Santa Barbara Museum of Art is only West Coast venue for exhibition of Glasgow Museums’ Italian holdings

Étiquettes

Christ and the Adulteress, Domenichino, Giovanni Bellini, Landscape with St. Jerome, Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation, Titian, Virgin and Child

Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, ca. 1480–85. Tempera and oil on panel, 24 1/2 x 18 1/4 in. (62.3 x 46.2 cm). Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Mrs. John Graham-Gilbert, 1877 (575). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection, Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

SANTA BARBARA, CA.– This beautiful and important exhibition explores the evolution of Italian art and reflects the outstanding quality and remarkable 500-year range—from the late 14th to the 19th centuries—of the Glasgow Museums’ Italian holdings. Included are works by some of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods, such as Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, Domenichino, Francesco Guardi, Salvator Rosa, Luca Signorelli, and Titian, many of which have never before been exhibited outside Glasgow. Several have been newly restored for the exhibition, among them, the southern Italian Adoration of the Magi by the unknown artist known as the Master of the Glasgow Adoration. This stunning early Renaissance masterpiece believed to have been part of a larger altarpiece was almost black with atmospheric pollution before conservation.

The character of Glasgow’s Italian collection was largely determined by the tastes of Archibald McLellan (1797–1854), a discriminating collector who spent much of his wealth on art and bequeathed his extensive collection to the city. McLellan acquired representative examples of all the main schools of Italy and in all the main periods of development. Most are religious or mythological in subject and were acquired in the spirit of an academic and moral ideal rather than for any personal reasons.

The exhibition of more than 40 works begins with early religious works in the section titled Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: Tradition and Discovery. Most of the paintings from this period were meant to convey biblical narratives to a largely illiterate public, to inspire prayer, to demonstrate the devotion of the paintings’ patrons, and, often, to commemorate an important occasion, such as a birth. Among the works in this section are Sandro Botticelli’s innovative The Annunciation (1490–95)—particularly notable for the artist’s use of mathematical perspective, which gives an impression of three-dimensional depth—and the exquisite Virgin and Child (ca. 1480–85) by Giovanni Bellini, who played a major role in advancing the use of luminous oil paints over the more common egg-based tempera medium.

Sandro Botticelli (and Possibly Assistant), The Annunciation, ca. 1490–95. 
Oil, tempera, and gold leaf on walnut panel. 19 1/2 x 24 7/16 in. (49.5 x 61.9 cm). Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (174). ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Photo courtesy American Federation of Arts.

One of the most significant Renaissance works in Glasgow and a centerpiece of the section The Sixteenth Century: Towards a New Beauty is Titian’s Christ and the Adulteress (ca. 1508–10), a rare example of the artist’s early paintings in a collection outside Italy and a key work in Titian’s oeuvre. As with many Renaissance paintings, this large masterpiece was cut down at some point. In 1971, Glasgow Museums was able to purchase Head of a Man, originally part of the upper right-hand corner. This exhibition will reunite the two works for the first time in the United States.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Christ and the Adulteress, ca. 1508–10. Oil on canvas. 54 13/16 x 71 1/2 in. (139.2 x 181.7 cm). Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (181). ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Photo courtesy American Federation of Arts.

The section The Seventeenth Century: Rhetoric and Realism presents the two contrasting, predominant styles of the 17th century, as represented in the theatrical Baroque style of Antiveduto Gramatica’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne (ca. 1614–17) and the classicism of Sassoferrato’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John the Baptist (ca. 1640s). This section also features masterpieces by two pioneers of their respective landscape styles. Landscape with St. Jerome (ca. 1610) by Domenichino, a forbearer of the Picturesque, exemplifies the meticulously constructed and serene composition of the ideal classical landscape. Salvator Rosa, on the other hand, was a passionate individualist who would influence the work of J.M.W. Turner and 19th-century Romantic painters, with his vision of an untamed and turbulent world of nature.

Domenichino, Landscape with St. Jerome, ca. 1610. Oil on panel, 17 5/16 x 23 1/2 in. (44 x 59.6 cm). Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (139). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection, Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

The Eighteenth Century: Age of Elegance illustrates the emergence of landscape as a subject in itself, a development aided by an increase in travel during the period. While on the fashionable Grand Tour, British visitors in particular flocked to Italy to see ancient Roman ruins and Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces. There they sought out Italian landscape paintings such as Andrea Locatelli’s Landscape with Fishermen (ca. 1730) and Francesco Guardi’s View of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (ca. 1760) as prestigious souvenirs.

Antonio Balestra, Justice and Peace Embracing, ca. 1700. Oil on canvas, 42 x 55 1/4 in. (106.8 x 140.3 cm). Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (266)© CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Photo courtesy American Federation of Arts.

The final section, The Nineteenth Century: Patriotism and Genre, presents an eclectic array of Italian art during this era of national unification and modernization. The section opens with two works by Vincenzo Camuccini: The Death of Julius Caesar and Roman Women Offering Their Jewelry in Defense of the State (both ca. 1825–29). Each portrays a narrative from antiquity while also reflecting the politically volatile climate of Italy in the late 1820s. Camuccini, the leading painter in early 19th-century Italy, developed his style by studying the art of Italian old masters, including the works of Domenichino, Titian, and other artists featured earlier in the exhibition.

Prior to the opening at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), the exhibition (originally named Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums) was on view in Great Britain in an expanded version including decorative arts at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow (April–August 2012) and Compton Verney in Warwickshire (March–June 2013). The North American tour began at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (August 22–November 17, 2013) before traveling to the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (December 13, 2013–March 9, 2014), Allentown Art Museum (June 8 – September 7, 2014), and Milwaukee Art Museum (October 1, 2014–January 4, 2015).

