Local Antiquities, Local Identities: Art Literature and Antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400-1700, ISBN: 978-1-5261-1704-5, 2018
This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across ... more This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era, c. 1400-1700. Breaking new ground, it explores local concepts of antiquity in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributors take a novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy, as well as examining other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They consider how real or fictive ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to demonstrate a particular idea of local origins, to rewrite history or to vaunt civic pride. In doing so, they tackle such varied subjects as municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants.
This special issue of Oud Holland offers new perspectives on the 'rediscovery' of early Netherlan... more This special issue of Oud Holland offers new perspectives on the 'rediscovery' of early Netherlandish art in the long nineteenth century. It probes the intersection of creative and scholarly practices that helped to establish the importance of this corpus of artwork, produced between about 1420 to 1550 in the Burgundian (and later Habsburg) Low Countries, and to secure its status as a cultural landmark and a distinct field of art historical inquiry. Investigating topics ranging from Karl Schnaase's pioneering writings, to Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's influential designs, to James Ensor's radically unconventional imagery, the six essays in this volume explore specific cases in the appropriation, reception, interpretation, and promotion of early Netherlandish art – particularly painting – in a range of cultural practices and circumstances. Topics addressed include art criticism and exhibitions, architecture and design, painting and drawing, and the emergence of 'reproductive' photography.
The essays expand upon such foundational studies as Francis Haskell's History and its images (1993), which demonstrated how the surge of interest in the work of the Van Eyck brothers and their compatriots was inextricable from the evolving national identity and cultural politics of the modern nation-state of Belgium. While the Belgian context is central, several contributors enlarge the scope of inquiry with projects rooted in England and German-speaking regions, which forged strong intellectual and political ties with Belgium and engaged enthusiastically with its artistic heritage. Collectively, the essays advance new insights into the evolution of art history as a discipline, the complexity of artistic modernism(s) and revivalism(s); the role of nationalism and religion in nineteenth-century cultural life; and some of the myriad ways in which the artistic past and present inflect one another.
Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print an... more Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print and other media were common, setting off chain reactions of images and objects that endured. Paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, musical or scientific instruments, and armor exerted their own influence on prints, while prints provided artists with paper veneers, templates, and sources of adaptable images. This interdisciplinary collection unites scholars from different fields of art history who elucidate the agency of prints on more traditionally valued media, and vice-versa. Contributors explore how, after translations across traditional geographic, temporal, and material boundaries, original 'meanings' may be lost, reconfigured, or subverted in surprising ways, whether a Netherlandish motif graces a cabinet in Italy or the print itself, colored or copied, is integrated into the calligraphic scheme of a Persian royal album. These intertwined relationships yield unexpected yet surprisingly prevalent modes of perception. Andrea Mantegna's 1470/1500 Battle of the Sea Gods, an engraving that emulates the properties of sculpted relief, was in fact reborn as relief sculpture, and fabrics based on print designs were reapplied to prints, returning color and tactility to the very objects from which the derived. Together, the essays in this volume witness a methodological shift in the study of print, from examining the printed image as an index of an absent invention in another medium - a painting, sculpture, or drawing - to considering its role as a generative, active agent driving modes of invention and perception far beyond the locus of its production. Co-edited by Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago Edward H. Wouk, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester (UK)
In two exceptional drawings, the Netherlandish artist Lambert Lombard responded to the famous stu... more In two exceptional drawings, the Netherlandish artist Lambert Lombard responded to the famous studies of Christ’s Passion that Michelangelo produced as gifts for the Roman noblewoman Vittoria Colonna between circa 1538 and 1541. This article investigates the nature of the drawing as gift in the work of both artists, with respect to practices of giving, reciprocity, and the gift of talent. In the context of his participation in the circle around the embattled English cardinal Reginald Pole, Lombard’s drawings engage with the theological and artistic significance of Michelangelo’s studies, particularly in their depiction of salvation as a gift beyond recompense. Lombard’s response to Michelangelo reflects his position as a northern European artist working in a period of intense crisis about the function of art in systems of belief.
