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alb3606217 Pair of five-light candelabra. Culture: Italian, Rome. Dimensions: Overall (each): 27 × 15 15/16 in. (68.6 × 40.5 cm). Maker: Luigi Valadier (Italian, Rome 1726-1785 Rome); Possibly in collaboration with Lorenzo Cardelli. Date: 1774.After the death of his father in 1763, Prince Marcantonio Borghese (1730-1800) inherited a great fortune that included the finest private art collection in the Eternal City.[1] His subsequent role as one of the most important collector-patrons of the Neoclassical period -rivaling, in his own family, Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1576-1633) in the Early Baroque era - has not received the attention that it deserves.[2] The creator of this pair of candelabra, Luigi Valadier (1726-1785), became the principal goldsmith for Prince Marcantonio, who was close to him in age, thus extending the ties that the artisan's father, the goldsmith Andrea Valadier (d. 1757), had established to the Borghese court decades earlier.[3]The superior design and precise, finely detailed craftsmanship of the present five-light candelabra place them among the most distinguished art objects created in the second half of the eighteenth century, an exciting period of Roman creativity influenced by the theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the progressive inventions of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.[4] Thanks to the archival research of Alvar González-Palacios, we know a great deal about the circumstances of their manufacture. They were made for the suite of public rooms in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome that the architect Antonio Asprucci was redecorating for Prince Marcantonio.[5] They were to be displayed on two small tables - also executed in the color scheme of deep red porphyry and gilded bronze - in the Galleriola dei Cesari (so called because sixteen ancient porphyry busts of Roman emperors were on view there in niches).[6] Porphyry has been associated since Roman times with personages "born in the purple"; it is also a difficult stone to work. González-Palacios suggests that Lorenzo Cardelli, a stone carver who collaborated with Valadier on several mantelpieces of porphyry and marble the following year, made the porphyry elements for these candelabra.[7]Rising from each candelabrum's porphyry drum decorated with gilded bronze bucrania and swags in the classical style, the porphyry shaft curves up in the form of a baluster to become a small bowl at the top, decorated with gilded lions' heads and three whimsical Roman theatrical masks, from which sprout clusters of gilded bronze leaves and long branches that terminate in sockets for candles. Standing on the drum and encircling the baluster are three bronze female figures that appear to support the basin but in fact are purely decorative. Valadier's invoice for works he executed for the palazzo Borghese (dated September 6, 1774) identifies the figures as a Venus, an Amazon, and a Muse and says they were based on clsasical Roman statues.[8] The Venus, shown turned toward the shaft - the better to display her beautiful posterior - was based on an ancient marble then at the Villa Farnesina in Rome and now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Often reproduced, in various media, it was a popular souvenir with foreign visitors on the grand tour. The figure Valadier describes as a Muse recalls the huntress Diana in the collection of the Palazzo Verospi in Rome. The prototype of the Amazon is a marble sculpture today in the Musei Vaticani. Valadier reproduced it in 1780 as a large bronze statue (now at the Château de Malmaison, outside Paris).[9]Valadier's idea of grouping three caryatid figures around the shaft of his candelabra may have originated with Piranesi, who engraved a celebrated ancient statue of the three Graces that was at the time on display in the Villa Borghese.[10] Nevertheless, both the forward-looking design and the daring combination of decorative elements with such divergent roots show that Valadier was well ahead of most contemporary makers of decorative objects. He had an important influence on English artists and metalwork, as a comparison of the upper part of his candelabra with English goldsmiths' work of the 1810s to the 1840s shows. Future research may reveal whether a similar pair of candelabra entered an influential English collection during the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, or whether an English artisan in Italy bought drawings of the candelabra home to the British Isles during those years.[11] Parallels with the oeuvre of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (1780-1854) are especially striking. In 1811 his British firm made for the Prince Regent a pair of candelabra with simpler ornaments and with sculptural details after English plasters that nevertheless reflect the design of the Metropolitan's candelabra.[12][Wolfram Koeppe 2008][1] González-Palacios 1995b, p. 97[2] Ibid.[3] Bulgari 1958-59, vol. 2, pp. 494, 496, 499.[4] See Koeppe in Kisluk-Grosheide, Koeppe, and Rieder 2006, p. 168, no. 70; Lawrence 2007.[5] On the redecoration of the suite of rooms on the ground floor of the palace, see Hibbard 1962.[6] On the tables, see González-Palacios in González-Palacios 1996, pp. 127-28, no. 26, pl. X.[7] González-Palacios 1995b, p. 101.[8] Alvar González-Palacios identified this document in the Archivio Segredo Vaticano, Archivio Borghese, fol. 5298 (no. 3169). It reads, in part, "due Candelabrij di profido tutti guarniti con dell'ornati e figure di metallo dorato . La Venere delle belle chiappe, L'Amazone et una Musa."[9] Note by James David Draper in the files of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum. Compare also the related Statue of a Wounded Amazon, an ancient Roman marble in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (32.11.4).[10] Fuhring 1989, vol. 1, p. 360, no. 557, fig. 27; Lawrence 2007.[11] Valadier created a pair of candelabra that are very similar to the present examples, today at Pavlovsk Palace, near Saint Petersburg. González-Palacios suggests they may have been commissioned by Grand Duke Paul of Russia and his wife Maria Feodorovna; see González-Palacios 1995b, p. 102, n. 8; Kuchumov 1974, pl. 184.[12] This hitherto unobserved influence demands a separate study. The following sources may cast some light on the question: Carlton House 1991, p. 178, no. 151; Christie's, Monaco, July 1, 1995, sale cat., lot 30 (a similar pair). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3603041 Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Studies for the Libyan Sibyl and a small Sketch for a Seated Figure (verso). Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475-1564 Rome). Dimensions: Sheet: 11 3/8 x 8 7/16 in. (28.9 x 21.4 cm). Date: ca. 1510-11.This double-sided sheet of closely observed life studies is the most magnificent drawing by Michelangelo in North-America, purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 8, 1924 (its acquisition being voted by the museum's acquisitions committee on June 9, 1924), in great part thanks to negotiations by the eminent painter, John Singer Sargent, with the widow of Aureliano de Beruete, its previous owner (file no. D7950, Archive Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The much smaller than life-size studies on the famous recto side of the Metropolitan sheet were clearly done from a young male assistant posing in the artist's studio, being preparatory for the design of the Libyan Sibyl, the monumental enthroned female figure painted in fresco on the north-east end of the Sistine Ceiling. The Libyan Sibyl was the last of the seers to be frescoed on the north part of the vault, executed in a scale that is about three times life-size (the overall area of this part in the fresco measures 4.54 meters by 3.80 meters); she is clothed except for her powerful shoulders and arms, and