‘The Secret of Dresden: From Rembrandt to Canaletto’ at the Groninger Museum

Étiquettes

12th-13th century, 14th Century, 15th century, Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velásquez, Dresden, Groninger Museum, Pietro Antonio Graf Rotari, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Titian, Tiziano Vecellio

Pietro Antonio Graf Rotari, Man with fur hat, 1755, oil painting, 35 x 43,5 cm, Dresdener Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

GRONINGEN.- The collections in Dresden form one of the best-kept secrets of European art. At the time, the art compilations amassed by Prince-Electors of Saxony in the eighteenth century belonged to the most beautiful and renowned collections in Europe. The Secret of Dresden – From Rembrandt to Canaletto displays a selection from the impressive collection of paintings that nowadays constitute the core of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. There are masterpieces such as the Rembrandt’s Abduction of Ganymede (1635), as well as works by painters who were once considered to be masters but have now been (almost) forgotten. Together they tell the story of the florescence of the court of Saxony in the eighteenth century.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Ganymede in the Claws of the Eagle, 1635, Oil on canvas, 177 x 129 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Saxony was already one of the most prosperous German states when Prince-Elector August the Strong managed to acquire the kingship of Poland in 1697. He underlined his new status among the royal courts of Europe by starting up ambitious building projects and initiating an impressive art collection that could rival those of the major royal collections of that period. After his death, his collecting activities were continued by his son August III until deep into the eighteenth century. The cultural wealth of Dresden was so notable that the city was referred to as ‘Florence on the Elbe’. The general public was increasingly granted access to the collection of paintings, so that one of the first public museums in the world eventually arose. Goethe, who often visited the Gemäldegalerie, regarded it as a true sanctuary of art.

Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto, Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe above the Augustus Bridge, 1747, Oil on canvas, 132 x 236 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

As a consequence of renovation, a part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister has now become temporarily available for display elsewhere. In a number of thematic chapters, ‘The Secret of Dresden’ tells of the important role of art in eighteenth-century Saxony. On show are mythological paintings by Rembrandt and Canaletto, portraits by Titian and Velazquez, views of Venice by Canaletto, and landscapes by Philips Wouwerman and Claude Lorrain.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Portrait of a lady in white, oil painting, 102 x 86 cm, Dresdener Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velásquez, Portrait of a Knight of the Order of Santiago, circa 1635, Oil on canvas, 67.3 x 56 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto, The Ruins of the Old Kreuzkirche in Dresden, 1765, Oil on canvas, 80 x 110 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

In addition to Groningen, this exhibition will also be on display in Munich and Vienna. An extensive German catalogue will accompany the exhibition, supplemented by a more concise Dutch-language version.

An exhibition organized by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in conjunction with the Groninger Museum.

13 December – 25 May, 10am – 5pm

Dutch Queen Maxima and Groninger Museum director Andreas Bluhm look at the painting « Dresden from the right bank of the Elde » by painter Bernardo Bellotto during the official opening of the exhibition ‘The secret of Dresden’ in Groningen, on December 12, 2014. AFP PHOTO / ANP / VINCENT JANNINK.

Dutch Queen Maxima looks at ta painting during the official opening of the exhibition ‘The secret of Dresden’ at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, on December 12, 2014. AFP PHOTO / ANP / VINCENT JANNINK

Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970), 21 (Red, Brown, Black and Orange)

Étiquettes

.M.W. Turner, 1950, Assumption of the Virgin, Autumn Rhythm 
(Number 30), Barnett Newman, Black, Black and Orange), Brown, Clyfford Still, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Francis Bacon, Gray, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, N°21 (Red, No. 10, No. 25 
(Red, Number 28, Onement I, Orange, PH-177 (1949-A-No. 2), Titian, Tropensonne, Two figures with a monkey, Untitled (Violet, Vampire, White on Yellow), Yellow on White and Red)

Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970), N°21 (Red, Brown, Black and Orange), signed and dated 1953 on the reverse, oil on canvas, 95 x 64 in. 241.5 x 162.5 cm. Executed in 1951. Estimation sur demande. Photo Sotheby’s.

PROVENANCE: Estate of the Artist (Estate No. 5142.53)
Marlborough A.G., Liechtenstein/Marlborough Gallery Inc., New York (acquired from the above in 1970)
Pierre and São Schlumberger (acquired from the above in 1972)
Acquired from the Estate of the above by the present owner in 1988.

EXPOSITION: New York, Museum of Modern Art, 15 Americans, April – July 1952 (as Number 21, 1951)
Venice, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Ca’Pesaro; New York, Marlborough Gallery, Mark Rothko Paintings 1947–1970, June – December 1970, cat. no. 10, illustrated in color in reverse orientation (as Red, Brown, Black and Orange and dated 1953)
Zurich, Kunsthaus Zürich; Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Neue Nationalgalerie; Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, March 1971 – January 1972, cat. no. 29, p. 49, illustrated in color in reverse orientation (as Red, Brown, Black and Orange and dated 1953)
Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Mark Rothko, March – May 1972 (as Red, Brown, Black and Orange and dated 1953)

LITTERATURE: Henry McBride, ‘Half Century or Whole Cycle?’, Art News 51, Summer 1952, p. 72, illustrated (as Number 21, 1951)
Violettes Walbern, Der Spiegel 23, May 31, 1971, p. 150, illustrated in color in reverse orientation
Karl Dhemer, ‘Am Ende nur nich Sang in Moll,’ Stuttgarter Nachrichten, August 25, 1971, p. 8, illustrated in reverse orientation
William C.Seitz, Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1983, pl. 224, illustrated in color (as Number 21, 1951)
David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1998, cat. no. 465, p. 352, illustrated in color and fig. 77, p. 72, illustrated (in installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1952)
Exh. Cat., Rome, Palazzo delle Espozioni, Mark Rothko, 2007, fig. 28, p. 43, illustrated (in installation in reverse orientation at Museo d’Arte Moderna Ca’Pesaro, Venice, 1970)

“These are the edgings and inchings of final form” – Wallace Stevens (Wallace Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, London, 1984, p. 488)

To encounter the majestic No. 21 is to be embraced by the full force of Mark Rothko’s evocation of the sublime. As privileged viewers of this indisputable, inimitable masterwork we are afforded a visual and somatic experience that is beyond compare and bespeaks the absolute mastery of the artist’s abstract vernacular. Executed in 1951 at the very incipit of what David Anfam, the editor of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, refers to as the anni mirabilis of Rothko’s oeuvre, the present work is a paragon of this halcyon era in which his mature mode of artistic expression pioneered truly unprecedented territory. Last seen in public during the major European travelling retrospective of Rothko’s art organized by the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1971-72, this superb painting has remained in the same highly distinguished private collection for over 40 years and its appearance here at auction marks an historic moment. A veritable treatise on the absolute limits of abstraction, No. 21 transmits an aura of the ethereal that is entirely enthralling and immersive. In accordance with the most authentic experience of Rothko’s vision, we cease to perceive this work as a dialogue between medium and support, and instead become wholly submerged within its utterly captivating compositional dynamism, chromatic intensity, and sheer scale.

