Art on the Grand Tour. Week 10: Rediscovering and Reinventing Ancient Art in 18th century Naples.

MATRAINI, Nicola, Portrait of Bernardo Tanucci, 1738, oil on canvas, University of Pisa.

Dioscurides of Samos after a Greek original with itinerant musicians, mosaic, find spot, “Villa of Cicero”, Pompeii, now in Museo Archeologico, Naples.

Photograph of modern excavations at Herculaneum.

Caylus, Recueil, reproduction of frescoes found at Herculaneum, vol vi., Paris, 1764.

Antiquity and Affairs of State in Naples 

The rediscovery of antiquity, sculptures, ancient wall paintings, objects of curiosity in Naples, happened against a backdrop of statecraft and diplomacy. Under Ferdinand IV, and with the help of his pragmatic and capable Prime Minister, the humbly born Bernardo Tanucci, the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii were overseen with a view to imposing a royal monopoly on the finds. Charles III, king of Spain, was kept informed of the situation in Naples through diplomatic correspondence with Tanucci and his rival, the Prince of San Nicandro, Ferdinand’s tutor. This correspondence is revealing because it offers insights on art and its reception in 18^th century Naples. For example, we know that the young Ferdinand was taken to see a mosaic from Pompeii of Itinerant musicians in 1765, two years after his tutor had vetted it for the king’s visit.[1] Charles III and Tanucci were engaged in the process of imposing copyright controls on the art discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and one way of doing this was to publish books of engravings of the ancient art under the imprint of the king. The ancient paintings were illustrated in a number of publications, but the most significant was Le antichità di Ercolano esposte hereafter “The Herculaneum Volumes” (8 volumes, 1757-61) which contained engravings of these ancient works facilitated by the varnishing of paintings.[2] Due to the restrictions placed on visitors to the sites and museums of Naples,- drawing and copying were forbidden, note taking was banned, and removal of objects not permitted-, artists and scholars turned to the Herculaneum volumes. Not everybody obeyed the rules. The French antiquarian, the Comte de Caylus had visited Naples in 1757 and stolen some terracotta vases, and secretly had drawings made in preparation for plates for his own book on the ancients, Recueil  d’ Antiquitiés which had started to appear in 1752. Yet Tanucci could admire the initiative and learnedness of Caylus who cast aspersions on the validity of the archaeological work at Herculaneum and mischievously but perceptively declared that “..at Naples, antiquity is an affair of state.”[3] Apart from art theft and the difficulty of recording the antiquities on site and in the museums, Tanucci and his court were very sensitive about criticism of the Herculaneum project. To criticise the digs at Pompeii and Herculaneum was frowned upon by the Neapolitan court, but despite this there were many complaints about the pace of the dig. Hestor Piozzi- who we last met in Florence- complained that the Neapolitans were too slow at Pompeii. And the more informed Goethe inspecting the site at Herculaneum regretted that German workmen were not available to speed up the proceedings! There was also the question of fakes of frescoes at Herculaneum circulating on the international art market which may have led to the Bourbon court giving orders in 1757 to deface some of the Vesuvian frescoes to keep them from being copied by antiquarians and artists.[4]

The German Artistic Community in Naples. 

 DE SILVESTRE, Louis, Portrait of Maria-Amalia of Saxony, wife of Charles III, in Polish Attire, 1738, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado.

 MENGS, Anton Raphael, Self-Portrait, c. 1775, Oil on panel, 102 x 77 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

MENGS, Anton Raphael, Portrait of Johann Joachim Wincklemann, 1761-62, Oil on canvas, 64 x 49 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 KAUFFMAN, Angelica, , Portrait of John Byng with Le antichità di Ercolano esposte,vol 2, Muse of Urania, 1765, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Private Collection.

