Symposium: Art in Baroque Rome. New Directions in Research

Transcription

1 Symposium: Art in Baroque Rome. New Directions in Research Baroque Arcadias Baroque Display with Keynote Addresses by Karin Wolfe Dr Wolfe is a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute, where she was awarded an Edward Maverick Scholarship and an Overseas Resarch Students Award. She has taught at Temple University Rome and John Cabot University and has published widely on Roman seventeenth and eighteenth-century patronage, painting and architecture, including articles on Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Caravaggio, Francesco Borromini, Andrea Sacchi and Francesco Trevisani, including her recent study in Art, Site and Spectacle on the National Gallery of Victoria's Joseph Sold into Slavery by this artist. She is currently preparing a monograph on Trevisani. and Tommaso Manfredi Professor Manfredi teaches in the Faculty of Architecture in the Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, and works on the history of architecture and of the city in the modern and contemporary periods. He is author of numerous books and studies on Filippo Juvarra, Borromini, Roman urbanism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Baroque architectural treatises. FAN Organising Committee David R. Marshall, Lisa Beaven, Katrina Grant, Mark Shepheard, Tim Ould, Clare O'Donoghue, Elisabeth Trennery, Graham Ryles Date Wednesday 14 November pm. Location Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre, Old Pathology Building, The University of Melbourne (Map) Registration Registration is required, but is free. There is a charge for morning and afternoon tea: FAN Members: Free. Non-members: $15. For Registration please this address no later than Monday 12 November to: AHCCA- FAN@unimelb.edu.au For Poster in.pdf format, click here

2 The Fine Arts Network is supported by the Art History Discipline, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne. Program Registration Introduction David R. Marshall The State of Roman Baroque Studies Keynote Address Karin Wolfe Keynote Tommaso Manfredi Address Rinfreschi Anti-Arcadia Francesco Trevisani's St. John Nepomuk: Catholic Identity and Iconography in Baroque Europe The Accademia Albana : Art and Architecure in Arcadia in the Rome of Clement XI Chair: Karin Wolfe Lisa Beaven Nicolas Poussin s Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake: Addressing the Poussin Discourse David R. Marshall The Arcadian Desert: Watering a Villa Discussion Lunch Break Baroque Display Chair: Lisa Beaven Tim Ould Image-making in the Galleries of Roman Palaces: The Palazzo Ruspoli Glenys Adams From Saintly Austerity to Lavish Cultic Display: The Rooms of Saint Ignatius Loyola at the Gesù and the Rooms of San Filippo Neri at Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome Victoria Hobday Battles over the Body of Baroque Rinfreschi Arcadia Chair: Christopher R. Marshall Mark Shepheard Readdressing Pietro Ottoboni: Cardinal Dilettante Katrina Grant Garden, Theatre and the Arcadian Academy Plenary Session All speakers Reception [To be confirmed] Questions and Reflections Abstracts Karin Wolfe Tommaso Manfredi Lisa Beaven David R. Marshall Tim Ould Glenys Adams Victoria Hobday Mark Shepheard

3 Katrina Grant Karin Wolfe Francesco Trevisani's St John Nepomuk: Catholic Identity and Iconography in Baroque Europe The 1729 canonization ceremony for the Bohemian martyr, St John Nepomuk, at the Basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano was the most spectacular event of its kind in eighteenth-century Rome. The canonization, sponsored by the Emperor Charles VI and presided over by Pope Benedict XIII Orsini ( ), was commemorated in a series of magnificent engravings by Antonio Rossi recording the ephemeral designs of the architect and designer, Ferdinando Reyff. Reyff's grandiose apparato for the interior cladding of the basilica, alongside his design for the exterior false facade of S. Giovanni in Laterano (which can now be documented as based on Borromini's original project for the facade of the church for the 1650 Holy Year) superseded all previous designs for canonization ceremonies. As vicar-general to the Bishop of Prague, John Nepomuk had actively opposed King Wenceslas IV's policy of interference in the appointment of titular ecclesiastical properties. John's resistance so incurred the King's wrath, that Wenceslas personally set the ecclesiastic's clothes on fire. John was then tortured on the wheel and finally killed by drowning after being thrown off the Charles Bridge, in the center of Prague, into the river Moldau. When his body was discovered the following day it was transferred to the Cathedral of St. Vitus where it remains. Although venerated as patron of Bohemia long before his sainthood was made official, John of Nepomuk was only formally beatified in 1721, over 300 years after his death. Recent research into the cult of the Saint has turned up exhaustive accounts for the 1729 canonization ceremony preserved in the Bibliothek des Prämonstratenserklosters Strahov in Prague. From these documents it is now possible to ascertain that Francesco Trevisani painted the official picture for the canonization ceremony. This work can now be identified with a large oval painting showing the Glory of St. John Nepomuk, hanging in the Irish national church in Rome of S. Isidoro, where it is displayed as an anonymous work of the eighteenth-century. Trevisani, one of the premier painters in Rome of the period, was 73 years old in 1729; he was paid 200 scudi for his magisterial picture. True to the conventions

4 of canonization pictures, Trevisani's composition shows the Saint in a formal, static pose, emphasizing his transformation upon sainthood into a religious icon. The history of the canonization process and celebration will be reconstructed and the significance of the painting as a major new addition to Trevisani's late oeurve will be discussed. Karin Wolfe is a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute, where she was awarded an Edward Maverick Scholarship and an Overseas Resarch Students Award. She has taught at Temple University Rome and John Cabot University and has published widely on Roman seventeenth and eighteenth-century patronage, painting and architecture, including articles on Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Caravaggio, Francesco Borromini, Andrea Sacchi and Francesco Trevisani. She is co-author (with Michael Jacobs) of the entries on Italian drawings in Drawings for Architecture, Design and Ornament, the James A. Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor (2006), and is a coeditor of the forthcoming proceedings of the conference at the British School at Rome, Roma Britannica: Britain and Rome in the eighteenth-century. She is currently preparing a monograph on Trevisani. Tommaso Manfredi Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria The Accademia Albana : Art and Architecure in Arcadia in the Rome of Clement XI In July 1703 Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni wrote a petition asking Pope Clement XI to be the patron of a new literary and artistic academy, to be called the Accademia Albani. This academy would have its seat in Rome in the Palazzo Riario alla Lungara, which now forms

5 part of Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara. The building and the villa behind would have been transformed according to a project that can be attributed to Carlo Fontana, for which until now, the context has not been known. According to Ottoboni s petition, the Accademia Albani would be the only institution allowed to teach the arts in Rome, and would have absorbed the older Accademia di San Luca. The latter would have been moved from its inadequate accommodation beside SS. Luca e Martina to the remodelled Palazzo Riario. Although Ottoboni presented this as a logistical benefit for the Accademia di San Luca, it would in fact have led to an irreversible loss of identity and autonomy for the older Academy. The new academy would have come under the influence of the Arcadian Academy (Accademia dell Arcadia), with which it would have shared its seat in the Villa Riario. The apparent inconsistency that Fontana, who had been the protagonist in the recent refounding of the Accademia di San Luca, was the author of the architectural project for the new academy, forms a critical node around which unfolds the narrative thread of this mysterious circumstance that has remained hidden in the shadows of the history of art. These circumstances the role played by Fontana in the utopia Albana (Albani utopia), his double presence in the Accademia di S Luca and the Accademia dell Arcadia, and his connections with Cardinal Ottoboni offers new material on both the history of architectural projects for the Arcadian Academy, and on the question of its architectural language, a language to which Fontana is considered to be a percursor. Tommaso Manfredi, teaches in the Faculty of Architecture in the Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, and works on the history of architecture and of the city in the modern and contemporary periods. He is the author of monographs on the Virtuosi of the Pantheon (with G. Bonaccorso), on Gustavo Giovannoni (with G. Simoncini and others) and on Filippo Juvarra (in press) and of numerous studies in books and journals both Italian and international, dealing with, in particular, Borromini and the architects of Ticino canton in Italy, Juvarra, on Roman architects of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the urban history of Rome and on architectural treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lisa Beaven La Trobe University