Mark Rothko. The artist in his studio on West 53rd Street in New York, 1952
. Kay Bell Reynal, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 
Artwork © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Soaring to 95 inches in height, No. 21 projects itself into our space on a greater than human scale, engulfing us entirely within its epic expanse. Dominated by simultaneously distinct and inextricably intertwined radiant zones of sumptuous color, the canvas pulsates with a tangible energetic intensity, pulling us ever inward. A concentrated field of gloriously vibrant orange surges forth from the sheer profundity of fierce black that surrounds it, the subtly perceptible strokes of Rothko’s brush in this area encouraging a sense of inexorable ascent towards the upper limits of the canvas. The captivating depth of the black band at the center, seemingly inhaling the areas of impossible illumination that surround it, pulls us in and takes absolute hold of our vision, encouraging us to travel through the subtle variants of tone and contour that comprise the intricate landscape of its surface. In a stunning feat of compositional and coloristic genius, this fiery ground is counterbalanced by the diaphanous layers of blush pink that seem to float amongst a sea of sunset orange in the lower register, bestowing upon No. 21 an otherworldly glow. Acting as a portal to the sublime, the limitless realm of sumptuous color in the present work envelops the viewer and brings life to Rothko’s assertion that his monumental canvases be experienced up close rather than from a distance. In its utter brilliance of palette, compositional dynamism, monumental scale, and indelible gravitas, this painting exists as an empyreal manifestation of the very apex of Mark Rothko’s painterly prowess.

The present work installed in the exhibition 15 Americans at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, April – July 1952. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Artwork © 1998  Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

No. 21 was first shown in the year immediately following its creation in the iconic 1952 exhibition 15 Americans held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Organized by legendary curator Dorothy C. Miller, this seminal show included masterpieces such as Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Clyfford Still’s PH-371 (1947-S), in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In characteristic fashion, Rothko was deeply involved in the curatorial planning and installation of the gallery devoted entirely to his paintings. Of the nine works originally chosen for the exhibition, five were eventually included in the show, among themNo. 10, now housed permanently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This final group of canvases was carefully and deliberately selected with an eye to variety. A diverse interplay of hues and forms, at once remaining distinct to their individual supports whilst communing directly with one another across the gallery, relayed an odyssey of progress towards an ultimate artistic truth. For its installation, Rothko demanded “blazing light” be shed on his paintings, thus intensifying the magnitude of his looming symphonies of color and contour, and conferring upon them a supremacy and majesty commensurate with their undeniable status as his first mature masterpieces.

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, 1516-18
S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, Italy
. Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY

The paintings in this seminal exhibition, all executed between the years 1949-1951, are monuments to a crucial turning point in Rothko’s aesthetic evolution, when he resolved an abstract archetype out of the preceding multiform paintings. Begun in 1947, and emerging from an exploration of biomorphic forms drawn from Miró, Picasso, Dalì, and his other Surrealist predecessors, Rothko’s multiform paintings reduced all figurative remnants to brightly tinted patchworks of irregular floating shapes that seem to variously coalesce and disintegrate as if fluidly and organically moving of their own accord. As Rothko wrote at the time, “I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers… They are organisms with volition and a passion for self-assertion.” (Mark Rothko, “The Romantics Were Prompted,” first published in Possibilities, no. 1, 1947) By 1950, however, Rothko had abandoned these multiform compositions to contemplate what he called “an unknown space.” David Anfam, in his definitive text on the artist, deems this crucial moment the onset of the “classical period,” a time he delimits as beginning in 1950 and spanning the remainder of Rothko’s lifetime. He draws particular attention to 1951, the year of No. 21’s execution, as being decisive: “From 1951 onward, Rothko’s artistic self-confidence was everywhere visible – from the meticulousness, authority and range of the paintings to his very attitude toward them.” (David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 71) No. 21 is a paean to the newfound aplomb with which Rothko approached his towering theses on abstraction, reflecting across its luscious, vigorous surface the artist’s desire, as elucidated by Stanley Kunitz, “to become his paintings.” (Stanley Kunitz, interview with Avis Berman, December 8, 1983, Archives of American Art) Indeed, in the same year as this painting’s execution, Rothko declared the apparent paradox that distinguishes his oeuvre: “I paint very large pictures…precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience…However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., London, The Tate Gallery, Mark Rothko: 1903-1970, 1987, p. 85).

Francis Bacon,
 Two figures with a monkey, 1973, Private Collection. 
Bridgeman Images
 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2014

When Rothko asked Katherine Kuh, The Art Institute of Chicago’s visionary first curator of modern painting and sculpture, to describe her reactions to his paintings, she wrote of the ones she had seen: « for me they have a kind of ecstasy of color which induces different but always intense moods. I am not a spectator – I am a participant. » (letter July 18, 1954) Like the artist himself becoming one with his canvas, physically entering into the incandescent environments as he created them, we too, as viewers, come to relate to his towering fields of luminosity as if engaging in a personal exchange. Our experience of No. 21,as participants in its stunning drama, brings it to life and may in turn give new dimensions to our life. We do not look at this painting; we are absorbed into it. Indeed, being in its presence parallels a line of Nietzsche that had inspired Rothko since he had been a young man: “There is a need for a whole world of torment in order for the individual to sit quietly in his rocking row-boat in mid-sea, absorbed in contemplation.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, translation by Francis Golffing, New York, 1956, pp. 33-34).

Edvard Munch, Vampire, 1893, 
National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
 © 2014 The Munch Museum / The Munch-Ellingsen Group / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Rothko’s arrival at his mature style, which in retrospect reads as the sole, inevitable, and predetermined conclusion of his quest for a reimagined abstraction, was in fact the supreme result of a calculated and concentrated purge, the product of an overwhelmingly radical and profoundly effective stripping away of compositional superfluity in order to arrive at the pure elemental state of the image. The distinct zones of color in the earlier multiform canvases coalesced into an impenetrable totality in works such as No. 21, wherein all elements engage in a choreography of endlessly pulsating flux and fusion so that the composition seems to shed the confines of its support, existing instead as a shimmering, energy-laden entity that fully surpasses the inadequacies of mere written description. Thus, the present work stands as the crowning evocation of Rothko’s declaration of 1948, delineating his ultimate goal a full three years before it was achieved: “The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer … To achieve this clarity is, ultimately, to be understood.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 15 Americans, 1952, p. 18).

