Tag: Baroque Art

Book Launch | Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting – Dr Christopher R. Marshall | Ian Potter Museum of Art

Book cover of Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the WorkbenchBy Dr Christopher R. Marshall

Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the Workbench | Dr Christopher R. Marshall Date: Thursday 20 Oct 2016, 6.00- 8.00pm Venue: Ian Potter Museum of Art, Swanston St, University of Melbourne, Parkville Free but RSVP essential: http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/public-programs/current-events/prgm-date/2016-10-20/prgm/book-launch-baroque-naples-and-the-industry-of-painting-the-world-in-the-workbench Join Dr Gerard Vaughan AM, Director, National Gallery of Australia for the Melbourne launch of Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the Workbench by Dr Christopher R. Marshall. In Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting, Marshall presents a new reading of seventeenth-century Italian Baroque art that explores the social, material, and economic history of painting, revealing how artists, agents, and the owners of artworks interacted to form a complex and mutually sustaining art world. Through such topics as artistic rivalry and anti-foreign labour agitation, art dealing and forgery, cultural diplomacy, and the rise of the independently arranged art exhibition,…

Lecture | The passions of the soul – Emotion in the paintings of Nicholas Poussin , Lisa Beaven

The passions of the soul – Emotion in the paintings of Nicholas Poussin Lisa Beaven The restoration of the NGV’s Crossing of the Red Sea provides us with a timely opportunity to re-evaluate its creator, Nicolas Poussin. He is one of the most studied, but also one of the most misunderstood, of seventeenth-century artists. Traditionally he has been seen as a strict classicist who valued reason above all else. And yet in a series of paintings from the 1640s, such as Landscape with a man killed by a Snake, idyllic landscapes not only fail to deliver the safety they seem to promise, but instead bring violence and death. The expression of extreme states of emotion, not reasoning, is at the heart of these works, and Lisa will argue that they represent a direct response to his immediate intellectual environment The…

What are you looking at? | Mark Shepheard – Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea

Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1633-34 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Poussin’s Crossing of the Red Sea was once something of a problem painting. Indeed, its exact relationship to the pendant Adoration of the Golden Calf (National Gallery, London) has made great fodder for undergraduate essay questions. The two works, clearly related in content and—as we shall see—origin have often been seen as quite dissimilar in composition and style, and these differences were once taken to indicate that the two paintings date from slightly different periods in the 1630s. We know from Bellori’s Life of Poussin (1674) that both the Crossing and the Golden Calf were painted for Amedeo dal Pozzo, Marchese del Voghera (1579-1644), and that they hung in his palazzo in Turin. Luigi Scaramuccia in his treatise on Italian painters—Le finezze de’ pennelli italiani, 1672—adds…

News | NGV unveils restored Poussin ‘The Crossing of the Red Sea’

Today the National Gallery of Victoria unveiled Nicolas Poussin’s The Crossing of the Red Sea’ after an intensive, twelve-month conservation project. The painting is one of the NGV’s, and arguably Australia’s, finest European masterpieces. It was painted by Poussin in 1633-34 along with its companion piece The Adoration of the Golden Calf, which is housed in the National Gallery in London. The restoration project was sponsored by BNP Paribas Australia & New Zealand, who have for the past eighteen years helped to restore over two hundred paintings, including works from the Chateau de Versailles, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Neue Pinakotheque in Munich and many other collections. The painting was cleaned twice during the twentieth century, once in 1947 while still in a private collection, and again in 1960 by London-based restorer Horace Buttery, in connection…

Review | Franco Mormando, ‘Bernini: His Life and His Rome’. Reviewed by John Weretka

Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, 2011 John Weretka Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011 (ISBN-13 978-0-226-53852-2). Surprising as it may be, in a world awash with biographies of his somewhat older contemporary, Caravaggio, Bernini has all too frequently been overlooked in the traditional life-and-works genre. After filling the better part of half a century with a torrent of works in almost all media and for almost all occasions, the employee of a succession of popes and a leading figure in shaping the look of Rome during its seventeenth-century Golden Age, Bernini passed into eternity almost unnoticed: as Franco Mormando notes, we know reasonably little about the artist’s death and funeral exequies from contemporary notices, all the more surprising given the sumptuousness of the similar events to which he contributed during his own life.…

