Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Vedute in Tempera on Leather by Marco Ricci

Marco Ricci
Landscape with a Horse being Ferried across a Stream
ca. 1718-28
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Landscape with Two Praying Monks
ca. 1728-30
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Wood with Figures Alarmed by a Bear
ca. 1720-30
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

"Marco Ricci produced a large number of paintings of landscape subjects executed in the unusual technique of tempera or gouache on leather, possibly kidskin (the paint was made by binding pigments with egg yolk or gum arabic respectively).  Typically measuring about 31 x 45 cm, the smooth, pale surface of skin on the stretcher gives a clarity and luminosity to the bright paint applied to it.  Joseph Smith, who knew Marco Ricci well, collected 33 of Ricci's tempera paintings, all but one in the Royal Collection (acquired by George III from Consul Smith in 1762).  All the works are in their original Venetian frames (some have their eighteenth-century glazing intact) and they would have hung in groups, probably on the walls of Smith's residence at Mogliano."

"Although most of Marco's temperas are not dated, they can be placed in the 1720s, his last and most productive decade.  Many are pastoral scenes – mountain landscapes, villages and farms – set in the richly fertile landscape surrounding Marco's home town of Belluno in the Dolomites.  Others illustrate the beauty and power of nature, with storms, torrents of water in rugged mountains, or the surprise appearance of a bear or a snake.  These were all subjects that Marco had painted throughout his life, reusing the compositions of existing drawings and oil subjects in the tempera medium.  In contrast to his oil paintings, in the temperas the sky is often an optimistic blue, the light refined and subtle."

"The tempera paintings demonstrate the broad range of influences that Marco absorbed.  In his early years he came into contact with Alessandro Magnasco and Francesco Peruzzini of Ancona, both of whom worked close with his uncle Sebastiano Ricci.  In his temperas of tempestuous weather conditions and other moments of high romance, such as figures fleeing from a bear, encountering bandits, or monks and hermits praying in isolation, Marco shows the influence of Salvator Rosa's wild and mountainous landscapes and Magnasco's dark and dramatic style."

– adapted from curator's notes at the Royal Collection

Marco Ricci
Landscape with Women and Animals at a Trough
ca. 1728-30
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Mountainside with Hermits
ca. 1728-30
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Outskirts of a Town with Women washing Linen
ca. 1720-25
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Rocky Landscape with a Waterfall
ca. 1720
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Wooded Landscape with a Huntsman
ca. 1720-25
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Woodland Scene with Bandits
ca. 1724-29
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Landscape with Peasants and Woodcutters
ca. 1723-28
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Town and Ruins beside a River
ca. 1719
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Classical Ruin Capriccio
ca. 1727-29
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Allegory with Monument to Newton
1728
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Marco Ricci
Ruin Capriccio with Gothic Church
ca. 1720-25
tempera on leather
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Decorative Italian Scenery in Paint (Eighteenth Century)

Giambattista Tiepolo
Virtue & Nobility bestowing Honors - Aurora dispersing Clouds of Night
(ceiling decoration from Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice)
ca. 1759-61
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"Tiepolo represents the height of uniquely Italian skills.  Only he was able to master and arrange with infinite imagination colors, figures, clouds, and all sort of animals and objects inside luminous skies."

Giambattista Tiepolo
Bozzetto for Apotheosis of a Poet - Allegory of Merit
ca. 1755-60
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giambattista Tiepolo
Apotheosis of Aeneas
1762
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Agostino Brunias after Robert Adam
Draped Women in Landscape
(decoration for breakfast room at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire)

1759-60
tempera on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum

Agostino Brunias after Robert Adam
Draped Women in Landscape
(decoration for breakfast room at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire)
1759-60
tempera on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum

Pietro Paltronieri
Capriccio - Antique Ruins at Bologna
ca. 1740
tempera and oil on canvas
National Trust, Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire

Pietro Paltronieri and Biagio Rebecca
Capriccio - Antique Ruins with a Pyramid
ca. 1740
tempera and oil on canvas
National Trust, Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire

"Capriccios represented idealized worlds that were first of all aesthetically pleasing and could arouse the viewer's imagination and sense of wonder: the painter created a bizarre, picturesque world to take the place of reality.  Conceived still within the rococo spirit, their function was mainly decorative.  The veduta ideata was a capriccio with imaginary elements or features added to a real landscape.  In 1759 Count Algarotti, a Venetian, wrote of a painting by his compatriot Canaletto: "A new genre of painting exists which consists in drawing a site from life and adorning it with beautiful buildings taken from here or there, or invented."

