Sculpture and its Reproductions

SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS

Edited by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft

SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS

Critical Views In the same series

The New Museology edited by Peter Vergo Renaissance Bodies edited by Luey Gent and Nigel Llewellyn Modernism in Design edited by Paul Greenhalgh Interpreting Contemporary Art edited by Stephen Bann and William Allen The Portrait in Photography edited by Graham Clarke Utopias and the Millennium edited by Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann The Cultures of Collecting edited by John EIsner and Roger Cardinal Boundaries in China edited by John Hay Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity edited by Stephen Bann A New Philosophy of History edited by Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner Parisian Fields edited by Miehael Sheringham

SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Edited by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft

, REAKTION BOOKS

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd II Rathbone Place London WIP IDE, UK First published 1997 Copyright © Reaktion Books Ltd, 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. Designed by Humphrey Stone Jacket and cover designed by Ron Costley Photoset by Wilmaset, Wirral, Merseyside Printed and bound in Great Britain by BiddIes, Guildford. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: Sculpture and its reproductions. (Critical views) L Sculpture 2. Sculpture Reproduction I. Ranfft, Erich 11. Hughes, Anthony 73° ISBN 18 6189002 8

Contents

Photographic Acknowledgements Notes on Editors and Contributors Introduction I

2

3 4

Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft

7

8

9

vu I

Roman Sculptural Reproductions or Polykleitos: The Sequel Miranda Marvin

7

Authority, Authenticity and Aura: WaIter Benjamin and the Case of Michelangelo Anthony H ughes

29

Art for the Masses: Spanish Sculpture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Marjorie Trusted

46

The Ivory Multiplied: Small-scale Sculpture and its Reproductions in the Eighteenth Century Malcolm Baker

6I

5 Naked Authority? Reproducing Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon Martin Postle 6

VI

79

Craft, Commerce and the Contradictions of Anti-capitalism: Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffler Neil McWilliam

100

Reproduced Sculpture of German Expressionism: Living Objects, Theatrics of Display and Practical Options Erich Ranfft

113

Truth to Material: Bronze, on the Reproducibility of Truth Alexandra Parigoris

131

Venus a Go Go, To Go

15 2

Edward Allington

References

168

Select Bibliography

197

Index

201

Photographic Acknowledgements

The editors and publishers wish to express their thanks to the following sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it (excluding those named in the captions, and the individual essayists, who supplied all remaining uncredited material):

© Edward Allington and the Lisson Gallery, London: pp. 153, 167; © 1997 ARS,

New York/ADAGP, Paris: pp. 142, 145, IS0; © Alan Bowness/Hepworth Estate (photography): p. 139; Michael Brandon-Jones: p. 107; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (Edmee Busch Greenough Fund): p. 120; The Art Institutue of Chicago (gift of Margaret Fisher in memory of her parents, Mr and Mrs Waiter Fisher): p. 137; Don Hall (courtesy the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Canada) (photography); © Bertrand Lavier: p. 159; Robert Hashimoto (photography): p. 137; Friedrich Hewicker: p. 124; Bill Jacobson Studio (photography): pp. 153, 167; Michael Le Marchant (Bruton Gallery): p. 134; G.V. Leftwich: pp. 12 (top right), 16; © Les Levine (photography): p. 134; Courtauld Institute of Art, London: p. 85; Royal Academy of Arts, London: p. 88; © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (photography): pp. 49, 58, 70, 74, 75; Paul Mellon Centre: pp. 82, 87, 96, 97; Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest; photo: © 1997 MoMA, NYC): p. 144; Photo: Alexandra Parigoris: p. 145; The Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena (photography): p. 150; and Wellesley College Museum, Jewett Arts Centre, Wellesley (gift of Miss Hannah Parker Kimball, M. Day Kimball Memorial): p. 12 (bottom).

Notes on Editors and Contributors

EDWARD ALLINGTON is a sculptor based in London. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; the Tate Gallery, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. He has also shown in public projects including Das Kunstprojekt Heizkraftwerk, Romerbriicken, Saarbriicken (1990) and Quadratura in Cambridge (1995). He was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at the University of Leeds, He currently teaches at the Slade School of Art and is Research at the Manchester Metropolitan University, who are publishing a collection of his essays, A Method for Sorting Cows (forthcoming). MALCOLM BAKER is Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has written widely on eighteenth-century sculpture and visual culture in many journals. He has co-written (with Anthony Radcliffe and Michael Maek-Gerard) Renaissance and Later Sculpture in the ThyssenBornemisza Collection (1991) and (with David Bindman) Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument: Sculpture as Theatre (1996), which was awarded the 1996 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. He is currently writing a book on Roubiliac and the roles of sculptural portraiture in eighteenth-century England. ANTHONY HUGHES is Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Leeds. He has published extensively on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art in Art History, The Burlington Magazine, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes and The Oxford Art Journal, and has written a book on Michelangelo. He is currently writing a book on the theory of sculpture from the fifteenth century to the present day. MIRANDA MARVIN is Professor of Art and of Greek and Latin at Wellesley College. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and Harvard University. She has excavated at Israel and Idalion, Cyprus, and publishes on Roman sculpture. NEIL McWILLIAM is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art in the School of World Art and Museology, University of East Anglia. He has published widely on nineteenth-century French visual culture, including A Bibliography of Salon

V111

NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Criticism in Paris from the July Monarchy to the Second Republic 1831-1850 (1991) and Dreams of Happiness (1993). He is completing a study of Jean Baffler and nationalist culture in the Third Republic.

ALEXANDRA PARIGORIS, formerly Henry Moore Lecturer in the History of Sculpture Studies at the University of York, recently completed a PhD on Constantin Brancusi for the Courtauld Institute in London. She has published on Brancusi, Pablo Picasso and ]ulio Gonzalez. Currently based in Chicago, she is preparing a critical edition of Andd: Salmon's La jeune sculpture franr:aise. MARTIN POSTLE is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the London Centre, University of Delaware. His publications include (with Ilaria Bignamini) The Artist's Model: It's Role in British Art from Lely to Etty (London and Nottingham, 1991) and Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures (Cambridge, 1995). ERICH RANFFT is former visiting Henry Moore Scholar in Sculpture Studies at the University of Leeds. He has published essays in Expressionism Reassessed (1993), Visions of the Neue Frau (1995) and The Dictionary of Women Artists (London and Chicago, 1997). He has been researching modern German arts and cultures and the practices of women sculptors, and has a forthcoming PhD on Expressionist sculpture from the Courtauld Institute in London. MAR]ORIE TRUSTED is Deputy Curator in the Sculpture Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She has written a number of articles and books on sculpture; her catalogue of Spanish sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum was published in 1996.

Introduction ANTHONY HUGHES AND ERICH RANFFT

Often, when the discussion of art turns to reproduction, it seems nearly exclusively bound by two dimensions. To take only the best-known examples, the effects of the hand-made print have been explored in William lvin's Prints and Visual Communication, while WaIter Benjamin's essay on 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (invoked by more than one contributor to this book) has become the single most influential piece of writing on the subject of reproductive photography. are no corresponding general studies dealing with sculpture, although, as all practitioners, curators and art historians know, facilities for reproducing three-dimensional objects predate by several millennia any ability to make pictures that were 'exactly repeatable' (to quote part of lvins' useful formula). Technologies associated with casting in clay and metal have been a traditional resource for sculptors for so long that their significance has gone largely unremarked. By contrast, the relatively abrupt appearance of the first woodblock images during the early decades of the fifteenth century in Europe and, still more dramatically, the well-documented invention of photography in the nineteenth, assume obvious significance, if only because they mark the kind of sudden discontinuity that seems to cry out for historical interpretation. There is no doubt that exploitation of these inventions has, as lvins argued, transformed the dissemination of information (and misinformation) , producing profound repercussions for the perception of art. However, the very continuity of sculptural practice should make us wary of reducing accounts of change to the of technological innovation alone. Very often, reproduction becomes an especially significant issue because of transformations in the cultural and social fabric, as the essays in this book clearly demonstrate. Some examples might illustrate the point more graphically. The first concerns the authority of antique sculpture. From the

2

ANTHONY HUGHES AND ERICH RANFFT

Renaissance onwards, ancient sculptural fragments were collected, restored and given currency by means of many reproductive processes. Martin PostIe's account of the debates concerning the role played by this exemplary art in English eighteenth-century practice marks a change in emphasis from a period in which it was routinely assumed that all ancient fragments were 'authentic' to the beginning of an age of fine discrimination between what was properly Greek and what was a Roman copy. Here the question of reproduction became crucial, but the forms of a later archaeological scholarship based on the systematic interrogation of Roman sculpture for what it could tell us about lost Greek prototypes was not stimulated by any technological change, but was rather symptomatic of an ideological shift observable in many types of historical writing and theory from Voltaire to Edward Gibbon. Its most influential voice in the field of the visual arts was that of Johann Winckelmann, whose History of Ancient Art provided at once a systematic method for the writing of connoisseurial history and a set of values associated with it. Though Winckelmann's values were not as coherent as they may at first have seemed and his scholarship was certainly contested, most memorably by Gotthold Lessing, the model he constructed in principle provided the basis for the vast library of studies that imaginatively sought to reconstruct Greek originals from a crowd of Roman copies. It may be claimed that the subsequent invention of photography facilitated this archaeological project, but it is beyond doubt that the new technology was harnessed to an enterprise already under way by the time that photographs became a standard adjunct to scholarly argument. In such scholarship, the Roman reproduction was simultaneously exalted and devalued as a glass in which we may catch a glimpse of vanished glory - more or less darkly according to the evaluation of the copy's quality. As Edward Allington's contribution to this book sardonically points out, modern commercial reproduction may multiply the ironies attached to the ambivalent status of the copy, that odd memorial to loss. It is often the case that in the present-day museum facsimile the supposedly 'real' object of veneration exists only as a phantom conjured up by means of a substitute for a substitute. The facsimile's careful fakery of surface texture simulates the appearance of the copy, the cultural value of which is held to reside not in any intrinsic merit but in the information it supposedly offers about a work now irretrievably lost. Within this hall of mirrors, it is a further irony that it is precisely this informational value that can never be substantiated.

Introduction

3

As Postle notes, rediscovery of works that are indubitably Greek, from the sculptures of the Parthenon to the Riace Bronzes, fostered the view of Roman figural sculpture as an industry in large part given over to the manufacture of reproductions. Miranda Marvin's essay forcefully argues, however, that the production of Roman sculpture was infinitely more nuanced than such studies have suggested, and the manufacture of facsimiles of Greek masterworks was merely one device in the repertory of craftsmen who also employed reproductive practices to produce variants and pastiches. It is the relatively modern preoccupation with authenticity and genius that has caused a great deal of Roman material to be misconstrued. Like much art at any time, Roman sculpture may have thrived on subtle adjustments and qualifications to a range of conventional types: the pleasures it offered a viewer must have been fairly refined and totally at odds with an aesthetic that prized originality above everything else. Twentieth-century anxieties concerning artistic integrity and commercial exploitation provide us with a second example of the importance of cultural ambience, this time giving a faintly sensational spin to practices hitherto regarded as unremarkable. The making and marketing of posthumous Rodins (in marble and in bronze) has occasioned scandal and caused quarrels to break out between normally well-behaved writers on art (for example, the dispute between Albert Elsen and Rosalind Krauss on which Alexandra Parigoris comments in her essay). Similar worries have arisen in connection with unauthorized bronzes made from waxes by Edgar Degas, the casting of metal sculptures by Umberto Boccioni, ]ulio Gonzalez, Constantin Brancusi and many others. Informing these debates have been issues of authority and artistic control that have recently issued in the drafting of a code of practice concerning the production of posthumous works. Parigoris' essay demonstrates just how deeply debates on these matters have been affected by specifically Modernist aesthetic preferences privileging concepts such as 'truth to materials' and form over other considerations, and hardly at all by the technologies involved, which in most cases would have been familiar in principle to the ancient Greeks. Erich Ranfft's discussion of Expressionist sculpture in Germany before and after the First World War reveals the extent to which a lingering attachment to the values implied by the doctrine of 'truth to materials' has distorted the writing of history to give a false sense of the priorities and practices that actually prevailed in artists' studios during this period. Much discussion on Modernism has also tended to pass over in silence

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ANTHONY HUGHES AND ERICH RANFFT

the role reproductive techniques have played in art since the late nineteenth century. In part this relative neglect has been an expression of embarrassment with processes that seem too obviously commercial to receive open admittance among writers on art, especially during periods and in regions in which the promotion of a proper standard of craft practice was regarded as essential for sculpture if authorial control was to be maintained. Oddly, these often authoritarian and elitist ideals went hand in hand with populist ideologies, creating some curious paradoxes. One is studied in Neil McWilliam's essay on the production of Jean Baffier's ornamental tableware. Baffler, committed to a medievalizing artisanal ideal, undertook an enterprise that could only be realized by exploiting the means of industrial reproduction. McWilliam's essay also explores the fuzzy borderline between 'sculpture' and the 'applied' arts where the production of multiples is the norm rather than the exception. Malcom Baker admirably outlines the importance of Kleinplastik and the way in which a sculptural motif could be comfortably and almost seamlessly transmitted from the exclusivity of the collector's cabinet to, say, Josiah Wedgwood's factory. Indeed, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century statuary must often have been more familiar in the form of porcelain, biscuit or Parian ware than it was in monumental marble or bronze. By the turn of the twentieth century, when sale of reduced replicas of salon pieces or favourite monuments was commonplace, it might have been difficult to tell precisely by what criteria a sculpture and a table ornament were to be distinguished from one another. It is the only half-acknowledged commercial exploitation of sculpture that sharpens the sense of ironic absurdity courted by Marcel Duchamp's readymades. His 'originals' - urinal, bicycle wheel, snow shovel and bottle rack - were not only themselves instances of industrially manufactured multiples, but also, as Allington reminds us, have subsequently been 'reproduced' in authorized versions whose status in relation to the parental object is parodically uncertain. These are cases in which reproduction has been made visible within the relatively closed worlds of scholarship and art. In larger contexts, the reproduction of imagery has been an important resource the very ubiquity of which has caused it to seem unremarkable. Repetition and dissemination of a motif or figure have constituted one of the simplest and most effective means of establishing and reinforcing political or religious authority. The image of a Roman emperor, whether depicted on a coin or in the form of a cult statue, became an inescapable sign of power, though in the twentieth century there is perhaps no need to search

Introduction

5

out historical prototypes for a practice familiar to the recent history of Germany and Eastern Europe. In many cultures, replication of religious cult imagery has often been a duty of sculptors and, although this is often associated with Asian practice, it has in fact been firmly embedded within the Catholic tradition of Western Europe for centuries. Here, as Anthony Hughes and Marjorie Trusted point out, replication and variation of a cult work may entail the assumption that the copy transmits something of the talismanic efficacy of the original. Trusted's discussion goes further, rightly questioning whether it is proper to assume the existence of an 'original' at all in the case of some seventeenth-century Spanish reliefs, which have probably been made from a mould in order to market a popular type of devotional image more effectively. In this instance, the conventional art-historical discrimination between authentic work and (it is usually assumed) second- or even third-rate copy may be not merely beside the point but positively misleading. Even when identifiable 'originals' exist, reproductive strategies are rarely merely passive but may have a powerful role in providing a frame within which the primary objects are seen. Baker argues that variation and reproduction of sculpture have had important repercussions for the transmission of reputation and the establishment of an oeuvre. Francis van Bossuit, a figure considered (if at all) today as 'minor', received the signal recognition of having what must have been one of the first illustrated monographs dedicated to him. Baker's argument subtly reveals how the engravings presented these small ivories anew as works of monumental grandeur, through the kind of dramatic devices which photography has now made commonplace. As editors, we are convinced that the replication of sculptural imagery has played a fundamental rather than a marginal role in the history of Western art. Each of the essays brought together here reveals a different aspect of the way in which the multiplication, placement and displacement of that imagery affects a variety of issues that, when analysed, importantly alter our conception of how sculptures function. The variety of approach from one contributor to another reveals how acknowledgement of replication, far from diminishing the interest objects hold for us, as we might perhaps fear, enriches their fascination. We have certainly benefited from the insights our contributors have offered. Our thanks go to them and to others who have supported us before and during the period in which the book was being produced. They include Ben Read and Adrian Rifkin at the University of Leeds and Penelope Curtis of the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture,

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ANTHONY HUGHES AND ERICH RANFFT

who convened a one-day conference at the Centre on this theme in December 1994. Finally we would like to record our gratitude to Ben Dhaliwal who organized an exhibition on the theme of reproduction and sculpture to coincide with that event.

I

Roman Sculptural Reproductions or Polykleitos: The Sequel MIRANOA MARVIN

In the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen is a nearly life-size Roman marble statue of a youth in the style of the fifthcentury BC Greek sculptor Polykleitos (p. 8). I He is identified as a 'diskophoros', or 'discus-holder'. His left hand has been restored to hold something that looks suspiciously like a hand-grenade, but, less anachronistically, seems likely to be a pomegranate (after which, after all, the 'grenade' was named), or a misunderstood aryballos. If he held something in his right hand, it is lost. The label that identifies the work as a discus-holder seems, therefore, eccentric. According to the logic that has until recently governed the identification of works of classical sculpture, however, it is perfectly reasonable, indeed correct. The Ny Carlsberg is a major museum with a long tradition of scholarly curators; its labels reflect the communis opinio of scholarly thinking. 2 In the case of the 'discus-holder' the label reads in its entirety (translated from the Danish): 'OISKOPHOROS/ROMAN/COPY AFTER POLYKLEITOS/STH CENTURY BC'. The work is identified, in other words, not as a work of art but as a reproduction of one. A long-standing scholarly consensus considers it to be a copy of a lost bronze by Polykleitos that depicted a victorious athlete holding a discus. That the Roman work holds no discus need not be explained on the label since its absence says nothing about the original, and only the original matters. The importance of the Copenhagen marble lies in what it can tell us about Greek sculpture, not about Roman. The only date on the label is the date of the sculptor of the presumed original; the only artist's name is his as well. Who made the Roman replica, when, where and for what purpose are not questions that have seemed important to ask. Recently, however, the consensus about this work and others like it has begun to break down. The Copenhagen youth now seems more likely to be a Roman creation than a copy of a Greek bronze and worthy of a label describing what the visitor sees, not just its imagined original.

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MIRANDA MAR VIN

Figure in the manner of Polykleiros, second century Ny Carlsberg Glyprotek, Copenhagen.

AD,

marble.

Much Roman sculpture is Greek in style and subject, and most of these Greek-seeming works have been assumed for at least a century to be copies of lost works by Greek artists . Some, like the Copenhagen Diskophoros (above), now appear to be Roman originals, and even those that are reproductions are today not believed to be mechanical ones. The theory that they were made with a pointing machine, similar to the one invented in the eighteenth century for making mechanically exact copies, has been discredited. 3 Roman replicas were works of judgement and skill, not machine-made repetition. Many were signed conspicuously with their maker's name, not the name of either the work or the artist replicated." The pride of the carver was shared by the purchaser who displayed the signed work for visitors to admire. s The anonymous Carrara craftsmen who today execute marbles that will be signed by the artists who modelled the bozzetti are not a modern equivalent to Roman marble-workers. Two anoma lies must be admitted before discussing Roman sculpture and its sources. The first is that the major centre of marble production in the Roman empire was the eastern Mediterranean. The marble-carvers of Greece and Asia Minor never ceded dominance to their competitors in Italy, and in their workshops the language spoken was Greek. They are considered to be Roman artists in that they and all their patrons were

Roman Sculptural Reproductions

9

subjects of the Roman government and products of its multicultural empire. In modern terms, however, few had ethnic roots in the city of Rome. The second anomaly is the ugly reality that all the works of Polykleitos are lost. If one of the surviving Greek bronzes in the museums of Athens, Reggio di Calabria or Malibu is his, we do not recognize it. If any existing Roman marble in Polykleitan style is a perfect copy of one of his works, we do not recognize that either. There is no known original left with which to compare existing replicas. The argument is not about proofs but about more or less persuasive hypotheses. The hypothesis adopted on the Copenhagen label, that the work is a copy, is simply less persuasive today than it used to be. The view of Roman sculpture reflected on the Copenhagen label is usually said to have originated in the circle of Winckelmann in the eighteenth century.6 As fully developed in German universities in the nineteenth century, it holds that Roman sculpture can be divided into two sharply distinct categories: historical and 'ideal'. Historical sculpture depicts historical persons and events? Public and private portraiture and the narrative reliefs that ornamented arches, columns and buildings throughout the Empire are its chief exponents. Historical sculpture is thought of as the place where Roman sculptors demonstrated originality and creativity, where they made significant contributions to the history of Western art. Roman ideal sculpture, on the other hand (which takes its name from the German Idealplastik) , is that which depicts deities, figures from myth, personifications, allegorical figures - creatures of another world, not ours. It includes everything from cult statues to lamp-stands, from fountain figures to wall plaques. The subject, not the function, of the work defines the genre. One of its characteristics is serial production. Very few works in this genre are unique. Most are known in multiples and belong to what is known as a replica series: a set composed of works that may differ in material, size, quality and iconographic minutiae, but that visibly relate to a common prototype. The prototypes of most Roman replica series have been thought to be lost works by Classical or Hellenistic Greek artists. The Romans are thought to have developed a taste for Greek sculpture from admiring the hundreds of ancient statues brought home as booty by their victorious armies, and to have come to prefer copies of these to originals by their own artists. The copies produced ranged from exact replicas to free variations, but all derived from Greek originals. 8 Since Roman literature constantly proclaims the glory of ancient Greek artists,

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MIRANDA MAR VIN

it seemed only reasonable to believe that most Roman patrons would prefer copies of acknowledged ancient masterpieces to inferior modern creations. As Franz Wickhoff put it at the turn of the century: The principal occupation of every Greek sculptor in Rome ... was to copy famous Greek statues in marble ... The exhaustion of the imagination, by impelling the lover of art who was no longer satisfied with contemporary creations to seek older works of art, favoured this extensive copying. 9

John Boardman at the end of the twentieth century describes the production of Roman ideal sculpture thus: For those who preferred masterpieces, even in copies, a copying industry soon emerged the result was the legion of marble copies ... which serve as a major source for our study of lost originals by famous artists ... It was, of course, always open to the copyist to introduce variants or create pastiches ... but obviously no new major art form developed from these classicizing works. IQ

Boardman's more nuanced but still dismissive statement reflects twentieth-century views. He still believes the Roman replicas' only value lies in what they can tell us about lost Greek works, but his list of copies of ancient masterpieces is substantially smaller than the list imagined by Wickhoff and his contemporaries. Since the 1970S whole classes of ideal works once thought to be copies of classical statuary have been reinterpreted on formal grounds as classicizing or 'classicistic' creations, conscious reformations of classical prototypes by Roman artists. I I Some, for example, have a strong homoerotic and pederastic content - 'sexy boys' Elizabeth Bartman calls them. I2. The bronze known as the Idolino in Florence, for example, was considered by Adolf Furtwangler in the 1890S to be an original of the fifth century. Its languorous elegance and youthful androgyny, however, betray its Roman origin and relate it unmistakably to similar figures of beautiful boys used to hold oil lamps to light Roman dining rooms. I3 Many more works have been recognized as Roman creations, and the category of literal copies from Greek masterpieces has shrunk dramatically.I4 This is not to say, of course, that they did not exist. Both literary and physical evidence demonstrates that the Romans made and displayed copies of many Greek works. Casts were taken from them and replicas made. In one instance, an overcast torso in the Metropolitan Museum in New York retains traces of the repairs made to the original from which it was taken. I5 At Baiae fragments of actual plaster casts have been found. I6 When Roman patrons wanted exact copies, Roman artists could produce them.

Roman Sculptural Reproductions

'ldolino', anonymous Roman artist, first century Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

8c / AD,

11

brom.e.

The hypothesis being challenged is that such copies were the normal preference of most purchasers of ideal sculpture. T have argued elsewhere that such a view imputes to the Romans a post-Enlightenment notion of genius and a familiarity with famous works of art made possible only by modern means of exact reproduction (today, of course, extending beyond the still camera to virtual reality in three dimensions). X7 The Romans had neither the ideology of individualism nor the technologies of reproduction that create the modern taste for replicas of famous works. Moreover, they had no academic discipline of art history or professional schools for artists, no encyclopaedic museums and only a rudimentary tourism industry. The art patron of ancient Rome had little in common with his modern successors who pile into tour buses in order to see the canonical works whose appearance they already know from reproductions, and purchase other reproductions on the spot to take home for the mantelpiece. Tn discussing Roman sculpture the burden of proof should shift from

I2

MIRANDA MARVIN

(top left) Doryphoros, in the manner of Polykleitos, first century BC, marble. Minneapolis Institute of Arts. (top right) Diadoumenos , in the manner of Polykleitos, first century BC, marble . National Archaeological Museum, Athens. (above) Figure in the manner of Polykleitos, first century AD ('), marble. Wellesley College Museum (jcwett Arts Centre), MA.

Roman Sculptural Reproductions

13

identifying which ancient work it replicates to establishing whether it copies any specific Greek work at all. I8 Is it a reproduction of a particular original or simply a repetition of approved forms in a classical manner? In the face of the many Roman variations on Greek styles now recognized, what defines a work as a true copy? How safe is it to reconstruct Greek sculpture from Roman replicas? The recent acquisition by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts of a magnificent replica of Polykleitos' Doryphoros and an exhibition in Frankfurt in 1990 devoted to Polykleitos have focused attention on works in his style. In the publications generated by these events (including a new and lavishly illustrated list of Polykleitan replicas compiled by Detlev Kreikenbom), the Diskophoros type to which the Copenhagen youth belongs is still classed as a copy of one of his lost works and used to reconstruct his career. I9 A native of Argos or Sicyon, Polykleitos was one of the leading bronze sculptors of the fifth century BC. 20 He took many pupils, and, as was not uncommon in Greece where occupations often passed from father to son, had more than one artist among his descendants. 2I His work is known from signatures on the bases of lost statues and from later literary accounts of his life and works. 22 The most important source is Pliny the Elder who, in the first century AD, credited him with major stylistic innovations and listed his best-known bronzes. The most famous of these were the Doryphoros, or 'spear-bearer', and the Diadoumenos, or 'youth tying a fillet' (p. 12). These have been reliably recognized from copies. Even the name of the Diadoumenos was wellenough known to make a pun on it. A Roman named Tiberius Octavius Diadumenus put a little relief of the Polykleitan statue instead of a portrait of himself on his tombstone. 23 Both these Polykleitan statues represent nude young men standing with their weight on one leg. The displacement of weight, thrusting one hip to the side, sets up a characteristic movement in the torso, usually referred to by the Italian term contrapposto. Their heads are slightly turned; they share similar facial features, an almost architectonic musculature and a distinctive rhythm that balances relaxed and contracted muscles in an easy, swinging stance. 24 The Doryphoros poses with a spear; the Diadoumenos tightens a long ribbon around his hair. Among the studies in these recent volumes, an important contribution is that of Gregory Leftwich. 25 He analysed the anatomy of the replicas of the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos and compared them with Classical Greek medical treatises. Both in the details of anatomical knowledge and

MIRANDA MAR VIN

in the conceptual framework defining a healthy body, the statues and the medical literature coincide. Leftwich argues that nothing in the sculptures reveals either information or theory foreign to Greek physicians of Polykleitos' day. An analysis by Leftwich of a Diskophoros in the collection of Wellesley College, Massachusetts (p. 12), concluded that its anatomy matched the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos, known Polykleitan works. Every significant feature appeared to him authentically Polykleitan. 26 In the most recently published study of Greek medicine and sculpture, Guy Metraux endorses Leftwich's conclusions. 27 The case for identifying the Diskophoros as a copy of a work by Polykleitos has, therefore, grown stronger in recent years, not weaker. The impediments to believing it to be a copy come, not from any anachronisms in the anatomy, but from the search for the original. Evidence for an original proves to be elusive and suggests that Roman sculptors were able to recreate styles from the past with greater sophistication and sensitivity than they are usually deemed to possess. Besides the approximately ten works listed by Pliny, many others by Polykleitos are mentioned in ancient literature. 28 Some may have been made by one or more of the later sculptors named after him, but it is clear that he was a prolific artist, with a recognizable style. Pliny describes his works as all very much alike, paene ad unum exemplum. 29 He is also said to have written a treatise on perfect proportions called the canon, or 'measuring stick', and to have made a statue to exemplify it (usually identified with the Doryphoros).3 0 Kreikenbom and the organizers of the Frankfurt exhibition believe that in addition to the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos, three additional mature male nudes by Polykleitos can be recognized from Roman replicas: a victor statue known today as the Diskophoros, a Hermes and a Herakles. The evidence, however, for identifying these lost works varies from one series to the next. It is strongest for the Diadoumenos, where the singularity of the pose, tying the fillet around the head, and the consistency of the replicas, which almost always combine the same head and body types, combined with Ti. Octavius Diadumenus' punning stela, make the identification certain. 31 The type identified as the Doryphoros also consistently associates the same head and body types. 32 Of the sixty-seven replicas listed by Kreikenbom, only twelve show any significant variation and several of these do not properly belong in a replica series. 33 The readily identifiable figure so consistently reproduced resembles the textual accounts of Polykleitos' work and the

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replicas of the Diadoumenos so closely that it is difficult to imagine not attributing it to the same sculptor. The attributions of the Hermes, Herakles and Diskophoros are less secure, and trying to find an original for each leads to a dizzying blur of confused identities. The work of later restorers, who have sprinkled the surviving heads on an assortment of ancient and modern bodies, and, with cheerful abandon, given ancient bodies new heads, makes the task particularly laborious. Once the Polykleitan replicas are disentangled from later additions, however, the grounds for the attributions emerge. More heads than bodies have been recognized, and they are grouped into series by hairstyle. In all the hair strongly resembles the Doryphoros. Hard and crisp, it lacks the puffy quality found in the hair of the Diadoumenos replicas. Chiselled locks of neat curls descend in layers from the crown of the head to frame the face in symmetrical whorls and tendrils. Each type, however, is identified by a distinctive arrangement of the locks around the face, which fall in recognizable patterns over the brows and in front of the ears. In the portraiture of the royal family at the beginning of the Roman Empire, such distinctive hair arrangements identify particular individuals. The men in Augustus' family are depicted as strongly resembling the emperor but he is distinguished by a formulaic hairstyle, found on heads of very different style and workmanship.34 Modern scholars have used the technique that court artists devised for identifying ruler portraits to identify the originals of ideal sculptures. They have classified all the young, male Polykleitan heads that share the same arrangements of locks as replicas of a common original. Applying the principles that work for one genre to the other, however, only points out the differences between them. The problem can be illustrated by comparing portraits of Augustus with copies of the Diadoumenos. Augustus was presented to his subjects in many guises - seated or standing, wearing a toga or a military cuirass, with or without the attributes of divinity. Even the portrait heads could look very different from each other. The heads were of different shapes; sometimes the hair was modelled, sometimes it was flat. Within each type were differences in the inclination of the head, its angle on the neck and the direction of the gaze. The formulaic hairstyle made the subject recognizable despite differences in presentation. Artists reproducing a work of art faced an altogether different problem. They needed to capture the distinctive contours, characteristic modelling and unchanging appearance of a specific image. A representa-

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Hermes/Mercury (?) in rhe manner of Polykleiros, second century Sraadiche Museen, Berlin.

AD,

marble.

tion of a young man who is clothed, not nude, seated, not standing, fastening his shoe, not tying a fillet, is not a copy of the Diadoumenos. The details of the hair contribute only marginally to the identification. The relief on Ti. Octavius Diadumenus' stela, for example, renders the hair only sketchily, but no one is in any doubt about the identity of the figure. The overall appearance of Polykleitos' original is clearly enough reproduced to make its identity plain, and so the copy is a success. Among the Roman replicas of mature nude males in a Polykleitan style, only the series based on the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos seem likely to reproduce specific works of art. A close examination of the other three fails to produce evidence suggesting separate replica series, but indicates a common origin for them all. In the Diskophoros series Kreikenbom lists eighteen heads. Most are plain but two have wings attached above the brows that should make them Hermes, the winged messenger god of the Greeks, identified by the Romans with their native Mercury.35 Three heads attached to the straight pillar bases known as herms, however, wear a celebratory wreath wrapped in a long ribbon, an attribute of Herakles/Hercules. 36 Only three Diskophoros heads were found with bodies, always with the same one: a youth with musculature and rhythm resembling the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos, but feet planted firmly on the

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ground. 37 This body type, however, is also used for other heads. Four replicas listed by Kreikenbom have ideal heads of different types, three have portrait heads and one torso-length herm holds the heavy club that identifies him as Herakles. 38 The Diskophoros torsos themselves, headless or not, show considerable variation. The torso occurs nude, with a baldric, with a mantle clasped around the neck, with a mantle bunched on the shoulder, with a straight mantle and baldric, with the left hand holding a discus and with the stub of a lost attribute attached to the left upper arm. 39 Attached to the tree-trunk support that strengthens the right leg are in the Copenhagen example a sea monster, in another example, a lyre, and in a third, a dog. 40 Poulsen noticed that the sea monster attached to the Copenhagen replica also occurs on a statue of Perseus in Ostia and suggested that the figure in Denmark represented Perseus, who slew a sea monster to rescue Andromeda. 41 The lyre support is attached to one of the Hermes figures with winged heads, and no one has yet suggested an identity for the figure with the dog. 42 Eighteen heads are also listed for the series called the Hermes. Three have wings like the two winged examples in the Diskophoros series. 43 Three others have traces of different headgear. 44 One of the winged heads sits on a not very Polykleitan torso in the Boboli Gardens, Florence, bedecked with a mantle, a caduceus and the infant Dionysos in a pose reminiscent of Praxiteles. 45 A little classicistic bronze has an almost intact Polykleitan head and body, but is so idiosyncratic that it cannot be said to copy anything literally.46 Another one of the heads is attached to a youth with a mantle draped across his hips.47 Kreikenbom suggests that three additional headless torsos of Polykleitan musculature and rhythm that do not quite fit into any known series might be some of the missing bodies for this one. 48 The Herakles is Kreikenbom's smallest series. Only fourteen works make up the main group, with eight others in a subset of miniatures. Of the heads, ten are plain, one has wings in the hair and three herms wear the ribboned wreath. 49 Only three heads are attached to bodies. All three torsos are the same: solid musculature, a rhythm and contrapposto strongly resembling the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos, and a distinctive pose in which the left hand is held behind the back. 5° No legs and feet are preserved to suggest a stance. Historically, the response to the mutability of these types has been to comb the lists of Polykleitos' lost works for three possible originals, (required by the three hairstyles), select one replica in each series as an

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accurate reproduction of it and identify all the others as copyists' variants. The hairstyles determined how many originals were required, while the poses and attributes determined which original each one reproduced. The Diskophoros series was named by Carlo Anti after the example in the T orlonia collection that has been restored holding a discus. He hypothesized that the original was one of Polykleitos' many statues of athletic victors. 51 Polykleitos' Hermes (Pliny, Natural History, XXXIV, 55) was identified as the original of the type that included three heads with wings and the Boboli Gardens' Hermes holding the infant Dionysos. In the Frankfurt catalogue, Peter Bol, noting that no work in this series has any alternative attributes, accepts Anti's identification. 52 The series with the hand held behind the back is thought to copy Polykleitos' Herakles (Pliny, loe. eit.).53 Perhaps the most popular image of Herakles in the Roman world stood in that pose, the type known as the Herakles Farnese, believed to copy an original by the great fourthcentury BC sculptor Lysippos. Presumably the fourth-century artist is believed to have imitated his fifth-century BC predecessor. 54 The tenuousness of these identifications is readily acknowledged in recent scholarship, particularly the Diskophoros, whose name occurs in quotation marks in Kreikenbom's replica list. It is not surprising, therefore, that alternatives have been proposed. In addition to Polykleitos' recorded works, there were others of which we are ignorant, and Ernst Berger, observing the downward glance of the Diskophoros, believes that the original depicted a Theseus looking at his sword. 55 Berger is unable to cite convincing parallels, however, and so the generally accepted hypothesis remains that the Diskophoros type represents a Polykleitan victor statue, while the others represent two of his images of gods. 56 Unfortunately, of the iconographic markers used to identify the figures, only one is familiar from the mid-fifth century BC, and that is the discus, which may be restored. Herakles' gesture, placing his hand behind his back, is not known before the fourth century. 57 Wings are certainly a ubiquitous attribute of Hermes; rapid motion denoted the traveller-god. 58 In sixth- and fifth-century BC Greek art, however, the wings that suggest his motion appear on Hermes' sandals or his hat; they do not sprout from his body. The motif of a winged head, not a winged hat, seems to originate in the Attic pottery workshop of the Talos Painter around 400 BC, too late for Polykleitos. 59 The attributes and poses, therefore, do not point directly to any works of Polykleitos. Other anomalies suggest that these may not be straightforward copies.

Roman Sculptural Reproductions The three series are composed of different ingredients. The Diskophoros is made up of a variably decked-out body type used with several different heads. The Hermes is constructed from eighteen heads, only three of which are attached to bodies, none of which is the same or believed to reproduce Polykleitos' lost statue, and three fragmentary bodies whose association with the heads is only a guess. Within the Herakles group is what looks like the remains of a small but traditional replica series (including both miniatures and large-scale works) that depicted a Polykleitan nude holding his hand behind his back. Most of the heads are plain but one has wings in the hair, suggesting an identification as Hermes. The series, however, also includes three herms wearing ribboned wreaths, which usually indicate Herakles. 60 Precisely these variations occur in the heads of the Diskophoros type plain, winged and ribboned wreaths. In both series herms only are wreathed and all the wreathed herms look very much alike, although they have been so heavily restored that it is unwise to subject them to much formal analysis. The Hermes series so far lacks any wreathed herms, but includes the winged heads familiar from the other two, as well as traces of other headgear, so far not found in the others. The Hermes and Herakles series, moreover, are represented by remarkably few bodies compared with the surviving heads. The Diskophoros type is distinguished from the other two in being the most productive, in the linguistic sense. Only two identities, Hermes and Herakles, can be reconstructed for them, while the Diskophoros body is used with many different heads, portrait and ideal. Moreover, apart from the marble replicas, the Diskophoros type is ubiquitous in small bronzes where it is widely used for images of Mercury holding a money bag. 61 Since the Romans identified Mercury with Hermes, the clear favourite for the original of the series would be Polykleitos' Hermes, were it not that the money bag is an attribute specifically of Mercury.62 The attribute signals a notable difference between the cults of the Greek and the Roman gods. 63 (It is also hard to understand why Polykleitos, sensitive to implied movement, would have chosen to depict the rapid Hermes as immobile, standing with both feet flat on the ground.) Mercury, whose name derives from the Latin merx, or 'goods', was less a messenger than the god of commerce, profit and wealth. As such he was widely venerated, and he occurs in small bronzes more often than any other Roman god. 64 Most of these are an appropriate size for an image in a household shrine or modest ex-voto in a sanctuary, and reflect the piety of commercial households.

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The usual assumption is that the devotional image of Mercury was a replica of Polykleitos' statue of a victorious athlete given new attributes by Roman artists. So little of Greek sculpture has survived that accurately tracing the changes between replicas and originals is fruitless, and such a reworking of a Polykleitan work is entirely possible. Erika Simon has even suggested an environment in which it might have taken place. 65 The island of Delos was home to both Greek and Italian traders in the second and first centuries BC. The god with the money bag is a popular terracotta figurine there, and on the prosperous island an active group of sculptors produced innovative works with mixed Greek and Roman roots. The transformation hypothesis holds that it was in such an environment as this, where Romans mingled regularly with Greeks, that an admired work by Polykleitos was first copied and then given a new identity. Making this argument, however, requires assuming not only that the predictable response to admiring a work of art was to make copies of it, but also that form and content were independent variables. To put it in different terms, the claim must be made that what the work looked like and what it signified were separable. In later Western art, classical forms could sometimes be virtually emptied of content and familiar works could be quoted without necessarily retaining much original meaning. John Singleton Copley, for example, based Watson in his painting Watson and the Shark on the Borghese Gladiator, without intending a reference to the meaning of the original, believed in his day to represent a gladiator. 66 Only a vague impression of heroic nudity seems to be intended by the reference. It is not likely, however, that Roman art of the Republic and Early Empire permitted so much attenuation of content. A Roman artist reproducing a Greek work was operating within a living tradition, not revivifying a dead monument. Adapting Greek images for Roman needs was a familiar pattern in the development of Roman art. When works were used in this way, however, both subjects were to be recognized at once and a relationship established between them. Giving Mercury the appearance of Hermes indicated the identification of the Roman with the Greek god. Funerary images of private citizens as gods or heroes had spiritual significance. 67 In the political realm, appropriating Greek imagery was a conscious choice made by rulers. 68 To the Romans a famous work of art was more than an admirable formal solution; it was a representation of something. Its identity lay in what it signified, not just in the disposition of its limbs. 69 The intellectual apparatus that led to a

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purely formal use of visual quotations was as foreign to the Romans as the academic art curriculum that trained eighteenth-century artists to produce them. The necessary conditions, in other words, that permitted Watson and the Shark were absent, and it is as unlikely on conceptual grounds that anyone of these series literally copies a famous work of Polykleitos as it is on the evidence of their attributes and poses. There is, of course, the theoretical possibility that the three series copied not famous works of Polykleitos but obscure ones. The originals would have been too little known to be recognized and copyists would have been free to give them the identities that suited their needs. The reasons for making replicas of well-known works of art are many. Copying obscure ones and using them as body types for varying identities requires explanation. The procedure is comprehensible if certain assumptions are made about both patrons and artists. Patrons who can distinguish a copy of a genuine Polykleitos from a newly created work in his style must be assumed. They must 'prefer masterpieces, even in copies' (to paraphrase Boardman) to originals in the manner of the ancients. Secondly, artists must be assumed who know that they cannot reproduce the past without detection and who turn to copying in order to satisfy their patrons' demand for authenticity. All of these assumptions about what Roman patrons wanted and what they knew are questionable. No testimony has survived from any Roman patron wishing to purchase a replica, for example, so we do not know what qualities they sought in them. The conspicuous signatures of replica-makers, however, suggest that perhaps excellence in the work at hand was as highly valued as fidelity to the original. How technical the language of Roman art criticism was, how sensitive Romans were to the nuances of individual artists' styles and how closely certain manners were associated with the names of particular artists are all debated. To assume that they, like moderns, saw certain traits as 'Polykleitan' and others as 'Praxitelean' or 'Lysippan', for instance, is speculative.7° The assumptions about artists are equally dubious. Roman artists felt no timidity about replicating earlier styles. These were thoroughly known and intimately familiar to them. Roman workshops, after all, were filled with clay, wax and plaster models of famous statuary used for making replicas.7 The serial production that characterized both bronze and marble sculpture depended on piece moulds made from casts, and ateliers possessed collections of heads, limbs and sections of torsos. Unlike their patrons, Roman artists knew from experience what made up I

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Polykleitan anatomy, Polykleitan rhythm and Polykleitan hair. The same physical evidence that shows that they made exact copies of ancient sculpture shows that they did not need to do so in order to recreate ancient styles. When today we find some replicas to be authentically Polykleitan, moreover, it is not as though we are comparing them with the real thing. The anatomy the Diskophoros series has been shown to reproduce is that of those Roman marbles that we believe most accurately reflect the lost bronze Doryphoros and Diadoumenos. Our reliance on Roman copies for our knowledge of Greek sculptors inevitably colours our understanding of their works. We are forced to reconstruct Polykleitos' style from the evidence currently available. Were that evidence to include any of his originals, our reconstruction might be quite different. To call the Diskophoros, Hermes and Herakles types accurate copies of lost works by Polykleitos is not impossible, but it is unlikely. It entails accepting a view of Roman patrons and Roman artists that brings them uncomfortably close to more recent makers and purchasers of sculpture. A product of the nineteenth century, the standard hypothesis perfectly accommodates that century's practices and expectations. It is less convincing as a reflection of the habits of ancient Romans, and it fits the physical evidence of the existing statues only awkwardly. There is no reason to assume that three different hairstyles must indicate derivations from three different works by Polykleitos. It is simpler and more plausible to describe them all as creations of Roman artists based on the Doryphoros, as has been separately suggested for the Hermes by Dorothy Kent Hill and the Herakles by Brunilde Ridgway.?2 They were designed to remind viewers of Polykleitos but not to reproduce specific works. They were individuated not by the details of the hair, but by broad categories of pose and attributes. Many more heads than bodies survive because they were originally used, not each with only one body type but with several, including many of the variously classified not-quite-Doryphoros or generic-brand Polykleitan bodies known. 73 The ready availability of piece moulds made recombining replicas of separate parts tempting, and the principle was a familiar one.?4 It was, after all, how terracottas were made, and how the ideal portrait statue had been conceptualized. It is interesting that the hair of the newly created works more closely echoes the Doryphoros than the Diadoumenos, and that his pose is more often adapted to new purposes than is the unvarying Diadoumenos. In small bronzes, for example, Annalis Leibendgut finds no replicas of the

Roman Sculptural Reproductions Doryphoros simply carrying a spear, only many adaptations of pose and anatomy?5 Michael Koortbojian suggests that basing the hairstyles on Polykleitos' best-known work might have been designed to signal to the knowledgeable an unmistakable allusion to the artist's style?6 Whatever the reason, these new Roman works are variations on the Doryphoros theme?? The large marble and small bronze replica series, although illustrating some common principles of sculptural reproduction, occupied separate segments of the Roman art market. Most of the large marble statuary made in the Roman empire was commissioned for architectural settings. Public and private buildings were adorned with statues whose subjects and styles were suited to the purpose of the building?8 Gymnasia, for instance, or the exercise areas in a bath were furnished with statues of classical athletes, deities and personifications associated with athleticism, health and fortitude?9 The Doryphoros and Diadoumenos were widely recognized as prototypical depictions of athletes, exemplars of the manly virtues associated with athletic competition. 80 Replicas of them were common in gymnastic settings around the Empire. Not satisfied simply to repeat over-familiar images, designers complemented them with newly created athletes such as the Torlonia discus-holder. The great gods of the gymnasium were Hermes and Herakles, at least from the fourth century BC on, and to depict them in a style associated 8I with well-known images of Greek athletes was singularly apt. Similarly, a Polykleitan manner was suited to a heroic figure from myth. The iconography of Perseus, the hero whose attributes included winged boots that enabled him to fly, blurs repeatedly with that of Hermes in Roman painting. 82 He is, however, a fairly rare subject in sculpture. Infrequently called upon to depict him, a workshop needing to produce a Perseus might choose a more familiar winged figure, Mercury/ Hermes, as the base on which to construct the hero, propping him against a sea monster to give him individuality. Once the associations with noble figures of athletes, gods and heroes were made, these Polykleitan types became suitable for portrait sculpture. Should viewers looking at the portraits be reminded of other uses of similar bodies, the association with figures of heroic athleticism would only enhance the nobility of the representation. The large-scale marble versions of these types have neither a single identity like the copies of the Diadoumenos, nor the unlimited range of identities of forms emptied of content. They are used principally for the two chief gods of the gymnasium and for portraits of men wishing to

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associate themselves with them. They are works that suggest how the culture of the Greek palaestra was adapted for the Roman dite. Their context is that mass of Roman statues often described as copies of works by the successors of Polykleitos, or as pastiches in the manner of various classical sculptors, which ornamented the porticos and fa<;ades of Roman athletic complexes. 83 The context of the small bronzes is quite different. These can be divided into two classes. The smaller category consists of secular figurines, many of which were reduced replicas of works of art. The bronze versions of the Diadoumenos are a good example. 84 As with the marble versions of Polykleitos' original, they differ in modelling, anatomy and handling, but pose, contour and gesture are unmistakable. They rarely add new attributes. Had the makers of Roman bronzes wanted to copy a Diskophoros of Polykleitos in the same way as they copied his Diadoumenos, they could have done so. No evidence exists today, however, to indicate that they did. Instead, the surviving miniatures classed as replicas of the Diskophoros belong to the much larger category of small bronzes the Romans produced as religious objects, and demonstrate great varieties of attributes, poses and contours. Rather than several distinct originals, they seem to echo a general Polykleitan manner based on the Doryphoros, with modifications appropriate for a function in cult. Most of these small creations were made as private devotional images to be displayed in the family lararium or left as a gift in a sanctuary. The god most likely to appear in a Polykleitan style is Mercury. Identified with the Etruscan Turms as well as the Greek Hermes, he had a long iconographic tradition in Rome as a youthful but mature deity, a vigorous, masculine presence. The four-square, muscular style of Polykleitos suited him. It was associated by the Romans with the values cherished by serious, responsible, god-fearing citizens and with the gods they honoured. 85 Hard-working Roman tradesmen venerated Mercury and prized the sober virtues the rhetoricians found in Polykleitos' works. Whether or not most viewers attached the artist's name to his manner, a Mercury in Polykleitan style evoked all the right resonances. He was the most popular but not the only deity represented in that manner. The associations of the style with heroic masculinity are as apparent in devotional figurines as they are in marble statuary. Jupiter, Hercules, Neptune and Mars frequently appear as Polykleitan figures, whereas Bacchus and Apollo are virtually unknown. 86

Roman Sculptural Reproductions As they never reproduce the spearbearing iconography, so the religious images rarely reproduce the exact stance of the Doryphoros - a feature of the work notoriously difficult to categorize. 87 Neither standing nor walking, the Spear-bearer appears poised on the brink of action, suggesting at once tension and relaxation, movement and rest. Most of the bronzes stand quietly with both feet on the ground, while even those closer to the Doryphoros pose tend to reduce his movement. 88 Considering the function of the works - a display of gods in a shrine the increased frontality and loss of movement appear reasonable modifications for Roman artists to have made to a Polykleitan schema. Since the large marbles were principally intended for display in a niche, between columns or against a wall, a similar tendency towards a frontal and stable pose is comprehensible for these toO. 89 The usual explanation, of course, is not a reworking of a Polykleitan pose to suit new circumstances but copying a different model. The Diskophoros type is thought to keep both feet on the ground because its original was an early work by Polykleitos (around 460 BC, according to Bol), before he had developed the bold, new ponderation of the Doryphoros. 90 The evidence of the small bronzes, however, strongly suggests a model of adaptation from a schema rather than a copying of separate originals. 9I Every gradation of pose between stiff frontality and a walking figure is found in them. 92 The Diskophoros solution of a Polykleitan contrapposto in the torso but both feet on the ground, although very popular, is only one among many. Similarly, the empty right hand of the Doryphoros is usually given the money bag to hold, and a caduceus often replaces the spear in the left, but there is no rule. The bronzes differ from both suggested originals in usually having a cloak draped over the left arm or fastened around the neck. It is a more consistent attribute than winged boots, in fact, although not more so than a winged hat. The picture that emerges is of workshops attempting to reconcile a cult requirement for a frontal-Mercury-with-money-bag with a formal requirement that the god look Polykleitan enough to suggest suitable values. 93 The makers of domestic religious images clearly followed rules unique to their trade. Recognition of the god was their paramount concern, not a close resemblance to a prototype. Regional styles, period styles, patron choice, cult practice and workshop habit were significant variables. 94 Although many were related to familiar cult statues, the little images did not have to reproduce them exactly. While many consistently echoed a single style, therefore, others were boldly eclectic. The artists imaginat-

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ively combined disparate styles but equipped the god with recognizable attributes and comfortingly familiar poses. 95 The large-scale marble workshops produced a smaller volume of works than did the bronze workers, and many fewer designed for cult purposes. Their versions of Polykleitan youths therefore reflect a creative process that is similar but not identical. They tended to be, for example, formally more conservative but iconographically more innovative than bronze workshops. Nevertheless, many of the same principles of composition are apparent, and their creations demonstrate a comparable range of styles and manners. The Diskophoros, Hermes and Herakles types represent thoughtful recreations of a single, consistent manner that betray their late origin only in subtle touches of pose and attributes. Attributing them to Roman marble-carvers grants those artists more sensitivity to past styles than is usually allowed them. The low regard in which Roman sculptors are held, however, is a consequence of accepting their works as no more than copies. The argument is circular: if Roman artists could produce only copies since they lacked imagination, they could produce only copies, and so on. What these Polykleitan figures demonstrate is that anything but the 'exhaustion of the imagination' regretted by Wickhoff characterized Roman workshops. Instead they indicate an environment in which styles were linked to values, and works designed for specific settings had to have styles deemed appropriate to those settings. Copies of ancient works were only one possibility. Sculptors could also create works of their own in a single ancient manner or in an imaginative combination of several different manners or could create completely original variations on the antique. 96 The constraints of decorum or appropriateness may have limited choices, but they did not forbid creativity.97 It is as examples of Roman creativity that such works as the Copenhagen Diskophoros should be studied and labelled. They are interesting in themselves, not merely as ghosts of Greek originals. When and where they were made, how they were used, what they represented, who carved them, who commissioned them - all these things are worth knowing. A surprising amount of information, moreover, is available for most of the Roman replicas in modern collections. A combination of archival research and scientific tests makes it possible to answer many of these questions and place the replicas in their Roman context. Their dates can be established by using the stylistic criteria worked out for other categories of Roman sculpture. Christopher Hallett has pointed out the dangers of circular reasoning in dating works by style and then using

Roman Sculptural Reproductions the same works to define the style of the period, but, used with skill and caution, stylistic dating can be as effective for Roman ideal statuary as for any other category of works of art. 98 Enough replicas are signed to make learning to recognize the products of specific workshops a not unreasonable goal. Since most major Roman marble workshops clustered around the great quarry sites, the source of marble for a statue can indicate where, in all likelihood, it was made. A set of cheap and non-destructive laboratory tests can determine with probability (not yet with certainty) the likely quarry for most Roman marbles. 99 The location where the work was found can be compared with the quarry site. Was the work shipped from a distant quarry or does it represent local production? Can regional tastes in styles or subjects be recognized? How structured was the Roman marble trade? If the precise site where the sculpture was excavated is known, then the setting in which it was placed can be understood. Did the work ornament a gymnasium, a garden, a temple, a public bath? Was it in public or in private hands? Who might have commissioned it and for what purpose? Even when no excavation history is available, the city or region in which it was found can often be deduced from the earliest collection in which it is recorded. Most of the large-scale Roman marbles exhibited today that do not come from excavations come from old Italian collections. 100 Many of these collections were made locally, of antiquities harvested from nearby sites. Often there are inventories that may record provenances. There are complications, of course. As treasured possessions, ancient marbles were treated lovingly by early collectors. They were carefully cleaned and elaborately restored by first-rate sculptors. Like antique furniture or plate, they were mended and repaired. The consequence is that the details of their surface treatment, on which dating and connoisseurship depend, are often those of the restorer, not of the original artist. Many of these marbles are the products of two separate workshops, that of their initial manufacture, and that of their restoration. In the twentieth century, in the search for 'authenticity', many have been stripped of restored limbs and attributes, but the new surfaces, of course, remain. The work can never return to a pristine condition. These ancient marbles as we see them today, in fact, are unreliable guides to lost Greek statues, but extraordinary documents for the history of Western taste. They are witnesses to the vitality of the classical tradition that took forms that Greek artists originated, adjusted them in Roman ateliers to express Roman ideas and then remade them for

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European collectors. Rather than having no history, these Roman replicas are palimpsests recording successive layers of the Western world's fascination with the classical past.

2

Authority, Authenticity and Aura: Walter Benjamin and the Case of Michelangelo ANTHONY HUGHES

In our culture, works of visual art are often especially valued as unique objects issuing from the hand of a single, gifted author. In significant part, this value has been created in interaction with reproduction in all its forms from at least the sixteenth century onwards. Photography, the predominant modern form of reproduction, has continued to maintain and even perhaps to reinforce the reverence that we accord to the artist's originals. The very opposite of this claim was advanced by WaIter Benjamin in the celebrated essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. I Benjamin argued that photography was a special case, and predicted that this form of 'mechanical reproduction' would eventually democratize the work of art, stripping it of 'aura', that nimbus of admiration and awe that psychologically distanced it from the spectator and made it seem an object of wonder. In this reduced form, his thesis seems simple enough to grasp. It has indeed in many circles been taken as self-evidently true, but interpretative difficulties lie in wait for anyone who wants to test it seriously. For one thing, the notorious density of Benjamin's prose tends to inhibit reduction of argument to such stark declaration. For another, his idiosyncratic terminology makes for fundamental problems of understanding. What might be meant by 'aura' has been debated at length: 2 less attention has been given to the concept of 'mechanical reproduction' itself. Though Benjamin used the phrase throughout chiefly to refer to photographic processes, he did not explain why photography should be so dramatically separated from previous modes of reproductive image-making. At the same time, he bundled together some quite different practices united only by a common technology, in a way that quickly leads to confusion.

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As we shall see, the two points are related, though it is Benjamin's lack of discrimination that is the easier to demonstrate since his confusion was in some measure abetted, if not generated, by a terminological vagueness encountered in most of the major European languages. Even when speaking only of art, it is oddly difficult to define what is meant by the concept of reproduction. Is replication, for instance, simply an acceptable synonym or a more neutral term embracing a number of varied phenomena? By way of anticipating a reply, we may observe that not all replicas are considered to be reproductions: fakes form an interestingly different category, while the concept of the multiple work of art is significantly at variance with the idea of a facsimile. Eighteenth-century mezzotints made after paintings, like picture postcards sold in museum shops today, are not replicas at all, though most people would agree to call them reproductions. Such distinctions emerge from considerations of usage, intention and context of viewing; in short from reception, rather than from differences between manufacturing process. My present purpose is to put Benjamin's thesis to the test by examining issues raised by two- and three-dimensional versions, variants and copies of Michelangelo's sculpture. This may enable us, first, to see whether it is possible to draw some working distinctions between one type of image and another and, second, to ask questions about the changes in perception effected by photographic reproduction. Focus on the pre-modern should allow continuities as well as disjunctions to emerge more clearly than they otherwise would. The reason for discussing sculpture rather than painting is that sculpture is sometimes taken to be an art especially resistant to reproduction, an art of which Michelangelo is often regarded as one of the purest practitioners. With respect to the integrity of the sculptural object, for example, it is often maintained that Michelangelo's work stands at the opposite pole to Auguste Rodin's. Michelangelo's so-called Atlas Slave 3 is without doubt an 'original' whose status is enhanced by the very fact that it remains unfinished. The figure emerges from a block which itself bears the marks of those processes by which it was brought to this stage of semicompletion. Indeed, those very marks guarantee its authenticity as a historic survival. Like the facture of a painting, they are signs that the shaped stone is an issue from Michelangelo's hands. In Benjamin's terms, those traces of the chisel constitute part of its 'aura'. By comparison, a Rodin marble such as La Pensee, 4 although it displays similar signs of manufacture, is a fiction. Far from being unique, it is a version of a work originally conceived in a different medium (clay or plaster), translated

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Michelangelo, Atlas Slave, after 1513, marble. Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.

into stone, not by Rodin but by a professional carver. 5 In other words, the marks here do not show how excavation of the block was broken off (by chance or because the sculptor was dissatisfied), but deliberately concoct the unearned appearance of an image half-discovered in the rock. In such judgements, aesthetics seem to become a branch of ethics. It is a view reinforced by certain modern theories of art, according to which Michelangelo's statue, unlike Rodin's, may be judged as an autonomous object conceived from the first to take one form and not another. Repetition or paraphrase can only weaken it, since any repetition, however successfully it may fool the viewer, misses the whole point of sculpture as art: its unrepeatable presence. To adapt a phrase of Philip Larkin's, reproduction can only mean dilution, not increase. 6 The trouble with the theory is that it has corresponded only rarely to what has happened from the Renaissance up to the present day. Studio

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practice routinely embraced procedures of reproduction in the general sense of the word. Terracottas and small bronzes form a whole class of artefacts designed to be produced as multiples. While it is true that Michelangelo on the whole avoided bronze and only ever produced two works in the medium, both unique casts, it is often forgotten that the actual process of production by stone-carvers in a workshop has frequently run counter to the notion of the autonomous, insular work of art in any straightforward sense. Even Michelangelo, though his methods were hardly those of a Rodin, was not in this respect as eccentric as is sometimes supposed. Transference of an image from one medium to another is a resource deeply embedded within the traditions of European sculpture that Michelangelo inherited. Long before Rodin, delegation of carving was customary. Especially during the execution of a large-scale project, sculptors would be employed to realize models of clay, wax or stucco in stone. For the Medici Chapel, Montorsoli and Raffaele da Montelupo carved Saints Cosmas and Damien after Michelangelo's design as part of a programme intended to be completed by a team of sculptors under the master's control.? Current, certainly commercial, consensus would probably value the models Michelangelo prepared more highly than the completed statues and there is reason to believe that sixteenthcentury collectors were interested in similar items. A clay head of Damien was acquired by Aretino within the artist's lifetime. But the point brings us to one of those essential discriminations. Aretino would not have believed himself to be acquiring an 'original' of which Montorsoli's Medici saint was a 'copy' any more than a modern collector of manuscripts would regard a holograph of an Eliot poem as somehow more authentic than its printed counterpart. Studio replication of certain images has also formed an integral part of workshop practice certainly since the seventeenth century, 8 and there is some indication that the practice may have begun much earlier. In sixteenth-century Italy, it is often difficult to know whether bronze or clay reductions of sculpture were made in the master's studio or represent a widespread form of piracy. Whatever the case, there is little doubt that we can speak quite unambiguously here of reproduction and original. Discussion of this type of small-scale sculpture may be postponed to the second part of this chapter. At present, it is important to distinguish it from what we may call the carved multiple. On at least one occasion, Michelangelo made two versions of the same work. The Risen Christ set up in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in I52I is

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the second carving of a statue first commissioned in 151+9 The first was abandoned when the sculptor encountered an unsightly flaw on the face of the figure, but it was not destroyed. Although it has now disappeared, it once stood as a 'collector's item' in the courtyard of the Roman house of Metello Vari dei Porcari, who had been one of the commissioners of the work. Though there has been a tendency to suppose that Metello Vari's possession must have differed radically from the version that remains, there is no evidence to support the case beyond the presumption that Michelangelo would not willingly have repeated himself. Though these routine cases have presented problems for collectors, curators and art historians, there has never been any doubt that the images in question can in some sense or other be regarded as authentic, or at least authorized by the master or the studio. Only when that authority is lacking do we enter the troubling realm where 'versions', 'replicas', 'imitations', 'variants', 'facsimiles', 'copies' - and even fakes abound. At this point we require a test case. 11

In 1549, a marble version of Michelangelo's Roman Pieta was installed in a chapel of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. It had been made as a funerary monument by Nanni di Baccio Bigio for one of Michelangelo's closest friends, the banker Luigi del Riccio. ID Vasari gave the group an admiring notice I I and the carver was himself proud enough of his achievement to inscribe his name across the sash of the Madonna, the place occupied in the original by Michelangelo's signature. The substitution did not seek to efface all thought of the inventor. Rather the contrary: it states that Nanni (designated by his family name of Lippi) made the work 'EX IMITATIONE' (in imitation) of the original group.I2 Two more texts record the installation of the work. A poem by Gian Battista Strozzi payed homage to Nanni's work in the form of an address to the Virgin: Bellezza et onestate E doglia e pieta in vivo marmo morte, Deh, come voi pur fate, Non piangete SI forte, Che anzi tempo risveglisi da morte, E pur, mal grado suo, N ostro Signore e tuo Sposo, figliolo e padre Unica sposa sua figliuola e madre.

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MicheJangelo, Pieta , c. 1497-1501, marble. St Peter's, Rome.

Nanni di Baccio Bigio, Pieta, c. 1549, marble. Santo Spirito, Florence.

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Ah you whose beauty, chastity, grief and pity live in the dead marble, do not continue to weep as sorely as you do in case you should prematurely and reluctantly rouse from death Our Lord and your bridegroom, son and father, 0 singular bride, his daughter and his mother. 13 Less flatteringly, an anonymous Florentine diarist, evidently a savagely puritan Catholic of the Counter-Reformation, contemporaneously noted that in March 1549 a Pied was unveiled in Sto Spirito, sent to this church by a Florentine, and they said that the original came from Michelangelo Buonarroti, that inventor of filth who puts his faith in art rather than devotion. All the modern painters and sculptors imitate similar Lutheran fantasies so that now throughout the holy churches are painted and carved nothing but figures to put faith and devotion in the grave. But one day God I hope will send his saints to throw idolaters like these to the ground. I4 Taken together, Nanni's inscription, Strozzi's madrigal and the diarist's outburst provide fascinating indicators of intention and response in connection with recycled sculptural imagery in mid-sixteenth-century Italy, but before examining their implications, we should take care once again to distinguish this type of image from the current notion of reproduction. While most of the modern literature refers to Nanni's Pieta as a copy, it would actually be better to call it a variant. Though its form leaves the derivation from the original beyond doubt, its many divergences from Michelangelo's model are marked and have received some attention in the secondary literature. I5 Here the inscription on the Virgin's sash helps to make an important point. Throughout the sixteenth century, 'imitation', the term used by Nanni and, incidentally, by the diarist, implied not mimicry but emulation, an enterprise whose aim embraced both humility and ambition. The task of carving Michelangelo's group over again was the tribute paid by a younger rival and the changes he introduced would have been judged against the standard set by the original. From this perspective, we may say that Nanni's variant indicates that Michelangelo's work had achieved classic status. As A. J. Minnis has shown, throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the notions of authority and authorship were intertwined and it was a measure of the authority of a text to be quoted, cited and considered worthy of imitation. I6 Though at first this signal auctoritas had been confined chiefly to the authors of sacred scripture, the fathers of the Church and certain ancient writers, such moderns as Dante and Petrarch had acquired comparable status long before the beginning of the sixteenth

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Gregorio de' Rossi, Pieta flanked by Rachel and Leah, 16x6, bronze. Stroni Chapel, San Andrea dell a Valle, Rome.

century. It is not difficult to see in Nanni's imitation the acknowledgement of Michelangelo's supremacy as a sculptural model. It is for this reason that the diarist's attack has some significance for any discussion of replication, since the anonymous writer's criticism is framed as though Michelangelo's error could be read through the medium of Nanni's variant. The authority lent to the original by such allusion is considered a scandal precisely because the process of imitation mimics the authority invested in traditional replication of the divine word. In other terms, an imitation of this kind has something of the transparency expected from reproduction in our customary sense, a point reinforced by Vasari's employment of Strozzi's madrigal, a poem he cites, not in connection with the group in the del Riccio Chapel, but in his Life of Michelangelo, where it is presented as a tribute to the original Pieta in St Peter's.1 7 To a certain extent, these observations may enable us to see how other, similar objects functioned to enhance the prestige of Michelangelo's original image. These certainly include the version of the Pieta made for the grave of ]ohann Schiitz by Lorenzetto in 153018 and perhaps may even

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embrace the bronze placed above the altar of the Strozzi Chapel in San Andrea della Valle. Here the Pieta was flanked by two more bronzes after Michelangelo, the figures of Rachel and Leah from the tomb of Julius 11. The altar is inscribed 'GREGORIUS DE RUBEIS [i.e. Gregorio de' Rossi] 1616. EX AERE FUDIT'. This functions more as a founder's mark than the declaration of an author or disciple, and it is possible that the three figures were manufactured directly from casts of the marble originals. 19 The near-mechanical method of replication seems to indicate that the figures in the Strozzi Chapel stand in a different relation to Michelangelo's originals from the marbles freely carved by Lorenzetti or Nanni, and it is tempting to treat them as though they were reproductions of a sort much despised by twentieth-century art historians. Criticism of this kind is relatively easy, almost reflex: Michelangelo's purposes have been at best misunderstood if not downright vulgarized. Translation of marble into bronze has profoundly affected the legibility of the figures; the architecture is unsympathetic to Michelangelo's inventions; the juxtaposition of motifs from different works is crassly insensitive to their meaningbesides which, the relative positions of Rachel and Leah have become unnecessarily reversed. Regarded as reproduction, the common reaction would be to treat the whole ensemble in terms of travesty or loss. But to regard any of the variants of the Pieta like this would be to miss an important aspect of the function of replication in such cases, one that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century observers would have regarded as routine. In this context, the writings associated with the installation of Nanni's group become crucial. Strozzi's over-elegant compilation of standard paradoxes may seem poles apart from the diarist's fundamentalist rage, but the two texts agree in focusing attention on the overwhelming importance of the sculpture as a focus for devotion. For Strozzi, if Nanni's marble is transparent, it is because it allows access to the mysteries of the Virgin's nature and, as is often the case with such poetry, his verse seems almost wilfully inattentive to the actual appearance of the work. The Virgin weeps neither in Michelangelo's original nor Nanni's variant, a discrepancy we may choose to explain by appeal to the incorrigibly conventional nature of this form of verse, or because the icon itself is here regarded as a trigger for meditation on the Virgin's sorrow, rather than a direct representation of it. Aesthetic squeamishness should not disguise the fact that, as funerary monuments, the three versions of the Pieta work as well as the original to remind believers of the saving grace of Christ and of the Virgin's role as chief intercessor for the souls of the dead. Replication of holy images preceded by many centuries the very

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conception of the work of art. Multiplication of an icon, far from diluting its cultic power, rather increased its fame, and each image, however imperfect, conventionally partook of some portion of the properties of the origina1. 20 The same would be true of the devotional image's diabolic counterpart. That is why the diarist objected to the replication of an uncanonical or - as he insultingly put it - a 'Lutheran' prototype. 2I His characterization of Michelangelo as one who preferred art to piety also reveals a fear that the value of Michelangelo's authorship conferred on a work could encroach detrimentally on its status as a devotional image. Mostly, the twofold nature of the work could be held in casual equilibrium. In 1546, the French monarch Fran~ois I wrote to Michelangelo: Seigneur Michelangelo, because I would very much like to have some works made by you, I have instructed the Abbe of Saint Martin de Troyes [Francesco Primaticcio], who is the bearer of this present letter to go abroad to collect them. If, on his arrival, you have some fine pieces you wish to give him, I have commanded him to pay you well for them. And furthermore, for my sake, I hope that you are happy for him to take casts from the Christ of the Minerva and from Our Lady delta Febbre [the Roman Pieta] so that I may adorn one of my chapels with them, as things which I am assured are the most exquisite and excellent in your art. 22

Emphasis here slides effortlessly from the notion of 'art works' (quelques besognes de vostre ouvrage) to devotional images fit for a chapel and back again to 'chose que Pon m'a asseure estre des plus exquises et excellentes en vostre art'. With the casts of the Risen Christ and the Pieta, Fran~ois was hoping to get something very like a modern reproduction, tokens of great works that could if required take their part in a collection alongside similar versions of ancient sculpture. More clearly analogous to modern reproductions were the reduced versions of Michelangelo's figures in three and two dimensions that began to appear during the sixteenth century and to which we have already made passing reference. These objects and images were importantly different from the kind of versions so far discussed since they did not aim to be 'imitations' in the emulatory tradition represented by Nanni's variations on the Pieta. Nor were they near-facsimiles or substitutes like casts. Rather they can only be understood as tokens, aidememoires, rich in information though not in any sense confusable with the originals. In three dimensions, they included small replicas of Michelangelo's work in clay and bronze, which circulated throughout the second half of the century and were themselves reproduced in second- or

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Bronze copy of Michelangelo's Pieta. sixteenth century.

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Antonio Salamanca. Pieta, IH7. engraving. Bibliotheque Narionale, Paris.

third-generation casts. Most were pirated or, like the small Pieta, probably made some time after the artist's death. Others such as the figurines that Daniele da Volterra made from the allegories in the Medici Chapel around about 1557 probably had Michelangelo's approval.2. 3 Like modern reproductions these were portable objects, easy to handle, allowing instant access to Michelangelo's sculptural concepts on a conveniently reduced scale. In this form, the original images were decontextualized, cut adrift from their function within the institutional and symbolic world for which they were devised and made available for special, aestheticized inspection as representatives of Michelangelo's art. As is the case with modern photographic reproduction, loss - of surface quality, colour texture and scale - was offset by the gain that intimate handling could bring. Some were collected by Tintoretto, who, according to Ridolfi, drew them from unusual angles, varying the lighting by which he viewed them. Although this verbal testimony is relatively late, Tintoretto's practices are amply documented by surviving drawings.2. 4 By these means, the sculptures could paradoxically become more completely known from the copies than they could ever be in the context of the chapel itself, where it is impossible to see them from certain aspects, an enhancement of the experience of art nowadays duplicated in photographic form by the publishers of art books.

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That process of detachment from initial function is even more clearly observable in engraved reproductions, more obviously because these carry inscriptions by which we can gain some measure of what aspect of the work was considered to be important. For example, in an engraving of the Tomb of]ulius II published by Salamanca it is clear that Michelangelo has equal billing with Julius himself. 25 More strikingly, the patron has disappeared entirely from an inscription on the same publisher's image of the Roman Pieta. 26 Though this may be an effect of the detachment of the work itself from its original location - the Pieta was removed from San Petronilla and its position altered several times afterwards 27 - the print goes further than might be expected by celebrating the sculptor's technical legerdemain. It is advertised in the statement that the two figures have been carved from a single block of marble. An almost identical formula is to be found in another engraving by Giovanni Battista de' Cavalieri, which was issued in February 1564 as a memorial to Michelangelo shortly after his death. 28 Such examples represent only a tiny fraction of the printed imagery offering two-dimensional accounts of statues and monuments. Two-dimensional reproductions were hardly as versatile as their three-dimensional counterparts, but they were cheaper and more widely distributed. Because they were accompanied by explanatory inscriptions, they were perhaps even more important a means of advertising authorship. Already by the mid-sixteenth century, the print trade existed as one of the essential institutions for the dissemination of art and the constructions of its canons of excellence. 29 III

All this may seem to leave Benjamin's thesis more or less intact. Handmade artefacts can hardly be regarded as equivalents of the modern photograph. Benjamin's understanding of reproduction is closely bound to a standard of informational accuracy associated with the disinterested camera, whereas the 'copies' we have so far considered are, whether by design or default, noticeably unsatisfactory in some respect. Indeed, their reliability may be checked precisely by setting photographs of copy and original side by side. The standard set by this kind of 'mechanical' medium has had an effect on three-dimensional reproduction too. Today's museum facsimile, with its careful simulation of even the smallest surface accident, aims at a kind of verisimilitude achieved first by the photographic print. By these rigorous standards, early modern reproductions seem to stand in the same relation to photographs as translations of a text do to transcriptions. 3°

Walter Benjamin and Michelangelo But the heart of Benjamin's argument lies in his thesis that photographic reproduction removes the 'aura' from a work of art and it is this thesis that must now be addressed. 'Aura' came to signify a number of things in Benjamin's writing, not all of them compatible with one another, but within the context of his essay on reproduction it has two relatively clear and distinct meanings. The first is as an indicator of the power an artefact would once have acquired from its function within a cult. The point is quite easily illustrated by the case history examined here. Michelangelo's Roman Pieta was made for the funerary chapel of the French Cardinal Jean Bilhere de Lagraulas where it could be understood in many complementary ways. Most obviously, the Virgin occupies a place in the liturgy for the dead as chief intercessor for souls, and this fact alone would invest her figure with a special importance. 'Aura' is thus that nimbus of awe with which the cult surrounds the image and which establishes a psychological distance between the believing spectator and the statue itself. When considering the devotional function of an object within a religious cult, its appearance is of secondary importance and may in fact often be a matter of indifference. 3I However, the second way in which Benjamin employs the term 'aura' has a more obvious application to what we normally think of as the work of art. 'Aura' is here that sense of uniqueness gained from inspection of surface marks left on an object by its manufacture and its subsequent passage through time. Facture and damage are interpreted as respectively signs of authorship and of historical authenticity. However, while Benjamin seems here directly concerned with the detailed appearance of a work, his case is not a formalist one. It is the beholder who must actively interpret these traces to invest the work with a reverential nimbus. For a formalist, accidental traces left by its history would hardly matter at all. Photographic reproduction, according to Benjamin, breaks down the aura surrounding the object. Partly this is conceived as a process of radical decontextualization, which brings even the most complex artefacts inside the living room. The ubiquitous, democratizing photograph furthermore supplies multiple substitutes for an artefact, thus supposedly eroding any sense of its unique presence in space and time, robbing it, we might say, of its quiddity. The second point is easier to deal with immediately because Benjamin's argument may be neatly reversed by making the equally plausible claim that the 'aura' of authority and authenticity enveloping an original is strongly enhanced by the photographic reproduction. This

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works in two ways. First, the very intrusive power of the camera, its ability to reveal surface qualities that cannot be detected under normal viewing conditions, tends to endorse the uniqueness of the work represented. All the peculiarities revealed in the photographic print help to fix the exact character of an object with a precision beyond the power of verbal description or the translation processes involved in handmade reproduction. The power to report on surface accidents in such a way as to enable one version of a work to be unambiguously identified from another enables photographs to acquire the status that an expert witness might have in court (not infallible, but to be heard with the greatest respect). Contrary to Benjamin's thesis, then, the photograph tends to emphasize the particularity of certain objects. Scraps of Benjamin's argument might still be salvaged. We could agree, for example that the 'aura' with which viewers invest a work sometimes remains strikingly independent of the object itself. However, this recognition hardly entails more than the fairly uncontentious observation that our responses are hugely determined by cultural make-up. Photographers have been shaped by the same cultural forces too, which affect the images they make and the way we understand them. Michelangelo's unfinished Atlas Slave provides a useful example of the fashion in which photography has worked to reinforce common assumptions and intensify the auratic effect even against the grain of historical evidence. All the details of that unique block from which the figure emerges have been recorded with great precision in photographs taken in varying forms of illumination, but most strikingly by raking light that reveals the slightest modulation of surface. The result has been a series of pictures designed to heighten the romance of the process whereby the formless takes on Michelangelo's form. But the extent to which the marks of punch and chisel are read as autograph will vary according to the knowledge and susceptibility of the viewer. Some of these traces of labour will have been made by those who shaped the block at the quarry; others by assistants at work in the studio. For at least a hundred years, scholars have disagreed about which marks represent Michelangelo's intervention. This argument tends to reinforce Benjamin's contention that photography inaugurated a change in the way the work of art was perceived (though he drew the wrong conclusions from the fact). In a different sense, we ought to insist on the fact to which William Ivins memorably drew attention: photography is a technology whose history should be regarded as continuous with that of printmaking and some of the points

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already made about the handmade reproduction apply equally well to the photograph. The 'mechanical' part of photography may be exaggerated. However informative, no photograph is ever in practice regarded as a substitute for the object itself. Like previous forms of reproductive imagery, it is always, in the final analysis, incomplete (unless the work to be reproduced is itself a photograph, in which case a print may, on occasion, function exactly like a substitute or facsimile 32 ). Photographs are traces indices rather than icons, in terms of Peirce's famous taxonomy and only in exceptional cases do they seek the status of facsimiles. Just as the older forms of handmade reproduction differed from the original in colour, scale and texture, so does the photograph, and, like those older forms, it too is a product of a number of interpretative decisions made by photographer and printer. The incompleteness of the photographic image is, of course, especially apparent in reproductions of three-dimensional artefacts such as sculptures. But it is precisely because it is an indexical sign that the photograph can never be regarded as satisfying in itself. It points beyond itself to the original, advertises itself as a trace, exhibiting in extreme degree that transparency we noted earlier as a feature of the whole range of 'reproductive' types, but which is especially true of indices such as casts. Benjamin's arguments concerning the loss of cuitic context seem equally in need of review. If it were merely a question of making adjustments to Benjamin's case, we could argue that an engraving or small three-dimensional version of Michelangelo's Pieta already detached the work from its devotional frame sufficiently to transform perception of it. In other words, photography seems irrelevant to Benjamin's point. All forms of secular reproduction act as a kind of conceptual relocation of an object, similar in effect to a spatial shift from church to museum. In the long run, it is not the mechanism of reproduction, but countless historical processes, small and large, that finally effect any real transformation in the spectator's perception. Even the most devout twentieth-century Roman Catholic could hardly claim to have the same experience in the face of the Pieta as a visitor to Cardinal Jean de la Bilhere's chapel had around 1500. To some extent, Benjamin's essay implicitly contains answers to such objections. The transformation from cultic object enveloped in its halo of mystery and power to the democratically reproducible image is not presented as a sudden outcome of the appearance of the photograph. An apparently long historical period is interposed between the cultic era and that of mechanical reproduction, during which the value placed on the

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object had to do with its status as an 'exhibitable' commodity. This is rather fuzzily presented (and Benjamin's major example contains empirically incorrect information 33 ), but what he seems to have in mind is an early modern period during which the work is valued first, primarily as a collector's item and ultimately as the museum or gallery piece: what we would normally think of as a work of art supposedly admired for its formal properties or for the author's creative power rather than for its place within a larger ceremonial context. One problem with Benjamin's argument is that it creates a much sharper division than can ever be sustained between the cultic object and that made for exhibition. In addition, Benjamin's idea of the cult is much too exclusively religious. Throughout, his essay tends to set up a linear, 'progressive' movement from religion to secularization, from the cultic object to the objet d'art and from there to envisage a further development towards a final and definitive, liberating political apprehension of imagery. For all Benjamin's subtlety, the armature on which his account is built is simplistic, strikingly similar to Auguste Comte's positivistic history of human culture whereby the world is understood by means of a progressive demystification of nature: religion succeeds magical practice and in its turn succumbs to the superior explanatory and manipulative power of the natural sciences. 34 At a crucial stage of this argument, Benjamin admitted that, towards the end of the nineteenth century, a 'religion of art' began to invest the work with a kind of substitute aura, but he appeared to believe that this notion had already had its day by the time he wrote. In general, he is resistant to any extension of the concept of cult beyond the strictly sacramental. If, however, we were to understand 'cult' as a term analogous to the anthropologist's 'ritual', then part of Benjamin's argument still retains a great deal of value, though only at the expense of his point about the effect of photography. Indeed, photographic reproduction has intensified the cultic status of art itself by means not dissimilar to those formerly used to promote the devotional icon. I am thinking here of the way in which art figures largely and inescapably in the rituals of tourism, of art-historical lectures and essays (like this one), and in those involving civic and national self-identification with historical figures. The presence of Michelangelo's head on Italian banknotes is one obvious sign of the fashion in which the Western cult of individual genius meshes with the supra-individual ideal represented by the nation-state. We may also note that Florence, as the birthplace of Michelangelo, represents another kind of cult, sometimes in harmony

Walter Benjamin and Michelangelo

45

with the national, sometimes chafing against it as the survivor of an older regional culture. The identification of the city's status as the origin of the 'universal' appeal of Michelangelo's art is emphasized by the strategic placement of reproductions. A marble copy of David stands outside the Palazzo Vecchio (its original location); another David, this one bronze, is accompanied by bronze versions of the Times of Day on the central monument of the Piazza Michelangelo; replicas of the Slaves were embedded in Buontalenti's grotto in the Boboli Gardens. 35 If visitors recognise these images, it is in large part because they have been made familiar through the medium of photography itself. The literal replication of figures from one context so that they may stand in another provides us with a further clue to the unsatisfactorily thin structure of Benjamin's positivistic view of the historical process. Constant reproduction, rather than reducing the work or emptying the sign, generates a multiplicity of readings, which may be carried backwards and forwards, from original to reproduction and vice versa. In this way older kinds of cult may subsist with the newer, one reinforcing the authority of the other. The Pieta, advertised through sixteenth-century engraving as the unique product of Miche1angelo's art, sustains today two distinct forms of devotion, one Catholic the other secular, and it should go without saying that two forms of reverence may co-exist now in one person in much the same way as they did for Fran~ois I and Metello Vari in the sixteenth century. In other words, replication of Michelangelo's sculpture, far from diminishing its authority, helps to enhance, even in some cases, to create it. Of course, reproduction does not work alone but as one factor in a complex of others. The replication of Michelangelo's work during the sixteenth century itself ran in parallel to another enterprise, the cult of antiquity in all its forms, literary, social and political. The seemingly inexhaustible process of refashioning ancient statuary in early modern Europe helped to constitute both that sense of the inescapable primacy of the antique and of the attachment of the modern to it that has been at the centre of so much Western art ever since. Both Fran~ois I and Tintoretto added models and casts of Michelangelo to a store of classical exemplars and their practice was imitated by the great schools of art up to the nineteenth century and beyond. Our canons have altered and we have largely exchanged the cast room for the collection of postcards and books, but like its earlier counterparts, photographic reproduction now occupies a place that is central to promoting and securing that elusive cultic penumbra Benjamin called 'aura'.

3

Art for the Masses: Spanish Sculpture In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries MARJORIE TRUSTED

The notion of reproduced images was prominent in Spanish sculpture from at least the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. Not only did sculptors produce the same subjects, such as the Virgin of Sorrows or St Francis of Assisi, but also their interpretations of these subjects frequently exhibited the same iconographical formulae, so that they closely paralleled one another, despite being made at different times, in different locations and by different artists. The time of the greatest flowering of art, particularly sculpture, in Spain (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) coincided with widespread, deeply held religious fervour, creating a tremendous demand for devotional images: sculpture for the masses in every sense. Recognizing how and why devotional sculptures were made in Spain at this time is paradoxically perhaps the most fruitful way of understanding them as works of art, for they were not primarily designed to be seen as unique or original creations. I (It is no accident that they were only exceptionally signed by their creators. 2 ) Nor were they designed to be studied as works of art in a museum, for their original contexts usually within a church or convent, or sometimes in a domestic setting as an object of private devotion, were fundamental to the way they were perceived. The greatest nineteenth-century commentator on Spain, the English traveller Richard Ford (1796-1858), lamented, 'Can it be wondered that such works, now torn from their original shrines and desecrated in lay galleries should loom gloomily and out of place, like monks thrust from dim cloisters into gay daylight?'3 For these reasons many works produced in Spain do not easily accord with a certain kind of art history, in particular attributions to great names and monographic studies of artists. By looking at four groups of objects illustrating four types of reproduction, this essay aims to show what they reveal about the ways sculptors organized their workshops, how an individual sculptor might influence contemporaries and later artists, and finally how images functioned within a devotional context.

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Spanish sculpture of this period was part of a strong tradition, which was both artistic (in that sculptors followed sometimes extremely closely both their immediate and more distant predecessors) and theological (in that the subjects depicted had to conform to what was accepted and approved by the Church, more especially so after the mid-sixteenthcentury Catholic Reformation). Partly because such rich archives survive in Spain, and because of the traditions of art history going back ultimately to Vasari (exemplified in Spain by the Dictionary of Artists produced in 1800 by J. A. Cean Bermudez),4 most studies of postRenaissance Spanish sculpture tend to concentrate on named artists and attributions; this essay will aim to approach the subject from a slightly different angle, while nevertheless inevitably building on the large volume of scholarship that exists to date. 5 Broadly, the four types of repetition to be discussed here are: first, the same composition (The Pieta in terracotta by Juan de Juni) more or less exactly copied by means of a mould; second, elements that could be adapted and re-used for different compositions within one workshop (that of Luisa Roldan), again using moulds; third, one image of great significance for devotional purposes (the Virgin of Sorrows) produced in only slightly different forms by a number of artists over a century; and fourth, the miraculous image of a saint (St Francis of Assisi) depending from one of two prototypes by the seventeenth-century sculptor Pedro de Mena, repeated in both painting and sculpture for over two centuries. TERRACOTTA: THE WORKSHOP OF JUAN DE JUNI IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Certain materials lend themselves to reproduction from moulds. In Spain the most commonly surviving such material is terracotta. A small polychromed terracotta relief of the Pieta was acquired in Madrid in 1863 by the Victoria and Albert Museum (then the South Kensington Museum).6 The relief is mounted in a painted and gilt-wood frame, decorated in gold with a Latin inscription? The original surface would have been somewhat brighter than the present appearance of the relief suggests, since the terracotta has been overpainted. 8 Three other close variants of this work are known: one in the Cathedral Museum (Museo Diocesano y Catedralicio) in Valladolid, another in the Archaeological Museum (Museo Arqueol6gico Provincial) in Leen and a third in the Camen Aznar Collection (Instituto y Museo) in Zaragoza. 9 With the exception of the Camen Aznar relief, they are virtually identical in size. Who originated the design for these four reliefs, and how do they IQ

MAR/ORIE TRUSTED

Juan de Juni, Pieta, c. 1540, painted terracotta in painted and gilt-wood frame. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

relate to one another? In answer to the first question, the figurative style points to Juan de ]uni (c. 1507(7), one of the leading sculptors active in Castile in the mid-sixteenth century, who probably came originally from ]oigny in Burgundy but who apparently spent all his working life in Spain!! The composition is of extraordinarily high quality, its mannerist nerviosidad (literally 'nervousness', expressing the energetic movement of his compositions) typical of ]uni's work. Comparable pieces associated with ]uni include a Pieta group attributed to him in the Museo Federico Mares, Barcelona,12. and a polychromed stone relief of the Pieta in the Cathedral at Salamanca forming part of the tomb of Gutierre de Castro, dating from about 1540, and convincingly ascribed to ]uni on both circumstantial and stylistic evidence. 13 These pieces display similar features to the Pieta reliefs: elongated, contorted bodies, thick, flowing folds of drapery and comparable facial types for Christ and the Virgin. The date of the tomb in Salamanca also gives an approximate date of 1540 for the conception of the terracotta.

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49

Juan de Juni, Pieta, c. I540, painted stone relief (part of the tomb of Gutierre de Castro). Salamanca Cathedral.

5°

MARJORIE TRUSTED

If the conception is Juan de Juni's, the question of the relationship between the four Pieta reliefs (in London, Valladolid, Leon and Zaragoza) remains. There are apparently two relatively early verbal allusions to the composition. The first, in the early seventeenth century, dates from just over seventy years after it was probably designed. This is the 1613 inventory of the possessions of Juana Mardnez, the widow of Juan de Juni's illegitimate son, Isaac de Juni, himself a sculptor. One of the items listed was 'clay image in relief of the Descent from the Cross'. I4 Although this is not a certain allusion to the composition, it is likely to be so, being a relief in the same material and of the same subject in the possession of the next generation of Juan de Juni's family. If it is an allusion to the composition, it remains unclear which (if any) of the surviving versions this was, as will be discussed below. Almost exactly one hundred years later, the eighteenth-century Spanish painter and writer Antonio Palomino recorded in 1714: 'In the church of St Martin in this city [Valladolid] there is a little scene in terracotta of the Descent from the Cross, of which a number of sculptors have made casts, so that it is a widely travelled image'.I5 It has been noted that the example formerly in the church of St Martin in Valladolid (as seen by Palomino) is the version now in the Cathedral Museum in Valladolid, and that this therefore could be the version mentioned in the inventory of Juana Martlnez, who lived in Valladolid. I6 For this reason it has been suggested that the version in Valladolid was the original and the others replicas. On the basis of Palomino's comments that other sculptors made casts of the Valladolid relief, the other versions have been considered early copies, which should be treated neither as 'original de Juni' nor as fakes. I7 It is interesting to note that when the London relief was acquired, the curator at the South Kensington Museum, John Charles Robinson, described it as 'School of Valladolid (?) probably by a pupil of Juan de Juni'. 18 These interpretations of the surviving versions, partly based on Palomino, seem plausible, but it is also possible that Palomino, writing over 130 years after Juni's death, was misinformed, or misinterpreted what he saw. The implication of his statement is that there is one original (possibly the one in Valladolid) modelled by Juan de Juni himself. Other versions, while still early, dating from the sixteenth century and possibly the seventeenth too, were cast from the original by other artists. They were not intended to deceive but were replicas. However, it seems probable that the composition was always intended to be reproduced in multiples. The appearance of the known surviving pieces suggests they are likely to be

Spanish Sculpture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

5I

contemporary with one another, whereas the theory that copies were made by other artists implies that one is earlier and that the others were made at a slightly later date, perhaps after Juan de Juni's death in 1577. I9 Yet there is no perceptible difference in the definition of the forms in these four versions, although the polychromy varies in quality and is much damaged in the Valladolid, Lean and Zaragoza examples. The Valladolid, Lean and London pieces are all of the same size; the Caman Aznar version in Zaragoza appears to be cut down and is consequently 5cm smaller in both height and width. 20 It is almost certain that all known versions are cast and not modelled, although it seems that the casts were not made identically, which may imply that they were not necessarily all carried out at the same time. 2I The reliefs seem to have been made for display, rather than for study. This can be assumed from the fact that contemporary polychromy seems to have survived on all of them at least in part, and that wood frames are extant on all but the Valladolid version. The wood frame of the London relief, with its goldpainted inscription, is analogous to the frame of the version in Lean, which also has an early inscription (although a different one), and to that of the one in the Caman Aznar Collection, which has a wood frame painted to imitate marble. These features imply that the four surviving versions should be accorded equal status, no one of them necessarily being closer to or further from the work of the sculptor than any of the others. Having made an 'original' in clay, which was probably then fired in order to harden it, Juan de Juni could have had made in his workshop a mould of this, from which were cast numerous copies. These were then painted, framed and sold. They would have been comparatively small devotional images, suitable for a domestic setting. The relief mentioned in the 1613 inventory if it is related to the present pieces - may be a fifth version that has been subsequently lost, or it may be identical to any of the other surviving examples. In addition to these four versions, there is a smaller variant of the composition, also probably dating from the sixteenth century, although of poor quality, and with the same composition laterally inverted; this is in the National Museum of Sculpture in ValladoHd.2.2 The reduced size and lateral inversion may imply that it was taken from an engraved version of the composition, rather than being derived from Juni's original mould, although no such engraving is known to have survived, and it could have been made from a now lost inferior copy, perhaps even pirated from Juni's workshop by a rival. As such, it is evidence of the continuing popularity of the composition, and a

MARJORIE TRUSTED

copy indirectly to be associated with the work of Juni, rather than a multiple produced in his workshop. Unfortunately no other evidence is known regarding how Juan de Juni sold uncommissioned sculptures, for example whether he retailed them or displayed them in his workshop. But the surviving versions of this composition, roughly all contemporary with one another and emanating from his workshop (with the possible exception of the inferior version now in the National Museum of Sculpture), imply that Juni produced multiples to sell, probably relatively cheaply, to private customers, and that this made sense economically. TERRACOTTA: THE WORKSHOP OF LUISA ROLDAN IN THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Economic reasons also influenced the running of the workshop of a Spanish sculptor working at the end of the seventeenth century. Luisa Roldan (r652-r706), known as La Roldana, was the daughter of the Sevillian sculptor Pedro Roldan (r624-99), and trained under him before setting up her own workshop as an independent sculptor, her husband Luis Antonio de los Arcos (d. r702/3) acting as polychromist. 23 There was a strong tradition of terracotta sculpture in Seville going back to the fifteenth century, and although Luisa Roldan also worked in wood, her terracotta pieces are most characteristic of her style, and prefigure the Rococo porcelain groups produced in the eighteenth century. She moved to Madrid in about r688 to petition for the post of court sculptor, which was finally granted in r692. Most of her small-scale terracotta groups are thought to date from r688 onwards. One of these, a painted and partially gilt terracotta figure group of the Virgin and Child Appearing to St Diego of Alcala, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 24 The Virgin and Child are shown presenting the cross to a kneeling Franciscan saint, accompanied by two angels, one kneeling, one standing. Six cherubim nestle around the Virgin's feet. All the figures except the saint rest on clouds, indicating that this is an ecstatic vision experienced by the saint. 25 St Diego of Alcala stole bread from his monastery to give to the poor, but was discovered, at which point the bread miraculously turned into flowers; the petals can be seen in the folds of his habit. 26 The group was acquired for the Museum in Madrid in r863, and was originally simply called 'Spanish, seventeenth century';2 7 the reasons for the subsequent attribution to Luisa Roldan are stylistic. One of her signed groups in the collection of the Hispanic Society of New York is remarkably close to the present one. This is the Mystical

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53

Luisa Roldan, Virgin and Child Appearing to St Diego of Alcala, c. 16~1700, painted terracotta on a painted and gilt wood base. Vic[Qria and Albert Museum, London.

Luisa Roldan, Mystical Marriage of St Catherine. c. 1690-1700, painted terracotta. Hispanic Society of America, New York.

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Marriage of St Catherine, in which the composition and facial features of the individual figures, notably the figures of the Virgin and the angel on the Virgin's right in each group, are extraordinarily close. 28 Because of these similarities and the nature of the material it is conceivable that Roldan used moulds to repeat certain figures in her groups. In order to test out this hypothesis, measurements of both groups and separate elements from each (the faces of the Virgin and of the kneeling angel) were taken. Unfortunately the results were inconclusive, as the measurements, which were anyway done by hand and taken at different times on both sides of the Atlantic, were close but not identica1. 29 In addition, different rates of shrinkage during firing and the possibility that the clay may have been worked up when it was still in a leather-hard state could also account for slight discrepancies. It is, however, striking that closely similar figures of the Virgin and Child and of the kneeling angel recur in other Roldan groups, such as her two versions of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, one dated 1691 in the collection of the Condesa de Ruisefiada in San Sebastian, and another in the Hispanic Society in New York. 30 Even within the present group, the heads of the cherubim are repeated forms. Recent examination of the underside of the New York Mystical Marriage of St Catherine revealed that the whole group consisted of separate elements (each usually of one figure) fitted together, presumably before firing. Straw was also visible, almost certainly used to bind the clay.3 1 Although it has not been possible to prove the theory, it seems highly probable that Roldan's workshop, organized around the production of these closely similar small-scale groups, almost certainly intended for domestic settings, depended on a high proportion of delegated work: Roldan presumably designed the compositions of the groups and made the initial figures; she could then multiply the images used by having moulds made, so that they could be adapted for various groups, depicting entirely different subjects. Even if certain elements were not actually cast from moulds, the undeniable repetition of forms in her pieces suggests a streamlined way of organizing her workshop. This may have been partly for iconographic or devotional reasons; for example, it might have been thought desirable that images of the Virgin be similar, if not identical. But perhaps the primary reason was economic: so that she could run an efficient workshop, which produced large numbers of such works; a contemporary letter from the sculptor refers to a list of eighty works she had produced over the previous ten years. 32

Spanish Sculpture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

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IMAGES OF THE VIRGIN OF SORROWS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

There are other repeated images in Spanish sculpture that cannot have been made simply because it was cheaper to do so. One of the most widely disseminated and popular images of the seventeenth century was that of the Virgin of Sorrows, the Virgen Dolorosa or Virgen de la Soledad. In sculpture the subject of the mourning Virgin could be in the form of a bust or a half-length figure, more rarely as a full-length figure, sometimes an imagen de vestir, an image to be dressed. Often a bust or a half-length figure of Christ as Man of Sorrows is accompanied by a comparable image of the Virgin, such as Pedro de Mena's pair of busts in the Convento de las MM. Concepcionistas, Zamora. 33 The depiction in the form of a bust may well partly derive from Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century, exemplified by the work of Dieric Bouts (c. 142075) and his son Albert Bouts (c. 1460-1549), perhaps transmitted through engravings. 34 Towards the end of the fifteenth century Spanish paintings of the subject appeared, such as the work of Paolo da San Leocadio (1447-1519).35 Another probable source is the reliquary bust, the associations of which, containing as they did physical relics of the saints depicted, must have added to the already powerful verisimilitude to be seen in the painted wood busts of the Virgin and Christ. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a particularly fine painted wood version of the Virgin of Sorrows, acquired in 1871, and at that date attributed to the Sevillian sculptor Juan Mardnez Montafies (15681649).36 This ascription was overthrown in 1950 when Xavier de Salas, then Director of the Spanish Institute in London, claimed that the bust could not be by him, but was 'possibly by Pedro de Mena who was ... a pupil of Alonso Cano. Cano himself was ... a follower of Montafies' .37 Many sculpted versions of this subject are known, most of them from Andalusia, in particular Granada, including works attributed to the two brothers Jer6nimo Francisco and Miguel Jer6nimo Garda (the Hermanos Garda),3 8 and Jose Risuefio (1665-1732).39 The Andalusian sculptor Pedro de Mena (1628-88), mentioned above, who had worked with the painter and sculptor Alonso Cano (1601-67), was the most eminent of those artists known to have produced versions. He originated and refined the type most commonly produced in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and at least sixteen versions of the bust of the Mourning Virgin attributed to him survive. 40 From 1950 until recently the London bust was associated with this sculptor. The attribution to

MARJORIE TRUSTED

Jose de Mora (1642-1724), Virgin of Sorrows, painted wood. Victoria and Alben Museum, London.

Mena had been generally agreed, partly because it is understandably always tempting to ascribe an outstanding work of art to the most eminent name associated stylistically. Although there are clear similarities with works by Pedro de Mena - the virtuoso carving of the wood, the corkscrew ringlets and the naturalistically crumpled veil - the parallels are iconographic and technical. However, other contemporary and slightly later works by Andalusian sculptors also have some of these characteristics, such as a bust by Jose Risueno of about 1700--30 in the National Museum of Sculpture, ValladolidY Despite the high number of surviving busts by roughly contemporary sculptors in Andalusia, stylistic differences can be discerned. The Dolorosa in the Victoria and Albert Museum has some distinctive features : the morose downward glance, the aquiline nose, heavy-lidded eyes and full lips. These all suggest the work is by Jose de Mora (1642.-172.4), Pedro de Mena's younger contemporary, and also active in Granada. An analogous example by Jose de Mora is a Virgin and pendant bust of Christ in a private collection in Salamanca. 42 These closely similar versions of busts of the sorrowing Virgin are highly worked images made by independent sculptors, all successfully working in or around Granada at about the same time, the second half of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. Admittedly the

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subjects were standard icons, but they were codified by the artists concerned at the same time and in the same place. They are not identical, but contemporary variants of the same type. Although it is possible to distinguish different pieces stylistically, individual artists were producing repeated images, such as the sixteen surviving pieces associated with Pedro de Mena. Perhaps the considerable craftsmanship that went into the busts - which was clearly a continuing part of a thriving vernacular tradition of polychromed wood sculpture - was also a way of suggesting the devotional care taken by the artist, as well as the amount of money spent by the individual or institutional patron. The images were rich in spiritual meaning and power. When a full-length Soledad figure by Jose de Mora was installed in the Church of St Anne in Granada in 1671, a contemporary chronicler recorded that it was taken there at midnight, accompanied by a congregation of the devout holding torches, and that on this journey to the church the image performed a miracle, bringing back to health a woman gravely ill, as it passed by her house. 43 IMAGES OF THE MIRACULOUSLY PRESERVED ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

A fourth type of reproduction can be distinguished in Spanish sculpture: the repetition of a miraculous image of a saint. One of the most renowned of such images was the figure of St Francis of Assisi in the form of a resurrected corpse, illustrating the legend of the miraculous preservation of his body over two centuries after his death. According to the legend, the saint was found standing up with open eyes gazing up to Heaven when his tomb in Assisi was opened by Nicholas V in 1449. 44

The event was first depicted in paintings and sculpture in the early seventeenth century,45 having been popularized in Spain by a number of publications of the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, such as Pedro de Ribadeneira's Flos Sanctorum 0 Libro de las Vidas de Los Santos (Flower of Saints or Book of the Lives of the Saints), first published in Madrid in 1599. 46 The first sculpted interpretations of the subject seem to have been produced by Gregorio Fernandez (c. 15761636); one, which had been dated to not later than 1620, is in the Royal Convent of the Discalced Nuns (Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales) in Valladolid. 47 This simple image, just over a metre high, is likely to have been the first depiction of this subject, the sallow face and uplifted eyes ringed in shadow reflecting the legend of the saint's life in death. The visible hands just reveal one of the stigmata, a detail that came to be typical of the Castilian interpretations of the subject later on in the

MARJORIE TRUSTED

(left) Pedro de Mena, St Fratlcis, 1663, painted wood. Toledo Cathedral. (right) Anonymous, after Pedro de Mcna, St Fratlcis, c. 1720-4°, painted wood. Vicroria and Albcrt Museum, London.

century. It is also an early instance of a free-standing statue of a saint as a devotional image, rather than an element in an altarpiece; this type of figure was to become widespread in Spain through the work of Alonso Cano later on in the century. Fernandez's figure almost certainly predates the three paintings of the same subject by Francisco de Zurbaran (15981664), which have been convincingly dated to about 1640--5.48 The image of the resurrected St Francis became more widely known following the two autograph sculptures of the subject produced by Pedro de Mena, one

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a relief for the choir-stalls in Malaga, dating from 1658 to 1662, and the other the figure in Toledo Cathedral, executed in 1663.49 The Toledo figure in particular was widely influential and must itself have been partly based on Fernandez's figure of over forty years before, although the hands are not visible and the cowl is deeper. Both it and the relief from Malaga, which also came to be used as a model for free-standing figures by other sculptors,5 0 became exceedingly popular sources, and they were adapted for sculptures all over Castile and Andalusia for the next century and more. The many versions of the Toledo figure of St Francis superficially form a coherent stylistic group and have generally been dated to the seventeenth century, roughly contemporary with the original that inspired them. SI However, when examined more closely, their styles can be distinguished one from another, and it is clear that they are not simply replicas, but must be called variants. While they can virtually all be traced back to one of the two types created by Pedro de Mena, each exhibits differences from the others to a greater or lesser extent, in scale, facial expression and the fall of folds of the drapery. Few are either inscribed or dated, but they are technically analogous to the figure in Toledo by Pedro de Mena. Often only a patient analysis of the style suggests a date, although sometimes this can only be approximate, owing to lack of documentary or other evidence. Two exceptions to this are a figure by Fernando Ortiz of Malaga in the National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid, signed and dated 1738,52 and an anonymous one in the Convent of St Clare, Medina de Rloseco, Valladolid, dated 1732.53 The subject continued to be popular into the nineteenth century; at least two versions are known to date from that time. 54 One example of an eighteenth-century variant is in the Victoria and Albert Museum;55 it is close iconographically to the autograph piece in Toledo, although it is only half the size. It was acquired for the Museum by the curator, John Charles Robinson, in Madrid in 1865. He believed the figure in Toledo to be by Cano (as did many of his contemporaries), and called the piece acquired by the Museum a 'contemporary repetition of a very famous statuette by Alonso Cano, preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo'. 56 When first acquired it was dated to the seventeenth century and until recently this date has been accepted. However, the style of the carving, in particular the fall of the drapery, strongly implies it was made in the first half of the eighteenth century, perhaps nearly a hundred years after Pedro de Mena's image in Toledo. That prototype image has been reduced in size to a more portable and

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domestic object. The same legend is being told (the miraculous posthumous image of the saint), and the statue created by Pedro de Mena is being deliberately evoked, although not directly copied, since clearly avoidable changes have been made, as in the fall of the drapery. This suggests a different meaning for the phrase 'stylistic influence' of an artist, and the chosen portrayal of the saint must be seen as bound up with the religious and miraculous nature of the image. It is evident that there can be different motives for reproducing an image

and various gradations in the meaning of the word 'reproduction' or 'variant'. In the first group of examples, it was argued that the sixteenthcentury artist Juan de Juni's workshop (and probably a competitor) reproduced an image using a mould and decorated the finished versions differently, perhaps to suit different clients who had not commissioned these works but stipulated certain surface decoration after the terracotta had been cast. In Luisa Roldan's work the repeated forms and compositions seen in different groups imply how she ran her highly productive workshop, whether or not moulds were actually used. In the third group, a number of more or less contemporary artists in Granada all produced similar, although distinctive, versions of the Virgin (and of Christ); Pedro de Mena in particular, who seems to have perfected the type, produced a whose series of closely similar works on this theme. This no doubt fulfilled the demand for sacred images in Spain and reflected the piety prevalent throughout the peninsula at this time. In the last group, two particularly striking and closely related images of the miraculously preserved body of St Francis by Pedro de Mena, in Malaga and Toledo respectively, as well as the earlier figure by Gregorio Fernandez, were used and adapted by large numbers of artists for up to two hundred years after their creation. Like the third group of examples, the nature and intensity of religious devotion must have been one of the main reasons for these repeated forms.

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The Ivory Multiplied: Small-scale Sculpture and its Reproductions in the Eighteenth Century MALCOLM BAKER

Since the publication of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny's Taste and the Antique, the role played by three-dimensional reproductions of smallscale sculptures in disseminating the antique sculptural canon has become a commonplace within histories of art. I Various studies of specific sculptors or centres of sculptural production have revealed how such sculptural reductions or multiple reproductions served to make more widely known both the works and the names of various Italian sculptors. 2 The new attention being given to the sculptural reproduction comes at a time when postmodern questioning of the notion of authorship has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between the original, the multiple and the copy, and the very legitimacy of these terms. 3 These two developments provide a framework for the discussion here of the reproduction of small-scale sculpture in the eighteenth century. By examining reproductions of northern European sculpture executed on a small scale in ivory - a class of art production that has been virtually ignored in the mainstream of art-historical literature - this essay attempts to investigate ways in which sculptural reproduction could sometimes operate differently from the practices used for the copying of the antique or Italian Renaissance sculptural canon and looks at the implications of this for our understanding of originals, copies and authorship. From the sixteenth century onwards the repertory of antique and modern figure sculpture that comprised the canon for successive generations of artists and connoissuers was disseminated not only through prints and plaster casts but also through the small bronze. Forming an essential component of any courtly collection, and by the eighteenth century figuring increasingly frequently as a decorative feature of the bourgeois interior, the bronze statuette after the Apollo Belvedere or Giambologna's Mercury was made widely available in casts by

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The Firzwilliam Coin Cabiner. Early eighteenth century with late eighteenth century additions and a bronze Venus after Giambologna. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Soldani around 1700 or Zoffoli some eighty years later:' In some cases the compositions reproduced originated as small-scale bronzes and were from the start intended for multiple reproduction in bronze; this was certainly the case, for example, with Giambologna's figure of Architecture, a version of which (translated into a Venus) is placed on the top of the Fitzwilliam medal cabinet in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 5 In many instances, however, such bronzes made available sculptures that were originally executed in marble on a far larger scale; in these cases, the multiple reproductions served as barh reductions and substitutes. The role that such reductions played in both providing models for artists in northern Europe and representing a canon of classical and ltalianate visual values is a familiar one. The Ashmolean Venus may at first sight seem to carry many of the associations and ambiguities of the small-scale sculptural reproduction. A version of rather later date after a composition by a major figure in European sculpture, it is here used decoratively, though prominently, so that we are unsure whether to view it as an independent sculpture or an

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ornamental part of a sumptuous but nonetheless functional artefact. Similarly ambiguous is its status in relation to its author, for, while being highly finished, this piece is probably an early eighteenth-century cast of a seventeenth-century invention. Nonetheless, like many sculptural reproductions in bronze, this is not a reduction of a larger composition originally executed in another material but a replica of an invention intended from the start to be reproduced on this scale and in this material. While making more widely known the masterpieces of European sculpture, and celebrating and perpetuating the reputations of those who invented them, the small-scale sculptural reproduction also made it possible for such images to be used decoratively and appropriated in ways that diminished the status of both the artist and the original work. An early eighteenth-century cast by Soldani of a Giambologna figure could be used as an ornamental addition to a piece of furniture, as in the (albeit rather grand) case of the Fitzwilliam cabinet or that of the models that were taken over from the Soldani workshop by the Doccia factory and used to reproduce the same figures in porcelain in the mid-eighteenth century. 6 Although the Doccia inventory of the models in many cases records the names of the sculptors, these names were associated with the porcelain versions that resulted. A similar sequence of reproduction and adaptation, through which a highly esteemed sculpture becomes a decorative artefact, may be seen in the multiple production, in different sizes, of Canova's Italian Venus that are to be found in almost every garden centre, both subject and artist unacknowledged. While this diminution of meaning and status by the appropriation of sculptural compositions is sometimes discernible in the reproduction of Italian sculpture, the dissemination of most later reductions of works by Michelangelo or Giambologna served to sustain and reinforce their canonical status. Unsurprisingly, the majority of studies of this process has been concerned with the reproduction of antique sculpture or Italian Renaissance sculpture and focused more on the dissemination and reworking of this canon, rather than its disintegration through decorative reappropriation. Far less well known, however, are either the works of small-scale sculpture produced in materials other than bronze north of the Alps or the ways in which such works were themselves appropriated by reproduction. While perhaps a less central and less significant narrative within histories of art, this far less familiar set of interconnections is worth examining, not least because it throws into relief the sequence from large-scale 'masterpiece' to small-scale substitute and provides an alternative model for thinking about sculpture and its reproductions.

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During the seventeenth century small-scale sculpture in ivory and boxwood - since then given the generic description of Kleinplastik, unsatisfactorily translated as 'small-scale sculpture' - occupied a significant place in the Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, or 'cabinet of curiosities'.7 In the collection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in the Palazzo Pitti, figurative works in ivory by sculptors better known for their larger figures in marble or stone, such as Balthasar Permoser, or sculptors specializing in ivory-carving, such as Francis van Bossuit, were placed alongside elaborately turned standing cups, one at least turned on the lathe by the Prince Ferdinando himself. 8 In the north, female nudes in boxwood by Leonhard Kern, in a distinctively 'northern' style, were prized at the Habsburg court and were illustrated, along with bronzes by Giambologna and paintings by both Italian and Flemish masters, in Franz von Stampart and Anton von Prenner's Podromus of 1735. 9 The status accorded to such works, and to the virtuosity that could be demonstrated in carving ivory, is evident from the lengthy poem written in 1680 by the Silesian poet Daniel Casper von Lohenstein about a single ivory tankard, Matthias Rauchmiller's elaborately carved vessel encircled by a Rape of the Sabines, which since 1707 has been in the Liechtenstein collection. 10 During the eighteenth century, however, attitudes towards ivorycarving and Kleinplastik in general began to shift, giving them an increasingly marginal position when academic norms increasingly favoured antique and Italianate values and privileged marble as an appropriate medium for sculpture. Although some ivory figures moved to the gallery, where they were placed in the company of sculpture in these materials, most such Kleinplastik lost its prominence with the dismantling of the Wunderkammer. In France such a shift is registered in the changing position of the ivory-carver in the Academie Royale de Peinture. In the I670S there seems to have been no difficulty in allowing Pierre Simon laillot, a sculptor working exclusively in ivory, to be an Academicien, even though a dispute with Le Brun led to his expulsion in I673.II No such carvers, however, were admitted in the eighteenth century and the sculpture to be seen in the Academie's own rooms, as described by Nicolas Guerin in 1715, consisted almost...exclusively of larger-scale works in terracotta, plaster and marble. I2 In Germany ivory-carvers continued to work for court patrons and in England a few carvers at least enjoyed popularity for their portrait reliefs of both noble sitters and an increasing number of bourgeois clients. While some carvers - Antonio Leoni in Diisseldorf, for instance remained resident at the same court, many others had itinerant careers of

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a familiar type. Jacob Dobbermann, for example, was probably trained in Danzig, then spent some years in England, where he taught in Sir Godfrey Kneller's Academy, and eventually moved to the court of the Landgrave Carl von Hessen in Kassel, where he produced reliefs of mythological subjects, based on mezzotints by the English engraver John Smith. I3 A similarly varied itinerary was followed by Joachim Henne, who moved from Amsterdam to the Danish court at Copenhagen, via Gottorf. I4 But this view of ivory-carving as a highly valued court art should be balanced by consideration of the production of ivories by carvers working at Dieppe. While some (such as David Le Marchand) pursued itinerant careers of the type just described, most of the carvers were residents, and their main output was of small decorative objects, frequently depicting religious subjects and intended for devotional use. Such works were luxury commodities produced for a growing market. This development of consumerism and the strategies of marketing and production that it involved have been much discussed recently, as has the intersection of the history of consumer societies with the history of culture. I5 Situated in this framework the changing pattern evident in the production of small-scale sculpture and the shifting attitudes towards this class of sculpture may be viewed rather differently. At this point the multiple and the reproduction become more significant. Although the production of decorative ivory-carving from the Dieppe workshops may be understood as a continuation of a far earlier tradition of large-scale manufacture of relatively low-priced devotional images, it may also be seen in terms of a growing demand for luxury objects from a wider range of consumers with modest but increasing wealth. In this market novelty was used to stimulate consumption. This meant not only new designs but also new materials, including porcelain, which was to prove highly attractive to this growing range of consumers. During the period when sculpture in marble or bronze was increasingly privileged in the academy and in public spaces devoted to high art that reflected academic ideals, small-scale sculpture in ivory or boxwood was being supplanted by the porcelain figure or group. Although not necessarily less expensive than the carved ivory, the porcelain compositions were made by a process that involved moulds and allowed variations to be introduced in the assembling of the various component parts. More significantly, this process of casting with moulds made the production of multiple versions relatively easy. While of course many compositions were new inventions by specialist modellers working only for the porcelain factories, some at least were cast from existing figures in ivory.

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When Permoser's figures of the Seasons were used in 1778 by the Furstenberg porcelain factory, established in 1753, the ivory originals were being used as the basis for another form of expensive luxury object, which retained associations with court and aristocratic culture, rather than for wares available as multiples in very large numbers to a wider audience. 16 Nonetheless, this process involved not only the erasure of the artist's name but also the appropriation of the ivory for decorative purposes. At about the same date ]osiah Wedgwood used wax casts taken from the portrait reliefs by another ivory-carver, David Le

Carl Gottlieb Schubert, Summer, FOrslenberger porcelain figurine of 1778, after an ivory by Balthasar Permoser. Herzog-Anton-Ulrich·Museum, Braunschweig.

Marchand. 17 While the subjects in most (but not all) cases remained significant, the authorship of the originals was again forgotten. More importantly, despite Wedgwood's strategy of marketing (and pricing) his products so that they would seem superior to other Staffordshire ceramics, these reliefs were manufactured as multiples for consumers 'of the middling sort', even if these buyers were attracted by the muchvaunted claims that Wedgwood produced works of high quality for the nobility and gentry. In many ways these pieces were intended to make reference to antique objects of the sort that had long been considered collectable; the relationship between the white-figure relief and the jasperware ground thus recalls the contrast between figure and ground seen on engraved gems as well as the way in which ivories in England

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(according to a French visitor in the 1760s) were set against black velvet. But this relationship between figure and ground also has much in common with that seen in cheaper, more popular forms of portrait such as the silhouette. I8 The use of ivory in reproductions during this period suggests that small-scale sculpture suffered a loss of status and significance as it became appropriated and adapted in other materials that could be readily reproduced and marketed to a wider range of potential consumers. While cheap, mass-produced replicas of devotional images had become commonplace by the late Middle Ages, a distinctive type of cabinet sculpture, made to be handled and examined closely, was here being reproduced as a multiple luxury object for a consumer culture. Implicit in the operation of such processes of reproduction and translation between media were assumptions about both the associations and values of particular materials and the procedures of making and reproducing sculpture. While never cheap, ivory could be differently valued and its associations were ambivalent. On the one hand, it might be widely used for knife handles, snuff rasps or dials, yet, on the other, both the courtly fashion for ivory-turning and the high esteem in which small-scale carvings had earlier been held in courtly collections still gave it artistocratic connotations. Porcelain likewise had courtly associations. Already anticipated by the isolated attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain for the Medici in the sixteenth century, the making of porcelain in the West began with the highly fired stoneware and soft-paste porcelain pioneered by the alchemist B6ttger for Augustus the Strong of Saxony in the second decade of the eighteenth century. Like the Meissen factory that grew from this, many of the factories that swiftly followed elsewhere in Europe were established under direct court patronage and control, among them Saint-Cloud in France and Capodimonte in Naples. The light-reflecting qualities of porcelain, its aristocratic associations, the closely protected secret of its manufacture and the sheer novelty of being able to produce European compositions in a material hitherto only imported from the East initially meant that, simply as a medium, porcelain was especially highly regarded, almost regardless of what the figures represented or how they were composed. Its distinctive qualitieswhether the nature of the ceramic 'body' or the enamelled painted decoration - continued to be admired, but as it became more familiar and more widely available, more attention was paid to the qualities of composition, modelling and decoration.

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The different techniques used in the making of ivories and porcelain figures also had different, and changing, associations. Underlying the appeal of the ivory figure in the seventeenth century was the way in which such carvings illustrated the relationship between the natural and the man-made, so central a theme in the Wunderkammer. By his virtuosity in carving the section from an ivory tusk, the carver was transforming a natural material into art - a process vividly represented by a carving in Vienna (and illustrated in the Podromus), which consists of a figure of Abundance carved out of a tusk, the lower part being left intact. 19 Here the virtuosity of the carving was more important than the invention involved in the composition. During the next century, however, with the reformulation of art theory and a reconfiguration of the hierarchies articulated in the 'art cabinet', this relationship was to be reversed and the process of carving ivory became less something to be admired and wondered at in its own right, just as the process of modelling, as was seen in terracotta, for example, became more highly valued, the sketch allowing a direct experience of the artist's invention on the part of the viewer. 20 The other principal process involved in the making of sculpture, along with modelling and carving, was casting and this was the technique most commonly involved in the production of multiples and the reproduction of carved or modelled figures. For early eighteenth-century viewers of porcelain figures, the intrinsic qualities of the material were emphasized, while the fact that their production involved casting was largely ignored, and the status of the porcelain figures as multiples played down. Only later in the eighteenth century was the reproductive nature of these works more evident and the potential that casting provided for the large-scale production of the same composition more openly acknowledged. This outline of the changing perceptions of the relationships between the various sculptural processes, between different materials and between the single work and the multiple provides a framework in which one particularly intriguing case of the ivory and its reproductions - that of Francis van Bossuit and his ]udith reliefs - may be considered. Unlike sculptors specializing in Kleinplastik, such as Kern, Henne or Dobbermann, Francis van Bossuit does not seem to have worked for any particular court. According to a brief biographical account published in Matthys Pool's Art's Cabinet in 1727, he was born in Brussels and then spent many years in Italy, returning north to Amsterdam where he died in 1692.21 Although he appears to have worked alongside the young Balthasar Permoser in the circle of artists associated with the Florentine

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Academy in Rome in the 1670S, the works thought to have been executed by him during this period have been attributed largely on stylistic grounds. 22 A reasonably coherent and detailed view of his later production, most of it probably from his Amsterdam period, may be formed from both a substantial number of surviving pieces that correspond to ivories shown in prints published in Pool's book and others that may be associated with these through their composition and facture. Although some of the works illustrated by Pool were in terracotta and boxwood, the majority were executed in ivory, many of them in low relief. Some are of biblical or mythological subjects but the largest number consists of half-length reliefs of single figures such as David or Cleopatra. Images of famous women figure particularly prominently. Drawing on a long-established tradition of series of donne famosi, these reliefs frequently employ similar formats, based on painted half-lengths of the types produced by Guido Reni. Whereas the history subjects are almost always unique, these half-length reliefs, though equally finely carved, are closely related to each other, so that poses used for Cleopatra reappear in images of, for example, Flora and Judith. Together they suggest that Bossuit was working and reworking formulae so as to produce a distinctive class of small-scale sculpture for which there was apparently a continuing demand. None of Bossuit's female subjects seems to have been more popular than that of ]udith with the Head of Holofernes and no fewer than five different variants may be plausibly attributed to him. 23 Each is distinct, indicating that, even when there was a demand for a particular subject, Bossuit was not meeting this by producing multiple versions. A range of reproductions and adaptations in various materials were, however, made after one of the ]udith reliefs, apparently in the early eighteenth century and so after the sculptor's death. The ivory reproduced in this way, now in Edinburgh, is characteristic of Bossuit's work not only in its composition but also above all in the way in which the figure is carved in low relief, with the delicately carved, fluttering draperies apparently merging with the ground in a series of subtly judged gradations of plane. In marked contrast with the reliefs by most of his contemporaries, with their sharply carved edges and deep undercutting, Bossuit's work has a softness that prompted the author of the biographical sketch in the 1728 book to note admiringly that 'he by his Ingenious, & free manner, of manageing the Hard Ivory, Could work upon it as if it were wax'. No fewer than five of the copies based on the Edinburgh ]udith are in ivory, two - in Schwerin and Strasbourg bearing initials probably to be

7°

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(left) Francis van Bossuit, judith with the Head of HoJofernes, c. 1680'-90, ivoty. Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. (right) Paul Heermann (after Francis van Bossuit), judith with the Head of HoJofernes, c. ivory. Staatliches Museum, Schwerin.

172.0,

(left) C.B. Rauschner (after Francis van Bossuit), judith with the Head of HoJofernes, c. 1750, wax. Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig. (right) judith with the Head of HoJofernes, c. 1714, Banger stoneware, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin.

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identified with the Dresden sculptor Paul Heermann, who may have carved two of the others. 24 Two further versions - in Hanover and Braunschweig - are in wax. But the largest number of replicas - six of which are known - are in Bottger stoneware, the immediate precursor of the porcelain produced at Meissen. Together these form an unusually large group of reproductions. What was the relationship between them and what can be said about the circumstances of their production, the status of the versions in different materials and the way in which these were viewed in the early eighteenth century? Comparison of the Edinburgh ivory with one of the Bottger stoneware versions establishes that the ceramic versions were produced from a mould taken directly from this relief by Bossuit. Since the other sources used by Bottger were available locally, it can be assumed' that the Edinburgh ivory too was in Dresden around 1712.25 It may also have been accessible there to Paul Heermann, an assistant of Permoser and a prolific ivory-carver in his own right, who probably carved four of the other ivory versions of the ]udith. Here the reproductions were not strictly speaking multiples for they were not only individually carved, rather than cast, but also show considerable small differences. While copying Bossuit's original and disseminating the image in a way that the earlier carver did not do himself, these carved reliefs remain variants rather multiple reproductions. By contrast, the ceramic versions were made with moulds, reproducing, with an overall shrinkage and the loss of subtlety in the details, the dimensions of the original. The most prominent part of the relief - the head - had in each case to be reworked a little. Far more of a multiple reproduction than Heermann's ivories, each of the Bottger reliefs involved a loss of the original's features through the process of casting, rather than its alteration because it was being copied by a different carver. This may seem unsurprising, given the role of casting in the reproduction of sculpture, but at this point an ambiguity arises that challenges our reading of the sequences outlined here, whether from ivory to ivory, from ivory to ceramic or from carving to casting. As well as varying certain features, such as the set of the head, the pommel of the sword or the decoration of the diadem, Heermann's ivory versions also, and perhaps significantly, omit particular details - the lower fold of the wind-blown headdress, for instance - that had been lost in the casting of the Bottger reliefs. Such details are clearly missing from some of the apparently later ivory versions, such as that in Vienna, but their omission in the Heermann ivories hints at the possibility that all the

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ivories were based not on Bossuit's original relief but on the ceramic versions or plaster casts after the ivory, rather as paintings drew on prints after paintings. The same process may have been involved in the production of the two waxes. Here, however, the technique of casting and moulds could be employed. This is most evident in the Hanover wax, which reproduces not only the precise details of the folds on ceramic relief but also the form of the ledge below the figure. The casting process was probably also used by Rauschner when he made the Braunschweig version. But in this case Bossuit's composition, via the ceramic version, was embellished with many additional decorative details and set against a painted background and so translated into a far more pictorial composition. Whatever the relationship between Bossuit's reliefs, the Battger versions, the waxes and the various ivories by Heermann and others may be, the process of dissemination of the image seems to have involved a diminution, a loss of significance, at least as far as authorship of the original was concerned. The presence of Heermann's initials on two of the ivories of course represent a claim to authorship (if not to invention) and an indication that these reliefs were not intended to be regarded as inferior reproductions because the sculptor (like numerous other artists) had appropriated an earlier composition. (His early eighteenth-century patrons may not indeed have been aware of this.) In the case of Rauschner's wax, Bossuit's original composition has likewise been reworked for the ends of another sculptor and given a distinctive quality. However, despite the claim made by the presence of the artist's initials, Heermann's ivories were closely similar versions based on an original that was conceived as a single and unique work. Here, and even more so in the Battger versions, the dissemination of Bossuit's relief required abandoning a connection with his name and the use of his composition for multiple reproduction, albeit in forms and materials that still enjoyed high status as luxury decorative objects. A rather different perspective on the reproduction of Bossuit's sculptures is, however, offered by the way in which they are were disseminated not by sculptural but by graphic reproduction. Reproduced in two dimensions in the book of prints by Pool, published in Amsterdam in 1727, Bossuit's reliefs are represented and 'framed' in a way that encouraged them, as well as Bossuit's standing as an artist, to be read in a very different way. The book was published with two title-pages, one in French and the other in Dutch and English, the latter reading Statue's or Art's Cabinet,

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Containing the Ivory works of that famous Statuary Francis van Bossuit and Curiously Ingraven in Copper According to the draught of Barent Graat. By Matthew Pool. Dedicated to the patrician Amsterdam collector 1erome Tonnemans, it consists of 107 single-sided pages, printed from engraved plates, beginning with the dedication to Tonnemans, followed by portraits of Bossuit and Graat and short accounts of both of them in the three languages. The rest of the volume is made up of no fewer than 103 views of Bossuit's sculptures, mainly ivory figures and reliefs but with some terracottas and boxwoods. Many of these pieces are shown from two or more different viewpoints, some images being juxtaposed on the same page but many occupying separate sheets. Apparently conceived by the engraver Pool who made use of the drawings of his father-in-law, Graat, this publication, its origins and intended audience are intriguingly ambiguous. Its production in the late 1720S, however, would appear to be linked to the esteem in which Bossuit's work was held in Amsterdam at this date, registered by the descriptions in a series of auction sale catalogues as well as by the prices they fetched. While Pool's publication seems to celebrate Graat almost as much as Bossuit, the reader/viewer is left in no doubt as to Bossuit's '26 ' ac h Ievement an d reputatIon. But although the distinctive qualities of Bossuit's ivories may be stressed in the text, the engravings prompt a rather different mode of viewing. Reliefs inevitably lose their sculptural features and seem almost to revert to the types of painting that formed Bossuit's starting point. More tellingly, single figures are placed among clouds and are shown from below so that they resemble details of ceiling paintings in the manner of Gerard de Lairesse, on whom Graat based his own style. The three-dimensionality of the original is consistently denied. In this way, Bossuit is praised in the text for his skill in modelling and carving but the engravings that follow present his compositions in pictorial, rather than sculptural, terms. The reproduction of the ]udith reliefs in ivory, wax and ceramics suggests the translation of a type of sculpture that had been prominent in the W underkammer into a decorative luxury commodity that could be made available in replicas or multiple versions. In Pool's prints, by contrast, these small-scale reliefs are reproduced in a medium that not only obscures - even denies - the size of the originals but also by giving them backgrounds transforms the composition into images that are more pictorial than their reproduction in prints need be. Far from being made into decorative objects, they are presented here, as the title page alone J

J

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Engraving of a figure by Francis van Bossuit, from Matthys Pool, Beelsniiders Kunstcabinet (Amsterdam, I7L7).

affirms, as art, with the artist's name emphasized and celebrated. This same trajectory may be followed if Bossuit's works are tracked through sale catalogues of around 1700, a few early references locating them among rarities of various sorts within the 'cabinet of curiosities', followed by sales of the late 1720S where they are classified along with painting and sculpture in marble. L7 Perhaps ironically, Pool's book illustrates many reliefs of half-length female figures, including several ]udiths, bur the relief that was most often reproduced in ivory, wax and ceramic forms is not shown, perhaps because it was already in Dresden or at least not available in Amsterdam for Graat to draw. Further evidence about the later reception of Bossuit's work in the mid-eighteenth century, however, involves once again this particular composition, albeit in a modified form. This version was evidently based ultimately on the Edinburgh relief but lacks the fluttering drapery to the right of the head and shows Holofernes' head turned in a different direction. It is framed, along with other ivory reliefs, and placed in the centre of the left door of a cabinet made for Horace Walpole about 1743. The context in which it is placed and Walpole's own description,

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The Walpole Cabinet, with an ivory of ]udith after Francis van Bossuit, 1743 .

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suggest that the reproduction of Bossuit's ]udith now enjoyed a new interpretation. The cabinet was made to contain Walpole's collection of English miniatures, including examples by Holbein and Isaac Oliver. 28 Placed centrally in the Tribuna at Strawberry Hill, it housed those works that, for Walpole, formed an important stage in the development of art in England, which he was later to document and celebrate in his Anecdotes of Painting in England. The iconography of the exterior was intended to complement the contents by representing both the canonical works of antique sculpture and the figures of Palladio, Duquesnoy and Inigo ]ones, whose works were to form a touchstone and inspiration for English artists of his own period. The former were shown by ivory reliefs after the antique by Pozzo and the latter by reductions by the ivorycarver Verskovis after figures by Michael Rysbrack. In this way the imagery of the exterior established the standards by which the achievements of English art contained within could be judged and would be seen to equal. But how was the reproduction of Bossuit's ]udith to be accommodated within this narrative of art in England? As far as Walpole was concerned, this was not a work by (or after) Bossuit but rather an image of 'Herodias with the head of the Baptist, by Gibbons', the Anglo-Flemish seventeenth-century sculptor Grinling Gibbons being included in Anecdotes of Painting. It was thus presented here as a work of modern English sculpture, which could be placed alongside the reproduction of a highly esteemed work of antique sculpture, the relief from the Capitoline that occupies the centre of the other door. In this case a reproduction has been invested with the authority of an original, and given an 'author-effect' in the way that happened when copies were regarded as originals in the early literature of connoisseurship.29 Nevertheless, although for Walpole the ]udith relief was not a reproduction, it was included as part of a sculptural ensemble that consisted otherwise of reproductions of various types. While some of the reliefs after the antique were identified as by Pozzo, most were for Walpole by an unknown sculptor and significant more as reduced copies of celebrated antique marbles. The originals on which the figures of ]ones, Rubens and Palladio were based, on the other hand, were of course familiar to Walpole as being by Rysbrack, who was himself following drawings by William Kent who may indeed have designed the cabinet itself for Walpole. Far from being anonymous reductions of works whose significance was lost, these ivory versions, by a carver whom Walpole included in the Anecdotes, celebrate not only those artists

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that they represent but also the sculptor who executed the large-scale originals. The use on the Walpole cabinet of these various types of ivory reproduction, including a reproduction (albeit unrecognized) of an earlier ivory, is quite unlike the way in which not only the bronze Venus but also ivories were used as an addition to the Fitzwilliam Coin Cabinet. Here, probably at the same time as the bronze was added to the cabinet proper, a stand was made to support it and this was, like the Walpole cabinet, decorated with ivory reliefs, in this case representing heads of the Caesars. Here, however, neither the authorship of the ivories themselves nor the sources from which they were derived seems to have been of any concern; the images themselves were evidently regarded not as reproductions of antique works but rather as decorative features appropriate for such a piece of furniture because of their subjects. Although the sculptural reproduction (and in particular the ivory reproduction) was being used in rather different ways in these two cases, neither the Walpole cabinet nor the Fitzwilliam cabinet shows the smallscale sculpture and its reproductions employed wholly decoratively or without regard to subject or sculptural interest. By the late eighteenth century, however, ivory reliefs were being reproduced in forms and materials that effaced many, if not most, of the characteristics of the originals and obscured rather than celebrated the names and reputations of the authors of these originals. Here we see what Rosalind Krauss has described as the 'atomization of the author into a social ... practice in which neither authorship nor originality have any function'.3 0 When in the 1770S James Tassie developed his technique of producing glass paste medallions, he not only made use of ivory reliefs by Le Marchand, as did his associate Wedgwood, but also he made reliefs that, while having many of the qualities of ivory, could be cast as multiples. 3I Although there is no evidence to suggest that the reproductions of Le Marchand's ivories by either Tassie or Wedgwood were produced on any large scale, their other compositions were increasingly being made and used to decorate furniture far less exceptional than either the Walpole or the Fitzwilliam cabinets. A century after being a highly valued item in the courtly Wunderkammer, the ivory had become available in a reproduced form to a far wider audience. The shift in the changing ways of reproducing ivories may also be seen in the increasing marginalization of small-scale sculpture during this same period. No longer did this class of sculpture merit a significant place within the hierarchies or canons of art as these were being formulated to

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accord with academic norms during the eighteenth century. Since most of these works were by northern, rather than Italian, artists, this process of marginalization has been further encouraged by the Italianate bias of most art historiography and the dependence of connoisseurs and collectors on this. Despite the publication of Pool's book and, more importantly, the efforts of Houbraken and Van Gool Van Mander's successors as biographers of Dutch artists who discuss Graat and Bossuit, sculptors such as Bossuit had become almost completely forgotten by the end of the eighteenth century. 32 Correspondingly, reproductions of ivory carvings by sculptors such as Bossuit, along with those made after other types of work by northern artists, came increasingly to serve a largely decorative function. If the reproduction of works by Italian sculptors often helped to celebrate their names and enhance their reputations by disseminating their inventions, for most northern artists, and particularly those sculptors of Kleinplastik, the reproduction of sculpture had very different consequences.

5

Naked Authority? Reproducing Antique Statuary in the English Academy~ from Lely to Haydon MARTIN POSTLE

The central focus of this essay is the role that the reproduction of classical statuary played within the academy from the first studio academies of the 1670S to the school set up by Benjamin Robert Haydon in 1815 in opposition to the Royal Academy of Arts. During that period the reproduction of three-dimensional antique statuary in twodimensional form was regarded as the bedrock of academic training. However, the authority of antique statuary within the academic framework, and the various processes of reproduction, gave rise to a series of conflicts. In the first instance, as we shall see most particularly with the example of William Hogarth, the academic reproduction of antique statuary resulted in arguments over the relative merits of 'original' antique statues and casts made from them. Second, there arose debates over the value of the inanimate classical statue versus the living model, and the authority of the antique as an embodiment of the 'ideal' as against the empirical testimony offered by anatomists. As the century progressed further, conflicts arose concerning the relative status of antique statuary, as the authority of more traditional models was challenged by the appearance of new paradigms for academic reproduction notably the Greek sculptures from the Parthenon. Objections to the veracity of certain antique sculptures, in turn, resulted in the reevaluation of methods and modes of reproduction, as artists realized that statues that they had been taught to reproduce and to revere were themselves mere reproductions of lost originals. REPRODUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE IN THE RENAISSANCE

During the Renaissance antique statuary recovered from the classical ruins of Rome, Florence, Naples and elsewhere assumed a central role in the cultural life of Western Europe. These statues included, notably, the

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Apollo Belvedere, the Venus de' Medici, the Farnese Hercules and the Laocoon. As their fame spread, the demand for their replication and reproduction grew rapidly, and by the end of the sixteenth century copies proliferated in the form of bronze and lead statuary, plaster casts, cameos and engravings. I However, while they proved immensely popular as decorative features and pointers to fashionable taste, it was the role of antique sculpture as artistic and philosophical paradigms that underpinned their value as cultural icons. Indeed, from the foundation of the earliest academies in Rome in the sixteenth century, a nucleus of antique statues informed the study of the human figure. These statues were upheld as moral and philosophical exemplars not only for their intrinsic artistic merits but also because they were perceived as the most absolute physical manifestation of the abstract concept of ideal beauty.2 As a result, casts taken from these statues were increasingly made available in academies, Giovanni Battista Armenini recommending in 1586 that art students should draw regularly from a range of casts, including 'the Laocoon, the Hercules, the Apollo, the great Torso, the Venus and the Nile'.3 However, statues were principally reproduced via prints and drawings. REPRODUCTION AND THE ACADEMIC IDEAL

During the seventeenth century the central role played by reproductions of antique statues within the academic curriculum was enshrined increasingly in theoretical texts, which sought to assert their primacy not merely on generalized aesthetic grounds but in terms of their physical properties. In the Conferences held by the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris during the 1660s the most famous examples of classical statuary were subjected to close analytical scrutiny.4 Here, the emphasis on the guiding spirit of the antique was supplanted by precise delineation. Classical statues were not simply reproduced in tonal drawings designed to replicate the three-dimensional form in twodimensions. Instead they were deliberately reduced to 'flat plans', heads and limbs anatomized and measured in order to produce definitive rules and regulations. 5 In the French academy students were no longer merely encouraged to study the antique but to defer to its absolute authority. Indeed, as has been observed, 'with the ascendancy of the French academy, the antique came to be regarded as the definitive measure, in the literal sense of the word, of beauty and perfection'.6 It was in some measure because of the reverence reserved for antique statuary that the transition from three-dimensional object to two-

Antique Statuary in the English

Academy~

from Lely to Haydon 81

dimensional representation within the academy became shrouded in an increasingly elaborate procedure and a certain degree of mystique. Indeed, from the sixteenth century onwards academic practice centred not only upon the copying of three-dimensional statuary but also on drawings and engravings made from them. There were two principal reasons for copying from two-dimensional reproductions of antique statuary: the first and most obvious was that the copying of prints allowed artists who did not have access to statues or casts to study them; second - and more significant in terms of the academic curriculum copying taught students the 'correct' way in which to interpret the antique, in terms of the viewpoint, the treatment of line, tonal values and the figure's structure. In the sixteenth century engravings after antique statuary, such as Antonio Lafreri's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae and Giovanni Battista de' Cavalieri's Antiquae Statuae Urbis Romae were intended primarily as anthologies of the most important classical works? Increasingly, however, they were also incorporated into drawing manuals, where they served as an essential component in a course of study.8 REPRODUCTION OF ANTIQUE STATUARY IN THE ENGLISH ACADEMY

Some of the earliest English academic drawings of the type promoted in continental academies are to be found in an album of drawings belonging to Dulwich College, which contains drawings made from living models and antique statuary in the studio of Sir Peter Lely.9 Among drawings after the antique are copies of the Farnese Hercules and the Apollo Belvedere. Although it was made in the 1670S, the drawing of the Apollo Belvedere shows the figure as it appeared before the restoration of its hands by Giovanni Montorsoli in the early 15 30S - indicating that it was not made from the statue or a cast but from an early engraving. 10 Similarly, the crude hatching technique employed in the Farnese Hercules suggests that it replicates a two-dimensional engraving rather than a statue. Significantly both copy-drawings reproduce the respective statues in reverse, as is the norm with engraved images. The replication of drawings and engravings after antique statuary continued to play an important role in art education in England in the eighteenth century at Sir Godfrey Kneller's Academy in Great Queen Street, the first St Martin's Lane Academy and Sir James Thornhill's Free Academy. II Among the most influential teachers during this period was the French artist Louis Cheron, who, before his arrival in England in 1695, had studied at the Academie Royale in Paris and the French

MARTIN POSTLE

Anonymous drawing, c. 1673, of the Apollo BelIJedere, red chalk on buff paper, folio 311. of Dulwich College Album (sketchbook MX xv). Dulwich College, London.

Academy in Rome. As Ilaria Bignamini has shown, Cheron's own drawings of the human figure, which were extensively copied by artists in the first St Martin's Lane Academy (which ran from 1720 to 1724), promoted a heroic and standardized rendering of the body, which ultimately relied on the authority of the antique - as interpreted, notably, by the Carracci and Raphael. 12 While not everyone approved of Cheron's drawing style (George Vertue described it as 'generally heavy'), by encouraging the replication of classical patterns of authority, he was instrumental in consolidating within the English academy the educational framework established by the French in Paris and Rome the previous century.'3 ART VERSUS NATURE: WILLIAM HOGARTH AND THE REPRODUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE

Cheron's standardized, heroic representation of the human form was not merely a stylistic preference. It related ultimately to modes of patronage and the art market in Europe, where there was a demand for large-scale

Antique Statuary in the English Academy~ from Lely to Haydon 83 historical and decorative schemes. The social, religious and economic conditions in England differed from those found in Catholic France or Italy. In England the portrait predominated; an art form which did not require close attention to the physical ideal enshrined in the antique. It was a reality recognized by William Hogarth, who took control of the reins of the second St Martin's Lane Academy in I735. Hogarth was also the first English artist to mount a challenge to the paradigmatic status of the antique, and its reproduction, within the academy. Hogarth had studied under Cheron at the first St Martin's Lane Academy. Yet he recoiled from Cheron's promotion of Continental models and patterns, and his own avowed preference for the face of a 'blooming young girl of fifteen' to the 'stony features of a venus' was in direct opposition to prevailing tenets. I4 Although he was not at heart a xenophobe, Hogarth distrusted the high premium placed on studying in Italy, claiming that 'going to study abroad is an errant farce and more likely to confound a true genious [sic] than to improve him'. IS Hogarth was also dismissive of the need to make two-dimensional reproductions from original antique statuary, asserting that for practical study purposes small-scale casts were preferable to the originals upon which they were based: the little casts of the gladiator the Laocoon or the venus etc if true copies - are still better than the large as the parts are exactly the same [-] the eye [can] comprehend them with most ease and they are more handy to place and turn about. I6

Ultimately, however, he challenged the very need to make any sort of reproduction from antique statuary, both in his theoretical writings and in his conduct at the St Martin's Lane Academy. In the first plate of his Analysis of Beauty, published in I753, Hogarth depicted the statuary yard of John Cheere, who made a good living by supplying the English market with casts after the antique. I7 Included in Hogarth's engraving were casts of the Farnese Hercules, the Belvedere Antinous, the Venus de' Medici and the Belvedere Torso. The engraving was also an allusion to the statuary yard of the classical sculptor Clito, where Socrates was in the habit of expounding his ideas on beauty. I8 Around the central image is a series of visual references to Hogarth's own theories on 'beauty', which cumulatively demonstrate his contempt for the dry, formulaic approach to the figure of post-Renaissance treatises, which propounded proportional systems based on detailed analysis of antique forms. Hogarth's antipathy towards according a pedagogical role to the antique was

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extreme. Nor was he the only English artist of his time who questioned the educational value of making reproductions from antique statuary. By the 1740S a number of those English artists who made the pilgrimage to Italy produced their own copy-drawings of antique statuary, the most notable being Richard Dalton's series of red chalk drawings of c. 1741-2, which followed the lead provided by Pompeo Batoni's 'paper museum' of drawings commissioned by an English connoisseur during the late 1720S.19 However, the very act of copying classical statues - from either full-sized figures or reduced reproductions - caused a greater awareness of their limitations as models. Giles Hussey (1710-88), who was in Italy between 1730 and 1737, made several drawings from the antique, including at least one of the Apollo Belvedere made with the aid of a camera obscura. 20 In 1745, Hussey, who had a close interest in academic theory, stated that he found and discovered the Antient [sic] grecian Sculptors had no Rule or certain regular proportions for human statue, parts, nor the whole-statue, this he said he discovered at Rome and demonstrated the fact ... The Antique statue of Herculus - the Laocoon and his two sons, and the Gladiator tho' the most perfect statue of all, yet he thinks faulty, in proportions and in the possition, and muscles. 21

The scepticism expressed by Hogarth and Hussey over the physical shortcomings of the antique can be compared with the affirmative approach of the sculptor Michael Rysbrack, who in 1744 set out to create his own classical statue of Hercules for Henry Hoare's 'Temple of Hercules' at Stourhead, Wiltshire. According to Vertue, Rysbrack selected the Farnese Hercules as 'his rule of proportion - but to make his Model standing but in a different attitude & the limbs otherways disposed'. Once he had worked out the general proportions of the figure Rysbrack 'had the bodies of several other men stood naked before him in order to form the body, Limbs, arms legs &c to chuse the most beautyfull, or the most perfect parts'. 22 The process adopted by Rysbrack was a conscious emulation of the practice of Zeuxis, the Greek artist who according to Pliny recreated the figure of Helen from the bodies of the five most beautiful women in the city of Crotona, thus producing a concrete affirmation of Plato's abstract concept of the Ideal. Of course, Rysbrack's Hercules does not form an exact parallel with Zeuxis' figure of Helen, since he was responsible merely for the adaptation rather than the actual creation of an ideal type. Even so, it set an important precedent in English academic circles, for although it drew

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 85

Michael Rysbrack, Hercules (study for the Hercules in the Stourhead Panrheon), signed and dated 'Mich. Rysbrack 1744', rerracorra. Stourhead, Wiltshire .

inspiration from the Farnese Hercules, it was not a mere reproduction or, indeed, an imitation reliant on a superimposed series of quasi-scientific proportions. It deferred to the antique as a paradigm for heroic figurative statuary, while at the same time giving rein to the individual creative impulse of the artist. It was a balance that few artists of Rysbrack's generation were able to achieve. Indeed, by the end of the 1740s, with the increasing isolation of Hogarth from his fellow members of the Academy, the pendulum began to swing much more firmly in the direction of the antique as artists attempted to establish a more rigorous and didactic sysrem of art education. WILLIAM SHIPLEY AND THE DUKE OF RICHMOND'S SCULPTURE GALLER Y

By the mid-I750S Hogarth was increasingly isolated from the membership of the St Martin's Lane Academy, most of whom wished to establish a full-blown academy along Conrinentallines. However, it was not from within St Martin's Lane that the first initiative came, but from an obscure

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Northamptonshire drawing master named William Shipley. In 1754 Shipley moved from Northampton to London, where he opened a drawing school. By the mid-eighteenth century there was a plethora of drawing masters educating sons and daughters of the gentry and aristocracy. There was also a host of drawing manuals offering correspondence courses in drawing, including the copying of antique statuary.2 3 Shipley, however, was principally concerned with the education of young people who aspired to work as professionals and who were shortly to embark on art-related apprenticeships. His confessed aim was not to train more artists but to train designers and craftsmen, to assist 'such manufactures as require Fancy and Ornament, and for which the knowledge of Drawing is absolutely necessary' .2 4 Students drew and copied from prints after the antique, after Old Master paintings and from sculpture, beginning with details - ears, nose, mouth - and then progressing towards the whole figure. In addition to his own school, in 1755 Shipley also advertised the 'Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce' through a competition for 'the best Drawings, by Boys and Girls, under the age of 14 years, and Proof of their abilities, on or before the 15 Jan. 1755'. The Royal Society of Arts - as it is now called - exists today, housed in the Adelphi, to which it moved in 1774. Shipley's own school was closely connected to the Society of Arts, his students competing for annual prizes in drawing offered there. From the beginning, the twodimensional reproduction of antique statuary formed the climax of the curriculum at Shipley's School, even though resources were at first limited. However, in the spring of 1758, Shipley's pupils were given access to the Duke of Richmond's sculpture gallery in Whitehall, where they were able to make copies of full-scale casts of antique statues rather than the reduced copies on which they had hitherto relied. The Duke of Richmond's sculpture gallery, by bringing artists face to face with exact replicas of classical statues, played a crucial role in confirming the reproduction of antique statuary as a key activity within the English academy. Here, under the tutelage of Joseph Wilton and the Florentine decorative painter Giovanni Battista Cipriani, students were taught to produce refined and carefully wrought drawings, which were then submitted for premiums offered by the Society of Arts. As Benjamin Ralph observed in 1759, it was hoped that 'the study of these most exact copies from antiques may greatly contribute toward giving young beginners of genius an early taste and idea of beauty and proportion; which when thoroughly acquired will in time appear in their several

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 87

William Parry, Borghese Gladiator, c. 1760, black chalk on paper, premium drawing. Royal Society of Arts, London.

performances' .2 5 A number of prize-winning drawings from the antique, made at the Duke of Richmond's sculpture gallery during the late 1750S and early 1760s, are preserved in the Society of Arts. They include a study of the Borghese Gladiator by William Parry (1742-91), who was later to study under Sir Joshua Reynolds. Parry's drawing, which was awarded a premium in 1760, is executed in black chalk and employs a firm, c1oseknit cross-hatching, typifying the Neo-c1assical principles adhered to in the Duke of Richmond's sculpture gallery. THE PHILOSOPHICAL ROLE OF REPRODUCTION IN THE ACADEMY

The reproduction of the antique figure within the academy was perceived as a means of helping the artist to gain an understanding of the idealized human physique. Reproduction of classical statuary also formed an aspect of the philosophical investigation of the antique. In 1765 Joseph Wright exhibited Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight. The painting depicts three men contemplating a reduced cast of the Borghese Gladiator, in the presence of a two-dimensional representation of the statue. David Solkin has suggested that the image may be perceived within a framework of Lockean epistemology - as the light shed upon the

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Joseph Wright, Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, exhibited at the Society of Artists, r765, oil on canvas. Private collection.

object allows sight, 'and sight in its turn enables enlightenment' .2.6 The Gladiator, its reduced copy and the drawing made from it generate knowledge. Imitation, as Solkin states, 'becomes the mechanism whereby individuals learn to pattern themselves after models of perfection in life and in nature, as well as the arts'.2.7 The moral and intellectual benefits of reproducing antique statuary, suggested by Wright's painting of 1765, were spelt out explicitly the following decade by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In his third Discourse, given at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1771, Reynolds stressed that 'mere imitation', the replication of particular specimens of antique statuary, was not enough. Nor was the Ideal encapsulated in anyone classical statue. 'It is not', he stated, 'in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the Apollo; but in that form which is taken from them all, and which partakes equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the Hercules'.2.8 In order to arrive at an understanding of the Ideal- the abstracted 'central form' - Reynolds instructed students that they should make copies of a variety of classical statues, 'models of that perfect form ... which an artist would prefer as supremely beautiful, who spent his whole life in that single contemplation'. In

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 89 Wright's painting the emphasis had been on the 'pleasure' of contemplation. 29 In Reynolds' Discourse the stress was on the pain induced by hard labour, industry and discipline. The rewards lay less in the process than in the results of prolonged study: significantly it was this ethos that informed the routine of the Royal Academy schools. THE REPRODUCTION OF ANTIQUE STATUARY IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY

The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in December 1768. Strict rules were laid down for study in the Plaister Academy: There shall be Weekly, set out in the Great Room, One or more Plaister Figures by the Keeper, for the Students to draw after, and no Student shall presume to move the said Figures out of the said Places where they have been set by the Keeper, without his leave first obtained for that Purpose. When any student hath taken possession of a Place in the Plaister Academy, he shall not be removed out of it, till the Week in which he hath taken it is expired. The Plaister Academy, shall be open every Day (Sundays and Vacation times excepted) from Nine in the Morning till Three in the Afternoon. 3 0

The Plaister Academy, like the Life Class, was an exclusively male preserve, and although there was no rule forbidding the Academy's two female members (Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser) from studying there, it was tacitly accepted that they would not avail themselves of the opportunity.3 I In 1770 the Swedish artist, Elias Martin, who was then enrolled as a student in the schools, exhibited A Picture of the Royal Plaister Academy, the only known representation of the Cast Room of the Royal Academy, in its first location - a dingy print warehouse in Pall Mal1. 32 In Martin's painting a small group of young students cluster around a group of classical casts, including Meleager, the Callipygian Venus, Mercury, the so-called Cannibal and Michelangelo's Bacchus. Standing, above and to the left, is an Academician (known as a 'Visitor') whose task it was to supervise the quality and 'correctness' of the students' copies from the statuary before them. Just discernible to his right, in the shadows, is an older figure, probably the Keeper of the schools, George Michael Moser. While Moser was in overall control of the schools, it was the role of the Visitor to 'attend the schools by rotation, each a month, to set the figures, to examine the performances of the students, to advise and instruct them, to endeavour to form their taste, and turn their attention towards that branch of the Arts for which they shall seem to have the aptest disposition'.33 As one would expect, the atmosphere is one of quiet industry

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Elias Martin, A Picture of the Royal Plaister Academy, signed and dated Royal Academy of Fine Arcs, Stockholm.

1770,

oil on canvas.

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 91 and obedience, the aura of reverence for the casts stressed by the dramatic lighting and their attenuated form. Martin's Cast Room forms a compelling contrast with ]oseph Wright's Academy by Lamplight (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection), painted the previous year. In contrast with the pedagogic environment of Martin's painting, which depicts a specific location, Wright's imaginary Academy shows a group of young men (as opposed to boys), unrestrained and at ease, in the presence of a semidraped, female classical statue - the Borghese Nymph with a Shell. 34 As Solkin has remarked, 'this statue, both woman and aesthetic object, acts as an agent of refinement, as a source of pleasure which elevates and softens, channelling the passions of the young into love and social feeling'.35 In other words, the students are not there merely to copy the statue before them or to make a correct reproduction of it, but to appreciate its intrinsic beauty. In 1769 Wright had declined to join the Royal Academy, pinning his loyalties instead to the more broadly based and ostensibly egalitarian Society of Artists. Indeed, according to Solkin, Wright's Academy by Lamplight was a visual expression of his views on art education and of his ideology on social relations. And even though Hogarth would no doubt have disapproved heartily of Wright's promotion of the antique figure in the Academy, both artists shared a fundamental belief in the free association of artists as equals, unlike the students in the Royal Academy schools who, says Solkin, 'submit to the discipline of an authority personified by the teachers and enshrined in the classical masterpieces that are being commended to their attention'.3 6 From an academic viewpoint, the image is subversive, promoting an imaginative response to the antique, where original and imaginative production is placed before complacent and obedient reproduction. The authority of the antique remained absolute during the decades following the foundation of the Royal Academy. An anonymous painting of c. 1780-3 (Royal Academy of Arts) shows exactly how the Plaister Academy was organized following the completion of William Chambers' New Somerset House in 1780.37 Here casts are illuminated by oil-lamps with large triple reflectors set on high standards. Student's easels are illuminated by individual oil lamps and reflectors, their work visible to the Visitor who presides over the activities from a lectern situated by the entrance. A screen has been erected along the wall behind the Belvedere Torso - a practice common in Italian academies. 38 J.M.W. Turner's black-and-red chalk drawing, executed during the mid-I790S, is typical

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].M.W. Turner, Belvedere Torso, mid-I790S, black-and-red chalk on brown paper heightened with white. Victoria and Albert Museum, London .

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Academy~

from Lely to Haydon 93

of the highly finished reproductions of antique casts produced by students in supervised sessions at the Academy. Turner, who enrolled as a student in the schools in December 1789, attended the Plaister Academy on 137 separate occasions during his studentship.39 From these sessions only eighteen drawings of casts are known. However, given that it could take at least a week to produce one drawing, the relative paucity of studies may relate to the painstaking manner in which they were made rather than any substantial loss or destruction of material. ANTIQUE STATUARY VERSUS THE LIVING MODEL

Students could spend as many as seven years copying antique casts in the Plaister Academy. Inevitably it had a profound effect on the way in which they subsequently copied the living figure. lames Northcote, himself a student at the Royal Academy Schools during the 1770s, recalled: 'The stillness, the artificial light, the attention to what they are about, the publicity even, draws off any idle thoughts and they regard the figure and point out its defects or beauties precisely as if it were clay or marble'.40 The inadequacy of a system of art education that served to use the antique to regulate life drawing had already been articulated by Chardin, a student at the Academie Royale some fifty years earlier: We begin to draw eyes, mouths, noses and ears after patterns, then feet and hands. After having crouched over our portfolios for a long time, we're placed in front of the Hercules or the Torso . .. Then, after having spent entire days and even nights, by lamplight, in front of an immobile, inanimate nature, we're presented with living nature, and suddenly the work of all the preceding years seems reduced to nothing. 41

It is not surprising, perhaps, that Chardin's subsequent career was centred on still-life and genre painting. In England, and in other European academies, the model was perceived as a piece of animated antique statuary, even when the individual palpably failed to live up to the heroic ideal. In 1787, for example, a former model at the Dublin Academy was hanged. According to a contemporary newspaper report, although the man was a convicted murderer, 'the figure of this wretched culprit had been incomparable. It was between the Hercules and the Gladiator, and perhaps for size and symmetry in all its parts little inferior to the Apollo Belvedere' .4 2 The male model occasionally fell short of the antique ideal. The female model, however, presented a more fundamental paradox. The Venus de' Medici was upheld by her adherents as a paradigm of purity and female physical perfection. In 1770 ]oseph Nollekens -

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following the example set by Gerard Audran's Les proportions du corps humain measurees sur les plus belles figures de l' antiquite of I683 - made his own series of measured drawings of the 'real Statue of the Venus De Medici' in Florence. The following decade, his fellow Academician Benjamin West produced a highly finished drawing of the living model in the attitude of the Venus de' Medici, which was subsequently engraved as an 'Academical Study' of Eve. In 1794 West, who had succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy two years earlier, reaffirmed the close links between the reproduction of classical statuary and the copying of the human figure. 'Were the young artist', he supposed, 'to represent the peculiar excellencies of woman would he not bestow on the figure a general smooth, and round fullness of form, to indicate the softness of character; bend the head gently forward, in the common attitude of modesty; and awaken our ideas of the slow and graceful movements peculiar to the sex, by limbs free from that masculine and sinewy expression which is the consequence of active exercise? - and such is the Venus de Medici'.43 In the Royal Academy female models were often placed in the attitude of the Venus de' Medici. In the mid-I830S Turner, then a Visitor in the schools, brought the living model and the antique statue together in the same room, placing 'the Venus de' Medici beside a female in the first period of youthful womanhood' .44 Yet, as students were acutely aware, the majority of living incarnations of Venus presented at the Academy were 'fallen' women (it being considered by both parties that their willingness to pose was in itself a form of prostitution).45 Only the timehonoured authority of the antique sanctioned the representation of such women, whose bodies students could worship in idealized attitudes but whose minds and morals they must consider as corrupt. Already by the I770S doubts were creeping in over the authority of the antique in the curriculum of the Royal Academy. Among the first to voice dissent was the Academy's Professor of Anatomy, William Hunter, who raised the issue in his lectures to the assembled body. 'In most pictures', he noted, 'there appears to me to be more composure, more inactivity, in the figure than we see in real life'. Moreover, he criticized artists for treating the living figure in their drawings like a classical cast: Most of the Ancient Statues which they copy and are taught to admire are figures in the quiet way of standing, sitting or lying down. And when they study Life or Nature itself, they see it commonly in the same inactive state ... Is it unreasonable then to suppose that such easy and confined habits may introduce a quiet and inactive manner in figures and composition?46

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 95 And while Hunter conceded that 'grace' and 'beauty' the very qualities embodied in antique statuary - were important, he stated that 'there is besides animation, spirit, fire, force and violence, which make a considerable part of the most interesting scenes' While the majority of members of the Academy continued to defer to the authority of the antique, there were moves to pursue alternatives. We can look here at just two representative examples. CHALLENGES TO ORTHODOX ACADEMIC PATTERNS OF REPRODUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE

In r800 ]oseph Nollekens, a founder member of the Academy and teacher in the schools, made a clay statue of a Seated Venus. Rather than relying upon the repertory of classical attitudes, or even attempting to reproduce a piece of classical statuary, N ollekens sculpted the figure directly from his model as she sat in the studio putting on her clothes. 'It was the opinion of most artists', stated his pupil ]. T. Smith, 'that many of the parts of this figure could have been much improved; they thought the ankles unquestionably too thick; and that to have given it an air of the antique, the right thigh wanted flesh to fill up the ill-formed nature which Nollekens had strictly copied'.48 Nollekens' modello was admired by the Earl of Carlisle, who intended to have a marble statue made from it for display at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire. However, owing to the objections of his family, it remained in Nollekens' studio until his death, when it was bought by the Earl of Egremont. 49 While the Earl of Carlisle's family had qualms about Nollekens' indelicate departure from the antique, he was vindicated by the Earl of Egremont, who when ordering a marble statue to be made from the clay modello, instructed the sculptor (J. C. F. Rossi) that 'no alterations whatever, not even an improvement upon the model, should be attempted'.5 0 A second, more extreme, example involves William Blake. Around 1780 Blake, then a student in the Royal Academy schools, made an unorthodox life drawing. The face and torso were clearly based on the features and form of a male figure. Curiously, however, the buttocks and legs were copied from the Venus de' Medici. The drawing was possibly conceived in a spirit of rebellion against the regime imposed by the Royal Academy.51 At a deeper level, the drawing foreshadowed Blake's own idiosyncratic attitude towards the antique, which surfaced more explicitly in 18°9, when he argued that Greek and Roman antique sculptures were copies of lost religious art of the Old Testament. Blake subsequently visualized his viewpoint in an engraving of The Laocoon as

MARTIN POSTLE

William Blake, Naked Youth, Seen from the Side, c. 1779""80, black chalk on paper. British Museum, London.

]ehovah with Satan and Adam, which he had based on a copy of a cast he had made in the Royal Academy.5~ It may not have been entirely coincidental that at the very time Blake was questioning the veracity of ancient classical statuary, the arch-conservative, and future President of the Royal Academy, Martin Archer Shee observed that the 'general (and it is to be feared) growing disregard of that purity of form and character, of which the Greeks have supplied us with the most impressive examples, is alarming to the interests of taste'.53 Even so, it was not Blake - then regarded as a peripheral figure - who posed the real threat to the established authority of antique statuary but the importation into England by Lord Elgin of new and unfamiliar pieces of classical sculpture recently removed from the Parthenon in Athens. REPRODUCTION AND THE PARTHENON SCULPTURES

In 1807 the young Benjamin Robert Haydon expressed his concern at the differences he observed when making drawings from the antique cast and the living model: In my model I saw the back vary according to the actions of the arms. In the antique these variations were not so apparent. Was nature or the antique wrong?

Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon

97

Benjamin Robert Haydon, South Metope XXVlI, r809, black chalk on paper. British Museum, London (Department of Prints and Drawings ),

Why did not the difference of shape from difference of action appear so palpably in the antique as in nature? This puzzled me to death. 54

For Haydon the puzzle was solved shortly afterwards when he began to draw intensively from the Elgin Marbles, then housed inauspiciously in a shed in Park Lane. At the time a number of connoisseurs, notably Richard Payne Knight, dismissed the Elgin Marbles as Roman copies from the time of Hadrian. 55 To his credit, Haydon was among the first to proclaim them as original Greek sculptures of the highest order. 'J felt', he recalled, 'as if a divine truth had blazed inwardly upon my mind, and I knew that they would at last rouse the art of Europe from its slumber of darkness'.5 6 Unlike the classical statues at the Royal Academy schools, which Haydon dismissed as crude copies, the sculptures from the Parthenon represented at first hand 'the most heroic style of art combined with all the details of actual life' Y And while his model bore little resemblance to the outmoded classical casts he had previously studied, he possessed, according to Haydon, 'that extraordinary character perceived in the reclining figure [the Theseus] of the Elgin Marbles' .5 8 Haydon continued to make drawings of the Elgin Marbles over the next few years, pasting many of the studies into two enormous

MARTIN POSTLE

scrapbooks (now preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum). Initially Haydon drew from the Elgin Marbles for his own benefit. However, by 1815 they had become a key component in an integrated system of art education which he offered until 1823 as an alternative to the jaded curriculum of the Royal Academy.59 At Haydon's school students did not begin by making studies from the antique but by undergoing an intensive course in anatomy - including practical dissection. From there, they progressed to life drawing. Only when they knew the mechanics of the human figure and could draw from the living model were they allowed to make drawings from antique statuary. Thus, the Parthenon sculptures formed the climax of their education. In 1817 Haydon's students, including the Landseer brothers and William Bewick, were permitted for the first time to draw from the Elgin Marbles - now housed in the British Museum. 'The astonishment of the people', stated Haydon, 'was extraordinary; they would not believe they were Englishmen; they continually asked if they were Italians. Their cartoons (drawn the full size) of the Fates, the Theseus and the Illissus literally made a noise in Europe' .60 Indeed, so impressed was Goethe that he ordered a set of drawings by Haydon's students for his house in Weimar. 6I Aside from Haydon, one of greatest proponents of the Parthenon sculptures was not a connoisseur or a professional artist but the anatomist Charles Bell, who was already giving instruction in anatomy to Haydon, David Wilkie and other young artists. 62 Significantly, Bell, the most brilliant anatomist of his generation, was overlooked by the Royal Academy in 1808 when a new Professor of Anatomy was to be appointed. Instead they selected the conservative Anthony Carlisle, who had suggested the previous year that since the Greeks had not studied anatomy it was of limited use to contemporary artists. 63 Anatomy was feared principally because it posed a threat to the status quo, and more especially to the hegemony of the antique over the living model. Already in 1804 the Academy's President, Benjamin West, had admonished students, informing them that proficiency was 'not to be gained by rushing impatiently to the School of the Living Model; correctness of form and taste was first to be sought by an attentive study of the Grecian figures'.6 4 But while the Academy upheld the authority of the antique and its opponents laid new emphasis upon the empirical value of anatomy, few attempted to reconcile these contending viewpoints. Among those who attempted to do so was the sculptor John Flaxman, who compiled (but did not publish) a treatise entitled

Antique Statuary in the English

Academy~

from Lely to Haydon 99

'Motion & Equilibrium of the Human Body'. Here Flaxman, who made copies of the Borghese Gladiator rotated through space, used antique statuary not as a paradigm for the perfect human form but as a vehicle for studying the body in motion. While accepting that classical sculptors had not studied dissection, Flaxman believed, from the evidence of statues such as the Borghese Gladiator and the Wrestlers that 'they must have made amends for that defect by a more diligent study of the living figure under all its forms & circumstances as adjusted by Philosophy and Geometry' .65 CODA

Despite the doubts cast on the authority of the antique during the early years of the nineteenth century, the classical tradition continued to be upheld as the bedrock of academic training in England, as students flocked to draw from the antique in the newly built galleries of the British Museum and elsewhere. 66 Yet by the end of the century its influence was undermined, the cast consigned increasingly to the lumber room, or simply discarded as more adventurous students looked to the transient values of the modern world for inspiration. The Greek revival of the nineteenth century was, seen in retrospect, little more than a temporary reprieve, as one pattern of classical authority was substituted for another. And while he did not know what lay ahead, lames Northcote realized, by the late r820s, that the future of the antique was far from secure: We are tired of the Antique ... The world wants something new and will have it. No matter whether it is better or worse, if there is but an infusion of new life and spirit, it will go down to posterity.67

6 Craft~

Commerce and the Contradictions of Anti-capitalism: Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baf(ier NEIL MCWILLIAM

Some time around 1900 the Paris firm of Siot-Decauville, one of France's largest bronze founders and retailers, offered for sale a selection of ornamental tableware by the sculptor Jean Baffier (1851-1920). Available either in gilded bronze or pewter, they appear at first sight unexceptional, if rather conservative, examples of the period's enthusiasm for natural forms in the applied arts, an attraction more readily associated with the bravura organicism of Emile Galle and fin-de-siecle Art nouveau. I Baffier's rather solid goblets, bowls and pitchers clearly announce their indebtedness to such floral motifs as blossoms, leaves and seed pods, a source of inspiration exploited during the period by manufacturers such as the silversmith Christofle, whose vases modelled on artichokes, celery and thistles were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1900.2Yet the replicas marketed by Siot-Decauville derive from a far more ambitious decorative project, which occupied Baffier for almost thirty years and could be considered the fullest cultural expression of a complex ideological programme, which made the sculptor one of the most notorious artistic personalities associated with the nationalist right. Indeed, these few ornamental pieces, commercially reproduced and circulated within a well-established network of capitalist commodity exchange, vividly expose the contradictions of a nostalgic philosophy of craft central to Baffier's anti-modernist myth of national tradition and natural order. The very act of commercial multiplication, implying an alienation of the labour process from the originating creative impulse, undercuts Baffier's fundamental belief in the integrity of craft, even as it holds out the only real possibility of economies of scale capable of fulfilling his commitment to integrate art into everyday life. Baffier's contemporary notoriety owed much to his self-proclaimed status as an ouvrier-sculpteur engaged in a tireless crusade to restore

Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffler

t.l

..

J tOn... ~I

Jean Baffier, Ornamental tableware advertised in rhe Siot-Decauville sales catalogue, undated but after 1900. Mediatheque Equinoxe, Chareauroux.

Jean Baffier, Elements from the table setting, undated contemporary photograph of plaster models. Archives du Cher, Bourges.

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regard for native identity within French art. His artisanal persona was enhanced by a family background and professional training from which sympathetic commentators embroidered a highly coloured myth, endowing Baffier with an ethnic authenticity far removed from the cosmopolitan values of the Paris art world. 3 Born in 1851 to a family of poor sharecroppers, Baffier grew up in a peasant community in the Berry before training as a mason in the local town of Nevers. His apprenticeship on the restoration of Nevers Cathedral in the early 1870S, together with his laborious and single-minded pursuit of independent recognition while working as a sculptor's assistant in Paris, nurtured Baffier's reputation as a maztre-imagier sustained by an instinctive sympathy for the land. Essentially self-trained, Baffier repudiated the protocols of the academy as inimical to France's native artistic temper, extolling instead a medieval craft tradition from which he claimed to draw both creative and ideological inspiration. Within a few years of his Salon debut in 1880, Baffier had won a significant following for a body of work, which, his supporters argued, pointed the way towards a vigorous alternative to the tested - and increasingly tired - formulae of academic sculpture. Though he produced a series of full-sized monumental figures, commemorating national heroes as diverse as Louis XI and Jean-Paul Marat, it was his more distinctive rural subjects that attracted greatest acclaim. In a series of busts, low reliefs and statuettes, Baffier celebrated the community in which he had been born, inviting critical comparisons with Gustave Courbet and Jean-Fran~ois Millet with his portrayals of demure peasant girls and rugged farm-hands redolent of 'la vraie race fran~aise'.4 Insofar as such work has attracted historians' interest in recent years, it has been as a conspicuous instance of late nineteenth-century sculptural naturalism, tempered by a weakness for picturesque effect typical of portrayals of rural life in the Salons of the Third Republic. 5 Yet this commitment to peasant themes cannot be dissociated from a militant nationalism, which not only shaped Baffier's entire sculptural practice but also inspired his often controversial political interventions and his vociferous support for the preservation of regional identity.6 From his failed attempt to assassinate a local depute in 1886 to his unsuccessful candidature as a nationalist for the National Assembly in 1902, Baffier was never far from the headlines. His often provocative behaviour and violent polemics coloured his artistic output, and encouraged him to undertake monumental commissions carrying overtly chauvinistic or factional implications? It coloured too an aesthetic philosophy

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profoundly hostile to the cultural mainstream and the capitalist economy that sustained it. Sharing a hybrid nationalist socialism with many of the leading personalities on the radical right, Baffier advocated an artistic practice in which a revivified guild system would re-establish the sculptor as a vital servant to the community and its collective beliefs. Such a vision could scarcely have been further removed from the market for serial sculpture, which had emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as perhaps the most intensively capitalized area of French artistic production. Since the introduction of new materials and technological processes in the 1830S and 1840S, demand for reproductive sculpture and decorative items had mushroomed, creating a highly competitive market controlled by a small number of specialist foundries. 8 Companies such as those of Barbedienne, Christofle and Siot-Decauville had come to dominate the manufacture and sale of reproductions, targeting a broad potential public by means of shrewd variations in scale, materials and price. Their increasingly professional marketing techniques, involving the development of a network for exhibition and retailing with printed catalogues and advertising, had been emulated by a handful of sculptors who had gone into business on their own account. Following the early example of the animalier Antoine Barye, sculptors such as Carpeaux and Fremiet had determined to cut out the middleman and exploit the economic potential of their work to the ful1. 9 Participating in events such as industrial exhibitions and World Fairs - both regarded by Baffier as epitomizing contemporary cultural depravity - such artists operated as entrepreneurs, employing promotional assistants and tailoring their work specifically to anticipated demand. For Baffier, such strategies demonstrated the corrupt alienation of the artist and his work in the modern world. Though his own intervention in the decorative arts was intended in some measure to combat such trends, the commercialization of individual items from his repertoire demonstrates the fragile basis of his enterprise. Potential customers leafing through the Siot-Decauville sales catalogue may well have recognized Baffier's wares as deriving from a monumental table setting made of pewter and copper, elements of which had regularly featured in the Salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts since 1892. In its definitive form, the setting was to comprise seventy individual pieces, displayed on a specially designed oak table sixteen metres long. Regarded by the sculptor as a domestic evocation of the natural landscape, the setting was dominated by eight candelabra, modelled on trees, and by a series of five vases and tureens, which blended references to

NEIL MCWILLiAM

1°4

Vt.t t d'C'l'!H.1ll bl c dl!l'tltt lJll~l',

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Jean Baffier, Drawing of table setting,

1911.

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Musee Municipal Frederic Blandin, Nevers.

Jean Baffler, Partial display of table setting, undated contemporary photograph, location unknown. Archives du Cher, Bourges.

traditional costume, natural forms and rural crafts, all drawn from Baffier's home region on the borders of the Berry, Nievre and Bourbonnais in central France. Smaller items, such as sugar bowls, salt cellars and jugs, were inspired by poppy flowers, broom blossoms, rose seeds and other plants, their plain, swelling forms often decorated with small animals, such as frogs and lizards, or with more fanciful motifs, like the winged fairies whose thrusting heads serve as handles for a sugar bowl.

Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffier

1°5

Peasant types, such as winnowers and young girls carrying baskets to market, populate this miniature evocation of rural France, lending the ensemble what sympathetic critics regarded as a 'highly refined and sumptuous rusticity'. IO Completion of the setting was a slow and laborious process, exacerbated after 1900 by the state's increasing unwillingness to support an artist whose extremist politics apparently thrived on public controversy. Though Paris city council had purchased a number of important elements from the project between 1895 and 1903, Baffier had to rely heavily on private patrons to pursue his plans. I I Petitioning the Undersecretary of State for Fine Arts for 10,000 francs to underwrite completion of the last three elements in the setting failed in 1913, and Baffier had to wait four more years before a private client could be found to commission the works. I2 Throughout the period, Baffier used both the Salon and exhibitions in provincial centres such as Bourges and Nevers to give a foretaste of the overall effect, I3 but met with increasing critical indifference to a project that wore thin through overfamiliarity. Baffier's recourse to organic forms and rustic themes had excited significant interest in the 1890S and 1900s, when a number of commentators singled out his fastidious naturalism as a solution to what many saw as an impasse in the decorative arts. I4 Eclecticism, together with a deterioration in craft skills, was frequently blamed by critics for bringing about a decline in France's former supremacy in the applied arts. I5 The rediscovery of nature was extolled not only as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, but also as reconnecting with a native tradition, which had reached its apogee during the Middle Ages. Nationalist critics in particular inclined to such a decorative genealogy as an effective counter to the alien influence and formal stylization of Art nouveau. I6 In contrast to the effetely attenuated sophistication of what Baffier himself airily dismissed as 'style munichois', the stolid simplicity of his table setting was seen to possess a moral power in which form and material signified the unspoilt integrity of 'la France profonde'. As the critic Vincent Dctharc commented in 1911: Baffier expresses wonderfully the nobility and poetry of familiar things; beneath his celebrated fingers, simple, everyday utensils take on a radiant beauty, giving some idea of the progress that applied art could make if the lessons of such a master were followed. I7

Though Baffier attracted favourable notice for leading the revival of pewter in the decorative arts, I8 the massiveness of his forms and the

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NEIL MCWILLIAM

solidity of his materials quickly alienated critics for whom his selfconscious rusticity, rather than offering an exciting way forward, merely represented an anachronistic parochialism. 19 By the time of the retrospective display of decorative works mounted by the Musee Galliera following the sculptor's death in 1920, his tenacious regionalism and militant resistance to more modern developments in the applied arts were widely dismissed as 'ancient history'.20 Stylistically, of course, this was largely true: the initial expectations for Baffier's naturalism had certainly not been fulfilled in the paths pursued by French domestic design in the early twentieth century.2I Yet on a more fundamental ideological level, too, Baffier's work and the more ambitious project of which it formed part had been eclipsed by the profound renegotiation in understandings of French national identity and the role of tradition that occurred in the years around the First World War. As originally conceived, the table setting was to form the centrepiece of a specially designed dining room in which every feature recalled national tradition and the apparently unchanging rhythms of rural life. A monumental fireplace, first exhibited in its definitive form in 1898 under the title 'Pour la tradition celtique', was to provide the focus for a lowrelief frieze extending around the room in an unfolding narrative of agrarian tasks. The fireplace itself, modelled on fifteenth-century originals in the Palais jacques-Coeur in Bourges, mobilized autobiographical references in a sequence of low reliefs centring on a scene of grape harvesting, which sat above a portrait of the sculptor's mother embedded in the chimney-breast, her lower limbs apparently roasting over the flames in the hearth below. Colossal male caryatids, modelled after Baffier's brother Baptiste and a local quarryman, flanked the fireplace, supporting the imposing structure, which was surmounted by a small statuette of the artist himself playing a hurdy-gurdy. Specially designed pieces of furniture, including a series of oak buffets to house the table setting and a rather bizarre coupling of a washbasin and clock, punctuated the frieze and took up the dominant decorative motif of leaves and branches found on the chimney-piece. 22 Finally, landscape murals by the sculptor's colleague Louis Boucher were planned to decorate the walls. Taken as a whole, the project was presented as a virtual shrine, not only to the rituals and rhythms of country life, but also to the racial identity of the Frenchor, more specifically, the Berrichon - peasantry, in whom Baffier invested an atavistic fantasy of ethnic essentialism. As the sculptor proclaimed in an elaborate explanation, which accompanied the display of a reduced version of the project in the 1898 Salon:

Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffier

1°7

Jean Baflier, 'Pour la tradition celtique', monumental fireplace, as shown at the SNBA Salon of 1898, reproduced in Revue des Arts Decorati(s, XXVIII {I898}, p. 2.00.

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NEIL MCWILLIAM

This dining room [has been] conceived and designed to exalt the dignity of labour in its hardships, its joys and pleasures, and to glorify the worker who piously cultivates the fields following the precepts of aryan religion and the noble traditions of the Celts, which command respect for ancestral achievement [l'oeuvre ancestrale], family education, pride in tradition, the cult of heroes and the careful and meditative study of the laws, forces and beauties of nature. 23

From the smallest candle-holder to the vast fireplace, Baffler's whole conception was dictated by a commitment to nature as the fundamental principle of artistic and social renewal. On a social level, he proclaimed militant opposition to capitalist industrialization, which he vociferously argued was the main tool in a cosmopolitan and Semitic plot to undermine the nation, which depended on the reassertion of apparently timeless rural values for its salvation. Aesthetically, this renewal depended on artists immersing themselves in nature, looking to the fields and hedgerows of France as a corrective to the perverting influence of foreign styles, which had ostensibly eclipsed the native spirit in the arts and crafts since the Renaissance. As the sculptor was to claim in r895: To create, one must be a part of life and movement, in other words, in the midst of everything which vibrates. One must bow one's head before the great work of God - Nature - adore it in its infinite grandeur, embracing both heaven and earth; one must kneel before the tiny blade of grass and contemplate the smallest flower lovingly and at length. If one is touched by the splendours of creation, if one is moved by the mysterious relationship between beings and things, one can then attempt to produce a work of art. 24

This commitment was pitted against currents in the decorative arts, particularly associated with the English Arts and Crafts Movement and the cosmopolitanism of Art nouveau, which Baffler dismissed as a distortion of nature consequent on a pervasive moral corruption. Representing himself as a lone crusader struggling to overcome foreign artiflce with native values rooted in the land, Baffler was contemptuous of dominant fashion in the arts: Attempting to make a pewter salt-cellar inspired by a tiny wild is a crime of intellectual treason. If, on the other hand, I had been prey to superior intellectualism, I would have been off to the catacombs in Montrouge to fetch a cartful of bones to scrub, polish, varnish and stick together to make anglosemitic furnishings, in the style of William Morris, and I would have exhibited these inspiring objects at M. Bing's Art Nouveau. That way I would have been fashionable and on the path which leads to the Pantheon. 25

It was in his localism that Baffier invested claims to a moral and aesthetic integrity at odds with his competitors' geographical and temporal rootlessness. His aggressive xenophobia, acted out politically by his

Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffler

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participation in a number of nationalist and anti·Semitic organizations, fed off a fanatical devotion to his own provincial roots. This patriotic commitment to the petit pays inspired a variety of initiatives designed to preserve local folk culture and coloured much of Baffier's artistic practice. Decisive in the sculptor's understanding of the table setting as an essentially ethical work was its formal indebtedness to the vegetation and traditional dress of his native Berry. In practical terms, however, the floral motifs selected are scarcely unique to the region, while elements of traditional dress are subsumed and neutralized in the overall decorative conception of the scheme. Nonetheless, for the closely knit circle of Baffier's supporters, the sculptor's privileged contact with the land was credited with redefining the language of decorative art. In the words of Edouard Achard, one of Baffier's most faithful admirers: He always draws his inspiration from the flowers of France, deriving new ideas from their sustained study which renew art. He never applies motifs to current forms. The motif is indistinguishable from the form, deriving from it and forming a whole. Hence the superiority of his work. 26

For Baffier, keeping faith with the land and keeping faith with the past were one and the same, both aesthetically and ideologically. In this regard the Middle Ages represented an ideal of social order and artistic probity from which the sculptor claimed to draw strength. Explicitly repudiating Gothic revivalism as a dereliction of the artist's duty to create for the present, Baffier nonetheless presented himself as uniquely capable of achieving a renewal in French art by virtue of his privileged understanding of the past. It was in this sense that Achard could claim of his work that it represented 'the art of the nineteenth century, of our time, borrowing nothing from previous centuries while continuing the national tradition of a truly Gallic art'. 27 Central to such a project was the revival of artisanal practices of cooperative labour within the arts, ostensibly restoring the creative integrity of the craftworker and consolidating the artist's status as an integral member of society free from the corrosive threat of capitalist exploitation. It was in the guild system of workers' corporations, suppressed by the Revolution in 1791, that Baffler invested his hopes not only for artistic renewal but also for a more general rediscovery of national values, which would repudiate a parliamentary regime founded on Jacobin centralization. It was this ideological programme, federalist in ambition and profoundly reactionary in intent, that distinguishes Baffier's vision of labour from the socialist associationism of his bete noire William Morris

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and aligns him more closely with the conservative disciples of the midnineteenth-century sociologist Frederic Le Play. In his artistic work, and in his means of organizing it, Baffier set out to challenge an increasingly pervasive consumerist economy, which he blamed for the progressive eradication of regional tradition and for a spreading moral debility rooted in the dilution of national identity. In the arts, as within the economy more generally, he maintained, creeping uniformity jeopardized the survival of racial purity and cultural distinctiveness: Today, those who 'control the arts' in France, since they are of foreign origin, set out to conceal, distort and destroy the varied characteristics of our National Genius in order to provide a market for exotic products. And little by little we shall see the disappearance of those noble artisans and local artists whose works will soon be nothing more than a vague memory in minds atrophied by the education and administrative instruction of an oligarchic State whose goal is to create docile and compliant slaves or parasites. 28

Baffier presented his own studio practice as a response to this threat. Working with two assistants, France Briffault and Paul Orleans, the sculptor claimed to have revived the artisanal spirit of the medieval guilds. In producing the table setting, for example, Baffier himself concentrated on the conception of individual pieces and the production of a plaster model, while Briffault was responsible for chasing work on the finished object. The completed ensemble was thus conceived as uniting the moral uplift implicit in its rural inspiration with an integrity of manufacture invested in its corporate production. As the artist claimed in I909: 'Since the fall of our glorious Corporations in the arts and crafts, I am the only French sculptor who has produced within the useful arts, which are the only true arts, a series of works which share a harmonic relationship rooted in a doctrinal base'. 29 It was such a programme that inspired the sculptor's attempts to revive corporate forms, both in Paris and in the provinces, as a catalyst for the rehabilitation of craft skills. As early as I890 he sought municipal support for an abortive attempt to re-establish faIence production in Nevers, one of its traditional centres. 3D Eleven years later, Bourges and Paris provided the setting for projects to establish corporations of artisans and artworkers. The Bourges initiative quickly collapsed, the victim - according to Baffier - of an alliance of local freemasons and Jews. In Paris, however, the scheme briefly flourished, thanks in part to the institutional support provided by one of the leading groupings on the radical right, the Ligue de la Patrie fran~aise, an organization in which Baffier played a prominent role. The sculptor used his authority as

Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffler

III

President of the Ligue in the Plaisance district of Paris to establish an association, which brought together a range of local artworkers who shared Baffier's nationalist outlook. Not only did the grouping organize exhibitions under the Ligue's auspices and promote competitions for nationalist regalia, but also it played a central role in decorating the Maison commune, which Baffier masterminded as the Ligue's local headquarters and which opened in September 1900. The Maison commune provides some indication of the ideology that underlay the table service and the projected dining room, which Baffier conceived as its setting. Ideally, the sculptor intended the room to accommodate a workers' corporation in a nation rejuvenated by its rediscovery of racial purity, its repudiation of industrial capitalism and its recovery of provincial freedoms. Such a model conceived of the nation as an extended family, united organically in a decentralized federation held together by a single, powerful leader. This anti-democratic vision placed a premium on fraternal communion founded on rigorous racial exclusivity, mediated by regional affiliations and identity. As the sculptor proclaimed at the inaugural meeting of the Maison commune: 'A nation is an enlarged family which has undergone normal development in a territorial area in harmony with its basic temperament'. 3 The Maison commune, decorated by Baffier and his fellow artworkers, provided the focus for a familial model combining political militancy with forms of sociability transplanted from the sculptor's native Berry. Family evenings, featuring folk songs, traditional dance and country tales, alternated with political rallies at which undying hatred was sworn against the Republic and the Jewish conspiracy accused of conniving in the nation's ruin. The appeal to tradition used to underwrite this xenophobic assertion of nationalist defiance nurtured a myth of racial essentialism, rooted in regional particularity, which seems particularly incongruous in an inner-city neighbourhood near Montparnasse. The myth of community, founded in a nostalgic appeal to a France profonde alien to most of the Ligue's petit-bourgeois members, relies on an evocation of organic notions of collective identity irrevocably displaced in the complex metropolitan culture of belle epoque Paris. Baffier's investment in the family, understood not only in terms of biological attachment but also as a metaphor for professional, ideological, regional and racial bonds, rests upon a fragile myth of primitive equity offering a reactionary evasion from history buoyed up by the systematic scapegoating of the imputed enemies of True France. In a curious way, the few trinkets offered by Siot-Decauville, the I

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disjecta membra of Baffler's epic vision of a revitalizing alliance between craft and community, embody the fundamental contradiction of the sculptor's fantasy of aesthetic and political renewal. Though he railed against the department store and the international exhibition as harbingers of a morally debilitating mass culture, Baffler could not escape the circuits of production and consumption that they stimulated and upon which they relied. 32 For all his talk of craft revivals, of artisanal values salvaged from the moral fastness of the medieval guilds, of a flght to the flnish against the factitious allure of the production line, Baffler was unable to square his commitment to pre-industrial working methods with a populism intent on making the fruits of such labours available to True Frenchmen and women of every class. This was a paradox all too evident to Baffler's critics, for whom his grand vision of an artisanal economy servicing a modern mass public encapsulated the contradictions underlying the broader enthusiasm for a revival of traditional decoration. As the critic Camille Mauclair trenchantly remarked in 1906: Snobs in their town houses admire country furnishings, cretonne curtains, pitchers from New Zealand and pewter soup tureens by M. Baffler, one of the most prolix of windbags on 'social art', but these samples of 'back to basics' cost a fortune, and there is nothing 'social' about this art. The tiresome expression 'decorative art' had led everyone to the basic error of imitating popular style with materials and a workforce which were as expensive as each other. 33

The substantial price demanded for the hand-crafted models from the table setting kept them out of reach to all but a privileged minority of affluent patrons, upon whom the sculptor relied to sustain his gargantuan ambition. Yet, in a twist of irony Baffler apparently preferred to ignore, it was the commercial foundry - itself practically an emblem of the industrialization of art so inimical to his vision of the artisanal tradition whose reproductive techniques were uniquely able to translate his work into a form that the true artisan could even begin to afford.

7

Reproduced Sculpture of German Expressionism: Living Objects, Theatrics of Display and Practical Options ERICH RANFFT

Between c. 1910 and the mid-1920S the spectrum of progressive sculpture in Germany was characterized by the arts and cultures of Expressionism. One of numerous types of Expressionist sculpture was that of the woodcarving (the human figure predominating over abstract forms). This was usually executed by 'direct carving', in which the wooden or stone object was produced by the artist without assistance and with no recourse to mechanical copying of a pre-existing model. In the purest approach a model would not even have existed. Direct carving became an increasingly esteemed aesthetic of modern sculpture internationally between 1900 and 1940. It was equated with authenticity and the notion of the unique, autonomous and self-referential object, and linked to the idea of an avant-garde practice imbued with these qualities. Formalist histories of modern sculpture stereotyped the figure directly carved in wood as the quintessential image of Expressionist sculpture in Germany. The clearest statement of this image was in the catalogue to the major exhibition German Expressionist Sculpture, organized in 1983-4 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 2 The catalogue presented works by thirty-three sculptors, revealing a diversity of sculptural media, many of which involved reproductive processes. But ideologically the catalogue centred on the painter-sculptors of the Briicke group (19°5-13), who were represented as the leaders of a hierarchy of artists whose sculptural production was judged by its degree of formal distortion and its output of direct, roughened and painted wood-carving for emotive purposes. Heading this hierarchy was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a prolific producer of mostly wood-carvings from about 1909 to the mid-1920S.3 Kirchner epitomized the Expressionists' sometimes fetishistic preoccupation with wood-carving. In 1911 in a letter to the Hamburg collector Gustav Schiefler, he wrote, 'it is a sensual pleasure when the figure grows out of I

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the wood step by step. In every trunk is a figure, it only has to be peeled'.4 Perhaps it was no coincidence that the catalogue of a major 1992 touring exhibition in Germany, surveying modern German sculpture from 1900 to 1945, featured a wood-carving by Kirchner on its front cover. 5 Fuelling the Los Angeles mandate was the media-hyped, contemporary international 'movement' known by 1980 as 'Neo-Expressionism'. Its central focus was on German artists who bore labels such as the 'Barbarians' and 'New Wild Ones', making obvious references to the critical reception surrounding the Briicke and other Expressionist groups around 1912. Particular to 'German Neo-Expressionism' was the closeknit relationship between painting and sculpture in the roughly hewn and garishly painted wood-carvings of Georg Baselitz and ]6rg Immendorff. 6 The German critical reception of the Los Angeles exhibition, upon its showing in Cologne in 1984, acknowledged a formal legacy between old and new Expressionism with review headlines such as 'The Sculpted Scream' and 'The Wild and the Penitent Ones'.7 The result has been an entrenched characterization of Expressionist sculpture as a self-contained and autonomous, formalist 'movement', whereas in fact it was pluralistic, non-hierarchical, democratized and interdisciplinary. The Briicke carvings themselves were at the margins of Expressionist debates and very little critical reception was offered them, apart from an article on Kirchner's carvings, written pseudonymously by the artist himself in 1925.8 Research is still needed into the visionary and economic motivations for the diversity of expressionistic sculpture and how this diversity functioned within ideological concerns of Expressionism, such as the socialist-utopian and mystical ideals, or the Gesamtkunstwerk ('total work of art') and its manifestations as 'theatrical' public and private display.9 Pivotal for an understanding of the social and cultural history of Expressionist sculpture is the study of its functions within practices of reproduction in three-dimensional and two-dimensional media. This essay will survey various historical developments and strategies, including the decoration of architectural settings, the interchange between three- and two-dimensional media, and ideas concerning the animation of objects to evoke 'life'. By looking at the subject of reproduction, the issues of authenticity of wood-carving versus traditional reproductive media may be integrated into specific ideological, social and historical contexts. Nazi destruction and the raids of Allied bombers have made it difficult to ascertain the extent of the working practices of over half the hundred-

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plus German sculptors who produced expressionistic works. But we can guess that practices and strategies of reproduction played a part in at least ninety per cent of the production of Expressionist sculpture. There is also evidence that the majority of sculptors frequently worked simultaneously in a variety of three-dimensional media. Throughout the two decades of Expressionist sculpture the predominant media were clay and plaster, which could serve as models for carving in wood and stone or as means for casting into permanent materials such as bronze, cement and artificial -stone. Nevertheless, sculptures in plaster and clay were often exhibited, those in clay at times as finished works, either in their natural state or fired as terracottas. Casting in cement, stone and artificial stone was common by 1914; it was especially suitable for life-sized figures and architectural decoration, and served as an inexpensive alternative to bronze right through to the mid-1920S. Its popularity started in 1910 with the highly successful Cement and Concrete exhibition in Berlin and the impetus of the Deutsche Werkbund (German Union of Work), established in 1907 to engender communality between the fine and applied arts, the artist and industry. Leading spokesmen 'entered pleas for the artistic and practical exploitation of synthetic materials'. 10 Carving in marble, impractical by comparison with these 'imitative' processes, was to prove an infrequent practice. Sculptors were involved to some extent in the production of wood-carvings, but it would seem that fewer than fifteen produced a sizeable body of work in wood. I I Overall, even fewer engaged in pure direct carving, as it was customary to work instead from a model or an already finished version, for example, in artificial stone, and sometimes by mechanical means using a pointing machine. Until 1915 Expressionist bronzes featured regularly in private and public collections and in yearly survey exhibitions. The comprehensive exhibition of contemporary sculpture at the Mannheim Kunsthalle in 1914 was remarkable for its wide coverage of Expressionist bronzes, with works by the nationally renowned sculptors Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Milly Steger. 12 Bronze and other metals also featured in the production of so-called avant-garde painter-sculptors. These included wax animal sculptures by Franz Marc, of the Blaue Reiter group, intended to be cast into bronze for gallery sales, as two were before his death in 1916. From the Briicke, there were Max Pechstein's works in bronze, three of which he exhibited in the Mannheim exhibition, and several of Kirchner's modelled figures cast in tin, one of which was included in a Briicke showing in 1910 in Dresden (and ironically

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illustrated in Kirchner's 'manifesto' of 1925 on the purity of carving).I3 Additionally, there occurred a revival in the production of bronze medals and plaques, wherein sculptors such as Karl Goetz and Ludwig Gies communicated the events and effects of the First World War and its aftermath in disturbing and satirical expressionistic images. 14 Before the war the Werkbund was not as successful in offering Expressionist sculptors opportunities in the crafts as it was in generating close links between sculptors and architects. The Werkbund's aim of reviving the grandeur of architecture from the past in accordance with modernizing concepts of design was reflected in Germany's fascination with monumental forms of architecture and memorials, and their inspiration from Egyptian, Assyrian and Far Eastern styles and decorative schemes. By 1913 the excavations in Egypt by the German Oriental Society resulted in significant finds for the Royal Prussian art collections in Berlin; and soon thereafter Hedwig Fechheimer published her seminal book on Egyptian sculpture, which began by discussing the links between modern and Egyptian art. IS A number of projects for adorning new commercial and civic sites illustrated the extent to which early Expressionist sculptors played a vital role in the wave of historicist programmes. The sculptural decoration for these sites was predominantly characterized by variations in repetitive figural elements, which echoed decorative schemes of ancient times. The most imposing of these was the Lions' Gate, a three-storey portal structure with sculptures by Bernhard Hoetger and designed in collaboration with the architect Albin Muller as the entrance to the Mathildenhohe complex of artists' craft workshops in Darmstadt, completed for its summer Exposition of 1914.16 Along the top of the portal was a row of six identical, over-life-sized male lions in cast stone, each standing on paired Ionic columns, which recalled the Avenue in Karnak lined by long rows of gigantic sphinxes illustrated in Fechheimer's book. Spanning the bottom of the portal were ten panels in sheet copper (approximately 1.3 metres square), each bearing the identical relief of five men on horseback in profile, which echoed classical Greek motifs, with the five reliefs on one side being the exact reverse of the five on the other side. The arrangement was thus AA AA AB BB BB, with the left- and right~side panels meeting in the centre to make up the doorway. Hoetger repeated this layout on the reverse of the structure, which made twenty panels in total. 17 Hoetger was the Expressionist sculptor most preoccupied by the decorative possibilities of repetition and by the reproduction of his

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Il7

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Bernhard Hoerger and Albin Miiller, Lions' Gate, 19'4, present sire of Rosenh6he Park, Darmsradt (since 192.6), parrially reconsrrucred: brick columns, original lions and eighr relief panels.

present and past work in replicas or in new variations. He was afforded this luxury because he was virtually never without the backing of affluent patrons. I8 Among his displays for the Mathildenh6he complex, Hoetger added four over-life-sized, stone-cast sculptures, which were enlargements from a cycle of fifteen figurines in majolica, the Light and Shadow series (19II-I2), which drew from Oriental and Buddhist motifs and the practices of the della Robbia family of fifteenth-century Italian sculptors. 19 His majolica series was also exhibited at the Mathildenh6he Exposition, as had other editions throughout Germany. His work in the public realm was unrivalled in quantity and matched only by his large repertoire of historicizing styles. In 1916 an industrialist from Aachen, Erich Clipper, sought to create a museum devoted to his collection of works by Hoetger. This brought about a storm of negative publicity: it was unthinkable to erect a museum for a living German artist, let alone one who was 'thoroughly eclectic', whose 'experiments could be described at best as mystically perfumed' and whose 'quality is damaged by standing ten of his works side by side'.20 Implicit in the criticisms of Hoetger's seeming assembly-line

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production were his strategies of reproduction. The idea of a Hoetger Museum was soon laid to rest, as was the working relationship between Hoetger and Ciipper. Hoetger then sought out the patronage of the biscuit manufacturer Hermann Bahlsen, who had a long-standing fascination for Egyptian heritage. In 1916 Bahlsen commissioned Hoetger to build and decorate in Hanover a new factory complex with a residential community, the 'TET-City' (the 'TET' referring to an Egyptian hieroglyph). This project too failed to come to fruition, but from Hoetger's plans and models it is evident that his Egyptian- and Babylonian-inspired sculptural decoration would have been very expansive and repetitive - meaning more lions and the like - and there would have been an 'honorary' location set aside for displaying Bahlsen's collection of Hoetger's works, or rather his copies from the Hoetger oeuvre. 2I So far we have considered sculptural practices intended for the public sphere, be it for mass public display or for a private collector. There were, in contrast, the wood-carvings from 1909 to 1913 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel, the only Briicke painter-sculptors to produce such works during the period of the group's existence. The carvings were meant to serve the artists' private studio environment - first in Dresden and then in Berlin - as an integral aspect of their synthesis of high art and craft and decoration in order to shape the studio into a living Gesamtkunstwerk. Even though some of the carvings were occasionally shown at Briicke exhibits, this was all about demonstrating the uniformity of their subject-matter across various media. Unlike the Werkbund seeking to integrate the artist-craftsman into society, the Briicke saw itself as anti-bourgeois, its studio providing 'an antithetical "other" to the life and civilization of Germany, a realm of artistic freedom and invention, a temporary utopian retreat and counterreality'.22 Their working practice, according to Kirchner, involved an uninterrupted, logical intensification, which went hand in hand with the painterly development of the paintings and graphics and sculptures. The first bowl that was carved, because we could not buy one that appealed to us, offered its plastic form to the surface-oriented form of the painting, and so through the varied techniques the personal form was kneaded thoroughly down to the last stroke. The love that the painter felt for the girlfriend, who was his companion and helper, crossed over to the carved figure, ennobled itself over the surrounding area into the painting, and in turn conveyed the specific form of a chair or table from the life habits of the human mode1. 23

Kirchner and Heckel executed their wood-carved figures (at least twenty each) in statuette to near-life proportions, and directly and unmediated

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into unique objects. The figures, however, were not intended as autonomous or independent works of art. Like the hand-carved furniture and like the naked human models, they were 'props' for the artists' interpretation of their communal studio life as a living Gesamtkunstwerk. Or, like the sculptor's clay or plaster model awaiting a transformation, these carvings too were transformed or reproduced into new representations. The two artists reproduced nearly all their carvings (that we know of) in numerous paintings, drawings and prints, sometimes repeating the carvings in several of the media. Translations into two dimensions were nearly always in reference to narratives of studio life and largely according to traditional pictorial means. But in numerous other representations Kirchner and Heckel sought a theatrics of display that could 'break down the barriers between life and art practice by means of a visual conceit'.2 4 This was usually achieved by dissolving distinctions in scale and stylistic differences between the carved figures and the human models in order to evoke an animated interaction between the two. As a consequence, the carving was reproduced not only as an index of its contextual site but also into a 'living' duplicate of its inanimate original. The artists extended this duality by conjuring up a sense that the carving and human model had switched 'identities' - becoming the 'human' carving and the 'sculpted' model - to parallel the Briicke utopian praxis of art as life/life as art. Kirchner exploited these theatrics of display especially in his subjects of female models in bathtubs, the low, circular tubs acting like plinths to transform the models into sculptures. In the drawing Woman in the Wash Tub (1911), Kirchner accentuated this idea by involving a 'living' carving: he depicted a bathing model in front of two loosely sketched statuette carvings with tall plinths - a crouching figure planted on its plinth and a standing figure off its plinth and on the studio floor. 25 The latter, with one leg out in front of the other, appears ready to stride out of the picture, leaving the 'sculpted' woman as a stand-in. A similar ploy was used by Heckel in his drawing The Black Cloth, which was reproduced on the front cover of the May 1911 issue of the Expressionist journal Der Sturm. 26 Here a female model is shown seated on a low platform, her hands holding up behind her a black cloth, which serves to transform the model into a sculpture in relief. Her inanimate state is heightened by the small carved female figure in the background looking on curiously, as if eagerly awaiting the chance to be part of the sculptor's business in hand.

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Erich Heckel, Convalescence of a Woman, 1912.-13, triptych, oil on canvas. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

The simulation of sculpture by dancers was a pervasive contemporary practice, which paralleled the artists' concern with the transformative states of human models. Especially relevant were Kirchner's and Heckel's interest in popular dance - their girlfriends and the majority of their female models were music-hall dancers_ It is quite likely that they would have known of the pre-19I4 nude dances of variety performers in the form of 'plastic poses', especially those of the famed Olga Desmond, who held classicizing poses (in all-over white make-up) based on turn-of·thecentury sculptures by Reinhold Begas and Max Klinger.2. 7 Both artists generally gave an air of innocence and playfulness to their representations of carved figures in the studio setting. At times Heckel imbued his figures' 'living' qualities with a spiritual resonance, which reflected those carvings that had obvious religious connotations, such as Praying Man (1912), yet it seems he did not reproduce these in twodimensional representations. 28 Heckel chose instead to reproduce ordinary and non-referential carved figures, such as those for his richly symbolic triptych Convalescence of a Woman (1912-13).29 In the central panel of this oil painting Heckel has represented his companion and future wife, Siddi Riha, who is seated facing the viewer. In the left panel stands a carved female figure alongside a planted sapling in bloom, and in the right panel a large bouquet of sunflowers looms over a semi-carved crouching figure, with the contour lines of its face and body drawn on to the block of wood. Hecke1 imbued his triptych with the signification of an altarpiece, which reflected both his personal love and servitude to his 'convalescing' companion and a universal prayer to life. The sunflowers were symbolic of trust in healing and the sapling was a symbol both of

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beauty and also of the fragility of life. 30 The close proximity of the two sculptures to the flora suggests their role as the bearers of these symbols. In a literal sense their purpose is to watch over and care for Siddi, and in a more ecclesiastical sense they embody angels and disciples who watch over the holy incarnation, while Siddi signifies a Madonna-like figure. 3I Consequently, the bowed head drawn on the blocklike carving depicts an act of praying. The possibility that Heckel meant this figure as a portrait of himself is suggested by the emphatic diagonal lines that move the viewer's attention up and down between Siddi's head and that of the carving. Meanwhile, the carved standing figure on the opposite side is shown not looking at Siddi but out at the viewer. This holy attendant serves to stimulate a spiritual response in the viewer, who is thus invited to participate in Heckel's altarpiece of personal and religious devotion. 32 Kirchner, on the other hand, was more preoccupied with reproducing carvings in terms of their external relations by evoking movement through space and dynamic spatial arrangements. An important aspect of Kirchner's aesthetic was his use of photography, which seems to have been unique among the Briicke members. In the process of documenting many of his carvings from about 1910 to the mid-1920S, he reproduced a few into 'living' duplicates of the original, by employing an ambiguous sense of scale and by the staging of grouped sculptures. 33 One of Kirchner's most lyrical images was a staged photograph from c. 1913 in which he contrasted the emotive qualities of animation between two near-life-sized standing female figures. In the foreground he placed the Female Dancer (1912) in a slight profile position and made the sculpture lean sideways towards the camera, so that she appears to be striding forward and ready to thrust herself out of the picture frame. Behind her and to the side Kirchner positioned the Standing Woman (1912), whom he carved in the act of placing one foot in front of the other. Consequently, in this photograph it is as if she is about to follow the Female Dancer, yet her closed body stance and hunched shoulders convey an inhibition made all the more emphatic by the contrast with her exuberant counterpart. 34 Additionally, Kirchner sometimes photographed carvings next to female models in order to emphasize the human form as sculpture against the animation of the object. For example, in the image of the dancer Nina Hard in Kirchner's Davos home (1921), a standing Hard, posing nude and applying make-up, is contrasted with a nearly identical-looking, 63cm-high standing figure, Nude Girl (1912), which has been placed on the dressing-table, so that their heads are nearly at the same height. 35

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It is important to recognize that the physical and decorative nature of one-third of Kirchner's and Heckel's carvings also emulated twodimensional representation. Heckel's triptych figure with its face and body drawn on to the block of wood shows how the artists sought to imbue their carvings with a pictorial flatness that would enhance their status as extensions of the two-dimensional conception of the studio environment. Some figures were made with sections left uncarved to retain the look of the squarish or rectangular block of wood, which had the effect of signifying the two-dimensional frame and echoed the pictorial effects of relief sculpture. Other figures, although fully carved, had flattened frontal planes to varying degrees, and it is not difficult to read them as thick (and pliable) cut-outs. The artists made the allusions to two-dimensional representation, especially in terms of the woodcut, all the more obvious by delineating parts of the face and body with darkcoloured paint; they even emphasized slight recesses between body parts with 'artificial' shadows. 36 Their carvings were in general painted, selectively or all over, and we might refer to them all as 'sculpted' paintings; but it is in these more flattened carvings that the artists seem deliberately to have chosen to animate the essence of two-dimensional representation. These 'carved drawings' provide another clear example of the interweaving of artistic practices as described by Kirchner in the Briicke concept of the living Gesamtkunstwerk. The only other artist to be as engrossed with sculptural forms moving between three- and two-dimensional media was the multitalented sculptor Ernst Barlach, whose prolific graphic output from 1910 to the mid-1920S reflected far more interpretations than translations of his sculpture. One of his most compelling series of images was the cycle of twenty-seven lithographs (1910-11) visualizing aspects of the first of his seven Expressionist plays, The Dead Day (written 1907-10). The lithographs plus the play were published in 1912 in a portfolio edition. 37 Here Barlach represented an interplay of rural figures, which recreated the stylistic forms and iconography of his sculptural oeuvre, reproducing essentially the collective sense of his sculptures two-dimensionally. In their graphic representation the sculptural figures were imbued with a 'living' presence, as if they were reproduced as theatrical performers unfolding one of countless dramas about their existence. This play centred around a mother's domination over her only son, whom she traps in the earthly and unconscious world to prevent him from reaching his father who is Spirit and God. The only character of the play to refer to a specific sculpture was that of the Mother, whose three-dimensional

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form was the table-top oak-carving, Troubled Woman (1910, from a model in plaster), depicting a seated woman with a brooding facial expression and hands clasped in her lap.3 8 Even though there is no evidence to indicate whether the lithograph or the sculpture came first, it seems likely that Barlach's drawn figure inspired the sculpture, because he would have wanted to create a physical embodiment of the Mother's emotionally and symbolically charged presence. The height of Expressionist sculpture from 1918 to c. 1923 was the result of new associations of Expressionist artists seeking to revitalize collective artistic production based on Christian socialist ideals for the spiritual regeneration of the individual and society. This was to be accomplished by uniting sculpture, painting and the crafts with architecture into the people's Gesamtkunstwerk - the utopian 'cathedral', a site for worship and communal activity.39 Bruno Taut, the leading voice among the visionary architects, sought to channel the revolutionary and spiritual fervour of artists by calling for 'extensive employment of painters and sculptors on all buildings in order to draw them away from salon art' .40 But because of the severe post-war recession there were very few public projects and private commissions in which Expressionist sculptors could participate. There were, nevertheless, alternatives that served their spiritual yearnings and economic conditions. Some produced fantastical sculptures, others worked as independent 'craftsmen', while ample opportunities were created to exhibit 'salon art' that conveyed visionary motivations. As sculptors continued to reproduce their three-dimensional works in two-dimensional representations, the post-war recession gave rise to a number of fantastical, monumental sculptures, which were conceived as drawings or textual descriptions and reproduced in Expressionist publications or by means of graphic print-runs and published portfolios. 41 In 1920 in Fruhlicht, the magazine dedicated to utopian architecture, Taut published his designs and descriptions of his envisioned House of Heaven (1919), which featured Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's drawings of two totemic structures with bands of carved figures and heads, entitled Pillars of Suffering and Prayer. Standing at the entrance of the House of Heaven, the Pillars 'begin at ground level in gloomy black (shading into intense blue) and terminate above in a blaze of gold. With the exception of the gold, all the colours are shot through with flecks and stripes of blood red'.4 2 In contrast, Rudolf Belling reproduced the imaginary 'original' of his

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Rudolf Belling, Triad, original 1919, second version in wood (elm). Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg.

Gerhard Marcks, Horseman Candlestick, c. 1918-19, Battger stoneware. Gerhard Marcks Stiftung, Bremen.

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metre-high plaster Triad (1919) as if it were already a reality. Triad presented three abstracted dance figures projecting from a central base, which was meant to symbolize the union of the three arts, painting, sculpture and architecture. Belling sought to acknowledge the monumentality of this union when Triad was first shown with the work of the November Group at the Berlin Art Exhibition in 1920. The catalogue entry noted that the 'original' was 'six metres high, built from brick with coloured plasterwork', and the exhibition guidebook proclaimed, 'This is religion, this is architecture'. 43 Belling had the 'original' described again in the catalogue of his commercial gallery exhibit in Cologne of 1921, and by that year he let it be known that his sculptural 'architecture' should serve 'as a podium for an orchestra, for performances by Hindemith, Schonberg and Stravinsky'.44 Nobody cared that the work did not exist physically, what mattered more was Belling disseminating its 'image' as a statement of Expressionist ecstatic fervour for the living Gesamtkunstwerk. Moreover, the conceptual physical evidence lay with the plaster Triad and its published photographic reproductions - Triad was, in effect, being replicated into the living duplicate of its giant 'original'. As such, the two as one were celebrated Expressionist icons. By the mid-1920S at least half of the Expressionist sculptors had been involved to some extent in the production of small-scale, decorative figures and craft objects for domestic and civic purposes. Although many sculptors could not become the 'exalted craftsmen' that WaIter Gropius envisioned for the Bauhaus,45 this aspiration must have invariably motivated their independent, entrepreneurial roles. Oriented towards opportunities for reproduction, the sculptors worked primarily in ceramic, stoneware and porcelain, while bronze and various metals such as iron, tin and copper were also given prominence. Some set up their own workshops - Margarete Scheel in Rostock (1920), Will Lammert in Essen (1924) or Bernhard Hoetger in Worpswede (1923) and Bremen (1927). These were often organized as co-operatives involving locally trained artists, and Hoetger's approach was characteristic. He valued not only the immediacy of creativity in the initial design of a decorative object but also the cooperative processes in bringing the object into its final state as a reproducible commodity.46 Other sculptors were sponsored by manufacturers who undertook to turn their designs into products; the Meissen porcelain factory, for example, was particularly receptive to contemporary decorative styles. By 1927 Meissen had produced editions of expressionistic works by such sculptors as Gerhard Marcks, Ernst Barlach, Richard Langer and Paul

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Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Praying Woman, 1918, cast stone. Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg.

Borner. 47 From 19r8 to r920 Marcks designed altogether seven models, which were moulded for editions, and his Horseman Candlestick in Bottger stoneware (opaque and reddish-brown in colour) was immediately lauded for its 'expressionistic character', its 'exquisite' use of material to 'stimulate a highly expressive conception of form'.4 8 His subjects had strong Christian religious overtones, and so too had Barlach's table-top model of a bearded God-figure, God, the Father Hovering (r92.3), which the Meissen firm reproduced in a large edition in Bottger stoneware. 49 In an ideological sense, these expressionistic sculptures should have served ecclesiastical functions of decoration; in Barlach's case, his should have been a remedy to his lament, 'I lack the great opportunity. Missing for my sculpture is the sacral space' (1920).50 Yet the established Church did not, on the whole, accept Expressionist art, or when the congregation did, they could not adequately defend it from public protests. As a result, these editions were marketed as precious fine-art commodities destined for the German art world, with copies available to both private collectors and public museums.

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The 'salon' sculpture of post-war Expressionism flourished amid the new visionary fervour that compelled sculptors to animate their objects to evoke 'life'. Where before I9I4 the notion of the living statue was largely at the fringes of discussion (and mainly in the Briicke studios), it was now at the forefront of Expressionism's romantic yearnings. In Ernst ToIler's celebrated play The Transfiguration (I9I9), Friedrich is working on a life-size statue and declares, 'The stone resists my efforts; my hand upon the chisel cannot bring it to life. The chisel chips marble, dead marble; am I powerless to breathe life into it? If so I'll do no more. I will not be content to carve a mere memorial to life ... Life intense must stream from my creation'.5I Moreover, the legendary Golem automaton was the subject of three Expressionist feature films (I9I5, I9I7 and I920), which immortalized the Rabbi Loew who formed the human-sized clay Golem and then magically brought it to life. 52 Questions arose, however, about determining the most suitable or authentic material for expressing the spiritual and mystical animation in the living object. While most sculptors continued to use clay and exhibit in plaster (especially in view of the post-war recession), as well as work towards casting into more permanent materials, a strong polemical position asserted the authenticity of wood and direct carving. It became fashionable to romance the wood-carving, likewise to be dismissive of the value of modelling in clay, wax and plasticine, and of their subsequent use in relation to materials integral to reproductive processes. Sculptor Philipp Harth called for a rejection of the slave-like submission to these latter, while Alfred Kuhn, art historian and critic, compared these to 'a prostitute' that 'allows virtually everything to be done to it'.53 Ouo Hitzberger, who taught wood-carving at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School, asserted that wood was 'the mother of sculpture' and testified, 'I have made my work completely by myself and need no one to have my model copied' .54 The authenticity of wood was seen in terms of its already existing materiality and inherent rawness, which, 'for the true artist', serves 'the clarification of his spiritual and intellectual yearning for elevated creativity' (Georg Biermann, art historian and publisher).55 Wood was authentic because it was seen to embody the natural practices of African and Oceanic tribal peoples and, in particular, the creation of Gothic sublimity and rapture. Critics continually offered their most laudatory support to Ernst Barlach who had been chiefly preoccupied with carving in wood since I909. Paul Westheim's praise, from as early as I9I3, epitomized this support: the Gothic 'is the same exalted rapture which is found in a Barlach who manipulates the carving tool, allowing

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him to actualize faces out of the deep where the blood steams, and thereby he can breathe life into them in order that they may once again become at one with their creator'. 56 Alfred Kuhn and others sought to give credence to their position by referring back to the influential aims of the classicizing sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand (1847-1921). In his treatise The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts (1893, with ten editions by 1918), Hildebrand sought to rejuvenate the process of direct carving in stone based on sculpture from the Greek and Italian Renaissance periods. 57 He argued that modelling in clay and the like should not be practised for artistic reasons in the first place, because it lacked the already given pictorial structure presented by the block. Hildebrand felt that modelling in clay had value only if it was used as a method of study from Nature, and that the sculptor should only transform and not replicate the clay model into a finished carved object. In contrast, there was a wide range of working practices that challenged the supposed authenticity of wood and direct carving. To begin with, as a result of the support given to the highly expressive qualities in the art of Auguste Rodin, who was Hildebrand's polar opposite in the art literature,s8 many artists also accepted his strategies of exploiting traditional reproduction techniques as practices fundamental to modern sculpture. Strange, because Rodin was widely seen to be the arch-modeller and one who exploited traditional reproduction techniques; but for the Expressionists, Rodin was above such criticisms because his work evoked a kindred spirit of highly expressive emotion and symbolism. Moreover, most sculptors were more concerned with beginning their object in clay and plaster, exhibiting it as such, and subsequently planning to execute a version in wood (almost as an afterthought). If they were aware of Barlach's working practices, they would have known that nearly all his carvings derived from versions in plaster, up to one-third of these being produced three or even up to six years after the original. Supposedly Barlach did not even carve directly but used a pointing machine to translate plaster to wood. 59 His approach must have resembled product manufacture, using a pre-existing stock of sculptural motifs as models. Every so often Barlach (and his dealer, Paul Cassirer, in Berlin) also had bronzes produced from the originals, as in the Mannheim exhibition of 19 14.

60

Most of the sculptors active after 1918 had little training for carving in wood, and one gets the impression that they needed to meet the demands of the latest fashion and secure some carvings for their 'portfolio' of works. It would seem that part of the pressure also emanated from the

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museums, whose directors were increasingly enamoured of Expressionist wood sculptures. For Rudolf Belling's retrospective exhibition in 1924, the Berlin National Gallery ordered the purchase of a copy of Triad in birch with mahogany base, stained and polished (see the illustration on page 124 for a similar version).61 It is not surprising that the National Gallery would want to acquire the Triad, since the object had a celebrated iconic status and a copy in wood afforded the museum (and Belling himself) the opportunity to have the more fashionable material made available for posterity. We might query whether Belling produced the copy of Triad himself. There seems to have been a tendency among sculptors to hire someone else to carve (completely or partially) their wood versions. The sculptor Ewald Matare lamented in his daybook that one 'can never arrive at a style if [one] kneads in clay and then has it carved in wood, as is happening now everywhere'.62 Determining the extent of this 'unauthentic' process among Expressionist sculptors is difficult given the general lack of records, but several cases have come to light: for example, the Berlin sculptors Emy Roeder and her husband, Herbert Garbe, had a certain amount of carvings (from originals in plaster and terracotta) finished off by local craftsmen in southern Bavaria. 63 We know that Roeder had visited Oberammergau by 1921 to learn to carve in wood, and her concerns were probably not educational but professional- to get help in producing Expressionist carvings in order to diversify the range of her 'portfolio'. Similarly, the Berliner Georg Kolbe, who had been producing Expressionist sculptures in bronze (probably through the support of his gallery dealer, Cassirer), had several original models produced in wood by local carvers by trade. 64 In effect, Kolbe's sculptures in wood were just as much a commodity as the bronzes. passion for wood-carving resulted essentially in more talk than work (and less 'authentic' work at that). Conversely, there was a quiet florescence of working in clay and materials integral to reproductive processes, which had the same ideological aspirations as carving in wood, but which did not need to authenticate its materiality. Even if a clay or plaster or bronze sculpture was seen by some as a 'violation' and an 'abomination', it was still authentic because the ideal of animating the perception of a living essence in the object remained a fundamental. In Paul Rudolf Henning's 'Clay - A Manifesto', which appeared in publications by the Werkbund and the Berlin Working Council for Art in 1919""""20, he called for the sculptors' devotion to 'the richness of the "unborn" that lies dormant in clay, waiting to be brought to life by an act

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of deliverance of the creator' .65 Seen in relation to the Golem story, it was no coincidence that Rudolf Belling created the Golem's Egyptianized headdress for all three films. 66 We might concede that clay or plaster objects had the benefit of being read more easily as 'original' and authentic because they stood at the beginning of the reproductive processes, but it was no more difficult to imbue with ideological significance the highly influential oeuvre of Wilhelm Lehmbruck (see p. 126), which was increasingly made up of sculpture cast in cement, artificial stone and bronze (he never carved in wood, hardly ever in marble).67 What mattered to critical supporters was the resonance of Lehmbruck's figures, whose satiated flesh is melted away by the glow of immanent life. Only the spirit appears to exist ... In the drive upwards, in Gothic fervour the soul soars upwards, sweeping up with it its bodily form, the skin swelling in an inexorable vertical direction ... the Lehmbruck man and woman leave this coarse world of harsh differences, sharp antitheses, merciless rationalities, in order that, alone in the rhythm as the most powerful cosmic principle, they may lead an existence of the purest spirituality.

This interpretation from 1921 was by Alfred Kuhn, marking one of a number of exceptions to his distaste for non-wooden sculptures. 68 Finally, one may also argue that the dramatic events of Lehmbruck's life - he committed suicide in 1919 in the prime of his career (which undoubtedly affected Kuhn's perception) - took precedence over discussion of his working practices, yet Lehmbruck's figures had since 1912 been constantly read as embodying a spiritual animation of living form. There are certainly more aspects to matters of reproduction (and case studies), which could be considered in the scope of this introductory survey, not least fundamental issues concerning the legacy of reproducing Expressionist sculpture over the past fifty years: be it the controversies of posthumous bronze-casting of Expressionist 'masters', or the strategies of a Rudolf Belling ensuring that ample museums own a bronze version of Triad (and that a copy in wood, from c. 1950 - see page 124 - existed outside of the former East Germany), or the ramifications of having four Ernst Barlach museums in the unified Germany ....69 German Expressionist sculpture and its reproductions offer no quintessential images, just essential histories.

8

Truth to Material: Bronze", on the Reproducibility of Truth ALEXANDRA PARIGORIS

Fifteen years ago a heated debate arose between two prominent art historians over the status of claims to authenticity for posthumous bronze casts of works by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), then on show in the important Rodin Rediscovered exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I Rosalind Krauss used the occasion of the exhibition to explore from a 'postmodernist perspective' the mystique of originality in the modernist discourse when it is applied to sculptural editions and to denounce the steadfastness of the traditional evaluative categories in art historical discourse. Her essay 'The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Post-modernist Repetition'2 argued that Rodin's approach to his sculpture reveals an artist 'deep in the ethos of mechanical reproduction', an ethos which affected not only his castings but also his very creative process. The production of multiples was not accidental. Not only was the concept of an original bronze cast foreign to Rodin's thinking, Krauss argued, but also his whole oeuvre was predicated on the production of multiples. Albert Elsen, the organizer of the exhibition, immediately responded to this article in the following issue of October3 by attacking Krauss' evidence and her concept of originality, referring readers to the document 'A Statement on Standards for Sculptural Reproduction and Preventive Measures to Combat Unethical Casting in Bronze', which he, as President of the College Art Association, Professor of Art History at Stanford University and a Rodin specialist, had helped to draft. 4 His condemnation extended to a recent catalogue essay written by Krauss for an exhibition of ]ulio Gonzalez, where she had argued in defence of Gonzalez's posthumous bronze casts. 5 It would be fair to say that this exchange sorely tested the advocacy of the 'Standards' document. 6 My essay will re-examine some of the issues at the centre of this debate, in particular the artistic and historic status of the posthumous cast and the place of intentionality when dealing with objects. It will also appraise bronze as a material in a period that promoted the notion of

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'truth to material' and 'working direct'. Many of the questions I raise were first brought to light in the journal ARTnews in 1974. The relevant article, 'Problems in the Reproduction of Sculpture', by Sylvia Hochfield used the pretext of reporting on a newly cast stainless-steel Cock by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) to explore the question of the unethical reproduction of sculpture in the light of the recently published 'Statement on Standards'.7 Quoting from Sidney Geist, a sculptor and leading authority on Brancusi, Hochfield exposed some of the problems that beset the sculpture of not only Brancusi but also Raymond DuchampVillon (1896-1918), Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) and ]ulio Gonzalez (1876-1942), among others whose work had been cast posthumously.s We shall return to these individual cases, but for the moment it is important to point out that Hochfield brought out the essential problem raised by these 'Standards': the philosophical, legal and ethical question involved in defining originality. The article ends: 'Ultimately, the CAA hopes, a tradition, a body of customs, will be created, which, over a period of time, will be recognized by the courts. In other words, common law will give way to statutory law'.9 As soon became apparent, Krauss was addressing this philosophical question using the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism and poststructuralism to expose the foundations of a body of customs. The present essay shares many of Krauss' concerns, without subscribing to its strict semiotic perspective, and will consider the valuable questions that emerged still unexplored from this debate. Thus, rather than pursue the claims of the legitimacy of posthumous bronze casts (as they were aired in the forum where Elsen and Krauss gathered), this essay considers the contribution that these works make, in their own right, in the larger historical and critical perspective. This might at first suggest that I side with Elsen against Krauss, but the conventions governing the legitimation of posthumous casts are open to question without the need of recourse to a postmodernist position. Considerable light may be shed on the status of posthumous casts by situating the various claims in their historical context, be they legal, ethical or linguistic. One of the first aspects to emerge from the exchange between Rosalind Krauss and Albert Elsen following the Rodin Rediscovered exhibition is that the debate surrounding the posthumous casts of works by Rodin was restricted to a rather narrow path, far narrower even than that envisaged by the 'Standards': the delicate question of defining authenticity in a field that existed by means of a form of reproductive process. The quarrel centred on issues of legitimacy raised, for example,

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by a 1980 bronze cast of a Rodin by the Musee Rodin. According to the 'Standards' (and to French law), the Musee Rodin, as authorized parties, had produced an authentic Rodin since it was cast from the original working plaster. This 'real reproduction', to use Krauss' terms, or this work from an 'original edition', to use Jean Chatelain's (a delegate to the Conseil d'Administration of the Musee Rodin),IO remains no less than a normative product: one that fulfils the 'Standards' for sculptural reproduction and is legitimate only according to those standards. But what if those standards were not as conclusive as their advocates may suppose, and what other questions, as a result, might be left to explore in this context? It must be remembered that the debate took place in the poststructuralist atmosphere of the late 1970S when author(ity) and quality were questions considered long dead and buried, although the object(s) in question might still require these issues to be clarified. In particular, intentionality and audience might be explored by examining surface finish in works of sculpture, just as they so often are with painting. Take, for example, the difference in surface finish between two bronzes by Rodin in the Musee Orsay in Paris: Age of Bronze (Age d'Airin; c. 1877) and Walking Man (L'Homme qui marche; 1907), both cast in Rodin's lifetime;II their different patinas evidence (i) specific conditions of production available at the time and produced by different foundries, (ii) decision-making on the part of Rodin, as is borne out by archival evidence - whether that decision entails his personal involvement or referral to others does not alter the fact that he was in a position to make that decision, and (iii) suggest that Rodin was aware of his audience and tailored his works accordingly. The Mighty Hand (or Clenched Hand; c. 1855) by Rodin in the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation's collection is evidence that this decision-making process was transferred elsewhere, in this case to the Musee Rodin. Although only the Rodin bronzes in the Peter Stuyvesant collection came from the Musee Rodin, all the works in bronze were derived from posthumous casts, some from originals in stone, and all shared a uniform, dark patination. The Musee Rodin certainly lent its authority when the collection went on tour, in that a Musee Rodin curator, Monique Laurent, wrote the Introduction and entries to the catalogue. I2 One might say that in a debate about the history of an object, to focus on judgemental conclusions (who is right? or who has the right?) is beside the point. What might an approach to the history of sculpture from a material standpoint achieve? It might reassert the role of evidence

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Auguste Rodin, Jean de Fiennes nu, c. 1886, bronze (posthumous cast). Trammell Crow Centre (formerly LTV), Dallas.

provided by the object itself, evidence too often overlooked, and position the ensuing understanding in more secure contexts, thus dispensing with debates that seek to displace or replace such notions as 'work of art' because of practices, and instead explore 'work of art' as situated within these practices. 13 In his essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', WaIter Benjamin wrote: The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardised by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter.'4

Some art historians working with this important essay have erroneously perceived it as a commentary on cinema and modernity. They seem to have responded to the examples described in the essay, rather than to the philosophy of history that was being put forward through their agency. In this light, we may be justified in questioning the testimony provided by work such as the cast of Rodin's Jean de Fiennes nu standing in the lobby of the Trammel! Crow Centre (formerly LTV) in Dallas, though

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not to the extent of throwing out its evidence altogether. The Bruton Gallery, which supplied the cast, working with the Musee Rodin, has produced a legitimate work by Rodin within the strict confines of the law. Michael Le Marchant, who runs the gallery, sees his role as one that enables 'rediscovery and diffusion' of an artist's oeuvre. IS But what aspect of an artist's oeuvre is being diffused? And are not other aspects being diffused at the same time, aspects contained within the very medium of diffusion, which could not, in principle, be the same from one generation to another, and, because of this, carry 'historical testimony' in their own right? The Jean de Fiennes nu is one of seven works by Rodin now on view in Dallas. On the one hand, the cast attests to the survival of the technical means that enabled it to come into existence (technical means of varying standards, according to Chatelain); and on the other, the cast documents all the art-historical aspects that contribute to defining notions of quality: namely, the position of Rodin in the late twentieth century, the nature of his public in that period, and the manner in which the taste and collecting habits of the later public are revealed in the copies made for them. The type of corporate culture that fills its art niche with such a work can be read either as a safe or valuable investment (this is an authentic bronze, by a famous sculptor, a work that can enhance our image) or as an expression of the sclerosing effects of committee decisions on art purchases (when people opt for the security of an object whose message is suitably sanitized, in this case divorced from its narrative context and thus not threatening any more). Whichever position is taken, the Trammell Crow version of Jean de Fiennes nu can and must be read for what it is: a work 'from an original edition', yes, but one that bears testimony to the period when it was produced as an object, and not back to the period when it was conceived. The Musee Rodin never denied that it owed its existence and financial upkeep to the marketing of Rodin bronzes in its collection. But Elsen claims that this role has a pedagogical function as well. I6 The museum has not only been responsible for diffusing the larger works of Rodin according to his testament, but also it has at its disposal the lore of small works, parts of works, etc. left in his studio. Even though it is clear that the small plasters are more marketable in the twentieth century, and even though Rodin may not have commanded the sort of audience he needed to justify casting them in his lifetime, the Musee Rodin must realize that they are extending their role of conservation to one of rectification, not to say manipulation, of their heritage. I7 The manipulation does not arise from what they are doing - 'casting Rodins' - but from the standpoint

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they are taking. This is less a question of 'clinging to a culture of originals' as perceived by Krauss and developed in her postmodernist discourse r8 than of clinging to the few available verifiable facts. In this case the circumstances in which Rodin was produced in the 1980s are an essential part of the history of these Rodins. These works are as much the product of Rodin's creativity as the product of an institution delivering a lesson. The problem arises because, for all its rigour, the institution resists facing its role squarely. What kind of history is being produced when the elements that should be brought forward as evidence are being devalued by claims of fetishism or aura and thus insufficient attention is paid to the information they provide? Let me illustrate this point with the example of Raymond DuchampVillon's The Horse of 1914. Excellent histories have been written concerning the bronze casts of this work and its subsequent enlargements. It was left at the sculptor's death in 1918 in the form of a 48-cm plaster maquette with an armature for a possible loo-cm enlargement. 19 One has to agree with the opinion of Sidney Geist, quoted in Hochfield, that the posthumous castings and enlargements of The Horse 'distort the experience of sculpture in modern times' and 'do not represent the sensibility of Raymond Duchamp-Villon'; indeed, in a letter to Alfred Barr (30 August 1938), Jacques Villon, Duchamp-Villon's brother (1875-1963), writes that he was unable to fulfil his brother's wishes of casting the enlargement in polished steel, and had to make do with bronze. 2o Does this mean that these postumous casts and enlargements represent nothing? They may not shed light on the status of Cubist sculpture or the work of Duchamp-Villon in I9I4, but they do indicate how his work entered the history of twentieth-century sculpture. The cast of c. 1930 that was produced by Jacques Villon does, as Geist argued, distort 'an entire movement' (Cubism), but it is also, importantly, evidence of the then perception of Cubist sculpture in the public domain and of the form that Cubism, as a language, evolved into when it had gained more currency and had come to exist outside the confines of its initial avant-garde context. Marcel Duchamp's (18871968) involvement further complicates the make-up and strategies of this group of brothers without negating their agenda. Thus, the enlarged one metre-high version of The Horse on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, cast in 1957 by the Galerie Louis CarnS, really belongs to a later period of the history of twentieth century sculpture - the period that consecrated works first produced in studios more than twenty-five years before.

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Raymond Duchamp-Villon, The Horse, 1957 version of a 1914 bronze. The An Institute of Chicago.

The correspondence between Katherine Kuh, the then Curator of Modern Painting and Sculpture, and Louis Card: is revealing. Kuh, acting on information supplied by Marcel Duchamp, wrote: 'I understand from Duchamp that the large Horse has an edition of only six casts and that the last cast is still available but would have to be cast,.2-] CarnS's response is even more interesting. It informed Kuh that the fifth cast of Duchamp-Villon's Le Grand Cheval had been requested by Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) for exhibition at the forthcoming Milan Triennial in the International Section .H Thus not only Duchamp (in ensuring that his brother's work was diffused) but also Giacometti (in selecting the work for a major public event) were representing a view of Duchamp-Villon that was important, for this was a period when the history of twentieth-century sculpture was being written or, put another way, when early twentieth-century scu lpture was entering history (long after the dominant modernist outlines of the history of modern painting had been well established and were in the process of entrenched institutionalization).2-3

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We can thus say, without confusing questions of qualitative assessment with aesthetic judgement, that a bronze work of sculpture is necessarily a testimony to its period and bears the traces of the period when it was cast. This testimony has to be allowed an independent status in historical analysis. The remaining part of this essay will address the question of bronze as a historically coded and significant material that was recognized as such by artists who (i) reacted against it (Picasso, Boccioni), (ii) aspired to its cachet but were not able to work with it for reasons of cost (Gonzalez) or (iii) worked with it and developed new qualities within it (Brancusi). One overriding aspect that has dominated sculpture and its historiography in the twentieth century is the close attention paid to materials and materiality, a concern central to formal and iconographic interpretations. This period has also witnessed the expansion of sculpture into a wide range of new materials and new conceptions worked out through such materials. New materials such as steel, plastic or aluminium, found objects or refuse came to be utilized, as concerns with time, speed and chance came to be embodied through matter. In this light, bronze can appear ossified, a left-over from another age, an age when sculpture was the record of an image in a given material, rather than the image derived from the creative possibilities inherent to the material. Bronze is an alloy, composed of about 80-5 per cent copper and 2-20 per cent tin (even up to 25 per cent) with slight percentages of phosphorus, lead and zinc. Traditional bronze alloy consisted of 85 per cent copper, with 5 per cent each of tin, zinc and lead. 24 On their own, the component metals were not precious but some were rare enough to be prized: copper chiefly but also tin and lead. The prestige of bronze goes back to Pliny and to the invention of 'Corinthian brass'.2 5 It is one of many materials used in sculpture throughout the centuries, but until the middle of this century, bronze stood out among the materials ascribed to that art by being man-made. Wood and stone were found in nature, ivory was organic. Furthermore, the creation of a work in bronze has remained a complex, time-consumming, therefore costly, process of fabrication, which contributed to its aura. The fabrication of a bronze requires the team effort of several highly skilled craftsmen. Right up to the beginning of the twentieth century, a foundry comprised several functions (metiers), of which the more specialized ones of chasers and patinieres (specialists who applied the patina to a bronze) required considerable expertise and were separate crafts in their own right. 26 A bronze's patina was highly regarded and sought after, like gilding.

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Barbara Hepworth in the Morris Singer Foundry, London, in 1964 in from of her Single Form, 1964, bronze. Now outside the Unired Nations Headquarters, New York.

Connoisseurs of bronzes looked for the crispness of outline and colour of patina, which varied according to the alloy's mix of metals and the skill of the patiniere applying acid washes. 27 It can therefore be argued that what one admired in such works was the product of a workshop rather than of a single artist.2.8 In this light the photo of Barbara Hepworth in front of Single Form at the Morris Singer Foundry in London in 1964 is deceptive because of the one-ta-one focus it gives of the artist and her creation, and because it belies the existence of a workshop needed to create this over-life-sized bronze. The image is important as it bears witness to what had become a conventional understanding in the twentieth century of the sculptor working alone in close communion with his or her material. At the root of the controversy that accompanies attempts to legitimize posthumous bronzes lies the only comprehensively articulated discourse on sculpture in the twentieth century: one that was supported by the eloquence of critics and the demonstration of accomplished works. This

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was the debate that put forward carving rather than modelling in the practice of sculpture. Patrick Elliott was the first to suggest the interesting link between the rise of concern with 'direct carving' (taille directe) in France in the 1920S and the scandal of Rodin's posthumous stone sculptures that shook the art world at the time.2.9 Rodin's posthumous bronzes did not share that fate, being legitimated by the law. The issue of direct carving or working direct, however, has considerable bearing on my discussion of the materiality of bronze, as it had such an impact on the critical discourse available to sculpture this century. In the English-speaking world, Henry Moore (1898-1986) has done more than anyone to give coherence to the place of material in the field of sculpture. Even though by the 1950S he would come to denounce this 'fetish', he never failed to stress what had been, in the 1930S when he began to make sculptures, the 'very necessary fight for the doctrine of truth to material and the need for direct carving'. 3° Moore also acknowledged the impact of Roger Fry's writings on essential form, and of Ezra Pound's account of direct carving in his Gaudier-Brzeska A Memoir (1916),31 not to mention the vicinity of Adrian Stokes' writings, which evoked the emotive response to materials and elements. Moore realized, in his words, 'the intrinsic emotional significance of shapes', exceeding that of representation, which forced him to 'recognise again the importance of the material in which [the sculptor] works',32. so that when, in 1934, the notion of 'truth to material' appeared in his statements on sculpture, it contributed with its persuasiveness to entrench carving as the only acceptable path in sculpture. 33 The impact of these ideas on the subsequent history of sculpture is all too apparent if we consider Moore's own perceptive appreciation of the work of Brancusi: Since the Gothic, European sculpture had become overgrown with moss, weeds - all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi's special mission to get rid of this overgrowth, and to make us once more shape-conscious. 34

I suggest that these concerns of truth to material and working direct entrenched the discourse about the subject in one exclusive direction, which privileged shape and form above all other sculptural effects. We need look no further than to Clement Greenberg to see the effect of this discourse on the critical appreciation of sculpture: at the root of his notion of 'construction-sculpture' and 'the liberation from the monolithic' lies the idea of essential form, which informs his notion of 'the self-sufficiency of sculpture' .35

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Let us now turn to consider the consequences of these views on the understanding of the work of Julio Gonzalez and Constantin Brancusi. The case of Gonzalez's posthumous casts is both familiar and particular. It is familiar in that these works are produced by his heirs, allegedly acting according to the wishes of the artist who, in their words, would have cast all his works including the irons if he could have afforded it. Its particularity resides in the fact that the resulting bronzes are valid before the law as it stands only if the forged and welded metal originals are regarded as platres de travail (working plasters used for casting); in other words, if their status is thus altered. Rosalind Krauss, in a catalogue essay of a Gonzalez exhibition, which combined posthumous casts with original sculptures in iron, sought to defend these new works. Her forceful arguments betray the limitations of a reading that ignores surface texturality: In ending this discussion it might be interesting to confront, straight on, one of the conclusions to be drawn from what I have been saying about Gonzalez's process, his immersion in the modalities of transcription and copying, his distance from the metaphoric conditions of assemblage. Although he used metal scrap and the occasional found object as well, the exigencies of Gonzalez's process meant that many of his shapes had to be obtained by reworking the scrap through forging and certainly relegating the industrial readymade parts - bolts or springs - to minor areas of the work. Gonzalez's sculpture was not about the transformations wrung by the perceptual association on the quotidian object. Therefore the uniqueness of that object - just this colander or this bicycle seat - was irrelevant to his work. Thus many of the issues of direct-metal working that would theoretically prohibit its translation into bronze are also irrelevant. 36

What does it mean to say 'although he used metal scrap and the occasional found object as well', as though this 'although' is a concession? And what does it mean, for someone who approaches the work of art as a semiotic system, to speak of Gonzalez as 'certainly relegating the industrial readymade parts - bolts or springs - to minor areas of the work?' What are 'minor areas of the work'? Are they irrelevancies, aesthetic mistakes on the part of Gonzalez? Krauss' argument rests on a notion that because 'the uniqueness of the object' is linked to metaphor it is not a relevant concern to Gonzalez. This is confusing enough, but her insistence on what she sees as Gonzalez's characteristic mode of 'transcribing' and 'copying' is linked to a wish to close out the possibility of a Surrealist interpretation, however broad, of Gonzalez's work; which results in a need to distance it from that of Picasso whose sculpture of the 1930S cannot avoid a Surrealist interpretation.

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Julio Gonzalez, Harlequin, c. 192.9'""30, bronze (posrhumous cast). Scortish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh .

The metaphoric conditions of assemblage, in this passage, are those of Surrealism, those found in such works as Bull's Head, which emerges from the chance encounter of a bicycle seat and handlebars. Because the aim of Krauss' essay is to explain and justify the casting of Gonzalez's work in bronze, the solution seems to be to distance him from Surrealist concerns, gauged in terms of metaphoric assemblage. This is a very narrow view of what is Surrealist in Picasso's work or what might be Surrealist in a broader poetical sphere, and excludes any consideration of what elements of Surrealism were parr of a wider context by the 1930S. But what is at stake is whether one simply views the final image created by Gonzalez in a work such as Harlequin or one includes the meaning that a low-art, even decidedly non-art, material has on the work: the iron original in the Zurich Kunsthaus or the bronze version in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. 37 The problem with Gonzalez is that his position in the avant-garde was marginal, and the formulation of the avant-garde itself was elliptic. If we are to accept that it is his use of materials as much as the images generated that opened up new creative avenues, we cannot admit the posthumous cast. Krauss is reluctant to explore fully the meaning of forged metal and its possible affiliations with concerns of the creative possibilities of ordinary

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materials, just as she is little concerned with the practical modalities of sculpture in the period, when exploration took place in the studio. She also positions her critique of Modernism entirely within the post-Second World War orbit of Clement Greenberg. Yet before the First World War, the use of ordinary materials was of great interest to Guillaume Apollinaire's circle and one can safely say that its use was not limited solely to the metaphoric possibilities of assemblage as they became entrenched under Surrealism. Ordinary, non-art materials existed outside the system of values represented by the academy, the museum and other institutions of authority. But what is often misunderstood is that the aesthetic developed by Apollinaire and his friends involved negotiating art with life and not divorcing art from life. 38 It is always claimed that sculpture lagged behind painting in revolutionary breakthroughs; however, AndnS Salmon's La ]eune Sculpture franraise makes clear that avant-garde sculpture, before the First World War, shared with painting an anti-bourgeois stance: his denigration of the (bourgeois) cult of the shelf belittles the 'objet d'art' fetish of the bibelot, segregating art from life. 39 In this instance Picasso's Absinthe Glass, a series of six differently painted (one coated with a layer of sand), as opposed to patinated, bronzes, stands out as a work in which the material, bronze, handled in such a way as to obfuscate its quality label, had a specific set of historical connotations, which, furthermore, Salmon's criticism makes clear was a condition of cultural meaning. Probably the most famous advocates of rejection of traditional sculpture materials were the Futurists, their stance being most notably expressed by Umberto Boccioni in his 1912 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture': 4. Destroy the literary and traditional 'dignity' of marble and bronze statues. Refuse to accept the exclusive nature of a single material in the construction of a sculptural whole. Insist that even twenty different types of materials can be used in a single work of art in order to achieve plastic movement. To mention a few examples: glass, wood, cardboard, iron, cement, hair, leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc. (my emphasis)40

In spite of this disclaimer, Boccioni's surviving sculptures in plaster were cast in bronze in the late 1920S, long after his untimely death in 1916.4I The polished bronze versions of Unique Forms of Continuity in Space on view in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London obviously do not adhere to its creator's published statements but they evidence an important development in twentieth-century sculpture, namely, the equation between sleek, polished metal surfaces and

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modernity, which has contributed to make Unique Forms of Continuity in Space an icon of what is truly modern in pre-Second World War sculpture. In this it has surpassed the works that might have held a claim to that invention: Brancusi's polished bronzes, viewed by many critics in the 1920S and 1930S as an expression of modern technologyY For Brancusi, however, the identification of his polished works with the products of modernity's manufactures was not flattering and resulted in a court case against the US Customs in 1927 over the status of his bronze Bird in Space of 1926, which had failed to satisfy Customs officials that it was indeed a work of art and not an object of industrial manufacture. 43 It is Jacob Epstein's testimony, in defence of Brancusi at this trial, that reveals to what extent the case also turned around the role of the sculptor, personally, negotiating the mechanical: 'Why is this a work of an?' the lawyer continued. 'It pleases my sense of beauty [said Epstein], I find it a beautiful object.' 'So if we had a brass rail, highly polished and harmoniously curved, it would also be a work of art?' 'It could become so', said Epstein. 'Then a mechanic could have done this thing?' asked the lawyer triumphantly. 'No; a mechanic could not have conceived it.'44

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 191}, bronze (cast in 1931). Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 19~6, polished bronze (unique cast) on stone and wood hase. Collection Mrs Hester Diamond, New York.

It is rarely asked, however, whether, and in what sense, the discourse of the celebration of modernity and technology is even applicable to Brancusi's concerns, as opposed to a Futurist philosophy. Thus one might venture that it was indeed Boccioni and not Brancusi who held the day, when Unique Forms of Continuity in Space was cast in bronze in the early 1930S.45 SO much more was at stake in the polished bronze surfaces that Brancusi intentionally used. Until now, my argument has been that posthumous reproduction informs us about the era in which the posthumous casts are made. I now wish to move my argument to another level in relation to Brancusi, that is, to an explicit engagement with intentionality in Brancusi's use of polished finish. Here my argument draws on the work of Quentin Skinner's application of J. L. Austin's speech and theory to methodological questions in historiography.4 6 Accordingly, we cannot distinguish between two apparently similar cases of finish in Boccioni and Brancusi unless we concern ourselves with the understanding of finish. Furthermore, to ask of this 'understanding' is to say something about the possibilities from which the artist chooses or makes decisions; and the performance of a decision is an intentional activity. In other

ALEXANDRA PARIGORIS

words, that the finish of Boccioni and Brancusi may look the same and, even, fall within plausibly similar contexts is not sufficient to the historical understanding of the function performed by polished finish in either case. That two things are similar does not mean that they fall under the same description or that further acts of differentiation are not required, for clearly it is commonplace to lump together Brancusi and Boccioni as examples of modernity and finish, the machine aesthetic and the celebration of 'l'esprit nouveau' (the New Spirit), etc. In this light, those who argue that Brancusi is no less guilty than Rodin on the issue of reproduction would point to Brancusi's (admittedly occasional and rare) employment of assistants. This is mistaken. Not only are the contexts different, but also the understanding of what is at stake, of what is being performed, is radically different. The upshot could well be that Brancusi's work (as the transformation of certain Symbolist concerns) is to be, in part, defined against Rodin, but not at all in relation to Boccioni. First, significance should be accorded to a negative fact: not only did Brancusi dispense with the work of the patini"ere to supply the patinas of his works, but also he dispensed with patina altogether and instead came to produce the high polish directly from the bronze cast and in the process redefined the relationship of sculptor to work and process. 47 In this manner, Brancusi realised something of the virtue of direct carving as conceptualized by Moore but without the fetishization of the process that lurks within Moore's formulation of direct carving. Thus Brancusi stated that Direct cutting is the road to sculpture, but also the most dangerous for those who don't know how to walk. And in the end, direct or indirect, cutting means nothing, it is the complete thing that COUlltS. 48

The work of producing high polish directly from the cast is linked to another consideration of the highest importance for Brancusi, namely, that although he avoids the fetish of direct carving while recognizing its value, he practises a process of sculpture in which the bronzes are not conceived as casts from modelled objects. This opens the possibility that the conventional distinction of sculpture production as either carving or modelling fails to capture what is distinctive in Brancusi's technique, in which illumination and the possibilities of light directly produced (reflection, distortion, absorption, intensity and many other values of light from a surface) define not only the object but also the possible relations that a viewer could entertain with the object:

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High polish is a necessity which certain approximately absolute forms demand of some materials. It is not always appropriate, it is even very harmful for certain forms. 49

Epstein, too, recognized the importance of light in relation to material in the new conception of sculpture emerging in this period. For him the interpretation of this phenomenon was to do with form and vitality, a form inconceivable outside the possibilities of the material: I have noticed at many recent exhibitions how much sculptors are influenced by your methods. They use the rough surface entirely without discretion, merely to break up the light. It gives the unpleasant impression of skin disease or the remains of an attack of smallpox. ARNOLD L. HASKELL:

EPSTEIN: That is because they make the work smooth and then roughen it afterwards as an afterthought. The texture is a definite and inseparable part of the whole. It comes from inside so to speak; it grows with the work. 5°

If to Brancusi we add Boccioni, then Epstein, we could, too, add Frank

Dobson in order to establish a context for this concern with high polished finish. But what makes the statement 'high polished finish' unique to Brancusi is the role his studio came to play in providing a sculptural space where his preoccupation with illumination and light could (i) be explored, (ii) be under his direct control and (iii) be stabilized. For this reason, the photographs of Brancusi should be understood as an extension of the aesthetic of the sculpture of illumination, and his instructions to his patrons for the installation of his works should be understood as confirmation of the importance of the setting, the ideal setting, in the imagination of his works. Brancusi's work and its ideology constitute an art of the studio in terms of which the directives from the maker are indeed a means of transfer of the maker's scheme (this was understood by John Quinn very well, hence his instructions for the liquidation of his collection on his death). Within the Futurist ideology the role of high finish is exactly the reverse of what it is for Brancusi: not precious, not a sign of spiritual illumination, nor less a sign of the absolute, and certainly not the product of a studio conception of art; Futurist works, even when they are produced in studios, are understood to be blueprints for a transformed public sphere. 5I Brancusi's photographs and the works that survive with their original bases attest to an art in which materials are organized in a hierarchical manner: they range from organic (wood) to mineral (stone and marble) and man-made (stainless steel and bronze), allowing also for admixtures of plaster and concrete. Though rough is often opposed to smooth we

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cannot say, faced with works such as Sorceress (in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) or Torso of a Young Man (at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), that the roughly hewn works are only the ones in wood and that wood alone is used for bases. What we can say, however, is that polish is a quality Brancusi applied to well-defined works, and that for him the polished bronze surface was one of utmost importance and significance. Brancusi left an extraordinary and rarified oeuvre of simple yet immeasurably subtle forms, enshrining them in the most obfuscating aphorisms, designed, one feels, to ensure that we the spectators are exactly where he the artist wants us to be. Brancusi's absolute resides, one would think, outside his material, but his aphorisms indicate, I believe, that the sculptor's statement lies in his gesture, though this may appear sublimated. It is this intimate relation between the artist and the resulting work of art that is most important in a work by Brancusi. He made sure that his forms were individually polished and finished. The works stand as testimony of the high regard and seriousness with which he held the 'bronze-sculptor's Art'. Hence the careful instructions on the maintenance of his works once they had left his studio and entered the environment of the collector; an example of which is the letter to John Quinn dated 5 June 1918. In this important document, Brancusi details the care that must be taken with his bronze, A Muse (1917), and, in an often overlooked passage, demurs from giving an opinion on the conservation of the Epstein bronzes in the lawyer's collection. Brancusi writes that he cannot tell Quinn what to do because he is not familiar with Epstein's working methods, and because he does not know what his intentions were. 52 These instructions bear witness to the attention he brought to the finish of his work, and more importantly to the place of intentionality in this process. Noguchi's recollections of the time he acted as studio assistant in the late 1920S confirm the importance of the sheen. The bronzes' finish and clarity were carefully thought out and brought out and not left to the hazards of the foundry patini"eres. Clarity was essential to form as clarity permitted the perception of the absolute in form. This thinking through, these acts of attention to each work, even on the rare occasions when assistants are present, is qualitatively different from, not better than, the traditional workshop practices characteristic of Rodin's production. The form of attention reaches into the production of works not conceived as multiples (for no two are identical, and never was any work conceived as a multiple) but as objects created for the solution of sculptural problems.

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These objects would soon come to take on symbolic significance, a significance that could not obtain with multiples or with posthumous productions, since posthumous productions for the kind of process inaugurated by Brancusi would not permit us to say among what possibilities decisions were being made. Thus the unease felt before the many versions in different materials of, for example, Torso of a Young Man or A Muse, and which has provoked responses ranging from outright denunciation of the claims that Brancusi made for his work to justification on the part of his heirs to cast his work posthumously, demonstrates a failure to understand the significance of Brancusi's kind of production. Geist is justified in his equation of Brancusi's absolute and his use of materials, whose sole justification is their adaptability to certain ends. 53 This is attested by his desire to have a golden finish on the iron Column at Tirgu Jiu, Romania, whether the technical means were available or not. 54 Brancusi's originality resides not in the cult of uniqueness but in the development of a conception of sculpture which, in sidestepping the carving/modelling distinction, created a body of work that was confronted, unintentionally, with the issue of seriality. That he did not set out to do a series is important, and this 'not setting out to do, but ending up doing', this unintentionality, is what is distinctive about his approach and the resulting works. This is how one must understand his calculated response to John Quinn's request in 1917 for a cast of the marble Muse already in Arthur B. Davies' collection, not as a disavowal of his philosophy. 55 In this respect, if a psychoanalytic interpretation of Brancusi's work were at all viable, it would have to deal with this unconscious resistance and thus could not possibly be performed in relation to posthumously produced works, such as The Muse in the Norton Simon Collection, for example. The bronze-casting process with its use of fire and worked matter no doubt added to Brancusi's pose of the artist as creator (especially significant here would be the emphasis he placed on the Symbolist theme of Prometheus). Bronze was a dignified medium and a meaningful one for Brancusi. It held a special place in his oeuvre, embodying soaring flight and sacredness. These are no doubt traditional positions, but the practice that accompanied them was less so. The self-portrait photograph that Brancusi often gave to friends and critics is deceptive: in it he appears as though working in a forge, when in fact it is just a contrived play of light and shadow that transforms his studio environment. The link between the fire of the forge necessary to bronze-making and the light that results

ALEXANDRA PARIGORIS

Constantin Btancusi, The Muse, 1912., bronze (posthumous edition of five, cast no. I) on a limestone base. Notton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA.

from a polished bronze is made explicit. 56 From this light stem the divergent possibilities of Brancusi's practice. Must we conclude that bronze carried no distinctive meaning in the twentieth century? Brancusi's self-portrait attests to an awareness of the power and fire associated with the forge and work in metal, but I hope to have shown that there were enough cases to prove that bronze, as a material, was central to sculptural work and, furthermore, though one might denigrate the term, that aura (the golden glow) and finish have a place in the history of sculpture along with the ideology behind the set of

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values they support or seek to define. Far from needing to say that reproducibility is the effective critique of finish, I have sought to discuss the issues surrounding reproduction in ways that secure historicity and specificity without the contrivances of uniqueness.

9

Venus a Go Go, To Go EDWARD ALLINGTON

FIRST FLASHBACK: NEW YORK,

1987

The taxi, yellow, decrepit and large, lurches over the potholes and steam vents of New York's streets. It's uncomfortable in the back where I'm sitting with a strange resin object cradled on my lap. It's precious to me, this thing which for now may be allowed to pass as a sculpture, or the shadow of a sculpture. I'm out hunting in the urban manner, motorized, and guided by the yellow pages. I need a practical solution, I need reproduction, and I need it now. To me this object, which I hold in love and hate, is a source, it is the beginning of a new sculpture. One is not enough, I want nine and I want them quickly, cheaply. And so we drive on, with me in the back filled with hope and the dread of wasted time. To ride in a taxi is to wait while in motion. Only the presence of a lover could alleviate the tortures peculiar to this mode of transport. The choice is between watching the cost of time accumulate on the meter or seeking diversion. But why should I worry about the meter? After all this ride is on the gallery. Perhaps because numbers irritate me, especially in the form of minutes equals dollars. So I allow my eyes to wander and my mind to follow them. I glance at the rear-view mirror. The reflection of his face, then at the card with his ID photograph attached to the crude protective screen of pop-riveted plexiglass and aluminium which separates me from him. The comparison between this portrait and its bellicose owner requires quite a leap of the imagination. Either he's able to believe the photograph is still a reasonable reproduction of his physiognomy or he simply can't be bothered to change it. Time has had different effects on the man and his photographic representation. The image is pallid, rather too blue in colour, while the man himself - well, he's just got older. We go over the Brooklyn Bridge, light flickering through the web of its supporting cables, the East River, huge, glittering, beneath us. My mind begins to focus on the object on my lap - what it means, what it represents, as well as the simpler problem of finding someone who'll make

Venus a Go Go, To Go

Edward Allingcon, Roman from the Greek. in America, 1987, painted wood and plaster figures . Private collection.

a mould and then pull casts from it. I could do this myself, but I don't have the time for that kind of indulgence. The immaculate beige Watch Tower buildings are passing on our left. And I think of the effects of reproductive technology in our culture, of Waiter Benjamin's famous essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Within the Watch Tower buildings reproduction is the basis of a religion. Those immaculate walls conceal the hub of the ]ehovah's Witnesses' publishing empire, where religious tracts roll off the presses, being logged and scockpiled for worldwide distribution. Copy after copy, the same message constantly updated, they call their religion the truth. This is evangelism founded upon the reproductive techniques of printing. It's a black-and-white issue after all. Accept the word and the reward is everlasting life; refuse and it's death. They spread their message through little magazines and books delivered co you the old-fashioned way by preachers disguised as door-co-door salesmen. They tend to be a bit evasive when it comes co discussing the importance

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of these buildings, though. And why not? Truth and reproduction are uncomfortable bedfellows. But the buildings are far behind us now, the meter's marking time and dollars. The taxi's moving through the bleak edges of the city, closer to that destination so appropriate to my quest: Coney Island, first town of shallow dreams and fakery, opened in 1906 as an electric dreamland of ersatz forms, a world for the reproduction of fantasy. I This thing on my knees is an object whose exact status is very hard to establish. Roughly speaking, it can be called a sculpture - though only by proxy. You might say it's a replica: that's the word on the small fact sheet that came with it, but I can't help feeling that this description is more generous than it should be for a resin cast of the Medici Venus in imitation-marble finish. It's a female torso: no arms; no legs; no head. The body is bent forward a little, making the curve of the belly prominent. The hips are square and full, the buttocks smooth, the breasts slightly rounded domes like the insides of wine glasses - let me tell you, it's pretty damn sexy. All these tactile curves are set on a base of real stone, ideal for the coffee table or mantelpiece, its nudity presumably acceptable for the home because it has a provenance of sorts. I paid over $300 for it at the shop in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The fact sheet has their stamp on it to prove it. Museums are our temples to authenticity. They house the real, the actual objects that signify our cultural truths. They employ people - all those experts - to make sure that these treasures are, and remain, authentic. But this thing jumping about on my lap as the taxi goes over the potholes is a fake. For sure no one is going to be fooled by it. It corresponds to its original only in size and shape. The materials are modern - anyone can see it's not old. Does it contain any kind of truth, though? Is it capable of transmitting any of the awe we are asked to feel when in the presence of the object that formed its matrix - the object from which the mould was taken to spawn so many plastic copies? The problem in this particular case is acute. My fact sheet clearly states that it's a copy (in resin) of a Roman copy (in stone) of a presumed Greek original (in bronze), presumed lost. In other words, a copy of a copy from something which doesn't exist. CUT TO REAL TIME AND THE QUESTION: DO PLASTIC VENUSES TELL LIES?

My Medici Venus, fake marble, and beautiful in its own peculiar way, needs its fact sheet, that small piece of paper I still keep on file. Its short

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script and museum stamp frame or qualify an object that would otherwise be nothing but an ornament of dubious worth. The fact sheet imbues this Venus with a moral standing, with educational value. It enables her to transmit information about art, and the institutional knowledge of museums. Since the Enlightenment, modern Western concepts of artistic value have had little to do with religious patronage or the production of icons. Even before the first public museums were created,2 the authority of the church was being replaced with a new, secondary code of morality based on reason, substituting for the cultivation of virtue and vice an ethic of 'doing good' and 'doing harm' to which art had integral importance. As Diderot's Encyclopedie article, 'interessant', indicates, a work of art owes its interest to its normal social content and the artist must therefore be both 'philosophe et honnete homme'. And Diderot summed up his philosophy of art in the famous sentence: 'To make virtue attractive, vice obvious, ridicule forceful: that is the aim of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel' .3 This moral and educative directive for art spawned divergent attitudes to the notion of reproduction. On the one hand, by the mid-eighteenth century, the development of the Grand Tour as an essential prerequisite to the education of a gentleman or man of taste had accelerated the development of a significant trade in reproductions of antique sculpture. In essence, this was the origin of the modern souvenir, which tourists seek so avidly and to which museum shops - with their fact sheets - still pander. On the other hand lay the complex and contradictory Neo-classical attitude towards imitation. Hugh Honour explains it succinctly. So far from having anything of the servility of the copy, the practice of imitation was, according to Reynolds, 'a perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual invention'. Mengs was also careful to emphasize the distinction between copying and imitation: 'but he who effectively studies and observes the productions of great men, with true desire to imitate them, makes himself capable of producing works which resemble them because he considers the reasons by which they are done and this makes him an imitator without being a plagiarist'. Hence the contempt with which Canova and other Neo-classical sculptors regarded the practice of copying even the greatest of antique statues. 4 Yet this strong moral directive against mere reproduction paradoxically led to the manufacture of still more copies. The N eo-classicist demanded that nature should be depicted only in its ideal, unblemished or 'true' state. Since the antique represented precisely that ideal from

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which a new universal art would be born, students in the academies were rigorously trained to draw and model from casts taken from the greatest works of antiquity. Just as our older art schools are still inhabited by such derelict casts, so the legacy of these contradictory attitudes remains with us. Associated with tourism and kitsch, the reproduction is regarded as a debasement of the essential value residing in the ideal original. However, that value is transmitted largely through photographs and three-dimensional forms of replication, such as my Venus. Hence the casting services and shops associated with the great museums in Paris, London and New York. To some extent, this question of the original and its copy is more of a problem in the case of sculpture than it is in the apparently similar instance of painting. In earlier periods, paintings became known through prints and many were actually produced for dissemination in this way. The obvious distinction, however, between the techniques of printmaking and painting left the viewer in no doubt that the unique material object that was the original was not to be confused with the reproduction that propagated its image or message. As far as sculpture is concerned, the problem was not so much that technically distinct forms of reproduction were not available (they were), but rather that many of the traditional techniques of sculpture were, as they remain, in themselves essentially reproductive. As a souvenir for the aspirant highbrow tourist, my Venus may well be a kind of fake - but then so was its original if the fact sheet has it right. And it's surely more: a legacy rendered solid, as it were, one that concentrates in itself complex and contradictory histories. But where are these histories and the values associated with them located? Within the object or somewhere else? Does a sculpture entirely exist as a purely material thing or as a conceptually more complex entity? Richard Wollheim usefully distinguished between two commonly opposed theories: 'the ideal theory that works of art are mental entities, and the presentational theory ... that works of art have only immediately perceptible properties', rejecting both of them in any undiluted form. s Iris Murdoch, though hardly in agreement with Wollheim's Wittgensteinian argument, refutes the purely presentational theory in terms more succinct and accessible than those used by Wollheim, usefully raising the case of sculpture on the way. A work of art is of course not a material object, though some works of art are bodied forth by material objects so as to seem to inhere in them. In the case of a statue, the relation between the material object and the art object seems close, in

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the case of a picture less so. Poems and symphonies are clearly not material objects. Works of art require material objects to keep them continually available (our memories fade) and some require performance by secondary artists. All art objects are 'performed' or imagined first by the artist and then by his clients, and these imaginative and intellectual activities or experiences may be said to be the point or essence of art. 6

It's interesting that Murdoch should indicate that the experience of sculpture seems more bound to the physical object than is generally the case with other forms of art, even though, for her, the material object is necessary mainly to body forth an experience of a distinctly separate mental object. Such a conceptual object would, of course, already be informed by existing knowledge, by established ways of seeing. In the essay 'I Think Therefore I Art', Thomas McEvilly describes the mental object that constitutes the aesthetic experience as follows: Theories, of course are things; they are what Edmund Hussel called neomantic objects, that is, mental objects. Every thought or concept is an object, and every object has form and aesthetic presence (what does a centaur look like? an angel?). There is, in other words, an aesthetics of thought with its own styles and its own formalism?

The problem that besets sculpture, perhaps more than it does the other arts, is to determine to what extent the material object can be said to body forth the Husselian 'neomantic object'. This problem applies even to those art works that are unique material objects, for in time they suffer, deteriorate, require restoration, they may even have decayed so badly that in part they require to be substantially replaced. In these cases, the term 'restoration' seems too loose - it would be more accurate to speak of refabrication. As for reproductions - replicas, copies, call them what you will- the problem seems endemic. With each impression, each cast taken from the matrix or the original something, some small detail, gets lost. Today we most readily assume that which is lost must be the artist's touch. SECOND FLASHBACK: REGINA,

1985

We're deep in the Canadian plains and it's cold outside, lethally cold. The television stations issue warnings at regular intervals: don't walk outside unless it's absolutely necessary; drive in convoys. To underline these messages the news is filled with stories which sound like urban myths. There is a couple whose car had broken down; they had not been in a convoy. She was alive because she stayed in the car. He died; he froze to death trying to make it from the car to the nearest house.

EDWARD ALLINGTON

It's hard to believe because it's so deceptively beautiful out there, but with the temperature running from minus twenty to minus forty with the wind-chill factor, the danger's real. It's a world of whiteness, virtually devoid of life, where the snow is so white and crisp it sings snow music as you walk on it. A world where the moisture in your nostrils freezes with a sinus crunch as you step out of the hotel, and if you start to feel warm and comfortable out there in the whiteness, you should know that this means your body has started to succumb to hypothermia, leaving the mind - that site of sensory and aesthetic pleasure - right out of the loop. It's going to look good, and who knows, it might even feel good - but you will be starting to die. Here in the gallery it's warm and safe, as if the imaginary divide that separates the gallery from the world, a world within a world, has been defined climatically rather than by a priori concepts of space. We're here within this art space, this safe space, a world within the world of ice, cabin fever and potential death, to install a group exhibition. It's called Space Invaders. My task here is relatively simple. I have a room and some works, some material objects, to place inside it. There's a certain ritual attached to this task: after setting the sculptures up, I walk out of the room and try to forget everything for a while before going back to see how the sculptures sit together, one piece against another, how the space between them is articulated. The aim being to make them resonate in the space, to get them to look as if there's simply no other place they could be, as if they've always been there. To achieve this I need to clear my mind, so as to be able to go back and see with clean eyes. These periodic excursions from my part of the exhibition are also a good opportunity to check on what all the other artists are doing. On one of these walkabouts, I stop to talk to the French artist Bertrand Lavier. Bertrand is making a new work for the show. He's standing there in the gallery, pipe in mouth, in front of two rear wings from an old American car. They're fixed, pinned to the gallery wall like a butterfly. He's holding a broad brush which he's using to apply thick, even strokes of Liquitex, which happens to be the only paint he will use. The paint is mixed so as to match exactly the actual colour of the car wings, the only difference being that of texture. He stops painting so we can talk for a while. I like these works a lot and as I stand there admiring the piece; Bertrand makes a joke, one with a serious intent, but funny nonetheless. He says, 'You know, today I am painting with the touch of Van Gogh, but tomorrow? I don't know. Perhaps the touch of Gauguin'. The point

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Bertrand Lavier, Belvedere, 1985, Liquirex acrylic painr on sreel. Privare collecrion.

he's doing his utmost to apply the paint so there's no 'touch' whatsoever.

IS,

CUT BACK TO VENUS AND HER LIES -

OR OTHER WISE

My lovely plastic Venus is also totally devoid of any evidence of her maker's hand. No touch of genius here, just the slightly warm surface of resin impregnated with marble dust. Remember, it's a copy of a copy of an original only 'presumed' to have existed. Making copies was integral to the methods of the Roman sculptor. The demand for replicas of celebrated Greek works to decorate villas and palaces makes it seem reasonable that there was once a Greek original of my plastic Venus but, in any case, practice in the traditional Roman workshop celebrated copying. Apprentices learnt from the master; artisans used casting techniques to turn clay models into wax and then into bronze. For a long time it was considered that some form of pointing machine was known to the ancient world, so closely do certain types conform to a standard. These traditional methods remained largely unchanged and untouched even throughout the Renaissance and beyond. But the fact was obscured - or at least repictured - by the revolution in thought that accompanied the rise of Romanticism in the eighteenth century, transforming the status of the artist. Jean Chatelain puts it like this:

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EDWARD ALLINGTON

The revolutionary upheaval which shattered the traditional workshop system and the advent of an individualistic philosophy, followed the rise of Romanticism, and the development of the art market and speculation destroyed this unity and substituted a hierarchy among the arts. All these factors contributed to the emergence of a new concept, that of the artist as an inspired, exceptional being, endowed by providence or by nature with a gift for creating, innovating - for doing what others had not yet done - and so personal, so spontaneous, was this endowment that it could blossom only within the context of total liberty, supporting neither guidance nor hindrance. 8

As Chatelain explains, this new notion of the artist changed the way art was seen and sold. In other words, it is to the Romantic vision that we owe the idea of inspiration rendered solid by the artist's touch. The myth is now so deeply embedded within modern notions of art that it is taken as given by most spectators as they mentally release the work of art from the material object which bodies it forth. It's even applied retrospectively to objects quite innocent of the concept of art. There are of course some works to which it can be applied with accuracy, but normally within the domain of sculpture, its fragility is revealed by the continuation of traditional techniques such as bronze casting. Here, at best, it is compromised. In the light of much contemporary sculpture, it hardly applies at all. Reproduction within traditional practice is represented by the limited edition that Chatelain discusses in detail: The basic role on which this compromise is founded is that the 'matrix' from which the skilled artisans work to produce the original edition should be made by the creating artist's own hands and that their final completion be overseen by some agreed authority, usually, but not always, the artist. The notion of the first edition is simply that of all the technically possible copies from the 'matrix'. The first will usually be considered the most noble, beautiful and accurate, and the first edition will usually be small in number (under ten examples). The reason for this is usually a balance between what is economically most advantageous to artist, artisans, agents and buyers alike. Sometimes the 'matrix' can only sustain a certain number of copies before failing. Sometimes, however, the notion of the original edition is used to fallaciously promote exclusivity which brings us to the very opposite of the first edition, the concept of mass-produced art. 9

If, in these cases, it can be said that the artist's touch has at least been

'mediated' to some degree, what of the compound manifestations of materials, found objects and the conceptual actions of contemporary sculptural practice, Rosalind Krauss' 'sculpture in the expanded field'?IO If we have reservations about the romantic notion of genius' touch in the face of these phenomena, it is well to remember that the situation is not entirely new. One of Rodin's major contributions to modern sculpture lay in his revolutionary use of the then novel technique of photography to

Venus a Go Go, To Go

r6r

propagate images of his work - and, paradoxically, of himself as the very type of creative genius who gave birth to unique objects somehow frozen at the moment when they left the master's hand. The image was, of course, quite false. Methods of reproduction were essential to his practice. Rodin used casts and moulds to build a library of parts, which were subsequently recombined to collage new sculptures. He established what amounted to a sculpture factory, employing pointing and enlarging machines as well as skilled stone-carvers to produce his work. What's more, it has survived Rodin himself. Of course, many Rodins remain unique, either literally or in Chatelain's sense as a numbered cast from an authorized edition, but thanks to the artist's legacy to the French Government, it is still possible to obtain new, posthumous and completely 'authentic' bronzes issued by the Musee Rodin. But back to my Venus, a carapace of resin impregnated with marble dust. She's a tricky little number, but maybe she contains truth after all. Not the kind of truth that is bodied forth to constitute the neomantic object you might identify as a work of art, but a kind of truth about the nature of sculpture itself. More often than not, sculpture is dependent upon processes which by their very nature deny the artist's touch. Take the clay model, that first rendering which is made to be immediately destroyed, washed from the moulds, merely one among a number of fabrications, which, though under the sculptor's control, are not executed by the artist. The sculptor's vision is realized through collaborative effort. You might say that the sculptor's role may be likened to that of the cinematic 'auteur' or a composer of music. In this light the current liking for sculptors' drawings becomes immediately understandable, for in them at least the artist's touch is guaranteed. Perhaps, just as my Metropolitan Venus, shadow of its presumptively lost original, product of an absent matrix, may be said to have no verifiable singular genesis, so a great deal of sculpture may be said to have no originating centre. It issues from a type of void, not from a set of definable actions akin to those made by touches of a brush on canvas. If you're not hopelessly wedded to the romantic notion of the inspired artist, to the touch of genius, you may be able to see that the beauty and wonder of sculpture as an art lies precisely in its use of reproductive techniques, of collaborative work combining the skills of more than one person. If in some respects the production of sculpture may be likened to the production of music, and admittedly this is an analogy which collapses if pushed too far, then it might be said that there is a matrix generated and to some degree controlled by the composer, but for its

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realization it assumes a base in a multiply skilled community, in the existence of reproductive techniques and performances by people other than the artist, or as we might say, as well as the artist. Perhaps the analogy with music could be used to help us to see why sculpture today, sculpture in the expanded field, has, like music, become so divergent in its manifestations. From the introduction of Minimalism and, more importantly, of Conceptual Art in the 1960s, expression no longer seems the driving force within art practice. The significance of Conceptual Art relies not on any novelty of thought (art has always involved the conceptual, as Wollheim and Murdoch recognized in their different ways), but rather on the attempt to remove value completely from the object that bodies forth the work of art. But, as McEvilly noted, Prior to the 1960s, conceptual art already existed in a variety of forms which were not regarded as comprising a separate genre. Magritte and Picabia, for example, produced conceptual drawing in the 1920S. Duchamp and Man Ray practised conceptual sculpture. It was the impasse of Formalist hegemony in the early 1960s which had become virtually tyrannical in its exclusion of conceptual elements and of social reference that caused conceptual art to be specified as a separate genre. I I

If, within the traditional practice of sculpture, reproductive technology

may be regarded as a device which not only produced objects but also invested them with value as objects, Conceptual Art employed reproductive techniques and other strategies that denied the value of the artist's touch to favour not the material object but the neomantic entity constituted by the idea or concept. The history of the first 'conceptual sculpture', Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, his original and most important 'readymade', makes the differences clear, for, like my false Venus, this is a work dependent upon reproduction; it also had a 'presumed' original, now lost. This famous work, a bicycle wheel on a stool, is usually displayed in museums or illustrated in books with the label: Bicycle Wheel I9I3~ Neuilly. In one sense, this is correct: for Duchamp, it was the concept that mattered, not the object. However, as an object, the title is always incorrect. There have been thirteen versions of this work and there is no way to establish the form and configuration of the first one, the one made in 1913 at Neuilly. It is thought to have been discarded by Duchamp's sister when she cleared his studio following her brother's move to New York. The lack of evidence to verify this first version has led to speculation concerning its actual appearance.

Venus a Go

Go~

To Go

It would be interesting to know what the original wheel was propped upon. Since there is no written description, nor photographs or eyewitnesses, we are left with speculations. As Eke Bonk remarked to William Camfield, the tall kitchen stool seen in the 1917 photograph is a typically American piece of furniture, foreign to a European eye. It stands 29 Y2" tall as opposed to the 16 %" height of the usual European stool. The closest thing that comes to mind resembling a tall stool is a three-legged sculpture easel. 12

If Bernard Brunon is right, then the original was quite different from the subsequent replicas. The second version to which Brunon refers, that made by Duchamp in New York in 1916, is also lost. We have only the photographs. The first version still extant was made much later by Duchamp and Sidney Janis (Janis bringing the wheel and fork back from France) for a show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1951. This is the version now on view at the New York Museum of Modern Art. The fourth version was made for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm by UIE Linde and P. O. Ultuedt. Another replica was made by Richard Hamilton in 1963 and, finally, an edition of eight was produced under the direct supervision of Marcel Duchamp by the Galleria Schwartz, Milan, in 1964. Duchamp took great pleasure in these reproductions, believing that each new version released the concept from the tyranny of the object that bodied it forth. In this entirely modern reconfiguration, reproduction functions as a means of diminishing the value of the object and with it what Wollheim called the presentational theory of art. In the Bicycle Wheel, the immediately perceptible properties of the work are undercut by the work's dubious history, its mythical origin and the subsequent replications whose various manifestations all differ in detail but are usually accorded a single title and date, the date Duchamp gave for its conceptual inception, but one quite inaccurate for any of the remaining material objects. This history suggests a new idea. If the mental entity, the neomantic object, is all-important and the material object that bodies it forth no more than a cipher or analogue serving to represent or, in Murdoch's terms, perform it, then there is no reason why a work of art cannot exist in mass-produced form as an endless edition, the sculptural equivalent to the record or compact disc. Several artists - the German Katerina Fritsch, for example - have attempted something like this, but to my knowledge only one has made a thorough exploration of this means of propagating and marketing a truly mass-produced work of art with the potential to achieve the objective completely. A real work of art capable of being sold in supermarkets, this work or project is Les Levine's Disposables of 1966.

EDWARD ALLlNGTON

Les Levine, Disposables, 1966, vacuum-formed polystyrene. Courtesy Les Levine.

In a self-conscious parody of capitalist methods of mass-production and distribution, Levine mass-produced a line of so-called Disposables from expandable polystyrene - better known as Styrofoam - which emerged straight from the factory in sixty different styles and thirty colours. Levine proceeded to distribute them in bulk packages of ten thousand units to buyers, retailing at a volume price of $3 per unit .'3

Not only did these works involve the eradication of the artist's touch. Levine simply had the idea, then 'phoned in his order to the plastics manufacturer. Totally undercutting the notion of exclusivity normally associated with the art object, the Disposables were available in bulk for a price which actually reflected the cost of their production. Levine's position was admirable in its thoroughness and went beyond mere

Venus a Go Go, To Go questions of production and distribution. 'Levine took the renegade role still further by heretically claiming that he didn't care what the objects looked like. The point was for people to "use" his art for as long as they felt like, and when they grew tired of it to chuck it.'14 As he pithily proclaimed to Rita Reif of the New York Times: To be disposable something must be made to be destroyed as soon as the owner wishes ... To be truly disposable a work of art must be as available as Kleenex and cheap enough to throwaway without compunction ... in a fantasy-oriented, consumer-oriented society, culture is just one more thing to be consumed. I5

Levine's Disposables established a position at the extreme end of what Wollheim called the ideal theory. Without actually disappearing, the object was reduced to its minimal form as a means to body forth the work of art. By industrially replicating his Disposables and pegging them at such a low price, Levine implicitly questioned the actual value of other art objects and suggested a form for a means of art production equivalent to the marketing of music records or compact discs. The plastic Disposables are a structural paradox; their production and sale as art produce a double bind. They challenge the market mechanisms that restrict the supply of certain works of art, making it clear that this restriction is not due to rarity or scarcity, but to economic strategy. Levine thus notes that Noland's stripe paintings could easily be manufactured like awning fabric, with strip frames to match, at virtually no decrease in quality. If this is so, then the perpetuation of high art in the midst of mass-production is nothing short of social hallucination. By signing contracts with department stores for sales of millions of Disposables ($1.25 each), Levine is filling a niche in the ecology of art economics - and in the process may make as much money as Kenneth Noland. Hence Levine, as an artist, sees little use in uniqueness or pseudouniqueness, but only in well-considered business methods, a juxtaposition of kitsch and high art which brings to mind the methods of Frank Zappa. I6

After this, is it possible to say that a work of art - a sculpture - contains a singular truth? Romantic thought would seem to offer the possibility of an absolute value embodied, held captive within a solid object that sits pregnant in the gallery waiting for you, the viewer, to release it. But the reproductive methods of sculpture would seem to cast doubt on this proposition. For the production and replication of art does not reproduce an absolute value again and again. It is not a black-and-white issue like making icons and printing Watch Tower tracts in which the message is constantly updated but always the same. The void at the centre of the reproductive practices of sculpture comes out of a refusal of epistemological certainty. As McEvilly has it: 'Those who insist on certainty of knowledge resist recognition of the aesthetic of thought since

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it casts doubt on the distinction between truth and beauty ... and especially on the category of truth in and for itself'. I7 The aesthetics of thought have to do with the beauty of uncertainty, like the uncertain experience of art. Not only do the material objects of art change with time, but also do the neomantic objects as they are modified by new theories and new social constructs. Sculpture is a reproductive art: that is part of its beauty. And my reproduction Venus, image of the Goddess of Love, presides over the act of reproduction. She may not be telling the truth, but I'm pretty certain that she isn't telling lies. FINAL FLASHBACK: CONEY ISLAND,

1987

I've arrived. I'm in the shop and the taxi driver is outside waiting. He's just sitting there taking a long draw on a cigarette while his reproduced self sits fading, facing an empty back seat. This place is nothing like I'd expected. It's a glass-fronted shop overrun with children. There are tables in the centre of the shop covered in plaster casts, each one being given a multicoloured going-over by a besmocked infant. I'm standing in the middle of this mayhem talking to the owner. He's loquacious, he's enthusiastic, he's happy. Surprisingly, so am I. This situation is pretty useful from my point of view. It's not my idea of fun, but it's allowing me to see examples from virtually every mould he has on his shelves. His idea is, why throwaway all the dud casts when they can provide this much fun? No doubt there is a commercial angle to it as well, but all the same ... Why am I so happy? Well, in amongst all the vivid and incomplete casts turning technicolour before my very eyes, I've noticed some miniature versions of the Nike of Samothrace. This interests me enormously as I'm more or less certain where they originated from God knows how many moulds ago. You see, the Louvre produces casts exactly this size, reductions of the massive antique figure in its collection. I express interest; we talk numbers, we talk money. A deal is made for a hundred-plus spares. In this Coney Island paradise I have found the material for a new work. Soon they will arrive in my studio, and what will I do with them when they get there? I will use them to body forth a work of art, of course. We move on to my Medici Venus, where again we rapidly agree on the number of casts, a date for delivery and a very agreeable price. Back into the taxi, and back towards New York, with me feeling very happy, not only do I have my Venus to go, but also I'm pretty certain

Venus a Go Go, To Go

Installation in the Diane Brown Gallery, New York, in 1987, showing Edward AlIington's Victory Boxed, painted wood and plaster figures. Collection of the artist.

he'll make a mould for himself as well. My Medici Venus, Metropolitan Museum beauty, resin table-top delight, reproduced and reproduced again and again, an endless love object. Venus ad infinitum.

References

1

Miranda Marvin: Roman Sculptural Reproductions or Polykleitos: The Sequel I

2

3

4 5

6

7

8

9

IQ

Inv. no. 1801. Ancient Sculpture in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, museum catalogue by Frederik Poulsen (Copenhagen, 1951), no. II3, p. 101. Dr Mette Moltesen, the present Curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, is currently producing new catalogues and labels for the collection. I should like to thank her for her generous hospitality, and hope that no one in the museum will take my remarks about their old labels as any reflection on that wonderful institution today. Peter Rockwell, The Art of Stoneworking (Cambridge, 1993); Michael Pfanner, 'Ober das Herstellen von Portrats', Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts, 104 (1989), pp. 157-257; Elizabeth Bartman, Ancient Sculptural Copies in Miniature (Leiden, 1992), pp. 66-72. Bartman, Ancient Sculptural Copies, pp. 13-14. Visitors to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu can share the experiences of visitors to the Roman 'Villa of the Papyri' in Herculaneum, restored as the home of Mr Getty's collection. In Frands Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (New Haven, 1981), they note that Jonathan Richardson Senior and Junior first pointed to the copies in 1722 (p. 99), but that the theory was widely accepted only after Anton Raphael Mengs published it late in the century (p. 106). 'Historical', that is, in Roman terms. Figures such as Romulus, the founder of the city, are considered mythical or legendary today, but to the Romans they were historical, and depictions of them are considered historical scenes. Margarete Bieber, Ancient Copies (New York, 1977), pp. 1-9, reviews earlier literature. See also Paul Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen (Mainz am Rhein, 1974), pp. xv-xx; Christopher Hallett, 'Kopienkritik and the Works of Polykleitos' in Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition, ed. Warren Moon (Madison, 1995), pp. 121-60. Franz Wickhoff, Roman Art: Some of its Principles and their Application to Early Christian Painting, ed. and trans. Eugenie Strong (London and New York, 1900), pp. 28-9· John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity (Princeton, 1994),

p.286. II Zanker's Klassizistische Statuen separates works that echo Polykleitos into true

copies, works based on a single, specific original ('Umbildungen') and works fabricated from two or more originals ('Neubildungen' or 'Neuschopfungen'), p. xvii. Additional literature cited in Hallett, 'Kopienkritik', note 17, p. 157. 12 E. Bartman, 'Sexy Boys' in The Roman Art of Emulation, ed. E. K. Gazda (Ann Arbor, forthcoming). 13 Adolf Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, ed. and trans. Eugenie Sellers

References

14 IS

16 17 18

19

20

21

2.2

23 2.4 25 2.6 27 28 29 30 31 32

[Strong] (New York, 1895), p.286; Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen, no. 28, pp. 30-2. e.g. Mary C. Sturgeon, 'The Corinth Amazon', American Journal of Archaeology, 99 (1995), pp. 483-5°5. Carol C. Mattusch, ed., The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1996), no. 7, pp. 198-200, figs Christa Landwehr, Die antiken Gipsabgusse aus Baiae (Berlin, 1985). Miranda Marvin, 'Copying in Roman Sculpture: The Replica Series', Studies in the History of Art, xx (1989), P.39. Amanda Claridge, the pioneer in this paradigm shift, is hard to cite since she largely confines herself to the spoken word. It is a pleasure to thank her here for everything J have learnt from her. Polyklet: der Bildhauer der griechischen Klassik: Ausstellung im Liebieghaus, Museum alter Plastik, Frankfurt am Main, exhibition catalogue: Liebieghaus, Frankfurt (Berlin, 1985); replica list: Detlev Kreikenbom, Bildwerke nach Polyklet: kopienkritische Untersuchungen zu den mrmnlichen statuarischen Typen nach polykletischen Vorbildern (Mainz am Rhein, 1990); symposium on the Minneapolis Doryphoros: Warren Moon, ed., Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition (Madison, 1995). Brunilde Ridgway, 'Paene ad Exemplum' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 177-99, reviews the scholarship on Polykleitos up to 1994 in lucid and judicious terms. See also Federico Rausa, L'[mmagine del Vincitore (Rome, 1994), pp. 107-08, 181-7· Discussed in English by Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (New Haven, 1990), pp. 263-6, bibliography p.2.66; and Brunilde Ridgway, Fifth Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (Princeton, 1981), pp. 201-06. The differences between Ridgway and Stewart illustrate the limits of certainty about Polykleitos' career. Andreas Linfert, 'Die Schule des Polyklet', Polyklet, PP.240-97; chart on P.242 updates the standard work on the subject; Dorothea Arnold, Die Polykletnachfolge: Untersuchungen zur Kunst von Argos und Sikyon zwischen Polyklet und Lysipp (Berlin, 1969). Norbert Kaiser, 'Schriftquellen zu Polyklet', Polyklet, pp. 48-78. Also Gregory V. Leftwich, 'Ancient Conceptions of the Body and the Canon of Polykleitos' (diss., Princeton, 1987). Kreikenbom, no. V, 36; p. 197, pI. 306; Polyklet, no. 73, P.559. Cf. C. H. Hallett, 'The Origins of the Classical Style in Sculpture', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 106 (1986), pp. 81-2.. Gregory V. Leftwich, 'Polykleitos and Hippokratic Medicine' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 38-5I; and diss. Gregory V. Leftwich, 'Physical Analysis' in Style and Science: Examining a Polykleitan Sculpture by Miranda Marvin and Gregory Leftwich (Wellesley, 1989), n.p. Guy P. R. Metraux, Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth Century Greece (Montreal and Kingston, 1996), P.46 and note 52-, pp. no-I. Kaiser in Polyklet (above); J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece, I40D-P BC: Sources and Documents (EngIewood Cliffs, 1965), pp. 88-92. Pliny, Historia Naturalis [NH] XXXIV, 56-7. Cited in The Elder PUny's Chapters on 1896), P.44the History of Art, eds K. Jex-BIake and E. Sellers (New J. J. Pollitt, 'The Canon of Polykleitos and Other Canons' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, p. 19 and note 5. Illustrated in Kreikenbom, type no. V, pIs 247-348. Kreikenbom, no. IIJ, pIs 104-2°9. Not without variations, of course. See K. J. Hartswick, 'Head Types of the Doryphoros' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 161-76.

References 33 Following Zanker, Kreikenbom includes, for example, the Naples Antinoos (Naples inv. 6030; Kreikenbom no. 35) in his replica list. If such an attenuated relationship suffices to consider a work a 'replica', then the Prima Porta Augustus could be added to the list ('Neuschopfung' of course). See Gotz Lahusen, 'Polyklet und Augustus' in Polyklet, pp. 393-6; John Pollini, 'The Augustus from the Prima Porta and the Transformation of the Polykleitan Heroic Ideal: The Rhetoric of Art' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 262-72. 34 Paul Zanker, Die Bildnisse des Augustus (Munich, 1987) has clear diagrams on pp. 50-I. For the function of portrait types, see Paul Zanker, The Power ofImages in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1988), pp. 9~100, 220-1. 35 Kreikenbom no. I IS p. 147, pI. 30; no. I 45 p. 155, pi. 65; Erika Simon, 'Mercurius' in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae [LIMC], 7.2 (Zurich, 1995), p. SOO. 36 Kreikenbom no. I 46 pp. 155-6, pI. 67; no. 147 p. 156, pis 6~0; no. 148 p. IS7, pI. 71. 37 Kreikenbom no. I I p. 143, pi I; no. I 2 p. 143, pI. 6; no. I 3 p. 144, pI. 7. 38 Other ideal heads: Kreikenbom no. I 12 p. 146, pI. 26a; no. I 14 p. 147, pI. 28; no. I IS p. 147, pI. 30; no. 128 p. IF, pI. 45. Portraits: no. I 10 p. 146, pI. 22; no. I I I p. 146, pI. 23; no. I 33 p. 153, pI. 49. Torso herm: no. 127 p. IF, pI. 43. 39 Baldric: no. I 17 p. 148, pI. 31b; Neck mantle: I IS p. 147, pI. 30; no I 19 p. 148, pI. 19; Shoulder mantle: no. I 10 p. 146, pI. 22; no. I 21 p. 149, pI. 38; Mantle and baldric: no. I 32 p. 152, pI. 48; Lost attribute (spear? caduceus?) no. I 13 p. 146, pI. 26b-27a; no. I 31 p. 152, pI. 47b. pI. 18; Lyre: no. I IS p. 147, pI. 30; Dog: no. 16 pp. 144-5, 40 Sea monster: no. 17 p. his total of forty-eight works in the Diskophoros type by pI. 16. Kreikenbom including 'possible adaptations of the body type' and 'works associated with the body type but of doubtful or refutable connection'. 41 See note I above. Also Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen, no. 3, p.6. 42 Dogs are common with figures of hunters, Meleager, for example. 43 Kreikenbom no. II 9 p. 159, pI. 184; no. 11 10 p. 159, pis 86-'7; no. II 12 p. 160, pI. 88. 44 Kreikenbom no. II 8 p. IS8, pis 81-3, and no. 11 13 p. 160, pI. 89, have traces of head coverings usually assumed to be the remains of a petasos or pilos, one of the traveller's hats often worn by Hermes. Another head in the series has holes for attaching a metal wreath: no. 11 IS p. 160, pI. 94. 4S Kreikenbom no. 11 9 P.IS9, pI. 84. Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen, no. 40, P.40 ('Neubildung') . 46 Kreikenbom no. 11 17 p. 161, pis 97-100. 47 Kreikenbom no. 11 IS p.160, pI. 93. Kreikenbom considers the remaining miscellaneous bodies attached to Hermes heads to be restorations. 48 Kreikenbom no. 11 18 p. 161, pI. 101; no. 11 19 pp. 161-2, pI. 102; no. II 20 p. 162, pI. 1°3· 49 Wings: Kreikenbom no. IV 13 p. 184, pI. 233b; Ribboned wreath: Kreikenbom no. IV 6 p. 182, pI. 221; no. IV 7 p. 182-3, pI. 225; no. IV 9 p. 183, pI. 227. Another herm wears a slightly different wreath: no. IV 8 p. 183, pI. 22S. 50 Kreikenbom no. IV I p. 181, pI. 210; no. IVa I p. 185, pI. 236; no. IVa 2 p. 185, pI. 24°· 51 Carlo Anti, 'Monumenti Policletei', Monumenti Antichi, 26 (1920), p. 550. He notes that the discus is modern 'except for a small segment adhering to the thigh' (p. 558). Whether enough is original to guarantee the accuracy of the restoration is debated. The Torlonia collection has been unavailable for study for a generation. 52 Peter C. Bol, 'Hermes' in Polyklet, pp. U8-20. 53 Ibid., pp. 19~205·

References 54 As far as I know, this argument is never explicitly made. Ridgway in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, p. 191, calls it the 'unconscious' rationale for the attribution. 55 Ernst Berger, Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig III (Mainz and Rhein, 1990), pp. 130-1. Diagrams of replicas pp. 120-21, 127. 56 Simon in LIMC, P.503. 57 Ridgway in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, suggests that the Herakles may be a Roman creation, borrowing the gesture from the Herakles Farnese, p. 191. 58 Gerard Siebert, 'Hermes' in LIMC, p.288. 59 Siebert in LIMC, P.384. Cf. Ridgway in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, p. 190 and note 44. 60 Mercury wears such a wreath, further elaborated with a lotus-flower crown, in bronze figurines thought to echo the Hermes Paramnon of Ptolemaic iconography. Stephanie Boucher, Bronzes romains figures du Musee des beaux-arts de Lyon (Lyon, 1973), nos. 136-8, pp. 84-7; Christiane Boube-Piccot, Les Bronzes antiques du Maroc (Rabat, 1969), nos 216-17, pIs 143-4, from Volubilis. 61 Annalis Leibundgut, 'Polykletische Elemente bei spiithellenistischen und r6mischen Kleinbronzen: zur Wirkungsgeschichte Polyklets in der Kleinplastik' in Polyklet, pp. 397-427; catalogue nos 185-210. 62 Caterina Maderna-Lauter, 'Polyklet in Rom' in Polyklet, p. 351. 63 Ibid., p. 500. 64 Ibid., p. 507. 65 Ibid., p. 506; Bernard Combet-Farnoux, Mercure romain (Rome, 1980), pp. 412-13, 42 3-4. 66 First noted by Benjamin Rowland. See Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley in England (Cambridge, MA, 1966), P.273, figs 373 and 379. 67 Henning Wrede, Consecratio in formam deorum: vergottlichte Privatpersonen in der romischen Kaiserzeit (Mainz am Rhein, 1981), pp. 273-83, and Caterina Maderna [Lauter], Iuppiter Diomedes und Merkur als Vorbilder fur romische Bildnisstatuen: Untersuchungen zum romischen statuarischen Idealportrat (Heidelberg, 1988), pp. 107-10, differ on the nuances of religious meaning attached. 68 Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 239 ff. 69 The adaptation of the Doryphoros as Pan, as in the colossal marble in Copenhagen Kreikenbom no. III 16, pI. 141 - is thought-provoking in this context. 70 See E. Bartman, note 12 above. 71 Hartswick in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, has identified the use of casts 111 some Doryphoros replicas, p. 165. 72 Ridgway in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, p. 181; Dorothy Kent Hill, 'Polykleitos: Diadoumenos, Doryphoros and Hermes', American Journal of Archaeology, n.s. 74 (1970), pp. 21-4· 73 In addition to the marble 'variants' that survive (see Kreikenbom, pIs I5~3), see the fragments of such a near-Doryphoros among the Baiae casts, Landwehr, Antiken Gipsabgusse, P.I77, and a schist torso from the imperial villa at Castel Gandolfo. Paolo Liverani, CAntiquarium di Villa Barbarini a Castel Gandolfo (Vatican City, 1989), no. 22, figs 22, 1-4. 74 I would like to thank M. Koortbojian for reminding me of the relevance of this practice. 75 Leibendgut in Polyklet, P.412. 76 Personal communication, 13 August 1996. 77 Note the comment of Dorothy Kent Hill: 'It is permitted to raise again the question of whether the variant Hermes figures are not mere Roman creations on a Polykleitan theme, the famous Doryphoros', 'Polykleitos', P.24. 78 Paul Zanker, 'Zur Funktion und Bedeutung griechischen Skulptur in der R6merzeit'

References

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

97 98

99

in Entretiens sur l'antiquite classique, 25 (Geneva, 1978), pp. 28 3-314; Adolf Borbein, 'Polyklet', Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 234 (1982), pp. 191-3. Hubertus Manderscheid, Die Skulpturenausstattung der kaiserzeitlichen Thermenanlagen (Berlin, 1981); Miranda Marvin, 'Free-standing Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla', American Journal of Archaeology, 87 (1983), pp. 347-84. One school of thought holds that the Doryphoros represented Achilles. Cf. Andrew Stewart, 'Notes on the Reception of the Polykleitan Style: Diomedes to Alexander' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 247-8. Gerard Siebert, 'Hermes' in LIMC, pp. 289 and 378. Linda lones Roccos, 'Perseus' in LIMe, 7.1 notes that Perseus ' ... seems to embody the ephebic ideal of heroic, responsible behavior ... " pp. 347-8. See Arnold and Linfert, note 21 above. Leibendgut, Polyklet, pp. 400-02, figs 239, 240. Terracotta, cat. no. 160, pp. 630-1 (Metropolitan Museum, New York), 32.n.2. Tonio Holscher, Romische Bildsprache als semantisches System (Heidelberg, 1987), pp. 55-60; Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 245-52; Maderna-Lauter in Polyklet, pp. 37~85· Leibendgut in Polyklet, P.423; cf. pIs I9~2I5. An exceptional Bacchus in Polykleitan style comes from Morocco. Boube-Piccot, Bronzes antiques du Maroc, no. 340, pp. 270-1, pI. 219. In Polykleitos, ed. Moon, three authors describe the action of the Doryphoros differently: Leftwich, P.47; Tobin, p. 55; Hurwit, pp. n-12. Cf. Polyklet, no. 201, fig. 201, p. 663, and pp. 212 ff. Cf. Sturgeon, 'Corinth Amazon', p. 487. Ellen Perry reminded me of the relevance of Sturgeon's comments. Polyklet, p. II2. The repertory of small bronzes is startlingly consistent across the Empire. Compare types from Morocco - Boube-Piccot, Bronzes antiques du Maroc - with Switzerland - Annalis Leibendgut, Die romischen Bronzen der Schweiz Il: Avenches (Mainz am Rhein, 1976), nos 5-12 - or Italy - Girolamo Zampieri, Bronzetti figurati etruschi, italici, paleoveneti e romani del Museo Civico di Padova (Rome, 1986), nos 144-5. Leibendgut in Polyklet, pp. 397-424, summarizes. In Polyklet Leibendgut offers an alternative explanation and a chart on p. 398 suggesting derivation from two Polykleitan originals. Boucher, Bronzes romains de Lyon, p.67; Leibendgut, Polyklet, pp. 397-8. e.g. Annalis Leibendgut, Die romischen Bronzen der Schweiz Ill: Westschweiz (Mainz am Rhein, 1980), no. 14, pIs 20-1, pp. 24-6· Whether the industry was organized into workshops specializing in one or another type of sculpture, or into workshops capable of all sorts, remains to be investigated. According to Kreikenbom, the replicas of the Polykleitan series date between the late second or early first century BC and the beginning of the third century AD. It would be unwise to assume that no changes occurred in the art world during that time, or that a single pattern of production characterized the whole Roman Empire. Ellen Perry, 'Artistic Imitation and the Roman Patron' (diss. Ann Arbor, 1995). C. H. Hallett, 'Kopienkritik and the Works of Polykleitos' in Polykleitos, ed. Moon, pp. 121-60; contra Elaine Gazda, 'Period Styles' in 'Truth in Advertising: Labeling Greco-Roman Sculpture', College Art Association annual meeting, Boston, 24 February 1996. 'At present, most laboratory testing of marble entails two or three processes: petrographic analysis, stable-isotope testing and, sometimes, trace-element analysis. X-ray diffraction testing has been used for years and newer modes of evaluation, including electron spin resonance and cathodoluminescence, are gaining acceptance.'

References

173

Mary Hollinshead, 'Meaning in Marble: The Value of Attribution' (http:// www. wellesley.edu/DavisMuseum/Truth/Polymarblesupp.html), 22 February 1996. 100 Most small works still come from clandestine sources, illegally dug up and illegally exported. Any possibility of deriving historical information from them is, of course, non-existent.

Anthony Hughes: Authority, Authenticity and Aura: Waiter Benjamin and the Case of Michelangelo

2

I WaIter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in Illuminations, ed. with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1969); first published in French translation in Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, V/I (1936). The German text, 'Das Kunstwerk im ZeitaIter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit', appeared in Schriften (Frankfurt am Main, 1955). 2 See, for example, Andrew Benjamin, 'The Decline of Art: Benjamin's Aura', Oxford Art Journal, 9/2 (1986), pp. 30-55. Benjamin's historical thesis has been challenged in Jacquelin Baas, 'Reconsidering Waiter Benjamin. "The Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Retrospect' in The Documented Image: Visions in Art History, eds Gabriel P. Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon (Syracuse, NY, 1987), pp. 337-47, and implicitly in The Image Multiplied: Five Centuries of Printed Reproductions of Paintings and Drawings, exhibition catalogue by Susan Lambert: Victoria and Albert Museum, London (London, 1987). 3 For the history of, and related literature on, this work see Joachim Poeschke, Michelangelo and his World (New York, 1996), pp. 103-05. 4 La Pensee, marble, Paris, Musee Rodin. For further information see Cecile Goldscheider, Auguste Rodin: Catalogue raisonne de l'oeuvre sculpte (Paris, 1989). 5 Posthumous production of marbles and bronzes 'by' Rodin has caused scandal and controversy. On Rodin, originality and related matters see Jean Chatelain, 'An Original in Sculpture' in Rodin Rediscovered, exhibition catalogue ed. Albert E. Elsen: National Gallery of Art, Washington (Washington, 1981); and the subsequent dispute between Albert Elsen and Rosalind Krauss in October, nos 18 (Fall 1981) and 20 (Spring 1982). Krauss' part was republished as 'The Originality of the AvantGarde' and 'Sincerely Yours' in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA and London, 1993). 6 Philip Larkin: 'Why did he think adding meant increase?/To me it was dilution.' From 'Dockery and Son', Collected Poems, ed. with an introduction by Anthony Thwaite (London and Boston, 1988), pp. 152-3. The topic is human reproduction. 7 Poeschke, Michelangelo, pp. 105-14. 8 Nicholas Penny, The Materials of Sculpture (New Haven and London, 1993). 9 Poeschke, Michelangelo, pp. 9~101. IQ Giovanni Gaye, Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI publicato ed illustrato con documenti pure inediti, 2 vols (Florence, 1840) (facsimile reprint, Turin, 1968), 11, P.500. For a brilliant, definitive account of the commissioning, history and placement of Michelangelo's original Pieta see Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, 'Michelangelo's Pieta for the Cappella del Re di Francia' in 'Il se rendit en Italie'. Etudes offertes a Andre Chastel (Rome and Paris, 1987), pp. 77- 12 1. I I Giorgio Vasari, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols (Florence, 187885), VII, p. 55 2 . 12 The inscription is difficult to read and has been left deliberately incomplete. It runs '[ ... IO EX IMITATIONE LIPPVS STAT. FACIEBA[T]'. For the significance of the incomplete text and the employment of the imperfect tense, see Weil-Garris Brandt, 'Michelangelo's Pieta'.

174

References

13 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scuLtori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols (Florence, 1875-85), VII, P·15 2 . 14 '... si scoperte in St~. Spirito una Pied, la quale la mand6 un fiorentino a detta chiesa, e si diceva che lorigine veniva dall inventor delle porcherie, salvandogli larte ma non devotione, Michelangelo Buonarroto. Che tutti i moderni pittori e scultori per imitare simili caprici luterani, altro oggi per le sante chiese non si dipinge 0 scarpella altro che figure da sotterar la fede e la devotione; ma spero che un giorno Iddio mandera e sua santi a buttare per terra simile idolatre come queste'. Gaye, Carteggio inedito, p. 500. 15 Poeschke, MicheLangeLo, pp. 76-7. See also Leo Steinberg, 'The Metaphors of Love and Birth in Michelangelo's Pieta' in Studies in Erotic Art, eds Theodore Bowie and Cornelia Christenson, PP.231-335 and Romeo De Maio, MicheLangeLo e La Controriforma (Rome and Bari, 1978). Most of the commentary on the variants begin with the premise that Lorenzetti and Baccio deliberately introduced changes to correct what was deemed unacceptable in Michelangelo's original: either (Poeschke and De Maio) the youthfulness of the Virgin or (Steinberg) the supposed erotic implications of the sculpture. There is some indirect evidence in Condivi's life of the artist that contemporaries were perplexed by the apparent age of the Virgin. See Ascanio Condivi, Vita di MicheLangeLo Buonarroti, ed. E. Spina Barelli (Milan, 1553, reprinted 1964; English trans. A. S. Wohl, The Life of MicheLangeLo, Baton Rouge, 1976). This feature was not, however, 'corrected' even in prints that appeared after the final deliberations of the Council of Trent. Steinberg's theory seems the reflection of a modern longing to find some (preferably scandalous) heterodoxy in the work of an artist as an incontrovertible sign of genius. 16 A. J. Minnis, MedievaL Theory of Authorship: SchoLastic Literary Attitudes in the Later MiddLe Ages, 2nd edn (Aldershot, 1988). 17 Vasari, Vite, VII, p. 152. 18 Ernst Steinmann, MicheLangeLo im SpiegeL seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 100-01; and Poeschke, MicheLangeLo, pp. 76, pIs 9 and 163. Vasari credited this work also to Nanni di Baccio Bigio who was an assistant to Lorenzetto during the relevant period, but there is considerable uncertainty about his participation. See Rudolf Wittkower, 'Nanni di Baccio Bigio and Michelangelo', Festschrift fur Ulrich MiddeLdorf (Berlin, 1968 ). 19 Steinmann, MicheLangeLo, p. 10r. 20 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and London, 1989). See especially chapter 8 and pp. 177-8. 21 The diarist's characterization is likely to have been a confused recognition of the fact that the motif of the Virgin with the dead Christ in her lap was of northern European derivation, though the devotional image had, of course, a preReformation origin and was reasonably well known in Florence. See Charles de Tolnay, MicheLangeLo, vol. I, The Youth of MicheLangeLo (Princeton, 1947), p. 14422 Michelangelo, Carteggio, IV, M LIV , 8 February 1546, p. 229. The French text runs as follows: 'Seigneur Michelangelo, pour ce que j'ay grant desir d'avoir quelques besognes de vostre ouvrage, j'ay donne charge l'abbe de Sainct Martin de Troyes, present porteur que j'envoye par dehl, d'en recouvrer, vous priant, si vous avez quelques choses excellentes faictes son arrivee, les luy voulloir bailler en les vous bien payant ainsi que je ay donne charge. Et davantage voulloir estre contant, pour l'amour de moy, qu'il molle le Christ de La Minerve et la Nostre Dame de La Febre, afin que j'en piusse aorner l'une de mes chappelles, comme de chose que l'on m'a asseure estre des plus exquises et excellentes en vostre art.' The text, now in Lille, Musee de I'Art et Histoire, was composed and written out by Claude de L'Aubespine and signed by Francis.

a

a

References

175

23 Vasari, Vite, VII, p. 362: 'Ll [i.e. in Florence] ... formo di gesso tutte le figure di marmo che did mano di Michelangnolo sono nella sagrestia nouva di San Lorenzo.' 24 Carlo Ridolfi, Maraviglie dell'arte, ouero le vite de gl'illustri pittori veneti e dello Stato (Venice, 1648), vol. II. The biography of Tintoretto is translated by Catherine and Robert Enggass as The Life of Tintoretto, and of his Children Domenico and Marietta (Pennsylvania, 1984). For Tintoretto's drawing practice, see Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and I6th Centuries (New York, 1944). 25 Tomb of ]ulius ll, engraving, 1554, inscribed: SEPVLCHRI MARMOREI IVLIO 11 PONT. MAX. DIVINA MICH. ANGELI BONAROTI FLORENTINI MANV ROMAE IN BASILICA S. PETRI AD VINCVLA FABREFACTI GRAPHICA DEFORMATIO. ANT.

SALAMANCA EXC. ROMAE LIIII; Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Gabinetto dei Stampi. For a discussion of prints after Michelangelo see Evelina nel suo tempo' in La Sistina riprodotta: gli Borea, 'Michelangelo e le affreschi di Michelangelo dalle stampe del cinquecento alle campagne fotografiche Anderson, exhibition catalogue, ed. Alida Moltedo: Calcografia, Rome (Rome, 1991), pp. 17-30. The Salamanca engraving is her fig. 10. On the career of the print publisher Salamanca, see David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470-155° (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 3°2-04· They also discuss the significance of this type of inscription on pp. 167-8 and treat the rise of reproductive imagery of statuary on pp. 305-09. 26 Nicolas Beatrizet (?). Pieta, engraving, inscribed: 'MICHELANGELVS BONAROTVS FLORENT. DIVI PETRI IN VA TICANO EX VNO LAPIDE MAT REM AC FILIVM DIVINE FECIT. ANTONIVS SALAMANCA QVOD POTVIT IMITATVS EXCULPSIT

1547'. It is unlikely that Salamanca himself engraved the plate. 27 Weil-Garris Brandt, 'Michelangelo's Pieta'. 28 Gian Battista de' Cavalieri, Pieta, engraving, 1564, Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Gabinetto dei Stampi. For an illustration see Borea, 'Michelangelo', fig. 17, or Steinmann, Michelangelo, pI. xxv. 29 On the nature and development of the reproductive print and the problems attached to the terminology, see Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, chapter IV, "'''I'''''''''U
References Piazza Michelangelo was also finished in r875 in time for the celebration of the fourth centenary of Michelangelo's birth at which time the bronzes were installed. See Stefano Corsi, 'Cronaca di un centenario' in Michelangelo nel ottocento. It centenario del r875, exhibition catalogue: Casa Buonarotti, Florence, 1994 (Milan, 1994). Cronaca also gives valuable information on the Michelangelo exhibition held at the Accademia in 1875, which exhibited the master's sculptural works in reproduced form. For the history of the Accademia Slaves, see Poeschke, Michelangelo, pp. 103-05. 3 Marjorie Trusted: Art for the Masses: Spanish Sculpture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries I

2 3 4 5

6 7

This article developed out of an earlier study of terracottas published in 1993 (M. Trusted, 'Three Spanish Terracottas in the Victoria and Albert Museum', Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia, LIX (1993), pp. 321-3°), as well as the research conducted in connection with the publication of the catalogue of Spanish sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Spanish Sculpture: Catalogue of the Post-Medieval Spanish Sculpture in Wood, Terracotta, Alabaster, Marble, Stone, Lead and Jet in the Victoria and Albert Museum, museum catalogue by M. Trusted, London, 1996). One exception to this is Luisa Roldan, who signed a number of her works. The practice of signing seems to have become more common (although it was still relatively unusual) in the eighteenth century. Review by R. Ford of E. Head, A Handbook of the History of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting and W. Stirling, Annals of Spanish Painters, The Quarterly Review, LXXXIII (1848), pp. 1-2. J. A. Cean Bermudez, Diccionario de los mas ilustres profesores de las Bel/as Artes en Espana, 6 vols (Madrid, 1800). This publication was also inspired by Antonio Palomino, El Parnaso Espartol (1714). Studies that have approached more general themes include F. Checa Cremades, Carlos V y la imagen del heroe en el Renacimiento (Madrid, 1987), and Pedro de Mena y Castilla, exhibition catalogue: Museo Nacional de Escultura (National Museum of Sculpture), Valladolid (1989). Inv. no. 91-1864. The measurements are: height (without frame), 30.5cm; width (without frame), 4ocm; height (with frame), 45cm; width (with frame), 55cm. See Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by Trusted, cat. no. 14. '0 VOS OMNES QVI TRANSITS.lPERVIAM. ATENDITE ET VIDE ESIE sT.lDOLOR SIMILIS,

SICVT.

DOLOR

MEvs/QUINET

TVAM

IPSIVS

ANIMAN

PENERBIT

(Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. And why does not the sword pierce your very soul?). The first half of the inscription is from the Book of Lamentations (1:12); the second from Luke (2: 35). 8 I am grateful to Richard Cook of the Sculpture Conservation Section, Josephine Darrah of the Science Conservation Section, both at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Sarah Boulter, who cleaned the relief while a student in the Sculpture Conservation Section, for their comments on this. The terracotta has been overpainted at least twice, probably once in the seventeenth or eighteenth century and once in the nineteenth century. The conclusions about the paint layers are based on sections of samples of paint examined by the above conservators. 9 See J. J. Martin Gonzalez, Juan de Juni: Vida y Obra (Madrid, 1974), pp. II5- I 7. 10 Ibid., and Trusted, 'Three Spanish Terracottas', pp. 324-5, note 22. According to Martin GonzaIez (Juan de Juni, p. 378), the relief in Leon measures 30cm in height GLADIVS'

References

II 12 13 14 15

16 17 r8 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

177

and 39cm in width. He gives the same measurements (30 x 39cm) for the one in Valladolid (ibid., p. 379). These measurements are sufficiently close to those of the London relief to suggest the pieces are actually identical in size, and apparent differences are due to manual errors of measuring. However the measurements of the version in the Camon Aznar Collection are: height, 25cm; width, 35cm. The Camon Aznar relief was also published in Museo Camon Aznar, Obra Social de la Caja de Ahorros de Zaragoza, Aragon y Rioja (Zaragoza, 1979), unnumbered plate. For Juan de Juni, see Martin Gonzalez, Juan de Juni and Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by M. Trusted, cat. no. 14Martin Gonzalez, Juan de Juni, pp. II8-20, fig. 80. Martin Gonzalez has pointed this out. Ibid., pp. 133-42 and fig. 101. Ibid., p. II5. The inventory is quoted in J. Marti y Monso, Estudios historicosarttsticos relativos principalmente a Valladolid (Valladolid, 1898-1901), p. 369. 'En la iglesia de San Martin de dicha ciudad hay una historieta de barro cocido de Descendimiento de la Cruz, que le han vaciado algunos escultores por ser cosa tan peregrina.' A. Palomino, El Parnaso Espaiiol [1714], in Fuentes Literarias para la historia del Arte Espaiiol, ed. F. J. Sanchez Canton (Madrid, 1923-41), IV, P.76. This is also cited in Martin GonzaIez, Juan de Juni, p. II5. Martin Gonzalez, Juan de Juni, p. II5. Ibid., p. II6. J. C. Robinson papers (Art Referee Reports) held at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum. Unfortunately it has not been possible to carry out any thermoluminescence tests to tryout the theory. Martin Gonzalez, Juan de Juni, pp. II 5-17; see also note 10. I have been kindly informed by John Larson (personal communication), who has examined the Valladolid and Leon examples, that the method of casting these two versions differed: the clay used for the Valladolid relief was carefully and compactly inserted, while the one in Leon was made in layers in a far cruder construction. This is a painted terracotta relief in a wood frame (height, 22cm; width, 33.5cm); inv. no. 828; unpublished. I am grateful to Luis Luna Moreno and Manuel Arias for giving me access to this piece. For Luisa Roldan, see B. Gilman Proske, 'Luisa Roldan at Madrid' (Parts r-3), The Connoisseur, CLV/624-6 (February-April 1964) and J. J. Martin Gonzalez, Escultura Barroca en Espaiia (Madrid, 1983), pp. 177-84. I am grateful to Catherine Hall-van den Elsen for giving me the revised birth and death dates of the artist, which are given here. These have been established through archival records; see C. Hall-van den Elsen, The Life and Work of the Sevillian Sculptor Luisa Rold/m with a Catalogue Raisonne (unpublished doctoral thesis, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 1992 ). Inv. no. 250-1864. Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by Trusted, cat. no. 27. The group is set on a gilt-wood base, which is almost certainly original. This has been suggested by C. Hall-van den Elsen, La Vida y las Obras de Luisa RoId/m (unpublished MA thesis, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 1989), p. 100. See L. Reau, Iconographie de I'Art Chretien (Paris, 1958),111.1, p. 385, and E. Male, L' Art Religieux apres Le Concile de Trente (Paris, 1932), pp. 487-8. J. C. Robinson papers, I, part Ill. See also Inventory of the Objects Forming the Art Collection of the Museum at South Kensington. Supplement no. I for the Year 1864 (London, 1864), p.20. See Gilman Proske, Luisa Rold/m, Part 2, fig. 6. The dimensions of the Mystical Marriage are: height; 36.5cm; width, 45cm; depth, 29.5cm. This group lacks a base. The greater width and depth of the present piece

References

30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37

38

39 40

are at least partly explained by the floor area around the figures, which is much shallower in the Mystical Marriage group. The measurements of the face of the Virgin in the London group are: height, 50mm; width, 38mm. Those of the Virgin in the Mystical Marriage are: height, 42mm; width, 32mm. Those of the face of the angel in the London group are: height, 42mm; width, 31mm; while those of the angel in the Mystical Marriage are: height, 40mm; width, 29mm. Gilman Proske, Luisa Rold/m, Part 2, fig. 7, and Part 3, fig. 16. I am grateful to Constancio del Alamo of the Hispanic Society for allowing me to examine this piece. I am grateful for this information to Catherine Hall-van den Elsen (personal communication), who during the course of her research on Roldan located a letter from Roldan to Charles II of Spain mentioning an attached list of eighty works; the list has sadly been lost. See also note 23. See Pedro de Mena y Castilla, pp. 36-9, nos 8 and 9. Cf. M. J. Friedlander, Dieric Bouts and Joos van Gent (Early Netherlandish Painting III), trans. H. Norden (Leyden, 1968), pIs 74-8, and The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe T300-T500, exhibition catalogue by H. van Os and others: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (1994), P.46, fig. 10. A Flemish terracotta bust of the Mourning Virgin dating from 1470 to 1490 (itself probably based on a painting by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden) is in the Thyssen Collection. Such pieces may also have been imported to Spain; see A. RadcIiffe, M. Baker and M. Maek-Gerard, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture (London, 1992), pp. 418-23, cat. no. 83. I am grateful to Paul WiIliamson for drawing my attention to this. For example, his two panels of Christ and the Virgin of c. 1480-5 in the Prado, Madrid; see El Mundo de los Osuna ca.q6o-ca.T540, exhibition catalogue: Museu Sant Pius V, Valencia (1994), pp. II8-23, cat. nos 6 and 7. Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 1284-1871; height, 48.5cm; width, I9cm; depth, 29cm. Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by Trusted, cat. no. 46. Museum records. It had first been published as a work by Pedro de Mena in 1923, although this was not apparently widely accepted (A. L. Mayer, Spanische Barockplastik (Munich, 1923), fig. 107), and it had not been cited in R. de Orueta y Duarte, La Vida y la Obra de Pedro de Mena y Medrano (Madrid, 1914). These sculptors, apparently twins, were active in Granada in the mid-seventeenth century. See E. Orozco Diaz, 'Los Hermanos Garda Escultores del Ecce-Homo', Bolettn de la Universidad de Granada, VI/30 (1934), pp. 1-18, and La Escultura en Andaluda Siglos XV a XVIII, exhibition catalogue: Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid (1984), pp. 92-3, where further bibliography is cited. Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by Trusted, pp. 96-101. These include two in the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, one in the Accademia de Bellas Artes in Madrid, one in the monastery of St Joachim and St Anne in Valladolid, two in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Granada, one in Cuenca Cathedral, one in Malaga Cathedral, one in the Dreifaltigkeitskirche in Vienna, and one in the Iglesia de la Profesa in Mexico City. For further examples see Orueta, Pedro de Mena; D. Angulo lfiiguez, 'Dos Menas en Mejico', Archivo Espanol de Arte, XI (1935), pp. 131-52; H. Aurenhammer, 'Zwei Werke des Pedro de Mena in Wien', Alte und Neue Kunst, IIII2 (1954), pp. 126-7; Martin Gonzalez, Escultura Barroca, p. 219; Pedro de Mena, pp. 34, 38, 42, 46; Pedro de Mena: 1Il Centenario de su Muerte Centenario, exhibition catalogue: Malaga Cathedral; Junta de Andaluda (April 1989), cat. nos 34-8; J. Fernandez Lopez, 'Una Nueva Dolorosa attribuible a Pedro de Mena', Bolettn del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologta, LIV (1988), pp. 428-30. Cf. also what appears to be a nineteenth-century pastiche of the

References

41 42

43 44

45

46 47 48

49

50 51

179

type (present whereabouts unknown) sold in 1932: Antiquitaten und Alte Gemalde aus dem Nachlass des verstorbenen Freiherrn F. von Stumm, sale catalogue: G. Deneke, Berlin (4 October 1932), cat. no. 192. Pedro de Mena, pp. 62-3, cat. no. 21. Ibid., pp. 5~61, cat. nos 19 and 20. Another bust perhaps by a follower of Jose de Mora is in the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina (Spanish Polychrome Sculpture I50o-I8oo in United States Collections, exhibition catalogue, ed. S. Stratton: Spanish Institute, New Yark, pp. 136-7, cat. no. 29). F. Hurtado de Mendoza, Fundacion y Cronica de la Sagrada Congregacion de San Phelipe Neri de la Ciudad de Granada (Madrid, 1689), cited in A. Gallego y Burin, Jose de Mora: su Vida y su Obra (Granada, 1925, reprinted 1988), p. 158. The sixteenth-century chronicler Pedro de Ribadeneira stated that Nicholas IV witnessed the miracle (Ribadeneira cited in text below, and see also note 46); other sources say Nicholas V (Reau, lconographie, p. 530, and W. Braunfels, ed., Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols (Freiburg im Bresgau, 1974), VI, p. 311). Seen in an engraving of about 1610 by Jean Le Clerc (Braunfels, Lexicon). The scene was also depicted in Thomas de Leu's Vida de San Francisco, published in about 1600; see J. J. Martin Gonzalez, El Escultor Gregorio Fern/mdez (Madrid, 1980), P.249, and Pedro de Mena, p.22. I have been unable to see a copy of either publication. St Francis was of course depicted in numerous paintings prior to the popularity of this specific legend, notably in the work of El Greco (1541-1614). A second part appeared in 1601. I have been able to see a copy of the 1643 edition only, but I am grateful to M.!! Rosario Fernandez for the details of the earlier dates of publication. Height, 104cm. See Martin Gonz:ilez, Gregorio Fern/mdez, P.249, and Pedro de Mena, pp. 22-3, cat. no. I. An eighteenth-century variant after Gregorio Fernandez is illustrated in ibid., pp. 84-5, cat. no. 32. Martin Gonzalez, Gregorio Fernandez, pp. 24~50. The paintings are in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Cataluna, Barcelona, respectively. See M. Gregori, L'Opera Completa di Zurbaran (Milan, 1973), nos 36~70 (bis), and J. Brown, Francisco de Zurbaran (New York, 1973), p. 134, pI. 38. The autograph versions are described and illustrated in Orueta, Pedro de Mena, p.128, fig. 21, and pp. 163 ff. and fig. 54, and in M. E. Gomez-Moreno, Ars Hispaniae, XVI: Escultura del Siglo XVII (Madrid, 1963), pp. 245-6, figs 221 and 223· For example the figure by Fernando Ortiz in the National Museum of Sculpture at Valladolid, dating from 1738. See Pedro de Mena y Castilla, pp. 64-5· Examples are located in the Church of St Martin in Segovia (height, 84cm; Pedro de Mena, pp. 50-I, cat. no. 15); the Municipal Museum, Antequera (height, lOocm; M. E. G6mez-Moreno, 'Un San Francisco de Mena en Antequera', Archivo Espaiiol de Arte y Castilla, XLVII (1974), pp. 68-70; see also Pedro de Mena y Castilla, p. 10); the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen (height, 87cm; Orueta, Pedro de Mena, P.170, fig. 57); one formerly in the K.K. Osterreichisches Museum, Vienna (J. von Falke, Holzschnitzereien: eine Auswahl aus der Sammlung des K.K. Osterreich. Museums (Vienna, 1893), pI. XXXVII, 2); the Meadows Museum and Gallery, Southern Methodist University, Dallas (height, 74.lcm; Stratton, Spanish Polychrome Sculpture, pp. 76 and 124-5, cat. no. 23); one recently acquired by the Louvre, Paris (height, 87cm; Musee du Louvre: Nouvelles Acquisitions du Departement des Sculptures I988-I99I (Paris, 1992), pp. 50-3); and a variant in the Fray Pedro Bedon Museum, Convent of Santo Domingo, Quito (G.G. Palmer, Sculpture in the Kingdom of Quito (Albuquerque, 1987), P.46 and fig. 20).

References

180

52 Pedro de Mena, pp. 64-5, cat. no. 22.

53 Ibid., pp. 86-7, cat. no. 33. 54 Pedro de Mena, pp. 92-3, cat. no. 36 (version attributed to Esteban de Agreda (1759""""" 1842) and dated to after 1814), and Musee du Louvre: Nouvelles Acquisitions, p. 50 (marble version made in 1872 by Zacharie Astruc, exhibited in Madrid in 1877). See also Orueta, Pedro de Mena, P.163. Cf. one sold in the F. von Stumm sale, lot 49 (Antiquitaten, pI. XI), which also appears to be nineteenth-century. 55 Inv. no. 331-1866. Height, 50.5cm; Spanish Sculpture, museum catalogue by Trusted, cat. no. 24. 56 Museum records held at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum: J. e. Robinson papers, V, part Ill, minute of 5 February 1867.

4 Malcolm Baker: The Ivory Multiplied: Small-scale Sculpture and its Reproductions in

the Eighteenth Century In my work on Bossuit and ivory-carving I am especially grateful for the interest and encouragement of Christian Theurkauff whose many publications about ivories and Kleinplastik form the basis for the study of this subject. I

2.

3

4

5 6 7

8 9

10

Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical , Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven and London, 1980). Examples include Klaus Lankheit, Die Modelisammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia (Munich, 1992.) and the introductory essays on 'Originals, Versions, Multiples and Casts' in The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture, by Anthony Radcliffe, Malcolm Baker and MichaeI Maek-Gerard (London, 1992). For a discussion of these issues see Rosalind Krauss, 'Retaining the Original? The State of the Question' in Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, symposium papers: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, VII (Hanover and London, 1989), pp. 1-12. For changing uses of bronzes and different constructions of the 'small bronze' as a discrete category of sculpture, see Malcolm Baker, 'Collecting, Classifying and Viewing Bronzes 17°0-185°' in Von alien Seiten schon. Nachtrage, ed. Volker Krahn (Cologne, 1996), pp. lII-23. Nicholas Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum 1540 to the Present Day (Oxford, 1992), I, cat. nos 35, 40, 63, 159"""""61. For this see Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia. For these 'cabinets of curiosities' see (from a rapidly growing literature) Julius von Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spatrenaissance (Braunschweig, 1978) and Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds, The Origins of Museums (Oxford, 1985). K. Aschengreen-Piacenti, 1/ Museo degli Argenti a Firenze (Milan, 1968). For Kern's relationship with collectors, noble owners of Wunderkammern and art dealers see Johannes Zalten, 'Bemerkungen zu Kunstproduktion und Sammlungswesen im 17. Jahrhundert, angeregt durch die Kleinplastiken Leonhard Kerns' in Leonhard Kern [1588-1662J, exhibition catalogue, ed. H. Sidebenmorgen (Schwabisch Hall, 1988), pp. 35-5°· Franz von Stampart and Anton von Prenner's Podromus seu preambulare lumen ... (Vienna, 1735) is discussed in ibid., cat. no. 37. The imagery and the relationship between poem and tankard are discussed in the catalogue entry by Johanna Hecht in Liechtenstein, the Princely Collections, exhibition catalogue: Metropolitan Museum, New York (New York, 1985), cat. no. 67·

References

r8r

II For Jaillot see Christian Theueurkauff, 'Kleinplastik des Barock, Werke von Jean Gaulette, Michel Mollart and anderen franzasischen Zeitgenossen', Kunst und Antiquitaten, I (1985), p. 30. 12 Nicolas Guerin, Description de l' Academie Royale des arts de peinture et sculpture (Paris, 1715). I am grateful to Andrew McClellan for drawing my attention to this book. 13 For Dobbermann's work and career see Christian Theuerkauff, 'Jacob Dobbermann und Joachim Henne - Anmerkungen zu einigen Kleinbildwerken', Alte und moderne Kunst, 24 (1979), pp. 16ff. 14 For Henne' career see ibid. and Jarg Rasmussen, 'Joachim Henne, ein hafisher Kleinmeister des Barock', Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, 23 (1978). 15 Most notably in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993) and Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800 (London, 1995). 16 For Permoser and Fiirstenberg see Siegfried Asche, Balthasar Permoser (Berlin, 1976), pp. 106-09· About twenty years earlier these same ivories had been reproduced in porcelain by Doccia and, as Asche shows, Permoser's figures continued to be used by various porcelain factories throughout the eighteenth century. 17 Charles Avery, David Le Marchand 1674-1726 (London, 1996), pp. 27, 86-9. 18 Pierre-Jean Grosley, A Tour to London (London, 1772), p.69. 19 Leonhard Kern, exhibition catalogue, cat. no. 92. 20 This process was itself made available in multiple form by the terracottas of Clodion. 21 Matthys Pool, Beeldsnijders Kunstkabinet (Amsterdam, 1727). 22 For a thorough and detailed discussion, on which all later work must be based, see Christian Theuerkauff, 'Zu Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692), "Beeldsnyder in yvoor"', Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 37 (1975), pp. II~82. 23 For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between these different versions, on which the account here is based, see Malcolm Baker, 'Francis van Bossuit, Battger stoneware and the Judith reliefs' in Festchrift Alfred Schadler, eds R. Kahsnitz and P. Yolk (Munich, forthcoming). 24 For Heermann see Christian Theuerkauff, Elfenbein. Sammlung Reiner Winkler (Munich, 1984), pp. 56-9. 25 For the Battger reliefs (with references to the earlier literature) see Stefan Bursche, Meissen. Steinzeug und Porzellan des 18. Jahrhunderts Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (Berlin, 1980). 26 This discussion is based on a longer study I am preparing of Pool's book, the circumstances in which it was produced and its place in both the history of the Amsterdam book trade and art historiography. 27 This will be discussed in my forthcoming study of Pool's book but some of the relevant information, particularly about the sale of Anthony Grill in 1728, was made available for entries in De Wereld binnen Handbereik, exhibition catalogue by Wim de Bell and Jaap van der Veen: Historisch Museum, Amsterdam (1992). 28 Walpole's own detailed account of both cabinet and contents is given in A Description of the Vilia of H orace Walpole ... at Strawberry-Hill (Strawberry Hill, 1774), pp. 77-8. For the cabinet's significance see Clive Wainwright, The Romantic Interior (New Haven and London, 1982), PP.74-6; A Grand Design, exhibition catalogue, eds Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson (New York, 1997), cat. no. IH· 29 On this see Krauss, 'Retaining the Original?', pp.lQ-II, and Jeffrey M. Muller,

182

References

'Measures of Authenticity: the Detection of Copies in the Early Literature on Connoisseurship' in Retaining the Original, pp. 141-50. 30 Krauss, 'Retaining the Original?', p. 10. 31 For Tassie see Avery, David Le Marchand, pp. 86-7; Holloway, lames Tassie I735-I799 (Edinburgh, 1986). 32 His name still occurs occasionally, however, in some late eighteenth-century Dutch sale catalogues and he is mentioned in the inventory of Ploos van Amstel's art collection. For Houbraken see Peter Hecht, 'Browsing in Houbraken' in Ten Essays for a Friend: E. de ]ongh 65, Simiolus, 24 (1996), pp. 157/2; for van Gool see Lyckle de Vries, 'Jan van Gool als geschiedschrijver', Oud Holland, 99 (1985), pp. 165-90.

5 Martin Postle: Naked Authority? Reproducing Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon 1 See Frands Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 15°0-19°0 (New Haven and London, 1981), pp. 16-37 and 7')'9 8. 2 For a survey of the role of the antique in academic training see Carl Goldstein, Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 137-58. 3 Giovanni Battista Armenini, De' veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna, 1587), pp. 613, quoted in Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, p. 16. For a survey of the development of academies in Italy in the sixteenth century see Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art Past and Present, 2nd edn (New York, pp. 25-66. 4 See Andre Felibien, Conferences de l'Academie Royale de peinture et de sculpture pendant l'annee r667 (Paris, 1668); Andre Fontaine, Conferences inedites de l'Academie Royale de peinture et de sculpture (Paris, 1903). See Gerard Audran, Les proportions du corps humain mesurees sur les plus belles figures de l'antiquite (Paris, 1683); Sebastien Bourdon, 'Les proportions de la figure humaine, explique sur l'antique', 5 July 1670 (Paris, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, MS. 143); Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles Le Brun's 'Conference sur l'expression generale et particuliere' (New Haven and London, 1994), pp. 73f. 6 Goldstein, Teaching Art, p. Ip. 7 Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, pp. 17-22. 8 See, for example, Jaap Bolten, Method and Practice, Dutch and Flemish Drawing Books 1600-175° (Landau Pfaiz, 1985), pp. 257-9· 9 See M. Kirby Talley Jr, Portrait Painting in England: Studies in the Technical Literature before 1700 (London, 1981), pp. 308-09; Ilaria Bignamini, 'The Artist's Model from Lely to Hogarth' in The Artist's Model: Its Role in British Art from Lely to Etty, exhibition catalogue by Ilaria Bignamini and Martin Postle: University Art Gallery, Nottingham, and the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood (Nottingham, 1991), p. 8. 10 Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, P.148; Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (Oxford, 1986), pp. 71- 2; Bignamini, 'The Artist's Model from Lely to Hogarth', p.8. I I Ilaria Bignamini, 'George Vertue, Art Historian, and Art Institutions in London, 168')'-1768: A Study of Clubs and Academies', Walpole Society, LIV (1988), pp. 2148. 12. Bignamini, 'The Artist's Model from Lely to Hogarth', pp. 12-13. 13 For Vertue see George Vertue, 'Notebooks nI', Walpole Society, XXII (1933-4), p.2.2 and Bignamini, 'The Artist's Model from to Hogarth', p. 12.

References 14 Michael Kitson, 'Hogarth's "Apology for Painters"', Walpole Society, XLI (19669), p.86. 15 Ibid., pp. 85-6· Hogarth singled out William Kent as a prime example of the worthlessness of study in Italy: 'Mr Kent won the prize of Rome and never was there a more wretched dauber'. 16 Ibid., p. 86. 17 For Cheere see The Man at Hyde Park Corner: Sculpture by John Cheere 17°9-1787, exhibition catalogue by Terry Friedman and Timothy Clifford: Stable Court Exhibition Galleries, Temple Newsam, Leeds; Marble Hill House, Twickenham (Leeds, 1974), passim. 18 See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times, 2 vols (New Haven and London, 1971),11, p. 168; The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 37, p.62. 19 See Hugh MacAndrew, 'A Group of Batoni Drawings at Eton College, and some Eighteenth-Century Copyists of Classical Sculpture', Master Drawings (1978), pp. 131-5°; The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 23, p. 54. Eight of Dalton's drawings were published in 1770 by John Boydell as part of A Collection of Twenty Antique Statues Drawn after the Originals in Italy by Richard Dalton Esq. 20 The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 22, p. 53. 21 Vertue, 'Notebook Ill', pp. 127-8. See also The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 22, p. 53. 22 Vertue, 'Notebook Ill', pp. 121-2. See also Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor 1694-1770, exhibition catalogue by Katherine Eustace: City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (Bristol, 1982), pp. 160-2. 23 Kim Sloan, 'Drawing - A "Polite Recreation" in Eighteenth-Century England' in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, ed. Harry C. Payne (Wisconsin, 1982), 11, pp. 21 7-4°. 24 D. G. C. Allan, William Shipley. Founder of the Royal Society of Arts. A Biography with Documents, 2nd edn (London, 1979), p.80. 25 Benjamin Ralph, The School of Raphael; or the student's guide to expression in historical painting (London, 1759), p. B. 26 David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London, 1993), P.217. 27 Ibid., p.220. 28 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven and London, 1975), P·47· 29 For the suggested association between the 'Pleasures of the Imagination', as expounded by Joseph Addison, and Wright's image, see Solkin, Painting for Money, pp. 217-18. 30 Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 2 January 1769, I, pp. 4-6· Quoted in Sidney C. Hutchison, The History of The Royal Academy 1768-1986, 2nd edn (London, 1986), P·3 L 31 Early in the nineteenth century a female art student was allowed by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) into the Antique Academy during the Christmas vacation as a special dispensation. However, as the room was not heated, she found that her hand was too cold to hold her pencil. See William T. Whitley, Art in England, 1800-1820 (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 83-5. 32 The schools moved to Old Somerset House in the Strand in 1771. See Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy, p. 33. 33 Ibid., P·27· 34 Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, cat. no. 67, pp. 281-2.

References 35 Solkin, Painting for Money, P.242. 36 Ibid., pp. 245-6· 37 There is no evidence to support the attribution of this painting to Zoffany. See Lady Victoria Manners and G. C. Williamson, Zoffany, R.A. His Life and Works (London, 1924), pp. 33-4. 38 See The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 7, p. 43. The same room, viewed from the opposite end, appears in Edward Francesco Burney's wash drawing of 1780, The Antique Room, New Somerset House (Royal Academy of Arts). 39 A. J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, 2 vols (London, 1909), I, P.7. 40 William Hazlitt, Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. (London, 1830), p.102. 41 Diderot on Art -I. The Salon of 1765 and Notes on Painting, trans. John Goodman, Introduction Thomas Crow (New Haven and London, 1995), P.4. 42 Dublin Chronicle, 3 December 1787. 43 John Gait, The Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West, Esq., 2 vols (London, 1820), 11, p. 10r. 44 See Richard and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of British Painters (Oxford, 1947), p. 256; The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, pp. 58-60. 45 James Northcote stated that the prostitutes who sat in the Royal Academy Schools were distrustful of the students' motives, regarding the activity as 'an additional disgrace to what their profession imposed upon them, and as somethng unnatural, one even wearing a mask'. Hazlitt, Conversations of James Northcote, p. 103. 46 Martin Kemp, ed., Dr William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts (Glasgow, 1975), P·43· 47 Ibid. 48 John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 2 vols (London, 1828), 11, p.64. 49 Christie's, 5 July 1823, lot 2.1, 'Cast of a sitting Venus'. 50 Smith, Nollekens and his Times, II, p.64. 51 See The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 27, pp. 56/ . 52 See William Blake, exhibition catalogue by Martin Butlin: Tate Gallery (London, 1978), cat. no. 315, pp. 145-6. 53 Martin Archer Shee, Elements of Art, A Poem: in Six Cantos, with Notes and Preface, including Strictures on the State of the Arts, Criticism, Patronage, and Public Taste (London, 1809), p. 63. 54 Malcolm Elwin, ed., The Autobiography and Journals of Benjamin Robert Haydon (London, 1950), p. 75. 55 Andrew Ballantyne, 'Knight, Haydon and the Elgin Marbles', Apollo Magazine, CXXVIII (September 1988), pp. 155-9· 56 Elwin, Autobiography and Journals of Benjamin Robert Haydon, P.78. 57 Ibid., P·77. 58 Ibid., p.168. 59 Frederick Cummings, 'B. R. Haydon and his School', journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXVI (1963), pp. 367- 80 . 60 Elwin, Autobiography and journals of Benjamin Robert Haydon, p. 311. 61 Cummings, 'B. R. Haydon and his School', p. 372 and note 23. 62 See Martin Postle, 'The Artist's Model from Reynolds to Etty' in The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, P.23. 63 See Joseph Farington, 21 July 1807, in The Diary of joseph Farington, ed. Kathryn

References

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18 5

Cave (New Haven and London, 1982), VIII, p. 3094. Carlisle had first published his remarks in an article in The Artist on 4 July 1807. Prince Hoare, Academic Annals of Painting (London, 1805), p. 182. John Flaxman, 'Motion & Equilibrium of the Human Body', p. 14. The unpublished manuscript of Flaxman's treatise is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. See also The Artist's Model, exhibition catalogue by Bignamini and Postle, cat. no. 88, p. 94. For a survey of the role played in art education by the antiquities in the British Museum in the nineteenth century see Ian Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800-1939 (London, 1992), pp. 30-40. Hazlitt, Conversations of James Northcote, P.41.

6 Neil McWilliam: Craft, Commerce and the Contradictions of Anti-capitalism: Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffier I Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-si'ecle France: Politics, Psychology and Style (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), pp. 22~42. 2 Henri Bouilhet, L'Orfevrerie franfaise au XVIIle et XIXe siecles (Paris, 1912), Ill, pp. 320-1, and Gustave Soulier, 'La Plante et ses applications ornementales', Revue des arts decoratifs, xx (March 1900), pp. 93-6· 3 Among the numerous contemporary biographies of the artist, see in particular Edouard Achard, Jean Baffier (Paris, 1887); Charles Achard, Le Sculpteur berrichon Jean Baffier (Montrouge, 19I1); and Jean Desthieux, L'Enfant des cathedrales (Jean Baffier) (Paris, 1933). For more recent studies, see Gilbert Perroy, 'Nos Artistes: Jean Baffier, sculpteur-statuaire (1851-1920)', Revue d'histoire du quatorzieme arrondissement de Paris, XXV (1980-1), pp. 74-85; Oeuvres de Jean Baffier au Musee municipal de Nevers, exhibition catalogue by B. Bringuier (Nevers, 1981); and Gerard Coulon, 'Jean Baffier, tailleur d'images', Berry. Une Terre Cl decouvrir, I (Spring 1987), pp. 42-5°. 4 Charles Baussan, 'Un Maitre imagier. Jean Baffier', Le Mois litteraire et pittoresque, XX/Il9 (November 1908), p. 543. On analogies with Millet, see, for example, Louis Perie, 'Quelques Notes sur Jean Baffier', Le Limousin de Paris, 9 May 1920. 5 See, for example, Philippe Durey, 'Le Realisme' in La Sculpture franfaise au XIXe siecle, exhibition catalogue by Anne Pingeot and others: Grand Palais (Paris, 1986), pp. 365-6. 6 See Christian-E. Roth, 'Jean Baffier et le regionalisme en Berry-BourbonnaisNivernais (I885-I9Il)', Federation des Societes savantes du Centre de la France. Actes du 5Ie congres, Il7-I8 (July-December 1990, January-June 1991), pp. I5~77, and Yannick Guilloux, Ethnographes et folkloristes dans le Cher (1852-1914). Petite Histoire locale des chercheurs de traditions populaires, de l'enquete Fortoul Cl la mission Brunot, Maitrise des lettres modernes, Universite Franf:rois Rabelais (Tours, 1987). 7 For an instance of this, see the discussion of Baffier's monument to the Spanish doctor and theologian Michael Servetus in Neil McWilliam, 'Monuments, Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion in the French Third Republic', Art Bulletin, LXXVIII2 (June 1995), pp. 186-206. This discusses the anti-Protestant polemic underlying Baffier's work and its relationship with French nationalist antiProtestantism more generally. 8 The best general discussion of the market remains Jacques de Caso, 'Serial Sculpture in Nineteenth-Century France' in Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by J. Wasserman: Fogg Art Museum (Harvard, 1979), pp. 1-27. 9 On Carpeaux's commercialization of reproductive sculpture, see, for example, Anne Middleton Wagner, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire (New

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References Haven and London, 1986), pp. 175-207. On Fremiet, see Emmanuel Fremiet: La Main et le multiple, exhibition catalogue by Catherine Chevillot: Musee des BeauxArts (Dijon, 1988). Louis de Fourcaud, 'Les Arts decoratifs au Salon de 1899. Les Objets d'art. 11: La Societe nationale', Revue des arts decoratifs, XIX (October 1899), P.332. See the Jean Baffier dossier in the Archives de Paris 10624/72II17. The council purchased nine pieces in all, which were deposited at the Musee Galliera before being transferred to the collection of the Petit Palais. Baffier received a total of 20,000 francs for these purchases. See the correspondence between Baffier and Henri Jacquier, Under-secretary of State for Fine Arts, in Archives nationales F2.I 4287, which also contains letters in support of Baffier's request from a number of influential public figures, such as the Carde des sceaux, Antony Ratier. In 1917, Baffier's long-standing patron Jacques Mariani offered to pay for the work's completion; see Archives departementales du Cher, Bourges, 23 F 5,640-41, undated letter [February 1917]. See, for example, Anonymous, 'La Troisieme Exposition d'art au palais du due Jean. L'lnauguration', Journal du Cher (24-5 October 1910), reporting a speech by Baffier in which he described his decorative work and its inspiration. See, for example, Pierre Roche, Exposition de rart du fer forge, du cuivre et de retain au Musee CalUera (mai-septembre I90S). Rapport general presente au nom du jury (Paris, 1905), where the elements from the table setting are extolled as 'des oeuvres irreductibles, profondement originales et dedaigneuses de toute concession' (p. 9). Roche goes on to point to.the benefits to be gained within the decorative arts from the example of rural craft traditions, though he explicitly repudiates nationalist exploitation of such sources (p. 20). The theme is conveyed particularly forcefully by Marius Vachon in a series of pamphlets and enquiries such as Pour la defense de nos industries d'art. L'Instruction artistique des ouvriers en France, en Angleterre et en Autriche (Paris, 1899). On Vachon's campaign, see Stephane Laurent, 'Marius Vachon, un militant pour les "industries d'art"', Histoire de rart, 2~30 (May 1995), pp. 71-8. On nature as a source of inspiration, see Gustave Soulier, 'La Plante et ses applications ornementales', Revue des arts decoratifs, XX (1900), pp. 93-6; on the rejection of Art nouveau, see Charles Genuys, 'A propos de l'Art nouveau. Soyons Fran~ais!', ibid., XVII (1897), pp. 1-6. Vincent Dethare, 'Les Artistes berrichons au Salon d'automne', Journal du Cher (1617 October I9 I I). Emile Molinier, 'Notes sur I'etain', Art et decoration, I (October 1897), p. 102. See, for example, Andre Salmon, 'La Semaine artistique [ ... J Art et regionalisme', L'Europe nouvelle (3 May 1919), p.867. Henri Clouzot, 'L'Art decoratif de Jean Baffier', La Renaissance de l'art franfais et des industries du luxe, IV11 (January 1921), p.18. See Nancy J. Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (London and New Haven, 1991). For the decorative and symbolic importance of tree imagery in the fireplace and accompanying furniture, see Etienne Charles, 'A l'atelier de Jean Baffier', Journal du Cher (28 November I909). Baffier's involvement in regionally inspired furniture design can be understood as part of a broader interest in traditional forms around the turn of the century: see Denise Gli.ick, 'Meuble regional et modernite' in Le Meuble regional en France, exhibition catalogue by Denise Gllick and others: Musee national des arts et traditions populaires (Paris, 1990), pp. 170-1. Catalogue of the 1898 Salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, no. 216: 'Maquette au quart d'execution definitive, mur de fond d'une salle cl manger.'

References 24 Jean Baffler, Les Marges d'un cahier d'ouvrier. Objections a Gustave Geffroy sur le Musee du soir et la force creatrice (Chateauroux, 189S), p. IS. 25 Jean Baffler, 'Lettre ouverte M. Henry Hamel, Directeur du "Journal des artistes"', Journal des artistes, 18th year, 44 (S November 1899), P.2898. See also Jean Baffler to Auguste Rodin, letter dated 23 December 1901, in which he attacks 'cet art de pacotille, qui s'intitule Art Nouveau, art issu d'un brocantage industriel ehonte, qui remplace l'heure actuelle les belles conceptions issues de notre art ancestral, si precieusement et si pieusement conserve au sein des corporations'. Dossier Jean Baffler, Archives du Musee Rodin, Paris. 26 Edouard Achard, 'Les Nivernais aux deux Salons', Revue du Nivernais (June 1901), P·23 6. 27 Edouard Achard, 'L'Art d'epoque', Le Reveil de la Gaule, 40 (January 1892), p.282. 28 Jean Baffler, Manifeste du groupe corporatif des ouvriers d'art de Bourges fonde sous la direction de Jean Baffier, ouvrier sculpteur, pour le relevement de la dignite du travail national et la moralite de tart franrais (Chateauroux, 1901), pp. 7-8. 29 Jean Baffler, 'Petition M. le President du Conseil municipal de Paris au sujet de mes oeuvres sabotees honteusement au Musee Galliera', supplement to Reveil de la Gaule (March 1909), p. 394. 30 Baffler, Les Marges d'un cahier d'ouvrier, pp. 46, 48. 31 Speech recorded in Ligue de la patrie franraise, section du X/Ye arrondissement. Comite de Plaisance. Proces-verbaux des assemblees, no. 18, record of 6 October 1900, n.p., Archives departementales du Cher, 23 F 9. 32 On the department store, see Jean Baffler, 'Le Bazar de la Charitf', Le Reveil de la Gaule, 3rd series, 8-u (March-July 1897), p. II3: 'le bazar, importe d'Orient par les agioteurs juifs, est le mauvais lieu Oll est en train de sombrer la dignite du travail et toutes les vertus de l'art fram;ais, pour ne pas dire le caractere de notre race'. 33 Camille Mauclair, 'La Crise des arts decoratifs' in Trois Crises de l'art actuel (Paris, 1906), p. 167.

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7 Erich Ranf{t: Reproduced Sculpture of German Expressionism: Living Objects,

Theatrics of Display and Practical Options See, for example, Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Alan Wilkinson: Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 1981); Patrick Elliott, 'Sculpture in France 1918-1939' (PhD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1991), especially chapter IV, 'Direct Carving'; Sculpture en taille directe en France de I900 I950, exhibition catalogue by Patrick Elliott: Foundation de Coubertin (Saint-Remy-Ies-Chevreuse, 1988); and Alexandra Parigoris' essay in this volume. 2 German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Stephanie Barron: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Josef-Haubrich Kunsthalle, Cologne (Los Angeles and Chicago, 1983; trans., revised and expanded as Skulptur des Expressionismus, Munich, 1984). 3 The other Brucke painter-sculptors were Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde, while the Los Angeles project also included in this 'category' of sculptors Kirchner's followers in Switzerland: the painter-sculptor Albert Muller and the sculptor Hermann Scherer, from 1923 to 1927; see German Expressionist Sculpture, ibid., for essays and catalogue entries on each of the abovenamed. Undoubtedly inspiring the Los Angeles project was the major touring retrospective, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner I88o-I938 (Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Zurich, 1979/80; organized by [former West-] Berlin Nationalgalerie, 1979), I

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References including fifteen sculptures. For the most relevant study to date on Brucke art and sculptures, see Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven and London, 1991). Quoted in Rose-Carol Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (New York, 1993), p.26 (the quote uses 'peeled out' but this is awkward). Deutsche Bildhauer 19°0-1945 Entartet, exhibition catalogue ed. Christian Tumpel: two venues in the Netherlands, 1991; then Gerhard Marcks-Haus, Bremen; Westfalisches Landesmuseum, Munster; Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim {Zwolle, 1992}. This features Kirchner's Standing Woman (1912, Nationalgalerie, Berlin); see cat. no. 34, pp. 140-1. This catalogue also featured as its frontispiece a wood-carving by Expressionist sculptor Milly Steger (c. 1919); see cat. no. 29, p. 136. See Andreas Franzke, Skulpturen und Objekte von Malern des 20. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1982); and for a timely survey, including sculptures: Expressions: New Art from Germany, exhibition catalogue ed. Jack Cowart: The Saint Louis Art Museum; Long Island City, NY; Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, Newport Beach, Washington, DC (Saint Louis and Munich, 1983). Petra Kipphoff, 'Der skulptierte Schrei', Die Zeit, no. 31 (27 July 1984), p. 33; and Eduard Beaucamp, 'Wilde und Biiger', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. IH (17 July 1984), P.23. For a later study incorporating Baselitz into research on Expressionist sculpted heads, see Angela Ziesche, Der neue Mensch. Kopfe und Busten deutscher Expressionisten (PhD dissertation, published Frankfurt am Main, 1993)· L. de Marsalle [E. L. Kirchner], 'Uber die plastischen Arbeiten E. L. Kirchners', Der Cicerone, XVII/q (1925), pp. 695~01; translation in German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Barron, PP.43-6 (with illustrations of works from article) and Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents, pp. II~ 21 (excerpted). For introductory contextualizations of Expressionist sculpture see: German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation, exhibition catalogue ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas; Kunstmuseum Diisseldorf; Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle (Munich, 1988); Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik und die expressionistische Kunst (Munich, 1990), pp. 145~6; and Erich Ranfft, 'Expressionist Sculpture c. 1910-30 and the Significance of its Dual Architectural/Ideological Frame' in Expressionism Reassessed, eds S. Behr, D. Fanning and D. Jarman (Manchester and New York, 1993), pp. 65-79· Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton, 1978), P.50, note 63; see also Alan Windsor, Peter Behrens (London, 1981), pp. 137-8. Mainly Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein, Ernst Barlach, Gerhard Marcks, Ludwig Gies, Christoph Voll, Karl Knappe, Otto Hitzberger, Milly Steger and Karl Opfermann (all but Gies, Hitzberger and Opfermann were included in German Expressionist Sculpture, though the coverage of Marcks was superficial). ll. Ausstellung von Zeichnungen und Plastiken neuzeitlicher Bildhauer, exhibition catalogue by W. F. Storck: Kunsthalle Mannheim (Mannheim, 19I4); list of works Lehmbruck - Lehmbruck in seiner Zeit, exhibition reprinted in Hommage catalogue by Siegfried Salzmann and Karl-Egon Vester: Wilhelm-LehmbruckMuseum (Duisburg, 1981), pp. 148~. See Cornelia Wieg, 'Animalisierung. Zu Plastiken von Franz Marc' in Expressionist

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23 24 25 26 27

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Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Rintaro Terakado and others: Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya; Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (Nagoya and Niigata, 1995), pp. 181-6; and Hans Friedeberger, 'Plastiken und neue Zeichnungen von Max Pechstein bei Gurlitt', Der Cicerone, V (1913), pp. 760-2. See The Dance of Death: Medallic Art of the First World War, exhibition catalogue by Mark Jones: British Museum (London, 1979); and Bernd Ernsting, 'Ludwig Gies. The Munich Years', The Medal, no. 13 (Autumn 1988), pp. 58-72. Hedwig Fechheimer, Die Plastik der Agypter (Berlin, 1913), especially pp. 1-8; by 1919 its 4th edition contained further examples of findings from Egypt. Other projects by Expressionist sculptors included Milly Steger for the Hagen City Theatre (19II/12); Steger and Will Lammert for the Hagen City Hall (1913/14); Paul Henning for the Prachtel business headquarters in Berlin (1912); and Bernhard Hoetger for the Berne Community Centre (1912). On the Lions' Gate and Hoetger's sculptural decorations for the Mathildenhohe, see Dieter Tino Wehner, Bernhard Hoetger: Das Bildwerk 1905 bis I9I4 und das Gesamtwerk Platanenhain (Alfter, 1993), pp. 93-197 and accompanying catalogue of works. See Peter van der Coelen, 'War der Kunde Konig? Bernhard Hoetger, ein deutscher Kiinstler und seine Auftraggeber 19°0-1945' in Deutsche Bildhauer, exhibition catalogue by Tiimpel, pp. 71- 82. See Wehner, Bernhard Hoetger, pp.III-13, 122-8; and Licht und Schatten. Bernhard Hoetger. Majoliken 1910-1912, exhibition catalogue by Uta Bernsmeier: Bremer Landesmuseum fiir Kunst und Kulturgeschichte (Bremen, 1993). Robert Breuer, 'Treuhander', Das Kunstblatt, III (1917), PP.27-8 (see also the complete 'Umschau' section on these pages). See Ranfft, 'Expressionist Sculpture', pp.67-8; van der Coelen, 'War der Kunde Konig', PP.72-3; and Frauke Engel, 'Bernhard Hoetger und der Kerksfabrikant Hermann Bahlsen' in Bernhard Hoetger, Bildwerke 1902-1936, ed. H. Grape-Albers (Hanover, 1994), pp. 35-55· Reinhold HelIer, 'Bridge to Utopia: The Briicke as Utopian Experiment' in Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, exhibition catalogue by Timothy Benson: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles and Seattle, 1993), pp. 62-83, especially P.71. Entry from 1923 in Lothar Grisebach, E. L. Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch (Cologne, 19 68 ), P·7 8 . Lloyd, German Expressionism, p. II9 (in reference to Kirchner; her study fails to treat the extent of Heckel's practices); for general coverage see pp. 21-49, II~23. Drawing: pencil, watercolour and gouache, Buchheim Sammlung; illustrated in ibid., p.122. 'Das schwarze Tuch', Der Sturm, no. 63 (25 May 19II); also illustrated in Nell Walden and Lothar Schreyer, eds, Der Sturm: Ein Erinnerungsbuch (Baden-Baden, 1954), p.20. See Claudia Rieger, '''Lebende Bilder" und "Bewegte Plastik'" in Ausdruckstanz, ed. G. Oberzaucher-Schiiller (Wilhelmshaven, 1992), pp. 367-76; and Ulrich Linse, 'Zeitbild Jahrhundertwende' in 'Wir sind nackt und nennen uns Du' ... Eine Geschichte der Freikorperkultur, eds M. Andritzky and T. Rautenberg (Gie~en, 1989), pp. 10-50, especially PP.25, 32. Praying Man (destroyed in 1944) and Draped Woman (1912, Briicke-Museum, Berlin), illustrated in German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Barron, figs 2 and 6 respectively, pp. 94-5. For a colour illustration see Erich Heckel 1883-1970, exhibition catalogue ed.

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30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42

43 44 45 46 47 48

Zdenek Felix: Museum Folkwang, Essen; Haus der Kunst, Munich (Munich, 1983), cat. no. 33, pp. no-n. Katharina Hegewitsch, 'Einst ein Kommender vor Kommenden - Erich Heckel in seiner Zeit' in ibid., p. 34. It is not surprising that Heckel wanted to convey Siddi in terms of a religious icon, for this mirrors his paintings and drawings of Madonnas and figures with halos done in 1912-16. Such a relationship to the spectator was also explored in 1912 when Heckel and Kirchner created a 'Madonna Chapel' for the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne; see Lloyd, German Expressionism, pp. 5~1. See German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Barron, pp. 43-6, n329· Photograph entitled Two Sculptures with Background of Paintings, illustrated in ibid., fig. 5, p. 121. Photograph entitled The Dancer Nina Hard in Kirchner's 'Haus in den L(jrchen' in Davos, 1921, illustrated in ibid., fig. 7, p.122. An idea of these structural and painterly variations can be gleaned from ibid., pp. 45, 94-5, and Lloyd, German Expressionism, pp. 67-74· Published by Barlach's dealer, Paul Cassirer, Berlin; lithographs illustrated, for example, in Un sculpteur-ecrivain: Ernst Barlach, exhibition catalogue by Catherine Krahmer: Musee d'Orsay (Paris, 1988), pp. 34-8. In the collection of the Ernst BarIach Haus, Hamburg; illustrated, along with corresponding lithograph, in Naomi Jackson Groves, Ernst Barlach: Life in Work (Konigstein im Taunus, 1972), pp. 46-7. On this period see sources in note 9. From Bruno Taut, 'Ein Architektur-Programm', 1918, trans. in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, eds Amon Kaes and others (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 432-4. See Stark Impressions: Graphic Production in Germany, 1918-1933, exhibition catalogue by Reinhold HelIer: Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover; Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, Austin (Evanston, 1993); and The German Print Portfolio 1890-1930: Serials for a Private Sphere, exhibition catalogue by Robin Reisenfeld: Detroit Institute of Arts; Tampa Museum of Art; Katonah Museum of Art; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Chicago (Chicago and London, 1992). Bruno Taut, 'Haus des Himmels', Fruhlicht, 1/7 (April 1920), pp. 10~I2 (the Pillars are illustrated on p. 112), quoted in Expressionist Utopias, exhibition catalogue by Benson, P.285 (with full translation PP.283-5); and reprinted in Bruno Taut: Fruhlicht 1920-1922, ed. Ulrich Conrads, (Berlin, 1963), pp. 33-6. One of the Pillars is illustrated in Wolfgang Pehnt, Expressionist Architecture (London, 1973), fig. 260, p.l14· See Winfried Nerdinger, Rudolf Belling und die Kunststromungen in Berlin 19181923 (Berlin, 1981), pp. 24-6; and Ranfft, 'Expressionist Sculpture', pp. 70-3, for its architectural-ideological context. Quoted in Nerdinger, Rudolf Belling, P.24. From WaIter Gropius, 'Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses', 1919, trans. in Kaes and others, Weimar Republic Sourcebook, pp. 435-8. See logo Kerls, 'Worpsweder Kunsthiitten und die Werkstatt "Zu den 7 Faulen'" in Bernhard Hoetger: Sein Werk in der Bottcherstrape Bremen, eds A. DreesHiittemann and B. Kiister (Worpswede, 1994), pp. 96- 123. See Caren Marusch-Krohn, Meissener Porzellan 1918-1933: die Pfeifferzeit (Leipzig, 1993), especially pp. n2-18, 121-4. Carl Georg Heise, 'Zu einer Leuchterfigur von Gerhard Marcks', Genius, Vh (1920),

References

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61 62

63 64 65

66 67

pp. 252-4; see also Rop und Reiter in der Skulptur des XX. Jahrhunderts, exhibition catalogue by Martina Rudloff and Albrecht Seufert: Gerhard Marcks-Haus (Bremen, 199 1), pp. 3~40, 90-1. Illustrated in German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Barron, cat. no. 18, p.67. Quoted in Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, p. 179, note 151. From Md Gordon, ed., Expressionist Texts (New York, 1986), p. 183 (entire trans. of play pp. 155-2°7). See Golem! Danger, Deliverance and Art, exhibition catalogue by Emily D. Bilski: Jewish Museum (New York, 1988). Philipp Harth, 'Ober Plastik und Holzplastik', Das Kunstblatt, VIII (1924), pp. 16476, on p. 164; Alfred Kuhn, Die neuere Plastik (Munich, 1921), p. 15. Otto Hitzberger, 'Aus der Werkstatt eines Holzbildhauers', Die Kunst, Lll (October 1923), pp. I I -19, especially pp. 13, 19. Georg Biermann, 'Der Bildhauer Herbert Garbe', Der Cicerone, XIIho (1920), pp. 737-47, especially P·742 . Paul Westheim, 'Neue Malerei?', Sozialistische Monatshefte, XIX/3 (1913), pp. 17073, on p. 172 . Adolf von Hildebrand, Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst (Strasbourg, 1893), with the 3rd revised and expanded edn (1901) as the final and 'modern' version, which was translated into English (abridged, New York, 1907) and French (Paris, 1903). For a full translation of the 1893 edition, see Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, r873-r893 (Santa Monica, 1994), pp. 227-79· See Rudolf Wittkower, Sculpture: Processes and Principles (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 231-49; and Erich Ranfft, 'Adolf von Hildebrand's "Problem der Form" and His "Front" Against Auguste Rodin' (Master's thesis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1992). According to Liesbeth Jans, 'Ernst Barlach' in Deutsche Bildhauer, exhibition catalogue by Tumpel, p.201. Also: Moderne Plastik, exhibition catalogue by Galerie Ernst Arnold (Dresden, 1919), cat. no. 33; and in 1930, by then without the patronage of Cassirer, Barlach was persuaded by the dealer Alfred Flechtheim to allow bronzes to be cast from a number of plaster models - see Isa Lohmann-Siems, 'Zum Problem des Materials bei Ernst Barlach' in Ernst Barlach: Plastik, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik, exhibition catalogue by Manfred Schneckenburger: Kunsthalle (Cologne, 1975), pp. 23-32. See Anita Beloubek-Hammer, 'Rudolf Belling' in Roland Marz, Kunst in Deutschland 1905-r937 (Berlin, 1992), pp. 104-06. Ewald Matare, Tagebucher, eds H. Matare and F. Muller (Cologne, 1973), p. 32 (2 August 1923). According to Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, p. 151, note 59; which works and how many remain unknown. See Ursel Berger, Georg Kolbe - Leben und Werk, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1994), cat. nos 53 (pp. 260-2) and 57 (pp. 264-5). Paul Rudolf Henning, 'Ton - Ein Aufruf', Mitteilungen des Deutschen Werkbundes, no. 5 (191~20), p. 144; first published in 1917 by the Kunsthaus Zurich. For a partial translation of the manifesto, see German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Barron, pp. 41- 2; but for a complete reprint of the Werkbund publication, see Barron, Skulptur des Expressionismus, pp. 214-5. Emily D. Bilski, 'The Art of the Golem' in Golem!, exhibition catalogue by Bilski, pp. 51-2 . For the most in-depth and current study on Lehmbruck, see Dietrich Schubert, Die Kunst Lehmbrucks, 2nd revised and expanded edn (Dresden, 1990).

