18th Century Art

Cette communication a eu lieu le 31 mars 2017, dans le cadre du séminaire doctoral d'Alexandre Gady. Elle fut l'occasion de révéler une documentation inédite permettant de porter un nouveau regard sur le projet de place Louis XVI destiné à la cité du Ponant en 1786.

http://www.mareetmartin.com/livre/jessica-l-fripp-amandine-gorse-nathalie-manceau-nina-struckmeyer_artistes-savants-et-amateurs

La notion de sociabilité a fait l’objet, depuis quelques années, d’un renouvellement historiographique important. La complexité de cette notion impose pour son étude une approche pluridisciplinaire qui fasse appel aussi bien à la sociologie qu’à la philosophie, à l’anthropologie qu'à l’histoire de l’art.
Ce volume rassemble des études de spécialistes internationaux et explore la diversité des échanges sociaux dans le monde artistique du XVIIIe siècle. En examinant la sociabilité des divers acteurs de la création artistique, ces textes analysent les réseaux formés par le commerce des objets matériels, à travers l’étude des collections, du marché de l’art ou des expositions, et par le commerce des idées, à travers l’étude des écrits sur l’art et de l’art de la conversation. Le rôle des pratiques sociales au sein de la sphère publique dans l’évolution de la production artistique et des échanges matériels, économiques et intellectuels constitue donc l’objet de cet ouvrage collectif.
ISBN : 9791092054422

This particular consideration of Piranesi’s influence is not an exhaustive geography of the haunted wanderings of the artist’s aesthetic ghost. Rather, what follows highlights three aspects of eclecticism in his work—presented in loose chronological order—that seem to have had the most bearing on the conceptualization of stylistic heterogeneity in the architecture of the nineteenth century. These three aspects are those which generate that ‘special essence’ of a Piranesi print, that certain impression of amalgamation derived from a sum total presented as the assembly of diverse fragments. The first of these aspects is Piranesi’s innovative coalescence of various influences, particularly in his early architectural fantasies, which were inspired simultaneously by new developments in scenographic perspective, the contemporaneous capriccio genre, and the older tradition of pictorially reconstructing ancient monuments. The second aspect is his combination of physical fragments, considered through the lens of his Vedute and Diverse Maniere. More specifically, it deals with architectural and sculptural ruins as a concept and as the actual product of assemblage: constructing for the former, collecting and making for the latter. The third is his portrayal of space, namely, the ambivalence between the spatial order of his maps and its dissolution in his Carceri, ending with a consideration of his progression toward abstraction, both geometric and perspectival.

This most recent edition of the bibliography contains almost 21,200 titles in English (64%) and French (36%), with an introductory section on historiography. It deals with every aspect of Italian history and culture from the Late Renaissance to the French Revolution.

Bien que représentant un cas particulier, le Livre d'Echantillons Fol Est 489 constitue un bon exemple de la manière dont un recueil à destination d'un homme de l'art était composé au milieu du XVIIIe siècle. Éléments pratiques et didactiques y forment un vaste ensemble dans lequel le propriétaire pouvait puiser des idées et des formes, adaptables et combinables au gré de son imagination et des exigences de ses commanditaires. Il témoigne aussi du coût qu'un tel objet pouvait constituer, investissement assez onéreux pour un simple artisan. Il reflète, enfin, comment le goût de la période rocaille se diffusa dans les ateliers qui portèrent cette « mode » que Blondel fustige dans ses Cours d’Architecture.

В статье рассматриваются особенности различных вариантов текстов русской народной песни «Белолица-круглолица» («При долинушке»), перечисляются основные печатные и рукописные источники XVIII – первой четверти XIX века, содержащие нотные записи мелодии. Богатые возможности вариационного развития обусловили повышенный интерес к ней многих композиторов рассматриваемой эпохи: от малоизвестных и совсем забытых в наше время авторов до прославленных мастеров (среди которых – Я. Л. Дусик, И. В. Гесслер,
Г. В. Пальшау, Г. Й. Фоглер), использовавших мелодию народной песни в качестве темы для вариационных циклов. Глубоко укоренившись сначала в повседневном быте русских любителей музыки, а впоследствии и в профессиональной музыкальной практике, непритязательная, бесхитростная песня превратилась к началу XIX века в один из наиболее заметных и хорошо узнаваемых символов национальной культуры России.