Michele Rocca
Rinaldo and Armida
ca. 1720-50
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

follower of Alessandro Magnasco
Soldiers playing cards in rocky landscape
ca. 1700-1750
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gian Paolo Panini
Fountain of Trevi, Rome
before 1765
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Paolo Monaldi
Peasants near Roman Ruins
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Canaletto
San Giorgio Maggiore from the Bacino San Marco, Venice
ca. 1726-30
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"To draw vedute means to study, as painters do, walking around various corners of the countryside or famous city sites, and reproducing with a pen or stylus, or with China ink or watercolors, towns, sylvan dwellings, cities, rivers, and similar views," wrote art historian Filippo Baldinucci in 1681.  The urban veduta with faithful reproductions of reality had already achieved the status of an autonomous genre in 17th-century Holland.  The 18th-century fashion of the Grand Tour created a growing demand for paintings or etchings to be purchased as souvenirs by foreign travelers.  In addition, architects or simple amateurs wanted to own exact, almost documentary reproductions of squares, palaces, monuments, excavations, and ruins.  . . .  In Venice, a popular destination of English intellectuals and collectors, vedute were in very high demand.  Among the Venetian vedutisti, Luca Carlevarijs and Canaletto stand out: the latter, who had trained in Rome, preferred realistic landscapes to scenographic or fanciful ones, which were also prized." 

Canaletto
Fonteghetto della Farina, Venice
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Carlo Labruzzi
Ruins at Capua
ca. 1789
watercolor
Yale Center for British Art

– texts drawn from European Art of the Eighteenth Century by Daniela Tarabra, translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia (Getty Museum, 2008)

Monday, October 29, 2018

French Rococo Pictures

Jacques Vigoureux-Duplessis
Painted Fire Screen (trompe-l'œil
Chinoiserie Figures supporting Tondo with Jupiter and Danaë
ca. 1700
oil on fabric
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous French painter
Cupid as Messenger with Caduceus
18th century
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Anne Vallayer-Coster
Winter (decorative overdoor) 
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Rococo with its rocks, shells, and scrolls was the joyful and ironic expression of "controlled formlessness."  Space became elastic and objects lost their earnestness as their scale changed from vast (theatrical scenes) to tiny (tobacco boxes).  Such decoration comforted the imagination and soothed the mind.  It suited a skeptical world, one without illusions, yet pleasure-seeking.  It demonstrated its power by clinging to walls, imposing its curves on furniture, endowing frames and borders with endless hooks and crooks, providing cartouches for landscape and genre scenes.  It therefore represented a characteristic phase of French taste, an overwhelming commitment to elegance with mannerist, indeed libertine, overtones."

"Looking at things from another angle, rococo could be seen as the triumph of craftsmanship.  Rarely was so much skill required  of the ironworker, goldsmith, embroiderer who executed complex compositions that nevertheless conveyed solidity.  . . .  "Rococo is bearable only when extravagant," wrote Victor Hugo in 1837 from Ghent.  This fairly accurate view helps explain why, even today, an art so apparently flippant receives little appreciation."

– André Chastel, from French Art: The Ancien Régime, 1620-1775, translated by Deke Dusinberre (Flammarion, 1996)

François Boucher
Study for a Monument to a Princely Figure
before 1770
oil on paper, mounted on board
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

François Boucher
Angelica and Medoro
1763
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Nicolas Lancret
The Escaped Bird
before 1743
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicolas Lancret
Luncheon Party in a Park
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jean-Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non
The Two Sisters
1770
pastel on paper, mounted on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hubert Robert
The Swing
1777
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Landscape with Waterfall and Figures
1768
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Aegina visited by Jupiter
ca. 1767-69
oil on canvas (unfinished)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pierre Subleyras
Brother Luce the Hermit with the Widow and her Daughter
(illustration to La Fontaine)
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pierre Subleyras
Brother Philippe's Geese
(illustration to La Fontaine)
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Charles-Joseph Natoire
The Rebuke of Adam and Eve
1740
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Immense Asymmetric Bow of Pewter-Colored Silk Taffeta