6 Nicolas Poussin s Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake: Addressing the Poussin Discourse Poussin s Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake is one of the artist s most famous and puzzling paintings. Many scholars have attempted iconographical readings of the picture, but recently T.J. Clark has published an experiential reading of the work. This paper seeks to address his interpretation and to argue for an approach to the painting based not on iconography, but on Poussin s direct experience of the Roman Campagna. Lisa Beaven is a lecturer in Art History in the School of Historical and European Studies, La Trobe University. Her research interests are concentrated on the seventeenth century and include landscape painting, patronage and the collection of art and antiquities. She is currently writing a book on Cardinal Camillo Massimo ( ). David R. Marshall University of Melbourne The Arcadian Desert: Watering a Villa English visitors to Rome, accustomed to Claude Lorrain's lush images of the Roman Campagna, were sometimes disappointed by Roman villas like the Villa Borghese. Why, they asked, did they only have piddling little fountains set in the middle of little woods, instead of making the whole landscape lush and green as in the paintings of Claude? Such visitors were, in fact, victims of an Italian Baroque fantasy that presented the villas countryside as well watered and fertile, and of the circumstance that this image had been the inspiration for the English landscape garden, which was naturally well-watered and fertile. In short, because of Claude, English visitors came to Rome expecting its villas to look like English country parks. But the reality is that Rome has hot dry summers like those in Australia, and water was in just as short supply as it is in Australia today. The same problems and issues arose then that face us here today. Can I pipe water from the hills? Can I afford the cost of the pipes to do this? How big a water tank do I need? How do I plumb this when there is almost no water

7 pressure? How to I ensure there is no wastage, and how can I use the same water to both make a good display, so necessary to my social status, while ensuring the same water ends up on the garden or crops? This paper looks at the efforts of an early eighteenth-century villabuilder, Cardinal Patrizi, to answer these questions. David R. Marshall teaches Renaissance and Baroque Art history at the University of Melbourne. His current research focuses on villas and gardens of the early eighteenth century in Rome, and on the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini. He recently edited Art, Site and Spectacle: Studies in Early Modern Visual Culture (2007) and is currently completing a book on the Villa Patrizi and the early eighteenth-century villa culture. Tim Ould University of Melbourne Image-making in the Galleries of Roman Palaces: The Palazzo Ruspoli This paper will explore recent research on how patrons represented themselves in the galleries of their palaces. These spaces were sometimes the setting for collections of easel paintings or antique sculpture, in other examples decoration in fresco or stucco served as a substitute for them. The galleries of Roman palaces are truly amazing spaces, where patrons unabashedly articulated their importance in the cosmos. The size and function of these rooms known as galleries vary widely, they may serve as passageway, as exercise spaces for indoor promenading or as sites for pagentry and performances. With a focus Gallery of the Palazzo Ruspoli (c ), I will examine the way this form imported from France was adopted by

8 Rome s palace builders. Tim Ould has a BA (Hons.) degree from the University of Melbourne, with a major in Fine Arts (Art History). He is currently completing his PhD in Art History at the School of Culture and Communication. The thesis explores the sources of the fresco cycle by Jacopo Zucchi in the Gallery of the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome (c.1585). He works as a research assistant at the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. Glenys Adams University of Melbourne From Saintly Austerity to Lavish Cultic Display: The Rooms of Saint Ignatius Loyola at the Gesù and the Rooms of San Filippo Neri at Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome The new and reformed religious orders and congregations that emerged in sixteenth century Rome, such as the Jesuits and Oratorians, were instrumental in reinvigorating a spiritual revival in that city, and the identity of these religious communities shaped through the lives of their saintly figures. Behind the very public cults that emerged in the seventeenth century, the lived-in rooms that their founders had occupied became much revered and venerated spaces. The posthumous decoration of these spaces, was not only presented as a means to perpetuate the memory of the saint, support the process of canonization, and assist in the ongoing survival of the cult, but also to signify to the believer an ongoing link with the earthly and heavenly aspects of their founders.