wears an elaborately braided coiffure. Her complex pose in the fresco, evidently requiring study in numerous drawings, plays on the arrested motion of her stepping down from the throne, while holding an enormous open book of prophecy which she is about to close. Sketched in soft black chalk, the verso of the double-sided Metropolitan sheet was possibly drawn before the better-known recto side with its meditated red chalk studies; many of Michelangelo's drawings for the early parts of the Sistine Ceiling are in a similarly soft black-chalk technique (examples of early Sistine studies in soft black chalk are British Museum inv. 1859,0625.567, London; Teylers Museum inv. A 18 verso, Haarlem; Casa Buonarroti inv. nos. 64 F and 75 F, Florence; Musée du Louvre Département des Arts Graphiques inv. 860, Paris; Biblioteca Reale inv. 15627 D.C., Turin.), while a preponderance of sheets done for the later parts of the frescoes are in red chalk. The verso of the Metropolitan sheet portrays at center, in profile the large nude seated figure of the sibyl (here, the softer anatomical forms may be feminine, rather than masculine as they evidently are in the case of the studies on the recto), at upper right a very summary design of a much smaller figure in three-quarter view facing left (its style generally resembles the motifs in the "Oxford Sketchbook": see Ashmolean Museum nos. 1846.45 to 1846.52), and at lower right the detail study of the sibyl's right knee. The main study in red chalk, on what is today considered the recto of the Metropolitan double-sided sheet, portrays the seated youth with head in profile, bent arms and upper body turned in an elegant contrapposto stance, to display the formidable musculature of his back in a rear view. Michelangelo considered the position of the shoulders turning into the depth of space, with especial attention, indicating also with two small circles the prominence of the supraspinatus muscles (the accents with tiny touches of white chalk on the left shoulder are likely a later retouching, but create a most intense highlight). The sequence of execution of the surrounding motifs on the recto, also done in red chalk, is much less clear, and one may venture to guess that, at left, the reprise of the head in profile and the rough sketch of the torso and head were drawn before the main study (given that parts of their outlines seem to lie underneath the main study), while the highly rendered motifs of the left hand at lower center and the three reprises of the left foot and toes at right probably followed the main study on the sheet. The manner of the weight-bearing on the toes of the sibyl's left foot was crucial for the overall design of the figure's contrapposto pose, and explains the multiple studies of this detail on the Metropolitan sheet. The facial features on the large head at lower left in the recto seem closer to those of the Libyan Sibyl in the final fresco, than the face of the youth in the main study. The recto of a sheet in the Ashmolean Museum (no. 1846.43; Fig. 2), Oxford, dedicated to studies for the Sistine Ceiling and sketches for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, represents at center the attendant young boy genius who is seen to the immediate left of the frescoed Libyan Sibyl, as well as at lower left the sibyl's right hand, both motifs executed in red chalk. While the overall dimensions of the Oxford sheet (28.6 x 19.4 cm) are similar to those of the Metropolitan sheet, the hue of the red chalk seems brighter and slightly orange; nevertheless, it is clear that the Oxford and New York sheets are very close companions, probably from the same sketchbook, without their necessarily being (in the present author's opinion) halves of the same sheet, as an earlier generation of scholars suggested (summary of discussion in Joannides 2007, p. 120).The scientific findings which emerged during the cleaning of Michelangelo's Sistine frescoes (1984-1990; published in Mancinelli 1994) provide a precise, though often overlooked context in which to consider the dating and function of the Metropolitan Museum studies. Given that the great artist painted the enormous vault of the chapel from the west to east end -- that is, from above the entrance to above the site of the altar -- in two campaigns demarcated by the erection of scaffolding (or pontate), as is suggested by both documents and a variety of recently emerged physical data (for which see Mancinelli 1994, pp. 16-22), the monumental Libyan Sibyl belongs to the latter phase of work on the project. At this point, Michelangelo's technical virtuosity as a fresco painter was at its height, having made a rough and inexperienced beginning in 1508 when the first scene of the vault he frescoed, The Deluge, grew mold because of incorrectly prepared intonaco (this fine surface plaster was used too watery; see also Condivi 1553). The most difficult technique of painting is possibly that of fresco, as it requires speed of execution onto the wet plaster before it sets and great self-confidence; writers of art treatises from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century judged the medium of fresco to be supreme, precisely because of the technical virtuosity it demanded (Bambach 1999); as Michelangelo would himself later complain to his biographer Giorgio Vasari: "Fresco painting is not an art for old men." (Vasari 1568).Although the chronology of the Sistine Ceiling is debated, the first phase of work, or pontata, was done between late summer - perhaps late July -- of 1508 (the contract for the Sistine frescoes dates to May 10, 1508; see Bardeschi Ciulich and Barocchi 1970) and late August 1510, and ended with the painting of the Creation of Eve; while the second pontata and final phase of work probably began some time after January 1511 (the winter months are not good for fresco-painting), concluding on October 31, 1512 with the unveiling of the Chapel (see Gilbert 1994). The recto of the Metropolitan Museum study can be dated with great probability to the winter of 1511, when Michelangelo could draw rather than paint in fresco (he returned to Rome, from Bologna, by January 11, 1511), and would have been prepared at the beginning of the second pontata, that is, soon after the great artist had moved his scaffolding for the second (and final) time to paint. The gigantic figure of the Libyan Sibyl, together with her throne and attendants, was frescoed onto the large concave surface of the vault in twenty days of work (the fresco is comprised of 20 giornate, or patches of fine surface plaster), and the complex design was transferred by the laborious technique of spolvero (a cartoon or full-scale drawing transferred by means of pricking and pouncing the outlines; see Bambach 1994).The Metropolitan study is done with a red-chalk of slightly purplish hue sharpened to a point for the fine contours of the figure and some of the interior hatching, but it was also at times applied with the side of the stick; the red chalk medium was especially suited for the particularized, highly naturalistic study of anatomical detail. Although Michelangelo had begun to use red chalk in the early 1490s (See C.C. Bambach, "La virtù dei disegni del giovane Michelangelo", in Michelangelo 1564-2014, ed. by C. Acidini, Rome 2014), his greatest accomplishments with this medium are connected with the later parts of the Sistine Ceiling. Yet the group of red chalk studies for the Sistine has also been among the most greatly contested of Michelangelo's drawings in terms of attributions. The closest companions in style and technique to the red-chalk Metropolitan Libyan Sibyl are the studies on the sheet at the Ashmolean Museum (Fig. 2), as well as three others at the Teyler Museum, Haarlem (inv. nos. A16 recto, A20 recto-verso, and A27 recto-verso). Two of these Teyler sheets (A20 and A 27) are drawn, in fact, with a red chalk of closely similar purplish hue as that employed for the Libyan