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of Marie-Françoise de La Cropte de St Abre, Marquise d'Argence
1744
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of Suzanne-Marguerite Fyot de la Marche, Marquise d'Argenson
1750
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

François-Hubert Drouais
Portrait of Marie Rinteau, called Mademoiselle Verrières
1761
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Despite shifting social mores and behavior, the aristocratic attitude continued to represent an envied model, contested only later by Enlightenment ideals.  What is most striking is the development of a cult of femininity, beauty, and female privilege, which became more explicit than ever, covering a full range of attitudes from the lowest to the highest echelons of society, from coarseness to adoration.  The century owed its originality to this general attention to subtle feelings, amorous casuistry (the focus of Marivaux's plays) and the flirtatious thrill that inhabits painting and sculpture even more intensely than literature.  Watteau's album of French fashions provided models for the billowy, waistless dresses called ballandes.  By 1715 hoop skirts were seen on the fashionable promenade of the Tuileries, with petticoats draped over wicker frames to create a broad new silhouette.  The inevitable counterpart was the development of the upper body, notably with décolleté bodices and complex coiffures.  The French art of dress and "cosmetics" played a driving role, fueled by portraiture and engravings.  The image of woman as vaguely smiling idol became so dominant that it imposed its modern accouterments on mythology and history."

– André Chastel, from French Art: The Ancien Régime, 1620-1775, translated by Deke Dusinberre (Flammarion, 1996)

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of Giovanna Bagnara
ca. 1739
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of François-Armand de Gontaut, Duc de Biron
1714
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Presumed portrait of the Chevalier de Damery
ca. 1765
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Marguerite Gérard
Portrait of a man in his study
ca. 1785
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
Portrait of a young woman
ca. 1797
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"You agree, then, that there is not, nor could there be, either an entire subsisting animal nor a portion of a subsisting animal which, strictly speaking, you could take as a primary model.  You agree that this model is purely ideal, and that it is not directly imprinted on any of the individual images in nature, copies of which have remained in your imagination, and that you can summon up at will, hold before your eyes and slavishly copy, to the extent that you wish to avoid portraiture.  You agree that, when you make something beautiful, you do not make it of something that exists or even of something that could exist.  You agree that the difference between the portraitist and yourself, a man of genius, is essentially that the portraitist faithfully renders nature as it is, and by inclination remains on the third order of reality, while you seek out the truth, the primary model, and ceaselessly attempt to raise yourself to the second order."

– Denis Diderot, from the Salon of 1767, translated by John Goodman (Yale University Press, 1995)

attributed to Joseph Boze
Portrait of two boys, said to be the Autichamp brothers
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

François Boucher
Young woman with flowers in her hair
before 1770
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
The white hat
ca. 1780
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of Jean-Charles Garnier d'Isle
ca. 1750
pastel and gouache on blue paper, mounted on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of a woman in a rose-colored gown
ca. 1755
pastel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"The category of "painter in pastels" was recognized by the Academy when Maurice Quentin de La Tour, after becoming an associate in 1737, was made a full member in 1746.  The arrival in Paris of the Venetian propagandist for pastel, Rosalba Carriera, converted La Tour to the medium.  The powdery, delicate effect of pastels enchanted aristocratic clients, yielding a fashionable art which repeated the same pose, same smile, same absence of background."

– André Chastel, from French Art: The Ancien Régime, 1620-1775, translated by Deke Dusinberre (Flammarion, 1996)

Marie-Denise Villers
Miniature portrait of an unknown woman
ca. 1790
pigment on ivory
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Antoine Vestier
Miniature portrait of Mlle Marie-Nicole Vestier,
the artist's daughter at her easel
1785
watercolor on ivory
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous French painter
Miniature portrait of an unknown woman
ca. 1790
pigment on ivory, mounted on gold box lid
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacques-Joseph de Gault
Miniature portrait of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte,
daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
1795
pigment on ivory
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York