Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
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Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
EACH YEAR ANNIVERSARIES of artists’ births and deaths throw together a number of miscellaneous figures united only by the survival of their achievements and a concatenation of dates. Alongside these, of course, there are the somewhat less alluring anniversaries of institutions, museums and societies, but the posthumous fêting of outstanding creative artists provides the public at large with a specific personality on whom to pin their badge of celebration. Exhibition schedules, publishers’ lists and the media in all its variety are frequently planned to reflect these anniversaries. A certain opportunism, even cynical marketing, is combined with a genuine desire to remember the artist concerned. A vivid biographical profile is of help (and can be expressly embroidered for the occasion) but is by no means essential; nor too is an exact date of birth or death. We do not know, for example, the year in which the great Tuscan sculptor and architect Arnolfo di Cambio died (some time between 1301 and 1310) but several beneficial exhibitions in Italy over the last few years (see the review on pp.296–97 below) would almost certainly not have taken place without the prompting of this floating anniversary. So far this year, the sovereign birthday boy of the arts has been Mozart, with Vienna as the epicentre of performances and exhibitions. But Mozart scarcely needs the fillip of an anniversary to bolster his reputation, whereas Shostakovich, born a hundred years ago, is sure to benefit from his centenary.
FROM 1615 TO 1616 Jusepe de Ribera, called Lo Spagnoletto, was listed in the register of persons (Stati delle Anime) living in the parish of S. Maria del Popolo (via Margutta). New notarial documents now provide further information on his sojourn in Rome. A contract for the lease of a house shows that the artist was already living in the city on 5th June 1612, gives his address and the rent he paid and speaks of the modifications he planned for his studio (see Appendix 1 below). The identification is secure: Giuseppe Ribera is called the son of Simone, native of Valencia, ‘pictor in Urbe’. Ribera’s landlord authorised the artist to open a window in the roof to aid his painting, with the obligation that ‘if you wish to make a window in the roof to help your painting you must do so at your own expense and when you leave you must return the structure to its original state without any recompense or exemption from rent’.
THE PROVENANCE OF two portraits by Pompeo Batoni, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, was first traced by Maria Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui, in an article in this Magazine, to the frigate Westmorland; she also identified the sitter of one of them as Francis Basset, later Baron de Dunstanville. The Westmorland was captured by the French off Livorno in 1778, and its contents acquired by Carlos III, King of Spain. The present article gives a fuller account of the identification of the sitter in another Batoni portrait in the Prado which was also on board the Westmorland.
AS THE CHAMPION of classicism in Victorian England, Frederic Leighton drew heavily on Greek mythology for his subjects. His large painting Daedalus and Icarus (Fig.17), exhibited in 1869, exemplifies the artist’s idealistic view of Greek antiquity. In classical mythology Icarus was the impulsive boy who, being given wings, flew too close to the sun. He was the son of Daedalus, the Athenian sculptor, inventor and master craftsman, who abandoned Athens for Crete where he met a slave of King Minos, Naucrate, who became the mother of Icarus. Daedalus later incurred the displeasure of King Minos and, together with Icarus, was imprisoned on the island of Crete. Intent on escape, Daedalus turned his thoughts to ‘unknown arts’ and devised two pairs of wings. According to Ovid, Daedalus gave his son careful instructions: ‘Fly a middle course, Icarus. Do not go too low or the moisture of the sea will weigh down your wings; /do not go too high or the sun’s fire will burn them. Keep to the middle way’. Ignoring his father’s advice, Icarus soared towards the sun until the wax holding the carefully aligned feathers melted in the heat. As he plunged into the sea, henceforth called Icarian, his father watched in horrified despair.
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