrait discussed here shows two changes from that one. The first is minor: the scarlet robe on Henry’s left arm has been folded back to reveal its ermine lining. The second substitutes Henry’s own brown hair for the
1. British gentlemen in Rome, by Katherine Read. c.1750. Oil on canvas, 94.6 by 134.6 cm. (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).
2.
3.
light-coloured wig shown in both the La Tour original and Read’s own first copy.9 The prince’s face is also sharper and a more accurate copy of La Tour’s original.
The portrait of James III is much less interesting and represents no more than a routine copy of Duprà’s original. Read, however, did make one small change: the king’s right shoulder is held back and his arm not shown, so that the portrait can be contained within the painted oval that is a feature of all three portraits in the set. Read’s skilful use of red also provides an additional visual link between the three portraits: Prince Henry’s scarlet cape, King James’s cloak and the red glow around Prince Charles. Despite the variations in the quality of the three paintings, Read took steps to connect them.
The only other portrait painter who is known to have been working for the Stuarts while Read was in Rome was Louis Gabriel Blanchet (1701–72), with whom she studied and who was obviously recommended to her by the king’s private secretary at the Stuart court. The present set of three portraits has even been tentatively attributed to Blanchet.10 This is because in 1748 Blanchet had painted a full-length portrait of Prince Henry as a cardinal with the face copied from La Tour’s pastel portrait of 1746–47.11 Yet that portrait shows the cardinal with a wig, not his own hair, and the only portraits of the Stuarts painted by Blanchet while Read was in Rome were sent away to Paris.12
There are no payments to Read in the accounts of either King James or Prince Henry, which confirms that the three portraits were not painted for either of them. Yet Prince Henry eventually owned them and gave them away. The explanation for this probably has Scottish origins. Read was born in Scotland at Forfar, Angus, as was the king’s private secretary James Edgar, and their families were acquainted. It is likely that the set of
three portraits was painted for Edgar, who would have paid Read himself, thus leaving no trace in the Stuart accounts. In 1753 Edgar wrote that Read had ‘a prodigious genius for painting’ and ‘I may safely say there never was anybody either Scots or English ever came near her in portrait painting’. 13 Edgar’s Scottish assistant, Andrew Lumisden, wrote in 1751 that ‘Miss Read [. . .] has done portraits that are thought little inferior to Vandyke himself’.14 When Edgar died in 1762, with no heir in Rome,15 this portrait and the other two would have remained in the Palazzo del Re, and immediately or subsequently come into the possession of Prince Henry.
That the portraits were made by a Scottish painter for a Scottish patron would also explain the absence of the Thistle ribbon and the Garter star. Jacobite Garter Knights wore a blue sash from the left shoulder to the right hip, where the St George medal (known as the Lesser George) was pinned. A Thistle Knight who also had the Garter wore a green ribbon around the neck, to which a St Andrew medal was pinned. The two orders are depicted in this way in all the Italian portraits of the Stuart king and princes.
Portrait of James III, here attributed to Katherine Read after Domenico Duprà. 1750–53. Oil on canvas, 62 by 47 cm. (Mells Manor, Somerset).
Portrait of Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, here attributed to Katherine Read after Maurice Quentin de La Tour. 1750–53. Oil on canvas, 61 by 41.5 cm. (Mells Manor, Somerset).
4. Portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, here attributed to Katherine Read after Maurice Quentin de La Tour. 1750–53. Oil on canvas, 61 by 41.5 cm. (Mells Manor, Somerset).
However, a Thistle Knight who did not also have the Garter wore a blue sash from the left shoulder to the right hip, exactly like that of the Garter, but with a St Andrew medal instead of a Lesser George.16 By omitting the green ribbon around the prince’s neck in this portrait Read was presenting Charles as a Scottish Knight of the Thistle, not as an English Knight of the Garter, so she needed to remove the cloak with the Garter star. The orientation of the portrait – a bust with the prince looking left – does not include the prince’s right hip, upon which would have been a St Andrew medal. It is noteworthy that Henderson’s description of the prince noted a blue sash but made no mention of a green ribbon or Garter Star.
The attribution of this set of three Stuart portraits to Read is a significant addition to what we know of her early career as a portrait painter. Until now, the only known painting from her Roman period was a conversation piece (Fig.1) featuring six men in front of both the Colosseum and one of the arches in the Forum. The portrait of Prince Charles, which identifies him exclusively with Scotland, is a striking reinterpretation of La Tour’s original pastel, and brilliantly captures the romantic and heroic personality of this iconic figure in Scottish history.
The present author is very pleased to acknowledge the generous help and encouragement given him by Peter Pininski in the preparation of this article. He is also grateful to Bendor Grosvenor for first bringing this set of portraits to his attention and to the anonymous reviewer for very constructive criticism.
1 For Katherine Read, see the very full entry in N. Jeffares: Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, www.pastellists.com, accessed 28th August 2025.
2 The portraits were given to Sir John Coxe Hippisley to thank him for the part he played in getting Prince Henry a British pension after the French Revolution and the French invasion of Italy had deprived him of his income.
3 E. Corp: ‘Prince Charles or Prince Henry? Maurice Quentin de La Tour’s portrait of a Stuart prince’, The British Art Journal 10, no.2 (2009), pp.51–57, at p.53.
4 E. Corp: ‘Portraits of the exiled Stuarts by Scottish painters’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 165 (2023), pp.140–52, at p.150. Read’s oil copy of Prince Charles was reproduced as Fig.14. Her oil copies of both Prince Charles and Prince Henry were reproduced in sale, Christie’s, Glasgow, The Jacobites and their Adversaries, 12th June 1996, pp.52–55. They both measure 62.5 by 49 cm.
5 Letter from Edgar to Waters, 2nd September 1754, Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, Stuart Papers (hereafter RA SP) 350/72; letter from John Gordon to James Edgar, 15th September 1754, RA SP 350/127; and letter from John Waters to James Edgar, 8th October 1754, RA SP 351/28.
6 P. Pininski: Bonnie Prince Charlie: His Life, Family, Legend, Edinburgh 2022, p.46.
7 Corp, op. cit. (note 3), p.53.
8 It should be noted that the dimensions of the self-portrait, 63.5 by 48 cm., are virtually the same as those of the two portraits of the princes painted
by Read in Paris, see note 4 above.
9 Another version of the portrait of Prince Henry, presumably also by Read, was auctioned at sale, Christie’s, London, The Sunday Sale - Property of the Smith-Barry Estates, removed from The Old Priory, Gloucestershire and Property of St. Mary’s University College, removed from Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 17th February 2008, lot 69, described as by a ‘follower of Girolamo Pompeo Batoni’. It is slightly larger, measuring 65 by 49 cm.
10 M. Postle: ‘Mells Manor: introduction to the catalogue of paintings and drawings’, Art and the Country House, doi.org/10.17658/ACH/MME587, in which the portrait of Prince Charles is identified as Prince Henry.
11 The portrait of Cardinal York (private collection), with the face copied from the pastel by La Tour, shows him standing full-length and measures 248.5 by 177.3 cm.
12 RA SP 331/62 and Misc 43, p.38, ‘Conto Generale del Mese di Aprile 1752’ shows that Blanchet was paid for two portraits ‘per mandare à Parigi’. By 1753
Blanchet had been replaced as the Stuart portrait painter by Andrea Piserni, who painted large portraits of both King James and Cardinal York (RA SP Misc 43, p.80, October 1753), and then the one of Cardinal York now in the Royal Collection (RA SP Misc 44, p.47, November 1754: RCIN 401252, 172.1 by 127.3 cm.) and described there as by an unknown painter (‘Italian school, Roman, 18th century’).
13 Letter from James Edgar to George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal, 12th June 1753, RA SP 341/73.
14 Jeffares, op. cit. (note 1), ‘Read, Katherine’, letter from Andrew Lumisden, 3rd August 1751.
15 Edgar had a nephew in the French army but there is no reference to him in the Stuart Papers after 1752.
16 ‘We hereby Order that in all time coming, the Knights Brethren of the said Order of the Thistle or St Andrew, who are not also of our Order of the Garter, shall wear the Ribon, Jewel or Medal of the said Order over the Left shoulder to the Right side as the ribbon of the Garter is wore’, RA SP Misc 20, p.28, James III’s Regulations for wearing the Thistle, 30th November 1716.
Exhibitions
For
her first solo exhibition
in
Greece, Marlene Dumas’s spectral, allusive paintings are brought into restrained dialogue with Cycladic figurines
Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens 5th June–2nd November
by james cahill
In the painting Cycladic blues (Fig.1) by Marlene Dumas (b.1953), the head of a Cycladic figurine appears as a translucent impression, far larger than life. The work exemplifies a characteristic tension in Dumas’s art: her images are at once ethereal and insistent. One senses the artist coaxing them into being even as she
acknowledges their fugitive quality. To the yellow blank of the prehistoric face she has added pinprick eyes and a cursory downturned mouth. The painting lends its title to Dumas’s exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, which numbers some forty paintings and drawings spanning three decades, from the early 1990s to today. Like the figurines that appear in most of the galleries, selected by the artist from the museum’s permanent collection, the displays are succinct yet emotive: a chamber orchestra version of a retrospective.
In the first of the salon-like galleries two new paintings face one another from either end of the room. Each vertical canvas depicts an elongated silhouette. The green figure in Phantom age (2025) is bending over, as though constrained by the proportions of the canvas, and depthless as a shadow.1 The amber-hued body in Old (Fig.2) is fractionally more substantial: a face is perceivable, although it seems to recede into a swimming wash of pigment, just as the entire body dissolves around the edges. Both works are based on photographs of the same antique statue, taken from different angles. The source is practically unidentifiable and seems immaterial. A mirror image of Old can be found in the Cycladic female figurine that has been installed in the centre of the room. The Bronze Age artefact is more palpable and immediate than the spectral apparition of either painting. Planar and schematic, it resembles a modernist sculpture. Indeed, avant-garde artists were fascinated by Cycladic statuary, sometimes to the point of obsession – Jacob Epstein had a sizeable collection, for example. Dumas’s interpolation of the ancient in the contemporary does not insist on an explicit connection between the two, but rather raises the more fundamental question of whether it is possible to see Cycladic art in isolation from its modern reception. Both in its prehistoric artefacts and its Neo-classical architecture, the museum acts as an unusually eloquent frame. Unlike the minimalist spaces where Dumas’s work is typically shown, this elegant villa in Kolonaki – once the home of the Stathatos, a prominent Greek ship-owning family – underscores the lyrical classicism of her work and its responsiveness to the ‘long ago’, as well as to more recent histories. Also displayed in the opening room are Candle (2020) and Glass tears (for Man Ray) (2008), which recreates in spectral monochrome Man Ray’s 1932 photograph of tears beading on a woman’s face: a riposte to the idea that Modernism was bereft of tears. Encompassing still life and the body,
death and remembrance, the first gallery serves as an overture for the exhibition. In the following room, Persona (2020) is one of a group of masks and skulls; it conveys a glassy, evanescent face of sorrow. Based on a photograph of a plaster cast of one of the figures in Auguste Rodin’s Gates of hell (1880–1917), it is as doleful as a tragic mask – or perhaps evokes the agonised central figure of the Laocoön Once again, the actual source is only of passing interest. As Dumas notes in an essay in the accompanying catalogue, the word ‘persona’ derives from the Latin for ‘mask’, meaning ‘to speak through’ (p.10).2
As the show progresses through a sequence of smaller galleries, Dumas’s art is revealed as a sustained
form of speaking through, its emotional force semi-veiled and yet persistent. If certain works appear self-explanatory – an African-style mask, a skull or a series of portraits of family members – others are harder to comprehend. Alfa (2004) portrays an androgynous head, eyes closed. It is based, it turns out, on a newspaper cutting of a young Chechen woman killed in the 2002 Moscow hostage crisis. This knowledge limits as much as it illuminates, pushing the image back towards reportage. Even when a source is revealed, however, Dumas’s paintings retain a sense of deferred or sublimated meaning. Her life impinges on her art; and yet there is usually a concurrent sense of her abstracting away from the personal,
of her blurring the specifics. Helena (Fig.3), the earliest work in the show, is a portrait of her daughter as a frowning child. The placement close by of an ‘unfinished’ Cycladic figure supplies a metaphor for the still-unformed child. As the curator, Douglas Fogle, notes in the catalogue, ‘Helena is almost completely present in our world while keeping one foot in the painting itself’ (p.56). By the same token, paintings that seem to reach into distant history, particularly those based on ancient statues, are often images of Dumas herself. The world of Antiquity becomes a conduit for the personal and the introspective. It is no coincidence that images of ageing women have preoccupied the artist in recent
2. Installation
Old,
2025. Oil on canvas, 300 by 100 cm.; and early Cycladic female figurine. c.2700–2400/2300 BCE. Marble, height 36.7 cm. (Courtesy Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens; photograph Paris Tavitian).
view of Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, 2025, showing
by Marlene Dumas.
years, for example 50+ (Fig.4), based on a Hellenistic sculpture of an ‘old drunk woman’. The ancient allusion is equally a self-reckoning. This exhibition is astute in its selection and stylish in its arrangement. If anything, the displays are over-judicious – sparing to a fault – given that Dumas’s work often gathers power through accumulation. The greatest impact is achieved in the final gallery, an airy rotunda filled with smaller works. At its centre – in an anomalous departure from the Bronze Age – stands a Hellenistic statue of a boy holding a hare, the presence of which condenses the exhibition’s wider mood of playful mythologising. A cycle of ink drawings from 1992, loosely themed around the story of Salome and the head of John the Baptist, appear just as concerned with the infancy of Dumas’s own child: the dance of the
seven veils transfigured, apparently, into the artless motions of a toddler. Close by, reclaiming the erotic subtext of the Biblical story, is Immaculate (2003), a blue-grey counterpart to Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde (1866; Musée d’Orsay, Paris). The canvas offers a cropped view of a woman’s crotch, painted from an old book of French photographs. Adolescent sexuality glimmers languidly in the ink drawings Young boy (pale skin) (1996) and Dorothy D-lite (1998), in which Dumas has conjured mythic characters – fluid epicene visions – from magazine photographs. In each gallery, ancient objects, presented either singularly or in small clusters, form a focal point. Unlike the engineered ‘dialogues’ that have become commonplace for contemporary displays in historical settings, Dumas’s juxtapositions are not strident. Her painting Leather
boots (2000), which depicts a stripper in a neon-lit portal in Amsterdam, where she has lived since the 1970s, is placed near a miniature Aphrodite. It is a subtle reminder that the goddess of love always had split identities: the transcendent and the carnal. Such connections flicker in and out of focus. Curated by Fogle in consultation with Dumas, Cycladic Blues was conceived, in the artist’s words, as ‘a melancholy, meditative exhibition’.3 Melancholy, for the ancient Greeks, was not only a pathological condition but also a cast of mind – one that might impart an unusual depth of insight. It was a state both physical and mental, collapsing together the emotions and the intellect. Dumas’s work has always been characterised by this kind of doubleness: her images refuse us the satisfaction of resolving into one thing.
1 Unless otherwise stated, all works are in private collections or the collection of the artist.
2 Accompanying publication: Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues at the Cycladic By Douglas Fogle and Marlene Dumas. 144 pp. incl. numerous col. + b. & w. ills. (Roma Publications, Amsterdam, and Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, 2025), €40. ISBN 978–618–5060–56–5.
3 Marlene Dumas, quoted from the press conference for Cycladic Blues at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (4th June 2025).
Simone Cantarini (1612–1648): Un giovane maestro tra Pesaro, Bologna e Roma
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
23rd May–12th October
by raffaella morselli
In the eighteen years of his professional career (1628–46), Simone Cantarini developed an innovative pictorial language: a highly original synthesis of classicism and naturalism, which he blended with Venetian colour and line. A skilled painter, driven by restless creativity, he was also an excellent draughtsman and a refined engraver with a sense of the poetic. It is twenty-eight years since Andrea Emiliani curated the fundamental exhibition on Cantarini in Pesaro and Bologna and thirteen years since an exhibition in Pesaro, Fano and Rimini marked the 400th anniversary of the painter’s death.1 Now, in this retrospective at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, the research on Cantarini that has been carried out in the interim is finally comprehensively presented, including a number of unpublished works from both public and private collections. The project was developed in partnership with the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Rome, and has benefited from the research carried out by a group led by Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari and Yuri Primarosa, the co-curators, together with Luigi Gallo. The exhibition sheds new light on the beginning of Cantarini’s career in and around his native Pesaro, his relationship with the Barberini family, the operation of his workshop and his relationship with Guido Reni in Bologna.2
The title of the exhibition refers to the artist’s centres of activity – to which Venice could also have been added. It is located in the museum’s temporary exhibition spaces on the ground floor of the Palazzo Ducale. The attractively designed layout is divided into six thematic sections, which explore key themes of Cantarini’s practice, such as his portraits, profane subjects and his relationship with contemporary
painters. The first section deals with his artistic formation and his patrons.
Cantarini was born in 1612 in Pesaro, at a time when the city was part of the duchy of Urbino. 1612 was also the year in which Federico Barocci died and Cantarini knew how to develop the older artist’s legacy.
According to Malvasia, the young artist’s first apprenticeship was with the local landscape and figure painter Giovan Giacomo Pandolfi. There are,
5. Adoration of the Magi, by Simone Cantarini. 1628–30. Oil on canvas, 208.5 by 154.5 cm. (Private collection; exh. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino).
however, few documentary and visual traces from this early period. More significant for his artistic development was the Veronese painter Claudio Ridolfi, who, following the death of Barocci, became the most important artist in the duchy of Urbino.
Cantarini was greatly influenced by Ridolfi’s Venetian style, especially after a trip he made to Venice in c.1628–30. The Adoration of the Magi (cat. no.II.2; Fig.5), recorded in 1675 by
Count Alessandro Fava as having been ‘made in Venice when [Cantarini] was studying there’ (p.112), was arguably the turning point in Cantarini’s career and is one of a handful of securely dated works. It demonstrates that Cantarini’s local training received a new stimulus from the way Venetian artists treated colour and light.
Around the same time, Cantarini discovered Reni’s paintings in S. Pietro in Valle, Fano, a city close to Pesaro, most notably the Annunciation (c.1621; Pincoteca Civica, Fano) and Christ giving the keys to St Peter (1620/25; Musée du Louvre, Paris). He was also drawn towards the powerful Caravaggesque painters who were active locally, in particular Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri, who in the mid-1620s had completed three altarpieces dedicated to St Charles Borromeo for the Petrucci chapel in S. Pietro in Valle, but also Carlo Bononi, Mattia Preti, Orazio Gentileschi and Alessandro Turchi. Cantarini combined what seems to have been an innate sense of naturalism with the Classical style of Reni, which was the dominant pictorial mode in the region in the 1620s and 30s. The results of this combination are apparent in some of the works from Cantarini’s youth on show in the exhibition, such as the Holy family with St Catherine of Siena (1632–35; private collection; no.V.1), the Madonna with Child and St Barbara and St Terence (no.II.1; Fig.7), painted for his parish church, S. Cassiano, in which the figure of St Terence is a selfportrait, and the Immaculate conception (c.1632–35; Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna; no.II.3).
Foremost among his early patrons was Antonio Barberini the Younger, the nephew of Maffeo Barberini, Urban VIII (reg.1623–44). In 1631 Antonio, then papal legate, arrived in the area following the incorporation of the duchy of Urbino into the papal territories after the death of Francesco Maria della Rovere II. Two of Cantarini’s portraits of Antonio can be seen in the exhibition (both c.1631; Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica and private collection; nos.I.9–10), together with an unfinished self-portrait, which shows the artist with a sketchbook and pencil (c.1634–35; Gallerie Nazionali di
Arte Antica; no.I.5). Both works reflect Cantarini’s interest in capturing the psychological character of his subject, and the Barberini portrait suggests that there existed a bond between the painter and his client.
It is hardly surprising that Cantarini gravitated towards Bologna, even if it was only some time later, around 1634, that he joined Reni’s workshop and school. According to Malvasia, the reason for this move was the extraordinary effect on him of seeing Reni’s Olivieri altarpiece (c.1631–33; Vatican Museums) in Pesaro Cathedral. A securely dated work from his period in Bologna is the Holy Family with a book and a rose (c.1638; Palazzo Perticari Signoretti, Pesaro; no.II.7).
In 1685 it was engraved by Domenico Maria Muratori with precise indications of its date and provenance, the latter being the collection of Count Fava. The third section brings together depictions of St Jerome by Cantarini, Reni and Bartolomeo Manfredi. It is a meditation on the
6. Hercules and Iole, by Simone Cantarini. 1642–46. Oil on canvas, 182 by 120 cm. (Private collection; exh. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino).
Opposite 7. Madonna with Child and St Barbara and St Terence, by Simone Cantarini. Oil on canvas, 350 by 180 cm. (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; exh. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino).
artist’s relationship with ancient and modern sculpture and with Reni. St Jerome in meditation before the Cross (c.1635–38; private collection; no.III.6) is included here, although its stilllife elements differ from Cantarini’s modelling of form.
An outstanding juxtaposition of paintings is found in the fifth section, devoted to Cantarini’s commitment to classicism and naturalism. An unpublished and quite unexpected full-length St John the Baptist (private collection; no.V.7) stands out as a demonstration of the artist’s ability to bring together those two languages in entirely new ways. It is here dated by Primarosa to 1637–40 and placed in dialogue with a painting of the same subject by Valentin de Boulogne (c.1630–31; S. Urbano, Apiro; no.V.8); in the catalogue it is juxtaposed with the prototype by Reni (c.1636–37; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London), which could not travel to Urbino.
