Art History Today

The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 5

Consul Smith: An Englishman Abroad.

S

mith established himself as a merchant in 1709 rising to the prestigious, though modestly paid office of British Consul to Venice in 1744. Living in a palace in the English taste on the Grand Canal, Smith entertained many important cultural luminaries; he was an avid devotee of opera and theatre, and married the controversial opera singer Catherine Tofts. The celebrated dramatist Goldoni wrote a play about him and entitled it, perhaps with some irony: Il Filosofo Inglese. Walpole sarcastically dubbed him “The Merchant of Venice” and he appears to have been generally disliked. Yet he was an ardent collector who started in the 1720s with works by Sebastiano Ricci at a time when Tiepolo was virtually unknown and his tutor Lazzarini had retired. Smith also owned a series of works by Veronese, probably acquired as a section of his studio, but as yet there was nothing from which an individual taste might be inferred. In the 1720s Smith also patronised Rosalba Carriera who was working for him by 1723. His collection contained pastel portraits by her including a portrait of a young woman called “Winter.”¹ By 1730- when Smith was 55- he had an impressive, though stylistically unremarkable collection, consisting of Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Carlo Cignani (Bologna), Rosalba, and possibly some Piazzetta. However, the direction of Smith’s collection completely changes with Canaletto’s (above) arrival on the scene in the 1720s.

1Described by Smith (cited in Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 303): “Beautiful female covering herself with a Pelisse allowed to be the most excellent this Virtuosa ever painted.”

The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 4

Visions and Vedute in Venice.

Anybody casting an eye over the state of Venetian art in the late 17th and early 18th centuries might be forgiven for thinking that it fell into two distinctive categories. Firstly, there were the decorations of noble palaces and the ceilings of churches: allegories and apotheoses that might be collectively called the painting of visions, both sacred and secular. Then there was the growing interest in recording views of Venice to satisfy the hunger of collectors and connoisseurs interested in architecture, perspective or eager for a memento of Venice on the Grand Tour: this could be called vedute painting. The first strand was amply taken care of by artists such as Bambini, Algarotti, Piazzetta, and above all Tiepolo with his decoration of churches like the Scalzi and Gesuati (above) in Venice, as well as canvases for the Palazzo Dolfin. The second was the preserve of artists like Carlevarijs, Guardi and above all Canaletto. Canaletto’s career was boosted by the patronage of another English patron: Joseph Smith who wasn’t a printmaker or an international traveller. A connoisseur and patron of some distinction who spent most of his life in Venice as a partner in a banking firm, Smith is interesting for us as his taste reflects the two backgrounds of English and Venetian which Haskell captures brilliantly in his survey of his life and art patronage.¹

1On Smith, see Suzanne Boorsch, Venetian Prints and Books in the Age of Tiepolo, exh, cat., MMA, New York, 2007, 15f; Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 297ff.

The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 3

Between Truth and Fantasy in 18th Century Venice.

Painting in 18th century Venice bloomed at a time when the intellectual climate was changing radically throughout Europe. The political, scientific and philosophical movement that is known as the “Enlightenment” stressed reason as opposed to the glorified fantasies of the baroque; it was inevitable that such an intellectual trend would have consequences for a school of painting that included Tiepolo whose art was completely irradiated with fantastic ideas and conceits. Yet it would be naïve to judge the stylistic opposite of Tiepolo, Canaletto, as lacking in imagination. Canaletto experimented with a genre known as “capriccio”: a subversion of established ways of painting which depended upon a central joke or conceit. For example, Canaletto brought the Horses of St Marks down from the Basilica and set them up on pedestals in the square in a painting from his later career (above). Such imaginative treatment of the real environment found favour with some critics, even those who supported the Enlightenment. Antonio Conti was aware of scientific developments in Paris and London, and he made the trip to see the Enlightenment for himself. Newton supported Conti’s application to the Royal Academy, and on his return to Venice, the Italian brought with him a spirit of rationalism that influenced the intellectual climate in the city. As Francis Haskell observes, Conti made “an interesting defence of fantasy in painting which chimed in well with contemporary practice.”¹ Conti who approved Canaletto’s use of the camera obscura, highlighted the problem of the roles that fantasy and reason should play in the creative act (Haskell). By contrast, another Venetian intellectual, Padre Carlo Lodoli insisted on a realistic approach to the arts: he rejected outright Conti’s defence of fantasy and preached astringency in the arts, especially architecture which he insisted should be functional. It is easy to imagine his attitude to painters of make-believe like Tiepolo and Piazzetta who for him would have exemplified the worst excesses of the baroque in their compositions and their painted architecture. Not much is known about Lodoli’s views on painting, but it seems logical to assume that the art of Canaletto and Visintini would have met with his approval.

1Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters, Yale University Press, 1980), 319.

The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 2

Panini & Veduti in Rome

Giovanni Panini, sometimes Pannini (1691/1765) was an Italian painter born in the Piacenza who was trained in the tradition of stage designers at Bologna. By 1711, Panini had arrived in Rome where he became the “pre-eminent painter of real and imaginary views of the city.”¹ He was also the first painter to to make a speciality out of painting ruins, which connects him with Frances’s greatest ruin painter Hubert Robert who painted the Louvre both intact and ruined to reflect the impact of time upon art. Panini also did a lot of paintings of public festivities and ceremonies; these were sometimes events of historical importance. As a member of the French Academy in Rome, Panini also taught perspective, hence his influence was as strong with French as much as Italian artists. Pannini most famous creations are his capricci, or witty, visual inventions of famous buildings and works of ancient art. These show structures and sculptures like the Pantheon (above), Colosseum, Trajan’s Column, the Farnese Hercules and Flora set in an imaginary setting. In 1765 Panini was commissioned by the Duc de Choiseul , the French Ambassador in Rome, to paint “an imaginary palatial gallery stocked with the greatest treasures of ancient Rome.² The Duc also commissioned Panini’s gallery of modern view which was filled with paintings by the vedutisti.

1The Oxford Dictionary of Art Ibid, 369.

2Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press, 1982), 84.

The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 1

Defining Veduta

As most of the paintings shown today come under the category of “veduta,” it is worth defining for the uninitiated, I shall take the definition from The Oxford Dictionary of Art:

Veduta. Term (Italian: ‘view’) applied to a representation of a town or landscape that is essentially topographical in conception, specifically one that is faithful enough to allow the location to be identified (an imaginary but realistic-looking view can be called a vedute (for example Carlevaris, above) are called vedutisti.¹

1Ian Chilvers, Harold Osborne, Dennis Farr, The Oxford Dictionary of Art (OUP, 1988), 514.

Painting and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Slides

Slides.

1. Giovanni Paolo Panini, View of Rome from Mt. Mario, in the Southeast, 1749, Oil on canvas, 102×168 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

2. Hugh Frederick Hamilton, Portrait of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry, and Fourth Earl of Bristol, 1774-1778, oil on canvas, measurements not known, National Gallery of Ireland.

3. Laurent Pécheux, Portrait of Margherita Gentili Sparapani Boccapudli, 1777, oil on canvas, Private Collection, Rome.

4. Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham, oil on canvas, 233.05 × 161.29 cm, Los Angeles Museum of Art.

5. Johann Baptist Lampi II, Portrait of Antonio Canova, after 1806, oil on canvas, 113×93 cm, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

6. Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Antonio Canova in his Studio with Henry Tresham and a Plaster Model for the “Cupid and Psyche”, c. 1788-9, pastel, 71×100 cms, Private Collection.

7. Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche, 1786-93, marble, Musée du Louvre, Paris

8. Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg, Portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1814, oil on canvas, 90.7×74.3 cm, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.

9. Fritz Westphal, Arrival of Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen in 1838, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.

10. Franz Ludwig Catel, Crown Prince Ludwig in the Spanish Wine Tavern in Rome, 1824, oil on canvas, Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

11. Jacques Louis David The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, oil on canvas, 330×425 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris.¹

12. James Northcote, Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, 75.7×62.8 cm, Plymouth Art Gallery.

13. Hans Ditlev Christian Martens, Pope Leo XII visits Thorvaldsen’s Studio in Rome in 1826, 1830, State Museum of Art, Copenhagen, oil on canvas, 100×138 cms, on loan to Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.

14. Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, The Painter's Studio, c. 1780, oil on canvas, 33.1×41.5 cms, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

15. Hubert Robert, The Painter’s Studio, 1763-5, oil on canvas, 37×46 cms, Boymans Museum, Rotterdam.

16. James Barry, Self- Portrait with James Paine and Dominique Lefvre, c. 1767, oil on canvas, 60.6×50.5 cms, National Portrait Gallery, London.

17. Jacob More (1740-1793), Self-Portrait, 1783, oil on canvas, 198×147.5 cms, Uffizi, Florence.

18. Louis Gauffier, Self-Portrait with his Wife and Two Children, c. 1793, oil on canvas, 72.5×54.5 cms. Uffizi, Florence.

19. Richard Wilson, Rome: St Peter’s and the Vatican from the Janiculum, 1753-4, oil on canvas, 100.3×139 cms, Tate Gallery, London.

20. Att to John Frearson, Rome seen on a Grand Tour, probably 1790s, oil on canvas, measurements not known. David Ker Fine Art, London.

21. Claude Lorrain, Caprice with Ruins of the Roman Forum, c. 1634, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia.

22. Caspar Andrians van Wittel (“Vanvitelli”), St Peter's in Rome, c. 1711, oil on canvas, 57×11 cm, Private collection.

23. Hubert Robert, Draughtsman Copying Domenichino’s Flagellation of St Andrew, in San Gregorio al Celio, Rome, 1763, red chalk, 32.9×44.8 cm, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

24. Domenichino, The Flagellation of St Andrew, 1609, fresco, San Gregorio Magno, Rome.

25. Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of St Peter's in Rome, 1750s, oil on canvas, 75×100 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg. GREEN ARROW ON MAP.

26. Hubert Robert, Painters, 1790s, oil on canvas, 24×32 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

27. Henry Fuseli, Artist Moved by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins, 1778-80, red chalk and sepia wash, 42×35.2 cms, Kuntshaus, Zurich.

28. George Romney, Portrait Of William Beckford, Upton House, 1782, Upton House, Warwickshire, National Trust.

29. David Allan, The Arrival of a Young Traveller and his Suite during the Carnival in Piazza di Spagna, Rome, c. 1775, pen and brown wash over pencil, a substantial portion has been redrawn with darker ink, Royal Collection, 40×54 cm.

30. David Allan, A Roman Coffee House, c. 1775, pen, ink and watercolour over black chalk, 29.5 26.2 cms, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

31. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Piazza del Popolo, before 1751, etching, Royal Institute of British Architects.

32. Michelangelo, Interior of the dome, St Peter’s.

33. Giovanni Paolo Panini, The Piazza and Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, 1744, oil on canvas, Palazzo Quirinale, Rome.

34. Giovanni Paolo Panini, Picture Gallery with Views of Ancient Rome, 1757, oil on canvas, 170×245 cm, Museum of Fine Arts. Boston,

35. Viviano Codazzi, St Peter's, Rome, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 168×220 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

36. Nathaniel Dance, James Grant, John Mytton, Thomas Robinson, and Thomas Wynn in front of the Colosseum in Rome, 1760, oil on canvas, 98.1×123.9 cm, Yale Centre for British Art.

37. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Edward Gibbon, 1779, oil on canvas, measurements not known. Private Collection.

38. Andrea Casali, Charles Frederick the Antiquarian, oil on canvas, 134×97 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

39. Jean- Honoré Fragonard, The Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli, 1760, red chalk over light underdrawing in black chalk, 48.7×36 mm, Museé des Beaux-Arts et Archéologie, Besançon.

40. Giovanni Paolo Panini, Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome, 1757, oil on canvas, 170×245 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

41. Charles Grignion, Piazza del Popolo, la Coltellata (“A Tragedy”), 1790, pen, ink and wash, 33×42.6 cms, British Museum, London.

42. Att to Bernardo Bellotto, Ruins and Figures, 1750-75, Outskirts of Rome near the Tomb of Cecilia Metulla, oil on canvas, 71.2×92.2 cm, Shipley Art Gallery.

43. John Robert Cozens, The Colosseum from the North, 1780, pencil and watercolour, 36.1 52.8 cms.

44. The Colosseum, Rome.

45. Vasi, Frontispiece: Delle Magnificenze di Roma; Book III: Basilicas and Churches of Rome, 1747-61.

46. Map of Rome by Dupays.

47. Santa Maria della Vittoria, begun 1605. BLUE ARROW ON MAP

48. Sant’ Onofrio, built 1439.YELLOW ARROW ON MAP.

49. Joseph Wright, Firework Display at Castel Sant'Angelo, oil on canvas, 42.5×70.5 cm, Birmingham Art Gallery.

50. Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, 1750s, oil on canvas, 78×99 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

51. Pompeo Batoni, Self-Portrait, 1773-74, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Uffizi, Florence.

52. Pompeo Batoni, Thomas Dundas, later 1st Baron Dundas, 1763-64, oil on canvas, 298×196.8 cms. Aske Hall, North Yorkshire.

53. Pompeo Batoni, Saint Peter, 1740-43, oil on canvas, 73×60.5 cms, National Trust, Basildon Park, Reading.

54. Pompeo Batoni, Robert Clements, later 1st Earl of Leitrim, c. 1753-54, oil on canvas, 101×73 cm. Hood, Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

55. Pompeo Batoni, Edward Augustus, Duke of York (1739-1767), 1764, oil on canvas, 137.8×100.3 cms, Private Collection.

56. Pompeo Batoni, (1741-1820), Richard Milles, c. 1758, oil on canvas, 136.5×99.1 cm, National Gallery, London.

57. Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of Goethe at 38 Years of Age, 1787, location and measurements unknown.

58. Angelica Kauffman, Self-Portrait, 1780-85, oil on canvas, 77×63 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

59. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Goethe at a Window in Rome, 1787, pen, Classic Museum, Weimar.

60. Augusto Nicodemo, Portrait of Johann Phillipp Hackert, 1797, oil on canvas, 56×42cm, Private Collection.

61. Friedrich Bury, Goethe and his Artist Friends in Rome, c. 1786-7, pen and ink, 16.3×21 cm, Goethe Museum, Düsseldorf.

62. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Goethe in the Compagna, 1786, Oil on canvas, 164×206 cm. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

1Letter from Goethe to Haydon, 16th February, 1819.

Painting and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Italy. 11

A Portrait of International Antiquarianism: Tischbien’s Goethe in the Roman Compagna.

Tischbein’s portrait of Goethe in the Roman countryside is a visual summary of the international antiquarian culture that was established during the era of the Grand Tour. Though the exact date of the painting is not known, there is reason to believe it was finished by Tischbein in Naples in 1786, who may have added certain associations between its subject and the antique itself. As Patrick Hunt says, some scholars claim that the pose of Goethe may owe something to figures on the frieze of the Elgin Marbles, which seems extremely likely. The poet records in his Italian Journey a visit to the house of Sir Richard Worsley in Rome who had returned from Greece with drawings of the Elgin Marbles. Goethe was fascinated by these figures and after some of them were removed to London between 1801 and 1812, Goethe asked British artists like Benjamin Robert Haydon to send him copies in black chalk so that he and his Weimar circle could study them.¹ One of the most important elements of the painting is the classical relief behind Goethe; this is an explicit reference to his version of Euripides’s play of Iphigenia at Tauris. During 1786 Goethe worked on his Iphigenia auf Tauris which he finished and read to Angelica Kauffmann in February 1787. Goethe and Tischbein would not have been unaware of “the extant Bourbon excavations at Pompeii and in the Neapolitan Campania” and perhaps other friezes representing Orestes and Pylades in the Villa Albani. There were many painted versions of this tragic story, and Gluck’s opera Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) would have been known to Goethe. One of the most famous painted versions during the Grand Tour period was the American Benjamin West’s Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims Before Iphigenia, of 1766, now in the Tate. In showing the Iphigenia relief next to Goethe, Tischbein may have been hinting at the poet’s archaeological mission of saving the past. Is it significant that Goethe points down towards the earth, maybe signifying the remnants of an ancient culture that was slowly being unearthed as in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum?

1Letter from Goethe to Haydon, 16th February, 1819.

Painting and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Italy. 10

Goethe and the German Community of Painters in Rome.

Johann Wilhelm Goethe (1749-1832) was one of the most intelligent minds of the age. Not only a novelist, playwright and poet, he was also a scientist with interests in botany, geology, anatomy and colour theory. His Italian Journey (published about 1817) is one of the most famous written accounts of the Grand Tour, though the focus is predominantly on Rome and Naples. Goethe arrived in Rome on 29th October 1786 and left it on 23rd April 1788. As Elizabeth Einberg states, Goethe transformed the conventional Grand Tour into “an intense emotional experience, the modern idea of a man’s journey [as he put it} to find himself.” While he was engaged with this psychological quest, he benefited from the German artists living in Rome. He soon became a member of the circle of Angelica Kauffmann and her husband Antonio Zucchi (another artist) who invited him to their soirées. Angelica lived near the studio of her compatriot Trippel who made an impressive bust of her friend Goethe. He was also painted and drawn by his artist friends from whom he took drawing lessons. Angelica painted him when he was 38 years of age and Tischbein made several drawings of Goethe’s daily life in Rome. Goethe’s routine would be to study and read before 9 (above), before setting out to visit the museums and galleries as well as artists’ studios. Goethe actually resided near Canova’s studio as a painter under the alias Phillip Moeller, an alias he eventually discarded. The other main German artist associated with Goethe in Rome is the previously mentioned landscape painter from Brandenburg, Johann Phillipp Hackert who spent most of his time painting in Italy, particularly Naples.