What are you looking at? | David Packwood – Giuseppe Caletti, David with the Head of Goliath

Giuseppe Caletti, David with the Head of Goliath, Birmingham Museums and Art Galleries, c. 1650 The future King of Israel, David, is contemplating the head of the slain Goliath, champion of the Philistines. As the book of Samuel recounts, David hurls a stone from his sling, which hits Goliath in the centre of his forehead and fells him; David subsequently cuts off his head which results in the flight of the Philistines. In Caletti’s painting, David seems to focus on the wound made by his slingshot; it is a congealed ochre smear, the aftermath of violence, reminiscent of the great red spot of Jupiter, or a bloodshot cyclopean eye. Now the giant’s real eyes are closed forever, but this mark seems to fascinate David as he seems to think back to the time of the battle. The impact must have…

What are you looking at? | David R. Marshall – Bernini’s Raimondi Chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome 1638–48

Bernini’s Raimondi Chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome 1638–48 David R. Marshall The Raimondi chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio is proof of the triumph of sculpture over painting. At 8.30am on a cold winter’s morning, when the church opens, it is the one well-lit part of the church (Fig. 1). Opposite, Sebastiano del Piombo’s Christ at the Column is plunged in gloom, from which it is barely rescued by artificial lighting (Fig. 2). To be sure it is a question of condition, but then the condition of the Raimondi chapel is not great either, with loose pieces of marble lying about, but it does not affect the experience. What stands out is the sarcophagus below the right hand Raimondi (Monsignor Girolamo, died 1628) (Fig. 3). The Bernini conceit of hinging back the top of the sarcophagus (which I…

Exhibition Review | Guercino: A Passion for Drawing – The Collections of Sir Denis Mahon and the Ashmolean Museum by David Packwood

Guercino: A Passion for Drawing – The Collections of Sir Denis Mahon and the Ashmolean Museum Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, 11th February 2012 to 15th April 2012 Reviewed by David Packwood Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino (1591-1666) because of his squint, was one of the most prolific draughtsmen of the seicento. Many of his drawings survive, attesting to his industry, commitment and unwavering belief in his art. Born in Cento—mid way between Bologna and Ferrara—the biographers say that he drew from the age of six. Beckoned by the flourishing Carracci academy in Bologna, Guercino went there to study their art, but had the confidence to set up shop on his own. With the election of a Bolognese pope from the Ludovisi family in 1621, Guercino found artists from that region favoured, and so he graduated to painting ceilings of palaces…

EVCS: Callum Reid ‘Annibale Carracci’s Holy Family at the National Gallery of Victoria’

Callum Reid ‘Annibale Carracci’s Holy Family at the National Gallery of Victoria’ This paper examines the little- studied Holy Family by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), which hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria, and discusses its style, iconography and position within the artist’s oeuvre. The subject of the ‘Holy Family’ was repeated several times during the artist’s transition from a Bolognese to a Roman style, and it provides a means of studying this development closely through a comparison between each painting: the constancy of theme and figures serves to highlight the critical changes in style. This paper presents the Melbourne Holy Family within the context of these smaller devotional works, considering both the social and personal transitions that they represent. It also brings to light new documents concerning the painting’s provenance and artistic reception. Date: Monday 5th September, 2011, 6:30pm. Venue: Rm 150, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, the University of Melbourne, Parkville. All Welcome. Drinks and nibbles provided (gold coin…

Call for Papers: Rembrandt van Rijn Symposium – Scholarship for the New Century

Call for Papers Rembrandt van Rijn Symposium: Scholarship for the New Century Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH Deadline: Sep 1, 2020 In conjunction with the exhibition Rembrandt Paintings in America and Rembrandt Prints in the Morgan Library, both to be presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art February 19 to May 28, 2012, the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art are sponsoring a half-day symposium on the art of Rembrandt van Rijn, to be held on April 15, 2012. We seek papers from younger scholars, either advanced dissertation students or those who have finished their doctorate from 2002 to the present, on any aspect of Rembrandt’s paintings, prints, and/or drawings, including the history of collecting and exhibiting Rembrandt’s work and Rembrandt historiography. Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to Jon Seydl, The Paul J.…