In 1639 Cantarini returned to Pesaro. Recent studies have shown that, even when not resident, he was a frequent visitor to the city, where he maintained a solid client base. There followed in 1640 or 1641 a stay in Rome, which is said by Malvasia to have proved highly consequential for the artist, although we know almost nothing about what he did there or for how long he stayed. After Reni’s death in August 1642, Cantarini returned to Bologna, establishing a highly successful workshop and producing works that met the expectations of the city’s most sophisticated collectors. A striking version of the Madonna of the rose (private collection; no.II.1.1) can be securely dated to this period, since on its reverse is an inscription that reads ‘Simon from Pesaro made this painting in the year 1642’. Among the latest works on show is the Penitent St Joseph (1644–46; Musei Civici, Pesaro; no.III.11), a pendant to the Penitent Magdalene (1644–46; Musei Civici) painted for the now destroyed church of S. Filippo, Pesaro. The final section is dedicated to works with themes from poetry and ancient fables. On display here is a large canvas depicting Hercules and Iole (no.VI.1; Fig.6), an important new addition to the Cantarini catalogue. When
it was in Bologna in the collection of the senator Giovanni Antonio Pietramellara, it was admired by Malvasia, who judged it to be more ‘beautiful’ and ‘correct’ than the lost Iole by Reni because it succeeded in being at the same time both idealising and natural (p.196).
Cantarini’s brief but intense career is being brought to new life in this exhibition, which is curated with great critical intelligence. It establishes that Cantarini cannot be understood solely in terms of his relationship to Reni, and that his work reflects the influence not of a single pictorial language but numerous ones, including those that he encountered in Pesaro and its surroundings, as well as in Rome, Bologna and Venice. For this reason alone, the works on show – especially those with new dates –represent an unmissable opportunity to better understand his creative path, which is rich in surprises. Important new discoveries add to the as yet not fully explored corpus of the master’s paintings.
1 The Bologna exhibition was reviewed by D. Stephen Pepper in this Magazine, 140 (1998), pp.145–46. For the 1997 Pesaro exhibition, see A. Emiliani and A. Massari Ambrosini Massari, eds: exh. cat. Simone Cantarini nelle Marche, Pesaro (Palazzo Ducale) 1997. For the 2012 exhibitions, see A. Massari Ambrosini Massari, ed.: exh. cat. Fano per Simone Cantarini. Genio ribelle: 1612–2012, Fano (Pinacoteca di San Domenico) 2012; A. Massari Ambrosini Massari, ed.: exh. cat. Pesaro per Simone Cantarini. Genio ribelle: 1612–2012, Pesaro (Palazzo Mosca) 2012; and M. Pullini, ed.: exh. cat. Rimini per Simone Cantarini: opere da raccolte private, Rimini (Museo della Città) 2012–13.
2 Catalogue: Simone Cantarini (1612–1648): Un giovane maestro tra Pesaro, Bologna e Roma. Edited by Luigi Gallo, Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari and Yuri Primarosa. 224 pp. incl. 172 col. + b. & w. ills. (Officina Libraria, Rome, 2025), €28.50. ISBN 978–88–336–7320–2.
The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh 20th September 2025–8th March 2026
by amy golahny
As this exhibition and its catalogue demonstrate, the Book of Esther was an integral part of the culture of
seventeenth-century Amsterdam.1 Depictions of the story proliferated in art by Rembrandt and his contemporaries and also appeared on household furnishings. Essays by the catalogue’s five authors examine these subjects as well as the historical circumstances that made Esther a Dutch heroine. There are no catalogue entries, and many works illustrated are not in the exhibition, which will
8. Esther, by Aert de Gelder. 1665. Oil on canvas, 81.2 by 62 cm. (Private collection; exh. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh).
vary at each of the three venues.2 The character of Esther belongs to the ‘femmes fortes’ exemplars of virtue, selected from history and the Old Testament. The Book of Esther focuses on human action independent of divine intervention, although the Statenbijbel, the Dutch States General Bible (1637), added a preface that credits God for the Jews’ victory and Haman’s downfall. The Bible’s account of the court of
the Persian ruler Ahasuerus, which featured intrigue, betrayal and murder, was possibly loosely based on Xerxes (reg.485–465 BCE). In brief, Esther is the beautiful new wife of Ahasuerus. Her cousin Mordecai, a court official and Jewish leader, has uncovered a plan by two courtiers to assassinate the king. When Ahasuerus learns this, he honours Mordecai with a triumphant procession, led by the minister Haman, who feels that he, not Mordecai, should be so honoured. The vengeful Haman then plots to kill the Jews but is thwarted by Esther, who invites him to a feast and reveals her hitherto secret Jewish identity. Haman is hanged and the Jews are triumphant. The story’s themes of resilience and resistance to tyranny were significant both to the Dutch, who were breaking away from the Spanish Netherlands with the Eighty Years
War, and for Amsterdam’s Jews, who had escaped from persecution elsewhere. Sephardic Jews from Iberia arrived in Amsterdam after 1590, and Ashkenazic Jews from Eastern Europe after 1630; they settled in the neighbourhood of Vlooienburg, along with other immigrants. Rembrandt, whose house was nearby, portrayed some of the Jews and Africans living there in such works as Two African men (1661; Mauritshuis, The Hague).
The dramatic potential and topical popularity of the Book of Esther were exploited by Dutch playwrights and artists. At least five Dutch plays based on the story appeared in Amsterdam between 1618 and 1659, and others were written by members of the Sephardic community. The Dutch plays were performed on the stage in Amsterdam, ‘a key point of intersection between the Jewish and
the Christian communities’ (p.30).
The Sephardic plays were enacted for Purim, the holiday commemorating the story of Esther, with costumes and boisterous revelry in the Portuguese Synagogue. Their texts were inscribed on small scrolls, often elaborately illustrated. Seventeen of these fragile scrolls are exhibited. Each is unique. They generally have a printed or illuminated border framing the text, with drawn or painted figures, flora and fauna. Commissioned by elite families and owned by their women, the scrolls were read during the holiday, when women participated in the services. Amateur parodies of the plays were also performed in the home, and a few of these survive as ephemera. Additional manuscript and printed material amplifies the ritual and social observance of the Purim holiday in the history of the Dutch Republic.
9. Haman begging mercy of Esther, by Pieter Lastman. 1618 or 1619. Oil on panel, 52 by 78 cm. (National Museum, Warsaw; exh. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh).
c.1632.
The story’s climactic banquet especially appealed to artists, as it involved confrontation and emotion: angry Ahasuerus, stoic and unmerciful Esther and shocked Haman, whose powerful position has been reversed to condemnation. A painting by Pieter Lastman (Fig.9) places the scene in a Renaissance palace, with a table laden with Dutch delicacies, including peacock pie, as well as sweets and salt. Esther physically repels the kneeling Haman, who begs for mercy. Versions of this scene by Jan Lievens, Jan Victors, Jan Steen and Gerard de
Lairesse vary from a serious dinner to a raucous carnival.
Appropriately to the story of Esther, women were central to Purim. Its celebration involved a lottery to raise funds to support orphaned brides in the Sephardic community. Silver vessels, numerous examples of which are on display, were used to collect donations and to draw lots, adding to the ceremony and festivity. Imagery of Esther extended to objects used in the home; examples shown here include a ceramic tile (1740–1850; Philadelphia Museum of Art), a mother-of-pearl snuffbox (1700–25;
Victoria and Albert Museum, London), an embroidered casket (after 1665; Metropolitan Museum of Art), a tapestry (1510–25; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), a wooden cupboard (1622; Metropolitan Museum of Art), a stoneware tankard (1556; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and an iron fireback (1640–49; Centraal Museum, Utrecht). Clothing imaginatively identified the story’s characters and geography: artists combined exotic imports and familiar European garments. To locate a scene in Persia or the Middle East, men are shown wearing turbans and robes; women have layered gowns and curved pointed hats embellished with jewels, ribbons, veils and plumes. Stage costumes contributed to these images, as is revealed by Rembrandt’s drawing of the actor Willem Ruyter on stage in the role of a Middle Eastern ruler, perhaps Ahasuerus (c.1635–40; Rijksmuseum). Aert de Gelder painted many versions of Esther, either alone, with Mordecai or with her maids; he embellished her layered gown with tassels, jewels and lace (Fig.8).
The exhibition includes three portraits by Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) of royal women who identified with Esther as a woman leader during conflict. One is Amalia von Solms, Princess of Orange (1633; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA), who was compared to Esther in a sermon by Hugo Beyerus in 1626 and in a poem by Simon Simonides in 1673. Another is Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (Fig.10). Married to Frederick V of Bohemia, she was left a young widow in The Hague with thirteen children, for whom she sought to reclaim their royal positions in the Palatinate. Van Honthorst also painted her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, wearing a pointed, curved headdress trimmed with pearls and a scarf (1630–56; National Trust, Ashdown House, Oxfordshire); she has an oriental character, which may be intended to suggest Esther.
Rembrandt’s renditions of Esther concentrate on interiority – emotions felt but expressed with restraint. An early painting, A Jewish heroine [Esther?] from the Hebrew Bible
10. Elizabeth Stuart as Esther, by Gerrit van Honthorst.
Oil on canvas, 71 by 57 cm. (Private collection; exh. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh).
(1632–33; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), which depicts the heroine considering her responsibilities, is a remarkable display of luxury and gravity. A later painting, Ahasuerus, Haman and Esther (1660; Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), is a rare example of intertwined theatre, poetry and collecting, and, although it could not be exhibited, it is illustrated in the catalogue, as it is essential to any discussion of this topic. The painting was owned by the burgomaster and collector Jan Jacobsz Hinlopen, in whose house the writer Jan Vos saw it; in a poem written in 1662 Vos describes Ahasuerus’ wrath and Haman’s tortuous shame. Rembrandt’s painting may reflect the production in 1659 of a play by Johannes Serwouter, Hester, oft verlossing der Jooden (Esther, or the Deliverance of the Jews), which was dedicated to Hinlopen’s wife, Leonora Huidekooper. Such a contemporary reception reflects the depth of the Dutch fascination with and affection for the story, which are so fully explored in the exhibition.
Esther’s story has continued to resonate in modern times. In the final section of the catalogue, entitled ‘Postscripts’, Antwaun Sargent interprets a unique print by Fred Wilson (b.1954) commissioned in 1992 by the Jewish Museum for its annual Purim Ball, and Abigail Rapoport interviews the artist. The print was made by superimposing a sixteenthcentury engraving of Queen Esther onto an acetate photograph of the Black American Civil War heroine Harriet Tubman (c.1822–1913), in order to suggest, in Sargent’s words, ‘the similarities of the two heroines of Black and Jewish histories, and the enduring mythology that surrounds the women, who risked their lives to save their persecuted peoples’ (p.138).
1 Catalogue: The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt. By Abigail Rapoport with Michele L. Frederick and with contributions by Larry Silver, Antwaun Sargent and Fred Wilson. 160 pp. incl. 154 col. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2025). $50. ISBN 978–030027–914–6.
2 The exhibition was previously at the Jewish Museum, New York (10th March–7th August 2025), where this reviewer saw it, and will be shown at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (6th August 2026–18th January 2027).
Millet: Life on the Land National Gallery, London 7th August–19th October
by hannah halliwell
This exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the death of the Realist painter Jean-François Millet (1814–75).1 Curated by Sarah Herring, it presents the artist as the leading painter of rural life in nineteenth-century France. On display are fifteen works that range in media and states of finish, from crayon sketches to more refined oils, and date from 1847 to 1875. The focus is on the decade following 1849, the year that Millet moved to Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau.2 The key work is undoubtedly The Angelus (Fig.12), exceptionally on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the only work not from a lender in England, Scotland or Wales. Despite the quality and number of Millet’s works in British collections, this is the first exhibition on the artist in the United Kingdom since a show at the Hayward Gallery,
11. A shepherdess, by Jean-François Millet. c.1850–55. Black chalk with touches of blue chalk on paper, 22.8 by 15.1 cm. (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; exh. National Gallery, London).
London, in 1976, which was also the last time The Angelus was shown in the country.3 Its first appearance in London was in 1872 at the Society of French Artists exhibition at Paul DurandRuel’s gallery, an event that can be credited with stimulating British interest in Millet.
The two earliest works on display, the first version of the Sower (1847–48; Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales) and the Winnower (Fig.13), were Millet’s first depictions of rural labourers, created in the year before the 1848 Revolution. They marked a significant shift in his work, from portraiture and idyllic pastoral scenes to the depictions of rural life for which he would become best known, and for which Barbizon offered him ample models. Millet worked at a time of profound political upheaval, which led to both the derision and romanticisation of France’s poorest communities. The Winnower was shown in the Paris Salon in 1848 and the Sower in 1850, and they chimed with the conflicted feelings of the public towards the rural poor. Critics and scholars have since debated the extent to which the images are evidence of Millet’s engagement with, and sympathy for, the issues of poverty and unemployment that led to the Revolution.
Millet was born into a prosperous farming family in Gruchy, Normandy. He was awarded a stipend by the city of Cherbourg, where he studied under Lucien-Théophile Langlois. In 1837 he moved to Paris, where he entered the studio of the history painter Paul Delaroche, copied paintings in the Musée du Louvre. During the following decade he made visits to Saint-Ouen, a town just north of the city. There he observed rural labour and drew working men and women from life, a practice reflected in the exhibition by three preparatory studies of shepherdesses: a black crayon drawing (1849; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) and a black-andwhite chalk drawing (c.1849; Cooper Gallery, Barnsley) for the oil painting Shepherdess (1849; Burrell Collection, Glasgow), as well as a black chalk study (Fig.11) for Shepherdess seated on a rock, which exists in two versions from 1856 (Cincinnati Art Museum and
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The remaining works on display are from his time at Barbizon, as well as two from his native Normandy: the Well at Gruchy (1854; Victoria and Albert Museum, London), an oil study that the artist made during a prolonged return home after the death of his mother, and Goose girl at Gruchy (1854–56; Amgueddfa Cymru).
The Angelus, which Millet completed in 1859, is presented as the culmination of a decade of work, a status emphasised by its central placement in the gallery, opposite the entrance. The only later work, and the largest on display, at almost one
metre by one metre, is the unfinished oil painting Faggot gatherers (1868–75; Amgueddfa Cymru).
Rural life, primarily rural work, is the main theme of the exhibition. Unlike his fellow Barbizon artists, including his close friend Théodore Rousseau, who concentrated on landscapes, Millet’s art is centred on people; not on their faces or individuality, however, but on their bodies, which are strong and focused on their activity, whether depicted at work, at prayer or at rest. The introductory wall text outlines the division of labour in mid-nineteenthcentury France. Women worked
at home, gathered firewood (faggot gathering), shepherded and milked animals or collected leftover crops from the field (gleaning); men prepared and worked the land. With the exception of gleaning – a welcome addition would have been Gleaners (1857; Musée d’Orsay, Paris) – all tasks are represented here. The gendered divide is echoed neatly in the hang. Six works showing only male workers are placed to the left of the entrance; eight depicting only female labourers are hung on the right. The meeting point is The Angelus, a rare example in Millet’s œuvre of a male and female worker pictured together. He depicts them pausing their potato
12. The Angelus, by Jean-François Millet. 1859. Oil on canvas, 55.5 by 66 cm. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris; exh. National Gallery, London).
harvest to say the Angelus, a prayer said three times a day at sunrise, midday and sunset. The figures, often presumed to be a couple, respond to the bells of St Paul’s, a church between Chailly and Barbizon, which can be seen in the distance. Millet shows them silhouetted against the fading sun at dusk. It is the final prayer of the day, but the potatoes strewn on the ground suggest their work will continue into nightfall.
The Angelus broke the auction record for a modern painting in 1889 when it was sold to the American Art Association for 553,000 francs. This accolade, together with the work’s provenance (it passed through a number of notable collections before being bequeathed to the Louvre in 1910), extensive exhibition history (including eight in the thirty years after its creation) and influence (on artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dalí), all attest to its art-historical significance. Yet visitors who are unfamiliar with Millet may need to read the accompanying publication to find out why The Angelus takes such a prominent position here and in the popular imagination. The book is relatively short, in line with the modest size of the exhibition, but it is useful, informative and abundantly illustrated. It contains three essays: two by Herring, on Millet’s working practice and reception in Britain, and one by Simon Kelly on The Angelus and Millet’s ‘interest in religion and what might be described as his own religiosity’, which has been ‘marginalised in modernist readings’ of his work (p.31).
A secondary theme of the exhibition is the artistic process. Seven of the fifteen exhibited works are drawings or unfinished canvases, and in the accompanying publication Herring expands on Millet’s practice and his use of models. The lighting is sympathetic to both the works on paper and those in oil. It allows the viewer to appreciate the textured way in which Millet applied paint and the subtle nuances and inconspicuous details of his mark-making, such as the barely perceptible use of blue chalk in his otherwise monochromatic drawing of a shepherdess from Edinburgh, illustrated here; the faint outline of a figure, sketched for practice, in the blank space of the study of a shepherdess
13. Winnower, by Jean-François Millet. c.1847–48. Oil on canvas. 100.5 by 71 cm. (National Gallery, London).
from Cambridge; and the eraser marks scattered through the trees in Wood choppers (c.1850; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh). The strength of the exhibition lies in bringing these works, which are normally dispersed among collections across the UK, together in a display that gives visitors a valuable opportunity to study Millet’s working methods
and technique, both in preparatory studies and in finished paintings.
1 Accompanying publication: Millet: Life on the Land. By Sarah Herring with Simon Kelly. 64 pp. incl. 50 col. ills. (National Gallery Global, London, 2025), £15. ISBN 978–1–85709–738–2.
2 See also S. Herring: National Gallery Catalogues. The Nineteenth-Century French Paintings, volume 1: The Barbizon School, London and New Haven 2019.
3 Reviewed by Francis Haskell in this Magazine, 118 (1976), pp.252–54.
Exhibition catalogues
Drawings on coloured ground are at the centre of two major recent exhibition catalogues on Renaissance art in Eastern Central Europe and Italy
Master MS and his Age
Edited by Gábor Endrődi, Alexandra Kocsis, Manga Pattantyús and Emese Sarkadi Nagy. 384 pp. incl. numerous col. ills. (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2025), €24. ISBN 978–615–6595–73–7.
by dušan buran
Knowledge of the enigmatic artist known as Master MS is currently undergoing a radical revision, as
demonstrated by the retrospective devoted to him at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (closed 20th July) and its accompanying catalogue.1 Despite the excellent quality of his works, the master’s identity is unknown. Before the exhibition only seven paintings and one drawing were attributed to him. The monogram MS derives from an inscription on one of the seven panels (Resurrection; Christian Museum, Esztergom; cat. no.20),
1. Couple making music, by Master MS. c.1495–1510. Pen and brush with ink and white paint on paper, 19.3 by 14.6 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris).
Opposite 2. Nativity, by Master MS (and his workshop?). 1506. Tempera on panel, 123 by 79 cm. (Parish church of Svätý Anton).
which also records the year 1506. Originally, the seven panels (together with an Annunciation, which is lost) belonged to an altarpiece that was probably destined for St Catherine, Banská Štiavnica (Selmecbánya in Hungarian and Schemnitz in German). Today the settlement belongs to the so-called Central Slovak mining towns, but on the threshold of the modern era it was part of the kingdom of Hungary, although its population was predominantly German. Like many others, the Banská Štiavnica altarpiece was dismantled in the early eighteenth century. The remaining seven paintings found their way into various collections: four are in the Christian Museum; one is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and one is in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille. Only one – the Nativity (no.15; Fig.2) – is still in Slovakia, in the parish church of Svätý Anton, near Banská Štiavnica. Three monumental sculptures from the altar by an anonymous artist have also survived: a Madonna (St Catherine, Banská Štiavnica; no.21), St Catherine and St Barbara (both Slovak Mining Museum, Banská Štiavnica; nos.22 and 23).
The authors of the catalogue attribute additional painted works to the master, all of which are stylistically related to the Viennese milieu: a group of five fragments from a single altarpiece produced in a workshop in Vienna in which Master MS is thought to have worked (nos.61–65); a panel showing Christ crowned with thorns (c.1504–10; Dom Museum, Vienna; n0.66); and the Death of the Virgin (c.1522; Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; no.86). In addition, Christof Metzger, the chief curator of the Albertina, Vienna, identifies Master MS as the author of a damaged mural (1513–14) in the porch of the Bishop’s Portal, the northwestern entrance of Vienna Cathedral. It represents St Catherine and St Margaret and originally flanked the stone memorial relief for Hans Rechwein and Margaretha Zopf (1511; now inside the cathedral). However, the true art-historical sensations are seven drawings from various European collections, which Gábor Endrődi, the chief curator of the exhibition and one of the editors of the catalogue,
has attributed to Master MS. Only one of them, Couple making music (no.54; Fig.1), a chiaroscuro drawing on brown prepared paper, bears the MS monogram. The others are attributed to the painter on the basis of stylistic contexts or the artist’s technique. The most convincing of these is another chiaroscuro drawing on brown prepared paper, the Encounter of the three living and the three dead (no.56; Fig.3).
The fact that the two drawings were previously attributed either to Albrecht Dürer or to Hans Baldung Grien gives some indication of their exceptional quality. The case for Master MS’s authorship of the other five drawings is, at first sight, somewhat less convincing. Following Friedrich Winkler, they have until now generally been attributed to Hans von Kulmbach. However, Endrődi, with careful reasoning, including comparisons with paintings of Master MS, rejects Winkler’s
attributions, although he admits that it will probably take years to reach a consensus on this issue.
