 |
 |
The following sessions, brought to my attention by the Collecting and Display Seminar, may be of interest for anyone attending the Renaissance Society of America's annual conference in Boston from 31 March to 2 April 2016. Conference details at http://www.rsa.org/?page=2016Boston, schedule at http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/rsa/rsa16/ The Patrons' Input I Chair: Andrea M. Gáldy Thu, March 31, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Hynes Convention Center, Level Two, 204 Adriana Turpin, Buontalenti and Francesco and Ferdinando de’ Medici The architect Bernardo Buontalenti is famous for his projects for Grand Dukes Francesco and Ferdinando de’ Medici (1574-1609). Nonetheless, his relationship with his patrons and the nature and extent of their involvement with these projects remain obscure. This paper proposes to investigate the creation of two of Buontalenti’s projects in the Uffizi, the theatre and the Tribuna, and place them in the Florentine intellectual context at the end of the sixteenth century. It has long been accepted that the grand dukes themselves commissioned these spaces and decided on questions of decoration and display. Closer analysis of the court culture under Francesco and under Ferdinand after 1587, provides more detailed insights into the role of some courtiers. Accordingly, the focus will be on the musical circles in Florence, in particular those of Giovanni Bardi. Susan Nalezyty, Writing and Buying: Pietro Bembo as Patron and Collector As an author seeking new literary models, Pietro Bembo shared corresponding aims with visual artist friends, individuals who sometimes provided insights into the works he sought, acquired, displayed, loaned, and received as gifts. This scholarly collector’s career took him away from his celebrated collection in his Paduan palazzo and villa. Bembo served as his own buying agent with a trusted curator at home, though he often complains in epistolary evidence of strained economic circumstances. He brought works to Urbino, Venice and Rome, which informed his stylistic preferences, unique for his deep experience of these contexts near princely and papal collections. He valued not just monumental paintings, but portable objects of different media, and just as important were his visitors. Prominent authors wrote of what they saw, providing access to issues of usage and reception of Bembo’s works, which traveled up and down the Italian peninsula with him throughout his life. Gregory A. Grämiger, The Patrons’ Joys and Struggles in Three University Collections Already in the 16th century, the University of Leiden established a library, a botanical garden, a theatre of anatomy and different cabinets of curiosities. Specialized professors were responsible for establishing and ordering the different collections. Sometimes, they even ignored scientific facts to follow their own interests. Fellow colleagues disagreed with their works. Students wanted unrestricted access to the latest books and artefacts, while visitors paid an entrance fee and expected to see unknown curiosities. Donators were generous but in return wanted to be remembered infinitely. The advisory board of the university was mainly concerned with financial problems. The patrons were also dependent on voyagers and distant colleagues to receive extraordinary exhibits. The fate of their collection was in jeopardy when successors took over. Working extensively with primary sources, the paper intends to give insights into the patrons’ joys and struggles in hosting three collections of an early modern university. The Patrons' Input II Chair: Susan Bracken Thu, March 31, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Hynes Convention Center, Level Two, 204 Nathan Flis, The Paston Treasure The Paston Treasure is the first painting to depict an English Schatzkammer and will be the focus of an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art and Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery in 2018. The painting was commissioned, c. 1676-79, by Sir Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth (1631-1683). Recent conservation treatment has revealed iconographic puzzles within its painted layers that underlie apparent changes of decision and iconography, by artist and patron, to create its final appearance. The painting is an iconic memorial to the collecting of Sir William Paston, 1st Baronet of Oxnead (1610-1663), who travelled through Europe, reaching Alexandria and Jerusalem in 1638-39. A number of recently discovered inventories of Oxnead Hall, the countryseat built by Sir William, reveal that Oxnead housed an extensive collection of curiosities, schatzkammer objects and paintings, until now lost to the record. Alesandra Becucci, Ho visto la prontezza del pittore: Seventeenth-Century Military Nobility’s Art Purchases The paper considers the role of seventeenth-century military noblemen in the Habsburg service in the process of building up their art collections. In particular, it explores the Habsburg military nobility’s actual involvement in the choice of artworks and in the maintenance of contacts with artists producing them. The mobility inherent to these noblemen’s military and diplomatic activity often implied the need of a reliable network of agents, able to carry out the patrons’ orders for purchases, payments and display. On the other hand, frequent displacements on duty allowed this nobility to directly get in touch with the most active art markets in Europe. By considering an unusual category of patrons and their collecting habits, this paper argues that patronage practices and luxury acquisitions in early modern Europe should be reconsidered as operating at several levels, depending on context, circumstances, and mediators conditioning the patrons’ choices. Tomasz Grusiecki, Connoisseurship as a Dialogic Process: The Kunstkammer of Sigismund III Vasa Sigismund III Vasa (r. 1587-1632) was the first Polish-Lithuanian monarch to create a Kunstkammer in his official residence. However, historians of early modern art collecting have traditionally assumed that Polish-Lithuanian model of connoisseurship was a direct transplant from major European cultural centres. In this paper, I contend against classifying the transfer of an art-collecting practice from western Europe to Poland-Lithuania as an unmediated cultural diffusionism from the centre to a periphery. I argue that Sigismund’s cultural input was crucial in producing a local form of connoisseurship. Polish-Lithuanian gentry so fervently attacked and rejected art collecting as a respectable mode of sociability that Sigismund and his defenders needed to get their act together. A series of clashes between the court and the gentry offered a unique context in which to debate the value of art. From this dialogic tension, a specific set of conditions emerges where Sigismund’s agency as a collector can be re-considered. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~