Thursday, May 8, 2014

Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting

30 April – 21 September 2014

This spring, the National Gallery presents the first exhibition in Britain to explore the role of architecture in Italian Renaissance painting of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.
Domenico Veneziano, ‘Saint Zenobius Bishop of Florence restores to life a widow's son in Borgo degli Albizzi, Florence', about 1442-1448 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Domenico Veneziano, ‘Saint Zenobius Bishop of Florence restores to life a widow's son in Borgo degli Albizzi, Florence', about 1442-1448 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
'Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting' aims to increase visitors' appreciation and understanding of some of the most beautiful and architectonic paintings by Italian masters such as Duccio, Botticelli, Crivelli and their contemporaries. Visitors will be encouraged to look in new ways at buildings depicted in paintings, and to investigate how artists invented imagined spaces that transcended the reality of bricks, mortar and marble.
 
With a record-breaking six million visits during 2013, the National Gallery remains committed to researching and showcasing its extraordinarily rich permanent collection. As a result of the research partnership between the National Gallery and the University of York, this exhibition offers a fresh interpretation of some of the National Gallery’s own Italian Renaissance collection. In addition, Building the Picture will include the Venetian master



Sebastiano del Piombo's 'The Judgement of Solomon' (Kingston Lacy, The Bankes Collection, National Trust),

 on display in London for the first time in 30 years,



 and 'The Ruskin Madonna' by Andrea del Verrocchio (National Gallery of Scotland).

In Renaissance Italy, art and architecture were closely interconnected and the boundaries between all the arts were fluid. An important reason for this was that there was no specific educational programme or apprenticeship for architects. The Florentine architect Brunelleschi, for example, trained as a goldsmith, while Michelangelo was a painter and sculptor before he designed buildings.
Five short films commissioned to coincide with this exhibition demonstrate how contemporary practitioners and thinkers are again blurring the boundaries between media and forms of practice. The films provide modern perspectives on real and imagined architecture from award-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, film-maker Martha Fiennes, art historian T J Clark, film historian John David Rhodes and computer game cinematic director Peter Gornstein.

Caroline Campbell, Curator of Italian Paintings Before 1500 at the National Gallery, said:
''This exhibition provides a wonderful opportunity to think about how pictures can achieve an architectural sort of beauty. We can look beyond perspective to appreciate the imagined and fantastical spaces created by architecture. And how the sense of mass, scale and three-dimensionality introduced by buildings changes the balance and feel of a painting.''
Building the Picture explores the roles played by architecture in painting and how it affects the viewing process. Architecture within paintings has often been treated as a passive background or as subordinate to the figures. This exhibition shows how, on the contrary, architecture underpinned many paintings, and was used to design the whole picture from the very start. This was the case in



Sandro Botticelli's 'Adoration of the Kings',

 where the ruins in the picture were planned first and still dominate the composition. Renaissance paintings are full of arches, doorways and thresholds, like those in



Carlo Crivelli's 'Annunciation, with Saint Emidius

that invite the viewer into the picture and encourage us to begin a visual journey. Architecture could also be designed to tell a story, articulating the plot, deepening our understanding of the narrative and helping us to engage with the events.



In Domenico Veneziano's 'Saint Zenobius Bishop of Florence restores to life a widow's son killed by an ox cart in Borgo degli Albizi, Florence' from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the compressed perspective of the street heightens the emotion of the desperate mother whose son has just died.

More images from the exhibition:

Duccio
Duccio , The Annunciation, 1311, © The National Gallery, London

n-1418-00-000031-pr-e1398980687102
Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in his Study, about 1475, © The National Gallery, London

n-1411-01-000012-pr-e1398983037696
Ercole de’ Roberti, Nativity, about 1490-93, © The National Gallery, London

n-3073-00-000039-pr-e1398983070239
Bramantino, The Adoration of the Kings, about 1500, © The National Gallery, London

07f532240d0c4fdfecc656213d742d44
Vincenzo Catena, Saint Jerome in his Study, probably about 1510, © The National Gallery, London

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Marcello Venusti, The Purification of the Temple, after 1550. Oil on wood, 61 x 40 cm. Bought, 1885 © The National Gallery, London.


'Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting' is also an online catalogue produced by the National Gallery to accompany the exhibition. Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, said:
''I am delighted that this catalogue will be permanently accessible on the National Gallery website, where it can be read and enjoyed by a very wide audience.''
Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting is curated by Dr. Amanda Lillie, Reader in History of Art at the University of York; and Caroline Campbell, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500; with Alasdair Flint, CDA PHD student, University of York/National Gallery.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

An American in London: Whistler and the Thames


An American in London: Whistler and the Thames,” opening May 3 at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, is the first major exhibition devoted to American artist James McNeill Whistler’s early period in London, and it is the largest U.S. display of his work in almost 20 years. The exhibition showcases changing views of the capital city’s iconic riverbanks and waterways, revealing how Whistler emerged as one of the most innovative and original artists of the 19th century while London evolved into a modern city.