The parallels between the chiaroscuro technique used by Master MS in Couple making music and the Encounter of the three living and the three dead and that used by Dürer suggest that Master MS was not merely among his followers, but that he was working closely with the German artist in Nuremberg before or around 1500. Indeed, it is in Nuremberg that the origin of Master MS has traditionally been sought. However, in the 2000s Miklós Mojzer suggested that Master MS was first active in Kraków and that he may be identical with Martin Schwarcz.2 In her catalogue essay Agnieszka Patała not only refutes the identification with Schwarcz; she is also sceptical about the connection with Kraków more generally. And since Master MS has neither predecessors
nor successors – let alone ones of comparable quality – within the borders of both today’s Slovakia and medieval Hungary, the focus of research is once again on the southern German regions. Isabella Sturm’s essay explores the master’s connections with Nuremberg and Manuel Teget-Welz discusses his relationship with Jörg Breu the Elder of Augsburg.
Yet, in light of the newly attributed panels, the authors of the catalogue suggest that the origin of the Master MS’s activity is in Vienna. Essays by Endrődi and Metzger explore the context in more detail. If one accepts their arguments, the altarpiece for Banská Štiavnica can be considered an artistic import not only into the territory of today’s Slovakia, but also into the historical kingdom of Hungary. Such cultural transfer was by no means exceptional in Central Europe. In the latter part
3. Encounter of the three living and the three dead, by Master MS. c.1495–1510. Pen and brush with ink and white paint on paper, 30.4 by 43.8 cm. (Albertina, Vienna)
of the fifteenth century, Bardejov (Bártfa in Hungarian and Bartfeld in German) was an enclave of painters and sculptors from Kraków; and throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the painting, goldsmith’s works and sculpture of Bratislava were closely linked to Vienna. These overlaps challenge art-historical research to ignore not only today’s political borders but also those of historical states, in this case medieval Hungary.
The catalogue includes detailed entries for all known and newly attributed paintings and drawings by Master MS, as well as for the rich selection of comparative works that were part of the exhibition. They include two sheets of Dürer’s Green passion (1504; Albertina; nos.52 and 53), works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Altdorfer, Jörg Breu the Elder and other anonymous artists from both Nuremberg and Vienna. More comparisons could have been made with works from British collections, for example with the Lamentation triptych (1519; Compton Verney), especially the figures of St Catherine and St Barbara on the outer side of its wing panels. The central section is in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, with the attribution ‘Franconian Master’.3 There are also two studies devoted to the technological and conservation contexts (one by Éva Galambos and Manga Pattantyús, the other by Mátyás Horváth), which are highly valuable for the understanding of the painting and workshop operation of altarpieces around 1500.
In the past 150 years, in which Czech, Slovak and especially Hungarian scholarship has been preoccupied with Master MS, there has been no ‘earthquake’ like this exhibition and catalogue. The aftershocks of the expansion of Master MS’s œuvre are already having an impact on research in the field of Viennese and Nuremberg art. Undoubtedly, there will be a critical reassessment of the newly attributed works and attempts at making further new attributions. The identity of Master MS remains unknown, although in the catalogue Endrődi and the historian Judit Majorossy connect him indirectly with
Michel Schröter, a Viennese painter active at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet, without the discovery of new archival sources or new works of art, such suggestions remain hypothetical. The true achievement of the international team of authors in this catalogue is to deepen the understanding of Master MS and of the immediate reception of Albrecht Dürer’s art.
1 Hungarian edition: MS mester és kora ISBN 978–615–6595–72–0.
2 M. Mojzer: ‘Der historische Meister MS sive Marten Schwarcz seu Martinus Niger alias Marcin Czarny, der Maler des Krakauer Hochaltars von Veit Stoss. II. Teil, Krakau und Nürnberg im Jahr 1477 und davor’, Annales de la Galerie Nationale Hongroise 25 (2005–07), pp.90–141.
3 The reunited triptych was recently on view at Compton Verney (closed 28th February).
Leonardo – Dürer: Renaissance Master Drawings on Colored Ground
By Ralph Gleis, Achim Gnann and Christof Metzger. 400 pp. incl. 180 col. + b. & w. ills. (Albertina, Vienna, and Hirmer, Munich, 2025), £45. ISBN 978–3–7774–4468–0.
by lucia tantardini
Giorgio Vasari’s Libro de’ disegni featured an impressive group of works on paper, including a selection of drawings on coloured ground, such as the moving Head of an old man by Domenico Ghirlandaio (c.1490; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), executed in metalpoint on pink prepared paper with heightening in white opaque watercolour.1 Such works possess unique pictorial qualities that distinguish them from the wider realm of drawings on unprepared paper. They can almost resemble finished paintings. Indeed, in his Libro dell’arte Cennino Cennini recommended the artist draw on prepared paper and parchment in order to discover the ‘gateway to painting’.2 Metalpoint requires a prepared ground (often pigmented), and red chalk could be used on red prepared paper to achieve the so-called red-on-red effect, first employed by Leonardo (no.97; Fig.4). In addition, blue-tinted paper (carta azzurra) was prized particularly by the Venetians.
The Albertina Museum, Vienna, houses a superb collection of over one million drawings and prints. It recently hosted the exhibition Leonardo – Dürer: Renaissance Master Drawings on Colored Ground (closed 9th June), accompanied by the catalogue under review. The project, organised by the in-house curators Achim Gnann and Christof Metzger, focused on the origins and development of drawing on coloured paper. Although this was the first major exhibition devoted to the topic, the theme is familiar to scholars of master drawings.3 The juxtaposition of Leonardo and Dürer, the ‘Leonardo of the North’, is also a leitmotif of art-historical literature.4 The nucleus of the display was a group of twenty-six drawings by Leonardo and as many by Dürer, together with ninety-three works, including loans of drawings by artists from north and south of the Alps from major collections such as the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the British Museum, London.
The volume opens with a foreword by Ralph Gleis, the Albertina’s new director general, followed by four scholarly essays. Nils Büttner explores
the use of coloured ground in drawings, prints and paintings, as well as in enamels and textiles, and examines the ingenious technical and visual aspects of its application in each medium. One interesting example is the way in which Limoges enamellists sought to achieve nuanced and brilliant effects of colour with multiple firings in order to produce a colour palette that resembled panel painting. Gnann has contributed
two essays, in which he discusses a variety of Leonardo’s drawings on coloured ground in chronological order: from major commissions, such as the Last supper (c.1495–98; S. Maria delle Grazie, Milan), to anatomical drawings on red paper and carta azzurra (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; cat. nos.95–97). The focus is mainly on the ways in which his technique and style vary depending on the paper used,
5. Witches sabbath, by Hans Baldung Grien. 1514. Pen, brush, black ink and white bodycolour on paper, 28.8 by 20.5 cm. (Albertina, Vienna).
which ranges from warm (orange, pink and red) to cold (grey and blue) and neutral ground colours, all of which were employed by the artist throughout his career. Questions of attribution are also raised, for example in relation to two of Leonardo’s studies for the Last supper: the heads of Bartholomew and Judas (both c.1494–96; Windsor Castle). Metzger investigates the practice of chiaroscuro drawing north of the Alps. Although there are no written sources concerning the technical aspects of drawing on coloured ground that offer an equivalent to Cennini, the basic principles of the craft were similar to those in Italy. The main difference was function. Artists in the Germanspeaking lands and the Low Countries tended to avoid chiaroscuro drawing for the study of detail. Except for Dürer, they rarely used the technique for preparatory studies for paintings. Metzger highlights the idiosyncratic nature of Dürer’s practice compared to that of his contemporaries. He notes that Dürer was the only artist north of the Alps to use carta azzurra (no.72; Fig.6), which he had discovered during his stay in Venice from 1505 to 1507, and compares his use of chiaroscuro to Hans Baldung Grien’s preference for an opaque ground to contrast with the black and white of his drawings (no.81; Fig.5) and Albrecht Altdorfer’s use of a more fluid and transparent preparation layer to modulate chiaroscuro effects.
The thoroughness that characterises the essays is also found in the catalogue entries. Apart from drawings by Leonardo and Dürer, they cover works by Leonardo’s master Andrea del Verrocchio and other Florentines such as Filippo and Filippino Lippi and Raffaellino del Garbo; the so-called Leonardeschi, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Cesare da Sesto; the Venetians Vittore Carpaccio and Titian; as well as Michelino da Besozzo, Parmigianino and Ugo da Carpi. Among the German draughtsmen included are Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Baldung Grien and Urs Graf. The catalogue largely focuses on key works, including Dürer’s Praying hands (1508; Albertina; no.75) and Raphael’s silverpoint study (c.1506–07; Albertina; no.92) for the Bridgewater Madonna (c.1507–08;
1506. Brush and black and grey ink and white bodycolour on paper, 27 by 20.8 cm. (Albertina, Vienna).
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), but there are also some anonymous drawings, such as Two knights duelling on horseback by a Swabian master (c.1480; Albertina; no.9), as well as works by lesserknown artists such as Giovanni Maria Falconetto (both c.1491–1506; both Albertina; nos.51 and 52). A wide range of subject matters is covered too, from studies of drapery and portraiture to botanical and figural studies.
In the final essay, Eva Glück, the head of conservation at the Albertina,
discusses technique. She explains how artists and apprentices created tinted grounds to allow more vivid and unusual contrasts of light and tone.
Fillers made of diluted solutions of bone ash, white chalk or lead white were added to pigments and a binding agent, normally gum arabic or gelatin. The preparation was then applied with a brush in multiple layers. She comments on the variety of brushwork, paper textures and metal styluses that were used and provides data and images from technical examination (infra-red
reflectography and X-ray fluorescence) conducted in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, both Vienna, showing the composition and depth of the preparation layers and the technical virtuosity of the graphic mediums.
This catalogue is conspicuous for the depth and rigour of the analysis. At a time when the master drawing world is shrinking, it is both heartening and inspirational to witness the elevation of what is widely but erroneously perceived as an unfashionable topic.
1 L. Frank and C. Fryklund, eds: exh. cat. Giorgio Vasari, The Book of Drawings: The Fate of a Legendary Collection, Paris (Musée du Louvre) and Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2022–23; reviewed by Ketty Gottardo in this Magazine, 165 (2023), pp.784–87.
2 ‘[I]l principio e la porta del colorire’, see G. and C. Milanesi, eds: Il libro dell’arte, o trattato della pittura di Cennino Cennini, Florence 1859, p.10.
3 Daniela Bohde, Professor of Art History at the University of Stuttgart, heads an international research network, ‘The Autonomous Drawing’, which is focused on chiaroscuro drawing in the age of Dürer. It was instrumental for the development of the Albertina project. See also A. McCarthy, L. Moretti and P. Sachet, eds: Venice in Blue: The Use of ‘carta azzurra’ in the Artist’s Studio and the Printer’s Workshop, ca.1500–1550, Florence 2024, to be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of this Magazine.
4 See for example S. Ferrari: Dürer e Leonardo: il paragone delle arti a nord e a sud delle Alpi, Genova 2020.
La Rotonde de Saint-Bénigne: 1000 ans d’histoire
Edited by Frank Abert, Arnaud Alexandre and Christian Sapin. 160 pp. incl. numerous col. + b. & w. ills. (Faton Editions, Dijon, 2025), €29. ISBN 978–2–87844–391–2.
by hugh doherty
When rebuilding the abbey of SaintBénigne, west of Dijon, soon after the first Christian millennium, Abbot William of Volpiano wished to construct ‘a church more wondrous than those of all Gaul and incomparable in its situation’ (p.44). These were the words of his biographer and monastic disciple, Rodulf Glaber, writing shortly after Abbot William’s death in January 1031. Rodulf spoke with authority. He had served as one of Abbot William’s most active and most ardent supporters at Saint-Bénigne
6. Head of an angel, by Albrecht Dürer.
for more than a decade. He may even have been present at the consecration of the church in October 1016, but the two men fell out at the end of Abbot William’s life and Rodulf was compelled to transfer to a different monastic community. There was thus probably more to Rodulf’s praise for the church raised by his friend and mentor than mere hagiographic convention: it seems to express a combination of nostalgic pride and filial remorse. Yet Rodulf is also clear that the wondrous and incomparable nature of SaintBénigne was there for all to see. And despite being the work of enthusiastic revolutionaries and no less eager restorers, enough survives to justify Rodulf’s claims.
Perhaps the most wondrous and incomparable feature of the church was the remarkable rotunda, which was attached to the eastern sanctuary of the church. It was constructed on three levels, each with open arches and columns. At the lowest level was the crypt with the tomb of St Benignus. It was located at the juncture with the sanctuary, so that the high altar of the church was situated above the tomb. This rotunda was the subject of a recent exhibition at the Musée archéologique, Dijon, curated by Franck Abert and his colleagues (closed 21st September). The museum is housed within the former
claustral buildings of Saint-Bénigne, so the venue (in the former monastic dormitory) could not have been more appropriate. The exhibition was organised to celebrate the completion of a major three-year restoration project of the rotunda’s foundations, which is the subject of two contributions to this catalogue. The publication offers a detailed and beautifully designed distillation of the latest work on SaintBénigne and its remarkable history. It contains nineteen scholarly papers and three shorter essays, all handsomely illustrated, as well as a catalogue of the seventy-two exhibits, an up-todate bibliography and a useful glossary with diagrams.
The head of a twelfth-century statue of St Benignus from the western portal of the church (cat. no.1; Fig.8) was rightly chosen as one of the opening highlights of the exhibition. His solemn and noble face, expertly carved, underlines the enduring status of his saintly power. But the genesis of his cult remains obscure. As Gregory, Bishop of Tours, recognised in the 590s, it was long believed that the saint’s sarcophagus had belonged to an unknown pagan before a series of visions and healing miracles revealed the true identity of the incumbent. Among the early sceptics (as well as the early converts) was Gregory’s
great-grandfather, Gregory, Bishop of Langres (d. c.540). The archaeological evidence only complicates the picture further, as the contributions of Benjamin Saint-Jean Vitus, Carole Fossurier and Alexandre Burgevin make apparent. From the early seventh century onwards the picture is relatively clear: the district of SaintBénigne, outside the Merovingian castrum of Dijon, became ‘the major funerary hub’ (p.20), presumably because the people of the castrum and the surrounding region buried their dead within the cemetery of the early shrine church. But if there was a necropolis on the site before 600, it has left few traces in the archaeological record. Further excavations beneath the church of Saint-Bénigne and its surviving claustral buildings (including, appropriately enough, the Musée archéologique) might provide decisive clues.
The enigmatic beginnings of St Benignus’s veneration did nothing to dint his appeal in succeeding centuries. An early and enduring factor in the success of his cult, as Alain Rauwel observes, was the leadership of the bishops of Langres. The endorsement and investment of Gregory of Tours’s great-grandfather proved crucial. He constructed the first church on the site and, with the assistance of two priests and not a little miraculous help from the saint, carried the sarcophagus into its crypt. One of his successors, Isaac, may have exploited his standing at the court of Charles the Bald in the early 870s to transform a secular community of priests into a monastic one, subject to the rule of St Benedict. And, in the late 980s, Bishop Bruno turned to Maieul, Abbot of Cluny, to help reform the abbey on Cluniac lines and recruit a suitable abbot for the community. Abbot Maieul’s recommendation of William of Volpiano, as Noëlle DeflouLeca demonstrates, was as much as to do with aristocratic strategies of family alliances – William was Bishop Bruno’s kinsman – as with William’s reformist credentials.
The impact of William’s rule as abbot, which lasted for more than forty years, was momentous. His construction of a new church was one of many achievements. That church
7. Interior of the rotunda of Saint-Bénigne, middle floor, by Pierre-Joseph Antoine. c.1780. Watercolour. (Bibliothèque municipal, Dijon).
8. Head of St Benignus. France, third quarter of the 12th century. Limestone. (Musée archéologique, Dijon).
9. Fragment of pavement mosaic from the chapel of the Virgin, Saint-Bénigne. France, early 11th century. Lime mortar and hard rock tesserae. (Musée archéologique, Dijon).
was entirely rebuilt by Abbot Hugh d’Arc in the new Gothic style in the 1280s – this is the church visitors encounter now. Benignus’s remains were removed from the crypt and installed behind the high altar of the new church. The rotunda was nevertheless retained and survived until the revolutionary authorities commanded its destruction in February 1792. As Mélinda Bizri demonstrates, drawing almost entirely on unpublished archival material, the destruction of the rotunda took less than a year and was implemented in the teeth of strong resistance from the learned members of the Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon and two local engineers, the brothers Antoine Antoine and Pierre-Joseph Antoine. All that now survives of the rotunda is its lowest level, which was rediscovered during construction work in 1843 and, following the intervention of Prosper Mérimée, extensively restored and rebuilt over the course of the next forty years (the subject of the contributions by Martin Bacot and Camille Duclert). Some of the design and decoration of the rotunda can nevertheless be reconstructed from plans and
drawings made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most notably on behalf of the Maurists, following their formal installation in Saint-Bénigne in 1652. Shortly before the Revolution, Pierre-Joseph Antoine produced a number of views of the rotunda (no.25; Fig.7). A second contribution by Bizri furnishes a comprehensive and well-illustrated review of this pictorial evidence. The value of these drawings is underlined, too, by Stéphanie Büttner and Christian Sapin in their essay on the cladding, rendering and paving of the rotunda. A drawing made in 1792, for instance, provides welcome evidence for the design of the mosaic floor in the chapel of the Virgin on the first floor of the rotunda. All that now survives of this same mosaic is the face of one of two lions (no.39; Fig.9). The original mosaic, as further notes and drawings made in 1792 establish, was over three metres in length.
The key question, of course, is why Abbot William should have chosen to build a rotunda in the first place, and this is the subject of the longest article in the volume, by Andreas HartmannVirnich. Historians have unsurprisingly identified many different sources of
inspiration for the structure: the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem; the Pantheon, Rome; and even the Mausoleum of Theodoric, Ravenna. HartmannVirnich does an excellent job in highlighting the influence of each of these buildings while at the same time emphasising the wider appeal of the rotunda form for western monastic communities (as well as the western laity) at the turn of the first Christian millennium. Three more papers, finally, underline the significance of discoveries made during the recent excavations that accompanied the campaign of restoration. These include two new capitals from the lowest level of the rotunda (set in context by Christian Sapin); the massive piers of the great crossing tower of the church (examined in detail by Arnaud Alexandre); and even the foundations of an unfinished structure raised in the early stages of an ambitious building campaign that preceded Abbot William’s own (brilliantly discussed by Sylvain Aumard). As all the contributions to this volume demonstrate, the rotunda of Saint-Bénigne was as remarkable as Abbot William. Rodulf Glaber would surely have agreed.
Zurbarán: Réinventer un chef-d’œuvre
Edited by Ludmila Virassamynaïken. 320 pp. incl. numerous col. ills. (Éditions El Viso, Paris, 2024), €38. ISBN 978–84–12–78773–3.
by guillaume kientz
One of the most famous paintings in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, Francisco de Zurbarán’s St Francis of Assisi (cat. no.20; Fig.10), was the subject of a monographic exhibition shown earlier this year at the museum (closed 2nd March) and subsequently at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona (MNAC; closed 29th June). The painting was rediscovered in the Franciscan friary known as the Convent of the Colinettes, Lyon, in 1792. Then attributed to Jusepe de Ribera, it was acquired by the museum in 1807. Questions about its artist, date and the context of its creation were all addressed in the exhibition, as was its subject, the vision of the saint standing on his tomb that Pope Nicolas V experienced when visiting Assisi in 1449.1 The painting’s critical reception from the seventeenth century onwards was also examined.
Organised by Ludmila Virassamynaïken, the museum’s curator of old master paintings, the exhibition was prompted by the recent conservation of the St Francis, which revealed that it is signed and dated 1636, significantly earlier than the c.1640–60 that had previously been conjectured. Virassamynaïken has also edited the elegantly designed and abundantly illustrated catalogue. Although some repetitions might have been avoided, especially in the discussion of the painting’s iconographical sources, its essays are useful and comprehensive. María Cruz de Carlos Varona and Odile Delenda write on Zurbarán and the Franciscan context and Virassamynaïken contributes three essays, on the iconography of St Francis standing on his tomb, on the painting’s provenance and on the reception of Zurbarán and his St Francis, a subject also discussed in essays by Javier Portús Pérez, Stéphane Paccoud, Barbara Forest and Alexandre Samson.
The exhibition had an elegant and minimalist design that echoed and underlined the austerity of Zurbarán’s work. The catalogue, like the exhibition, is divided into nine sections. The first three, ‘The Silent Life’, ‘Ecstasies’ and ‘One and Multiple’, set out the context for the painting’s creation, explaining the iconographies and artistic formulae for the depiction of the saint that were developed in Counter-Reformation Europe in the early seventeenth century. The first gallery juxtaposed two secular still lifes by Zurbarán from MNAC, Still life with quinces (c.1633–35; no.2) and Still life with pots (c.1650–60; no.3), with two religious ones, St Veronica’s veil (c.1660; Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao; no.4) and Agnus Dei (1632; private collection; no.1).
This introduced the combination of a meditative approach to reality and its intimacy with the sacred that is often seen as characteristic of seventeenthcentury Spanish painting in general and of Zurbarán in particular. At the centre of the room was Zurbarán’s Crucified Christ with a painter (no.5; Fig.12).