9 The focus of this discussion will centre on two private sanctuaries in particular, the rooms of Saint Ignatius Loyola at the Gesù church and the rooms of San Filippo Neri at the Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome. The changing responses towards the presentation and display of these rooms will be compared and explored in this discussion. Glenys Adams studied the Bachelor of Letters (Hons) at the University of Melbourne completing an honors thesis on the cult of the sacra cintola in Prato, Italy. Glenys doctoral studies are focused on an investigation of the rooms of San Filippo Neri, at the Santa Maria in Vallicella church (Chiesa Nuova) in Rome, reconstructing the memorialization of this saint through the physical spaces of the rooms. Victoria Hobday University of Melbourne Battles over the Body of Baroque During the early eighteenth century the focus of anatomical learning and description shifted from the learning centres of Padua and Bologna moving to the cooler climate and interpretation of artists in Leiden and Amsterdam. This paper will briefly compare the defining differences and shared devices that artists in both northern and southern Europe employed in the mapping of these internal territories. Pietro da Cortona was recognised as one of the pre-eminent artists of his time which led to the engraving and publication of his

10 anatomical drawings one hundred years after his death in By 1779 the focus of anatomical description was predominantly in Northern Europe where large texts were produced and illustrated by Dutch artists such as Jan Wandelaar. What were the inherent differences and what changes and influences do they show of the cultural contexts in which they were produced? Victoria Hobday Mark Shepheard University of Melbourne Readdressing Pietro Ottoboni, Cardinal Dilettante Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni ( ) was described not long after his death as without morals, without credit, debauched, ruined, amateur of the arts, a great musician. Almost without fail, every subsequent commentator on Ottoboni s role in the artistic life of early eighteenth-century Rome has repeated these words by Charles de Brosses and they have deliberatly or otherwise coloured our approach to Ottoboni as both a patron of the arts and as a man of the Church. An unspoken assumption behind much writing on Ottoboni is that it was inappropriate for a cleric of his rank to spend so much money on art and music; in short, his career documents the last gasp of Papal nepotism, a system inherited from the corrupt yet prodigal Papacy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A further issue to have coloured modern responses to Ottoboni s patronage of the arts is the fact that he was as much a patron

11 of music as he was the visual arts; studies of Ottoboni have consequently been sharply divided between musicology and art history. As a result, the full extent of his influence in early eighteenth-century Rome has not yet been successfully articulated. This paper will seek to draw together these two disciplines to provide a more thorough and well-rounded image of Ottoboni, one which readdresses his role as a cardinal of the Church and which presents him as an artistic patron to rival such earlier counterparts as Alessandro Farnese, Scipione Borghese, and Antonio Barberini. Mark Shepheard has studied at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and at Oxford University. He is currently a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Melbourne and is writing a thesis on Italian musician portraits of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He also produces 'The Early Music Experience' for Melbourne radio station 3MBS FM. Katrina Grant University of Melbourne Garden, Theatre and the Arcadian Academy This paper will look at the interactions between garden, theatre and the Arcadian academy, in particular Queen Casimira s and Cardinal Ottoboni s operas for the Arcadian Academy, and their stage-sets by Filippo Juvarra. How does the imaginary and idyllic pastoral world portrayed within opera intersect with the Arcadian Academy s real garden, the Bosco Parrasio? Theatre was integral to the way in which the Arcadian Academy expressed its ideals; so too was the fact that they met regularly out of doors within gardens. The Arcadian Academy and its Bosco Parrasio have in the past been regarded as unique: an elite group

12 within an exceptional space. However, current scholarly thought is beginning to recognise the importance of Arcadian ideals on the arts (in its broadest sense) of eighteenth-century Rome. How then does the Academy s use of gardens and theatre fit within the tradition of the theatricality of the seventeenth-century Italian garden? And did they in turn inspire new styles of garden and theatre design? Katrina Grant is a PhD Candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores the relationship between gardens and theatre in Baroque Italy. She has published articles upon the villas and gardens of Lucca.