In 1737 Charles of Bourbon (later Charles III of Spain) was engaged to Maria Amalia of Saxony-Wettin. She was the Queen consort of Naples and Sicily from 1738 till 1759 and then Queen consort of Spain from 1759 until her death in 1760. The mother of thirteen children, and a popular person, she oversaw the construction of the Caserta Palace outside Naples as well as various other projects in her husband's domain. Due to this marriage, cultural traffic increased between Naples and Saxony. One of the most important artists from Saxony was Anton Raphael Mengs who hoped to visit Naples, but while these plans were forming, Mengs became firm friends with the leading antiquarian of the age, a son of a cobbler from Prussia, J.J. Winckelmann. Mengs organized a number of visits so that the archaeologist could examine the finds at Herculaneum for himself. Winckelmann first visited Naples in 1758 which resulted in a letter to Mengs in Rome giving descriptions of what was then called the Basilica at Herculaneum. Another significance artist was Angelica Kauffmann, Swiss, but close to the German artistic community. She was in Naples between July 1763 and April 1764 with the aim of finding other wealthy and influential patrons, a strategy that paid off handsomely. The openings she made in Naples led to further opportunities in Britain since her sitters in Naples were primarily British, such as John Byng who is portrayed with Vesuvius in the background and with a copy of the second volume of Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, which might be viewed as a symbol of the general interest in Neapolitan antiquity. Byng who never returned to Britain also commissioned a number of Roman subjects from Kauffmann, which according to Roettgen, betray the painter’s knowledge of the classical tradition followed by Batoni, Mengs, Dance and Gavin Hamilton who were all under the influence of Poussin who was the first artist to seriously attempt to give his work the air of ancient paintings long before the Pompeii/Herculaneum phenomenon.[5] Kauffman also met Johann Reiffenstein who introduced her to encaustic or hot wax painting which reflects the evolving debate on how ancient pictures were painted. Kauffmann was also put in contact with Winckelmann, who also sat for her.[6] Finally, Kauffmann was very friendly with Goethe who visited Naples in 1787 with the painter Tischbein, and who visited Pompeii on 11^th March 1788 where he notes the “richly painted frescoes” are in a state of deterioration, probably due to the disastrous policy of the Bourbons mentioned above.[7]

 

A Brief Note on Herculaneum and Pompeii on the Grand Tour.

Theatre at Pompeii

Street in modern Pompeii

From the discovery of Herculaneum in 1709 to the end of the Bourbon dynasty in 1860, the two cities had a problematical relationship. Using metaphor, modern commentators have suggested that Pompeii was the light city to Herculaneum’s dark.[8] Pompeii was a ruined city open to the sun on the surface whilist Herculaneum mainly lay buried in darkness underground. Metaphors aside, over the centuries Pompeii has eclipsed its companion, almost becoming shorthand for both. From the point of view of the Grand Tour, as Dwyer points out, the physical situations of the two cities has determined the different ways that artists and visitors in general have approached them. The subterranean Herculaneum posed difficulties for the iconographer; the open Pompeii on the other hand was easier to map since it lent itself to aerial perspective.[9] Then there was the slow pace of the excavations which drew the criticism of visitors on the Grand Tour as mentioned above. 

Reconstructing Pompeii: Piranesi and the Tradition of Drawing

PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, The Villa of Diomedes at Pompeii, undated, brush and pen in black ink over black chalk on white paper, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford.

PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, View through the Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii, undated, pen and brown ink over black chalk, Metropolitan Museum of Art, (Lehmann Coll, 1975).

 Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii.

DEPREZ, Louis Jean, The Herculaneum Gate at Pompeii, undated, black ink, grey wash and watercolour, National Museum, Stockholm.

DEPREZ, Louis Jean, Temple of Isis with Protective Covering at Pompeii, undated, black ink, grey wash and watercolour, National Museum, Stockholm.

As Giovanni Battista Piranesi wrote in 1743: “Speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings could never have succeeded in conveying.”[10]  Piranesi’s comment hints at the role of imagination as an aid to artistic creation in the 18^th century; whilist his views on composition and art are concrete expression of fantasy in an age renowned more for objective reporting, evidential analysis and hard facts. Many artists, archaeologists and scholars both competed and collaborated on the reconstruction of Pompeii through their drawings, models and scholarship. As Pinto demonstrates, Francesco Piranesi drew upon a rich fund of drawings of done by his father, G.B. Piranesi and the French artist Louis-Jean Desprez, a legacy Francesco did not acknowledge when drawing up a plan of Pompeii in 1792 for his patron, King Gustav III of Sweden. Piranesi Senior made a number of spontaneous sketches of Pompeiian features like the Herculaneum gate and an intriguing drawing of prisoners in the stocks in the so-called “Gladiators’ Barracks” which recalls his famous Carceri series. Desprez, a member of the French Academy in Rome, was part of Vivant-Denon’s expedition to Sicily illustrated by the abbe Saint-Non in his Voyage pittoresque (five vols, 1781-86). He spent the last 20 years of his life working in Sweden. Piranesi Junior would incorporate Roman soldiers into his views of 18^th century Pompeii, which would appear in his Antiquités de la Grande Grèce (Paris 1804) perhaps as a way of flattering Napoleon’s ambitions. 