Although the inclusion of this painting, which depicts an artist’s devotion to a sacred image, was appropriate, the interpretation suggested on its label and the catalogue entry by Portus is rather restrictive. No longer identified as a possible self-portrait of Zurbarán or a representation of St Luke (or possibly both), the figure is described instead simply as a painter, with no additional narrative significance. Since in Spain polychroming sculptures was the monopoly of painters, whose interventions were metaphorically supposed to bring the piece ‘to life’, and Zurbarán was admired for his ability to execute paintings that could be mistaken for sculptures or even human figures, it remains tempting to interpret the painting as a selfreferential statement by the artist and to connect it with St Luke, reputedly the first Christian painter, whose name was usually invoked to substantiate the primacy of painting over other forms of art.
burlington.org.uk/whats-on
Opposite
10. St Francis of Assisi, by Francisco de Zurbarán. 1636. Oil on canvas, 209 by 110 cm. (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon).
11. St Francis contemplating a skull, by Francisco de Zurbarán. c.1633–35. Oil on canvas, 91 by 32 cm. (Saint Louis Art Museum).
The second section, ‘Ecstasies’, used paintings by the workshops of El Greco and Rubens and a copy after Georges de La Tour to introduce visitors to seventeenth-
century representations of St Francis meditating or receiving the stigmata. These helped to establish the distinctive nature of Zurbarán’s approach to the saint’s iconography, a theme picked up in the section ‘One and Multiple’, which presented the variety of approaches to the subject developed by the painter. All his principal variations on the theme were present, with the exceptions of St Francis in prayer (c.1638–39; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) and St Francis meditating (1632; National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires) although the latter is illustrated in the catalogue. Special attention was paid to St Francis contemplating a skull, from the Saint Louis Art Museum (no.10; Fig.11), since in its conflation of the iconography of the saint in meditation with that of Pope Nicholas’s vision it foreshadows the Lyon painting. It is not clear to this reviewer whether the Saint Louis painting is a reduction of the larger version of the subject in the Milwaukee Art Museum, or whether the latter is an enlargement of the former, as argued in the catalogue. The smaller size of the Saint Louis canvas probably suggests that it was either intended for private devotion or was originally part of an altarpiece, both hypotheses that are consistent with its provenance from the Convent of San Alberto, Seville, from which it was confiscated in 1810. Although Delenda mentions the existence of four reduced versions of the composition, Portus’s catalogue entry for the small version shown in the exhibition, on deposit from the Prado to the Museo de Pontevedra (c.1635; no.11), mentions only two others, in Princeton University Art Museum and the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. The display of the Prado version next to the Saint Louis picture, however, raised the question of the former’s date. The modern appearance of its pigments and the heavy handling of the paint suggested to the present reviewer that it may be a nineteenthcentury copy, possibly made when the Saint Louis painting was in the Soult Collection in Paris.
The following section, ‘Icons of the Golden Age’, was the core of the exhibition. The dramatic display of
the Lyon painting with two other versions, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (c.1640–45; no.21), and MNAC (1635–40; no.22), and their placing in dialogue with sculptures by Pedro de Mena (1628–88) and his followers based on Zurbarán’s composition, was a unique opportunity to compare the three versions as well as a compelling demonstration of the originality and visual impact of Zurbarán’s iconography. The discovery of the signature and the date on the Lyon picture has prompted a revision of the established chronology. It remains uncertain whether the Barcelona
version, which is slightly smaller, was painted first, as Delenda argues in the catalogue. Its fluid and more synthetic execution may suggest, however, that it follows the Lyon composition. In any event, both probably date from the same period. There is a consensus that the Boston picture was executed a few years later, in 1640–45.
The second half of the exhibition mostly concentrated on the reception of the Lyon picture since its rediscovery in 1792. This part was, however, preceded by the section ‘Other Visions’, which was dedicated to the story of Pope Nicholas V’s vision of the
12. Crucified Christ with a painter, by Francisco de Zurbarán. c.1655–60. Oil on canvas, 105 by 84 cm. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid).
uncorrupted body of St Francis standing on his tomb and its representation in the visual arts. On display here were paintings by Laurent de La Hyre (1606–56), Jacques Blanchard (1600–38) and Pierre Jacques Cazes (1676–1754), works on paper by Cazes, Thomas de Leu (1560–1612) and Eugénio Cajés (1574–1634), and an Aubusson tapestry (1716; Cité internationale de la tapisserie, Aubusson; no.32). Although this section was useful, it could have been condensed, and some of the works confined to illustrations in the catalogue. Some of the ones shown in this part of the display, notably the Cajés drawing (c.1613; Albertina, Vienna; no.18), the first appearance of the subject in Spanish art, would have been better placed in the ‘Icons of the Golden Age’ section. Happily, in the catalogue the drawing is included in that section, making it more apparent that Zurbarán’s decision to focus solely on the figure of the saint and not on the story of the pope’s visit was intended to provide the viewer with a re-enactment of the vision.
The part of the exhibition on the early history of the painting’s reception gathered an eloquent selection of works by artists who lived and worked in Lyon or visited the city during the nineteenth century, and who would therefore have had an opportunity to see and respond to the then newly rediscovered St Francis. They include Jean Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810), who owned the picture for about a decade, as well as Fleury Richard (1777–1852), Hippolyte Flandrin (1809–64), Jules Ziegler (1804–56) and François Marius Granet (1774–1849). Together their works offered a sequence of reinterpretations that span such artistic movements as Troubadour painting, Romanticism and Symbolism, establishing, for example, a visually compelling comparison between Zurbarán’s monk and the iconography of the novelist and Rosicrucian Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918).
The following short section, ‘In the Era of Mechanical Reproduction’, showed the wider range of responses and citations to Zurbarán’s St Francis that appeared in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the work became available to a broader audience thanks to technological
innovation. It was during this period that St Francis ceased to be a painting only and became an image, seen and used as a symbol, model and artistic formula. The next section, ‘Modernity’, consisted mostly of twentieth-century and contemporary artists who have been inspired by or made use of the Lyon painting. Although Javier Bueno’s powerful Exécution d’un paysan espagnol (Fusillé) (Execution of a Spanish peasant, shot; 1937; private collection; no.68), was exhibited, this reviewer regretted the absence of Ignacio Zuloaga’s L’Anachorète (Anchorite; 1907; Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and Claudio Bravo’s Green Djellaba (1984; location unknown), although the latter is illustrated in the catalogue. Bravo shared with Zurbarán an interest in illusionistic still lifes and his paintings of Moroccan figures are clearly inspired by Zurbarán’s depictions of Franciscan monks. In some cases, artists’ interest in the Lyon painting was prompted by past exhibitions: for example, the Canadian artist Karel Funk’s Untitled #76 (2016; private collection; no.78), a painting of the head of a hooded figure seen from behind, was inspired by the Zurbarán retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1987–88.2 This section explored in particular the way that the Franciscan habit has intersected with streetwear hoodies to inspire such contemporary artists as Xavier Veilhan, Djamel Tatah and François Bard. The fact that the last has collaborated with Dior Homme offered a smooth transition to the ninth and final section of the exhibition, ‘Fashion Icon’, which was dedicated to responses to Zurbarán’s St Francis and appropriations of it by such designers as Madame Grès, Balenciaga and Azzedine Alaïa.
Ranging from religious art to prêt-à-porter fashion, from the seventeenth century to the twentyfirst, from discussions of iconography to questions of attribution and dating, and from the context of the work’s creation to its critical reception and visual fortune, this catalogue, like the exhibition it accompanied, is clever, sophisticated yet approachable, original in its conception and compelling in its form. It is a model for museums seeking
to ‘reinvent’ not just a masterpiece but also the approach they take to exhibitions, which may well re-engage audiences with the old masters.
1 The subject was first identified in F.J. Sánchez Cantón: San Francisco de Asís en la escultura Española, Madrid 1926.
2 Reviewed by Enriqueta Harris in this Magazine, 130 (1988), pp.252–55.
Tan lejos, tan cerca: Guadalupe de México en España
Edited by Jaime Cuadriello and Paula Mues Orts. 304 pp. incl. numerous col. ills. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2025), €32. ISBN 978–84–8480–632–5.
by cloe cavero de carondelet
Millions of people recognise Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe, a Madonna in prayer surrounded by a mandorla and supported by an angel. Its iconography has been endlessly reproduced in both Catholic and popular culture. The exhibition So far, so close: Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (closed 14th September), curated by Jaime Cuadriello and Paula Mues Orts, and its splendidly illustrated catalogue, published in Spanish, explored precisely this aspect of the image. The legend of the creation of the Guadalupe focused on the image’s facture. In 1531, barely ten years after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán, the Virgin is said to have appeared on Tepeyac Hill to Juan
Diego, a recent convert to Christianity; proof of the apparition was provided by the image being miraculously ‘painted’ upon his tilma (a type of cloak). The revered garment, which is conserved in S. María de Guadalupe, Mexico City, did not feature in the exhibition. The display was devoted instead to the rich corpus of painted and sculpted seventeenth- and eighteenth-century replicas (Fig.13) that viceroys, nuns and indianos (Spaniards who returned from Spanish America having become wealthy) sent or took back to Spain. Sixty-eight objects were used to explore the boundaries of artistic geographies as well as the tension between invention and copying, providing a refreshing contrast to the curatorial celebration of the individual artist–genius, which visitors could encounter, for example, in the landmark exhibition on Paolo Veronese displayed in the adjoining galleries.1
The fundamental question posed by Cuadriello and Mues Orts in their introduction to the catalogue is whether Spaniards perceived the Mexican Guadalupe as part of their own culture or rather as a sign of devotion from afar. It is by no means a simple one. This is partly because the Guadalupe has a conflicted status. While Spaniards used the legendary apparition to justify their colonisation of the Americas, those opposing Spanish rule used it as a symbol of Mexican identity in the years leading to the country’s independence. But the
13. Installation view of So far, so close: Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2025. (Courtesy Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid).
Guadalupe is also a work of art, and it is this fact that the curators took as their point of departure, distancing themselves from what they consider the ‘sterile and banalised model of a “colonial art” and its atavistic postcolonial remnants’ in order to reconstruct the ‘singular features of images and imagery from the Atlantic world’ (p.16). In the exhibition, these were eruditely explored in eleven thematic sections, arranged in a starshaped plan inspired by Madrid’s parish church of Guadalupe. The works on display included the extraordinary shell-inlay painting (enconchado) from the Capuchin convent of Castellón de la Plana (1680–1710; no.42), which combines Namban references, European iconography and Mexican craftsmanship, illustrating the striking creativity that shaped the global imagery of the Guadalupe. Two polychrome ivories made in the
Spanish Philippines (1700–30; no.60; private collection; and no.61; Fig.15) attested to the interconnectedness of the Spanish empire and illustrated the challenges of replicating painted icons in three-dimensional form.
The catalogue provides a deeper discussion of a range of themes touched upon only briefly in the exhibition, including the relationship between this Marian cult and indigenous cultures, as well as the status that devotion to it attained in Spain. Three of the six essays focus on artistic processes. Because the image of the Guadalupe was deemed to be of divine origin, it was invoked to vindicate the authority of the art of painting. Javier Portús discusses this key issue in the opening chapter, ‘The “early modern icon” confronts the era of art’, and his insightful juxtaposition of viceregal images with renowned Spanish works, such as
Juan Bautista Maíno’s St Dominic in Soriano (c.1629; Prado; no.11), disavows outdated theories of the former being passively derived from the latter. In the second chapter, ‘Figural typology, visual construction and devotional articulation’, Cuadriello traces the creation of the canonical Guadalupe iconography of a tetra-episodic Mariophany – a portrayal of the Virgin with depictions of her four apparitions – adorned with flowers and angels. The first such work was a painting (no.24; Fig.14) by José Juárez, which was taken to Ágreda by a pious indiana shortly after its completion in 1656. Cuadriello’s essay also briefly explores examples of the racialisation of the Virgin and Juan Diego, shedding new light on the representation of colonial identities in the early modern period. Turning from iconography to materiality, the most novel contribution is the chapter written
14. Image and apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, by José Juárez. 1656. Oil on canvas, 210 by 295 cm. (Monastery of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, Soria).
by Mues Orts and the painting conservator Rocío Bruquetas Galán. They analyse the gradual displacement of native painters such as Luis de Texeda (active c.1660–90), who were once the privileged copyists of the Virgin, by academic and criollo (people of Spanish descent born in the viceroyalties) artists, including Miguel Cabrera (1710–68). This shift transformed the practice of copying the miraculous tilma, once considered a celestial grace granted to a chosen few, into an intellectual process based on scientific knowledge and artistic skill. Four superb tracings by Mues Orts and Bruquetas Galán of Virgins by Juan Correa (c.1646–1716) and Cabrera are illustrated in the catalogue, printed on both transparent and silver-toned paper. They underscore the earthly, humanmade nature of the copy, as well as the way in which technical studies can provide invaluable scholarly insights. For example, the authors show that, contrary to the uniformity one might expect of sacred replicas, workshops in New Spain ingeniously combined a range of materials and techniques, innovations that led them to become the ‘cult’s major promoters’ (p.188). Many of these copies were exported to Spain and the remaining chapters explore the peninsula’s relationships with the Guadalupe. It is significant that the Virgin of Guadalupe owed her name to a renowned homonymous Marian image conserved in Cáceres in the Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe and venerated by the conquistador Hernán Cortés, who became the first governor of New Spain. The links between these two cults are the focus of a chapter by Francisco Javier Pizarro Gómez and Angelika García Manso, ‘The Virgin of Guadalupe, an icon between two shores’. It is followed by Francisco Montes González’s discussion of the nature of the indianos’ veneration of Guadalupe. The fact that many of the devotional sites he studies were overseen by missionary orders active in Spanish America signals the need for further research on this cult’s status as a symbol of evangelisation and conversion. In the final chapter,
‘The Virgin, the “indiano nobility” and the Catholic monarch’, Iván Escamilla González traces the Guadalupe’s evolution as an emblem of indiano identity during the complex period inaugurated by the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain around 1700 and ending with Mexican independence in 1821.
Dedicating an exhibition to a single image poses an immense challenge. The curators responded to it by foregrounding the complex question of centre and periphery within the Spanish empire. By identifying that it was painters born in Mexico – whether of Spanish, indigenous or African descent – who attained the highest authority as copyists of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the exhibition and catalogue have reaffirmed their elevated
15. Virgin of Guadalupe, by HispanoPhilippine workshop. c.1700–30. Polychrome ivory and brass, 51 by 17 cm. (Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid).
artistic status in Spain. Yet the fact that Spain was the principal destination for Guadalupe replicas raises new questions about the reception of these works of art. Were the copies from New Spain perceived as advocating viceregal authority or as evidence of the territory’s successful colonisation? These and numerous other issues arise from this stimulating catalogue, which will undoubtedly provide a point of departure for new research on Spain’s colonial heritage.
Finally, the Prado deserves praise for continuing to use temporary exhibitions to look beyond the Eurocentrism of its collections and promote greater visibility of colonial art, a concern that underpinned its recent exhibition Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain in 2021–22. In her review of that show, Olga Isabel Acosta Luna used the expression ‘So close, so far’ to signal how the Spanish public continues to be largely unaware of the art of Spanish America, despite the fact that many works from there have been in Spain for centuries.2 By rewording the phrase to read ‘So far, so close’, this catalogue and the exhibition it accompanied highlight the need –still a pressing one – to bring colonial art ‘closer’ to the Spanish public.
1 Reviewed by Beverly Louise Brown in this Magazine, 167 (2025), pp.914–18.
2 O.I. Acosta Luna: review of the exhibition Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain – Tornaviaje, Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) 2021–22, in 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual 3, pp.935–41, esp. pp.939–40.
Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form
Edited by Rodrigo Moura, Ayrson Heráclito and Chloë Courtney. 224 pp. incl. 115 col. + 59 b. & w. ills. (El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2025), $45. ISBN 978–1–88245–430–3.
by edward j. sullivan
Afro-Brazilian or Black art in Brazil has long been considered an integral part of the nation’s visual culture. Yet it has been often siloed, treated as an anthropological entity apart from the principal developments of modern art history. This publication goes a long way to redress that narrative. It
positions art grounded in encounters with its African ‘ancestors’ as not only a fundamental component of Brazilian art but also – because of its compelling implications for a wider stream of artistic occurrences in the Global South – an intrinsically transnational mode of aesthetic expansion. Several distinguished art historians in Brazil, the United States and elsewhere – including Roberto Conduru and Abigail Lapin Dardashti, both of whom are contributors to this book, and such others as Kimberly Cleveland, Bruno Pinheiro and Igor Simões – have contributed important studies illuminating the broad reach of this phenomenon. The present volume constitutes an important departure point in the unfolding complexity of the meanings of Black art in Brazil. It focuses on a key twentieth-century figure: Deoscóredes Maximiliano dos Santos (1917–2013), popularly known as Mestre Didi, a name that reflects his role as a Candomblé priest, of the Yoruba-based religion practised in northeast Brazil and shaped by the history of contact with enslaved West Africans from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the book creates a vivid panorama of ideas and associations regarding cultural and religious interactions, the ramifications of which extend far beyond Brazil itself.
Spiritual Form was published in conjunction with an exhibition of work by Didi and his contemporaries at El Museo del Barrio, New York (closed 13th July). Curated by the art historian and former Chief Curator at El Museo, Rodrigo Moura, and the artist Ayrson Heráclito, it presented a wide selection of the genres in which Mestre Didi worked. His pieces were complemented by paintings, photographs and drawings by eleven other artists, as well as video documentation of a Candomblé ritual performed by the dancer Negrizu and Didi’s daughter Inaicyra Falcão. It was the first major exhibition in New York dedicated to Didi since 1986, when the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture staged the small-scale solo show An Afro-Brazilian Artist. His work also appeared in Brazil: Body & Soul at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001.1 Apart from three
16. Agba Ati Itoka: Cetro da Grande Ave Ancestral com lança no topo (Sceptre of the great ancestral bird with lance on the top), by Mestre Didi. 1977–78. Palm ribs, painted leather, cowrie shells and beads, 212.1 by 57.15 by 27 cm. (Private collection).
exhibitions in the past twenty or so years, Didi’s art has been all but invisible to North American and European audiences.2
The book is the first monograph on Didi in English. It is an auspicious starting point for future scholarship and will be a highly usable source for students of modern Brazilian culture. Comprising five essays, it offers a cogent and interconnected panorama of Black Brazilian art at the intersection of religious practice and the secular art world. Among the most compelling contributions are those regarding the artist’s beginnings and his relationship to Candomblé practices as well as to the material culture of Salvador da Bahia, a city in north-eastern Brazil that retains palpable links to West Africa. In lucid prose Moura presents his arguments regarding the links between the material and spiritual auras of Salvador and those of West Africa, from where Brazil’s enslaved population originated. Ayrson and Beto Heráclito extend the discussion of Didi’s cultural and personal heritage in Salvador, which they refer to as ‘Black Rome’ in recognition of its cultural heritage. Conduru concentrates on the various genres of Didi’s art, examining, for example, his ritual sceptres (Fig.16) and related sculptural forms. Often made from coconut palm, painted leather, cowrie shells and other substances, these are based on
For more writing on recent art, visit Burlington Contemporary, our online platform for the latest research and reviews on contemporary art: contemporary.burlington.org.uk
traditional ritual items used in religious ceremonies involving the many orishas (deities or spirits) in the Candomblé pantheon and held in religious sites called terreiros. In the 1960s Didi began to depart from strict adherence to classic Yoruba-based characteristics and created related objects for the art market. This led to commissions for monumental sculptures during his later career, such as the twenty-three feet high Earth scepter (1997) for the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador. Despite the fact that they were created to be displayed in exhibitions and possibly sold on the art market, works such as Ejolorun (Fig.17) nonetheless express the artist’s fealty to traditional Afro-Brazilian religious forms.
The Brazilian historian Joselia Aguiar delves into the relationship between Didi and his mother, Maria Bibiana do Espírito Santo, who was known as Mãe Senhora, and explores her role within the story of Candomblé practices in Salvador. She is depicted both in the book and the exhibition by an imposing photographic portrait by Pierre Verger (1946–50; private collection). The other woman vividly discussed by Aguiar is the Argentinean anthropologist Juana Elbein, who also played a key role in Didi’s career. They married and she became his artistic partner and chronicler of his art. Lapin Dardashti expands the scope of the narrative by situating Didi within a larger picture of the practice and
politics of exhibiting Black art in Brazil, North America, Europe and Africa. She offers a fascinating and much-needed survey of the exhibitions, including their critical and popular reception and the way in which they have been viewed from both art-historical as well as anthropological perspectives. Didi not only embodied the spirits of Afro-Brazilian creativity. He also wrote extensively about his relationship to the palpable and the ineffable elements of the transcontinental aspects that were essential to understanding the Black Brazilian experience. One of the merits of Spiritual Form is that it publishes many excerpts of Didi’s writings. Beginning with a series of selected passages from his 1950 text on the Yoruba language, Lorubá tal qual se fala (Yoruba as It’s Spoken Today), it traces his interests in Candomblé and its place in Black Brazilian history from a series of passages from essays written in the early 1960s to a posthumously published piece titled ‘West African sacred art and rituals in Brazil: a comparative study’, published in 2014. Virtually every work of art in the exhibition is included in this volume, including those by artists other than Mestre Didi. The presence of such painters as Rubem Valentim, Abdias Nascimento and Aurelino dos Santos serve to enrich the scope of this volume. Their work reflects a similar interest in complex geometric forms
17. Ejolorun, by Mestre Didi. 1990. Palm ribs, painted leather, cowrie shells and beads, 57.15 by 96 by 26 cm. (Private collection).
based on Candomblé iconography and helped shape Didi’s artistic sensibility throughout his career. Also present in a reproduction and brief mention in Lapin Dardashti’s text are the art and scholarship of Emanoel Araujo. Araujo’s role in the development of interest and knowledge of Black Brazilian art is crucial and urgently needs more study and exhibition both inside and outside Brazil. In many ways he was an heir, in his artistic practice, to Mestre Didi’s intellectual devotion to the power of imagery derived from African-based spirituality. Araujo was equally important as an arts administrator and author, writing important texts such as A mão afrobrasileira: Significado da contribuição artística e história (The Afro-Brazilian Touch: The Meaning of its Historic and Artistic Contribution), published in 1988. He served as Director of the Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, for many years. But perhaps his greatest achievement was the founding, in 2004, of the Museo Afro Brasil (now called the Museo Afro Brasil Emanoel Araujo) in a landmarked building designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo. This anthological museum represents the embodiment of the goals articulated in the writings as well as the art of Mestre Didi: the clarification and valorisation of the role played by Black Brazilian artists in the development of the nation’s cultural profile.
Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form concludes with a generous series of some forty pages of full-colour illustrations that serve as graphic testimonies to the analyses and hypotheses offered in the essays. If one had to find fault with this thoughtprovoking and elegantly produced book, it would be the lack of an index – a seemingly pervasive deficiency within the realm of exhibition catalogues, and, more lamentably, in monographs and general studies published in recent years.
1 See E.J. Sullivan, ed.: exh. cat. Brazil: Body & Soul, New York (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), 2001.
2 See D. Maximiliano dos Santos et al.: exh. cat. Mestre Didi: Sacred Afro-Brazilian Sculpture, Miami (Bass Museum) and St. Louis (Laumeier Sculpture Park) 1998–99. The other two exhibitions were Mestre Didi: Fever Nights at Galerie Hussenot, Paris, in 2022, and Mestre Didi at James Cohan Gallery, New York, in 2024.
New attributions and research on French and Netherlandish paintings in Berlin’s State Museums collections
Netherlandish and French Paintings 1400–1480: Critical Catalogue
Edited by Katrin Dyballa and Stephan Kemperdick, with contributions by Erik Eising, Beatrix Graf, Maria Zielke, Babette Hartwieg, Christine Seidel, Sandra Stelzig, Maria Reimelt and Anja Wolf. 608 pp. incl. 497 col. + 142 b. & w. ills. (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Michel Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2024), €99. ISBN 978–3–7319–1319–1.
by lorne campbell
This handsomely produced book is and will remain indispensable for specialists and students in the field.1 Despite losses suffered as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and the Flakturm Friedrichshain fire in 1945, the collection of early Netherlandish paintings in the Berlin State Museums is still the most important in the world. One acquisition made after that date is included: the Virgin and Child with butterflies (c.1415; cat. no.4), here attributed to Johan Maelwael (Malouel) or
Henri Bellechose. In their preface, the editors, Katrin Dyballa and Stephan Kemperdick, include a short but extremely informative history of the collection.
There are fifty-two entries, covering triptychs, panels from polyptychs and fragments from the Gemäldegalerie. In his important catalogue Deutsche und Böhmische Gemälde 1230–1430 (2010), Stephan Kemperdick had already separated the early German from the earliest French and Netherlandish pictures. The terminus ante quem of 1480 has been rigorously applied. Excluded are an iconographically interesting diptych by an anonymous artist from Brussels, which includes a portrait of the patron Guillermus Sculteti, dated 1482: the inscriptions giving his name and the date are concealed by overpaint (Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.B 84-85), and the Annunciation (c.1500; Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.548), which is attributed to the Master of 1499 and probably a copy after Hugo van der Goes.2 Sixteenth-century copies after lost fifteenth-century originals are included,
except Michiel Coxcie’s copies after the central panel (1558; Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.524) and the Deity (1558; Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.525) of the Ghent altarpiece (1432; Ghent Cathedral) and the copy, very probably by Coxcie (c.1545; Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.534), after the Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden (before 1443; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). It is difficult to understand why the authors have excluded the small triptych of the Crucifixion with the donors Pieter van de Woestijne and his wife Margaret (Gemäldegalerie; inv. no.1658), sister of Louis of Gruuthuse. They married in 1456; the triptych is usually dated c.1475.
Thirty-one entries are written by Dyballa, eighteen by Kemperdick, two by Christine Seidel and one by Erik Eising. Each entry is divided into sections: first the heading with essential information on attribution, subject, approximate date, catalogue number, support and dimensions; then sections on technical notes, provenance, description and discussion. The discussions are generally divided into sub-sections with differing titles, determined by the different questions raised about each painting. The authors have examined the paintings with enormous care and the historical evidence with scrupulous attention. The illustrations include several helpful
1 St John altarpiece, by Rogier van der Weyden. c.1452–55. Oil on panel, 236.4 by 49.2 cm. (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
reconstructions, including those of Jacques Daret’s Arras altarpiece (c.1433–35; no.20; Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid; and Petit Palais, Paris) and of the Marmion altarpiece (1459; no.37; and National Gallery, London). The reconstruction of the original frame of Rogier’s Miraflores triptych (before 1445; no.26) is particularly interesting; in 2025 the modern, gilded frame was replaced with one that follows this reconstruction. Some of the several overlays are useful, such as the head of a Virgin from a refined silverpoint drawing from the circle of Rogier (Musée du Louvre, Paris; inv. no.20.664) that is superimposed on Rogier’s head of St Margaret from a panel showing St Margaret and St Apollonia (c.1450; no.30). The correspondence in this case is close, but the relevance of other overlays seems less convincing.
There are many new attributions. The Holy Family with angels (c.1400–10; no.2) is described as northern Netherlandish, circle of the Masters of Dirc van Delf; Aert van den Bossche is tentatively identified as the copyist responsible for the version (c.1505–15; no.47) of the lost Van der Goes, Adoration of the Magi in front of the stable in the hill. The Adoration of the Magi (c.1505–10; no.22) previously classed as a copy after the Master of Flémalle, is here identified as a copy after Daret. The Visitation and Adoration of the Magi panels from Daret’s Arras altarpiece (no.20), which is documented, and his Portrait of a man in a red chaperon (c.1455–60; no.21) are rightly praised for the skill of their painterly technique. The Madonna and Child before a grassy bench (c.1420–30; no.19) is given to the ‘Group Master of Flémalle’ (p.176); the Portrait of a stout man (c.1435–40; no.23) to the ‘Group Master of Flémalle / Rogier van der Weyden’ (p.224); and the Crucifixion (c.1440; no.24) to ‘Rogier van der Weyden or Workshop’ (p.235).
The Revenge of Tomyris (c.1550; no.15), usually classified as a sixteenth-century copy after the Master of Flémalle, is described as a copy after a ‘Ghent painter of the first half of the fifteenth century’ (p.134). It is likely that the original was painted for a Ghent patron, where the work of Robert Campin was so much admired that the leading Ghent painter Geraerd de Stoevere sent his son Jan to be apprenticed to Campin in Tournai, easily reached from Ghent along the river Schelde (Escaut in French).3 The figure of Tomyris has much in common – in its bold use of exotic patterns and strong colour for expressive effect, careful use of angles and parallel diagonals, as well as in the construction of the veil and the suggestion of limbs beneath
drapery – with the Flémalle St Veronica (c.1428–30; Städel Museum, Frankfurt). It is interesting that the floor on which Tomyris stands is similar to the floor in the group of Joachim and Anna in the Scenes from the Life of the Virgin from Kortessem (c.1390–1400; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels); similar floors, however, also appear in the tapestries of St Piat and St Eleutherius (1402; Tournai Cathedral): for example in the Consecration of St Eleutherius; Eleutherius accosted by the tribune’s daughter; and the Baptism of the tribune’s daughter. The tapestries were woven in Arras but probably designed by a Tournai painter for the patron Toussaint Prier, a canon of Tournai Cathedral.4
There are many important discoveries and observations. The Eyckian Crucifixion (c.1430–40; no.5), for instance, has not been transferred from panel but was painted on fine canvas. The Virgin and Child with butterflies was painted on a slightly less fine canvas. Sandra Stelzig has discovered red underdrawing or underpainting, or both, on all the panels by Petrus Christus (nos.16–18). It is to be hoped that she will publish a more detailed study of Christus’s use of vermilion and red lake. Kemperdick has solved the problem of the discarded frame of Christus’s portrait of a young woman (c.1470; no.18) and its lost inscriptions. The frame was missing by 1819, when it was in the collection of Edward Solly; many of the Solly paintings did not have frames. Yet, the signature Petrus Cristofori was remembered and so, apparently,
was the identity of the woman, who was a member of the Talbot family. On the reverse, visible in infra-red reflectography beneath the dark overpaint, is written ‘Md Talbot’ (p.171). In the background of the Crucifixion from the workshop of Dirk Bouts or by a follower (c.1475; no.41) are three of Brussels’s sites: the bell tower of St Nicholas, the tower of the town hall and the Flanders Gate. Perhaps it was painted in Leuven for a Brussels patron. A version, also in Berlin (c.1475–90; no.42), is the central panel of a triptych. It does not include the three buildings and depicts the saints Servatius, Catherine, Barbara, Agatha, Gertrude and possibly Lambert. Interesting versions of the Virgin and Child from the workshop of Bouts (c.1475; no.43) are in the Musée Départemental de Flandre, Cassel, where the scene is extended to a full-length composition, and in a private collection in England, with an unfinished portrait of a man, possibly German, on the reverse.5 In the Cassel version, the Virgin’s head is reversed and she is seated beneath a canopy; four musician angels are added, with St Barbara presenting Joos van den Damme, who came from Dendermonde and died on 16th May 1484. The picture is his epitaph. In Memling’s Virgin and Child enthroned (c.1480–85; no.50), the authors are able to confirm, by referring to an engraving of 1638, Dirk De Vos’s theory that the building to the right of the Virgin is ‘the imposing church of the Benedictine abbey’ at Seligenstadt (p.550), Memling’s birthplace, with which he maintained contacts.6
The catalogue has been so well researched that it is difficult to find anything to correct or to add. It would perhaps have been useful to recall that the Snoy family, from whom the dealer Lambert Jean Nieuwenhuys acquired Rogier’s triptych of the Nativity (end of 1440s; no.27) before selling it to the Gemäldegalerie in 1834, had also owned the so-called Pearl of Brabant triptych by Bouts (c.1465; Alte Pinakothek, Munich), sold to Melchior Boisserée in 1813.7 The Snoys had inherited the triptych from their ancestress Dorothée van t’ Sestich, who had married Guillaume Snoy in 1740 and who was the heiress of one of the great families of Leuven.8 Dyballa is perhaps too hasty in dismissing the significance of the several connections between Rogier’s triptych of the Nativity and the town of Middelburg in Flanders. By 1476 the church there, St Peter and St Paul, owned an important image of the Virgin. It was in the chapel of Donaas de Moor (d.1483). He was a furrier, one of the wealthiest men in Bruges and a great
2. Young woman, by Rogier van der Weyden. c.1440. Oil on panel, 49.1 by 33 cm. (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
philanthropist. He died in his small castle outside Middelburg, presumably across the border in Zeeland.9 In his will, dated Mechlin 5th December 1476, the chancellor Guillaume Hugonet, Lord of Middelburg, desired that, every Saturday and Sunday, after vespers and compline, the clergy of the church should sing a Salve Regina, a hymn or prayer to the Virgin, and go in procession ‘singing up to the chapel of Donaas de Moor outside the [liturgical] choir. In the chapel, in front of the image of the Virgin, they are to complete the Salve Regina’.10 Possibly, the ‘ymaige de Nostre Dame’ was the triptych of the Nativity and the donor de Moor. The small castle was perhaps the building behind the donor in the Berlin triptych. It was engraved for Flandria Illustrata as the castle of Middelburg and the residence of the countess of Isenghien (Izegem, near Kortrijk). However, the building cannot have been the castle of Middelburg, since, as recent research and excavations have revealed, it was a huge fortress.11
This reviewer disagrees strongly with the authors about the attribution to Rogier of the triptych of St John the Baptist, here called the St John altarpiece (no.29; Fig.1). The authors of this entry, Beatrix Graf and Dyballa, state that it is similar to the Miraflores triptych, a well-authenticated work by Rogier. Graf, who cleaned both triptychs, undoubtedly knows them better than anyone. The techniques of underdrawing and painting may be very similar but, in this reviewer’s opinion, the St John altarpiece was conceived by two different artists, neither of whom was Rogier. One designed the arches and preferred very elongated figures with small heads, well exemplified by the simulated statues of the twelve apostles that decorate the arches. The second artist was responsible for designing the foreground figures, who have rather large heads (especially Christ in the Baptism). In the Baptism, a residual section of a Miraflores-like pavilion and the draperies in the foreground disguise the uneasy relationships between the figures, the river and the framing arch. The Baptist straddles the river Jordan. His right foot is on one bank with the angel, while his left foot is on the opposite bank. In the Execution, Salome and the executioner turn away from each other. The executioner’s pose is exceedingly awkward; he is more unstable than any of the Miraflores figures. Although exquisitely rendered, Salome’s head and her demure facial expression seem at variance with her actions. That is because the designer has taken her head from a pattern drawing by Rogier of the head of the Virgin – evidently
by reversing the head of the above-mentioned Louvre drawing. Oblivious to propriety, the painter of the St John altarpiece has given the features and devout expression of the Virgin to the evil, vengeful Salome, who has brought about the death of an innocent man because he had told the truth about her mother. It seems unlikely that Rogier would have used a pattern for the Virgin for a figure of Salome.
Dyballa is incautious in proposing that the replica of the St John altarpiece (c.1510; Städel Museum, Frankfurt) could have been made in Spain. It has a chalk ground. In Spain, artists of the fifteenth century invariably painted on gesso grounds.12 The lost altarpiece of St John the Baptist, presented to St James, Bruges, in c.1477 by the Pisan merchant Giovanni Battista Agnelli and his Flemish wife could have been another version of the Berlin triptych.13 Dyballa denies this but her arguments are not conclusive. More could be said about the early sources that mention the lost Bruges triptych.
A careful study of the scratched out coat of arms on the reverse of Rogier’s Portrait of a young woman (no.25; Fig.2) and of the several early but little-known copies has established that Rogier’s painting was in Italy, probably in Florence, during the sixteenth century. If it arrived in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century, it could have impressed Leonardo and inspired him to conceive the compositions of his portraits of Ginevra de’ Benci and Mona Lisa. Ginevra’s almost insolent stare could have been influenced by the woman’s quizzical glance, with her raised eyebrow; Mona Lisa’s smile could have been a development of the subtle suggestion of an incipient smile of the woman in Berlin. The availability of serious and detailed catalogue entries for these highly important paintings will inspire present and future generations of art historians to investigate with greater understanding many significant issues, historical and aesthetic, and to perceive more clearly the innovations of the Netherlandish masters.
1 German edition: Niederländische und französische Malerei. ISBN 978–3–7319–1289–7.
2 V. Bücken: ‘La réception de Rogier van der Weyden dans un diptyque à portrait conventionnel: le cas de Guillaume Sculteti (Willem Sculteti)’, in A. Dimov, ed.: Rogier van der Weyden: contexte et réception, special issue of Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles 77 (2021), pp.87–118.
3 E. Verroken: ‘Tournai, Audenarde et Gand: un axe scaldien (XVe siècle)’, in L. Nys and D. Vanwijnsberghe, eds: Campin in Context: Peinture et société dans la vallée de l’Escaut à l’époque de Robert Campin 1375–1445, Valenciennes, Brussels and Tournai 2007, pp.223–38, esp. pp.225–27.
4 L . Weigert: ‘Performing the past: the tapestry of the city and its saints in Tournai Cathedral’, Gesta 38 (1999), pp.154–70, esp. p.161 and colour plates 2a and b.
5 Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, negatives B67/903 and B67/500. From the collection of Jean de Jullienne (1686–1766) in Paris.
6 See D. De Vos: Hans Memling: The Complete Works, Antwerp 1994, pp.14–16.
7 G.F. Waagen: ‘Ueber die Erwerbungen der GemäldeGallerie des Königlichen Museums wahrend der letzten zwei Jahre’, Allgemeine Preußische StaatsZeitung 181 (1836), pp.745–46, esp. p.745.
8 W. Schöne: Dieric Bouts und seine Schule, Berlin and Leipzig 1938, pp.180–81.
9 See N. Despars: Cronijcke van de lande ende graefscepe van Vlaenderen, ed. J. De Jonghe, 2nd edn, part 4, Bruges and Rotterdam 1842, pp.234–35.
10 W. Paravicini: ‘Zur Biographie von Guillaume Hugonet’, in K. Krüger, H. Kruse and A. Ranft, eds: Menschen am Hofe der Herzöge von Burgund: Gesammelte Aufsätze, Stuttgart 2002, pp.107–42, esp. p.135.
11 J. Haemers: ‘Middelburg na Pieter Bladelin’, Handelingen van het Genootschap gesticht onder de benaming ‘Société d’Émulation’ te Brugge 142 (2005), pp.215–65.
12 M. Jover, L. Alba and M.D. Gayo: ‘Maestros viajeros, obras importadas : Las tablas del Maestro de Sopetrán’, in L. Campbell and J.J. Pérez Preciado, eds: Rogier van der Weyden y España: Actas del Congreso internacional, Madrid 2016, pp.131–41, esp. pp.139 and 141, note 24.
13 W. Rombauts: Rijksarchief te Brugge: Het oud archief van de kerkfabriek van Sint-Jacob te Brugge (XIIIde–XIXst eeuw), I, Inventaris, Brussels 1986, pp.31 and 125.
The Queen Mary Psalter, Royal MS 2 B VII. British Library, London: Facsimile Edition and Commentary By Lynda Dennison, Nigel J. Morgan and Delbert Russell. 496 pp. incl. 55 col. ills. (Quaternio Verlag, Lucerne, 2023), €13,240. ISBN 978–3–905924–78–7.
by alixe bovey
The Queen Mary Psalter is one of the most extraordinary illuminated manuscripts made in England in the Middle Ages (Fig.3). Named for Queen Mary Tudor, to whom it was presented after being seized by a customs officer in 1553, the early fourteenth-century manuscript contains an exceptionally rich and inventive programme of illumination that constitutes, in the words of Nigel J. Morgan, an ‘encyclopaedia of the visual repertoire of early fourteenth-century English art’ (p.129). Beginning with a cycle of Old Testament images narrated by a unique Anglo-Norman French commentary, it includes a calendar, the 150 psalms, canticles and litany. Images in the distinctive, delicate style of the eponymous illuminator, known as the Queen Mary Master, accompany each element of the book. The Old Testament cycle and an extensive programme of images in the lower margin of each page are finely drawn and lightly tinted with wash; the miniatures and historiated initials are fully painted in vibrant, opaque pigments and gold. In the absence of explicit internal evidence
of the manuscript’s date, place of production, patron and first owner (not to mention the identity of its artist), much of the scholarship on the psalter has sought to resolve critical questions about its place in the context of elite art production in England in the first decades of the fourteenth century.
A new facsimile of the Queen Mary Psalter and an accompanying scholarly commentary have been published in a limited run of 520 enumerated copies. Not so long ago, it felt as if deluxe facsimiles that accurately represented important illuminated manuscripts were fading out of scholarly usefulness, however appealing they might remain for bibliophiles. Moreover, the price of most facsimiles puts them out of reach for all but the most committed libraries, and the availability of most if not all of the source manuscripts in highresolution digital facsimiles has made the printed facsimile redundant for most teaching and research purposes.
In 2012 the British Library, London (BL), published a complete set of images of the Queen Mary Psalter on its digitised manuscripts platform, enabling users to turn the pages of manuscripts and zoom in on details. This was the first time the whole book was accessible in colour anywhere other than the BL’s reading room: previously, researchers had to rely on the pioneering partial facsimile of the book (1912), with a still-indispensable commentary by George Frederic Warner, or on a grainy black-and-white microfilm. The publication of the present facsimile and commentary appeared at a moment when the supremacy of digital resources over conventional print suddenly seemed uncertain, coinciding with the collapse of the British Library’s online resources, including its catalogues and digitised manuscripts platform, as a result of a cyber-attack in October 2023. The BL is still in the process of restoring its online tools, and the complete digital facsimile of the Queen Mary Psalter is, for now, offline. The BL’s situation underscores the fragility of digital resources and demonstrates the continuing relevance of the physical facsimile.
The new facsimile of the Queen Mary Psalter is an exacting reproduction, replicating with uncanny precision the manuscript’s binding (including its metalwork fittings but excluding the now fragmentary embroidery of Mary Tudor’s pomegranate), even down to the tipped-in bibliographic slips on its first flyleaf and small irregularities in the parchment. Unlike the zoomable digital
facsimile, the fixed 1:1 scale of the printed volume ensures an appreciation of the complex interaction of word and image on each page, as well as the graceful precision of the Queen Mary Master’s drawings.
The erudite commentary volume, consisting of nine chapters, three appendices and a generous range of illustrations, makes a significant contribution in a number of ways. Written by Morgan, Delbert Russell and Lynda Dennison, it offers a critical synthesis of previous scholarship. Morgan provides comprehensive descriptions and insightful interpretations of its images. Russell breaks new ground by editing,
translating and contextualising the AngloNorman French texts, work that will be of particular importance to those interested in interactions between vernacular literatures and the reworking of biblical narrative in word and image. Building on decades of scholarship focused on the Queen Mary Master, Dennison presents compelling arguments for the Queen Mary Master’s origins, working methods, collaborators and imitators. Their commentary adds nuance to
3. Baptism of Christ, from the Queen Mary Psalter. England, c.1310–20. Illumination on parchment, 27.5 by 17.5 cm. (British Library, London, Royal MS 2 B VII, fol.190v).
the scholarly consensus that the Queen Mary Psalter was made in Westminster, probably with the involvement of both the palace and abbey. Dennison argues that it was probably commissioned by Queen Margaret of France as a gift for her stepson Edward II and his wife (her niece) Isabella, maybe associated with the birth or baptism of the future Edward III in 1312. Russell suggests that the psalter was intended to function as a ‘luxurious primer for Latin instruction in a royal household’, designed to grab the attention of a ‘young reader [. . .] captivated by the visual presentation of the Old Testament narrative, supplemented by someone reading aloud the Anglo-Norman captions’ (p.279).