Where could St. Petersburgers see and learn about works of art in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Most scholarly literature about this period dwells on the absence of art on public view in Russia's capital, relieved only by the triennial exhibitions at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Recent research, however, shows that exhibitions held before auctions and estate sales served as important venues for members of the literate classes to develop their knowledge of art and hone their connoisseurial skills. Because these exhibitions did not charge admission, nor require viewers to make purchases, they allowed non-elite classes the same opportunity to view art as the nobility who bought works for their collections. Drawing on newspaper announcements, sale inventories, and other primary sources, this paper will examine the role of these exhibitions in the development of taste and visual literacy in St. Petersburg before the mid-nineteenth century.

The article is an attempt at systemizing and interpreting trompe l'oeil motifs and devices - from single objects shown as if resting on a page, through those altering the appearance of the page, such as folded page corners, up to still lifes - that constitute elements of book-of-friendship entries in one particular collection.
Examples are used to show their relations with the entry text: illusionistic elements could illustrate, but also extend or complement it. It was particularly the quodlibet-type compositions that could allude to the book's owner and the shared memories, forming as if a visual counterpart of "memorabilia". The researched motifs do not always comply with all the criteria of trompe l'oeil; they do, however, aspire to be illusionistic, additionally fulfilling well the tasks that are associated with books of friendship.

Artykuł jest próbą systematyzacji oraz interpretacji motywów o charakterze iluzjonistycznym - od pojedynczych obiektów ukazanych jako leżące na stronie, poprzez zabiegi zmieniające wygląd
strony, jak np. zagięte rogi kart, aż po martwe natury - stanowiących elementy wpisów sztambuchowych w jednej kolekcji.
Na przykładach wskazany został ich związek z częścią tekstową.
Mogły one ilustrować treść wpisu, ale też rozwijać ją i uzupełniać. Zwłaszcza kompozycje typu quodlibet kryć mogły aluzje do osoby właściciela albumu i wspólnych wspomnień, stanowiąc
wizualny odpowiednik "memorabiliów". Badane motywy ukazane zostały jako nie zawsze spełniające wszystkie kryteria trompe l’oeil, ale niewątpliwie aspirujące do iluzjonizmu, a dodatkowo
dobrze wypełniające łączone z twórczością sztambuchową zadania.

The paper discuss the problem of the influence of ornamental fashions on the art of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 18th century. It may therefore be assumed that the art of Poland at that time provides a perfect example of a mechanism for disseminating ornamental models. As the area of the Commonwealth covered much of what is now called Central Europe, this model is fully representative. Two main directions in the development of the rocaille are examined, as it may be said that this ornament appeared in the area of the Commonwealth twice. The earliest examples of this fashion arrived as French imports, straight from Paris, and were based on designs by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. The second stage of the development, which may be characterised as ‘local’, but which in reality was to a large extent shaped by German ‘ornamental prints’ (from Augsburg), was crucial for the subsequent immense popularity of the ornament in Poland in the entire second half of the eighteenth century.

The article concerns the founders of the 18th century retables in the Church of SS. Johns in Torun. The main group of founders came from the clergy connected directly with the church, particularly its parish priest: Seweryn Szczuka and Maciej Aleksander Sołtyk, along with a curate Jan Michał Dutkiewicz. The local Jesuits also contributed to the creation of some of the retables. Some altars in the chapels were founded by religious fraternities: members of the fraternity of skippers paid for the retable of the altar of St. Barbara (after 1724), while members of the German Congregation – the retable of the altar of the Visitation (1755). According to the sources available, the only individual foundation in the 18th century was the altar of Corpus Christi (1753), the creation of which was financed by Torun’s master tailor Andrzej Stachurski. The most recent retable, devoted to the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was created probably in 1761; unfortunately, it is yet to be established who founded it. It was then that the process of replacing the church’s fittings, which had been ongoing for one and a half centuries, finished.