Sibyl on the recto of the Metropolitan Museum sheet. Clearly autograph, the sketches on the better preserved verso of the Metropolitan sheet are not ever mentioned by the scholars rejecting the attribution of the recto studies to Michelangelo(Perrig 1976; Perrig 1991; Zöllner et al. 2008). This verso exhibits a similar type of handling --with loose, impressionistic hatching and contours, rather than finely detailed-- as most of the soft black-chalk studies for the early parts of the Sistine Ceiling (for example, the sheets British Museum inv. 1859,0625.567, London; Teylers Museum inv. A 18 verso, Haarlem; Casa Buonarroti inv. nos. 64 F and 75F, Florence; Musée du Louvre Département des Arts Graphiques inv. 860, Paris). The late sixteenth-century copy in red chalk after the Metropolitan Libyan Sibyl at the Uffizi (inv. no. 2318 F), Florence, is of nearly the same size, but is of remarkably inferior quality of execution, omitting also the two anatomical notations of circles on the shoulders and the tiny white chalk accents. Moreover, the drawn copy rearranges the positioning of the individual motifs, introduces the right foot of the sibyl (which is absent in the recto of the Metropolitan sheet), and records the abrupt terminus of outlines in the study of the toe. As the Uffizi copy emulates defects of condition in the original Metropolitan sheet (especially the outlines of the hole in the original paper support), it can be deduced that it directly derives from the Metropolitan sheet.The verso sketches on the Metropolitan Museum sheet have always rightly been recognized as by Michelangelo, and the "no. 2i ." inscribed at lower center adds further proof, as it fits precisely into a numerical sequence found on many other drawings by the great artist that have an early Buonarroti family provenance (see Bambach 1997). The annotation at lower left on the recto regarding the artist's surname, here spelled in the form of "bona Roti" is also signficant in view of the corpus of drawings by Michelangelo and his school which bear this annotation by the so-called "Bona Roti collector," as Paul Joannides has baptized him. In any case, important groups of drawings inherited by the Buonarroti family appears to have been dispersed between ca. 1684 and 1799, probably by the senatore Filippo Buonarroti (Joannides 2007). The paraph in pen and dark brown ink inscribed at lower center on the recto of the Metropolitan sheet is often mistaken as a mark of ownership by the collector Everhard Jabach (1618-1695), of Cologne and Paris (De Tolnay1975; Logan and Plomp 2005) rather, it closely resembles the paraphs scribbled on sheets of drawings in the Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid, and which were part of a large group of drawings acquired in 1775 from the widow of the painter Andrea Procaccini (1671-1734), who had died at La Granja de San Ildefonso and who had in turn inherited them from his master, Carlo Maratti (1625-1713; see Mena Marqués 1982). Although the overall condition of this double-sided sheet is very good, it is somewhat different for each face of the paper; the original off-white hue of the paper is still nearly intact on the verso, but is considerably darkened on the recto; this is apparently due to prolonged exposure to light, and, as noted in 1925 by Bryson Burroughs (the curator who bought the drawing for the Met), the red chalk studies on the recto were "fixed" with a solution of shellac in alcohol, which has intensified the differences of light and shade (Bryson Burroughs 1925). The recto also exhibits stains of brown wash at lower right; the triangular loss on the original support toward the center of the right border (if the sheet is regarded from the recto) is the result of very early damage, being made up and toned in restoration after 1951.(Carmen C. Bambach). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3664110 Design for the Tomb of Pope Julius II della Rovere. Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475-1564 Rome). Dimensions: 20-1/16 x 12-9/16 in. (51 x 31.9 cm). Date: 1505-6.By 1505, eight years before his death, Pope Julius II della Rovere (reigned 1503-1513) had apparently already began contemplating plans to erect a grandiose tomb for himself in the new Saint Peter's Basilica being constructed according to Bramante's design, and entrusted Michelangelo with the sculptural project. In March-April 1505, Michelangelo probably began the first drawings for the tomb project which according to a first (lost) contract, was to cost 10,000 ducats, was to be finished in five years, and was to be sited in Saint Peter's at a location that was to be determined. Some of these intentions are already alluded to indirectly in Michelangelo's letter from Florence to his friend, the architect Giuliano da Sangallo in Rome, on May 2, 1506, for it was Giuliano who had encouraged the Pope in his choice of Michelangelo as the sculptor of the funerary program, amidst the heated artistic jealousies of the papal court. As described in Ascanio Condivi's biography of Michelangelo (Rome, 1553), the tomb of Julius II was to have been a three-story freestanding monument and may have included as many as forty-seven large figures carved of Carrara marble, but Michelangelo's project was interrupted by other papal commissions, chiefly the frescoes on the Sistine Ceiling (executed from 1508 to 1512), with which the early drawings for the Julius Tomb share considerable similarities of style. Following the pope's death on February 21, 1513, Michelangelo signed a second contract for a reduced version of the tomb to be finished in seven years. For a number of reasons, the Metropolitan Museum's drawing with its subtly pictorial illusionism of the architecture appears to reflect the first version of the Julius Tomb project, around 1505-6, as was convincingly argued by Michael Hirst in 1988, rather than that of the various designs produced after 1513, as has frequently been maintained in the literature. It is of much more subdued design and scale than the recto of the comparably large, nearly ruined drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett (inv. KdZ 15305), Berlin, which is the design most likely reflecting the contract of May 1513 for the Tomb of Pope Julius II. But the damaged autograph drawing by Michelangelo in Berlin is best understood through the faithful if awkward copy after it by Jacomo Rocchetti, preserved in the same collection (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15306, Berlin; Fig. 1). To the present author's eye, the appearance of Rocchetti's design is that of a very clean copy-drawing, in which the underdrawing was the result of a "calco" method of transfer from Michelangelo's sheet (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15305 recto); in a process much like a carbon-paper copy, the original by Michelangelo was placed on top of a sheet with a black-chalk-rubbed verso and another blank sheet underneath (Rocchetti's surface), and the outlines of the original were then incised with a stylus through the two layers of paper. Tellingly, the deriving copy is inscribed on the bottom of the sheet: "questo disegno é di Michelangelo buonarota hauuto da M[aestro] Iacomo rocchetti" (this design is by Michelangelo Buonarroti derived by Maestro Iacomo Rocchetti). The Berlin design by Michelangelo (as understood from Rocchetti's clean copy) is also more subdued in design than what is seen of the lower part of the monument in the drawing at the Uffizi (inv. 608 E recto), Florence, once owned by Pierre-Jean Mariette and which is perhaps a somewhat earlier version of the design than the Berlin drawings while being from the same 1513 campaign.The diagrammatic clarity of form and precise construction of architectural elements in the large Metropolitan Museum sheet are typical of modelli (demonstration drawings), produced for presentation of the design to a patron or to be used for the execution of the design by