Performing the Antique in Naples: Emma Hamilton and Mme de Stael’s Corinne 

 FABRIS, Pietro, Kenneth Mackenzie, 1^st Earl of Seaforth, 1744-1781, at home in Naples: Concert party (left to right, Fabris, W.A. Mozart, Leopold Mozart,Hamilton, Seaforth, and Gaetano Pugnani, 1770, oil on canvas, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.   

 VIGÉE LE BRUN, Elizabeth, Emma Hamilton (1761-1815)- as a Bacchant, 1790, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 134.6 x 157.5 cm.

Attitudes of Emma Hamilton, after 1791, print, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

GERARD, François, Corinne at Cape Miseno, 1819, Oil on canvas, 266 x 277 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.41. 

Apart from collecting sculpture, drawing ancient frescoes and re-imagining antique cities, there was another way of reconstructing the past. To be more accurate it was more a question of performing the past because it entailed assuming the poses and gestures of women from the past, some of which were based on famous sculptures like the so-called “Herculaneum Women”, three statues unearthed between 1709-11, long before the Bourbon excavations.[11] In Naples, the most celebrated example of this re-enactment of the antique was the “attitudes” or poses of Emma Hart, latter Lady Hamilton, the British envoy’s mistress and later his second wife. During the 1780s and 1790s Emma’s attitudes, the acting out of roles of famous women from the classical age like Medea or Niobe, were esteemed by travellers to Naples like Goethe who gives us information about Emma’s classical “animation of the past. “Then there are the memoirs of the painter Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun who recounts that Sir William came to her and requested that she paint Emma Hart as a bacchante or possibly Ariadne reclining by the sea.[12] Another character, this time from the world of early 19^th century fiction, Corinne, dressed in clothes that resembled ancient women, sang a tragic song with a lyre like the muses she resembled, and danced the Tarantella whose movements might owe something to the gyrations and costume of figures in paintings at Herculaneum, but as Chard says, Corinne’s dance also might have inspired artists to go beyond the ancient frescoes. The most well-known attempt to show Corinne in antique guise was the Napoleonic painter François Gerard, but Vigée-Lebrun also painted Mme de Stael with a lyre, in antique garb, thus identifying the author with her creation. 

Slides. 

1)       MENGS, Anton Raphael, Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, 1760, Oil on canvas, 179 x 130 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

2)       TISCHBEIN, Johann Heinrich, Maria Teresa and Mari Luisa Amalia of Bourbon with a bust of their mother Maria Carolina, 1790, oil on canvas, measurements unknown, Private Collection. 

3)       DE SILVESTRE, Louis, Portrait of Maria-Amalia of Saxony, wife of Charles III, in Polish Attire, 1738, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado.

4)       Caserta Place.

5)       MATRAINI, Nicola, Portrait of Bernardo Tanucci, 1738, oil on canvas, University of Pisa.

6)       Dioscurides of Samos after a Greek original with itinerant musicians, mosaic, find spot, “Villa of Cicero”, Pompeii, now in Museo Archeologico, Naples.

7)       UNKNOWN ARTIST Villa of Mysteries, 65-50 BC, Pompeii.

8)       Photograph of modern excavations at Herculaneum.

9)       Caylus, Recueil, reproduction of frescoes found at Herculaneum, vol vi., Paris, 1764.

10)    PIRANESI, Francesco, Niche in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, engraving showing the interior of the Sacrarium of Isis as reconstructed in the royal collection, Antiquités de la Grande Grèce, vol 3, 1807.

11)    Sacrarium of Isis, east wall showing Harpocrates, Museo Archeologico, Naples.

12)    REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua, Sir William Hamilton, 1776-77, oil on canvas, measurements not known, National Portrait Gallery, London.

13)    Frontispiece from Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, 1757.

14)    Hercules with the Child Telephos and the Personification of Arcadia, Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, vol 3, 1757.

15)    MENGS, Anton Raphael, Self-Portrait, c. 1775, Oil on panel, 102 x 77 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

16)    MENGS, Anton Raphael, Parnassus, with figure of Mnemosyne, 1760-61, fresco, Villa-Torlonia-Albani, Rome.

17)    MENGS, Anton Raphael, Portrait of Johann Joachim Wincklemann, 1761-62, Oil on canvas, 64 x 49 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

18)    UNKNOWN ARTIST Att. to MENGS, Anton Raphael, Jupiter and Ganymede, 1758-59, Fresco transferred to canvas, thought to be fake, 180 x 140 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.

19)    Marsyas and Olympia from Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, vol. 3, 1757.

20)    KAUFFMAN, Angelica, Self-portrait, c. 1764, Oil on canvas, 89 x 68.5 cm, National Trust, Saltram, Plymouth.