This article is devoted to the corporeal embodiment of dignity, which is revealed to mean for the 18th century a correspondence between behavioral practices and social status. By analyzing a series of poses and gestures in 18th century Russian portraits, it is shown that certain manners of posing are literally the choreographed positions that were codified in the late 17th century French school of ballet and became visual signs of a noble posture in general. It is also shown that the visual representation of dignity took shape at the intersection of signs referring to noble dances, fencing, and the art of oratory, which also served, in fact, as practices for forming a specific aristocratic corporality.

Contrairement à ce qui est traditionnellement écrit, la période de la Régence ne fut pas une période de « belle endormie » pour le château de Saint-Cloud. Les gazettes montrent en effet que les fêtes, comme au Palais-Royal à Paris, s’y succédèrent. Pour les accueillir, le Régent put profiter du château mais surtout du parc. A la fin de sa vie, il pensa même y conduire d’importants travaux. La mort du prince empêcha leur mise en œuvre, mais ils sont connus par des dessins de l’architecte Oppenord.

This article presents and discusses three original drawings found in the Album Goetghebuer, discovered in 2008, on long term deposit in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. The drawing of a view of Castel Sant'Angelo by Lieven Cruyl is examined at length, and connected to the environment of Queen Christina of Sweden.
Included in:  Dirk De Meyer, Bart Verschaffel, Pieter-Jan Cierkens (eds.), Aspects of Piranesi : essays on history, criticism and invention.
A&S/books, Ghent, 2015, pp. 160-175.

Toen tekenaar Jan de Beijer in de zomer van 1740 van Roermond naar Maastricht reisde, maakte hij drie zichttekeningen van Maaseik. Eén van de Roermonderpoort (nu Eikerpoort), één van de Maastrichterpoort (nu Hepperpoort) en één van de Markt. In dit boek worden deze drie tekeningen onder de loep genomen met als resultaat een aantal nieuwe inzichten, vooral voor de Markt.

Rembrandt, Rubens, Permoser: Glory and Splendour of Baroque Art Collections in Leipzig. Notes on the History of Collecting in Leipzig around 1700

The history of art has largely ignored the city of Leipzig. When studing early modern collection practice in Saxony, interest is traditionally oriented to the important electoral collections in Dresden. This finding is even more noteworthy since earlier studies have shown the considerable level and great diversity of the former civic collecting culture in Leipzig. Thus, over 90 collections with more than 100 collectors can be found from the beginnings, documented already in the 16th century. The collectors included wealthy bankers and merchants as well as pharmacists, scholars, and even artists. The article takes this academic lacuna as an opportunity to highlight the long history of private art collecting in Leipzig. It surveys a range from the early baroque "Wunderkammer" to esquisite 18th-century collections of paintings, prints, and drawings.

The paper presents new insights into some ethnic and artistic circumstances in the life and work of painter Jovan Četirević Grabovan in Slavonia and
northern Croatia during the last quarter of the 18th century. His probable origin
as an Aromanian from what is now eastern Albania can be seen as crucial for the
development of his business connections, due to extensive, mainly trade-related,
migrations of his fellow countrymen to the southern provinces of the Habsburg
Monarchy. Their signifcant fnancial and consequently cultural influence in the
Orthodox communities of the region greatly contributed to Četirević’s success and,
to some extent, determined the iconographic and stylistic traits of his painting.

Les circonstances dans lesquelles s’opéra le transfert d’une partie des tableaux de la galerie d’Énée du Palais-Royal au château de Saint-Cloud restent obscures. Le duc Louis-Philippe avait laissé la jouissance du Palais-Royal à son fils, Louis-Philippe-Joseph et à sa jeune épouse, Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. Le jeune duc de Chartres entreprit des travaux de décoration et de réaménagement . C’est dans ce contexte qu’il fit démolir, en 1778, la galerie d’Énée, peinte au début du siècle par Antoine Coypel . On ne sait si c’est lui ou son père qui fit porter une partie des tableaux démontés à Saint-Cloud. Quoiqu’il en soit, sept des tableaux étaient installés, en 1779, dans la seconde antichambre de l’appartement du duc d’Orléans au premier étage du château, lorsque parut à cette date la nouvelle édition du Voyage pittoresque de Dézallier : il y avait Énée et Anchise, Énée et Achate apparaissant dans le temple à Didon, La mort de Didon, La descente d’Énée aux enfers, Jupiter apparaissant à Énée, Les funérailles de Pallas et La mort de Turnus . Il n’en restait plus, semble-t-il, que cinq en place en 1785, lorsque le château fut vendu à Marie-Antoinette.

