An
Artistic Utopia?
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Johann
Baptist Lampi II, Portrait of Antonio Canova, after 1806, Akademie der bildenden
Künste, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 113 x 93 cm
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Christopher
Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1814, Portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen, oil on canvas, 90.7 x 74.3 cm.
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| Jacques Louis David The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Musée du Louvre Oil on canvas, 330 x 425 cmAdd caption |
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Franz
Ludwig Catel, Crown Prince Ludwig in the Spanish Wine Tavern in Rome, 1824,
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cm.
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A major player responsible for boosting Rome to the
status of cultural capital of Europe was the sculptor Antonio Canova. In
lauding Rome, Canova was contesting Napoleon’s claim that Paris was the main
city of culture, but Canova also believed in Rome as an Artists’ Utopia where
creative personalities were free to discuss aesthetic, philosophical, and even
political matters in an idyllic setting. Some of this was undoubtedly true: the
English sculptor John Gibson said that he not only listened to “conversations
between Canova and Thorvaldsen [a Danish sculptor] but between artists of
talent of all nations.”[1] Paintings
like the German artist Catel’s of an ensemble of artists (including Thorvaldsen)
in the Spanish Wine Tavern convey the convivial atmosphere in which such lively
debates took place, yet if one delves deeper beneath the surface sheen of
cosmopolitanism, the “practice of national prejudice” (Crask) is revealed. What
we have then is a more competitive arena than an international clearing house
of artistic ideas, which may also be a theme in Catel’s picture. National
rivalry is reflected in the attitude of the pugnacious Irish painter James
Barry who wrote a whole dissertation contesting the view that an artistic
nation like Italy could not be like Britain. Another cultural flashpoint was
Jacques Louis David’s classically realized Oath
of the Horatii lionized out of all proportion by the French, but
unreservedly condemned by the Italians; it also provided the German artist- and
Goethe’s friend- Tischbein with an opportunity to take an independent stance
and use his pen to reveal some of the petty chauvinisms lying beneath the
surface of “harmonious” relations.[2] Tischbein’s
balanced assessment of the state of painting in Rome should be contrasted with German
claims to artistic fraternity and cultural superiority, or to use Crask’s
contemporary gloss on it,- “a German take-over bid” in 18th century
Rome.
Artists,
Studios and Self-Portraits
There are a variety of types and we will start with
the rarest: the large, ceremonial portrait of the studio during a visit or an
important event. An excellent example of this is Marten’s large painting of a
papal visit to the Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen’s studio paid in 1826, but
painted four years later. There are scaled down views of artists’ studios such
as the Dublin-born painter Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s view of Canova posing in
front of a modello for his famous Cupid
and Psyche group watched by his English friend, Henry Tresham who arrived
in Rome in 1775. This painting with its aesthetic and social links underlines
Canova’s belief in a pan-European artistic community. The most prevalent genre
of painting is the self-portrait, which itself can be sub-divided further. There
are portraits of artists working (either on their own in the studio or outside)
or with members of their family present.
Jean Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803) shows himself working, with his wife
and daughter in a studio which also doubles as a living room. Lallemand is
seated at a drawing desk surrounded by busts, plaster casts of ancient
sculpture, drawings and books. The emphasis on domesticity as well as studio
practice is unusual in the genre.[3]
Sometimes an artist pushes his family to the foreground while retreating into
the shadows, as in Louis Gauffier’s (1762-1801) Self-Portrait with his Wife
and Two Children of c. 1793. Originally settled in Rome, Gauffier took his
family to flight to Florence following popular unrest with the death of Louis
XVI. In his painting the artist sketches a fallen pillar in the Roman compagna while
his wife Pauline has put aside her own sketchbook. Pauline was actually an artist
and may have painted the portrait of her husband in this melange of art, family
and Roman antiquarianism. The next
subdivision of the self-portrait genre is the type where the artist shows him
or herself next to other painters, as in James Barry’s Self-Portrait with James
Paine and Dominique Lefvre of 1767. Barry painted this ensemble
self-portrait after he had arrived in Rome in October 1766. Paine- furthest
from the viewer- was a sculptor while Lefvre was a painter, a pupil of the arch
French classicist Joseph Marie Vien. Both Paine and Lefevre are shown painting
the celebrated Vatican fragment, the Belvedere
Torso while Barry identifies himself as a “defiantly, Romantic youthful
genius.”[4] In
contrast, the Edinburgh painter James More shows himself at work out in nature with
brushes, palette and holding a small canvas. More was resident in Rome by 1773
and was admired by Canova in Rome and Reynolds in England, while he rivalled
another artist friend of Goethe, Jacob Philpp Hackert as a landscape artist. Another
artist praised by Reynolds was Angelica Kauffmann who painted her self-portrait
four years after More’s. In this beautifully elegant portrayal of herself, the
artist may be adhering to Reynold’s stipulation that a truly noble female
portrait should have the sitter dressed in “something with the general air of
the antique for the sake of dignity.”