“Whistler was one of the most influential painters of his time, and now in a single show we’re able to look at the transformation of his work and the transformation of a city,” explained Julian Raby, The Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art. “This is a huge opportunity for the U.S. public to celebrate one of their greatest artistic figures.”

On view through Aug. 17, the exhibition features more than 80 works from major museums in the U.S. and Britain, including 20 important oil paintings of Chelsea and the Thames, masterful prints and rarely seen drawings, watercolors and pastels. The exhibition culminates with an ensemble of the artist’s famous Nocturnes, including the iconic 




“Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge.” 


Other highlights include the daytime industrial landscape 



“Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge,” 

the schooners at rest captured in “Wapping” (below) and selections from the Thames Set, an early series of etchings depicting the river’s seedy dockyards and dubious characters.

The Sackler’s presentation is the final venue of a three-city tour (previously at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Massachusetts) and will be enhanced by the addition of nearly 50 masterpieces from the Freer Gallery of Art, which holds the world’s largest and finest collection of the artist’s work, including the famous Peacock Room. Museum founder Charles Lang Freer met Whistler in London in 1890 and became his most important patron. This is the first time since the Freer Gallery opened in 1923 that these works will be on view with Whistlers from other institutions.

Changing Art for a Changing City

“An American in London” focuses on the period during the 1860s and ’70s when Whistler (1834–1903) adapted the realist style he developed in Paris into a more personal aesthetic: “art for art’s sake.” He transformed scenes of gritty contemporary life, especially along the Thames riverbank, into moody and poetic views of the city, layered with color and atmosphere. It was during this time that he started to give his works musical titles such as “arrangement,” “symphony” and “nocturne” and drew inspiration from the composition and flattened forms of Japanese prints, some of which will be on view.

“Whistler developed radically new modes of expression as a response to the changing world outside his window in London’s Chelsea neighborhood,” said Lee Glazer, curator of American art at the Freer and Sackler galleries. “Through the visual poetry of his ‘arrangements’ and ‘nocturnes’ he reasserted the value of beauty, providing aesthetic compensation for the loss and alienation many Victorians associated with modern life.”

During this time, London was in a near-constant cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Historic landmarks—such as Battersea Bridge, a Whistler favorite—were altered or torn down to make way for mansions, factories and other modern structures. The river, however, maintained its central importance both as Whistler’s subject and as part of the lifeblood of the city itself.

 “An American in London” also features portraits of Whistler and his associates, bringing to life the personalities surrounding the artist during this crucial time in his career, as well as historic photographs and maps that detail the London neighborhoods where he lived and worked.

Organization

“An American in London” is organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Addison Gallery of Art, and is co-curated by Margaret F. MacDonald, professor emerita, and Patricia de Montfort, lecturer, at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Exhibition support is provided by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts and the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. Additional support for programming is provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Catalog






A beautifully illustrated catalog, “An American in London: Whistler and the Thames,” ($40, softcover, $60, hardcover; Philip Wilson Publishers, 2013, 191 pp.) contains detailed analysis of several of Whistler’s most important works.



Venues:
Dulwich Picture Gallery 
London, U.K.
October 16, 2013 – January 12, 2014

Addison Gallery of American Art 
Phillips Academy, Andover, MA 
February 1 – April 13, 2014

Freer and Sackler Galleries 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
May 2 – August 17, 2014

Reviews:

In grand oils, Whistler became a French-inflected painter of modern London life. His girlfriend Jo Hiffernan – hair “a red not gold but copper, as Venetian as a dream!” – stars in

“Wapping” (begun 1860) as a dockside tart, perched with smoking sailors on a balcony above passing ships painted impressionistically in fresh, bright hues...

In “The Last of Old Westminster” (1862), an impressionist flurry recording the reconstruction of the old bridge, each labourer is a dab of cream, each wooden pile a single luscious downward grey stroke.

By the fluid, sombrely tonal “Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach” (1863)

and “Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf” (1864-8), cool criss-crossed thin silver marks enlivened by the rusty brown of a few moored barges, narrative is banished and the Whistler of subdued, abstracted colour harmonies is triumphant.

Outstanding review 

Also in the exhibition:





James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Pink and Silver - Chelsea, the Embankment


 


James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge



James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Vauxhall Bridge




James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Battersea Reach from Lindsey Houses


Christie’s American Art on May 22 will offer Hopper, Hassam, Sargent, Avery, Inness, Cassatt


Coast Guard Boat I’s detail and emphasis on light, embodies Edward Hopper's aesthetic from the summer of 1929, as the majority of his work from the period was in watercolor (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000).  Hopper preferred to use watercolor for his New England works as this medium was conducive to working en plein air and provided him a freedom not afforded by oil paint.  As is the case with Coast Guard Boat I, Hopper often used water in his work as a means of introducing an element of motion into a scene that is otherwise dominated by stillness.  The beauty of Coast Guard Boat I lies in the contradiction between weightlessness and heft, motion and stillness. This tension is echoed by the ropes, which tether the boat to the shore. At once wanting to be of the sea yet firmly harnessed creates a sense of restlessness and even agitation to the otherwise serene, idyllic image.