Provincial artist Paul Cezanne is but an innovator in the field of arts and painting. He is reputed for his un-conventional painting technique which inspired the expressionists and cubists artists of 19th century to a great extent. Majorly rejected by the counterpart artists of his time, he believed in painting what he saw rather than from that which was popularly accepted. His natisvism and perfectionist style of painting was peculier to his taste and understanding of the art. The following study is a analysis of post impressionist painter Paul Cezanne's works and his style of paintings in a nutshell.

As eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian collectors filled their galleries with painting and sculpture, they followed European precedents in observing the academic hierarchy of genres and paying homage to the work of Old Masters.  This paper will highlight some of the particularities of Russian collections of this period by focusing on a single theme: the female nude. Drawing on recent studies of the art market in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as rare primary sources, it will trace the patterns of collecting and display that emerge when this distinctly European subject arrives in Russia.

Peter the Great was the first Russian to form a significant art collection when he imported hundreds of sculptures for palace gardens in and around St. Petersburg in the 1710s. The Roman Venus he acquired for the Summer Garden was so precious that he placed her in a special gallery, open on all sides, and watched over by a guard. Aristocrats followed the tsar’s example as they acquired sculpture and painting to furnish their own palaces. When art collecting spread beyond the elite, however, men who had less exposure to European conventions of depicting and displaying the female form also added nudes to their gardens and galleries. While some conformed to the practices of their highly cultured social superiors, others had expectations of naturalism and believability that shaped their ideas about displaying idealized images of women in their collections.

This study dispels Soviet-era myths about a supposed innate Russian modesty that carried over into artistic tastes. More importantly, it helps to provide a more complete picture of European ideas about collecting and displaying art as they spread to distant cultures.

This paper revisits the question of the social nature of the late seventeenth-century London art auction. It situates the art auction within the context of the wider London auction market as a whole and argues that although the auction market catered to both an elite audience as well as ‘middling sort’ buyers, the lines between the two audiences were never distinct. The social character of the English auction remained ambivalent in the later seventeenth century. The virtuosi in particular were torn between their enthusiasm for the opportunities afforded by the commercial auction to enhance their collections and put their connoisseurship on display and their hesitance to embrace a blatantly commercial sales medium and a social milieu in which they would inevitably rub shoulders with non-elite, bourgeois consumers. The language of connoisseurship promoted and articulated by the virtuosi shaped the sales patter and the advertising techniques of the early auctioneers, and hence indirectly it may have affected the tastes of the middling sort who attended these auctions, but the virtuosi themselves viewed the emergence of the London auction market with profound ambivalence.

Tekst govori o povijesti izgradnje i opremanja župne crkve Imena Marijina u osječkom Donjem gradu u 18. stoljeću na temelju arhivskih, kartografskih, grafičkih i drugih izvora. Istraživanjima se pokazalo da je današnja građevina podignuta tijekom dviju građevinskih kampanja na mjestu starije crkve iz 1714. Sjeverni dio, zvonik s korom, podignut je između 1758. i 1763., a potom je 1768. – 1775. uslijedilo podizanje broda i svetišta. Stilsko rješenje arhitekture crkve, ponajprije zvonika i zapadnog pročelja, povezuje se s mogućim uzorima u baroknoj arhitekturi Italije i Srednje Europe, a opremanje s djelokrugom umjetnika-obrtnika koji su sredinom i u drugoj polovini 18. stoljeća radili u Osijeku. U tekstu se donosi niz imena raznih umjetnika koji su radili za donjogradsku crkvu koji se do sada u literaturi nisu vezali uz ovu građevinu (graditelj Joseph Hatzinger, kipari Georg Egger i Joseph Erdt, stolari Heinrich Kessler i Thomas Firtler, slikar Franciscus Antonius Witz).