Funding: Opler Research Fellowship in Architectural History

Opler Research Fellowship in Architectural History Worcester College, Oxford University, October 01, 2020 Application deadline: Jan 10, 2021 Worcester College, Oxford is pleased to be able to offer a two year residential Fellowship in the study of Renaissance or Baroque architectural history through the generosity of the Scott Opler Foundation. Applications are invited from scholars of any nationality and academic affiliation in the final year of their dissertation or within the first four years after the completion of their Ph.D., D.Phil. or comparable degree. Topics may include any area or aspect of European architectural history during the Renaissance or Baroque era including urbanism, landscape and garden history, drawing and design method, theory and publication, architectural representation, as well as studies of architecture and related disciplines. The Opler Research Fellow will receive a stipend of £25,751 per annum (revised annually) and will have access to certain travel, research and publication funds.  The Fellow…

Call for Papers: International Conference on Arts, Ideas, and the Baroque

Call for Papers International Conference on Arts, Ideas, and the Baroque Hosted by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University in collaboration with the Montréal Baroque Festival 24-26 June 2011 2011 Theme: Deadly Sins This conference seeks to examine the ‘baroque’ in the early modern world as well as its echoes and resonances across time. Defined differently by different academic traditions, the notion of the baroque remains a point of reference as well as contention, and a signifier of cultural legacy as well as innovation – as in the notion of the ‘neo-baroque’. We propose to investigate the rich artefacts, representations, and influence of the era—particularly around the theme of Deadly Sins (also the theme of the 2011 Montréal Baroque Festival to be held in conjunction with this conference). We invite papers which address interdisciplinary scholarship and…

John Weretka – Giuseppe Maria Crespi ‘Ecstasy of St Margaret of Cortona’

What are you looking at? John Weretka Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Ecstasy of St Margaret of Cortona, 1701. Museo Diocesano, Cortona. If Crespi is remembered at all today, it must be for his genre paintings, the subject of an exhibition (Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the emergence of genre painting in Italy) in 1986. Crespi’s The flea hunt (Louvre; probably late 1720s – link) and A courtyard scene (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale; probably 1730s) are probably his two best known genre pictures, while his series of the Seven sacraments (Gemäldegallerie, Dresden; c. 1712) and the superb St John Nepomuk confessing the Queen of Bohemia (Turin, Galleria Sabauda; 1743) are among his best known sacred works. Born in 1665 in Bologna, Crespi’s early study included periods with Angelo Michele Toni, Domenico Maria Canuti and Carlo Cignani. He also appears to have made an intense study…

Call for Papers: Tradition and Transformation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

AAANZ Conference, Adelaide 1-3 December 2010 Session Call for Papers – ‘Tradition and Transformation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ In keeping with the overall theme of the conference, this session proposes to examine the broad theme of artistic engagement with tradition and its transformative outcomes in artistic theory and practice during the Baroque and Rococo periods. In an era when artists worked within largely traditional networks of production and patronage, how did they negotiate/subvert/enforce tradition? This session welcomes papers that address any aspect of theory and practice across all media 1600-1800. If you would like to contribute a paper for this session please contact the convenors: David Maskill Senior Lecturer, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington – david.maskill@vuw.ac.nz Associate Professor Jennifer Milam, Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney – …

New Database: Payments to Artists – 17th-Century Rome

A new database has been launched based on the research of Richard Spear for his recent book Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters (see this earlier post for details on the book). The database is described on the Getty website as follows: Artists’ wealth, like that of most Renaissance and Baroque painters, was principally derived from what they earned selling their art. Data that documents payments to artists—as opposed to resale prices or inventory evaluations—is the primary means for analyzing the socioeconomic lives of painters in early modern Europe. This online database contains approximately 1,000 payments recorded in Rome between 1576 and 1711. Information concerning painters active in Rome for a small portion of their careers is limited to their Roman phase. Richard Spear gathered this set of data in order to write the Rome section…