Painting and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Italy. 9

Batoni, Portraiture and the Constitution of his Sitters in his Roman Studio.

The Italians had never really been interested in the genre of portraiture. At the start of the eighteenth-century Paris easily eclipsed Rome in this area. In his View of Society and Manners in Italy (1780) Dr John Moore observed that portraiture “is in the lowest estimation all over Italy” with hardly any pictures of the patrons who commissioned work in Italian palaces.¹ Batoni himself had hardly begun in the field of portraiture; his early work is a fusion of renaissance and baroque history painting, though the realism of the heads in these pictures looks ahead to physiognomic exactitude of subjects in the Grand Tour phase.² It was precisely this ability to accurately depict facial features that contributed to Batoni’s startling success. Aristocrats looking at portraits of their peers in Batoni’s studio noted approvingly how Batoni had caught the likeness of their friends, and clearly wanted to be painted by the maestro too. Batoni drew to his studio British, Irish and Scottish visitors from fashionable lodgings in and around the Piazza di Spagna, and his oeuvre of over 200 portraits might be likened to a visual Debretts or “Who’s Who” of the Grand Tour. Though he painted portraits of all ages, half of Batoni’s subjects were in their early twenties when they sat to him. Nearly half were peers, or would become so in later life; more than 40 sat in the House of Commons, and 15 sat in the Irish parliament. Several of them were of royal birth, like George III’s brother, Edward Augustus, Duke of York (above). Batoni’s sitters pursued varied careers, but Law, the Church and the Army were dominant. There is the odd different career path: David Garrick (actor), James Bruce (traveller and archaeologist) and the travel writer Henry Swinburne. Conspicuously absent were businessmen, merchants, financiers though present are sons of financiers who used money to purchase a country estate to leave to their sons to inherit. The greatest number of portraits depict the landed gentry including important art patrons like Lord Charlemont and the Duke of Richmond.

1Ibid, “The Travellers” in Grand Tour, exh cat, p. 51.

2On Batoni and the Grand Tour, see Edgar Peters Bowron and Peter Bjorn Kerber, Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth- Century Rome (Yale 2008), 37 f.

Painting and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Italy. 8

On and Off the Beaten Track in Rome.

By the late 18th century Rome had been mapped extensively, which was helpful to the visitor. Such authorities as Guiseppe Vasi the architect had created maps with engravings of landmarks, but a distinction has to be made between Vasi’s antiquarian knowledge and more “user-friendly” guides to urban space. The most useful thing for tourists is that guides tended to divide the city up into “giornate of sightseeing” (Sweet) containing detailed information on what was worth seeing, as can be seen in the detailed map by Dupays.¹ Some visitors were advised to read a page or two of one of these guides the night before a sight-seeing trip with an antiquary; perhaps the latter tested them in the morning! However, not everybody was eager to hire an antiquarian or cicerone; the independent Anne Miller and her husband used the guides to plan their own itineraries and declined the services of a human guide. There was also the option of getting information from local officials and cultural advisors known to the visitors. Stendhal was given a list of 12 palazzi to visit from one “Signor Tambroni”, a similar list to those on Dupay’s key” Where churches were concerned, Stendhal took an independent approach by drawing up a list of “the most remarkable churches in Rome”, most of which were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This list consisted of 22 churches² ranging from St Peter’s where many of most esteemed altarpieces were to be seen, to the less familiar St Onofrio, resting place of the poet Tasso where readings and reflections occurred by his tomb. Stendhal also was aware of churches off the beaten track, the “little-visited churches on the heights of Rome [which] are closed after masses have been held at eleven in the morning.” But he tells that the friar-porter can be bribed to show visitors such works as Bernini’s celebrated group of St Theresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria (above). We read of many such walks in search of hidden art in churches in the travel journals of Stendhal and others. Walks were part of the tourist round in Rome and when tourists were not out in search of art, they exercised or promenaded while observing Roman life in the streets. However, the Roman aristocracy disdained the pavement and remained defiantly in their carriages.

1Sweet, Cities on the Grand Tour, 103.

2St Peter’s, The Pantheon, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, Sant’ Andrea della Vale, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Ara Coeli, St Paul’s Beyond the Walls, SS Apostoli, St Augustine, Madonna della Pace, Cappuccini, San Clemente, Santo Stefano Rotundo, San Gregorio al Celio, Il Gesù, Sant Ignazio, Santa Maria della Popolo, Sant’ Onofrio, San Pietro in Vincoli, Santa Prassede, an Lorenzo Fuori le Mura.