Milton Avery’s The Mandolin Player ( estimate: $800,000-1,200,000) is just one of the six works from his collection to be included in the sale of American Art.   The highly saturated palette of greens, blues, oranges and pinks is representative of Avery’s works from the mid-1940s, as is his rendering of expressive figures through a contained, plastic two-dimensional design. The interconnectedness of music and the formal components of visual art had been explored by American Modernists such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe in the 1910s and 1920s and were championed by European abstract painter, Wassily Kandinsky. Avery had likely been exposed to Kandinsky's work while exhibiting at the Valentine Gallery on 57th Street in 1935. Avery explored the topic in a more literal approach, demonstrating his ability to blend modern themes and broader European influences while remaining committed to a familiar subject, thus creating his own style.

George Inness’s (1825-1894) treatment of the landscape, particularly in his later work, is marked by a more subjective and ultimately more modern aesthetic than that of his contemporaries. The innovative brilliance of his art eventually brought him high acclaim--particularly for the later landscapes of which Summer, Montclair of 1887, is a notable example (estimate: $600,000-800,000). In Summer, Montclair, Inness presents a pastoral scene with a village church spire on the horizon and stream and grazing cattle in the distance. Beginning in 1884, Inness was able to achieve a complete synthesis of his innovative formal means and his goal of poetic expression. The central component of this synthesis was color, which he described as ‘the soul of a painting.’ Forms, on the other hand, though still based in the observation of nature, were softened by atmosphere and dissolved by light. Inness relished in capturing the colors of dawn, dusk, twilight, moonlight, the colors of all seasons and of all hours of the day. However, unlike the Impressionist painter Monet, Inness did not focus on the implied optical effects of motion or action, he instead created a dreamy stillness giving a sense of calmness. 

  

Childe Hassam's stunning Impressionist work, Evening in the Rain, ( estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000) captures a picturesque moment on a rain drenched sidewalk of lower Fifth Avenue. Hassam's passion for capturing the cityscapes that surrounded him immediately found direct expression in the works he produced, and critics quickly came to associate him with New York.   In order to capture the ever-changing scenes around him, Hassam often executed quick sketches while seated in a cab or standing on the street. From the vantage point of the viewer, it seems entirely likely that Hassam sketched the composition for Evening in the Rain while out on one of his many jaunts around the city.  The work includes all of the hallmarks of Hassam's celebrated works from the 1890s. Reflecting his fascination with his urban surroundings and the people that he encountered, Hassam pays homage to the city and captures the spirit of the end of the century in New York.



Hailing directly from a descendant of the sitter, John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. William George Raphael  (estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000) was painted in London in 1906 at the height of Sargent’s unparalleled level of success and when he had reached a mastery of his craft. Mrs. William George Raphael is a grandiose and engaging painting that is a masterwork of Sargent's later portraits.  Following Sargent's enormous success in the United Kingdom and the United States by 1900, the artist had gained international celebrity and his clientele expanded upward from the high bourgeoisie to the aristocratic who now sought to have their image captured by the top portraitist of the Gilded Age.  As is typical in Sargent's best portraits, Mrs. William George Raphael conveys the sitter's character as a forceful presence, combined with a quality of elegance and social ease.

Also in the sale:



Mary Cassatt’s Girl in a Hat with a Black Ribbon (estimate: $400,000-600,000).






Tuesday, May 6, 2014

ROCKWELL, MORAN LEAD CHRISTIE’S SALE OF AMERICAN ART ON MAY 22

Christie’s spring sale of American Art on May 22 will offer total of 172 lots, with outstanding works of from a range of styles and genres, including Illustration, Modernism, Western Art, Nineteenth Century and American Impressionism.  This fantastic array of masterworks is led by Norman Rockwell’s The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room) and Thomas Moran’s The Grand Canyon of the Colorado.  



The Rookie illustration ©SEPS. Used with permission from Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, Indiana. All Rights Reserved

The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room) by Norman Rockwell, which has never been offered at auction, was painted in 1957 for the March 2nd cover of The Saturday Evening Post and has remained in the same private collection for nearly thirty years.   It has been publicly exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston twice–once in 2005 and again in 2008–following World Series victories by the Red Sox.

The work was painted in 1957 for the March 2nd cover of The Saturday Evening Post and has remained in the same private collection for nearly thirty years. It has been publicly exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston twice–once in 2005 and again in 2008–following World Series victories by the Red Sox. Estimated at $20-30 million, The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room) marks the highest estimate ever for Norman Rockwell at auction.

Norman Rockwell’s covers for The Saturday Evening Post during the 1950s reflected the direction of editor Ben Hibbs, who strove to make the magazine more current to increase circulation. Nothing could be a more popular subject to an American audience than baseball and no player other than Ted Williams, “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” was commanding more attention at the time, on the eve of his retirement from baseball. Rockwell conceived this cover at least 9 months in advance of its publication date on March 2nd, 1957, just in time for the start of spring training for the Red Sox.