TODAY, THE NETHERLANDISH HUMANIST Dominicus Lampsonius (fig. 1) is generally known for his two pu... more TODAY, THE NETHERLANDISH HUMANIST Dominicus Lampsonius (fig. 1) is generally known for his two published texts on art: the biography of his friend and teacher Lambert Lombard, printed in Bruges in 1565, and the verse inscriptions he composed to accompany twenty-three engraved portraits of Netherlandish painters, which appeared in 1572 under the title Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies. 1 During his lifetime, however, Lampsonius was celebrated as a polymath who studied classical languages at the University of Leuven, trained as a painter, and distinguished himself as Latin secretary to the English cardinal Reginald Pole as well as three successive prince-bishops of Liège. 2 He also became a central figure in a community of artists, poets, and publishers who began to address the history of Netherlandish art following the publication of Giorgio Vasari's seminal Lives of the Artists, first printed in Florence in 1550, which almost completely excluded northern artists from its history. 3 On October 30, 1564, Lampsonius wrote a letter to Vasari, initiating an epistolary exchange that lasted approximately half a year. None of Vasari's responses to
Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gat... more Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gate of Antwerp’s Vieux-Bourg sometime in the fourteenth century. Little is known of the early history of Semini, although it was rumoured to be the object of a fertility cult. Yet, in 1549, at a crucial moment in the political identity of the city and its relationship to the Hapsburg empire, the statue came to be identified as Priapus, the Greco-Roman god of the fields and of procreation. This essay examines the reappropriation of Semini in the context of counter-reformation Antwerp. It considers the importance of this small antiquity to emerging practices of local antiquarianism, historiography and philology, while also examining some of the everyday street activities which both reinforced and challenged concepts of antiquity in the early modern city.
This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across ... more This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era. Breaking new ground, it explores local concepts of antiquity in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributors take a novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy, as well as examining other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They consider how real or fictive ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to demonstrate a particular idea of local origins, to rewrite history or to vaunt civic pride. In doing so, they tackle such varied subjects as municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants.
Rylands English MS 60, compiled for the Spencer family in the eighteenth century, contains 130 pr... more Rylands English MS 60, compiled for the Spencer family in the eighteenth century, contains 130 printed portraits of early modern artists gathered from diverse sources and mounted in two albums: 76 portraits in the first volume, which is devoted to northern European artists, and 54 in the second volume, containing Italian and French painters. Both albums of this 'Collection of Engravings of Portraits of Painters' were initially planned to include a written biography of each artist copied from the few sources available in English at the time, but that part of the project was abandoned. This article relates English MS 60 to shinning practices of picturing art history. It examines the rise of printed artists' portraits, tracing the divergent histories of the genre south and north of the Alps, and explores how biographical approaches to the history of art were being replaced, in the eighteenth century, by the development of illustrated texts about art.
Local Antiquities, Local Identities: Art Literature and Antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400-1700, ISBN: 978-1-5261-1704-5, 2018
This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across ... more This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era, c. 1400-1700. Breaking new ground, it explores local concepts of antiquity in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributors take a novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy, as well as examining other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They consider how real or fictive ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to demonstrate a particular idea of local origins, to rewrite history or to vaunt civic pride. In doing so, they tackle such varied subjects as municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants.
This special issue of Oud Holland offers new perspectives on the 'rediscovery' of early Netherlan... more This special issue of Oud Holland offers new perspectives on the 'rediscovery' of early Netherlandish art in the long nineteenth century. It probes the intersection of creative and scholarly practices that helped to establish the importance of this corpus of artwork, produced between about 1420 to 1550 in the Burgundian (and later Habsburg) Low Countries, and to secure its status as a cultural landmark and a distinct field of art historical inquiry. Investigating topics ranging from Karl Schnaase's pioneering writings, to Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's influential designs, to James Ensor's radically unconventional imagery, the six essays in this volume explore specific cases in the appropriation, reception, interpretation, and promotion of early Netherlandish art – particularly painting – in a range of cultural practices and circumstances. Topics addressed include art criticism and exhibitions, architecture and design, painting and drawing, and the emergence of 'reproductive' photography.