.M.W. Turner, Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817, 
Yale Center for British Art
. Bridgeman Images

The theoretical foundations of Rothko’s aesthetic revolution conform to the predominating rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism in the mid-Twentieth Century. Absolutism, themes of purging and beginning art anew, and other extremes of theory and practice were similarly espoused by Rothko’s now-heroic compatriots of the New York School such as Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman. In response to a pervasive general malaise and loss of faith in the external realities of modern life in the wake of the Second World War, an impassioned, quasi-sacred belief in the transcendental power of art rose to prominence. Donning the philosophical mantle of his great Romanticist forebears – pioneering giants such as J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Théodore Gericault – Rothko devoted himself to the pursuit of art as a portal to an enhanced realm of physical and spiritual experience.

Emil Nolde, Tropensonne, 1914, 
Ada and Emil Nolde Stiftung, Seebüll, Germany. 
Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
 © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, Germany

In an impassioned reaction against the prevailing social norms that arose as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, the Romantics emphasized and validated the emotional intensity that results from confronting the transcendence of an uninhibited aesthetic experience. J.M.W. Turner, in his 1817 masterwork Mt. Vesuvius in Eruption, realized the unquantifiable power of the sublime when he culled an utterly affecting narrative out of pure color and light. As we bear witness to the immeasurable devastation of the depicted scene, conveyed through the impossibly precise yet ethereally light stroke of Turner’s brush, we nonetheless cease to understand it in terms of our corporeal reality. Instead, we are willingly transported at once to the very core of Turner’s masterful surface and inwards, towards the depths of our own subconscious. Developing on the same fundamental principles espoused by the Romantics a century earlier, the late-nineteenth century Symbolists – Odilon Redon, Gustav Klimt, and Edvard Munch among the most influential – eschewed naturalism and realism in art, proclaiming instead the sovereignty of spirituality, the imagination, and the unconscious.  Munch in particular, in stirring canvases such as The Vampire painted in 1893, gained prestige for his intensely redolent translations of the human psyche into art. This image, a collection of darkened hues punctuated by an electrifying mass of red that swirls and churns into a staggeringly affective depiction of two intertwined human forms, immediately and aggressively wrests us from reality, ferrying us into a world of dreamlike fantasy.

The present work installed in the entrance hall of the exhibition Mark Rothko, Museo d’Arte Moderna Ca’Pesaro, Venice, 1970. The present work was hung in accordance with the orientation of the signature on the reverse, which dated from the 1968-69 inventory of Rothko’s studio. Photo Cameraphoto. Artwork © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Like the Romantics who preceded them, the Symbolists considered Art as a contemplative escape from a world of strife, achieving this liberation through themes of mysticism and otherworldliness grounded always by an incisive sense of mortality. With the advent of Abstract Expressionism, this remarkable philosophical lineage was given an ever grander and more evocative visual form. As early as 1943, Rothko published a joint statement with fellow pioneers of the new Abstraction, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb: “To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks. … It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way – not his way.” (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb, “Statement” in Edward Alden Jewell’s column, The New York Times, June 13, 1943) Thus, while delivering the tenets of Romanticism and Symbolism to the modern era, via a revolutionary compositional clarity and monumentality of viewing experience, Rothko conclusively asserted the paramount equation between his artwork and its beholder, whereby the true potential of his painting could not exist without the presence of the viewer. Four years later, he developed this integral relationship even further: “A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token.” (Mark Rothko, “Statement,” Tiger’s Eye, New York, vol. 1, no. 2, December 1947, p. 44).

Consuelo Kanaga, Untitled (Mark Rothko), 
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA / Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of the Artist / The Bridgeman Art Library

Through form, surface, texture, and color Rothko struck a perennial balance that lures the viewer’s constant attention. Yet, as we are beckoned into the glowing lustrous embrace of the devastatingly beautiful and complex No. 21 there is a profound tension struck between the uplifting emotions evoked by our perception of Rothko’s vibrant hues and something implicitly more tragic. Such elemental colors as the vibrant red-orange and dazzling rose of the present work harbor primal connotations of light, warmth, and the Sun, but inasmuch as they invoke the Sun they also implicate the inevitable cycle of dawn and dusk, of rise and set, and their own continual demise and rebirth. Indeed, the near violent encroachment of the depthless black upon the shining orange expanse, though entirely and adamantly abstract, nonetheless communicates a narrative of perpetual contest between the primal forces of light and darkness. The environment that is created in No. 21 ubiquitously encompasses us yet, in its immateriality also eludes our grasp, projecting a sense of space that is at once material and metaphysical, encapsulating Rothko’s proclaimed goal to “paint both the finite and the infinite.” (Dore Ashton,About Rothko, New York, 1983, p. 179) Rothko once stated to David Sylvester, “Often, towards nightfall, there’s a feeling in the air of mystery, threat, frustration – all of these at once. I would like my painting to have the quality of such moments.” (the artist cited in David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas, Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 88), and with its suggestion of an infinite depth in the darkest areas of the black shape, this enigmatic work harbors something that is indescribably portentous.

The present work sketched in Dorothy C. Miller’s handwritten notes regarding the work of Mark Rothko, 1951. 
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

Excepting a letter to Art News in 1957, from 1949 onwards Rothko ceased publishing statements about his work, anxious that his writings might be interpreted as instructive or didactic and could thereby interfere with the pure import of the paintings themselves. However, in 1958 he gave a talk at the Pratt Institute to repudiate his critics and to deny any perceived association between his art and self-expression. He insisted instead that his corpus was not concerned with notions of self but rather with the entire human drama. While he drew a distinction between figurative and abstract art, he nevertheless outlined an underlying adherence to the portrayal of human experience. Discussing the “artist’s eternal interest in the human figure,” Rothko examined the common bond of figurative painters throughout Art History: “they have painted one character in all their work. What is indicated here is that the artist’s real model is an ideal which embraces all of human drama rather than the appearance of a particular individual. Today the artist is no longer constrained by the limitation that all of man’s experience is expressed by his outward appearance. Freed from the need of describing a particular person, the possibilities are endless. The whole of man’s experience becomes his model, and in that sense it can be said that all of art is a portrait of an idea.” (lecture given at the Pratt Institute 1958, cited in Exh. Cat., London, The Tate Gallery, Op. Cit., p. 87) Paintings such as No. 21, in truth, involve both spirit and nature, and Rothko sought to instill in the viewer a profound sense of the spiritual whilst evincing his abject faith in the role of the artist in attaining the highest realm to which a man could aspire. For Rothko, art was capable of provoking in the viewer an existential sense of awe and wonderment for the sublime miracle of existence, and in this truly spectacular painting that capacity is wholly and perfectly achieved.

Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948, 
The Museum of Modern Art,
 New York
. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / 
Art Resource, NY
 © 2014 Barnett Newman Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1949, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red), 1949, 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
 © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm 
(Number 30), 1950, 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY 
© 2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jackson Pollock, 
Number 28, 1950, 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 
Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY 
© 2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mark Rothko, No. 10, 1950, 
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. 
Artwork © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mark Rothko, No. 25 
(Red, Gray, White on Yellow), 1951 
Private Collection. 
Artwork © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Clyfford Still, PH-177 (1949-A-No. 2), 1949
, Private collection 
© City and County of Denver, courtesy the Clyfford Still Museum
 © Estate of Clyfford Still

Sotheby’s. Contemporary Art Evening Auction. New York | 11 nov. 2014, 06:30 PM

« Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon’s Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery » at Norton Simon Museum

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Clodion, Flying Mercury, Francesco Bissolo, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Giorgione, Hubert Robert, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jacopo Bassano, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jusepe de Ribera, Leandro Bassano, Norton Simon Museum, Pierino da Vinci, Titian, Vincenzo Catena, Vittore Carpaccio

Zorzo da Castelfranco called Giorgione (Italian, 1477/78–1510), Bust Portrait of a Courtesan, c. 1509. Oil on panel, transferred to canvas.The Norton Simon Foundation.

PASADENA, CA.- The Norton Simon Museum presents an exhibition examining one of Norton Simon’s most memorable acquisitions—the purchase of the century-old, esteemed art dealership, the Duveen Brothers Gallery. Featuring more than 130 works from the Museum’s collection, along with several loans, « Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon’s Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery » sheds light on Simon’s business strategies and his dramatic evolution as an art collector. And with its focus on the Gallery’s remaining stock, the exhibition provides a window onto the tastes and trends of the early- to mid-20th-century American art market.

Duveen Brothers Gallery was once one of the largest and most successful art dealerships. Founded in 1879 in England, the firm under Lord Joseph Duveen was responsible for helping some of the most prominent American businessmen—Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon and Henry Huntington among them—build their renowned art collections. By the time Simon began collecting in the mid-1950s, the firm was owned by Edward Fowles, who had managed the Paris office, and occupied a stately mansion at 18 E. 79th Street. Simon’s interest was then in 19th- and 20th-century art (his first major purchase in 1954 was a Renoir), but while visiting the Duveen showroom in the late 1950s, one particular 15th-century painting caught his eye.

That painting, titled ―Bust Portrait of a Courtesan,‖ was purchased by Duveen in the mid-1930s. Then as now, scholars reveled in discussing and disputing its authorship—whether the painter was Titian, Giorgione, Rocco Marconi, Giovanni Cariani, Bonifazio Veronese or an imitator of any of the above. And many have wavered in their steadfast attribution, as did the famed art historian Bernard Berenson, who published it in 1932 as a Titian, and then again in 1957 as a Giorgione (long after he had left the employ of the Duveen firm). By 1963, despite still some hesitation due to the question of attribution, Simon agreed with Fowles to purchase the painting over a two-year period. And in the course of those two years, he eventually expressed interest in first an additional seven, and then another five objects in Duveen’s stock, until eventually he decided to purchase the whole inventory of slightly fewer than 800 objects, along with the Duveen gallery building and its entire library and archives. (The library was sold to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 1965. The archives are now housed at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. The building was traded to the dealer William Acquavella in 1967.)

After a series of decorative arts and furniture auctions in the 1970s to recoup a good portion of his $4 million outlay for the company, what Duveen pieces remain today in the Norton Simon collections number around 130 objects, primarily paintings, a handful of sculptures, a few porcelains and a cape purportedly worn by Charles IV of Spain. Of this assemblage, only about two dozen pieces are on permanent display. The remaining hundred objects are less frequently exhibited due to their condition, the type of restoration that the paintings underwent under the Duveen conservators’ hands or their dubious attributions. But as a whole, they offer an intriguing historical look at the infamous figure of Joseph Duveen and his eponymous firm that lived on 25 years after his death, as well as the state of the art market and art restoration in America at mid-20th century.

The purchase also resonates with Simon’s shrewd style of acquiring entire floundering-but-viable businesses and building them into thriving enterprises such as Hunt Foods, McCall’s Publishing and Canada Dry. In a step that he would repeat more than once while assembling his outstanding art collection, with his purchase of Duveen lock, stock and barrel, Simon planted his foot squarely in the market for Old Masters and began seriously his quest to build a collection that included earlier European art, especially early Italian art. This exhibition examines his remarkable and stunning maneuver 50 years in hindsight, and reveals his uncanny strategy that ultimately brought to Pasadena important Italian works by Bernardino Luini, Francia, Vincenzo Catena and Antoniazzo Romano, as well as French, Spanish and northern works by Gerard David, Jusepe de Ribera, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Hyacinthe Rigaud.

« Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon’s Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery » is curated by Chief Curator Carol Togneri.

Claude Michel called Clodion (French, 1738-1814), Bacchante Supported by Bacchus and a Faun, 1795. Terracotta, 20 in. (50.8 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Attributed to Vittore Carpaccio (Italian, 1455-1526),  Portrait of a Venetian Nobleman, c.1510. Oil on panel, 14 x 10-3/4 in. (35.6 x 27.3 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732-1806), Happy Lovers, c. 1760-65. Oil on canvas, 35-1/2 x 47-3/4 in. (90.2 x 121.3 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation

Titian, or Imitator (Italian, c.1487/90-1576), Venetian Nobleman, after 1530. Oil on canvas, 42-1/2 x 36 in. (108.0 x 91.4 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation

Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte), possibly Leandro Bassano (Italian, 1510-1592), Portrait of a Lady, after 1570. Oil on canvas, 31 x 25-3/4 in. (78.7 x 65.4 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), The Fountain, c. 1775. Oil on canvas, 26 x 20 in. (66.0 x 50.8 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Francesco di Giorgio Martini (Italian, 1439–1501/02), Fidelity, c. 1485. Fresco transferred to canvas, mounted on wood panel. The Norton Simon Foundation

Pierino da Vinci (Italian, 1530-1553), Nilus, God of the River Nile, 16th century. Bronze, 5-1/2 x 12-1/2 x 5-1/4 in. (14.0 x 31.8 x 13.3 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Francesco Bissolo (Italian, 1470/72-1554), The Annunciation, c. 1500. Oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 43-3/4 x 39-1/2 in. (111.1 x 100.3 cm). Norton Simon Art Foundation.

Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, 1591-1652), The Sense of Touch, c. 1615-16. Oil on canvas, 45-5/8 x 34-3/4 in. (115.9 x 88.3 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Northern Europe, 1610-1630, Flying Mercury, c. 1620. Bronze, 27 in. (68.6 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Hyacinthe Rigaud (French, 1659-1743), Portrait of Antoine Paris, Conseiller d’Etat, 1724. Oil on canvas, 58-1/2 x 45 in. (148.6 x 114.3 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Flanders, Holy Family with Music-Making Angels, c. 1520. Wool tapestry with silk and gold threads (woven at Brussels), 102 x 116 in. (259.1 x 294.6 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation.

Vincenzo Catena (Italian, c.1470-1531), The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, after 1510. Oil on panel, overall: 32 x 43 in. (81.3 x 109.2 cm). Norton Simon Art Foundation.

Masterpiece by Titian on view at Prince William V Gallery at the Buitenhof in The Hague

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Antonio Zanchi, Giovanni Battista Langetti, Titian, Titius, Venus Anadyomene

Titian, Venus Rising from the Sea (‘Venus Anadyomene’), c.1520/25. Canvas, 75,8 x 57,6 cm. Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland.

THE HAGUE.- From 10 October through 7 December 2014, a major work by Titian is being exhibited at the Prince William Gallery at the Buitenhof in The Hague. The painting, Venus Rising from the Sea (‘Venus Anadyomene’), is being lent by the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Goddess of love
This painting of Venus is an outstanding example of Titian’s art. According to Greek mythology, Venus was the goddess of love, who was born as a grown woman from the foam of the sea, Titian depicted her lost in her own thoughts standing up to her thighs in water and wringing out her long wet hair. Her sensual figure fills the entire canvas, and gives the impression that she is physically present. Titian fashioned her as a woman who fulfilled all the beauty ideals of the time: full and round around the hips and thighs, small breasts, creamy-white skin and a luxuriant head of auburn hair. In sixteenth-century Venice, these were the traits of the most beautiful woman one could imagine.

Titian, a master painter
Titian (1485/1490-1576) was the most influential painter from the heyday of sixteenth-century Venetian painting. He had an unparalleled sense of colour, dynamics and natural details, and painted with masterful skill that only increased as he got older. Titian rubbed shoulders with the great, such as emperor Charles V, and achieved high renown amongst clients, collectors and fellow painters.

Series of masterpieces
Titian in the Gallery is the second in a series of international masterpieces to be highlighted at the Gallery Prince William V. The Gallery exhibits one masterpiece from a painter with otherwise low exposure in the Netherlands each year for several weeks. The loan of the Titian is an exceptional event, as there is only one other painting by Titian in the Netherlands (at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam). Last year, Boy bitten by a lizard by Caravaggio from the National Gallery of London was the first in this series of masterpieces.

Princely collection
The Prince William V Gallery is a hidden jewel in the historical centre of The Hague. Stadtholder Prince William V of Oranje-Nassau had the space built in 1774 in order to exhibit his paintings. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling, in order to show off the wealth of his collection. The Gallery was recently restored to its previous splendour, and now displays over 150 Old Masters (including Jan Steen, Rubens and Paulus Potter). Crystal chandeliers, silken wall coverings and lavish curtains complete the regal appearance.

Giovanni Battista Langetti, Titius , c. 1660 – 1665, 109.5 cm x 119,5 cm, Mauritshuis © 2014 Mauritshuis

Antonio Zanchi, Sisyphus , c. 1660 – 1665, 110.4 cm x 119.8 cm, Mauritshuis © 2014 Mauritshuis

Raphael to Titian: Stadel Museum opens exhibition of Italian drawings from its collection

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Correggio, Parmigianino, Pontormo, Raphaël, Städel Museum, Titian

Parmigianino (Francesco Maria Mazzola)(1503–1540), Head of a bearded man towards the right, ca. 1523/25 (?). Red chalk, on paper; 189 × 131 mm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK

FRANKFURT.- The Städel Museum’s treasures comprise a comprehensive collection of Italian Renaissance drawings. This collection includes prized sheets by such outstanding artists as Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio, or Titian, as well as drawings by anonymous masters of the fifteenth century and less known artists of the sixteenth century like Giulio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo, or Taddeo Zuccari. “Raphael to Titian. Italian Drawings from the Städel Museum”, on show in the exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 8 October 2014 to 11 January 2015, offers an exemplary selection of these valuable holdings, most of which were part of Johann Friedrich Städel’s foundation donation; in the mid-nineteenth century, these holdings were extended by Johann David Passavant to form a collection of the first order. The array of about ninety drawings visualizes the variety of an era which – with the discovery of America, conflicting confessions, and a new beginning in the natural sciences – was such a decisive period for Europe. The presentation centers around High-Renaissance works of the early sixteenth century as its art-historical pivot and not only ensures an experience of the utmost perfection in drawing. It also illustrates the various artistic movements of that epoch, the draftsmen’s working methods, and the functions of drawings and sheds light on the history of collecting in the Städel.

Raphael  (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483–1520), Seated Madonna with Child, ca. 1500/02. Pen and brown ink, over black chalk and stylus (figure of Christ, head and upper body of Mary), on grey smudged paper, 213 × 145 mm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK

The exhibition rounds off a long-term research project sponsored by Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck, Frankfurt. Drawing on recent research, the Städel collections’ Italian Renaissance drawings up to 1600 were thoroughly analyzed in the context of this project; more than a third of all exhibited works, now featured in the catalogue of the collection published to accompany the presentation, could be focused on for the first time.

“Embracing about a total of 450 works by Italian Renaissance masters, our holdings rank among the most outstanding collections in Germany. They inform the character of the institution they are connected with and essentially contribute to the Städel Museum’s unmistakable identity. Striving to keep this identity alive, the museum’s holdings have to be critically reassessed again and again and continuously made the subject of scientific research. The show ‘Raphael to Titian’ is a both important and impressive visualization of this core task of our museum, a task mostly pursued in obscurity,” Max Hollein, Director of the Städel, points out.

