Thu - April 19, 2007

DüRER TO FRIEDRICH - GERMAN DRAWINGS FROM THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM OXFORD

By Neil Cooper

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is currently holding an exhibition of drawings that highlight the Museum’s small but prestigious collection of pieces by German artists from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Durer to Friedrich – German Drawings from the Ashmolean runs until May 20 2007 and consists of the collections of two different antiquarians.

Francis Douce bequeathed the earlier works, containing a number of works by Albrecht Durer, to Oxford University in 1834. The second group, dating from the 19th century, was given to the museum by Dr Grete Ring who came to England from Germany in the 1930s.

Full review at 24hourmuseum.org.uk >>>

Posted at 10:59 AM    

Mon - March 26, 2007

Lesson in Perspective

By Blake Gopnik

Here's what's not in doubt: In Renaissance Europe, women were basically the property of their fathers and husbands. They had almost no legal rights; they were not supposed to control property or sign contracts. They were the frequent victims of rape and vicious beatings. They had a range of career options: They could be wives, nuns or prostitutes.

But what's still at issue is the precise cultural effect of that oppression. "Italian Women Artists From Renaissance to Baroque," a gripping show staged at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in honor of its 20th anniversary, raises several crucial questions.

Do this show's 67 portraits, flower pictures, still lifes, holy scenes and classical narratives speak to us as special woman's work, or are they just more of what men made? Could a famous artist like Artemisia Gentileschi, by far the greatest talent in this show, benefit from being born a woman or only suffer for it?

Full article at washingtonpost.com >>>

Posted at 01:03 PM    

Mon - November 6, 2006

MAN WHO PUT EVERYONE IN THE PICTURE

By Brian Sewell

Review of DAVID TENIERS AND THE THEATRE OF PAINTING at the Courtauld Institute Gallery

Some three and a half centuries have passed since the issue of the first illustrated souvenir of a collection of paintings. By then, 1660, the manuscript inventory was common, though never published, and the illustrated printed book had been available for more than 150 years, yet no one, collector, curator, printer or publisher, had thought of combining them to provide records of the great collections that had been formed in Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe, until David Teniers the Younger did so for the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, brother of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III.

Teniers called it Theatrum Pictorium, literally The Theatre of Painting, though the sense of Theatrum in this case is the less usual place of exhibition rather than performance. It was a handsome volume devoted only to the more important Italian paintings in the Archduke's possession, 243 of them (a little more than half their number).

Full article at thisislondon.co.uk >>>

Posted at 05:41 PM    

Wed - October 18, 2006

Tue - October 10, 2006

A Master of Finding the Power of the Face in the Faces of the Powerful

By ALAN RIDING

To enter a gallery full of portraits by Titian is to confront raw power — imperial, religious, republican, aristocratic. Decked out in ornate armor or richly embroidered gowns or ceremonial robes, Hapsburg monarchs, popes and cardinals, Venetian doges and dynastic families proclaim their strength and importance.

Titian knew how to make the powerful look powerful, which is also why they sought him out: a portrait by Titian was worth boasting about. But as an artisan, albeit highly skilled, he could never become one of them. Rather, he was at their service; at times they even neglected to pay him, as if the privilege of recording their power sufficed.

Today that balance has shifted. Now it is because of the painter, not his subjects, that large crowds are visiting “Titian: In Face of Power,” an exhibition of portraits at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris through Jan. 21. In fact, many of the 16th-century men of power displayed in the show are remembered thanks only to Titian.

Full review at nytimes.com >>>

Posted at 11:13 AM    

Wed - September 20, 2006

The Fifth Centennial of the Death of Andrea Mantegna

The National Committee for the celebration of the fifth centennial of the death of Andrea Mantegna (Isola di Carturo, 1431 c. – Mantova, 1506), created by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities and composed of the most important scholars of the early Italian Renaissance, flanked by representatives of the regions, local governments and other interested organizations, celebrates the great artist through a show in each of the cities in which the master lived and worked: Padua (site of the exhibition Eremitani Museum), Verona (site of the exhibition Palazzo della Gran Guardia), Mantova (site of the exhibition Palazzo Te). The project is the expression of a high level of cooperation between the Italian government and the local organizations.