The essays expand upon such foundational studies as Francis Haskell's History and its images (1993), which demonstrated how the surge of interest in the work of the Van Eyck brothers and their compatriots was inextricable from the evolving national identity and cultural politics of the modern nation-state of Belgium. While the Belgian context is central, several contributors enlarge the scope of inquiry with projects rooted in England and German-speaking regions, which forged strong intellectual and political ties with Belgium and engaged enthusiastically with its artistic heritage. Collectively, the essays advance new insights into the evolution of art history as a discipline, the complexity of artistic modernism(s) and revivalism(s); the role of nationalism and religion in nineteenth-century cultural life; and some of the myriad ways in which the artistic past and present inflect one another.
Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print an... more Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print and other media were common, setting off chain reactions of images and objects that endured. Paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, musical or scientific instruments, and armor exerted their own influence on prints, while prints provided artists with paper veneers, templates, and sources of adaptable images. This interdisciplinary collection unites scholars from different fields of art history who elucidate the agency of prints on more traditionally valued media, and vice-versa. Contributors explore how, after translations across traditional geographic, temporal, and material boundaries, original 'meanings' may be lost, reconfigured, or subverted in surprising ways, whether a Netherlandish motif graces a cabinet in Italy or the print itself, colored or copied, is integrated into the calligraphic scheme of a Persian royal album. These intertwined relationships yield unexpected yet surprisingly prevalent modes of perception. Andrea Mantegna's 1470/1500 Battle of the Sea Gods, an engraving that emulates the properties of sculpted relief, was in fact reborn as relief sculpture, and fabrics based on print designs were reapplied to prints, returning color and tactility to the very objects from which the derived. Together, the essays in this volume witness a methodological shift in the study of print, from examining the printed image as an index of an absent invention in another medium - a painting, sculpture, or drawing - to considering its role as a generative, active agent driving modes of invention and perception far beyond the locus of its production. Co-edited by Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago Edward H. Wouk, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester (UK)
In two exceptional drawings, the Netherlandish artist Lambert Lombard responded to the famous stu... more In two exceptional drawings, the Netherlandish artist Lambert Lombard responded to the famous studies of Christ’s Passion that Michelangelo produced as gifts for the Roman noblewoman Vittoria Colonna between circa 1538 and 1541. This article investigates the nature of the drawing as gift in the work of both artists, with respect to practices of giving, reciprocity, and the gift of talent. In the context of his participation in the circle around the embattled English cardinal Reginald Pole, Lombard’s drawings engage with the theological and artistic significance of Michelangelo’s studies, particularly in their depiction of salvation as a gift beyond recompense. Lombard’s response to Michelangelo reflects his position as a northern European artist working in a period of intense crisis about the function of art in systems of belief.
TODAY, THE NETHERLANDISH HUMANIST Dominicus Lampsonius (fig. 1) is generally known for his two pu... more TODAY, THE NETHERLANDISH HUMANIST Dominicus Lampsonius (fig. 1) is generally known for his two published texts on art: the biography of his friend and teacher Lambert Lombard, printed in Bruges in 1565, and the verse inscriptions he composed to accompany twenty-three engraved portraits of Netherlandish painters, which appeared in 1572 under the title Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies. 1 During his lifetime, however, Lampsonius was celebrated as a polymath who studied classical languages at the University of Leuven, trained as a painter, and distinguished himself as Latin secretary to the English cardinal Reginald Pole as well as three successive prince-bishops of Liège. 2 He also became a central figure in a community of artists, poets, and publishers who began to address the history of Netherlandish art following the publication of Giorgio Vasari's seminal Lives of the Artists, first printed in Florence in 1550, which almost completely excluded northern artists from its history. 3 On October 30, 1564, Lampsonius wrote a letter to Vasari, initiating an epistolary exchange that lasted approximately half a year. None of Vasari's responses to
Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gat... more Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gate of Antwerp’s Vieux-Bourg sometime in the fourteenth century. Little is known of the early history of Semini, although it was rumoured to be the object of a fertility cult. Yet, in 1549, at a crucial moment in the political identity of the city and its relationship to the Hapsburg empire, the statue came to be identified as Priapus, the Greco-Roman god of the fields and of procreation. This essay examines the reappropriation of Semini in the context of counter-reformation Antwerp. It considers the importance of this small antiquity to emerging practices of local antiquarianism, historiography and philology, while also examining some of the everyday street activities which both reinforced and challenged concepts of antiquity in the early modern city.