Understandably, given its function as a facsimile commentary, the authors focus on description and interpretation: their arguments about the nature and significance of its makers, iconography, style, script, texts, materials, patronage, function, context and totality are interwoven into the chapters, with the volume ending without a synthetic conclusion. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that the Queen Mary Psalter was made by exceptionally capable and well-advised artists and scribes, and that it was, by design, able to sustain the routine attention of novices as well as experienced reader-viewers. Moreover, its combination of languages and pictures would have cultivated fluency in Latin, French and the interpretation of images. This volume offers an ideal first port of call for those interested in the Queen Mary Psalter: its learned interpretation of the manuscript is accompanied by careful consideration of the previous literature that it has attracted. It is to be hoped that the commentary quickly finds its way into all scholarly libraries with a stake in medieval studies.
Le tecniche della pittura medievale: materiali, lavorazioni e percezione visiva By Virginia Caramico. 244 pp. incl. 74 col. ills. (Einaudi, Turin, 2024), €28. ISBN 978–88–06–25952–5. by machtelt brüggen israëls and angela cerasuolo
In studies published in the 1980s by such pioneers as Henk van Os and Dolf van Asperen de Boer, a call was made for the worlds of art history and of restoration and scientific research to operate in
unison.1 Despite their efforts, however, the compartmentalisation of these disciplines has persisted. It continues to jeopardise an understanding of the genesis of a work of art and the intentionality of the artist, as well as the ability to make informed decisions about restoration and presentation. This book by Virginia Caramico, which is a felicitous union of art-historical and technical expertise, is therefore a rare and welcome exception.
In evocative prose, Caramico offers an exercise in the ‘philology of perception’ of the polytechnical and polymaterial surfaces of late medieval Italian panel and wall painting, ‘aimed at retrieving what is missing on the surface, what can no longer be seen, but also problematising what the painters never intended to be seen’ (p.xxiv). Her approach is to combine a discussion of the techniques described by Cennino Cennini in his Il libro dell’arte (written c.1400) with consideration of the condition of works and, above all, close looking, focusing not only on the way in which pictorial effects were achieved but also on why they were chosen.
The author aims to provide a key for reconstructing the visual experience of medieval Italian art at the time it was conceived – an alternative Baxandallian period eye. Caramico argues that this can be done by identifying what time has altered or erased. This allows one to come closer to the original intention of a painter, or at least to address the question of what it may have been. The steps to acquiring that consist in understanding the layers of a medieval painting: the preparation of the support, the paint, the varieties of metal leaf, their tooling, as well as the inclusion of inserted gesso and wax reliefs, gems, glass, mirrors and paper. These aspects are explored in five chapters, each of which concludes with a bibliography.
The study has a pocketbook format and is abundantly illustrated with illuminating details, almost a quarter of which are photographs taken by the author. The brevity of the text has, however, inevitably entailed selectiveness in the source material. Given the author’s interest in what she calls the medieval painter’s ‘counterfeiting of the epidermic truth of things’ (p.183), one would have wished for comparisons between pictorial effects and the textures of the objects they are meant to represent. Caramico relies heavily on the technical research of such scholars as Vincenzo Gheroldi but leaves out a vast body of technical investigations and recreations of painting techniques produced by major institutions, such as the Technical
Bulletin published by the National Gallery, London. These omissions are partly a result of the author’s focus on case studies in Italian churches and collections. Another limitation is the author’s choice to work with the Cennini edition by Veronica Ricotta and to neglect the literature on the technical exegesis of the treatise, including the editions by Fabio Frezzato and Lara Broecke.2 In addition, Caramico’s use of the treatise to explain the effect of technical choices on contemporary viewers would have been bolstered by a closer engagement with Victor Schmidt’s hypothesis that Cennini wrote not necessarily for painters but for those interested in the art, although it is an implicit assumption in her text.3 There are some misunderstandings of Cennini’s recipes and advice. The recipe for glue to ‘incollare carte per fare i strafori’ (p.36) is unlikely to mean ‘glue pieces of paper to make pounced cartoons’ for the transfer of a design, as Caramico and others argue, but rather to ‘glue pieces of paper to make fretwork’, referring to coloured paper pasted behind the open or hollow parts of carved frames, a technique that has recently been discovered in polyptychs by Carlo Crivelli.4 Similarly, Cennini’s recommendation for recognising the best type of gold leaf at the gold beater’s workshop is more likely to have been mareggiante e tosto (undulating like waves and brisk) than mareggiante e tristo (undulating like waves and sad; p.89), as Ricotta transcribes it, which Caramico accepts.5
Caramico’s earlier work on the Sacro Speco, Subiaco, feeds into the present book.6 In the fresco of St Stephen by the Master of the Dossal of Montelabate in the lower church at Subiaco (c.1338–43), the stones of his martyrdom are represented by physical stones that project from the wall – one of many instructive examples of the richness in surface texture of medieval Italian painting. The effect of the stones is to blend painting with sculpture and reality. Caramico dubs such ‘rendering of a certain material with its true material counterpart’ a ‘tautological mimesis’ (p.233). She also explores other experiments with lifelike composition undertaken before the introduction during the Renaissance of linear perspective and the substitution of gold backgrounds with painted scenes. This allowed artists to achieve a composition that could be controlled and avoid the unpredictable effects of gold, which differ according to light conditions and the angle from which the material is viewed. Caramico is attentive to such visual effects. For example, in her analysis of the frescos in the choir at
Subiaco painted by a Perugia workshop in the second quarter of the trecento, which include the use of metal leaf applied in relief, she highlights that, as the monks moved during Mass, the way in which the fresco appeared to them would have changed. In a discussion of Masaccio’s Trinity (c.1427; S. Maria Novella, Florence), she observes the impressions left by strings that the artist stretched taut over the surface, which were then pulled back and snapped back onto the wet plaster, thus creating straight lines. She argues that the resulting unevenness of the surface contributed to an intended play of light and shade; elsewhere she notes that the original white sheen of many silvered altarpiece frames would have resembled white marble.
Caramico demonstrates that materials transfigured by light were imbued with sacred meaning in the period by quoting the late thirteenth-century theologian Bartolomeo da
4. Detail in raking light from the equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano, by Simone Martini. c.1330. Mural painting. (Palazzo Pubblico, Siena).
Bologna. In his Tractatus de luce, Bartolomeo defines splendor – which is one step below the divine lux in his hierarchy of light – in relation to the reflectiveness of a gilded panel, a ‘tabulam deauratam’ (p.xvi).
Attention is given to Simone Martini, who developed a variety of stamps to tool surfaces of his frescos while they were still wet, notably in his equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano. A crescent shape stamp was used for the gorget, which was originally covered with tin; the stamped lattice pattern on Guidoriccio’s surcoat and the use of an ochre paint resembling gold evoked the surface of the woven fabric at low cost (Fig.4). Another artist discussed is Gentile da Fabriano. Into the dark brown of the burnished (‘brunito’, or browned) gold of the picture surface he incised angels, which would have seemed to appear and dissapaear, depending on the light and the position of the viewer. One of the book’s great merits is that, alongside these famous artists, there is discussion of lesser-known ones, some of whom are from southern Italy, such as the Master of the Oratory of S. Monica a Fermo,
whose frescos depicting Jesus’s childhood, the legend of St Blaise and stories from Genesis (c.1428–30) in S. Biagio, Piedimonte Matese, feature here. It is to Caramico’s credit that her study invites the reader to experience the work of art not through flattening photography but in person and in situ. In doing so, it can change the way one looks at and moves in front of late medieval Italian painting.
1 H.W. van Os and J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer: La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo: il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, Bologna 1983, p.2.
2 V. Ricotta, ed.: Il Libro dell’arte di Cennino Cennini, Milan 2019; C. Cennini: Il libro dell’arte, ed. F. Frezzato, Vicenza 2004; and L. Broecke, ed.: Cennino Cennini’s ‘Il libro dell’arte’: a new English translation and commentary with Italian transcription, London 2015.
3 V.M. Schmidt: ‘Hypothesen zu Funktion und Publikum von Cenninis Libro dell’Arte’, in W.-D. Löhr and S. Weppelmann, eds: exh. cat. Fantasie und Handwerk: Cennino Cennini und die Tradition der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco, Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) 2008, pp.147–51.
4 A practice observed by Rossanna Allegri, as cited by A. Delpriori: ‘Frames and carpentry in the altarpieces of Carlo Crivelli’, in A. Hilliam and J. Watkins, eds: exh. cat. Carlo Crivelli: Shadows on the Sky, Birmingham (Ikon Gallery) 2022, p.92, reviewed by Richard Stemp in this Magazine, 164 (2022), pp.497–99.
5 For tosto, see C. Cennini: Il libro dell’arte, o trattato della pittura, ed. G. Milanesi and C. Milanesi, Florence 1859; for a discussion of the possibility that it can be transcribed as tristo or tasto, see Frezzato, op. cit. (note 2), p.228; for tristo, see Ricotta, op. cit. (note 2), p.230.
6 V. Caramico: Il Sacro Speco di Subiaco illustrato: topografia sacra e narrazione per immagini fra Due e Trecento, Florence 2020, reviewed by Donal Cooper in this Magazine, 164 (2022), pp.1035–36.
Il caso Giorgione
By Bernard Aikema. 264 pp. incl. 150 col. ills. (Libri Scheiwiller, Milan, 2024), €52. ISBN 978–88–7644–735–8.
by giorgio tagliaferro
The disproportion between the meagre information about Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (c.1474/82–c.1510), and the plethora of scholarly interpretations of his paintings has little equal in the study of Renaissance art. Aside from a damaged fresco fragment from the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice (1508; Ca’ d’Oro, Venice), there are no surviving documented works by him and only a handful of unanimously attributed paintings. These include the Three philosophers (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), the Tempest and the Vecchia (both Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice). However, these and other similar works that have been attributed to Giorgione do not fit any obvious iconographical tradition and their dating and subjects are mostly obscure, thus leaving room for speculation about their meanings.
Giorgione himself is shrouded in mystery. The little we know about him is almost entirely derived from biographical accounts rather than contemporary documents. Notwithstanding this, he has been allocated a key role in the history of Venetian painting, being credited with introducing an innovative treatment of colour tones that reproduces the dynamic quality of light on surfaces and with teaching it to other local masters, most notably Titian (c.1485/90–1576).
Taking for granted that Giorgione was the initiator of a new school of painting, scholars have therefore expanded his catalogue by attributions, which has made things even more complicated. Although some writers have already highlighted this discrepancy between facts and hypotheses, this thoughtprovoking book by Bernard Aikema is the first systematic attempt to peel back the layers of interpretation and discussion accumulated over time, thus approaching the artist’s work from a different standpoint.
In the first part of the volume, Aikema reviews the early biographies of Giorgione to reveal how erroneous and misinformed they are. A thorough examination of the works assigned to the artist by Giorgio Vasari in the two editions of his Lives (1550 and 1568) demonstrates that his attributions are – with the exception of the Fondaco frescos, which were on public view – vague, unverified or wrong. It seems clear that Vasari had little acquaintance with Giorgione’s art, yet he described the painter from Castelfranco as the inventor of the maniera moderna in Venice. In this way – Aikema suggests – Vasari sought to show that a new style derived from Tuscan art had taken over in Venice through a linear development from Giovanni Bellini (c.1424/28–1516) to Giorgione to Titian.
Aikema applies the same critical approach to Carlo Ridolfi (1594–1658), who in his account of the artist in Le Maraviglie dell’arte (1648) expanded on Vasari to produce the image of him that has been handed down to us almost unquestioned. Since almost all Giorgione’s paintings were in private collections and largely inaccessible, it was easy for Ridolfi to fabricate an implausible corpus replete with portraits and mythological subjects, the genres deemed the most important for determining a painter’s qualities. In addition, he associated Giorgione with monumental half-bust figures caught in spectacular and eccentric poses, a subject that sold well in the seventeenth century but did not exist in Giorgione’s time. Ridolfi was motivated by commercial interests, which he
shared with another critic, Marco Boschini (1613–81), and two artists, Nicolas Régnier (1591–1667), known in Italy as Niccolò Renier, and Pietro della Vecchia (1603–78), the latter a notorious forger of paintings by Giorgione. Importantly, Ridolfi, like Vasari, omitted the few works that are now considered to be the core of Giorgione’s œuvre – the Tempest, the Vecchia and the Three Philosophers; according to Aikema, these had no obvious consequences for Venetian art and were therefore of no interest to Ridolfi. Finally, he both fostered and was inspired by a poetics of the wondrous that was pursued by Baroque poets close to him, such as Giovanni Battista Marino (1569–1625), but had no relevance for Giorgione. Aikema shakes the field to its foundations. Challenging over-expanded catalogues of the artist’s œuvre, he rejects paintings that many consider authentic, such as the Castelfranco altarpiece (c.1500–04; Castelfranco Cathedral), the much-debated Double portrait (Palazzo Venezia, Rome) and the the Portrait of a solider with a sword, called the Gattamelata (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), as well as the Singer and Musician (both Galleria Borghese, Rome) and Concert (private collection). However, this is not a matter of connoisseurship. For Aikema, the essential point is that these paintings do not belong culturally to what he calls the ‘Giorgione group’. This consists of small-format pictures characterised by attention to detail, refined execution and enigmatic iconography, and which also reflect a taste for the atmospheric rendering of figures immersed in, rather than set against, landscapes. They are part of a broader phenomenon spreading across both sides of the Alps between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, inspired by the delicate and precise art of the early Netherlandish painters known as the Feinmalerei, cultivated by the artists of the Danube School (Donauschule) and appreciated by elite circles of Venetian collectors. Crucially, this artistic tendency is not confined to Giorgione alone, and therefore Giorgione’s authorship of the works in the ‘Giorgione group’ is, according to Aikema, only one option among many.
This issue is explored in the second, constructive part of the book, suggestively titled ‘Microhistories’. Here the author examines in detail the most significant works of this group, which include paintings, drawings and engravings by Lorenzo Lotto, Correggio, Leonardo, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi and Marcantonio Raimondi. Instead of delving into the interpretative mazes of the Tempest or the Vecchia, or approaching the phenomenon as a
merely stylistic matter, Aikema tackles these works from a wider cultural perspective and so turns the ambiguities of Giorgione’s works, which have puzzled so many interpreters, into a revealing aspect of the group’s production. He reads these pictures as conversation pieces for learned discussion, in which the process of making meaning is more important than the meaning itself. Such discussions would be a product of the same culture that made the dialogue a favourite format for sixteenth-century writers, and one for which a multiplicity of interpretations was fundamental. Consequently, Aikema argues, it makes no sense to continue searching for one single, definitive reading, for these paintings are informed by a hermeneutics of indeterminacy deliberately aimed at prompting a discourse among viewers who appreciated both the openness of the subjects and their dynamic mode of execution. The Tempest, for instance, is read in relation to Danube School paintings portraying nature inhabited by satyrs and wild people, who represent a primitive state of humankind. Giorgione’s bucolic vision would therefore tap into humanistic discussion about the origins of civilisation, set between Lucretius’s positive and Hesiod’s negative characterisations of progress. The Vecchia is placed within a tradition of heads of old women connected with the theme of memento senescere (‘remember that you must grow old’), which could be read either positively or negatively. Likewise, two other paintings that Aikema accepts as by Giorgione, the Laura (c.1506) and Boy with an arrow (both Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), are thematically and semantically open, with elusive erotic allusions that evoke the effects of love conjured up by Petrarchan poetry. It is difficult to fully acknowledge the subtleties of this book and evaluate its consequences. The dismantling of our certainties about Giorgione, conducted with rigour and lucidity in the first part, is a fundamental repositioning of the subject. There remains ground for discussion of what is or is not by Giorgione, given that to some extent attribution and connoisseurship play a role even in Aikema’s definition of Giorgione’s œuvre. However, the book encourages us to pause from the task of, for example, focusing closely on details of brushwork and reflect instead on the inconsistencies in a catalogue that has come to include works too heterogeneous in concept, format, technique, spirit and vision. Aikema re-evaluates Giorgione’s art as part of a cultural trend developed out of exchanges between northern
and southern Europe that had almost no impact on the development of Western art, as it was superseded by the monumental art of Raphael and of Titian’s third maniera. It was, in the author’s view, a novel but not an innovative phenomenon, the novelties of which were rather conservative.
Some readers will not be prepared to accept the challenges that this book presents, which involve abandoning the traditional image of the artist. However, Aikema brings a fresh perspective to the subject, and it would be a mistake to overlook the new direction he presents, which offers an escape from the interpretative impasse of Giorgione studies. Approaching these paintings as open works rather than as iconographical riddles seems reasonable, although Aikema does not say whether room remains for further elaboration of their meanings, or whether we should consider this field a dead end. Only future research will show if there is more to learn about these paintings, or whether we should instead dismiss ‘the Giorgione case’ and move on to other topics.
Abbild, Nachbildung, Trompe-l’œil: Textilien im Textil
Edited by Evelin Wetter, with contributions by Juliane von Fircks, Juliette Calvarin, Anja Preiss, Stefanie Seeberg and Sabine Jagodzinski. 200 pp. incl. 101 col. ills. (Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, 2024), CHF 85. ISBN 978–3–905014–81–5.
by cybele tom
Illusionism in painting has been a central topic in the study of Western art, at least since Pliny’s account of the artistic contest that pitched the Greek painter Parrhasius against his rival, Zeuxis. Parrhasius won by painting a curtain that deceived Zeuxis into trying to pull it aside. This stimulating volume of collected essays turns the tables on the relationship between painting and textiles by investigating aspects of illusionism in textiles, and particularly the ways in which they represent other textiles. Together, the six essays and the introduction by Evelin Wetter, a curator at the Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, throw fresh light on the medium’s mimetic potential, demonstrating that the topic deserves more attention than it has previously received.
The book accompanied the exhibition Augentäuschung: Textile Effekte und ihre Imitation (Optical Illusion: Textile Effects and their Imitation)
at the Abegg-Stiftung in 2024. Like the exhibition, it highlights three main ways in which a textile can represent another: Abbild, Nachbildung and trompe l’œil. Accurate English translations of the first two terms are not straightforward, since both mean ‘copy’. In the volume the authors work with more specific definitions, closer to ‘reproduction’ for the first term and ‘replica’ for the second. To introduce these categories, Wetter thoughtfully mines the Abegg-Stiftung’s collection. She presents the reader with a host of examples and draws informative connections with objects not in the collection, which are further discussed in the papers that follow.
Abbild designates a textile that copies the characteristic ornamental pattern or motif of another; it is a pictorial mode of resemblance. The medallion pattern falls into this category. Juliane von Fircks’s essay examines the long history of this widely dispersed motif, which was used, in particular, in connection
with luxury silk cloth from Byzantium, Sasanian Iran and, before that, the gold appliquées on Achaemenid imperial dress. Von Fircks argues that its reproduction in different media and contexts led to a dilution of meaning and connotation, a process she describes as semantic bleaching, a term borrowed from linguistic studies. In a similar vein, Stefanie Seeberg presents an embroidered bench cover (1539; Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig) that copies the pattern of an Ottoman knotted rug in its top register and adapts contemporary woodcut print illustrations to depict a narrative in its lower register. Both essays show that reproducing a prestigious motif can lend status to a new object and its patron in a context entirely unrelated to the original use.
Nachbildung occurs when a textile is replicated by imitating its material or visual effects. Juliette Calvarin examines embroidered depictions of Mary Magdalene’s velvet cloak on a group of Swedish liturgical vestments from the late fifteenth century, connecting their recreation of velvet’s soft pile to tactile longing, a prevalent devotional theme associated with the Magdalene (Fig.5). Anja Preiss’s focuses on the facture of relief embroidery on several orphrey crosses depicting the crucifixion, made between the last quarter of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth, now in the treasuries of the cathedrals of Halberstadt and Minden, and in the Museum of the Archdiocese, Wrocław. She expands notions of imitation beyond that of optical resemblance by considering not only formal but also technical aspects: the high relief embroideries not only created threedimensionality comparable to sculpture but also adapted sculptural prototypes and techniques of casting.
A trompe l’œil seeks to deceive the eye, and in painting usually involves illusions of depth and the projection of the pictorial space into the viewer’s space. Both Wetter and Sabine Jagodzinski explore the ways in which tapestry weaving and embroidered manuscript illumination, respectively, approximate painterly effects and play with tropes borrowed from painting for their own purposes. Wetter focuses on a group of small-format tapestries that incorporate illusionistic borders, among other conceits, in order not only to stimulate the eye and mind and thus encourage devotion, but also to stage the main image as a spiritual vision. Jagodzinski demonstrates how needle painting and or nué techniques
5. Crucifixion with Mary Magdalene, detail of a chasuble. c.1450–60 and c.1480–1500. Velvet and embroidery in silk and gold thread on linen. (National Historical Museum, Stockholm).
draw attention to a lavish entry in an early seventheenth-century album amicorum of Philipp Hainhofer (c.1614; Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel), a German banker.
The volume’s tight focus – textiles in textiles – places double emphasis on the medium, merging scholarship on representation and mimesis with arttheoretical discourse, in particular Victor I. Stoichita’s concept of the self-aware image, which in this case is the meta-textile. This combination successfully expands the framework of mimesis beyond the resemblance of image, motif and form to other kinds of imitation, for instance of technique, material, visual and haptic effects and production processes. The approach has great potential for transmedial and intermedial studies more broadly, as well as for notions of medium specificity. The volume points to the need for further research. For instance, as Wetter notes, a tapestry that goes so far as to imitate the green selvedge typical of the costliest red velvets demonstrates a self-consciousness of other textile types as well as the sophistication of the weaver’s compositional choices. Yet the significance of that feature is even greater, since in Renaissance Italy velvet selvedges were subject to close regulation and an important means of identifying and controlling the dye substances used.
Fircks quotes Gottfried Semper, whose view of textiles is strikingly at odds with today’s focus on painting. The medium is unique, he wrote in Der Stil (1860), in having ‘develop[ed] its types from within itself or borrow[ed] them directly from nature’. The other arts ‘borrow their types and symbols from textile art’ (p.27). Although Semper’s observation are no longer accepted, Fircks astutely points out that, especially in silk weaving, image and structure are materially one. All the essays in this volume, in their content and technical rigour, make a convincing case that this intimate symbiosis between image and structure involves many parts of the textile making process, both on and off the loom, such as warp direction, spun or unspun threads, stitch technique and dye choice, which all affect the appearance of the final image. To better engage with some of the detailed observations made in the text, this reviewer would have wished for more illustrations at a higher magnification. As an example of the kind of original scholarship produced by art historians who study the details of artistic processes, the book shines in ways that rival the objects it spotlights.
Female Printmakers, Printsellers, and Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women c.1700–1830
Edited by Cristina S. Martinez and Cynthia E. Roman. 273 pp. incl. 20 b. & w. ills. (Cambridge University Press, 2024), £85. ISBN 978–1–108–84477–2.
by elena cooper
Cristina Martinez and Cynthia Roman have edited an impressive array of fifteen arthistorical essays that reveal the extensive presence of women in all aspects of the art and business of prints in the long eighteenth century. The result is a volume that pushes back against the archival gender bias that is evident in the priorities that have informed record creation and preservation, as well as in the relative lack of records of women’s contributions within a family business or in a domestic context. The book also breaks new ground in placing centre-stage women’s contribution to printmaking and graphic arts, a genre that is relatively understudied in comparison with painting.
The essays are grouped into three themes. The first, consisting of chapters by Madelein C. Viljoen, Paris A. Spies-Gans, Heather McPherson and F. Carlo Schmid, explores the strategies of self-promotion and self-presentation used by high-profile women printmakers. In the second group, Hannah Lyons, Kelsey D. Martin, Rena M. Hoisington, Rita Bernini and Roman explore the contribution of women printmakers who were not high profile and worked in the shadow of a patriarchal family. The final group of chapters, by Sheila O’Connell, Amy Torbet, Tim Clayton, Nicholas J.S. Knowles, Allison M. Stagg and Martinez turns away from printmaking, focusing instead on the contribution of women to the business of publishing and selling prints.
Some chapters can be read as stories of women’s liberation through the business and art of prints. For example, in her contribution, ‘Maria Hadfield Cosway’s “genius for print”’, Spies-Gans links Cosway’s decision to pursue printmaking as a means of earning money to the general influence of Mary Wollstonecraft’s statement in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that for women ‘to earn their own subsistence’ is ‘the true definition of independence’ (p.30). Indeed, some of Cosway’s prints, such as A progress of female dissipation and A progress of female virtue, published by Rudolf Ackermann
in 1800, directly addressed the obstacles that women faced, and can be seen as early forerunners to the radical use of art as a means of social criticism explored by the curator Linsey Young in the exhibition Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at Tate Britain in 2023.1
McPherson’s chapter, ‘Caroline Watson and the theatre of printmaking’, presents the highly successful career of the British professional engraver Caroline Watson (1760/61–1814). The author focuses both on Watson’s large theatrical subjects engraved in stipple for Robert Edge Pine, which include depictions of Shakespeare’s female characters Ophelia and Miranda as well as Mrs Siddons as Euphrasia, and on the prints commissioned by John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (the Death of Cardinal Beaufort and Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess). Watson, the daughter of a printmaker, James Watson (1740–90), learnt engraving at home. Although she did not exhibit her work publicly, her prints were in wide circulation and were regarded highly, as is reflected by the prestigious commission by Boydell.
Martinez’s chapter, ‘Jane Hogarth: a printseller’s imprint on copyright law’, discusses the important role played by Jane Hogarth (1709–89) in managing the family print-selling business after her husband William’s death in 1764. This included her successful campaign for an extension to copyright protection for his prints by reviving expired copyrights, which was included in the Engraving Copyright Act 1767. Although Martinez presents this as a ‘unique’ grant by the legislature (p.190), she notes that Hogarth was not the only widow to find herself running a family prints business: similar activities were conducted by Anne Fisher (widow of the mezzotinter Edward Fisher), Mary Brown Ryland (widow of the engraver William Wynne Ryland) and Elizabeth Bartlet Bakewell (widow of the engraver Thomas Bakewell). Indeed, other branches of the law that we today term intellectual property expressly granted rights to widows; the Cutlers’ Company Acts of 1801 and 1814, for example, granted trade marks in cutlery wares to members of the Cutlers’ Company with a life-interest transferrable to their widows on their death.
Although the presence of women in print-selling and printmaking includes stories of liberation, the more dominant narrative is of the extensive barriers that women faced. For example, Viljoen’s chapter, ‘Show-offs: women’s self-portrait prints c.1700’, while claiming that the ‘self-portrait empowered [. . .] women artists
to deliver distinctive statements about their creative identities’ (p.11), also uncovers the ways in which their choices were influenced by patriarchal power. In navigating ‘the highly gendered divisions between the public (male) and private (female) spheres’ (p.14), many women avoided self-portrayal altogether, and those that did not ‘leaned heavily on male authority figures’ to justify their selfrepresentation (p.12). For example, self-portrait etchings by Maria de Wilde (1682–1729) are evidence both of the care that women took in presenting their image and of deference to the patriarchal family; the self-portrait (Fig.6) expressly refers to her father, Jacob de Wilde (1645–1721), a senior officer in the Amsterdam admiralty. Although there was a market for portrait prints of accomplished women artists, it was a strategy employed by only a few, and ‘their success mostly hinged either on winning over or yielding to the approval of men’ (p.24). Similarly, in ‘Living “in the bosom of a numerous and worthy family”’, Lyons claims that for many women, ‘having a close (usually male) relative in the trade was really the only way’ both to learn the printmaking trade and to earn a living from it and the home workshop was a ‘highly gendered space’ (p.90; emphasis in original); women were expected to ‘be respectful of the family hierarchy and dependent on the men within it’ (p.86). Roman’s chapter, ‘Etchings by ladies, “not artists”’, uncovers the importance of privately produced etchings by women of high social
status, such as Lady Isabella Carlisle (1721–95) and Lady Louisa Augusta Greville (1743–79), but also illustrates the ways in which these artistic activities, as the contributions of so-called ‘amateurs’, were separate from ‘canonical work produced by professional artists’ (p.152).
One recurring theme in a number of chapters is the importance of attribution practices to the historical cultural record. Although the book demonstrates that it is wrong to assume that women were always, as Martin writes, ‘anonymous artisans’ (p.91), there are also examples where women’s contributions – especially those from a family of printmakers – are elided by a tendency for only the family name to be used by the printmakers. Interestingly, copyright rules mandating a publication line on engravings –requiring that the name of the owner of the engraving’s copyright appeared on each print – are cited by two of the contributors, Torbet and Martinez, as a practice that provides the art historian with a source for tracing women copyright owners.
In conclusion, Female Printsellers makes a significant contribution to how we understand printmaking and print-selling in the long eighteenth century. The product of rigorous scholarship of the highest quality, it is highly recommended to all scholars of art, culture and society in the eighteenth century.
1 Reviewed by Catherine Grant in this Magazine, 166 (2024), pp.303–05.
Discover Manet & Eva Gonzalès
Edited by Sarah Herring and Emma Capron. 120 pp. incl. 70 col. ills. (National Gallery Global, London, 2022), £16.99. ISBN 978–1–85709–688–0.
by emily a. beeny
This slender volume, edited by Sarah Herring and Emma Capron, both curators at the National Gallery, London, accomplishes an impressive feat. Published in conjunction with a concise exhibition of the same title (closed 2023), it is a major contribution to the literature on both Edouard Manet (1832–83) and his sole pupil, Eva Gonzalès (1847–83), whose portrait (Fig.7), painted by her master and exhibited at the Salon of 1870, forms the centrepiece of the study.
The product of some forty sittings, according to contemporary accounts, the work has attracted both praise and censure since its first showing. Upon its completion, Manet’s
friend and colleague Berthe Morisot called it the best thing he had ever painted.1 Salon critics were less generous. They described it as a caricature, ridiculing its sitter’s beaky nose and likening her to a wax doll.2 By the time Hugh Lane acquired it in 1906, however, it was widely hailed as a masterpiece. It entered the National Gallery in 1917. The portrait has faced harsher judgment in recent decades from feminist scholars including Tamar Garb, Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock. They have pointed to Gonzalès’s white dress – an impractical garment to paint in – and the oddly framed flower painting on her easel as evidence that Manet did not take his pupil’s professional ambitions seriously, casting her as an allegory of painting rather than a working painter.
The truth, as Herring, Capron and other contributors to this book reveal, is more interesting and complicated. Combining technical research, careful consultation of primary sources and keen critical insight, they place the portrait in a rich new context that spans the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, addressing the picture’s art-historical lineage, the personal and professional meaning it had for both artists, as well as its subsequent fortunes in Lane’s collection and bequest. Herring and Capron here offer what is surely the most nuanced appraisal of Gonzalès’s production to date, addressing both her life as a working artist |and the role she plays in Manet’s portrait.
Herring’s introductory essay provides a compelling account of Gonzalès’s formation before her arrival in Manet’s studio, which brings to light the crucial contributions of her first teacher, Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825–91). Too often dismissed in the literature on Manet as a shallow, academic foil to Gonzalès’s second master, Chaplin, in fact, distinguished himself both as a leader of the Rococo revival – a phenomenon that touched almost every corner of French culture in the third quarter of the nineteenth century – and as a teacher of female artists then excluded from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, notably Mary Cassatt, Louise Abbéma and Madeleine Lemaire. Manet, too, took an interest in the Rococo revival, and many readers will be surprised to discover the evidence presented in the book that he and Chaplin regarded each other with mutual respect, suggesting that Gonzalès’s switch from one to the other need not be construed as a rupture.
An incisive essay by Herring and Capron follows. They trace the descent of Manet’s portrait from self-portraits by
6. Self-portrait, by Maria de Wilde. Print, 20.8 by 14.6 cm. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
such eighteenth-century artists as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Angelica Kauffman, who presented themselves as allegories of painting. Seen in this light, Manet’s decisions to costume Gonzalès in a white robe en gaulle (an informal, loose-fitting muslin dress) and place a still life after Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1636–99) on her easel acquire new meaning as carefully selected elements of an eighteenthcentury allegorical mise en scène. Capron’s
superb analysis of Gonzalès’s response to Manet – ‘by turns admiring, independent, and sometimes critical’ (p.74) – comes next. She draws heavily on correspondence and exhibition reviews. In keeping with recent scholarship, she proposes that Gonzalès’s mastery of pastels (acquired in Chaplin’s studio) probably inspired Manet’s late turn to this medium – and not the other way around. Close, comparative readings of pairs of works by the two artists, including still lifes with peonies and scenes of couples at the opera and the beach, further enrich her analysis.
Hayley Tomlinson and Catherine Higgitt contribute a technical study of the Gonzalès portrait. Combining advanced imaging techniques with close examination of unfinished paintings by Manet and accounts of his studio procedures from Morisot, Jacques-Émile Blanche and Antonin Proust, among others, they trace the picture’s laborious revision process and startling change of format. The composition was originally framed with rounded corners and only converted into a proper rectangle after Manet’s death. An essay by Hannah Baker on the painting’s acquisition by Lane for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin (now the Hugh Lane Gallery), completes the volume, addressing the picture’s meaning for turn-of-the-century artists and critics in Dublin and London, where Lane stored much of his collection, and where it remained after his death aboard the RMS Lusitania in 1915. At once precise in its focus and attentive to broader issues (including histories of pedagogy, technique, gender and collecting), this book opens up a capacious understanding of its subject. Many heavier volumes on these two artists can boast less in the way of fresh insight and information than readers will find in these hundred pages.
1 ‘Jamais Manet n’a rien fait d’aussi bien que le portrait de Mlle Gonzales; il a peut-être encore plus de charme que lorsque tu l’as vu’. Letter from Berthe Morisot to Edma Pontillon, March 1870, in D. Rouart: Correspondance de Berthe Morisot, Paris 1950, p.37. When Morisot saw it again at the Salon she was less certain, writing to Pontillon that ‘Mlle Gonzales est passable, mais rein de plus’; see ibid., p.38.
2 See V. Fournel: ‘Le Salon de 1870’, La Gazette de France (8th June 1870), unpaginated; and G. Klein: ‘Salon de peinture 1870’, in Le Rideau 2 (1870), p.3.
Halsey Ricardo: A Life in Arts and Crafts By Mark Bertram. 224 pp. incl. 98 col. + 50 b. & w. ills. (Lund Humphries, London, 2025), £55. ISBN 978–1–848–22720–0.
by michael hall
When he died in 1928 at the age of seventyfour, Halsey Ricardo was remembered by his son, Harry, as ‘the happiest man I have ever known’ (p.101). One reason for that was his certainty of purpose. After leaving Rugby School, where he learned to admire William Butterfield’s buildings, he decided ‘I am either an architect or nothing’ (p.13). Following two years as a pupil in the office of John Middleton in Cheltenham, he moved to London in 1874 to work for Basil Champneys (1842–1935), a choice that suggests he was well informed
7. Eva Gonzalès, by Edouard Manet. 1870. Oil on canvas, 191.1 by 133.4 cm. (National Gallery, London).
about architectural fashion. Champneys, a leader in the new Queen Anne style, was busy with one of the key buildings of the decade, Newnham College, Cambridge, and in his office Ricardo began to establish the links with the Arts and Crafts movement that were to be so important for his career. After two years with Champneys, he embarked on a European study tour, during which he made an ascent of Vesuvius with James Rendel, whose father, Alexander, was the head of a distinguished engineering dynasty. On Halsey’s return to London in 1878 he set up in practice and four years later married James’s sister Kate. Ricardo seemed set for a brilliant career. To the advantages of his training and marriage he added striking good looks and a memorable name (he was a great-nephew of the famous Jewish economist David Ricardo; Halsey, pronounced ‘Hall-sey’ was his mother’s maiden name). Yet the stars never quite converged. Ricardo is remembered today, if at all, as the designer of one of the outstanding houses of an exceptional period of domestic design in Britain. Usually referred to as Debenham House after the couple who commissioned it in 1904, 8 Addison Road, Kensington, is famous for the confluence of Arts and Crafts talent who worked on its interiors and for its prominent use of structural colour in the form of glazed bricks, tiles and mosaic. The most distinctive aspect of Ricardo’s architecture is its polychromy, based on the expertise he gained from working for a decade, from 1888 to 1898, as the business partner of the most celebrated of all Arts and Crafts ceramicists, William de Morgan (1839–1917), to whom he had been introduced by Champneys.
Hopes that Debenham House might be simply the best-known representative of a stream of equally distinguished buildings by Ricardo are dashed by this book. Its author is one of the architect’s great-grandchildren but, although he has drawn deeply on a rich store of family archives and memories, this is far from being a work of piety. An architect himself, Mark Bertram brings a trained eye and lucid prose to analysing not only Ricardo’s occasional flashes of genius but also his relatively modest output of largely undistinguished buildings. For many years Ricardo’s life was taken up with small-scale alterations and additions to existing houses, often for his wife’s large family, and by preparing entries to competitions that he never won, although they include some imaginative designs, as for municipal buildings in Oxford in 1891, which sets a large expanse of glass in a masonry cradle in a way that Bertram compares to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s
somehow characteristic, that Ricardo never scraped together the money to visit India.
later Glasgow School of Art. When he did get a promising commission, for a small country house in Bramley, Surrey, in 1898, to be known as Orchards, his clients took one look at a house being built nearby at Munstead Wood and replaced Ricardo with its unknown architect, Edwin Lutyens.
Kate Ricardo once wrote to her husband that she was ‘always expecting to wake up one morning and find you overwhelmed with clients’ (p.100). This never happened and without her family’s money they could not have afforded their large house in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The book paints an appealing picture of a contented, culturally progressive late-Victorian couple, who are commemorated by a blue plaque on their house recording that their son Harry, another distinguished engineer, was born there. Indeed, without the support of his wife’s family, Ricardo’s career would not have amounted to much. In particular, they obtained for him his largest and most unexpected commission, the enormous Howrah railway station in Calcutta, on which he began work in 1901. Its bold silhouette, a cluster of pyramidal-capped red-brick towers, makes it look from a distance like a medieval town set within the city. To judge from the book’s photographs, it is well preserved despite being in busy use. It is curious, but
The station was, however, an outlier, and most of Ricardo’s output consisted of buildings that are at best, even in the country house he designed for himself at Graffham, Sussex, in 1905, weak reflections of work by Ernest George, Philip Webb and other leading domestic architects. Bertram is good at analysing where their faults lie. In particular, Ricardo – who seems not to have welcomed advice – was poor at planning and was unable to avoid chimneys popping up in awkward places. His gift was for colour. He first made striking use of polychromy in 1887 in the form of painted and gilded terracotta friezes on the façade of an office in Great George Street for Alexander Rendel, which does not survive. He had hoped to use glazed bricks as well, in order to achieve bright colour that could easily be cleaned of atmospheric pollution, but too many failed in the kiln, a technical problem he did not overcome until his partnership with De Morgan.
In 1892 Rendel commissioned a pair of semi-detached houses in Melbury Road, Holland Park. These were a break-through for Ricardo, both technically, in their cladding with ox-blood glazed bricks, and aesthetically, as their Queen Anne forms have an authoritative confidence that he had rarely demonstrated before. A lease of one of the houses was granted to the newly married Ernest and Cecile Debenham. Their commissioning of Debenham House indicates
8. Perspective of Debenham House, London, from the garden, by Thomas Hamilton Crawford. c.1905. Watercolour. (RIBA Collections, London).
that they must have liked it. It would be good to know more about this couple, whose money came from Ernest’s family’s chain of department stores. In his detailed analysis of Debenham House, Bertram reveals that the grass-green and peacock-blue glazed bricks on its façades (the forms of which were inspired by Raphael’s Villa Madama, Rome) were not part of the original design. He also suggests that it may have been the Debenhams’ idea to clad the dome of the double-height galleried hall with its spectacular mosaics, since Ricardo had envisaged it being left white. It was thanks to him that the house was fitted out by his friends in the Art Workers’ Guild – as well as tiles by De Morgan, there is woodwork by Ernest Barnsley, plasterwork by Ernest Gimson and glass by Edward Prior. The success of the house makes one regret what he might have achieved if he had encountered more rich clients who liked him and knew their own minds.
In 1946, almost twenty years after Ricardo’s death, the architect, historian and critic H.S. Goodhart-Rendel, a cousin by marriage, said to Nikolaus Pevsner that Ricardo was ‘dark, spectacularly good looking, musical and a typical architectural amateur. He was mainly important through his friendships with other people. He had a great theory to make buildings washable’ (p.199). Readers of Bertram’s book are unlikely to disagree with this judgment, while feeling that Ricardo, lucky in so many ways, has been fortunate to have his intriguing career recorded in such a model monograph, which as well as being engagingly written is well illustrated, designed and produced. Its rich selection of the beautiful drawings for Debenham House by Ricardo and the perspectivist Thomas Hamilton Crawford (Fig.8) and the colour photographs of its splendid interiors are especially valuable given that, after years in institutional use, and following a well-informed restoration early in this century, his masterpiece has returned to private occupation and is no longer publicly accessible.
ORDER A BOOK
To order a book reviewed in The Burlington Magazine, please visit www.burlington.org.uk, where a link will take you to John Sandoe Books. By ordering your book through our website, John Sandoe Books will generously donate a percentage of the sale back to the Magazine, supporting our mission to publish new research on art and its history.
Jewish Country Houses
Edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green. 352 pp. incl. numerous col. ills. (Profile Editions, London, and The National Trust, 2024), £45. ISBN 978–1–80081–035–8.
by clive aslet
When the late Jacob Rothschild opened his Wunderkammer, called the Treasury, at Waddesdon a few years ago, he told this reviewer that ‘Rothschilds have always liked buying extravagant things’. Here was a man who had no difficulty in recognising Rothschild taste as genetically inherited. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Rothschilds built several country houses on large estates in the Home Counties – Mentmore Towers, Tring, Ascott and Waddesdon. Their tastes were cosmopolitan but above all French, something suggested by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild’s choice of Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur and Elie Lainé, both of whom came from Paris, as Waddesdon’s respective architect and landscape designers in 1874. The Rothschilds were not alone. The Sassoons and the Ephrussis were similarly international and similarly attracted to exquisite, opulent and expensive things. So long denigrated for their difference, in the nineteenth century wealthy Jewish families such as these made a point of asserting it while at the same time seeking to assimilate.