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Hans
Ditlev Christian Martens, Pope Leo XII visits Thorvaldsen’s Studio in Rome in
1826, 1830, State Museum of Art, Copenhagen, on loan to Thorvaldsen Museum,
Copenhagen, oil on canvas, 100 x 138 cms.
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Jean-Baptiste
Lallemand, The Painter's Studio, c. 1780, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, oil on
canvas, 33.1 x 41.5 cms.
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Hubert
Robert, The Painter’s Studio, 1763-5, Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, oil on canvas,
37 x 46 cms.
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James
Barry, Self- Portrait with James Paine and Dominique Lefvre, c. 1767, National
Portrait Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 60.6 x 50.5 cms.
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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.[5]
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.[6]
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. 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.
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Pompeo
Batoni, Saint Peter, 1740-43, National Trust, Basildon Park, Reading, oil on
canvas, 73 x 60.5 cms.
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Pompeo
Batoni, Robert Clements, later 1st Earl of Leitrim, c. 1753-54, Hood
Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, oil on canvas, 101 x
73 cm.
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Pompeo
Batoni, David Garrick (1717-1779), 1764, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, 76 x 63 cms.
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Pompeo
Batoni, Edward Augustus, Duke of York (1739-1767), 1764, Private Collection,
oil on canvas, 137.8 x 100.3 cms.
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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 soirees. 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, 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.
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Angelica
Kauffman, Portrait of Goethe at 38 Years of Age, 1787, location and
measurements unknown.
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Angelica
Kauffman, Self-Portrait, 1780-85, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Oil on
canvas, 77 x 63 cm.
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| Augusto Nicodemo, Portrait of Johann Phillipp Hackert, 1797, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 56x42cm |
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Friedrich
Bury (1763-1823), Goethe and his Artist Friends in Rome, c. 1786-7, pen and
ink, 16.3 x 21 cm (6 3/8 x 8 ¼ inches), Goethe Museum, Düsseldorf.
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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.[7]
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.[8]
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? We shall turn to those next week when
our virtual Grand Tour reaches Naples.
Slides.
1) Johann Baptist Lampi II, Portrait of Antonio Canova, after 1806, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 113 x 93 cm
2) Antonio Canova, Bust of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1803, Marble, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna.
3) Antonio Canova, Tomb of Clement XIV, Church of S. S. Apostoli, Rome, 1787, white and lumachello marble.
4) Detail: Clemency and Temperance.
5) Jacques Louis David The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Musée du Louvre Oil on canvas, 330 x 425 cm.[9]
6) Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1814, Portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen, oil on canvas, 90.7 x 74.3 cm.
7) Fritz Westphal, Arrival of Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen in 1838, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, oil on canvas, measurements not known.
8) Franz Ludwig Catel, Crown Prince Ludwig in the Spanish Wine Tavern in Rome, 1824, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cm.
9) Hans Ditlev Christian Martens, Pope Leo XII visits Thorvaldsen’s Studio in Rome in 1826, 1830, State Museum of Art, Copenhagen, on loan to Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, oil on canvas, 100 x 138 cms.
10) Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Antonio Canova in his Studio with Henry Tresham and a Plaster Model for the “Cupid and Psyche”, c. 1788-9,Private Collection, pastel, 71 x 100 cms.
11) Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, with his Grandaughter, Lady Caroline Crichton, later Lady Wharncliffe, c. 1790-3, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, oil on canvas, 230 x 199 cms.
12) Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche, 1786-93, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Marble, height 155 cm, Hubert Robert, The Painter’s Studio, 1763-5, Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, oil on canvas, 37 x 46 cms.
13) Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, The Painter's Studio, c. 1780, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, oil on canvas, 33.1 x 41.5 cms.
14) Louis Gauffier, Self-Portrait with his Wife and Two Children, c. 1793, Uffizi, Florence, oil on canvas, 72.5 x 54.5 cms.
15) Hubert Robert, The Painter’s Studio, 1763-5, Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, oil on canvas, 37 x 46 cms.
16) James Barry, Self- Portrait with James Paine and Dominique Lefvre, c. 1767, National Portrait Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 60.6 x 50.5 cms.
17) Belvedere Torso, Vatican, Rome.
18) Jacob More (1740-1793), Self-Portrait, 1783, Uffizi, Florence, oil on canvas, 198 x 147.5 cms.
19) Angelica Kaufmann, Self-Portrait, 1787, Uffizi, Florence, oil on canvas, 128 x 93.5 cms.
20) Pompeo Batoni, Saint Peter, 1740-43, National Trust, Basildon Park, Reading, oil on canvas, 73 x 60.5 cms.
21) Pompeo Batoni, Saint Paul, 1740-43, National Trust, Basildon Park, Reading, oil on canvas, 73 x 60.5 cms.
22) Gavin Hamilton, The 8th Duke of Hamilton with Dr John Moore and Ensign Moore, 1775-76, Hamilton Collection, Lennoxlove House, Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland, oil on canvas, 178 x 101.5 cms.
23) Pompeo Batoni, Robert Clements, later 1st Earl of Leitrim, c. 1753-54, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, oil on canvas, 101 x 73 cm.
24) Pompeo Batoni, David Garrick (1717-1779), 1764, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, 76 x 63 cms.
25) Pompeo Batoni, Edward Augustus, Duke of York (1739-1767), 1764, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 137.8 x 100.3 cms.
26) Angelica Kauffmann, Portrait of Goethe at 38 Years of Age, 1787, location and measurements unknown.
27) Angelica Kauffmann, Self-Portrait, 1780-85, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Oil on canvas, 77 x 63 cm.
28) Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Goethe at a Window in Rome, 1787, pen, Classic Museum, Weimar.
29) Friedrich Bury (1763-1823), Goethe and his Artist Friends in Rome, c. 1786-7, pen and ink, 16.3 x 21 cm (6 3/8 x 8 ¼ inches), Goethe Museum, Düsseldorf.
30) Augusto Nicodemo, Portrait of Johann Phillipp Hackert, 1797, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 56x42cm.
31) Johann Phillipp Hackert, Great Cascades at Tivoli, 1783, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Oil on canvas, 120 x 170 cm.
32) Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), Goethe in the Compagna, 1786, Oil on canvas, 164 x 206 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.Benjamin West, Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims Before Iphigenia, 1766, Tate Collection, oil on canvas.
[1]
Quoted in Craske, 141.
[2]
See Tischbien’s account of the Oath of
Horatii in The Triumph of Art for the
Public, (ed) Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (Doubleday), 1979, 16-24.
[3]
Petra Lamers in Grand Tour exh cat,
no. 31.
[4] Brian
Allan, Grand Tour, no. 28.
[5] See
Brian Allan, “The Travellers” in Grand
Tour, exh cat, p. 51.
[6] On
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.
[7] 23rd
August 1787.
[8] Letter
from Goethe to Haydon, 16th February, 1819.
[9]
The argument that David’s aesthetic would have been recognized by the ancients
as their own was also used in descriptions of Canova’s Tomb of Clement XIV.