Over the summer of 1956, he convinced team management to send four players from the starting lineup up to Rockwell’s hometown, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, deep in Red Sox country. Pitcher Frank Sullivan, right fielder Jackie Jensen, catcher Sammy White all posed for the painting. Williams was either unable or unwilling to make the trip and Rockwell captured his likeness from his trading card, and other photographs. Rockwell traveled to Sarasota to take pictures of the Red Sox spring training stadium and locker room. The palm trees which sway in the window indicate the location. The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room) depicts an intimate scene during spring training; an awkward newcomer is juxtaposed with the confident stances of the seasoned players, making the rookie’s anxiety all the more apparent and endearing. 

In addition to The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room), ten other works by Norman Rockwell will be offered in the sale, including



The Collector ( estimate: $700,000-1,000,000),



Boy Graduate (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000)



and Willie Gillis in Church (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000).



Christie’s sale of American Art on May 22 will feature Thomas Moran’s (1837-1926) magnificent large-scale painting The Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Painted in 1904, the work is one of Moran’s most ambitious oils of the subject from the period. This canvas presents an awe-inspiring panorama and manifests Moran’s romantic and inspirational vision of the American West. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, which has been exhibited at both the Royal Academy in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., has not been offered for sale in over two decades. At $8-12 million, this is the highest pre-sale estimate assigned to a work by Thomas Moran at auction, reflecting the superb quality and rarity of this masterwork.

Moran first visited the Grand Canyon in 1873 as part of John Wesley Powell’s expedition. The artist eagerly accepted Powell’s invitation to join the excursion, as he was planning a pendant for his painting  




Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 

which Congress had purchased for the Capitol the previous year. Moran was immediately captivated by the unique and dramatic light, color and topography of the Grand Canyon and later wrote, “Of all places on earth the great canyon of Arizona is the most inspiring in its pictorial possibilities.”

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a masterwork of Moran's mature style and represents the artist at the height of his abilities. Although he visited the Grand Canyon many times and created multiple of images of the geologic wonder over the course of five decades, few are as richly complex or as monumental in scale as this painting, which captures the sublime beauty of the area in its expanse of rugged peaks and atmospheric valleys. Throughout, he employs his characteristic keen attention to light, color, and detail and the high vantage point underscores the vastness of the Canyon. Moran studied at a time when the strict realist theories of John Ruskin were lauded and, though adhering to the auspices of precise geologic transcription, it is evident that he was far more interested in capturing and conveying the emotional effect the landscape inspired.

The current world auction record for a work by Thomas Moran is 



Green River of Wyoming,

which sold at Christie’s in 2008 for $17.7 million, against a pre-sale estimate of $3.5-5 million. In addition to setting a record for the artist, it also set the record price for any 19th century work of American Art at auction.

Another view of the Gran Canyon by Moren:




Norman Rockwell’s America






Boy Graduate
Norman Rockwell, 1959, oil on canvas




Two Children Praying
Norman Rockwell, 1954, oil on canvas



 Bridge Game - The Bid
Norman Rockwell, 1948, oil on canvas





After shattering attendance records with its debut in England, Norman Rockwell’s America, a comprehensive exhibition of the legendary illustrator’s 60-year career, opens at the Birmingham Museum of Art on September 16, 2012.

Featuring more than 52 original paintings and all 323 vintage Saturday Evening Post covers, the exhibition visually chronicles the evolving landscape of American culture and society from 1916-1969 and is one of the largest Rockwell exhibitions to ever travel. Rockwell’s six-decade career depicts one of the most eventful periods in American history, spanning four wars, the Great Depression, the space race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Organized by the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, the exhibition premiered to critical and popular acclaim at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery in December 2010.

Norman Rockwell’s career as an illustrator began in 1912, at the age of 18, when he published his first works. That same year, he was hired as a staff artist for Boys’ Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America. He soon became the magazine’s art editor, a position he held for three years. While Rockwell’s relationship with the Boy Scouts continued long after his departure, it was his work with the Saturday Evening Post that made him a household name. With his first Post cover published in 1916, Rockwell often used his friends, family members and even himself as models for his work. He usually worked from reference photographs staged in his studio, and created scenes depicting everyday American life based on his own experience.

Although often remembered for his nostalgic approach to American daily life, Rockwell also seriously addressed major social issues of the time in some of his later work.



The Problem We All Live With showcases the courage of a young black girl led by US Marshals on her walk to school on the first day of desegregation. The original painting recently hung in the West Wing of the White House at the personal request of President Obama.

Rockwell’s exploration of such controversial topics was a radical departure from the generally positive and frequently humorous scenes he was known for in his Saturday Evening Post days.

As a painter, Rockwell mastered a wide variety of techniques, and showed strong interest in art history, sometimes emulating the work of the Old Masters, and even showing an interest in Modern artists such as Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock.


Saturday, May 3, 2014

Sandro Botticell at the Städel Museum


  
The Städel Museum hosted an exhibition on Sandro Botticelli (1444/45–1510) from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010. Taking the artist’s monumental  


Idealized Portrait of a Lady, 

 one of the Städel Museum collection’s highlights, as its starting point, the exhibition presented numerous works from all productive periods of this great master of the Renaissance in Italy about 500 years after his day of death (17 May 1510).