Opulence is not the principal focus of this book. In fact, the editors disassociate themselves from anything as homogenising. Their aim is to cast the net wider, hauling in a broad and more disparate catch of owners, whose tastes, lifestyles and country residences varied considerably. The approach is suggested by the plural of the title, which avoids suggesting that there is something inherent to Jewish taste that can be seen in the patronage of wealthy Jewish families, which would have led the editors into territory that they rightly identify as being ‘as dangerous as it is wrongheaded’ (p.15). Instead, Juliet Carey and Abigail Green take a more exploratory path, assembling a fascinating collection of a dozen or so houses in Britain, on the Continent and in the United States, evocatively photographed by Helen Binet and discussed in fourteen chapters by a range of contributors. Their aim, in line with the broader research project that this book is an outcome of, is to show that there were many different ways in which houses could be Jewish than by seeking to be ‘exotic’ or ‘other’, even if this has often been how they have been perceived, particularly by
those pursuing antisemitic agendas.1 In some ways, this is refreshing. Old cobwebs are blown away and the subject is seen in all its variety. There are some issues, however.
One is in the use of the term country house. It is notoriously difficult to define. Broadly it means a large house with dependencies (stables, kennels and lodge gates) in the middle of a landed estate. Before the nineteenth century land ownership was key: it conferred prestige, political power and the opportunity to socialise with members of the cultural elite. It also offered a chance to create a picturesque Elysium and generally display wealth while still possessing a good investment. For such outsiders as foreigners, nonconformists and industrialists to buy into this world, so much associated with the aristocracy, was a sign of achievement, but not quite of arrival; upper-class shibboleths prevented a newcomer from being fully accepted. Owning land became less desirable at the end of the nineteenth century, when an agricultural depression set in, and after the First World War it seemed a positive liability. The criteria therefore tend to change with reference to houses built in the twenty-first century, which are unlikely to be supported by a working estate, although owners might want the appearance of a landed life because they like shooting or, increasingly, rewilding.
As an architectural form, the country house is associated particularly with Britain. One could argue that, largely because of the weekly articles on them in Country Life, this building type has been given too much prominence in the study of British architectural history. But that does not mean that it is helpful to regard any large non-metropolitan dwelling as a country house, as Carey and Green do. East Cliff Lodge, Moses Montefiore’s large home on twenty-four acres of chalk cliffs outside Ramsgate, demolished in 1954, was a sign of his affluence as a banker but does not suggest any desire to assimilate with the elite. It was too small to hold shooting parties. Since the site is as near to France as it is possible to get on the British mainland, it was probably chosen because he travelled so much – a place from which to reach the Continent, not the shires.
Individually, the essays in this book are often interesting. One learns, for example, about Broomhill, outside Tunbridge Wells, the home of the Salomons family until 1937, when it was bequeathed to Kent County Council. The original house was commissioned by David Salomons (1797–1873) and designed by Decimus Burton. Salomons’s nephew, David Lionel, had additions built in a variety of styles, including,
in 1896, a science theatre for the exhibition of his discoveries. However, the smattering of Continental homes presented here, such as the painter Max Liebermann’s villa on Lake Wannsee, built in 1910 to designs by the German architect Paul Otto Baumgarten, have little in common with the preponderance of British examples, and indeed stretch the idea of the country house beyond the limits of its usefulness as a term of categorical analysis.
The result is somewhat mixed, then. The Villa Kerylos, on the French Riviera, is a remarkable example of an archaeologically correct villa in the style of Ancient Greek. Commissioned by Théodore Reinach, designed by Emmanuel Pontremoli and completed in 1912, it is cleverly adapted to the expectations of the Belle Epoque in matters of plumbing and electricity. By contrast, Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, remodelled by Benjamin Disraeli, is unexpected for being dull by comparison with the rings and velvet robes in which the future Prime Minister first appeared on the benches of the House of Commons, which were despised by his less flamboyant contemporaries as a racial trope. This dichotomy is not explored in the essay on the house. As for Frances Braham, Countess Waldegrave (1821–79), one of whose four husbands inherited Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill in Twickenham (a villa, not a country house), her father, the singer John Braham had long forsworn his Jewish background, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and none of her husbands was Jewish. The essay’s author, Nino Strachey, argues that Waldegrave flaunted her Jewish heritage through heraldry and collecting, but the evidence does not necessarily suggest this. In short, this stimulating book offers a thorough and welcome deconstruction of the Jewish country house.
1 ‘JCH: Jewish country houses & their worlds’, available at jch.history.ox.ac.uk, accessed 12th September 2025.
International Departures: Art in India after Independence
By Devika Singh. 312 pp. incl. 68 col. + 36 b. & w. ills. (Reaktion Books, London, 2023), £30. ISBN 978–1–78914–798–8.
by tapati guha-thakurta
This book traces the international connections that propelled the high-tide of modernism in India from 1947, when
it became independent, to the 1980s. The proposition that Indian art acquired its fully-fledged modernist contours through encounters with the contemporary art worlds of the ‘West’ (mainly Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States) is well established. This view of the ‘West’ – as a cultural force that shaped the course of Indian modernism and set the criteria for what qualified as truly ‘modern’ – received powerful art-historical validation in these same decades. Devika Singh’s book takes its place within a field of art practice and writing steeped in debates on decentring modernism and remapping its chronologies and geographies across the globe. It opens with a pragmatic disclaimer that the author is not offering a ‘grand national narrative’ about modernism in Indian art and its rising international prestige. Nonetheless, such a narrative is omnipresent, as Singh undertakes a detailed exploration of individual careers, state patronage and private networks, investigating ‘this vibrant and largely uncharted interface between Indian and international art’ and foregrounding ‘the embedded hierarchies’ in India’s positioning in transnational art circuits that were ‘at the same time connected and unequal’ (pp.8–9).
In keeping with its title, the book’s own ‘international departures’ – the way it navigates an international arena of Indian art – can be tracked on many levels. Firstly, the entity of ‘art’ is expanded here to include architecture, photography, documentary cinema and trade fair pavilions, all creatively positioned within the circuits of modernist art criticism and travelling exhibitions. Secondly, one of the author’s central areas of research lies in an archive of institutional cultural exchanges. These range from state invitations and private commissions that brought foreign artists, architects, critics, art collectors and film-makers to India, to the network of galleries and patrons that enabled Indian artists’ residencies abroad and careers in such cities as London, Paris and New York, as well as the hosting of travelling exhibitions of Soviet and American art, the Indian Triennale and major international expositions that placed post-independence India on a global art map. Thirdly, the book makes an important intervention in positioning these transnational art worlds within the political context of the Nehruvian and post-Nehruvian Indian state and its ‘utopian internationalism’, the polarisations of the Cold War, the conflicting pulls of Euro-America and the Soviet Bloc, the Non-
Aligned Movement, decolonisation and the forging of new ‘Third World’ solidarities. The first two chapters, which trace stories of inward and outward international flows, are meant to balance each other out in a structure of reciprocity. Chapter 1, ‘Participating in the Indian scene’, stands out for the attention it draws to the lesser-known Indian careers of several international artists, from independence to the early 1960s. In addition to the three well-discussed Jewish émigré artists and art critics in post-war Bombay – Rudolf von Leyden, Walter Langhammer and Emanuel Schlesinger – and the close connections they forged with the Bombay Progressives, readers are introduced to, for example, the American-Japanese sculptor and photographer Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi, with close connections to the Nehru family, arrived soon after independence. Through Noguchi’s links, the sculptor Alexander Calder travelled through the country in the mid-1950s and the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller visited twice, in 1958 and 1969, for lecture tours. Singh’s account of the making of Italian film director Roberto Rossellini’s India: Matri Bhumi (1959), with its complex layers of personal and professional tensions, is riveting, as is her discussion of Le Corbusier’s work in India, which takes the reader inside the team of his celebrated Chandigarh project and beyond, to the privately commissioned Villa Sarabhai, Ahmedabad, completed in 1955. Although Jawaharlal Nehru remains the towering persona and presence of this chapter, the equally influential force that emerges is that of the Sarabhai family, who played a key role in transforming 1950s Ahmedabad into the modernist design capital of India. The next chapter, ‘Questions of travel’, charts a more familiar territory of Indian artists’ travels abroad on cultural-exchange scholarships and residencies to three vibrant hubs of contemporary art: London, Paris and New York. It offers new detail on the networks of critics, collectors, art schools and galleries that formed the main support structure for resident Indian artists during the 1950s and 1960s. As Singh herself admits, however, what unsettles the balancing act of chapters 1 and 2 is the sharp unevenness of the terms of international exchange. The importance of the India careers of these foreign artists, architects and film-makers was clearly more marked in the country that hosted them than in the larger international professional spheres that they returned
to. By contrast, in the perceptions of the Indian artists and those writing about them, sojourns abroad took on a defining role in their artistic careers and the wider acclaim of Indian art. In such accounts, the India from which they travelled abroad appears as a place of outdated art education marked by a lack of infrastructure for modern art practice; the artists Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza are most explicit in this verdict. Their home country is set off against London, Paris and New York, where, in Raza’s words, ‘art was a vital, essential activity’ (p.122), and where they found entry into an enabling circle of art galleries and exhibitions. The London of the late 1960s was where the young Geeta Kapur was mentored by such figures as John Berger and Peter de Francia at the Royal College of Art, and she and her partner, Vivan Sundaram (Fig.9),
along with several others, forged new South Asian and ‘Third World’ identities. As Singh puts it, the coming of age of Indian artists in these settings was ‘as much political as it was aesthetic’ (p.106).
Yet, as Singh observes, it was in the nature of the constitutive inequality of India’s location in this international world that, despite the buoyancy of response and reception, Indian art and artists remain largely invisible in the modern art archives of these Western cities. This inequality of impact and visibility also cuts into modern Indian art history in other ways. The opportunities for travel and fellowships abroad that are presented in the second chapter also underscore a world of exclusions and inclusions within India’s multi-regional art worlds of these decades. The artists who figure prominently belong to an established modernist canon – a well-known BombayBaroda-Delhi line-up – with only passing references to artists from ‘elsewhere’, such
as Paritosh Sen in New York or Meera Mukherjee in Munich, and to travels to the countries of the Soviet Bloc. If the Western institutional archives expose blind spots about the international presence of Indian art, so does a book such as this. It reinforces an existing narrative of India’s artistic modernism, adding new research to fortify its hold over the field. And in doing so, it turns away from other unexplored personal and institutional archives of international encounters of Indian artists, many of which supplant the ‘West’ with the ‘East’, making Japan, China or Indonesia the competing destination of modern artistic pilgrimages over these same decades. Rabindranath Tagore and the artists of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan – the best known among them, Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee – provide a number of instances of travels and artistic exchanges with these Asian countries, through the early and mid-twentieth century. To stick to Singh’s own terrain, it must be underlined that a specific ideology of post-war ‘internationalism’ and its configuration of a ‘Third World’ gives her work its chosen historical and spatial focus, and also determines the archives she explores. As the narrative progresses into the late 1960s, chapter 3 brings this world order of ‘internationalism’ to a crescendo in the age of the international expos and trade fairs, signposted by the multi-media installations and pavilion designs that gave India pride of place in these settings. An arc of architectural modernism comes full circle within the book, taking the reader from Noguchi’s 1950s photographs of the astronomical structures of Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory, completed in 1724, to the look-alike of the Samrat Yantra sundial at Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar that served as the portal of the India pavilion at the Expo 67, Montreal. Five years later, Asia 72, the Third Asian International Trade Fair at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, marked a final, grand cheer in celebration of Nehru’s India. In a pavilion named after him, an exhibition focused on his life was put together by Charles and Ray Eames and Dashrath Patel of the then newly founded National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. That both the Nehru Memorial Pavilion and Raj Rewal’s Hall of Nations were demolished in 2017 speaks to the latter-day cultural ravages that have turned this history on its head – and makes Asia 72 an iconic symbol of an optimistic era of internationalism and nationhood to look back upon from the detritus of the present.
A longstanding editor for the ‘Survey for London’, an astute architectural scholar and a personable educator, Andrew Saint effortlessly combined many skills. His time as a professor in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture shaped numerous future careers, and his contributions to the ‘Survey’ enriched the history of London’s urban fabric.
by colin thom
It is given to very few people to write with the elan and fluency of Andrew Saint, the eminent architectural historian, who has died aged seventy-eight. His first major study in 1976 of the Victorian architect Richard Norman Shaw brought a freshness and vitality to writing on architecture that had been missing perhaps since the heyday of Sir John Summerson, whose books Andrew greatly admired and with whom he was sometimes compared. There followed a prodigious output. A committed, dedicated man, he could work at a ferocious pace without sacrificing quality or his ability to ‘inform and entertain’, as his preface to the Norman Shaw book announced was his ultimate aspiration. But he will be best remembered for his contributions to the renowned Survey of London series, which he served loyally in two stints: firstly in the 1970s–80s as its architectural editor, and latterly from 2006 until his retirement in 2019, mostly in the principal role of General Editor, a title which gave him particular pleasure.
Andrew John Saint was born on St Andrew’s Day 1946 (the likely source of his forename) to the Revd A.J.M. (Max) Saint and his wife, Elisabeth. His father was vicar of St Philip and St James in Oxford (a George Edmund Street church) and Chaplain at Guy’s Hospital, London. Max Saint was himself a scholar, publishing on missionaries in Sarawak, Malaysia, and Mariology. After education at Christ’s Hospital, Sussex, Balliol College, Oxford, and the Warburg Institute, London, Andrew began his career as a part-time lecturer in art history at the University of Essex.
While working on his Norman Shaw book in the early 1970s, Andrew made his unpublished research available to the Survey of London for its volume on the Museums Area of South Kensington (vol. 38), so he was already known to the staff there when, in 1974, the post of Architectural Editor became vacant on the departure of James Steven Curl – a role for which Andrew was ideally suited. Hitherto there had been a separation in the Survey between general background history and formal architectural descriptions, the latter written by the Architectural Editor. Under Francis Sheppard as General Editor, the Survey was already becoming a far more sophisticated instrument, but Andrew can be credited with severing that increasingly old-fashioned distinction between ‘history’ and ‘architecture’ and encouraging a more seamless, discursive style that was the hallmark of his own writing.
By then the Survey was under the aegis of the Greater London Council (GLC), the successor body to the London County Council, which had for so long supported its work, and Andrew revelled in the role of public historian in what by the early 1980s was becoming a strongly left-wing municipal government. He also enjoyed the Survey’s close working relationship with the GLC’s Historic Buildings Division, where (for reasons too abstruse to recite here) his post sat. The interaction between the two bodies was one of the distinctive features of the Survey’s time at the GLC
and did much to cement Andrew’s philosophy that scholarship, recording and publishing should be intimately connected with the practical side of building conservation, rather than kept institutionally distinct from it. Like C.R. Ashbee, the Survey’s founder in 1894, he also saw caring for the built heritage and promoting creative new architecture as parallel, rather than divergent, activities. Andrew saw a danger in keeping the nation’s historical past at arm’s length from contemporary architecture, and in architects viewing their works in isolation from local context and history. Two events in the opening half of the 1980s brought this phase of his career to a close. Firstly, his mentor Francis Sheppard retired in 1983, to be succeeded as General Editor of the Survey by Hermione Hobhouse, and shortly afterwards Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government dismantled the GLC, much to Andrew’s dismay. In 1986 he went with the Historic Buildings Division to the London Region of English Heritage, rather than with former Survey colleagues to the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. There he remained until 1995, bringing under his wing a talented cadre of young historians whose researches supported the quango’s essential work in protecting and interpreting the historic environment. His publications at this time included: a study of post-war British schools, Towards a Social Architecture (1987), which he had begun while with the GLC, commonly regarded as one of his finest books; also Exploring England’s Heritage: London (1991), written (apparently) in whisky-fuelled bursts with Elain Harwood; and The Chronicles of London (1994), co-authored with his good friend Gillian Darley.
Andrew Saint photographed in 2013. (Photograph Chris Redgrave).
In 1995 he took up a professorship in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. Andrew always abhorred the administrative confusion and power politics of public bodies like the GLC and English Heritage and was also uncomfortable within academia; but his devotion to his students was absolute, his innate altruism making him a much-admired tutor, and architectural teaching at Cambridge today still bears his imprint. However, his time there was marred in 2004 by the threat to close his department, brought on by the government’s divisive research assessment exercise. It was a threat he helped to quash but that precariousness made all the easier his decision in 2006 to return to the Survey of London when the post of General Editor became vacant on the retirement of John Greenacombe, a friend and former colleague from the Francis Sheppard days.
That return brought on the happiest period of Andrew Saint’s professional life, and under him the Survey thrived. His dynamism and enthusiasm drove the series forward at a prodigious rate, matching that set in the 1960s and 1970s by Sheppard. This was despite having to manage further institutional change, when the Survey moved in 2013 from English Heritage to UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. Colleagues recall working with Andrew on the Survey as being essentially a matter of struggling to keep up. Churches and whole streets were written with his marvellous lucidity before you even knew they had been begun. A proud and passionate resident of South London, he regretted the cold shoulder turned towards it by the Survey since 1956 and so volumes on Woolwich (2012) and Battersea (2013) were soon despatched. A return to the West End followed, also at Andrew’s behest, with studies of South-East Marylebone (2017) and Oxford Street (2020). Andrew was hardly a big-time operator but he had charm and guile enough to procure additional funding
sources for the Survey when needed – financial support from great estates for the Marylebone and Oxford Street projects, and generous subsidies for publishing costs from the Paul Mellon Centre. Characteristically, Andrew’s devotion to his Survey role did little to halt his personal output, and this period witnessed some exceptional Saint publications, including The Architect and Engineer (2007), and a revised and much-enlarged edition of Richard Norman Shaw (2010).
No one could work with Andrew without being profoundly inspired and influenced by him, and the same is true of the students he nurtured at Cambridge University and elsewhere. Perhaps his greatest legacy, therefore, beyond his extraordinary back catalogue, is the talented corps of former colleagues and students who now populate the fields of art, architectural and urban history, each carrying with them more than a little bit of Saint. That capacity to engage and inform came from his deep, genuine interest in other people – he always wanted to understand their passions, what made them tick. And so, despite Andrew’s luminous brilliance as a historian and writer, my abiding memory is of his generosity and humanity. There were many examples of this over the years, but one sticks in the mind: a Survey of London book launch. At the end of his speech, Andrew gave the usual lengthy thanks and acknowledgements to all those who had contributed to the volumes. It was only later that he realised he had forgotten to thank the lady who had designed them. We celebrated long and late into the night. But first thing the next morning, Andrew was at her door with an enormous bouquet of flowers by way of an apology. That was typical of the man.
Andrew is survived by his partner, Ida Jager, and three daughters: Lily, Catherine and Leonora.
among this month’s contributors
Clive Aslet is the publisher of Triglyph Books and co-host with John Goodall of the podcast ‘Your Places or Mine’.
Sylvain Bédard is Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Cinema and Audiovisual Media, University of Montreal.
Emily A. Beeny is Chief Curator of the Legion of Honor and Barbara A. Wolfe Curator-in-Charge of European Paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Alixe Bovey is Professor of Medieval Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
Dušan Buran is a Researcher at the Institut of Art History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.
James Cahill is a writer and critic. His most recent book is The Violet Hour (2025).
Lorne Campbell was formerly Senior Research Curator at the National Gallery, London.
Cloe Cavero de Carondelet is a historian of Spanish art and visual culture based in Princeton.
Angela Cerasuolo is Associate Professor of the history of artistic techniques and the methodology of conservation at the University of Siena.
Elena Cooper is Senior Lecturer at CREATe, University of Glasgow.
Amy Concannon is Manton Senior Curator, Historic British Art, at Tate.
Edward Corp is Professor Emeritus of British History at the University of Toulouse. His publications include The Stuarts in Italy, 1719–1766 (Cambridge 2011).
Hugh Doherty is Lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.
Amy Golahny is Logan A. Richmond Professor of Art History Emerita at Lycoming College, Williamsport.
Tapati Guha-Thakurta is an art historian and Honorary Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
Michael Hall is the former Editor of The Burlington Magazine.
Hannah Halliwell is Lecturer in nineteenthcentury French art history at the University of Edinburgh.
Machtelt Brüggen Israëls is Senior Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Amsterdam and Research Curator of Italian painting at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Anna Jozefacka is an independent scholar and curator based in New York.
Guillaume Kientz is Director and CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York.
Luise Mahler is an art historian and Adjunct Associate Professor in Art Market Studies at the Graduate School of FIT, New York.
Rossella Monopoli is a PhD candidate at the Warburg Institute, London.
Raffaella Morselli is Professor of Modern Art History at Sapienza University of Rome.
Emma Roodhouse is a curator and researcher, working freelance and for Colchester & Ipswich Museums.
Sabine van Sprang is Senior Curator of Flemish Painting 1550–1650 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
Edward J. Sullivan is Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art at New York University.
Giorgio Tagliaferro is Reader in History of Art at the University of Warwick.
Lucia Tantardini is a Fellow of Clare Hall and Affiliated Lecturer in History Art at the University of Cambridge.
Colin Thom is Director of the Survey of London at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
Cybele Tom is a conservator and doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Chicago.
NICHOLAS STONE (1586–1647)
PROVENANCE
Almost certainly the Earls of Pembroke, Wilton House; By descent to Constance Gwladys Robinson (née Herbert) (1859–1917), daughter of the 11th Earl & sister of the 12th Earl; Lady Juliet Duff (née Lowther) (1881–1965), niece of the 13th and 14th Earls; Given to Mary Anna Sibell Elizabeth Marten OBE (1929–2010), Crichel House, Dorset, 1964