This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across ... more This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era. Breaking new ground, it explores local concepts of antiquity in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributors take a novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy, as well as examining other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They consider how real or fictive ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to demonstrate a particular idea of local origins, to rewrite history or to vaunt civic pride. In doing so, they tackle such varied subjects as municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants.
Rylands English MS 60, compiled for the Spencer family in the eighteenth century, contains 130 pr... more Rylands English MS 60, compiled for the Spencer family in the eighteenth century, contains 130 printed portraits of early modern artists gathered from diverse sources and mounted in two albums: 76 portraits in the first volume, which is devoted to northern European artists, and 54 in the second volume, containing Italian and French painters. Both albums of this 'Collection of Engravings of Portraits of Painters' were initially planned to include a written biography of each artist copied from the few sources available in English at the time, but that part of the project was abandoned. This article relates English MS 60 to shinning practices of picturing art history. It examines the rise of printed artists' portraits, tracing the divergent histories of the genre south and north of the Alps, and explores how biographical approaches to the history of art were being replaced, in the eighteenth century, by the development of illustrated texts about art.
This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prin... more This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prints, long considered to be lost. By examining its composition and tracing its provenance from the Spencer collection at Althorp House to the John Rylands Library, Manchester, we offer new insight into how attitudes toward Marcantonio Raimondi‘s work evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Great Britain. Our article also explores Victorian collecting practices and the importance of the graphic arts for Mrs Rylands‘s vision for the Library to be dedicated to her late husband‘s memory.
Exposees dans les bibliotheques, musees et galeries derriere leur plaque protectrice de verre ou ... more Exposees dans les bibliotheques, musees et galeries derriere leur plaque protectrice de verre ou de papier cristal, les estampes du debut de l’epoque moderne peuvent nous sembler des objets statiques, faits pour etre contemples a distance ou manipules avec grand soin. Altered and Adorned (Alterees et Ornees), l’exposition organisee par l’Art Institute de Chicago en 2011, a montre que la relation avec les estampes a l’aube de la modernite se caracterisait par une dynamique bien plus active et ...
Frans Floris's monumental Allegory of the Trinity, signed and dated 1562, presents a radical ... more Frans Floris's monumental Allegory of the Trinity, signed and dated 1562, presents a radical vision of a restructured religious order. Aligning the Pope with the devil and removing the Virgin Mary from her traditional role as intercessor, the image relates the essence of Christian faith to the loving bond between a humble hen and her chicks. The present essay explores the relationship between this extraordinary iconography and Nicodemism, a religious movement which attracted many of the artist's patrons through its conciliatory response to sectarian factionalism and its irenic stance against violence. Floris's decision to include his self-portrait in the work divulges his personal investment in its subject. This study examines why Floris produced such an image at the height of his career and explores the strategies he used to respond visually to growing threats against his society and the fundaments of his art.
