Studier af et barn med en kat, ca. 1478-81, London, British Museum

…Bambach er ikke maleriekspert, hun er specialist i renæssancens tegnekunst, et område på hvilket der kun er få, hvis viden kan måle sig med hendes. Den genopdagelse af en af verdens mest berømte kunstnere, som bogværkets titel lover, ligger i hendes objektnære behandling af mesterens arbejder på papir. Hun er ikke interesseret i store overordnede teser og konklusioner, men snarere i den rigdom, der findes i detaljen. Hun ser ting, ingen andre har lagt mærke til, og i modsætning til mange kolleger, som går mere selektivt til stoffet, skyer hun ikke de ofte dybt komplicerede tekniske eller filologiske spørgsmål, det kaster af sig.

Alt dette gør hendes arbejde tungt at danse med for den alment interesserede læser, men uvurderligt for fagfolk : selv om formatet er monografisk og præsentationen kronologisk, fungerer det således bedst som opslagsværk.

Læs hele min anmeldelse her, mod betaling. Eller giv dig i kast med projektet, der dannede grundlaget, Bambachs store katalog til den fantastiske udstilling hun arrangerede om mesteren på Metropolitan Museum i 2003.

ITEM My exhibition Michelangelo & Sebastiano, which showed at the National Gallery last spring, was nominated for Exhibition of the Year at the Apollo Awards. Although we were beaten for the award by the amazing Raphael exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, it was needless to say an honour to be considered. I am proud of the work we did, warts and all, and hope some of you had the chance to come see it.

ITEM Speaking of Michelangelo and Raphael, they are — of course — two parts of the ‘Big Three’ constellation we are currently showing in room 20 at the National. The Royal Academy generously lent us Michelangelo’s Taddei tondo for Michelangelo and Sebastiano and have let us keep it till the end of January while they’re renovating and preparing its new display in time for their anniversary. For various reasons, my full online interpretation treatment on went live a few weeks ago. You can look at it here, and you can of course watch my Facebook Live introduction — previously posted — here.

Cornelis Cort after design by Titian, The Annunciation, second state, c. 1566, engraving

Lüdemann’s book is a welcome
addition to the literature. In addition
to providing the first analytical overview of
print production both in Titian’s workshop
and outside it, its central argument about
collaboration is strong. Titian himself never
cut, engraved or etched, which means that
any consideration of prints relating to his
output necessarily involves his workshop
practice and his arrangements with fellow
artists, printmakers and printers. It should
be obvious to any reader of this flawed but
fascinating book that the prints, and indeed
the drawings relating to them or otherwise
analogous to their function, are a particularly
illuminating key to a better understanding
of Titian’s work as a whole.

Read it at your local art library!

ITEM Our Christmas video series at The National Gallery this year focuses on gold as its theme. I participated briefly (see above) in the section devoted to the gilding of frames, discussing with our Head of Framing Peter Schade the spectacular altarpiece frame he created for the Gallery’s Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano and Michelangelo, which debuted in the aforementioned exhibition and is now on view around the painting in the Gallery’s room 8.

Merry Christmas!

The week in review.

Sorry, I can’t let it go. Yesterday I filed an article on the media shit storm over Charlie Hebdo‘s provocation, Riss cartoon speculating that poor, dead Aylan Kurdi might have become an ‘ass-groper in Germany’, had he been given the chance to grow up in Europe. I guess this small cartoon, buried deep within an issue with David Bowie on the cover and with many other, very different cartoons (one of which is at least as offensive…) is newsworthy, in the sense that anything Charlie does these days is potentially so. But: this is a still rather marginal left-wing magazine we’re talking about and casting it as the reincarnation of Der Stürmer or whatever in the manner of many, mostly uninformed left-wing critics is not only hugely overblown, but ignorant of context. Not to mention insensitive to the multivalent qualities of even heavy-handed cartoons. Look, it’s perfectly legitimate to criticise this cartoon for bluntly furthering an anti-refugee agenda — it clearly does, whether intentionally or, more likely, not –but this is mostly because of the media treatment of it.

People actually reading Charlie would be less inclined to jump straight to that conclusion, and perhaps also take it as commentary on our remarkably schizoid and certainly (and understandably) confused perception and representation of the refugees arriving in Europe: one day innocent children in need of help, the next ass-gropers and rapists in Cologne and elsewhere. I suspect that Riss is disgusted with the increasing sacralisation of the devastating image of little Aylan, especially on the left, and the concurrent demonisation of refugess based on the actions of some. Neither is helpful in handling what is clearly a real problem, leading as they do to dangerous complacency. This, as much as anything, is expressed by that cartoon.

For what it’s worth, above is Dominique Sopo, president of France’s biggest anti-racism grassroots organisation, SOS Racisme, fiercely contesting the accusation that Charlie is racist.

Links:

No, these aren't the caricature mentioned, but they're also by Titian (and/or his assistants), and they're on the back of the Ancona Pala Gozzi.

Here’s the abstract:

The article examines drawings found on the back of the canvas of the recently surfaced Portrait of a Man (Girolamo Cornaro?) painted by Titian around 1511:1512. Drawn with the point of the brush, they depict a large head in profi le and two smaller figures. Loose and broad in execution, at least the former belongs to the domain of caricature. By comparison with similar drawings, on paper as well as the versos of other paintings, the drawings are here attributed to Titian. Further, the possibility that the head might be a portrayal of Michelangelo is explored, as is its value as evidence of the reception of Michelangelo’s outsize public stature and self-fashioning as an imperfect, Socratic artist whose work carried palpable overtones of the grotesque. The two figure studies, in themselves acutely Michelangelesque, are related to inventions by other contemporaries. Next, the fact that the caricature wears a beard, but no moustache, occasions an excursus on contemporary facial hair generally and specifically that of Michelangelo’s patron, Julius II. Ecclesiastical beards were a controversial issue at the time, and shaving one’s upper lip carried liturgical significance. Julius was the fi rst Renaissance pope to grow a beard, as is famously charted by Raphael in his portraits of him in the Vatican frescoes and elsewhere. By focusing on the depiction of his beard, the article sheds new light on the iconography of these pictures and potentially their confused chronology. Lastly, Titian’s drawings are examined in the context of contemporary grotesques with reference to Leonardo’s explorations of exaggerated physiognomies. On this basis, it proposes a reevaluation of Renaissance caricature.

The issue is second of two dedicated to Professor Peter Humfrey in his retirement. I am very happy to thus take part in the celebration!

Artibus et Historiae vol. 68 is available now in a specialist library near you!

Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, 1481, oil on panel, 246 x 243 cm., Florence, Uffizi.

The picks of the week from around the web.