The exhibition opened with portraits and allegorical paintings that illustrate the degree of sophistication with which Botticelli drew on this highly developed genre and enriched it with new impulses. While the second section centered on his famous mythological representations of goddesses and heroines of virtue, the third part iwa dedicated to his abundant religious oeuvre.

With a total of more than forty works by Botticelli and his workshop, the show presented a comprehensive selection of his work surviving worldwide. Forty further exhibits, among them works by such contemporaries as Andrea del Verrocchio, Filippino Lippi, and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, will allow to understand Botticelli’s precious creations in the historical context of their genesis.

The presentation was supported by outstanding loans from the most important collections of paintings in Europe and the United States. These include the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery London, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, as well as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Sandro Botticelli’s painting has become a landmark of Italian Renaissance. The delicate beauty, elegant grace, and unique charm of his frequently melancholic figures make his work the epitome of Florentine painting in the Golden Age of Medici rule under Lorenzo the Magnificent. Initially trained as a goldsmith and then apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli soon ranked among the most successful painters in Florence in the second half of the quattrocento next to Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, and the Pollaiuolo brothers. From 1470 on, he received prestigious public commissions and established himself as a painter of large altarpieces. 

Throughout his life, Botticelli was in the ruling Medici family’s and their supporters’ good graces. Fulfilling their wishes for innovative decorative paintings, the master could not only rely on his personal knowledge of Florentine traditions and of ancient art, but also on definite suggestions and concepts from the circle of humanists gathered around Lorenzo de’ Medici. Held in equally high esteem as both a panel and a fresco painter, Botticelli enjoyed a high standing beyond his native Florence and was thus one of the artists summoned to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome by Pope Sixtus IV in 1481. It was particularly his much-discussed late work that brought out the characteristic features of his original style in an extreme manner.

Guided by the art of drawing – the exhibition includedan outstanding selection of preparatory sketches – Botticelli followed his penchant for presenting his figures with sharp contours, strong movements, and abundant gestures, grounding his compositions on textures of lines and surfaces rather than on spaces and volumes. In this respect, his painting had already stood out against his competitors’ works and current theoretical demands in his early years.

The starting point and center of the cross-genre exhibition was provided by a main work from the collection of the Städel Museum not only very well known in Frankfurt: the master’s idealized portrait of a young lady, who is probably to be identified with Simonetta Vespucci, the beloved jousting tournament lady of Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici. This portrait is less aimed at a true-to-life likeness of the subject than at the ideal of a woman characterized by perfect beauty and equally perfect virtuousness, an ideal also reflected in the poetry of that time. Such an ideal defines itself not least through its rapport with antiquity: thus, the beautiful female wears a piece of jewelry round her neck which is obviously based on an ancient cameo showing Apollo and Marsyas, which wasalso be on display in the exhibition.

In the Städel Museum, 



Botticelli’s famous portrait of Giuliano from the National Gallery of Art in Washington 

offered itself for comparison with his beloved Simonetta’s likeness. Both paintings make up the center of the first part of the presentation, which is devoted to Botticelli’s art of portraiture and, drawing on prominent examples, illustrates the interplay between social norm and artistic form as well as the different genre conventions of the male and the female portrait.

The second section of the exhibition dealt with Botticelli’s mythological pictures, which number among the artist’s most original creations. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which safeguards the most comprehensive and significant collection of works by the artist in the world, supported the exhibition in Frankfurt with one of its most popular works among others loans: the famous  



Pallas and the Centaur, 

 one of Botticelli’s monumental mythological paintings, to be seen in the context of Medicean self-presentation. 

Together with Botticelli’s 



Primavera,  

it once adorned the walls of a bedchamber in a Florentine palace owned by the family of bankers. We see Pallas taming the wild centaur indulging in his passions through her wisdom and virtue. The control and cultivation of emotions was a central issue in ancient philosophy and – combined with Christian thought – of the Renaissance, too; among the painters of the time, Botticelli offered himself as a congenial interpreter for such subjects. The political dimension and the reference to the patron family are symbolically present in the form of two intertwined diamond rings on Pallas’s gown, which were an emblem of the Medici family. 

Another great female figure featuring in the Florentine artist’s oeuvre is the goddess Venus. His life-size 



Venus from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin 

is a repetition of the central figure of (the unloanable) 

 


Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery, 

which he isolated from the context of the scene and set off against a black background. This work is one of the first monumental nudes of postancient painting.

The third and last section of the exhibition was devoted to Botticelli’s religious pictures. Next to his portraits and mythological works, Botticelli has owed his continuing fame to his Madonnas. According to theological thinking, Mary stands out as the ideal woman among the saints: she is the most virtuous and the most beautiful female, the bride of the Song of Songs. Besides many other works spanning from Botticelli’s earliest works still revealing the influence of his teacher Fra Filippo Lippi to examples of his late style, the exhibition in Frankfurt shows one of the artist’s most beautiful Madonnas:  



The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child.  