Renaissance Modern, conceived and organised by students from The Courtauld Institute of Art and t... more Renaissance Modern, conceived and organised by students from The Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Manchester in collaboration with their tutors Guido Rebecchini and Edward Wouk and with Stephanie Buck, the Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings at The Courtauld Gallery, examines how artists working in a variety of media sought to challenge established ideas about art and creativity during the sixteenth century. It focuses on drawings produced in Italy, primarily Florence and Rome, but also includes examples from Northern Europe, many of which have never been studied before. This website documents our exhibition and features catalogue entries for all the works exhibited.
A collaboration between students from both The Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of M... more A collaboration between students from both The Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Manchester, this display focuses on 16th century draughtsmanship in Italy and Northern Europe.
It explores those aspects of Renaissance drawing that were deliberately new or ‘modern’ in subject matter, style and approach. Now until 7 June 2015.
Il pomeriggio di studio sarà dedicato al volume Life of Marcantonio Raimondi and Critical Catalog... more Il pomeriggio di studio sarà dedicato al volume Life of Marcantonio Raimondi and Critical Catalogue of Prints by or after Bo-lognese Masters, secondo della serie Carlo Cesare Malvasia's Felsina pittrice (1678): Lives of the Bolognese Painters. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation, edizione critica e traduzione inglese corredata di note della Felsina pittrice (1678) di Carlo Cesare Malvasia. L'intera serie, pubblicata ad opera dell'editore Harvey Miller (Brepols Publishers), è il frutto del "Progetto Malvasia", portato avanti da un gruppo di studiosi guidati da Elizabeth Cropper e Lorenzo Pericolo (University of Warwick) sotto il patronato del Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
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The essays expand upon such foundational studies as Francis Haskell's History and its images (1993), which demonstrated how the surge of interest in the work of the Van Eyck brothers and their compatriots was inextricable from the evolving national identity and cultural politics of the modern nation-state of Belgium. While the Belgian context is central, several contributors enlarge the scope of inquiry with projects rooted in England and German-speaking regions, which forged strong intellectual and political ties with Belgium and engaged enthusiastically with its artistic heritage. Collectively, the essays advance new insights into the evolution of art history as a discipline, the complexity of artistic modernism(s) and revivalism(s); the role of nationalism and religion in nineteenth-century cultural life; and some of the myriad ways in which the artistic past and present inflect one another.
Co-edited by
Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago
Edward H. Wouk, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester (UK)
the theological and artistic significance of Michelangelo’s studies, particularly in their depiction of salvation as a gift beyond recompense. Lombard’s response to Michelangelo reflects his position as a northern European artist working in a period of intense crisis about the function of art in systems of belief.
The essays expand upon such foundational studies as Francis Haskell's History and its images (1993), which demonstrated how the surge of interest in the work of the Van Eyck brothers and their compatriots was inextricable from the evolving national identity and cultural politics of the modern nation-state of Belgium. While the Belgian context is central, several contributors enlarge the scope of inquiry with projects rooted in England and German-speaking regions, which forged strong intellectual and political ties with Belgium and engaged enthusiastically with its artistic heritage. Collectively, the essays advance new insights into the evolution of art history as a discipline, the complexity of artistic modernism(s) and revivalism(s); the role of nationalism and religion in nineteenth-century cultural life; and some of the myriad ways in which the artistic past and present inflect one another.
Co-edited by
Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago
Edward H. Wouk, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester (UK)
the theological and artistic significance of Michelangelo’s studies, particularly in their depiction of salvation as a gift beyond recompense. Lombard’s response to Michelangelo reflects his position as a northern European artist working in a period of intense crisis about the function of art in systems of belief.
This website documents our exhibition and features catalogue entries for all the works exhibited.
It explores those aspects of Renaissance drawing that were deliberately new or ‘modern’ in subject matter, style and approach. Now until 7 June 2015.
L'intera serie, pubblicata ad opera dell'editore Harvey Miller (Brepols Publishers), è il frutto del "Progetto Malvasia", portato avanti da un gruppo di studiosi guidati da Elizabeth Cropper e Lorenzo Pericolo (University of Warwick) sotto il patronato del Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington).