̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Victoria Avery

A feast for the senses

ta385 — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 07:00:00 +0000

A mouth-watering / stomach-churning new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum explores our complex relationship with food

How we fell in love with shopping

sjr81 — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:49:34 +0000

Opening at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge on March 24, Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment features 300 stunning objects, each revealing the tastes and hopes of its owners and the skills of the hands that made them. Following different collections of items, we see how Europeans shopped and brought novelties into their lives and their homes.

̽��ֱ��exhibition takes us on a visual adventure through the decorative arts, starting with bespoke Renaissance luxuries made in glass, bronze and maiolica. ̽��ֱ��impact of global trade soon changed European habits and expectations. Shoppers were seduced by the glamour of the exotic; they lusted after eastern objects, Arab designs, and became obsessed with all things Chinese and Japanese. New world products like tea, chocolate and sugar, powered frenetic trade. Commerce led to constant innovation and new technologies. In a single generation the idea of luxury was flipped on its head from being the preserve of the elite, to a universal desire. ‘Populuxe’ – popular luxury – was born.

By the Enlightenment, objects that were displayed in the home and worn on the body had transformed the look and feel of the world, and allowed for the creation of masterpieces in silk and silver, pearwood and porcelain.

Treasured Possessions is intended to take visitors back to the bazaars and workshops of the distant past. Prints of city markets, illustrated trade-cards and figurines of vendors are set beside the wares themselves. From gorgeous silks, silverware, jewels and porcelains, via shoes, armour and embroideries, to snuffboxes, tea-pots, fans and pocket-watches, Treasured Possessions sets strange and extraordinary items alongside objects that we still use every day.

̽��ֱ��exhibition has been co-curated by Dr Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Dr Melissa Calaresu, Dr Mary Laven and Professor Ulinka Rublack from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of History.

Dr Laven said: “Today, we spend half our lives shopping, and many of our acquisitions end up on the scrap-heap or boxed away in a garage or attic. Before industrial mass production, purchasing took much more skill and effort, and was often the result of complex negotiations between maker and shopper. ̽��ֱ��most significant things in life were not bought and sold off the shelf, but were hand-crafted in homes and workshops, customized for their owners. Acquisition was an art.”

̽��ֱ��show also allows us a glimpse of the many hidden wonders that remain off-view in the vaults of our national museums due to lack of space in the public galleries. On the eve of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s 200 year anniversary in 2016, more than 80 per cent of exhibition’s objects are taken from its reserves. For the first time, visitors will be able to see some of the Fitzwilliam’s least-known treasures, from a silver pocket-watch shaped like a skull to the most fabulous pair of bright yellow embroidered high heels.

Treasured Possessions will be complemented by two companion exhibitions ‘Close-up and personal: eighteenth-century gold boxes from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection’ (a loan show from the V&A) and ‘A Young Man's Progress’ by photographer Maisie Broadhead, a fictional modern narrative inspired by the costume-book of Matthäus Schwarz, a sixteenth-century German accountant, who recorded the clothes he wore throughout his life in what has become known as ' ̽��ֱ��First Book of Fashion'.

Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment runs from March 24 until September 6, 2015. Admission is free.

An exhibition of ‘treasured possessions’ from the 15th to the 18th centuries reveals how we first fell in love with shopping, and takes us back to an age when our belongings were made by hand and passed down through the generations.

̽��ֱ��most significant things in life were not bought and sold off the shelf, but were hand-crafted in homes and workshops...Acquisition was an art.

Mary Laven

Fitzwilliam Museum

Folding ‘Trompe l’oeil’ fan, English, c.1750

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Yes

Michelangelo bronzes discovered

sjr81 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 09:40:46 +0000

They are naked, beautiful, muscular and ride triumphantly on two ferocious panthers. And now the secret of who created these magnificent metre-high bronze male nudes could well be solved. A team of international experts led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Fitzwilliam Museum has gathered compelling evidence that argues that these masterpieces, which have spent over a century in relative obscurity, are early works by Michelangelo, made just after he completed the marble David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

If the attribution is correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.

They are a non-matching pair, one figure older and lithe, the other young and athletic. Long admired for the beauty of their anatomy and powerful expressions, their first recorded attribution was to Michelangelo when they appeared in the collection of Adolphe de Rothschild in the 19th century. But, since they are undocumented and unsigned, this attribution was dismissed and over the last 120 years, the bronzes have been attributed to various other talented sculptors.

That changed last autumn when Prof Paul Joannides, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, connected them to a drawing by one of Michelangelo’s apprentices now in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France.

A Sheet of studies with Virgin embracing Infant Jesus, c.1508, is a student’s faithful copy of various slightly earlier lost sketches by Michelangelo. In one corner is a composition of a muscular youth riding a panther, which is very similar in pose to the bronzes, and drawn in the abrupt, forceful manner that Michelangelo employed in designs for sculpture. This suggests that Michelangelo was working up this very unusual theme for a work in three dimensions.

This revelation triggered further art-historical research with input from a number of international experts. ̽��ֱ��bronzes were compared with other works by Michelangelo and found to be very similar in style and anatomy to his works of 1500-1510; a date confirmed by the preliminary conclusions of initial scientific analysis. Interdisciplinary research is continuing; the findings and conclusions of which will be presented at an international conference on Monday 6 July, 2015.

It is a common misconception that Michelangelo sculpted almost exclusively in marble and never in bronze. However it is historically verifiable that he was associated with bronze throughout his 75-year-long career. Michelangelo is documented as having made a two-thirds life-size David for a French grandee, and an over twice life-size statue of Pope Julius II. Sadly neither survives – the first disappeared during the French Revolution; the second was melted down for artillery less than three years after it was made.

Dr Victoria Avery, Keeper of the Applied Arts Department of the Fitzwilliam Museum, commented: “It has been fantastically exciting to have been able to participate in this ground-breaking project, which has involved input from many art-historians in the UK, Europe and the States, and to draw on evidence from conservation scientists and anatomists. ̽��ֱ��bronzes are exceptionally powerful and compelling works of art that deserve close-up study – we hope the public will come and examine them for themselves, and engage with this ongoing debate.”

̽��ֱ��bronzes have gone on display in advance of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s bicentenary in 2016 and before its next major exhibition Treasured Possessions, the result of a interdisciplinary ̽��ֱ�� research project revealing hidden items in the Museum’s reserves. ̽��ֱ��bronzes and a selection of the evidence are now on display in the Italian galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from February 3 until 9 August 2015. Admission to the Fitzwilliam is free.

Click on images to enlarge:

Researchers behind the discovery
Prof Paul Joannides - Emeritus Professor of Art History, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge
Dr Victoria Avery - Keeper of Applied Arts, Fitzwilliam Museum
Dr Robert van Langh - Head of Conservation, Rijksmuseum
Arie Pappot - Junior conservator of metals, Rijksmuseum
Professor Peter Abrahams – Clinical Anatomist, Warwick Medical School, ̽��ֱ�� of Warwick

Lead consultants
Martin Gayford - Art critic and author of Michelangelo: An Epic Life (2013)
Dr Charles Avery – Independent art historian, Cambridge (UK)
Dr Andrew Butterfield – Author of ̽��ֱ��Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio and many other publications on Renaissance art

It was thought that no bronzes by Michelangelo had survived - now experts believe they have found not one, but two - with a tiny detail in a 500-year-old drawing providing vital evidence.

̽��ֱ��bronzes are exceptionally powerful and compelling works of art that deserve close-up study

Victoria Avery

Michelangelo bronzes discovered

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Nude bacchants riding panthers, c.1506 - 08

Yes