“Drawings number among the most precious manifestations of artistic creativity. Their unique appeal lies in their potential to make us relive the masters’ considerations and often even their first artistic impulses. The masterpieces assembled for this presentation offer incredibly intimate and informative insights into the Italian High Renaissance – one of the most significant and momentous epochs in art history,” curator Dr. Joachim Jacoby describes one leitmotif of his exhibition.

The presentation in the exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings confronts visitors with a representative selection of Italian drawings from between 1430 and 1600 that demonstrates the different artistic movements of this world-renowned era, the various drawing techniques and relevant functions, as well as specific aspects in the history of the Städel’s collecting activities in a particularly vivid manner.

The show starts with a number of fifteenth-century drawings, not many of which have survived. The range of the fifteen examples on display spans from a drawing rendering four elegant Gothic standing figures from the circle of Pisanello (c. 1430) and the impressive sketches depicting a mourning scene by the Venice-based artist Marco Zoppo (c. 1470) to the drawing of a young man looking upwards (c. 1500) by an unknown Venetian master.

The second section highlights the achievements of artists whose work is regarded as belonging to the High Renaissance – a comparatively short period of time between 1500 and 1525, in which the art of Europe took a completely new direction and was already regarded as a phase of the “highest perfection” providing the foundation for future generations by Giorgio Vasari in the mid-sixteenth century. This epoch was decisively informed by the artists Fra Bartolommeo and Michelangelo in Florence, Raphael in Rome, Correggio in Parma, and Titian in Venice, all represented in the exhibition. Here, visitors will come upon such superb and fragile masterpieces as Michelangelo’s Grotesque Heads (c. 1525), Raphael’s Design for the “Disputa” (c. 1508/09), Correggio’s Seated prophet with book towards the right (c. 1523), or Titian’s unique Study of St Sebastian for the high altarpiece in SS Nazaro e celso in Brescia (c. 1519/20).

Raphael  (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483–1520), Design for the Disputa, ca. 1508/09. Pen and brown ink, black chalk, over stylus, on paper, 28.2 x 41.6 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U. Edelmann – ARTOTHEK

Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (1489/1594–1534), Seated prophet with book towards the right, ca. 1523. Brush (and pen?) in brown and grey, heightened in white, over red chalk, squared. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U.Edelmann – ARTOTHEK

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), (1483/85 or 1488/90–1576), Study of St Sebastian for the high altarpiece in SS Nazaro e celso in Brescia, ca. 1519/20. Pen and brown ink, washed in brown, gone over with white in places, on greyish blue paper, 182 × 115 mm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U. Edelmann – ARTOTHEK

The further development until the end of the sixteenth century has been divided into two sections: one includes works from central Italy, the other works from the large area between Genoa and Venice in the north of the country. The drawings of the first group are arranged chronologically according to the centers Florence and Rome and encompass works devoted to the demonstration of power and subjects of courtly representation – like Bronzino’s sketch for a ceiling fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (c. 1539/40) – and sheets used as essential instruments of planning or demonstrations such as those by Pontormo, Zuccari, or Poccetti.

Pontormo (Pontormo), (1494–1557), Nude studies (two seated men looking into a hand mirror, and a seated boy), ca.1520. Black chalk (native chalk?), white chalk, on blue paper; 422 × 272 mm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U.Edelmann – ARTOTHEK

The selection of drawings from northern Italy is grouped after geographical criteria, spanning from Liguria in the west to the Veneto in the east. The art centers of northern Italy did not constitute a unity in Renaissance times. The area was split up into different political territories some of which brought forth their own stylistic forms.

This section includes Venus Mourning the Death of Adonis (c. 1560) by Luca Cambiaso of Genoa, the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1527/30) by the extremely influential Parmigianino of Parma, and the Study of the head of Michelangelo’s “Giuliano de’Medici” (c. 1545/60?) executed by the Venice-based Tintoretto presumably after a cast of the sculpture in the Medici Chapel in Florence. All in all, the exhibition not only conveys a wide-ranging survey of the various movements and regional variants of Italian Renaissance art. It also fathoms the numerous functions and techniques of the medium by means of sheets like the chalk drawing Three Figures from the “School of Athens” (Stanza della Segnatura) (c. 1510/12) made by Raphael and his workshop, a silverpoint study of a live model for a crucified figure from the fifteenth century, Jacopo Bassano’s Study of a Reclining Figure (c. 1567?) executed in differently colored chalks, which strikes us as nearly abstract, or Giuseppe Cesari’s black-pen depiction of a Narcissus (c. 1595/1600), an independent work standing for itself.

The Städel’s collection boasted significant holdings of old-master drawings even in the days of the foundation donation for the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in 1815. These holdings were decisively extended and distinctively structured by Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) around the middle of the nineteenth century. Passavant, who was responsible for the Städel Museum’s collections as their “Inspektor” (curator) from 1840 until his death in 1861, pursued a strategy of deliberately acquiring “only outstanding” (as he said) individual works in order to provide visitors of the museum with a striking impression of the history of art and an intense experience of the art of “all times and schools.” Passavant had begun his career as a Nazarene painter and, based on his fascination for Raphael and Dürer, acquired a profound expertise in Italian and German Renaissance art. Consequently, the collection of drawings developed a number of focal points which are still quite evident in the institute’s holdings today. The Städel’s treasure of Italian Renaissance drawings highlighted by the presentation ranks – not least thanks to a number of later additions – among the most important European collections in this field, and no other German collection is in the possession of more drawings by Raphael.

Exhibition view « Raphael to Titian. Italian Drawings from the Städel Museum ». Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Städel Museum.

Exhibition view « Raphael to Titian. Italian Drawings from the Städel Museum ». Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Städel Museum.

« Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums » at Milwaukee Art Museum

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Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Casali, Antonio Balestra, Antonio Mancini, Archangel Michael and the Rebel Angels, Bartolomeo Veneto, Carlo Dolci, Cavaliere d'Arpino, Christ and the Adulteress, Death of Cleopatra, Death of Julius Caesar, Domenichino, Francesco del Cairo, Francesco Guardi, Giovanni Bellini, Justice and Peace Embracing, Landscape with St. Jerome, Luigi da Rios, Master of the Glasgow Adoration, mid-17th century, Milwaukee Art Museum, Overlooking a Canal, Salome, Sandro Botticelli, St. Catherine Crowned, The Annunciation, The Sulky Boy, Titian, Triumph of Galatea, Vanitas, Venice, View of San Giorgio Maggiore, Vincenzo Camuccini, Virgin and Child

Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, ca. 1480–85. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (174). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts

MILWAUKEE, WIS.- Opening in fall 2014, the Milwaukee Art Museum welcomes some of the biggest names in European art in Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums. The exhibition debuts in Milwaukee on Thursday, October 2.