The Madonna’s physiognomy of this painting from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, whose brilliant colorfulness has only been uncovered through restorative measures some years ago, is rendered in the vein of the same female model which the painter developed for his idealized portraits and pictures of ancient goddesses. This chapter also includes a number of narrative pictures, such as a removed Annunciation fresco once to be found in the vestibule of the hospital of San Martino alla Scala in Florence and preserved in the Uffizi Gallery today. Not only the enormous size of the fresco (243 x 550 cm), but also its qualities as a painting testify to Botticelli’s extraordinary importance in this medium. Four panels depicting scenes from the life of St. Zenobius, an early bishop and patron of Florence, offer a further highlight, with which the exhibition ends. Usually scattered to museums in London, Dresden, and New York, they have been brought together for the first time in Frankfurt again. Ranking not only among his most significant late works, but also among his very last, the panels are to be considered as Botticelli’s legacy as an artist.

Curator: Dr. Andreas Schumacher (Städel Museum)

Research assistants: Gabriel Dette M.A. and Dr. Bastian Eclercy (Städel Museum)

Exhibition architecture: Nikolaus Hirsch & Michel Müller Architekten, Michiko Bach

Catalogue: 




On the occasion of the exhibition, a comprehensive catalogue edited by Andreas Schumacher and comprising an introduction by Max Hollein and texts by Cristina Acidini, Gabriel Dette, Bastian Eclercy, Hans Körner, Lorenza Melli, Ulrich Rehm, Volker Reinhardt, Anna Rühl, and Andreas Schumacher was published by Hatje Cantz. German and English editions.


Turner and Venice


Museo Correr, Venice
From September 4, 2004 to January 23, 2005

Organised by Musei Civici Veneziani and the Tate Britain, the exhibition was curated by Ian Warrell, Collections Curator at Tate, and produced in collaboration with Venezia Musei.

The exhibition brought together around 120 works (oil paintings, watercolours, as well as prints, maps and Turner’s Venice sketchbooks) that chart the intense relation between the great English artist and Venice, which he visited at various times between 1819 and 1840.The works dedicated to Venice exemplify especially important aspects of Turner’s art – in particular, his handling of light. Some of them being exhibited to the public for the first time, they offer one the chance to chart the development of the artist’s own personal poetics. The exhibition also provides an opportunity to compare Turner’s work with that of artists who were important points for reference for him – for example, Canaletto, Marlow, Caffi and Doyle.

This was the first major exhibition devoted to JMW Turner’s trips to Venice. It spanned the twenty years between Turner’s first visit to Venice in 1819, when he was already forty-four, and his last in 1840.

Even among Venice’s many distinguished artistic visitors, Turner remains one of the few to find a true echo of his own sensibility in the unique qualities of this sublime floating city. His career was remarkable for its successes and its innovations, yet his images of Venice were quickly recognised by their first viewers as some of his most magical, luminous works. Turner’s vision remains as vital today, expressing as it does the often inchoate and funereal qualities of the Venetian experience.

The exhibition was organised in collaboration with Tate Britain , where it was shown during the autumn of 2003. Most of the works come from Turner’s own bequest, which was reunited in the Clore Gallery at the Millbank branch of the Tate in 1987 (the watercolours had were stored at the British Museum between 1929 and 1986). The Bequest contains all the works found in Turner’s studio after his death: some 300 oil paintings; plus all his watercolours and sketchbooks, which amount to more than 20,000 sheets of paper. It is only in the last thirty years that the full range of this material has received serious scholarly study, and as a result some works are only now being exhibited for the first time. During this period the Tate has mounted a long series of exhibitions exploring the diverse interests reflected in Turner’s output, charting his fascination with poetry, perspective and print-making, as well as his endless wanderings in Britain and on the Continent.

Works in the exhibition:



Antonio Canal know as Canaletto (1697 - 1768), Grand Canal from Ca' Balbi towards Rialto (1720 - 1723)



J.W.Turner, Venice, the Piazzetta with the Ceremony of the Doge Marrying the Sea, 1835 ca.






J.W.Turner, The Piazzetta and the Doge's palace from the Bacino, 1840 ca.



J.W.Turner, The Porta della Carta, Doge's Palace, 1840 ca.



J.W.Turner, Venice: An Imaginary View of the Arsenale, 1840 ca.

 

 
J.W.Turner, San Marco and the Piazzetta, with San Giorgio Maggiore; night, 1840




J.W.Turner, Venice at Sunrise from the Hotel Europa, with the Campanile of San Marco, 1840



J.W.Turner, The Upper End of the Grand Canal, with San Simeone Piccolo; Dusk, 1840



JMW Turner, San Giorgio Maggiore at Sunset, from the Hotel Europa, 1840



JMW Turner, The Dogana, San Giorgio, Zitelle, from the Steps of the Europa






JMW Turner, The Giudecca Canal, looking towards Fusina at Sunset



JMW Turner, The Sun of Venice going to Sea



JMW Turner, Venice – Maria della Salute



JMW Turner, Returning from the Ball [St Martha]



JMW Turner, Fishermen on the Lagoon, Moonlight



Turner’s images of Venice are one of the most important aspects of his work as a mature artist. Although he spent comparatively little time there (less than four weeks in all during three visits) he built a very close association with the city, attracted partly by its literary and historical associations and the reputation of its painters, and partly by its own unique beauties. Paintings of the sea and the effects of light on water had always been important to Turner, so it was perhaps inevitable that he should be attracted by the city’s celebrated light, the result of its dramatic setting on a series of islands in the middle of a saltwater lagoon. Most of the works in this exhibition come from the artist’s own immense bequest, housed at Tate Britain, London. Very little of this material had been exhibited during Turner’s lifetime, and the majority of it was undoubtedly unfinished by the standards of the period, allowing us to savour Turner’s private reactions to his subject. The paintings he showed at the Royal Academy grew out of a profound enthusiasm for the city, and its enchantments cast a spell over his art for the last twenty years of his working life.