The event will be open to the public from September 16, 2006 until January 14, 2007. The method applied in the scientific program of the exhibition is new with respect to past initiatives, and will present the works of the master alongside those of other great artists, involved like him in the renewal of the figurative language in northern Italy, as well as many of his followers.

Three periods, three exhibitions for a single fascinating voyage in discovery of the rich personality of Mantegna, starting from Padua, where he got his early training, continuing on to Verona where one of his most important works was painted and still kept, and had a tremendous influence on the figurative culture of that regional capital, and arriving in Mantova, where the artist spent most of his life and where he died.

350 works in all, 64 masterpieces by Mantegna, 140 lending museums, over 56 scholars involved in the scientific and consulting committees, an international study conference for an exceptional, unique event.

Full article at artdaily.com >>>

Posted at 11:48 AM    

Thu - September 14, 2006

RARE RENAISSANCE SKETCHES ON SHOW

A rare collection of sketches and designs, including little known works by Renaissance masters, goes on display in Florence later this week. Preparatory drawings by Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo Costa and Filippino Lippi will be exhibited alongside a host of other names from 15th-century Italy. The exhibition, which opens on Friday, will showcase some 50 designs that are part of a collection built up by Saxony princes in the 1700s and 1800s.

Full article at ansa.it >>>

Posted at 11:12 AM    

Wed - August 16, 2006

Wed - August 9, 2006

Time in Venice

By Jed Perl

Painting stops time--at least as we know time in our day-to-day lives. Within the delimited world of a painting, the forward flow of time is confounded, for even as the painter creates locations, intervals, and trajectories that hold our attention--that take our time--we nevertheless enter a realm in which we can move when and where we please, in which the amount of time we spend is for us to determine. In looking at paintings, we look quickly or slowly, we look at what we want to see when we want to see it, we enter into a time that is out of time. Even if the painter wants us to explore the canvas from left to right, and regards that exploration as suggesting a spatial progression that is also a temporal one, we are still free to regard left and right as existing simultaneously, and to explore not only from left to right but also from right to left--which might suggest going backward in time.  

If painting is one of the bellwethers of modernity--and who can doubt that it is?--this is surely because the painter, in shattering the orderly flow of time, offers such a strong sense of open-ended discovery, of the canvas as a world in which we make our own way, and determine our own orientation, our own direction, our own sense of things. And this view of painting first crystallized as an idea and an ideal in Venice, in the years just after 1500. That extraordinary period is now the subject of Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington that travels to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in the fall. Among the canvases gathered in Washington are several of the time-out-of-time masterworks of Western art, including Giorgione's Three Philosophers and Titian's Concert Champêtre (Pastoral Concert) and Bacchanal of the Andrians.

Full review at tnr.com >>>

Posted at 09:41 AM    

Fri - June 16, 2006

A very modern 17th-century art dealer

Will Bennett reviews In pictures: Rembrandt & Co at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

With its glamorous evening auctions, glossy catalogues and sleekly designed fairs, the art market can often seem like a modern invention. But while these presentational skills date from the late 20th century, the desire to own art and the resulting market have a much longer history.

An exhibition that opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London 7 June marks the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth by focusing on his art dealer, Hendrick Uylenburgh, and Hendrick's son, Gerrit. The two men played an important role in developing the art market as well as in promoting one of the greatest painters in history.

Until the 17th century, commissioning works of art was largely the preserve of the church, monarchs and aristocrats. The emergence of a powerful and wealthy middle class in Holland, though, produced a radical change in patronage as the new Dutch bourgeoisie bought art. For the first time, the direction of art was shaped by relatively broadly-based demand rather than religious dogma or royal whim, and the result was a market which today's dealers and collectors would find familiar.

Full review at telegraph.co.uk >>>

Posted at 09:43 AM