Displayed in five chronological sections, Of Heaven and Earth will include paintings originating from the principal artistic centers of Italy—Rome, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Siena, Naples, and Venice—and will present the works of artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, Domenichino, Francesco Guardi, Salvator Rosa, and Titian alongside those of lesser-known masters.

“With works by some of the most significant European masters like Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, and Titian, Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums will examine the thematic and stylistic developments in Italian art—from the religious paintings of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance to the secular neoclassical and genre paintings of the nineteenth century,” said Daniel Keegan, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. “The remarkable regional and historical breadth of the exhibition will also showcase the outstanding quality of Glasgow Museums’ collection.”

“This sumptuous exhibition presents the works of famous artists that even some art historians wait a lifetime to see,” said Tanya Paul, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator of European Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Most of the paintings have never traveled to America before, and many have been conserved specifically for this presentation.”

Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum from October 2, 2014 through January 4, 2015.

Sandro Botticelli (and Possibly Assistant), The Annunciation, ca. 1490–95. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (174). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Master of the Glasgow Adoration, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1503-10. Bequeathed by Mrs John Graham-Gilbert, 1877 (586). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Christ and the Adulteress, ca. 1508–10. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (181). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Bartolomeo Veneto, St. Catherine Crowned, ca. 1520. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (210). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Cavaliere d’Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari), Archangel Michael and the Rebel Angels, ca. 1592–93. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (153). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Domenichino, Landscape with St. Jerome, ca. 1610. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (139). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Unidendified Italian (?) Painter, mid-17th century, Vanitas, ca. 1650/60. Gift of Dame Anne Maxwell Macdonald, 1967 (PC.26). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Carlo Dolci, Salome, ca. 1681–85. Purchased by Glasgow Museums through JC Robinson, 1883 (656). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Antonio Balestra, Justice and Peace Embracing, ca. 1700. Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (266). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Andrea Casali, Triumph of Galatea, ca. 1740–65. Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (195). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Francesco Guardi, View of San Giorgio Maggiore, ca. 1760. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (184). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Vincenzo Camuccini, Death of Julius Caesar, ca. 1825–29. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Mrs. Cecilia Douglas of Orbiston, 1862 (318). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Francesco del Cairo, Death of Cleopatra, ca. 1645–50. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Archibald McLellan, 1856 (134). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Antonio Mancini, The Sulky Boy, 1875. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by David Perry, 1940 (2191). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Luigi da Rios, Overlooking a Canal, Venice, 1886. Glasgow Museums; Bequeathed by Adam Teacher, 1898 (787). © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

On a day like today, Italian artist Titian died.

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c. 1562, Self Portrait, Titian, Tiziano Vecellio

Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), Self-Portrait, c. 1562 © 2002-2014 http://www.titian-tizianovecellio.org

August 27, 1576. Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576) known in English as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.

A woman looks at Titian’s painting « Mary Magdalene in Penitence » during a press preview of an exhibition of 16th and 17th century Italian painting at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece, on Monday Sept. 22, 2008. The exhibition « From Titian to Pietro da Cortona: Myth Poetry and the Sacred, » ran until Dec. 20. On display were 24 works by Titian and other Italian masters, on loan from a score of Italian galleries and collections.

The spirit and splendour of Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie to go on tour to Munich, Groningen and Vienna

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Antoine Watteau, Bernardo Bellotto, Diego Velasquez, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Palma il Vecchio, Rembrandt, Titian

Diego Velasquez, Portrait of a knight of the order of Santiago, at or after 1635, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 56 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden .

DRESDEN.- Beginning in the autumn of 2014, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden (Old Masters Picture Gallery) will present a touring exhibition of selected masterpieces. On the basis of 100 works of art, the history and development of the collection during the Baroque and Enlightenment era is examined. 

The exhibition focuses on the reign of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670–1733), also known as the Strong, and his son Augustus III (1696–1763). During the “Augustan Age”, an era of economic and cultural flourishing, the manifold building projects, vibrant cultural life and the enhancement of the royal collections all embodied the electoral court’s new claim to power. The construction of the Cathedral and the Frauenkirche during this era gave Dresden its world famous silhouette. Moreover, prestigious painters like the Italian Bernardo Bellotto (1721–1780) or Louis de Silvestre (1675–1760) were drawn to Dresden, where they were engaged as court artists. This dynamic, prosperous era forms the backdrop behind the painted masterpieces and their stories. 

The development of the Dresden Picture Gallery, its presentation, focus and appeal throughout the 18th century is expounded in seven chapters. The exhibition examines the inception of the painting collection under Augustus the Strong, which may be interpreted as the expression of his heightened need to demonstrate his status on being crowned king of Poland in 1697. Significant works from various genres like history painting, landscape, still life and portraiture highlight the profile of the royal collection, which continued to grow throughout the 18th century. 

A frequent visitor to the Dresden Picture Gallery was the famous art historian and archeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), who wrote an account of his experiences, thereby contributing to immortalise the collection’s legendary reputation. The exhibition presents numerous works that he encountered while roaming the royal gallery and which found his appreciation. 

Over the course of the 18th century, the collection evolved into a place of learning and exchange of ideas, luring numerous artists to draw inspiration from the Old Masters. The exhibition concludes with the reopening of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under the direction of Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn (1712–1780); he succeeded in engaging prestigious painters as teachers, who gave the development of art in Dresden fresh momentum, thereby foreshadowing the modern trends of the 19th century. 

Rembrandt, Ganymede in the clutches of an eagle, 1635, oil on canvas, 177 x 129 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden.

Titian, Portrait of a Lady in White, oil on canvas, 102 x 86 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden.

Palma il Vecchio, Resting Venus, To 1518/20, oil on canvas, 112 x 186 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden.

Antoine Watteau, The Love Festival, oil on canvas, 61 x 75 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden.

Bernardo Bellotto, Dresden from the right bank of the Elbe above the Augustus Bridge, 1747, oil on canvas, 132 x 236 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister © State Art Collections in Dresden.