The exhibition introduces here the variety of images which formed Turner’s ideas of Venice before he set out on his first visit in 1819. Above all, it was the work of Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) which enabled Turner’s generation to feel they knew the city well even before they arrived. Turner, like so many other visitors, would have known Canaletto’s work mainly through engraved reproductions, especially a set by Antonio Visentini, published in 1735-42, focused on the Grand Canal, with other plates devoted to the city’s churches and public spaces. Turner acknowledged his debt to Canaletto in his first painting of Venice, which shows ‘Canaletti’ working (improbably) in the open air at his easel. But Turner never allowed himself to be constrained by Canaletto’s example; he absorbed principles from the earlier artist but, especially in his later work, he was concerned to produce something quite different. Canaletto’s example can also be felt in the works of other British artists of the period, including William Marlow and Richard Parkes Bonington, who exhibited in both Paris and London. Marlow’s painting provides an instructive example of the ways in which London and Venice were seen as related commercial centres at the end of the 18th century.

Turner made three visits to Venice during the course of about twenty years:

1819: 8-13 September; stayed at the Albergo Leon Bianco
1833: from 9 September for about a week; stayed at the Hotel Europa in the Ca’Giustinian
1840: 20 August – 3 September; stayed again at the Hotel Europa.

It was Turner’s habit to sketch principally in pencil, especially if his time was limited (he claimed he could make fifteen pencil sketches in the time taken to produce one watercolour). This explains his somewhat cursory response to Venice in 1819, when he painted only four watercolours, though these brilliantly distil the effect of morning sunlight across the Bacino. Similarly the 1833 visit is documented almost exclusively in his sketchbooks, though some of the colour studies made on sheets of grey paper are likely to date from this visit, as they set out compositions which he later reworked as oil paintings.

The final visit of 1840 was his longest and, therefore, his most productive stay in Venice. Turner’s contemporaries were well aware of his love of Venice; he exhibited as many as twenty-five oil paintings of the city between 1833 and 1846. But the true strength of his fascination only became known after his death. Ten sketchbooks, containing many hundreds of Venetian scenes, were found in his studio, as well as a large group of watercolours. These remain the most compelling evidence of Turner’s personal vision of the city.

TURNER AND THE LITERARY VISION OF VENICE

If Canaletto was one of the most powerful influences on Turner’s ideas about Venice, he was equally moulded by a number of literary sources. Above all Shakespeare’s Venetian plays – The Merchant of Venice and Othello – and Byron’s poems and verse-dramas. These works inevitably permeate Turner’s paintings and watercolours of the city.

The final part of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published in 1818, just as Turner’s interest in the art, history and landscape of Italy was at its most intense. The poem may well have contributed to his determination to visit Venice for the first time. Turner’s reputation was founded partly on his images of picturesque ruins, so Byron’s evocation of Venice as a city still beautiful, though ‘Her palaces are crumbling to the shore’, must have had an especially strong appeal.

In the 1820s, Turner produced two sets of book illustrations for the poetry of Samuel Rogers. These were immensely popular in the nineteenth century, introducing his work to several generations, including the young John Ruskin.

TURNER AND VENETIAN PAINTING: RELIGIOUS AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS

When Turner began his career, in the 1790s, the London art world was entranced by the beauties of Venetian painting. The Peace of Amiens in 1802 marked a temporary halt in the war between Britain and France, making travel to the Continent possible. Turner went to Paris to study in the Louvre, which at the time housed many works of art appropriated by Napoleon’s troops. Some of these were taken from Venice itself, including works by Veronese, Titian and Tintoretto. Turner admired paintings which showed how landscape could play a vital role in the action of a painting, rather than merely providing a background setting. He was particularly impressed by Titian’s ‘colour and pathos of effect’, and attempted to assimilate the lessons of the master in his own pictures.

The exhibition focused now more closely on Turner’s work, arranged to take you on a trip through the city, starting here with the monuments at its heart, in the Piazza San Marco, and its adjacent Piazzetta. Dominating these spaces are the Doge’s Palace, the Campanile, the highest bell-tower in Venice, and the Basilica of San Marco. The palace had been the city hall and courthouse as well as the residence of the Doge, the head of the Venetian state. The Basilica had once been the Doge’s private chapel, but in 1807 Napoleon made it the city’s cathedral. Many found its mixture of architectural styles incomprehensible: the poet Thomas Moore described it as ‘barbaric’. But Turner studied the outside during his first visit to Venice, and on later trips used dark brown paper to suggest the gloom of the interior and heighten the glinting of the mosaics.