References 68 Kuhn, Die neuere Plastik, pp. Iq-IS; see also Kuhn's favourable comments on Milly Steger's use of artificial stone, p. 104, and on works by Belling, pp. 126-8. 69 See, for example, Siegfried Salzmann, 'Jedes abgeschlagene Bein wandert seelisch fort. Lehmbrucks Plastik und das Problem der Giisse', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 206 (5 September 1991), P.35; and Ursel Berger, 'Zum Problem der "Originalbronzen". Deutsche Bronzeplastiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert', Pantheon, III (1982), pp. 184-95. Belling had nine bronze versions of Triad cast between 1949 and 1972 - see Nerdinger, Rudolf Belling, cat. no. 20, p.229, for the locations of seven of these; the 1924 version in wood remained in relative obscurity in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie in the former East Berlin (I am grateful to Dr Gottlieb Leinz of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, for bringing to my attention Belling's motives for the second, wooden Triad). The Barlach museums are located in Hamburg, Giistrow, Wedel and Ratzeburg.

8 Alexandra Parigoris: Truth to Material: Bronze, on the Reproducibility of Truth I am indebted to the editors, Erich Ranfft and Anthony Hughes, for their careful and critical reading of this essay. I would also like to thank Michael Stone-Richards and Jonathan Wood for their useful comments on the early drafts. I Rodin Rediscovered, exhibition catalogue ed. Albert E. Elsen: National Gallery of Art (Washington, 1981). 2 Rosalind E. Krauss, 'The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition', October, no. 18 (Fall 1981), pp. 47-66. The essay was reprinted in her The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), pp. 151-70. 3 Albert E. Elsen, 'On the Question of Originality: A Letter', October, no. 20 (Spring 19 82 ), pp. IQ7-o9· 4 See Art Journal, XXXIV/r (Fall 1974), pp. 44-5°· 5 Julio Gonzalez: Sculptures and Drawings, exhibition catalogue by Rosalind Krauss: Pace Gallery (New York, 1981). The essay was reprinted as 'This New Art: To Draw in Space' in Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde, pp. II~3I. 6 Krauss had the final word in an article that followed Elsen's letter, where she maintained her position in extending her critique to the essays published in the catalogue Rodin Rediscovered. The object of her discussion was less the works of Rodin than a critique of the conventions used to define and valorize these works. See Rosalind E. Krauss, 'Sincerely Yours', October, no. 20 (Spring 1982), pp. Ill-30. All the articles were subsequently gathered in The Originality of the Avant-Garde. 7 Sylvia Hochfield, 'Problems in the Reproduction of Sculpture', ARTnews (New York), LXXIII/9 (November 1974), pp. 21-9· 8 See also the exchange of letters between Alexandre Istrati and Sidney Geist in ARTnews (New York), LXXIV/IQ (December 1975), pp. 24-8. 9 Hochfield, 'Problems in the Reproduction of Sculpture', P.29. For the most recent enquiry into the market of posthumous casts see Judd Tully, 'The Messiest Subject Alive', ARTnews (New York), XCIV/ro (December 1995), pp. 112-18. 10 Jean Chatelain, 'An Original in Sculpture' in Rodin Rediscovered, exhibition catalogue by Elsen, pp. 275-82. II This version of Age of Bronze was cast by the firm Thii:bault fr(:res, and acquired by the French State in 1880 after its exhibition at the Paris Salon. Walking Man was cast by the firm Alexis Rudier, and given to the French State in I9II by a group of art enthusiasts. 12 See the catalogue to the travelling exhibition Rodin and his Contemporaries, seen by

References

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17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

27

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the author in its venue at the London department store Selfridges, from 28 March to 21 April 1990. This was the of Rudolf Wittkower's Slade lectures in 1971, published as Sculpture, Processes and Principles (London, 1977). WaIter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' reprinted in Illuminations, trans. H. Zorn, 4th impression (London 1982), p.223. Michael Le Marchant, 'Le Role du marchand: redecouvrir et diffuser' in Rencontres de l'Ecole du Louvre, La Sculpture du XIXe siecle, Une Memoire retrouvee. Les Fonds de sculpture (Paris, 1986), pp. 255-61. Elsen, in his exhibition catalogue Rodin Rediscovered, p. 15, wrote: 'Whether or not one prefers a lifetime cast to an authorised posthumous cast on historical or ethical grounds, there is no question but that the latter casts do perform an important educational function'. See Monique Laurent, 'Vie posthume d'un fonds d'atelier: les editions de bronzes du Musee Rodin' in La Sculpture du XIXe siecle, Une Memoire retrouvee, pp. 245-55· I refer the reader to Paul Wood's review, 'Howl of Minerva', Art History, IX/r (March 1986), pp. II~31. See, for example, the entry for Raymond Duchamp-Villon, The Horse, 1914, in Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (New York, 1985), pp. 270-81. Letter in French quoted in ibid., P.273. Katherine Kuh to Louis Carre, Chicago, 19 April 1957. Unpublished correspondence from the Raymond Ducham-Villon Artist File of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am grateful to Daniel Schulman, Assistant Curator in the Department of Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture, for making this information available to me. Louis Carre to Katherine Kuh, Paris, 9 May 1957, ibid. This important note on the historiography of avant-garde sculpture was argued convincingly by Patrick Elliott in 'Sculpture in France 1918-1939' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1991), chapter V. The very detailed label that accompanies Horse, 1955-57 version of a 1914 work. Bronze (from an edition of 7), in the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago lists the various versions and histories of production, but in the final analysis maintains the title Horse for the work, rather than Large Horse used by Duchamp and Carre to designate this work, thus stressing 19 14 over 1957. Oliver Andrews, Living Materials, A Sculptors Handbook (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1983), p.182. I wish to thank Anthony Hughes for clarifying this aspect. Renaissance sculptors often left accounts of their work in this material to commemorate the retrieval and mastery of a technique that had a time-honoured tradition, stretching back to ancient civilizations. See the account of this literature in Richard E. Stone, 'Antico and the Development of Bronze Casting in Italy at the End of the Quattrocento', Metropolitan Museum Journal, 16 (1982). I wish to thank Dr Ian Wardropper, Eloise W. Martin Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture and Classical Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, for his advice on this question and for referring me to this article. Louis Slobodkin, Sculpture, Principles and Practices (1949; reprinted New York, 1973), offers the most accessible account of the process to the layman, pp. 161-9. It is significant that although most accounts of bronze fashioning acknowledge the artistry of the patiniere, these crafts remain anoymous. A singular exception is made by 'Pere and Jean Limet', who worked for Rodin and others in this century. See Malvina Hoffman, Heads and Tales in Many Lands (New York and London, 1937), P·91.

194

References

28 Though the make-up of a foundry has altered little since the days the workshop was recorded in illustrative prints in such manuals as Diderot, or d'Alembert, Encyclopaedia of Trades and Industries (c. 1751-65) or Carradori, Istruzione Elementare per gli Studiosi della Scultura (1802), the number of specialized artisans has diminished. 29 Patrick Elliott, La Sculpture en taille directe en France de I900 I950 (Saint-Remyles-Chevreuse, 1988); idem, Sculpture in France I9I8-I939, chapter IV. 30 See the statement in the catalogue of the Henry Moore exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1951. Reprinted in Philip lames, ed., Henry Moore on Sculpture (London and New York, 1966; New York, 1992), p. 113. 31 Furthermore, the publication of H. S. Ede, Savage Messiah (London, 1931) and Horace Brodzky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska I89I-I9I5 (London, 1933) must have contributed to reviving interest in the earlier sculptor's work. I wish to thank lonathan Wood for this point. 32 Henry Moore, 'A View of Sculpture', Architectural Association Journal (May 1930). Reprinted in lames, Henry Moore on Sculpture, pp. 62-8. 33 First published, untitled, in Unit One, ed. Herbert Read (London, 1934), pp. 2~30, reprinted in lames, Henry Moore on Sculpture, pp. 6~72: 'Truth to material. Every material has its own individual qualities. It is only when the sculptor works direct, when there is an active relationship with his material, that the material can take its part in the shaping of an idea. Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh - it should not be forced beyond its constructive build to a point of weakness. It should keep its hard tense stoniness.' 34 Henry Moore, 'The Sculptor Speaks', The Listener, XVIII/449 (18 August 1937). Reprinted in lames, Henry Moore on Sculpture, pp. 62-8. 35 Clement Greenberg's 'The New Sculpture' was first published in 1948 and revised in 1958 for inclusion in Art and Culture (London, 1961; reprinted 1973), pp. 13~45. For an excellent and fair critique of Greenberg's ideas on art, mainly painting, see T. J. Clark, 'Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art' in Francis Frascina, ed., Pollock and After: The Critical Debate (London, 1985), pp. 47-63· The limiting effect of Greenberg's view of sculpture for Gonzalez is explored in my essay, 'Gonzalez in the Context of Surrealism: Plutot la vie' in the 1995 Gonzalez Symposium papers (Valencia, forthcoming). 36 Rosalind Krauss, 'This New Art: To Draw in Space' in The Originality of the Avant Garde, p.128. The essay first appeared in the catalogue of the Pace Gallery exhibition Julio Gonzalez: Sculptures and Drawings in 1981. 37 The Edinburgh Harlequin (posthumous cast) was acquired in 1972 from the Galerie de France in Paris. It is, apparently, one of four posthumous casts done by Valsuani. I wish to thank Patrick Elliott, Assistant Keeper of European Painting and Sculpture at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, for providing me with this information. 38 Andre Billy's 'Comment je suis devenu poete (pour Guillaume Apollinaire)', advocated the new sources of inspiration for the modern poet to be found in advertising texts, in Les Soirees de Paris, no. 9 (October 1912), P.276. Apollinaire himself praised the plurality of the technical means available to painters, in the section devoted to Picasso; see Guillaume Apollinaire, Meditations esthetiques: Les Peintres cubistes, eds L. C. Breunig and J.-Cl. Chevalier (Paris, 1980), p. 80. 39 Andre Salmon, La Jeune Sculpture fran~aise (Paris, 1919), pp. 25-6. Salmon states in the preface that his manuscript was ready for publication before the war. This important text is the first to comment on Picasso's Cubist constructions' assault on the hierarchy of art categories, p. 104- See also my essay, 'Les Constructions cubistes

a

References

40 41

42

43

dans Les Soirees de Paris - Apollinaire, Picasso et les cliches Kahnweiler', Revue de [,Art, no. 82 (1988), pp. 61-75. From Futurist Manifestoes, ed. Umbro Apollonio (London, 1973), p.65. For the best discussion of the casting of Unique Forms of Continuity in Space of 1913 see Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the T ate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists (London, 1980), entry T. 1589 compiled with the help of Judith Cousins, pp. 60-1. Anna C. Chave, in Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art (New Haven and London, 1993), gathers all these statements to strengthen her contention that Brancusi's polish was perceived as an expression of modern technologies. See also Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture (New York, 1966). Brancusi won his case when it was decided in his favour that Bird in Space was an 'original production by a professional sculptor' and thus qualified as a work of art. A facsimile of the minutes of the US Customs Court trial of Constantin Brancusi vs. the United States 1927-8 is available in the Museum of Modern Art Library. Commentaries on this trial abound: Aline B. Saarinen, 'The Strange Story of Brancusi', New York Times Magazine (23 October 1955); Edward Steichen, 'Brancusi vs. United States', Art in America, no. I (1962); Thierry de Duve, 'Reponse cote de la question "Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne?'" in Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne?, exhibition catalogue: Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 1986), pp. 274-92; Thomas L. Hartshorne, 'Modernism on Trial: C. Brancusi v. United States (1928)', Journal of American Studies, XXII (1986), pp. 93-1°4. The most recent account that provides the most extracts from the court case and contemporary press reports is Chave, Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art, pp. 198-223. So central was this issue to the production of bronze sculpture that it is not surprising that Epstein included his testimony at the Brancusi trial in his autobiography, Let There Be Sculpture (New York, 1940), pp. 123-7. Of Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Sidney Geist in a letter to the author writes: 'Unique Forms was cast in bronze, then filed down, then polished. The ex-Malbin cast (in New York) shows modelling which was erased in the Tate copy. This erasure tells us about a lot of things, but not about Boccioni' (Letter dated 5 September 1996). Quentin Skinner, 'Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas' in Meaning and Context, Quentin Skinner and his Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton, 1989), p.61. This is why Athena T. Spear's analysis is still so useful: Brancusi's Birds (New York, 1969), pp. 17-27. Brancusi statements in the Brummer exhibition catalogue (New York, 1926). These statements had appeared in French the previous year; Constantin Brancusi, 'Reponses de Brancusi sur la taille directe, le poli et la simplicite dans l'art. Quelques-uns de ses aphorismes Irene Codreane', This Quarter, no. I (1925). Brancusi, ibid. Jacob Epstein, The Sculptor Speaks: Jacob Epstein to Arnold L. Haskell, A Series of Conversations on Art (London, 1931), p. 78. This conclusion is indebted to discussions with Michael Stone-Richards about the divergent aims and ambitions of the Futurist artist. Letter from Constantin Brancusi to John Quinn, 5 June 1918, in the John Quinn Memorial Collection, New York Public Library. Sidney Geist, Brancusi, A Study of the Sculpture (New York, 1967, 2nd edn 1983), P·159· 'The metalization must be yellow' ('11 faut que la metallisation soit jaune'), he wired

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References Stefan Georgescu-Gorjan, the engineer working on the site in the fall of 1937. See Stefan Georgescu-Gorjan, 'The Genesis of the Column without End', Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de ['Art, Ih (1964), p. 290. 55 In this sense, I read the correspondence and exchange of works with Quinn from an entirely opposite perspective to that taken by Chave. See Chave, Brancusi, Shifting the Bases of Art, p.206. See also the important contributions to this question made by Friedrich Teja Bach, Brancusi, Photo Reflexion (Paris, 1991) and Jacques Leenhardt, 'Au-dela de la matiere: Brancusi et la photographie' in SculpterPhotographier, Photographie-Sculpture, eds Michel Frizot and Dominique Paini (Paris, 1993), pp. 33-9· 56 No. 27, captioned Brancusi au travail dans l'atelier, in Brancusi Photographe, exhibition catalogue by Marielle Tabart and Isabelle Monod-Fontaine: Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 1979). It survives with dedications to Petre Comanerscu and Stefan Georgesco-Gorjan among others. Margherita Andreotti reads this photograph in terms of a self-portrayal as 'mythic creator - a kind of modern Vulcan of the studio' in her 'Brancusi's Golden Bird: A New Species of Modern Sculpture', The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies (1993), pp. 135-52 and 198- 203. 9

Edward Allington: Venus a Go Go, To Go 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 II

12

13 14 15 16 17

Dan Graham, Rock my Religion: Writing and Art Projects I965-I990, ed. Brian Wallis (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1993), p. 293: 'Around 1900, Freud's theory of the "unconscious", the cinema, and Coney Island appeared almost simultaneously'. In his Delirious New York (New York, 1978), the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas discusses the development of Coney Island as an unconscious dreamland set amid the waking, rational world of New York City. The first museum to be built in Europe, commencing in 1769, was the Landgrave Frederick in Cassel, known as the Fredericianium. Hugh Honour, Neo-classicism (London, 1968), p. 80. Ibid., p. 107. Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 12. Iris Murdock, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London, 1993), p. 2. Thomas McEvilly, 'I Think Therefore I Art', Art Forum (Summer 1985), p. 76. Jean Chatelain, 'An Original in Sculpture' in Rodin Rediscovered, ed. Albert E. Elsen: National Gallery of Art, Washington; New York Graphic Society, Boston (19 81 ), p. 275· Ibid., p. 276. Rosalind E. Krauss The Originality of the Avant-Garde and other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), p. 276. McEvilly, 'I Think Therefore I Art', p. 74. Bernard Brunon, The Status of Sculpture: Sezanne, Lyon: Espace Lyonnais d'art contemporain, Ville de Lyon (1990 ), p. 13. Stephen Fenichell, Plastic - The Making of a Synthetic Century (New York, 1996), p.228. Ibid. Les Levine, New York Times. Jack Burnham, Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New York, 1974), p. 74. McEvilly 'I Think Therefore I Art', p. 76.

Select Bibliography

This bibliography comprises selected works cited in this volume and additional references highlighting the wide-ranging parameters of sculpture and its reproductions. Allington, Ed, 'Introduction' in Reproduction in Sculpture: Dilution or Increase?, exhibition catalogue: Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (1994), pp. 1-5· Andrews, Oliver, Living Materials: A Sculptor's Handbook (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1983). Baas, Jacquelynn, 'Reconsidering WaIter Benjamin. "The Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Retrospect' in The Documented Image: Visions in Art History, eds Gabriel P. Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon (Syracuse, 1987), pp. 337-47. Benjamin, WaIter, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in WaIter Benjamin: Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (London, 1970; revised edn 1992), pp. 2II-44· Berger, Ursel, 'Zum Problem der "Originalbronzen". Deutsche Bronzeplastiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert', Pantheon, III (1982), pp. 184-95. Bober, Phyllis Pray and Rubinstein, Ruth, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London, 1986). Bode, Wilhelm [von], Die italienischen Bronzestatuetten der Renaissance, 3 vols (Berlin, 1907-12); trans. as The Italian Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance, 3 vols (Berlin, 1908-12); revised and ed. by James D. Draper, I vol. (New York, 1980). Buchholz, Daniel and Magnani, Gregorio, International Index of Multiples From Duchamp to the Present (Cologne, 1992). Burnham, Jack, Beyond Modern Sculpture (New York and London, 1968). - - , Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New York, 1974). Chatelain, Jean, 'An Original in Sculpture' in Rodin Rediscovered, exhibition catalogue ed. Albert E. Elsen: National Gallery of Art, Washinton, DC (1981), pp. 275-82. Crum, Robert, 'Degas Bronzes?', Art Journal, LIVII (Spring 1995), pp. 93-8 (exhibition review). Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object, exhibition catalogue eds Brian Wallis and Marcia Landsman: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1986). Dhaliwal, Ben, 'Catalogue of the Exhibition' in Reproduction in Sculpture: Dilution or Increase?, exhibition catalogue: Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Henry Moore Insititute, Leeds (1994), pp. 6-16. Edward Allington, exhibition catalogue by Annelie Pohlen: Bonner Kunsrverein, Bonn, and Cornerhouse, Manchester (1992).

Select Bibliography Edward Allington: The Pictured Bronzes, exhibition catalogue by Shin Ichi Nakazawa and James Roberts: Kohji Ogura Gallery, Nagoya (1991). Elsen, Albert E. and others, 'Standards for Sculptural Reproduction and Preventive Measures to Combat Unethical Casting', Art Journal, XXXIVII (Fall 1974), pp. 44-50. 'On the Question of Originality: A Letter', October, no. 20 (Spring 1982), pp. I0709·

Fake? The Art of Deception, exhibition catalogue ed. Mark Jones with Paul Craddock and Nicolas Barker: British Museum (London, 1990). Fenichell, Stephen, Plastic - The Making of a Synthetic Century (New York, 1996). Gauricus, Pomponius, De sculptura (Florence, 1504); ed. and trans. into French by Andre Chastel and Robert Klein (Paris and Geneva, 1969). Geist, Sidney, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture (New York, 1967; revised and expaned 1983).

German Expressionist Sculpture, exhibition catalogue by Stephanie Barron: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1983); revised German edn as Skulptur des Expressionismus (Munich, 1984). Goldsten, Carl, Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers (Cambridge, 1996 ).

'

Haskell, Francis and Penny, Nicholas, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 15°0-19°0 (New Haven and London, 1981). Hildebrand, Adolf von, Das Problem der Form in den bildenden Kunst (Strasbourg, 1893); ed., introduced and trans. in Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-r893 (Santa Monica, 1994)·

Hochfield, Sylivia, 'Problems in the Reproduction of Sculpture', AR Tnews, LXXIII/9 (November 1974), pp. 20-9; with 'Letters' in response: LXXIVII (January 1975), p. 22, and LXXIVIro (December 1975), pp. 24-8. Hulten, Pontus, Dumitresco, Natalia and Istrati, Alexandre, Brancusi (Paris 1986); English trans. (New York, 1986). Ivins Jr, William, Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1953; revised edn 1969). James, Philip, ed., Henry Moore on Sculpture (London and New York, 1966; New York, 1992 ).

Jenkins, lan, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800-1939 (London, 1992). Jones, Mark, ed., Why Fakes Matter: Essays on Problems of Authenticity (London, 1992). Krauss, Rosalind E., Passages in Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1977; revised edn 1993). - - , 'The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition', October, no. 18 (Fall 1981), pp. 47-66; reprinted in R. E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), pp. 151-70. - - , 'This New Art: To Draw in Space' (1981), in R. E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), pp. II~29. - - , 'Sincerely Yours', October, no. 20 (Spring 1982), pp. Ill-30; reprinted, with 'Introductory Note', in R. E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), pp. 171-94. - - , 'Retaining the Original? The State of the Question', in Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, ed. Kathleen Preciado. XX of Studies in the History of Art (Washington, 1989), pp. 7-Il. Landau, David and Parshall, Peter W., The Renaissance Print 1470-155° (New Haven and London, 1994). Larsson, Lars Olof, Von allen Seiten gleich schon. Studien zum Begriff der

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199

Vielansichtigkeit in der europaischen Plastik von der Renaissance biz zum Klassizismus. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis (Stockholm, 1974). Laurent, Monique, 'Vie posthume d'un fonds d'atelier: les editions de bronzes du Musee Rodin' in Rencontres de l'Ecole du Louvre, La Sculpture du XIXe siecle. Une Memoire retrouvee: Les fonds de sculpture (Paris, 1986), pp. 245-55. Le Marchant, Michael, 'Le Role du marchand: redecouvrir et diffuser' in Rencontres de l'Ecole du Louvre, La Sculpture du XIXe siecle. Une Memoire retrouvee: Les fonds de sculpture (Paris, 1986), pp. 255-6r. Marvin, Miranda, 'Copying in Roman Sculpture: The Replica Series' in Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, ed. Kathleen Preciado. XX of Studies in the History of Art (Washington, 1989), pp. 2~45. Mattusch, Carol c., 'Two Bronze Herms. Questions of Mass Production in Antiquity', Art Journal, LIVh (Summer 1995), pp. 53-9. Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, exhibition catalogue ed. Jeanne Wasserman: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (1979). Montagu, jennifer, Bronzes (London, 1963). - - , Alessandro Algardi (New Haven and London, 1985). - - , Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art (New Haven and London, 1989). - - , Gold, Silver and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Roman Baroque (New Haven and London, 1996). Owens, Craig, 'Alan McCollum: Repetition and Difference', Art in America, LXXII8 (September 1983), pp. 130-2. Penny, Nicholas, The Materials of Sculpture (New Haven and London, 1993). Raddiffe, Anthony, European Bronze Statuettes (London, 1966). Ranfft, Erich, Adolf von Hildebrand's 'Problem der Form' and his Front against Auguste Rodin (Master's thesis, Ann Arbor, 1992). Renaissance Master Bronzes from the Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, exhibition catalogue by Manfred Leithe-Jasper: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (1986). Ridgway, Brunilde S., Roman Copies of Greek Sculptures: The Problem of the Originals (Ann Arbor, 1984). - - , 'The State of Research on Ancient Art', Art Bulletin, LXVIII/l (March 1986), pp. 723· - - , 'Defining the Issue: The Greek Period' in Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, ed. Kathleen Preciado. XX of Studies in the History of Art (Washington, 1989), pp. 13-26. Rodin Rediscovered, exhibition catalogue ed. Albert E. Elsen: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1981). The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue eds Peter Fusco and H. W. Janson: Los Angeles County Musuem of Art (New York, 1980). Salvioni, Daniela, 'Die Oberschreitungen der Sherrie Levine/The Transgressions of Sherrie Levine', Parkett, no. 32 (June 1992), pp. 76-87. Schulz, Paul Otto and Baatz, Ulrich, Bronze Giesserei Noack (Ravensburg, 1993). Sculpture en taille directe en France de 1900 1950, exhibition catalogue by Patrick D. Elliott: Fondation de Coubertin, Saint-Remy-Ies-Chevreuse (1988). Spanish Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, museum catalogue by Marjorie Trusted (London, 1996). Stone, Richard E., 'Antico and the Development of Bronze Casting in Italy at the End of the Quattrocento', Metropolitan Museum Journal, XVI (1982), pp. 87-II6. Wagner, Anne M., 'Learning to Sculpt in the Nineteenth Century. An Introduction' in The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American

a

200

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Collections, exhibition catalogue eds Peter Fusco and H. W. Janson (New York, 1980), pp. ~20. - - , ]ean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire (New Haven and London, 1986).

Wittkower, Rudolf, Sculpture, Processes and Principles (Harmondsworth 1977; revised edn 1986). Wollheim, Richard, Art and its Objects (Cambridge, 1968; 2nd edn with six supplementary essays, 1980 and 1996).

Index

Abundance, ivory figure of, Vienna 68 Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris 64, 80, 81 conferences 80 Achard, Edouard 109 Allington, Edward

Roman from the Greek in America I53

Victory Boxed I67 anatomy 13-14, 79, 94, 98-9 Anti, Carlo 18 'Antinous', the 83 Apollinaire, Guillaume 143 Apollo Belvedere 60, 80, 81, 82, 84, 93 applied arts 4, lOo-I2 Arcos, Luis Antonio de los 52 Aretino, Pietro 32 Armenini, Giovanni Battista 80 Art Institute of Chicago 136 Art nouveau 100, 105, 108 ARTnews 132 Arts and Crafts Movement 108 Audran, Gerard Les proportions du corps humain measurees sur les plus belles figures de I'antiquite 94

Augustus, Emperor, portraits of IS Augustus the Strong of Saxony 67 aura 29, 30, 41-5, 136, IF Austin, J. L. 145 Baffier, Baptiste 106 Baffier, Jean 4, lOo-I2 ornamental tableware

100, IOI

'Pour la tradition celtique' (monumental

fireplace) 106, I07, 108 table settings 103-9, I04, III Bahlsen, Hermann 1I8 Baiae plaster fragments II

Barcelona Museo Frederic Mares 48 Barlach, Ernst lIS, 122-3, 126, 128, 130

The Dead Day 122-3 God the Father Hovering I26 Troubled Woman 123

Bartman, Elizabeth lO Barye, Antoine 103 Baselitz, Georg 114 baths, sculpture appropriate to 27 Batoni, Pompeo 84 'paper museum' 84 Bauhaus I25 Begas, Reinhold I20 Bell, Charles 98 Belling, Rudolf, I25, I29, 130 Triad I24, I25, I29, 130 Belvedere Torso 80, 83, 9 2 , 93 Benjamin, Waiter, I, 2~30, 40-5 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' I, 29, 134, 153 Berger, Ernst 18 Berlin 1I8 Art Exhibition (1920) I25 Arts and Crafts School 127 Cement and Concrete exhibition (I9lO) lIS National Gallery 129 Royal Prussian Art Collections 1I6 Working Council for Art 130 Bermudez, Cean 47 Berry (France) 102, 104, 109, III peasantry of 106 Bewick, William 98 Biermann, Georg I2 7 Bigio, Nanni di Baccio (Giovanni di Lepo) 33 Pieta after Michelangelo 33-6, 37

202

Index

biscuit ware 4 Blake, William 95-6 ]ehovah with Satan and Adam 96 Naked Youth seen from the Side 95, 96 Blaue Reiter, der II5 Boardman, John 10, 21 Boccioni, Umberto 3, 132, 13 8, 146, 147 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture' 143 Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 143-5, 144 Bol, Peter 18, 25 Bonk, Eke 163 Borghese Nymph with a Shell 91 Borghese Gladiator, the 20, 83, 84, 87, 88, 93,99 B6rner, Paul 126 Bossuit, Francis van 5,64, 68-9, 72-4, 78 figure engraved after 74 ]udith with the Head of Holofernes (Edinburgh) 69, 70, 74 ]udith with the Head of Holofernes, copies of 6<)-72 , 70, 73,74, 75 B6ttger, Johann Friedrich 67 B6ttger stoneware 71, 126 Horseman Candlestick after Gerhard Marcks 124, 126 ]udith with the Head of Holofernes after Bossuit 70, 71 Boucher, Louis 106 Bourges 105, IIO Palais Jacques-Coeur 106 Bouts, Albert 55 Bouts, Dieric 55 Brancusi, Constantin 132, 138, 140, 141, 144, 146 , 147-5 1 Bird in Space 144, 145 Cock 132 Column 149 A Muse 148 , 149 The Muse (posthumous cast) 149, 150 Sorceress 148 Torso of a Young Man 148, 149 Briffault, Frances IIO bronze foundries 103 Barbedienne 103 Christofle 103 Morris-Singer 139 Siot-Decauville 100, 103, 1II-12 Briicke, Die II3, II4, II5, II9, 122, 127 Brunon, Bernard 163 Bruton Gallery 135

CAA see College Art Association cabinet of curiosities 64, 74 Callypigian Venus, the 89 camera obscura 84 Camfield, William 163 'Cannibal', the 89 Cano, Alonso 55, 58, 59 Canova, Antonio 155 Italian Venus 63 Capodimonte porcelain factory 67 Carlisle, Anthony 98 Carlisle, Earl of 95 Carpeaux, Jean Baptiste 103 Carracci, the 82 Carrara 8 Carre, Louis (Galerie Louis Carre) 136-7 Cassirer, Paul 128, 129 Castle Howard 95 Castro, Gutierre de 48 casts 10,21, 37, 38,45,66,68,71-2,80,81, 86,87,89,9 1,93,94,99,115,15 2-3, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 166-7 Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista de' 40 Antiquae Statuae Urbis Romae 81 Chambers, William 91 Chardin, Jean Baptiste Simeon 93 Chatelain, Jean 133, 135, 160, 161 Cheere, John 83 Cheron, Louis 81-2, 83 Christ as the Man of Sorrows 55 Christofle 100 Cipriani, Giovanni Battista 86 Clito 83 College Art Association (CAA) 131, 132 'A Statement on Standards for Sculptural Reproduction and Preventive measures to Combat Unethical Casting in Bronze' 131, 132 Cologne 114, 125 Comte, Auguste 44 conceptual art 162 consumer culture 67 Copenhagen Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 7-8, 9 Copley, John Singleton Watson and the Shark 20, 21 Courbet, Gustave 102 Cubism 136 Ciipper, Erich II7-18 Dallas, Trammel Crow Centre 134-5 Dante Alghieri 35

203

Index Darmstadt Matildenhohe workshops lI6, lI7 Davies, Arthur B. 149 Degas, Edgar Hilaire Germain 3 DelIa Robbia family II7 Delos 20 Desmond, Olga 120 Dethare, Vincent 105 Deutsche Werkbund II5, lI6, II8, 130 Diderot, Denis 155 Dieppe 65 Diadoumenos 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,22,23, 24

Diadumenus, Tiberius Octavius, 13, 14, 16 direct carving II 3, I I 5, 140, 146 Diskophoros 7, 8,12,13-14,15,16-17,1819, 22, 24,25, 26

Dobberman, Jacob 65, 68 Dobson, Frank 147 Doccia factory 63 Dolton, Richard 84 donne famosi 69 Doryphoros 12, 13-14, 15, 16, 17, 22,23, 24,25

Dresden II5, lI8 Dublin Academy 93 Duchamp, Marcel 4, 136, 137, 162 Bicycle Wheel readymade 4, 162-3 replicas of 162-3 Bottle Rack readymade 4 Snow Shovel readymade 4 Urinal readymade 4 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond 132, 136 The Horse (Le Grand Cheval) 136;, Duke

Richmond's Sculpture Gallery

86;

Dusquenoy, Franlj:ois 76 Egremont, Earl of 95 Egypt n6 Elgin, Lord 96 'Elgin Marbles' see Parthenon sculptures Eliot, T. S. 32 Elliott, Patrick 140 Elsen, Albert 3, 131, 132, 135 Epstein, Jacob 144, 147, 148 excavation history 27 Exposition Universelle 1900, 100 Expressionism II3 Farnese Hercules 80, 81, 83, 84, 93 'Fates', the 98

Fechheimer, Hedwig lI6 Fernandez, Gregorio 57 St Francis 57-8, 59, 60 Fitzwilliam Coin Cabinet 62, 77 Flaxman, John 98-9 'Motion; Equilibrium in the Human Body' 99 Florence 44-5 Boboli Gardens 17, 18, 45 Medici Chapel 32 , 39 Palazzo Pitti 64 Palazzo Vecchio 45 Piazza Michelangelo 45 Sto Spirito 33 Florentine Academy in Rome 68~ Florentine diarist 35, 36, 38 Ford, Richard 46 Francis of Assisi 46, 47,58, 60 resurrected corpse of 57-60 Fran~ois I (of France) 38, 45 Free Academy (London) 81 Fremiet, Emmanuel 103 Fritsch, Katerina 163-4 Fruhlicht 123 Fry, Roger 140 Fiirstenburg porcelain factory 66 Fiirtwangler, Adolf 10 Futurism 147 Galerie Louis Carre 136 Galle, Emile lOO Galleria Schwartz (Milan) 163 Garbe, Herbert 129 Garda, Jeronimo Francisco 55 Garda, Miguel Jeronimo 55 E>"", .......,u", sculpture appropriate to 27 Gauguin, Paul 159 Geist, Sidney 132, 136, 149 German Expressionist sculpture II 3-30 German Neo-Expressionism 114 German Oriental Society n6 Gesamtkunstwerk II4, nS, n9, 122, 123, 12 5 Giacometti, Alberto 137 Giambologna (Jean Boulogne) 61, 62, 63, 64

Architecture 62 Mercury 61 Giambologna, after Venus 62-3, 62, 77 Gibbon, Edward 2 Gibbons, Grinling 76

204

Index

'Heriodas with the Head of the Baptist' 76

Gies, Ludwig I16 glass paste 77 Goethe, ]ohann Wolfgang von 98 Goetz, Karl I16 Gogh, Vincent van 159 Golem, the 127, 130 Gonzales, ]ulio 3, 131, 132, 138, 141- 2 Harlequin I42 Gool, ] an Van 78 Graat, Barent 73, 78 Grand Tour 155 Greenberg, Clement 140, 143 Gropius, WaIter 125 Guerin, Nicolas 64 gymnasia, sculpture appropriate to 23-4, 27 Hadrian, Emperor 97 Hallett, Christopher 26-7 Hamilton, Richard 163 Hanover TET city I18 Hard, Nina 122 Harth, Philipp 127 Haskell, Arnold 147 Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny Taste and the Antique 6 I Haydon, Benjamin Robert 79, 96-8 Copy of South Metope XXVII from the Parthenon 97 school of 97 Heckel, Erich I18-22 The Black Cloth I1~20 Convalescence of a Woman I20, 120-1 Praying Man 120 Heermann, Paul 6~0 ]udith with the Head of Holofernes after Bossuit 70, 71, 72 Henne, ]oachim 65, 68 Henning, Paul Rudolf 130 Hepworth, Barbara I39 Herakles see Hercules Hercules 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 93 Hermanos Garda, the 55 HermesI4,I5,I~I7,I8,I9,2I,23,24,26

Hessen, Karl von 65 Hildebrand, Adolf von 128 The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts 128

Hill, Dorothy Kent 22 Hindemith, Paul 125 Hitzberger, Otto 127 Hoare, Henry 84 Hochfield, Sylvia 133, 136 Hoetger, Bernhard I16-I8, 125 Hoetger Museum 117-18 Light and Shadow series 117 Lions' Gate (with Albin Muller) I16, n7 Hogarth, William 79, 82, 83, 85, 91 Analysis of Beauty 83 Holbein, Hans 76 Honour, Hugh 155 Houbraken, Arnold 78 Hunter, William 94-5 Husserl, Edmund 157 Hussey, Giles 84

Idealplastik 9 see also Sculpture, Roman ideal 'Idolino', the 10, n 'Illissus', the 98 imitation 33, 35-6, 38 Immendorf, ]org 114 intention 145-6 Ivins, William I, 42 Prints and Visual Communications I ] aillot, Pierre Simon 64 ]anis, Sidney 163 Jehovah's Witnesses 153 ]oigny, Burgundy 48 ]ones, Inigo 76 ]uni, Isaac de 50 Juni, Juan de 47-8, 50-I, 60 Pieta (Leon) 47, 50-I Pieta (London) 47-8, 48, 50-I Pieta (Salamanca) 48, 49, 50-I Pieta (Valladolid, Cathedral Museum) 47, 50-I Pieta (Valladolid, National Museum of Sculpture) 51-2 Pieta (Zaragoza) 47, 50-I Karnak I16 Kauffman, Angelica 89 Kent, William 76 Kern, Leonhard 64, 68 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig I13-14, I15-I6, 118-20, 121-2 Female Dancer 121

205

Index Nude Girl 122 Standing Woman 121 Woman in the Wash Tub II9 Kleinplastik see also sculpture, small scale 4,64,7 8 Klinger, Max 120 Kneller, Godfrey 65 Academy of 65, SI Knight, Richard Payne 97 Kolbe, Georg 129 Koortbojian, Michael 23 Krauss, Rosalind 3, 77, 13 1, 132, 133, 136, 14 1 -3 'The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Post-Modernist Repetition' 131 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field' 160 Kreigenbom, Detlev 13, 14, 16, 17, IS Kuh, Katherine 137 Kuhn, Alfred 127, 128, 130 Kunstkammer 64 Lagraulas, cardinal 41, 43 Lairesse, Gerard de 73 Lammert, Will 125 Landseer brothers 98 Langer, Richard 126 Laocoon 80, 83, 84, 95 Laurent, Monique 133 Lavier, Bertrand 158-9 Belvedere 159 Le Brun, Charles 64 Le Marchand, David 65, 66, 77 Le Marchant, Michael 135 Le Play, Frederic lIO Leftwich, Gregory 13-14 Lehmbruck, Wilhe1m I 15, 130 Praying Woman u6 Leibendgut, Annalis 23 Le1y, Sir Peter 79, 81 Leocadio, PaoIo da San 55 Leoni, Antonio 64 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 2 Levine, Les 164-5 Disposables 164, 164-5 Ligue de la patrie fran~aise lIo-lI Maison commune I I I limited edition, concept of 160 Linde, Ulf 163 Locke, John 87-8 Lohenstein, Daniel Caspar von 64 London New Somerset House 91

Victoria and Albert Museum St Francis 59 Lorenzetto (Lorenzo di Giovanni di Lodovico) 36, 37 Los Angeles County Museum of Art II3 German Expressionist Sculpture exhibition I 13-14 Louis IX (of France) 102 Lysippos 18, 21 McEvilly, Thomas 'I Think Therefore I Art' 157, 162, 166 Magritte, Rene 162 Mana, Pedro de 55 Mander, Care! van 78 Mannheim Kunsthalle I I 5, 128 Marat, Jean-Paul 102 Marc, Franz lIS Marcks, Gerhard 126 Horseman Candlestick 124, 126 Martin, Elias 89 The Cast Room at the Royal Academy 8~91,

90

Martinez, Juana 50 Matare, Ewald 129 Mauclair, Camille 112 Medici, Ferdinando de' 64 Medici Venus 80, 83,93, 154-5, 156, 159, 161-2, 166-7

comparison with the living model 93-4

Meissen porcelain factory 67, 126 Meleager, the 89 Mena, Pedro de 47, 55-6, 57, 60 St Francis (M,Haga) 59 St Francis (Toledo) 58, 59,60 Mengs, Anton Raffael 155 Mercury 16, 1~20, 24, 61, 89 Metraux, Guy 14 Michelangelo Buonarroti 30, 32 , 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 45, 63

Atlas Slave 30-1, ]I, 42 David 45 Leah 37 Pieta 33, 34, 35, 36 , 38 , 40, 4 1 , 43, 45 Rachel37 Risen Christ 32-3, 3S St Damien, clay model for 32 Times of Day 45 Slaves 45 Tomb of ]ulius II 37, 40 Milan Triennial Exhibition 137

206

Index

Millet, Jean-Fran~ois 102 Minimalism 162 Minnis, A. J. 35 Modernism 3-4, 143-5 Montafies, Juan Martines 55 Montelupo, Raffaelo da St Cosmas 32 Montorsoli, Giovanni AngioIo 81 St Damien 32 Montrouge catacombs 108 Moore, Henry 140, 146 Mora, Jose de 56 Christ 56 Virgen de la Soledad (Granada) 57 Virgin (Salamanca) 56 The Virgin of Sorrows (London) 56 Morris, William 108, 109 Moser, George Michael 89 Moser, Mary 89 moulds 21, 47,54,60,65,71-2,152-3,161, 167 Muller, AIbin JI6; see also Bernhard multiples 9, 30, 32-3, 50-2, 65, 67, 68, 71, 7 2 , 73, 77, 13 1 , 14 8-9, 16 3-5 Murdoch, Iris 156-7, 162, 163 Musee Galliera 106 Musee Rodin 133, 135-6 Neo-classicism 155-6 Neo-Expressionism Iq neomantic object IS7, 163 'nerviosidad' 48 Nevers 102, 105, IIO New Wild Ones II4 New York 152 Brooklyn Bridge 152 Coney Island 154 East River 152 Metropolitan Museum of Art 167 Museum of Modern Art 163 New Zealand JI2 Nicholas V (Pope) 57 Nike of Samothrace 166 and replicas 166-7 'Nile', the 80 Noguchi 148 Noland, Kenneth 165 Nollekins, ]oseph 93-4 Seated Venus 95 Northcote, James 93, 99

10,

154,

Oberammergau I29 October 131 Oliver, Isaac 76 Orleans, Paul 110 Ortiz, Fernando St Francis 59

palaestra, sculpture appropriate to 24 Palladio (Andrea Pietro della Gondola) 76 Palomino, Antonio 50 Parian ware 4 Paris 102, 105, lIO, III Parry, William 87 copy of the Borghese Warrior 87 Parthenon sculptures ('Elgin Marbles') 79, 96- 8 patina 138-9, 146 patinieres 138, 148 Payne Knight, Richard see Knight, Richard Payne Pechstein, Max I I 5 Peirce, Charles S. 43 Penny, Nicholas 61 Permoser, Balthasar 64, 68, 71 Seasons, the 66 Permoser, Balthasar, after Summer 66 Perseus 17, 23 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 35 photography 1-2, 29, 40-3, 147, 14~50, 161 Picabia, Francis 162 Picasso, Pablo 138, 141 Absinthe Glass 143 Bull's Head 142 Pieta (Juan de Juni) 47,48, 49, 50, SI, 52, 60 Pieta (Michaelangelo) 3, 34, 35, 36, 38,40 , 41,43,45 Pieta (copy after Michelangelo) 33-6, 37, 38-9,39 Pieta (engraving by Salamanca) 39,40 plaster 64 platres de travail 141 Pliny the Elder 13, 14, 84, 138 Polykleitos 7, 9, 13-21 presumed copies after and works in the manner of Diadoumenos (Athens) 12 Diadoumenos series, 13-16,22, 23, 24 Dionysos 17

207

Index Diskophoros (Berlin) I6 Diskophoros (Copenhagen) 7, 8, 26 Diskophoros (Wellesley) I2, 13, 16 Diskophoros series 13, 14-16, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25, 26 Doryphoros (Minneapolis) I2 Doryphoros series 13-15, 22-3, 25 Herakles 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26 Hermes 14, 15, I6, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26 Perseus 17 Theseus 18 pointing machines 8, II5, 128, 159 Pool, Matthys 68, 73 Beelsnijders Kunstcabinet (Art's Cabinet) 68, 69, 72-4, 74, 78 portrait sculpture 9, 15, 23 Poulsen, Frederik 17 Pound, Ezra Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir 140 Pozzo 76 Praxiteles 17, 21 Prenner, Anton von 64 Primaticcio, Francesco 38 Prometheus 149 printmaking I; see also reproduction of sculpture in prints quarry sites 27 Quinn, John 147, 148 , 149 Rabbi Loew 127 Ralph, Benjamin 86 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 82 Rauchmiller, Matthias tankard with a Rape of the Sabines 64 Rauschner, C.B. Judith with the Head of Holofernes after Bossuit 70, 7 2 Ray, Man 162 Regina, Alberta 157-8 Reif, Rita 165 Reni, Guido 69 replica series 9 reproduction of antique sculpture 1-2, 61, 76, 77, 7f:T 99, 154-6, 161, 166-7 and authorship 66, 72, 74, 76, 77 and the canon 35-6, 38, 40, 63, 78 of devotional sculpture 5, If:T20, 24-6, 37-8,46-60 ethics of 3, 131-2, 140

of Greek by 'Roman' sculptors 2-3, 728, 159 of lithography in sculpture 122-3 of sculpture in cameos 80 in drawings 39, 80-4, 86-7, 8f:T94, 9 6- 8

in paintings II 8-22 in photographs 2, 42-3, 147, 161 in porcelain 4, 65-8, 12-16 posthumously 3, 13 1-7, 13~40, 1415, 149 in prints 40, 45, 72-4, 80, 81, 83 in reduced replicas 24, 32-3, 38-9,61, 62-3, 84, 87 terminology of 30 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 87, 88-9, 94, 155 Discourses 88-9 Riace Bronzes 3 Ribadeneira, Pedro de 57 Flos Sanctorum 0 Libro de las Vidas de los Santos 57 Riccio, Luigi del 33 Ridgeway, Brunilde 22 Ridolfi, Carlo 39 Riha, Sidda 120-1 Risuefio, Jose 55, 56 Robinson, John Charles 50, 59 Rodin, Auguste 3, 30, 32, 128, 13 1, 132-3, 134-5, 136, 140, 146 , 148, 161 Age of Bronze 133 Jean de Fiennes nu I34, 134-5 Mighty Hand 133 La pensee 30-1 Walking Man (L'Homme qui marche) 133 Roeder, Emy 129 Roldan, Luisa 47, 52-4, 60 Mystical Marriage of St Catherine 52-4, 53 Rest on the Flight to Egypt (New York) 54 Rest on the Flight to Egypt (San Sebastian) 54 Virgin and Child Appearing to St Diego of Alcala 52, 53 Roldan, Pedro 52 Rome French Academy 81-2 San Andrea della Valle 37 San Petronilla 40 Rossi, Gregorio de' 37

208

Index

Rossi, John C.F. 95 Royal Academy of Arts 79, 88, 91, 94, 95, 9 6,97 Plaister Academy 89, 9 1, 93 Royal Academy Schools 89, 9 1, 93-5, 97 Royal Society of Arts 86--'7 Rubens, Peter Paul 76 Rysbrack, Michael 76, 84 Hercules 84-5 Study for Stourhead Hercules 85 Saint Cloud porcelain factory 67 St Martin's Lane Academy 81; second academy 83, 85 Salamanca (Cathedral) 48 Salamanca, Antonio 39, 40 Salas, Xavier de 55 Salmon, AndnS La jeune sculpture franfaise 143 Sansovino, Jacopo Baccchus 89 Scheel, Margarete 125 Schiefler, Gustav II3 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl 123-5 Pillars of Suffering and Prayer 123~5 Schoenberg, Arnold 125 Schubert, Carl Gottlieb Summer 66 Schiitz, Johann 35 sculpture antique 1-2., 7-2.8, 38, 45, 61, 76 and architecture 2.3-4, 2.7, u6-rS, 125 boxwood 64, 65, 73 bronze 7, 9, 13, 19,2.3,2.4,2.5,2.6, 30, 32, 37, 38, 61-2, 80, II5-16, 130, 131SI, 154, 159 cast stone II6, 130 cement II 5, 130, 143 day 30, 32 , 39, lIS, 12~30 Cubist 136 German Expressionist 3, II3-30 and Greek medicine 13-14 ivory 61, 64--'78 and the living model 83, 93~, II8-22, 127-3 0 marble 7,8,10,22,23,26,27,37,62.,64, 115, 130, 148 , 154, 161 materials of 47, 54, 63-8, 7 1 - 2, 80, 115, n6, 125, 142., 80, 127-3°, 138, 143, 154, 161, 164 and religion 5, 1~20, 24--6, 37-8,41, 43-4,45,46--60,126-7

restoration of 27-8 Roman historical 9 Roman ideal ~10, II, 27 plaster II, 21, 30, 80, !I5, 123, 128, 136 and politics 4-5, 20 scrap-metal 141-3 signatures on 8, 13,2.1,27, 33,35,46,59, 6~71, 7 2 small-scale 20, 24--6, 32, 38~, 61-78 terracotta 20, 32 , 47, 52, 60, 64, 68, 73, IIS wax 21, 32 ,66, 69, 72, 74, 115, 159 wood 55--60, II3-14, II4, II8-2.2, 1278, 12~30, 143, 148 serial production 21-2, 103 Shee, Martin Archer 96 Shipley, William 86 drawing school 86 Simon, Erika 20 Skinner, Quentin 145 Smith, John 65 Smith, John Thomas 95 Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts 103 Society of Artists 91 Socrates 83 Soldani, Massimiliano 62, 63 Solkin, David 87-8, 91 Space Invaders (exhibition) 158 Stampart, Franz von, and Anton von Prenner Podromus 64, 68 Steger, Milly II 5 Stockholm (Moderna Museet) 163 Stokes, Adrian 140 Stourhead 84 Stravinsky, Igor 125 Strawberry Hill 76 Strozzi Chapel (Rome) 37 Strozzi, Gian Battista 33-5, 36 studio practice, see workshop practice Sturm, Der II9 'style munichoise' see Art nouveau Surrealism 141- 2, 143 taille directe see direct carving Talos Painter, the 18 T assie, James 77 Taut, Bruno 123 House of Heaven 123 temples, sculpture appropriate to 27 TET hieroglyph II8 'Theseus', the 97, 98

Index Thornhill, Sir James 81 Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) 39, 45 Jiu (Romania) I49 Ernst The Transfiguration I27 T onnemans, Jerome 73 Torso Belvedere 80, 83,92,93 tourism H, 44-5 'truth to materials' 3, I40 Turner, J.M.W. 93, 94 Drawing of the Belvedere Torso 9 1 -3, 92 Ulteudt, P. O. 163 United States Customs 144 Valladolid 50 Cathedral 50 Medina de Rioseco (Convent of Poor Clares) 57 St Francis 59 St Martin 50 Vari de' Porcari, MeteIlo 33,45 Vasari, Giorgio 33, 36,47 Venus de' Medici see Medici Venus Verskovis 76 Vertue, George 82 Villon, jacques 136 Virgen de la Soledad 56 Virgen Dolorosa 55 Virgin of Sorrows 46, 47, 55-'7 Voltaire (Fran~ois-Marie Arouet) 2 Volterra, Daniele da (Daniele Ricciarelli) 39

209

Walpole, Horace 74 Anecdotes of Painting in England 76 Walpole Cabinet 74-'7, 75 Washington National Gallery of Art Rodin Rediscovered exhibition 131 Wedgwood, josiah 4, 66, 77 Werkbund, see Deutsches Werkbund West, Benjamin 94, 98 'Academical study' of Eve 94 Westheim, Paul 128 Wickhoff, Franz 10, 26 Wilkie, David 98 Wilton, Joseph 86 Winckelmann, Johann joachim 2, 9 History of Ancient Art among the Greeks 2 Wollheim, Richard 156, 162, 163 workshop practice 8, 21-2, 31-2, 26, 42,

46, 54, 60, Ho-H, 146, 159'"""62, 161-2 Worpswede I2 5 'Wrestlers', the 99 Wright, Joseph 87, 91 Academy by Lamplight 91

Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight 87, 88 Wunderkammer 64,68,73,77 Zappa, Frank 165 Zeuxis 84 Zoffoli, Giovanni 62 Zurbaran, Francisco de 58