21)    KAUFFMAN, Angelica, A Woman in Neapolitan Dress, Oil on canvas, 89 x 68.5 cm, National Trust, Saltram, Plymouth

22)    KAUFFMAN, Angelica, , Portrait of John Byng with Le antichità di Ercolano esposte,vol 2, Muse of Urania, 1765, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Private Collection.

23)    Muse Urania, Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, vol 2, Naples, 1760.

24)    KAUFFMAN, Angelica, Young Woman, 1766, etching, Angelica Kauffmann Museum, Schwarzenberg.

25)    KAUFFMAN, Angelica, Bacchus and Ariadne, Oil on canvas, Private collection.

26)    Photograph of Pompeii today.

27)    PIRANESI, Francesco, Site Plan of Pompeii, c. 1792, etching and engraving.

28)    PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, The Villa of Diomedes at Pompeii, undated, brush and pen in black ink over black chalk on white paper, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford.

29)    PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, View through the Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii, undated, pen and brown ink over black chalk, Metropolitan Museum of Art, (Lehmann Coll, 1975),

30)    Photograph of Herculaneum Gate, date unknown.

31)    PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, The Via Consalare, Pompeii, undated, pen and brown ink and wash, British Museum, London.

32)    DEPREZ, Louis Jean, The Herculaneum Gate at Pompeii, undated, black ink, grey wash and watercolour, National Museum, Stockholm.

33)    DEPREZ, Louis Jean, Temple of Isis with Protective Covering at Pompeii, undated, black ink, grey wash and watercolour, National Museum, Stockholm.

34)    ALLAN, David, Sir William Hamilton, 1775, oil on canvas, 226 x 180.3 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

35)    VIGÉE LE BRUN, Elizabeth, Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, after 1782, Oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm,National Gallery.

36)    VIGÉE LE BRUN, Elizabeth, Emma Hamilton (1761-1815)- as a Bacchant, 1790, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 134.6 x 157.5 cm.

37)    FABRIS, Pietro, Kenneth Mackenzie, 1^st Earl of Seaforth, 1744-1781, at home in Naples: Concert party (right to left, Fabris, W.A. Mozart, Leopold Mozart,Hamilton, Seaforth, and Gaetano Pugnani, 1770, oil on canvas, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.   

38)    Attitudes of Emma Hamilton, after 1791, print, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

39)    Small Herculaneum Woman, c. 20-30 BC, marble, Dresden.

40)    GERARD, François, Corinne at Cape Miseno, 1819, Oil on canvas, 266 x 277 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.41. VIGÉE LE BRUN, Elizabeth, Portrait of Madame de Staël as Corinne on Cape Misenum, 1809, Oil on canvas, 140 x 118 cm, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva.

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[1] See Carlo Knight, “Politics and Royal Patronage in the Neapolitan Regency: The Correspondence of Charles III and the Prince of San Nicandro, 1759-1767 in Rediscovering the Ancient World on the Bay of Naples, 1710-1890, National Gallery Washington, 2013, 75-88, 80.

[2] See Steffi Roettgen, “German Painters in Naples and Their Contribution to the Revival of Antiquity 1760-1799 in Rediscovering the Ancient World on the Bay of Naples, 125-140.

[3] John E. Moore, “To the Catholic King” and Others: Bernardo Tanucci’s Correspondence and the Herculaneum Project” in Rediscovering the Ancient World on the Bay of Naples, 91-122, 105.

[4] Paolo D’Alconzo, trans Mark Weir, “Naples and the Birth of a Tradition of Conservation: the restoration of wall paintings from Vesuvian sites in the 18^th Century,” Journal of the History of Collections, 2007, vol. 19, no. 11, 203-214, 205.

[5] Roettgen, “German Painters in Naples, 130.

[6] Roettgen, “German Painters in Naples, 132.

[7] Goethe Italian Journey, trans W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, (Penguin, 1962), 198.

[8] For an interesting use of this metaphor deriving from Susan Sontag’s comparison of Pompeii/Herculaneum to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in her novel on William Hamilton, see Eugene J. Dwyer, “ Pompeii verses Herculaneum” In Rediscovering the Ancient World, 247-266.

[9] Dwyer notes that despite’s the sun-lit Pompeii, it yielded up more dead bodies.

[10] John Pinto, “Speaking Ruins: Piranesi and Desprez at Pompeii” in Rediscovering the Ancient World on the Bay of Naples, 231-244.

[11] See Jens Daehner, “The Herculaneum Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe” in Rediscovering the Ancient World, 37-46.

[12] On women and antiquity in Naples, see Chloe Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, (University of Manchester Press, 1999), 126f.