Art imitating art and beyond

Magazine Antiques, March, 1998 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

As the fine exhibition catalogue explains, the commissioning and subsequent ownership of the paintings overlap in fascinating ways. As the stories unfold, the paramount importance of nobility and power in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe becomes evident. Both Titian and Rubens traveled in the very highest circles. Titian's patron, Francesco Maria I della Rovere, for example, was related by birth and marriage to Pope Julius II and members of the ruling house of Aragon. Pietro Aretino commented on his friend Titian's portrait of Francesco Maria I in a letter dated November 7, 1537, in which he noted that the artist had captured "every wrinkle, hair, every mark, and he painted the colors not to depict the boldness of the flesh but the virility of the soul." Titian's Europa was part of a projected series of six works painted for Philip II of Spain.

Rubens was born one year after Titian died, and at the time of his own death in 1640, his inventory listed eight paintings and two sketches by Titian along with thirty-three copies Rubens had made. Through his role as a diplomat his travels took him to the courts of Europe and England, where art and politics always intersected. David Freedberg's catalogue essay chronicling Rubens's comings and goings between the Low Countries, Italy, Spain, England, and France is as full of intrigues as a James Bond movie. His entree into royal palaces provided Rubens with the opportunity to study and copy some of Titian's most remarkable paintings. Rubens befriended the English nobleman Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel, an insatiable art collector who commissioned a portrait. Rubens once again looked back to Titian's penetrating likeness of the duke of Urbino. In composition and psychological depth Rubens accomplished precisely what Aretino had noted a generation earlier.

In 1630 the widowed Rubens retired from diplomatic life and returned to Flanders where he married the sixteen-year-old Helene Fourment, whose father was a prominent art dealer in Antwerp. Rubens fathered five more children, and during the last peaceful and happy decade of his life he devoted himself exclusively to painting. These highly regarded last works not surprisingly continued to pay homage to his Venetian mentor.

The catalogue of the exhibition contains essays by Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Mr. Freedberg, and Manuela B. Mena Marques. It may be obtained from the Gardner Museum at 617-5661401 or by fax at 617-566-7653.

The sea and photography

The waterways of the world have provided us with food, shipping lanes, graveyards in war, and playgrounds in peace. These multiple incarnations of the seas are the subject of a traveling exhibition currently on view at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Entitled A Maritime Album, the show is on view through May 31. It is sponsored by the PaineWebber Group and Newport News Shipbuilding.

The Mariners' Museum has a collection of some six hundred thousand photographs from which one hundred have been selected by John Szarkowski, the guest curator of the exhibition. He made his selection based on the degree to which an example, he said, "piqued my curiosity on the issue." The pictures span the history of photography and reflect America's maritime economy, industry, and society. They include daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, stereoviews and postcards, prints from glass-plate negatives, nitrate and acetate films, and also albumen and gelatin silver prints.

Because the photographs on view were taken by both amateurs and professionals, some known and some not, they range from accidental, but serendipitous, combinations of provocative light and alluring compositions to those hard-edged views of unlikely subjects (such as engines and propeller screws) that appeal to professionals. The unknown photographers have left us haunting images of beached ships in the wake of a hurricane; the enormous engines of the Joseph Henry with a boy standing by, no doubt to confirm their massive scale; a fishing boat being unloaded at waters edge, complete with a horse-drown cart to ferry the catch to market; and a Great Lakes freighter sheathed in ice.

The professional British photographer Edwin Levick (1869-1929) was interested in commercial shipping and fishing, but his photographs are studies in shades of gray, rather than documents of a maritime livelihood. The range of both subject and technique evident in the exhibition is as varied as the oceans themselves.

The catalogue of the exhibition, entitled A Maritime Album: 100 Photographs and Their Stories, contains an introduction by Mr. Szarkowski and essays on the photographs by Richard Benson. It is co-published by the Mariners' Museum and Yale University Press and may be obtained in paper covers or hard covers in bookstores or from the museum at 800-581-7245.

For students and collectors

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City has announced its ninth annual Peter Krueger-Christie's fellowship. It is awarded to a young scholar (who has not received a Ph.D.) to pursue research in fields that complement the museums areas of collecting (prints and drawings, textiles, wall coverings, European and American decorative arts, and contemporary design) and its considerable library and archival resources. The recipient of this fellowship is expected to conduct independent research, but will work with the museums curatorial staff. A stipend of $18,000 for a maximum of twelve months is accompanied by a travel grant of $2,000. The deadline for applications is April 30. For further information and an application form contact Anna Manuel, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, New York, New York 10128.