members of the workshop. As may be deduced from the Metropolitan drawing, the massive tomb ensemble was to be a three-sided structure attached to a wall, and in a daring departure from tradition, Michelangelo designed the pope's effigy to be seen frontally, and within the tall arched niche, angels raise the dead pope toward the Virgin and Child. A quick outline sketch in pen and brown ink for the Pope's raised effigy, seen in a side view facing left (Casa Buonarroti inv. 43A verso, Florence; Fig. 3), best allows one to envision the design of this main figure in elevation, as it were, in the 1505-6 monument. The upper part of the wall tomb with its monumental niche, or cappelletta, as it is called in the Julius Tomb documents, is of approximately the same design, though squatter than in the Berlin drawings and the architectural detailing is in a style closer to that of the Quattrocento. Also similar to the solution evident in the Berlin drawings are the motifs of the Virgin and Child in the mandorla (anticipating the design of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, of 1513), with the dead pope in frontal view being supported over the sarcophagus by angels. But eliminated from the Berlin drawings are the figures of the youths with hirsute hair and somewhat whimsical expression who flank and face the niche in the Metropolitan sheet -- that on the left with an aspergillum and bucket of holy water, that on the right with a censer; in the Berlin sheets, these flanking figures are idealized and more schematic, while looking outward. The lower part of the Metropolitan drawing, however, most radically differs from the designs in the Uffizi and Berlin sheets. It omits the classicizing figures of the slaves and herm pilasters seen in the latter, and the nearly square relief at center offers an inventive portrayal of the Gathering of Manna (Exodus 16:11 - 36; Numbers 11:7 - 9), with acorns falling from an oak tree, in allusion to the heraldic device of the Della Rovere family (in Italian, "rovere" means oak). The Della Rovere acorns abound elsewhere in the design, filling a footed cup between two reclining river gods at lower center, and they decorate the finials of the thrones of the sibyl and prophet on the second storey of the monument. Allegorial figures of Charity and Faith stand within the niches to the left and right on the lower storey. The projection of the tomb from the wall is indicated by statues of standing figures seen in profile at extreme left and right, and the ensemble portrayed in the Metropolitan Museum drawing would have rested on a stepped base, as is seen in the Uffizi and Berlin designs, but which in this case is cropped by the lower border of the sheet.The early date of the Metropolitan sheet in 1505-6 is confirmed by the style of the figures, similar to those in the small pen-and-ink jottings on the sheet connected with the Battle of Cascina (Uffizi inv. 233 F, Florence); as well as further by the discovery in 1990, of the fragmentary designs for the Julius Tomb, on the versos of two corresponding portions of the same sheet now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and of which the recto of one sheet depicts a nude seen from the back for the Battle of Cascina, began in 1504. "The tragedy of the tomb," as Condivi called Michelangelo's forty-year ordeal in producing the Tomb of Julius II, did not end until 1545, when the present, much scaled-down structure was installed in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, far away from the papal majesty of Saint Peter's Basilica (Fig. 2); the most in-depth study of the related drawings for the Julius monument is by Claudia Echinger Maurach. The gradual reinstatement of the large, carefully rendered Metropolitan Museum drawing in the Michelangelo literature is due to Michael Hirst in 1976, who published the first detailed analysis of it, also advocating for the authorship of Michelangelo himself; the Metropolitan Museum of Art had acquired the drawing fourteen years earlier, as a work by the school of Michelangelo. While the attribution to Michelangelo has met mostly with approval since 1976, it was not endorsed by Charles de Tolnay in his Corpus (1975-80), who considered it a copy, with a style of outline-drawing too calligraphic, too soft, and less dynamic than Michelangelo's autograph studies, and the drawing was also more recently rejected by Frank Zöllner, Christof Thoenes, and Thomas Pöpper in 2008, without offering any reasoning. Hirst's opinion in 1976 was that the Metropolitan sheet dated more or less to the time of the Berlin design (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15305), but in a revised opinion in 1988, proposed instead the Metropolitan drawing as Michelangelo's original project of 1505 for the Julius Tomb. Michelangelo's designs for the Tomb of Julius II offered meaningful visual sources (perhaps even normative ones) for artists of the following generation, as is seen, for example, in the design produced by Antonio da Sangallo "The Younger" for the Tomb of Pope Clement VII. Both drawings served as modelli, or demonstration drawings, perhaps for the patron, being precisely executed over a comprehensive construction with the stylus, compass, and ruler. While Michelangelo's working drawing is in good overall condition, the design has been roughly silhouetted and mounted onto a larger sheet, and the drawing surface seems sufficiently abraded for the underdrawing to have disappeared in several passages; the sheet also exhibits minor accretions, a horizontal crease at center, and some brown stains.Carmen C. Bambach (2009, revised in 2014). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3658097 Seated Nude Young Man in Nearly Frontal View. Artist: Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (Italian, Cento 1591-1666 Bologna). Dimensions: sheet: 23 x 16-7/16 in. (58.4 x 41.8 cm). Date: ca. 1618.A new addition to Guercino's youthful corpus, this powerful, boldly rendered study after the male nude model is an impressive early example of his practice of life drawing, and can be precisely associated with a small but surprisingly homogeneous group of life drawings dating around 1618-1621, that is, before Guercino's two-year sojourn in Rome. The drawings all exhibit a similar subject matter, scale, and unusual medium, suggesting that they must have been executed in a short span of time. Among this group are the especially fine sheets in the J. Paul Getty Museum 89.GB.52, Los Angeles; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe del Comune nos. 1702 and 1703, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa; Ashmolean Museum 873A, Oxford; National Gallery of Victoria 1278/3, Melbourne; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 12502 F, Florence; Royal Library nos. 2415 and 01227, Windsor Castle; and collection of Evalyne S. Grand, St. Louis. Other life studies of this type have also been published, although their quality of execution often does not seem as skilled, and this has led to doubts regarding an attribution of such sheets to Guercino himself. (See Sir Denis Mahon, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri: Il Guercino 1591-1666: Disegni, Bologna, 1992, pp. 312-17, nos. 205-209; George R. Goldner and Lee Hendrix with Kelly Pask, European Drawings: 2: Catalogue of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, 1992, pp. 60-61, no. 20; Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections with an Appendix..., exh. cat. British Museum, London and Rome, 1991, pp. 36-38, 48, nos. 4, 16; Carel van Tuyll, The Burlington Magazine, December 1991 p. 868; David Stone, Guercino Master Draftsman: Works from North-American Collections, exh. cat. Harvard University Art Museums and National Gallery of Canada, Cambridge MA and Bologna, 1991, pp. 146-51, nos. 63-65; Sir Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge and New York, 1989, pp. 80-81, nos. 149-150). The closest comparison for the present sheet is the J. Paul Getty Museum drawing, which seems to portray the same model, but from a different viewpoint; both sheets may date closer to c. 1618, to judge from the compressed anatomy and proportions of the figure. Like the other closely comparable sheets of this type by the young Guercino, the Metropolitan Museum drawing is done in relatively cheap media, with a distinctive, fairly unusual technique, in which the black chalk was dipped into a gum solution in order to make the chalk intensely dark and dense for areas of shadow, on fairly coarse "wrapping" paper. Although the medium of this type of drawing by the young Guercino has often been described in the literature as "oiled" black chalk or charcoal, repeated examinations under ultraviolet fluorescence and high powered magnification have demonstrated that there is no evidence of oil, or of the telltale sign of haloing occurring with oil-containing materials; the intense blackness of the chalk seems to be due solely to the gum solution (technical report by Marjorie M. Shelley, Department of Paper Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 19, 2004). Importantly, Guercino rarely seems to have used this modified black chalk technique again after the mid 1620s. Seen in a broader context, these early monumental life studies in the modified black chalk technique, which can be dated independently between 1618 and 1621 on the basis of style, vividly attest to the pedagogic aspect of Guercino's early career in that they represent the type of exercise drawing whose primary purpose was the investigation of the nude human figure, and probably without the specific purpose of a final work in mind. The practice and technique of drawing are both generally indebted to the academies of the Carracci and Pietro Faccini. Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia's closely contemporary biography of Guercino (1678), based on personal knowledge of the artist, states that Guercino was widely sought by young artists as a teacher, even in his early years, and that he founded in 1616 his own "Accademia del Nudo" in his native town of Cento, under the patronage of Bartolomeo Fabri, who set aside two rooms in his house as the site for the young artist's academy. By 1617, Guercino seems to have had as many as twenty-three pupils, and the "Accademia del Nudo" at the Casa Fabri seems to have functioned with great success until the mid 1620s; his numerous pupils may help account for the diversity of quality among the life drawings associated with the young Guercino and his circle. As amply discussed by Nicholas Turner (1989 and 1991), at about this time, in 1619, some of Guercino's anatomical studies were also published as engravings by Oliviero Gatti, and were meant to serve for the instruction of young artists. It is clear that Guercino and his disciples must have filled the pages of bound sketchbooks, and loose quires of paper, with countless sequences of drawings of the male nude. It is demonstrable that the present sheet was conceived of by the artist as an "academic exercise" (most probably without a final picture in mind), for the young, muscular model holds onto a curtain or hanging drapery (a prop) with his left hand, and is seated on a short block in a relatively frontal view. As is also true of the Getty drawing, the model's face is fairly idealized with fine, nearly feminine features, and long, wavy hair, contrasting with the more carefully described body of somewhat bulky proportions. The large feet, which are quite characteristic of Guercino's figural vocabulary in these early life drawings, are sketchily outlined. The form of the model's body, tightly compressed on the sheet of paper, is animated by the sharp, opposing turns of his torso and pelvis with respect to the limbs. The youth's pose conveys complex, agitated movement in repose, and is designed to show off the artist's virtuosity as an anatomical draftsman. Guercino quickly defined the athletic form of the young male model in terms of broad, very boldly articulated areas of light and shadow, and in many passages of tone he rubbed in the individual strokes of the black chalk by stumping to create a smoky effect of rendering.(Carmen C. Bambach, 2005). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb5142933 Follis Iustinian I, g bronze, total: diameter: 3 cm, inscription: Obverse: next to the head on the right a cross, circumferential inscription DN IVSTINIANVS PP AUC, coins, numismatics, portrait, portrait of ruler, state portrait, historical person, emperor, late antiquity, Originally the follis was introduced by the Roman emperor Diocletian in his coinage reform around 294 AD. Coined from bronze, the coins were covered with a thin silver film. Since the currency reform of the emperor Anastastius around 498 B.C. they have been large bronze coins. On the value side of the folly, the large letters MY in ligature. In Greek numerals they stand for the value 40. Due to its size, this folly belongs to the group of 'Large Module Folles'. It shows an armored bust of the emperor Iustinian I. with crown and jewelry on the front side (obverse). In his right hand he holds the globe with cross. Next to the head there is a cross on the right. The circumferential inscription facing inwards is DN IVSTINIANVS PP AUC (Dominus noster Iustinianus perpetuus Augustus - Our Lord Iustinian, eternal ruler). The reverse side (lapel) is dominated by the MY stamp, under which a small B can be seen. On the left is the inscription ANNO (in the year), on the right XXIII (23); this is a reference to the minting date in the 23rd year of the emperor's reign 560/1 A.D. In the lower section there is a reference to the mint KYZ(ikos). Iustinian I. - with full name Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus - was born around 482 AD in Tauresium and ruled the Imperium Romanum from August 1, 527 AD until his death on November 14, 565 AD. He is considered one of the most important rulers of late antiquity. His reign marked the transition from the ancient Imperium Romanum to the Byzantine Empire. He succeeded in reconquering large parts of the Western Roman Empire, which had been lost to the Ostrogoths and Vandals in 476 AD. At the same time he closed the Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy in Athens in 529 and abol.

alb3659457 Design Fragment for the Left Side of the 'Fonte Gaia' in Siena. Artist: Jacopo della Quercia (Jacopo di Pietro d'Angelo di Guarnieri) (Italian, Siena 1374?-1438 Siena). Dimensions: 7-13/16 x 8-7/16 in. (20.1 x 21.4 cm). Date: 1415-16.This is one of the most historically important early Italian drawings in a United States collection, and is associated with a famous sculptural project in Renaissance Italy. The details of the project are complex but illuminate the crucial role of this drawing in the development of the commission. They are summarized here with new research. In 1408, Jacopo della Quercia was contracted by the magistrates (signori) of the republic of Siena to execute the Fonte Gaia ("Fountain of Joy"), a great rectangular basin with figural sculptures in marble, intended to replace a previously existing structure on the northwest edge of the Piazza del Campo, the main public space of the town. The damaged original fragments of the Fonte Gaia are today in Santa Maria della Scala (Siena) but remained in situ until 1858 when the ensemble was substituted with a facsimile copy by Tito Sarrocchi. Eleven years in the making, the Fonte Gaia served practical, symbolic, and aesthetic functions, as part of a larger program of public monuments initiated by the fiercely republican government of the comune that rose to power in 1404. It was the principal source of public waters in the center of Siena (a land-locked hill town), serving as a large cistern with several spouts that was supplied from the vast network of subterranean aqueducts, or bottini, which had been completed with a 25 km expansion at enormous expense in the late fourteenth century. The documents about the Fonte Gaia commission (preserved in the Archivio di Stato of Siena) confirm that drawings produced by Jacopo della Quercia served an important legal purpose, allowing the patrons to discuss and approve the state of the fountain as it progressed. Although much about the two drawing fragments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum has been debated (including their authorship, iconography, and precise purpose), the new visual-archaeological evidence and a critical reading of the documents clearly confirm the attribution to Jacopo della Quercia himself.On December 15, 1408, the magistrates of the republic established that the total cost of this major civic monument, dedicated to the Virgin as protectress of Siena, was not to exceed 1,700 gold florins. The commission for the Fonte Gaia was authorized and the terms of the contract with Jacopo were stipulated on January 22, 1409. This document refers to a deadline of twenty months for the completion of the fountain, as well as to its dimensions and decoration "with figures, foliage ornament, and marbles that are clearly shown in the above-mentioned drawing" ("cho' le figure, foglame, e marmi che nel disegno soprascritto chiaramente si dimostrano"). A memorandum of January 18, 1415, however, assessed the defects of the design and the incomplete state of the work as it stood: Jacopo della Quercia seems to have begun to produce the sculptures only in 1414, and between 1415-16 most of the sculptures or their preliminary models may have actually been complete. It also noted the need to expand the size of the fountain and to provide for the decoration of the exterior faces of the basin. On December 11, 1416, a new contract for the Fonte Gaia was drafted, since the prescribed deadline for completion of the monument had also long passed. This document of 1416 refers to a first drawing done in 1408, as well as to a new drawing on a piece of parchment or vellum ("carta edina"), as "designed and made by the hand of the said master Jacopo, presented by the lord magistrates themselves in the town council" ("dicti anni MCCCCVIII, secundum formam primi designi facti in Palatio magnificorum dominorum Priorum in sala dicti Palatii tendenti versus Campsum fori, et quod postea fuit facta nova location, secundum novum designum factum manu dicti magistri Iacobi ... et eo modo et forma et prout continetur et designatum est, et apparet in quadam carta edina manu dicti magistri Iacobi designata et facta, presentata per ipsos dominos Regulatores in Consistorio"). The Fonte Gaia was finished with the last payments to Jacopo della Quercia and the cancellation of the previous contracts for the project, recorded on October 9 and 20, 1419. The two surviving fragments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum pertain to the left and right portions of the Fonte Gaia, and originally constituted a large, very detailed single drawing on vellum of which the central portion is lost. The Victoria and Albert fragment has also been cut down substantially along the upper and bottom borders. The minute control of the figural and ornamental details especially evidence Jacopo della Quercia's early training as a goldsmith. Seen close up and in good light, the drawing style of the figures with parallel- and cross-hatching is also surprisingly expressive. The general iconography of the Fonte Gaia alludes to the virtues of good government of the republic of Siena, which are also celebrated in the fourteenth-century frescoes of the Palazzo Pubblico, which faced the original fountain across the Piazza del Campo. Two standing female figures, each accompanied by two infants, terminate the design of the fountain at left and right foreground in the present drawing fragments. They represent respectively Acca Larentia (she wears a fur) and Rhea Silvia (she wears a crown), who are the birth and foster mothers of the twins Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, and who according to local legend were also the founders of Siena: these figures are much more individualized in the drawings than in the final marble sculptures. In addition to the she-wolf of Rome in the foreground of the Metropolitan Museum fragment, two other symbolic animals adorn the far corners of the low walls, an ape in the Metropolitan Museum fragment and a she-dog in the Victoria and Albert Museum fragment, possibly alluding to the kinds of sinfulness of the Roman twin's mothers. The rows of niches in the interior of the three low walls of the basin house the figures of Christian virtues. Of the scientific instrumentation used to examine the Metropolitan Museum drawing fragment, ultraviolet light especially clarifies that the wash modeling in iron-gall ink was originally much more extensive and powerful, and that it has greatly faded with age and light. Hence, the monumentality and overall sculptural quality of the original design, with its graded tonal transitions in the areas with wash and with pen-and-ink hatching in the deepest shadows, have been considerably diminished. The arguments that these drawings are by a painter (Priamo della Quercia, doc. 1426-1467, brother of Jacopo being one of the proposed candidates), rather than by a sculptor, therefore fall apart. When the two drawing fragments are seen together side by side, as in the present exhibition and as they were displayed in 1998 and 2010, it becomes clear that the Victoria and Albert portion depicts design elements in a greatly more incomplete state and is of more modest overall conception than the Metropolitan Museum fragment. A possible explanation is that the drawings may represent a kind of visual legal document, or ricordo, of the actual state of progress around 1415-16 of the carved monument and the fact that it was greatly unfinished in its right half at that point in time. The pilasters and much of the moldings are left unarticulated (almost blank) in the London fragment, while the New York drawing seems only slightly unfinished toward the lower right where the very summarily sketched outlines indicate a mount projecting forward from the low back wall that provides a ground-line for the she-wolf. The moldings at the bottom of the architectural framework toward right are also drawn in reserve and are therefore blank (this is verified by the view under the microscope and with infrared reflectography). These architectural lines stop quite short of the design of the mount. Close-up examination of both drawing fragments confirms that these passages of apparent unfinish are an intentional matter of facture, not ones due to compromised physical condition: they are not simply a case of the ink being faded in the blank parts of the designs. The New York and London drawing fragments portray a still fragmentary sculptural ensemble in which the passages of most incomplete execution generally occur in the middle to right portions of the fountain's decoration, although the degree to which the drawings are accurate records of the work in progress may be open to question. The New York and London drawing fragments also provide a greater amount of content and specific details much beyond what the Fonte Gaia documents describe, but represent a much less complex overall design than the fountain that was finally executed in marble by 1419. The drawing fragments therefore must date to 1415-16 or so, roughly speaking during the period of time in which the design of the Fonte Gaia was being reevaluated on the basis of the work in progress, and the new contract and "novum designum" for the greatly modified fountain were being drafted. The visual conventions of form adopted by Jacopo della Quercia in the New York and London fragments also shed light on the precise function of the monumental original drawing. In both drawing fragments, the detailed design of the precisely ruled architectural framework for the fountain with its sculpted allegorical figures, animals, and vegetal patterns of ornament is depicted with precise outlines and modeling in wash in a clearly expository manner so as to indicate the general illusion of the three-dimensional forms receding in space. The figures, animals, and ornament were then further individuated with clarity by the deeper modeling with strokes of spirited hatching. On the two lateral walls, the framing elements of the niches, pilasters, and moldings overlap the forms of the figural sculptures, but the overall design is constructed according to a parallel projection of all diagonal lines, or isometry, rather than a true, pictorial one-point perspective in the Renaissance style pioneered by Filippo Brunelleschi in which orthogonal lines converge on a single vanishing point. These pictorial conventions in the Fonte Gaia design fragments are rooted in Late Gothic practice and fit within a larger typology of architectural-sculptural drawings by Sienese artists from the second half of the fourteenth century onward. Such early Sienese drawings depict carefully ruled architectural ensembles decorated with meticulously drawn figural and ornamental sculpture, and are executed in pen and ink on parchment, as, for example, the drawings for the façade of the Baptistery of Siena and for a lavish, unexecuted pulpit perhaps intended for the Orvieto Cathedral (Siena, Opera del Duomo inv. 20; Orvieto, Opera del Duomo; London, British Museum 1899,0617.2; and Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett KdZ 3392). The result of the early historiography on the Fonte Gaia project has been that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert drawing fragments are usually published with a question mark after the attribution to Jacopo della Quercia. While the documents alone should suffice to settle the attribution beyond doubt, the scholarly debates have chiefly arisen from two problems. Firstly, the term disegno in Italian embraces the dual meanings of "design" and "drawing," and in making attributions a previous generation of scholars often overly preferred to regard the authorship of the design idea as separate from the actual execution of a drawing. Secondly, it is a choice of how narrowly or widely one interprets the phrase "manu dicti magistri Jacobi," "made by master Jacopo's hand." In the Italian vernacular, the phrasing in documents is frequently rendered as "fatto di sua mano." The phrase "di sua mano," "by his hand," and like wording have been much better understood by art historians with regard to early paintings and sculptures. The large physical scale of projects often entailed the delegation of labor among collaborators and workshop assistants, and this consequently raises nuanced dimensions of authorship in examining a design with respect to its execution. But, one must emphasize, this is more often than not the wrong paradigm for the analysis of early modern drawings. When referring to actual drawings, at least of a reasonably portable scale, the Italian Renaissance artist, patron, and author applied the phrase "di sua mano" in a most literal and practical sense (that was usually also legally binding in the case of contractual documents), to mean that a drawing was physically made by the artist's hand. At the same time, one must also emphasize that the understanding of the phrase, "di sua mano," as meaning that a drawing was physically by the artist's hand went much beyond the sphere of official contractual drawings: the phrase is used in this narrow, literal sense in a variety of written sources of the early modern period (letters, ricordi, and writings on art including, Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori).Carmen C. Bambach (2014). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3613939 Washstand (athénienne or lavabo). Culture: French, Paris. Designer: Design attributed to Charles Percier (French, Paris 1764-1838 Paris). Dimensions: Height: 36 3/8 in. (92.4 cm); Diameter: 19 1/2 in. (49.5 cm). Maker: Gilt bronze mounts by Martin-Guillaume Biennais (French, 1764-1843, active ca. 1796-1819). Date: 1800-1814.The form of this elegant washstand ultimately derives from the ancient Greco-Roman three-legged perfume burner or brazier, of which the designer Charles Percier had made some study. The decoration reflects his familiarity with the wall decorations in the emperor Nero's Golden House and their adaptation in Raphael's Logge in the Vatican. A reappreciation during the Renaissance of the tripod as a luxury item of the utmost refinement is documented as early as 1499 by an example illustrated in Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in Venice that year.[1] A further not-to-be-underestimated influence on Percier was Neoclassical paintings illustrating ancient Greek mythology, such as The Loves of Paris and Helen, commissioned from Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) by the comte d'Artois in 1788.[2] The designer was also familiar with the richly illustrated seven-volume Recueil d'antiquités (1752-67) by the comte de Caylus (1692-1765),[3] and the Recueil et parallèle des édi fices by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760-1834), published between 1799 and 1801 in Paris, in which plate 25 was devoted to tripod forms, among other types of Roman objects.[4]The shape of the base and of the shelf--triangular with canted sides--can be traced back to a famous antique Roman tripod named after the French antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peirese (1580-1637).[5] Percier was probably also acquainted with the athénienne designed about 1773 by Jean-Henri Eberts (acc. no. 1993.355.1), which has the same type of base.The long-accepted attribution of the design of this athénienne to Charles Percier, the imaginative friend of Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762-1853), who in partnership with Fontaine dominated interior design in France during the Empire period, is based on its close similarity to a large colored drawing ascribed to Percier now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.[6] The maker of the Museum's piece, Martin-Guillaume Biennais, was perhaps the most accomplished goldsmith and entrepreneur of his time in France (see also acc. no. 26.168.77). He owed his economic success to the dissolution of the mighty Parisian guilds, the grandes corporations, which had controlled the activity of all craftsmen and artisans during the ancien régime. Like other skillful young goldsmiths he found himself free after the Revolution to explore business opportunities without corporate obstacles and turned his back on the outdated privileges and jealousies of the habitually conservative former guild masters. One of seven children, Biennais was born into a simple laboring family in 1764. Four decades later, he headed the most important goldsmith's and jeweler's firm in continental Europe. His inventive traveling sets and ostentatious tableware found favor not only with the emperor and his entourage but also with the swarm of nouveaux riches and self-made men who flourished in prosperous post-Revolutionary France.[7] Biennais's products were smartly promoted on his business card of 1806. It shows at the left in an architectural niche a fashionable tripod, most likely a perfume burner or brazier, crowned by a swan with spread wings.[8]There is an iron plate on the underside of the triangular shelf between the legs of the Museum's example. This served as an attachment for a lost, hanging bell-shaped ornament decorated with a stylized acanthus-and-acorn motif. How the bell hung down over the stand can be seen in another version of this model in Fontainebleau.[9] The unusually formed, bold ormolu mount would have shifted the eye slightly toward the gilt-metal parts below, creating a better balance between the warm-colored wood and gilded bronze mounts and the sparkling, moonlight-cold look of the silver basin and ewer (both missing from the Museum's piece). Several simpler washstands are recorded in inventories of Napoleon's palaces.[10]Percier's athénienne is known in three versions: the above-mentioned example at Fontainebleau, which has a probably not original dark, patinated metal basin (the ewer is lost); the present piece; and the famous personal washstand of Napoleon, today at the Musée du Louvre, Paris.[11] Napoleon kept it in his bedroom at the Palais des Tuileries, where he settled early in 1800, the year in which he commissioned the stand. It was one of the few personal luxury items that accompanied the emperor into exile at Saint Helena.Like Napoleon's washstand, this example is decorated with masterfully executed dolphins and swans, both graceful allusions to Napoleon as the rightful successor of the Sun King, Louis XIV. The firstborn son of each French ruler was called the "Dauphin," a word that also means dolphin. That jolly sea-dweller and also the winged sea creatures on the frieze around the triangular shelf suggest the Mediterranean, which forms the southern border of France and surrounds the island of Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon.[12] The swan, which was believed to utter a beautiful song at the time of its death, was associated with Apollo, god of music, with whom Louis XIV identified himself. The swan is also a symbol of beauty and of parental solicitude. At the approach of danger, with feathers puffed up and anxiously hissing, these birds protect their young within the wall of their white wings. Napoleon's consort, Josephine, and her children were frequently compared to a swan and its cygnets.[13] The swan was chosen as her symbol by Claude, wife of Francis I, the French Renaissance king whom Napoleon greatly admired.The Museum's athénienne was certainly made for a close friend or relative of the emperor. It is a superior example of the new Empire style, through which Napoleon, with the aid of leading artisans, tried to emulate the lavish decors of the ancien régime, modified by the classical restraint and formality of the art of the caesars of ancient Rome. Empire furniture of such superbly calculated plan and proportions may express better than anything else the confidence, fresh ideas, and energy of the age.[Wolfram Koeppe 2006]Footnotes:[1] Peter Thornton. The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600. New York, 1991, p. 212, pl. 240.[2] Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris, and Musée National du Château, Versailles. Paris, 1989, pp. 184-88, no. 79; and Anne Dion-Tenenbaum. L'orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Les dossiers due Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2003, p. 20, fig. 9.[3] Claudio Paolini, Alessandra Ponte, and Ornella Selvafolta. Il bello "ritrovato": Gusto, ambienti, mobili dell'Ottocento. Novara, 1990, p. 30.[4] John Morley. The History of Furniture: Twenty-five Centuries of Style and Design in the Western Tradition. Boston, 1999, p. 17, fig. 10 (dated 1802); and D'après l'antique. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2000, p. 345, no. 159 (entry by Anne Dion-Tenenbaum).[5] For the Peirese tripod, see John Morley. The History of Furniture: Twenty-five Centuries of Style and Design in the Western Tradition. Boston, 1999, p. 25, fig. 27.[6] Anne Dion-Tenenbaum. L'orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Les dossiers due Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2003, pp. 19-20, no. 2; in this excellent study Dion-Tenenbaum discusses the evolution of the tripod form in great detail.[7] Ibid., pp. 11-17.[8] Ibid., p. 14, fig. 3.[9] The third known version of this model, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, has an identical iron plate, but the pendent bell ornament has been lost. On this washstand, see below at n. 11. For the second version, at Fontainebleau, see Anne Dion-Tenenbaum. L'orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Les dossiers due Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2003, pp. 23-24, no. 4.[10] For example, "une athénienne dorée beau bois d'acajou, pot et jatte dorés" (a gilded athénienne of mahogany, the ewer and bowl gilded) and another with gilded ewer and bowl decorated with palmettes; Archives Nationales, Paris, O2 55.[11] For Napoleon's washstand, see R., G., and C. Ledoux-Lebard. "L'inventaire des appartements de l'empereur Napoléon Ier aux Tuileries." Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1952 (pub. 1953), p. 200, no. 872; D'après l'antique. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2000, pp. 346-47, no. 160 (entry by Anne Dion-Tenenbaum); Anne Dion-Tenenbaum. L'orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Les dossiers due Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2003, pp. 21-22, no. 3; Gail Feigenbaum. Jefferson's America and Napoleon's France: An Exhibition for the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial. Exh. cat., New Orleans Museum of Art. New Orleans, 2003, p. 71, no. 47 (entry by David O'Brien); and Elke Pastré. "Der Goldschmied Napoleons." Weltkunst 73 (December 2003), p. 2109, fig. 4.[12] A Greek mosaic found on the island of Delos is decorated with dolphins and the same wavelike Vitruvian scroll ornament that encircles the upper ring of the basin holder of the Museum's washstand. For the mosaic, see Pierre Arizzoli-Clémental. "Néoclassicisme." In L'art décoratif en Europe, ed. Alain Gruber, vol. 3, Du Néoclassicisme à l'Art Déco, pp. 21-127. Paris, 1994, p. 62.[13] James David Draper, with Clare Le Corbeiller. The Arts under Napoleon: An Exhibition of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, with Loans from the Audrey B. Love Foundation and Other New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1978, p. [4]. On the symbolism of swans, see James Hall. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. Rev. ed. New York, 1979, p. 294. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb5141934 Goblet (Cranes), glass, overlaid, thread support, cut, glass, Total: Height: 17.4 cm; Diameter: 5.2 cm; Base diameter: 5.3 cm, drinking and barware, birds, The slender goblet with cylindrical vessel body tapering at the bottom, flattened spherical mode and conical base is composed of numerous fragments. Minor missing parts are replaced. Its decoration is particularly captivating: birds in opaque glass are applied to the thin-walled, light pink tinted transparent glass. Three birds with long, curved necks and beaks, each with a long, bent neck and beak, stride out to the right in four staggered rows. Due to their appearance, they are probably herons or cranes. Their plumage is indicated by grooves created with a stamp. The birds of the upper and lower row are turquoise-blue, the second and third row white above and yellow below. The lower conclusion forms put on turquoise-blue snake-threads. The coloration and opacity of the birds stands in clear contrast to the transparency and lightness of the vessel body, whose color is unusual. Although high-quality productions of snake-string glasses are known and typical especially from the Roman Cologne (Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium), this goblet - due to its type and decoration - might rather be assigned to an eastern, probably Syrian production, which should remain an important region of glass production far beyond the late antiquity. Earliest examples of snake-string glasses in the west of the Imperium Romanum date to the 2nd half of the 2nd century AD, so that a similar dating can be assumed for this vessel. Herons or cranes in marshlands are a common motif in Roman art since the early imperial period. They can be found on silver magnificent cups from the house of Menander in Pompeii, on an Arretine Terra Sigillata chalice, clay lamps or mosaics, for example in Italica (Spain). A wall painting from the House of Epigrams in Pompeii shows a heron standing in front of an erect cobra with its shield spread out in front o.