ITA
Nato da genitori inglesi e allievo di Anton Domenico Gabbiani, Ignazio Enrico Hugford (Firenze, 1703-1778), noto per la sua attività di collezionista, conoscitore e mercante d’arte, fu anche pittore molto attivo nella Firenze del Settecento. L’analisi della sua produzione grafica, sia attraverso fogli noti, ma in parte inediti, sia per mezzo di novità qui presentate, consente di gettare luce sul suo percorso artistico, sempre in stretto rapporto con le altre attività, tra cui quella di professore all’Accademia del Disegno. A partire dai disegni giovanili, con ritratti di condiscepoli e nudi accademici, passando per studi preparatori di diverso genere, di stili e tecniche anche molto distanti, e fino ai fogli della piena maturità, Hugford si rivela disegnatore eclettico, che guarda tanto a Gabbiani e al classicismo di stampo correggesco, quanto ad artisti di ambito tosco-romano (Cortona, Volterrano, Maratti, Luti, Morandi) a lui contemporanei o di poco anteriori, dei quali collezionava e vendeva disegni e dipinti.

FRA
De parents anglais et élève d’Anton Domenico Gabbiani, Ignazio Enrico Hugford (1703-1778) est principalement connu pour son activité de collectionneur, de connaisseur et de marchand d’art. Il fut aussi un peintre très actif à Florence durant le XVIIIe siècle. L’analyse de sa production de dessins, qu’il s’agisse de feuilles connues en partie inédites, ou de plusieurs nouveautés, permet d’éclairer son parcours artistique qui était étroitement lié avec ses autres activités, en particulier celle de professeur à l’Accademia del Disegno. De ses dessins de jeunesse (portraits de ses confrères et études de nus), en passant par des études préparatoires, stylistiquement et techniquement très variées, jusqu’aux feuilles de la pleine maturité, Hugford se révèle être un dessinateur éclectique. Il regarde aussi bien Gabbiani et le classicisme dérivant de Corrège, que des artistes du milieu tosco-romain de son époque ou légèrement antérieurs (Pietro da Cortona, Volterrano, Maratti, Luti, Morandi), dont il collectionnait et vendait par ailleurs les dessins et les tableaux.

L'exemplaire numérisé est l'exemplaire de travail de Germaine Faider-Feytmans, ancien conservateur du Musée de Mariemont. Les précieuses annotations qui y ont été apportées par Mireille Jottrand corrigent, entre autres, certains numéros d'inventaire et indiquent les pièces détruites lors de l'incendie du Château de Mariemont en 1960.

The name of Johann Gottfried Wilhelm Palschau, widely known in St Petersburg at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries as a composer, keyboard virtuoso, teacher and musical entrepreneur,  is now familiar only to a narrow circle of professionals. Despite the fact that his music has been revived in recent years, there are still blank spots in Palschau's biography. Our task is to fill in some gaps in the life of Palschau as well as to illuminate in more detail his concert life and work as a composer.

Seventeenth-century English virtuoso attitudes to the visual arts have often been contrasted with a putative eighteenth-century culture of connoisseurship, most notably in a still influential 1942 article by Walter Houghton. This essay revisits Houghton’s influential thesis and argues that English virtuoso culture did indeed allow for an incipient notion of artistic connoisseurship but that it did so in a manner different from the supposedly normative French model. The first section details a virtuoso aesthetic in which a ‘modern’ approach to the cultural heritage of antiquity was central. The instructive ethical and historical attributes of an art work were deemed more important than attribution to a master artist, although one can discern the development of a virtuoso canon of great artists. The second section examines the social and institutional position of the English virtuosi and argues that the lack of a Royal Academy of arts in the French manner made virtuoso attitudes to the arts unusually receptive to outside influences such as the Royal Society and other private clubs and academies. It concludes by considering the ways in which some eighteenth-century concepts of taste and connoisseurship defined themselves in contrast to an earlier and wider-ranging virtuosity even if they failed to fully supplant it. Historians of modern art connoisseurship are thus well advised to take seriously the early modern origins of their subject in virtuoso culture.