In the 18th century Canaletto’s images had contributed to a prevailing preference for the city seen in sparkling sunlight. But as its palaces crumbled and its canals became choked with weeds, poets such as Thomas Moore began to suggest that Venice became magical only when the ‘dimness of the light’ masked its decay. Turner only publicly exhibited one painting of Venice at night. His contemporaries were unaware of the large group of studies he had made principally for his own use, showing the city’s transformation by moonlight. Few of the drawings and watercolours shown here were considered worthy of being exhibited in public until relatively recently.

During his final stay in Venice Turner seems to have used his rooms in the Hotel Europa as a temporary studio. The building is not the same as that which now houses the Hotel Europe e Regina (where Monet stayed), but lies closer to the mouth of the Grand Canal in the Ca’Giustinian, just behind San Moise. Turner’s windows looked out in one direction towards the Campanile of San Marco to the east, while from the top of the building he could look down across the canal to the Dogano and the Salute. The backs of several of these studies are annotated with notes by Turner that testify to his excitement in being the temporary possessor of these views.

Ippolito Caffi (Belluno, 1809 – waters around Vis, Croatia 1866) was born in Belluno in 1809. He attended the Fine Arts Academy in Venice where he studied historic painting and Canaletto’s view paintings. A great innovator of Venetian view painting, he traveled extensively throughout Italy and sojourned from 1832 to 1836 in Rome, a point of convergence of landscape painters from all over Europe. Here, Caffi executed his splendid renditions of the ancient ruins, achieving exceptional results. This period was followed by travels in the Middle East and Greece and, in 1848, involvement in the uprisings of the Risorgimento, which would cause Caffi to spend several years in exile. During this time, he exhibited his work at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Upon his return to Venice in 1857, Caffi resumed painting with fresh enthusiasm, making effective use of colour and light in a series of images destined to become his most famous: serenades on the Grand Canal, S.Giorgio Maggiore, and the Venetian carnival, in which Caffi reveals his deep fascination with subdued light and nighttime scenes. The works included in the exhibit convey this expressive research.

Turner devoted a whole sketchbook to a survey of the entire length of the canal. Other watercolours focus on the areas near the two hotels where he was based during his three visits: around the Rialto Bridge and along the Canal’s last great curve to the Dogano (or Customs House). As well as working from a boat, Turner painted some of his watercolours from the landing stages on the Canal. His views of the final stretch are dominated by the church of Santa Maria della Salute, its domes transformed by the afternoon sunlight and shadows.

The Giudecca Canal separates the city from the homonym island. Turner had ventured briefly onto the Giudecca during his first visit to Venice, though he had only got as far as the church of the Redentore (Redeemer), designed by Palladio in the 16th century. It was not until his final visit, in 1840, that Turner really began to appreciate the spectacular views across to the heart of the city that the area offered. Earlier artists had largely neglected the Giudecca Canal, so Turner made the most of the opportunity to present the city’s familiar landmarks in striking new ways. Directly opposite the Doge’s Palace, at the east of the Giudecca, lies the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Its buildings were largely conceived by the architect Andrea Palladio in the mid-16th century. Most striking is the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Its campanile and dome appear repeatedly in Turner’s watercolours, viewed at times from the quays and canals of the city, but also seen from the water. He seems to have been particularly fascinated by the play of light on the brick and marble surfaces of the island’s buildings. Turner’s dedication put other artists to shame. William Callow admitted feeling guilty that he was lying around smoking in a gondola late one evening when he saw Turner in another gondola, still sketching San Giorgio.

The Riva degli Schiavoni offers spectacular views of the Bacino di San Marco – St Mark’s Basin – and the city’s most famous buildings. It had once been the commerical heart of the city; ships from all over the world anchored here when Venice was at the height of its power as a trading centre. But by Turner’s day the volume of shipping had shrunk significantly and many mid-nineteenth century viewers could compare contemporary views of the Bacino with the vibrancy shown in Canaletto’s paintings a century or so earlier: Turner tended instead to focus on smaller craft, gondolas or the local fishing boats known as ‘bragozzi’.

Byron described Venice as a jewel rising out of the sea, but surprisingly few artists tried to show its isolated setting in the vast expanses of the Lagoon. Turner seems to have been alone in developing a fascination for the profile of the city seen from the surrounding waters. His last images show it as a glittering silhouette, touched by the light of dawn or sunset. Some show arrivals or departures: we seem to be either approaching Venice with anticipation, or leaving it, watching it melt into the distance. The works in this final section were produced during the last ten years of Turner’s life. They divided the critics. Many who admitted to being entranced by his ‘beautiful and fantastic play of colours’ were disconcerted by the difficulty of making out forms and shapes. Several of these pictures remained unsold in Turner’s Gallery at his death. But seen here, as the climax of the exhibition, they show Turner maintaining to the end his determination to find new perspectives from which to challenge and enchant the viewer.