The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

THE ART NEWSPAPER SECTION 2 Number 284, November 2016 21

HEAD: COURTESY OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Small but

perfectly

formed

A complete historical

catalogue of the

Wallace Collection’s

Italian sculptures.

By Susan Jenkins

ART HISTORY

I

n 2011, the Getty Foundation

launched an ambitious aca-

demic experiment conceived

by the late Natalie Kampen

as part of the Connecting Art

Histories initiative. A group

of mainly junior researchers from

difering backgrounds and disciplines

was recruited for a “roving seminar”

devoted to re-examining and debating

the comparatively neglected subject of

art in Rome’s provinces “in the field”.

The provinces of the Roman Empire

ofer plenty of scope for roving. At their

greatest extent they encompassed the

area of more than 30 modern nation

states, from Britain to Egypt, Portugal

to Syria. In every part of this territory

we find the physical traces of a Roman

material culture that, despite its

great variety, exhibits an astonishing

degree of technical and iconographical

homogeneity. Under the conditions of

Roman rule, the artistic traditions of

Italy and the urban centres of the Medi-

terranean, themselves largely inherited

from the Greek world, became a

common visual language for a vast

provincial population. The shared

imagery of statues, figural reliefs, wall

paintings, domestic mosaics, coins,

ceramics and so on might seem to have

united the Empire even more efec-

tively than actual language. The fact

that the execution of Roman-style mon-

uments often appears crude or idiosyn-

cratic—provincial, in fact—only serves

to strengthen the impression of Roman

art as a cohesive repertoire, even if

recent, revisionist research has more

or less outlawed the concept of Rome

itself as a cultural centre “Romanising”

its provincial peripheries.

In the event, two regions—Britain

and Greece—were chosen to host the

Getty seminars and associated field

trips, although the interests of the

international participants represented

the whole geographical breadth of the

Empire. Beyond Boundaries: Con-

necting Visual Cultures in the Prov-

ince of Ancient Rome is the beautiful

and carefully edited outcome of their

deliberations over two years. The title

implies the crossing of the political

boundaries of the Empire, insofar

as these can be said to have existed.

Indeed, one of the most interesting

contributions is by the Indian art histo-

rian Naman Ahuja, who reassesses the

identity of Gandharan Buddhist sculp-

tures within the complex, globalised

world they shared with Roman art. But

his inclusion in the project also demon-

strates the organisers’ determination

to cross conceptual and disciplinary

boundaries, and to mount a fundamen-

tal challenge to entrenched assump-

tions about the nature of Roman art. In

this aim, the book is largely successful.

Its 19 papers include a mixture of his-

toriographical discussions, provocative

arguments, theoretical reflections,

and more empirical case studies. They

cover sculpture, coinage, metalwork,

architecture and sites of religious

ritual. There is a refreshing departure

from the sometimes over-simple

post-colonial models that have recently

become something of a new orthodoxy

in anglophone scholarship on the

Roman provinces. For example, there

are no heavy-handed attacks on the

idea of Romanisation (instead, a subtle

and acute analysis of “the R-word” and

its alternatives in Maria Papaioannou’s

discussion of Roman Greece). That

is not to say that the advances made

by such approaches have not been

acknowledged; indeed, they have pro-

foundly informed the Getty project.

Not all the papers are equally inno-

vative or productive, and occasionally

their evocation of anthropological or

archaeological theory seems to promise

more than it truly delivers (there is a

fair bit of network theory and a lot of

“entanglement”). Notwithstanding this,

the book is consistently interesting and

thought provoking. It is particularly

stimulating when papers disagree

with each other, allowing the reader to

glimpse, perhaps, some of the dialogue

that went on in the seminars them-

selves. For instance, Steven Hijman’s

attempt to present diferences of style

and technical quality in sculpture as

a matter of “consciously semantic

deployment” is in pleasing tension

with Dragana Mladenovic’s combat-

ive recognition of “bad art” in Upper

Moesian stelae.

If the volume has a common

message, it is about the sheer diversity

and richness of ideas and insights that

can be derived from taking provincial

art seriously and interpreting it in

both its local and its global, empire-

wide contexts (a “glocal” dynamic,

as Carlos Noreña calls it in his essay

on Antiochene coinage). Between the

traditional narratives of Romanisation

and resistance, such an approach has

been all too rarely applied to the art of

Rome’s provinces.

• Peter Stewart is the director of the
  Classical Art Research Centre and a lecturer
  in classical art and archaeology at the
  University of Oxford. His publications
  include The Social History of Roman Art
  (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Beyond Boundaries: Connecting

Visual Cultures in the Province

of Ancient Rome

Susan Alcock, Mariana Egri and

James Frakes, eds

Getty Publications, 408pp, $69.95 (hb)

FINE

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Madame Helleu aboard the yacht ‘Bird’

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A Roman copper-alloy

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traditions

SCULPTURE

Jeremy Warren’s recent contribution

to the series of sumptuous catalogues

published by the Wallace Collection

is beautifully designed and produced,

with spectacular photographs by

Cassandra Parsons. Warren, formerly

the collections and academic director

at the Wallace Collection and now

an emeritus research fellow there,

explains how its 159 works document

the collecting eforts in the field of

Italian sculpture from around 1740

to around 1890 of five generations of

the Seymour-Conway family.

This comprehensive two-volume

Catalogue of Italian Sculpture

enjoys meticulous scholarship and

is the “first serious reappraisal of

the Wallace sculpture collection as

a whole for some 85 years”, treating

one third of the entire holdings and

replacing Sir James Mann’s catalogue

of 1931. Warren explains that he has

taken a geographical approach to the

objects, cataloguing all works by the

same artist in the same place, thus

the probable origin of a cast dictates

whether or not the sculpture has

been included.

Sir Richard Wallace (1818-90) was

not the only family member to pur-

chase sculpture, but Warren under-

standably focuses on his guiding

influence as he had a “transforma-

tive” efect on the family collection

which saw him end “his life with a

collection of sculpture that... reflected

his own taste”. The personal nature

of the collection is emphasised in

the charming photograph of around

1885-88 showing Sir Richard in his

smoking costume, holding one of his

acquisitions, believed to be a bronze

statuette of The Flagellation of Christ.

Sir Richard was responsible for

the quality and breadth of acquisi-

tions, which ranged from Renais-

sance bronze statuettes, utensils

and medals, to door knockers and

plaquettes. His surprise inheritance

in 1870 ensured that he was able to

put his personal stamp on the works

acquired, redoubling his active con-

noisseurship in the auction rooms

and occasional purchases of major

collections.

As with every collection that

reflects the personal tastes of its

founder, there are strengths and

weaknesses. Wallace was an avid

collector of coins and medals. His

eye for outstanding Renaissance

bronzes saw him acquire some of the

finest early examples, including the

“brilliantly fluid portrait from life” of

a cleric, probably Antonio Trombetta,

by Andrea Riccio (around 1506-16)

and a beautiful piece of a Seated

Woman (around 1480-90) by Giovanni

Fonduli da Crema. There were sig-

nificant acquisitions in other media

too, including a boxwood Hercules

(around 1520) by Francesco Pomarano,

“the most important small wooden

figure sculpture to survive from the

earlier Italian Renaissance”, to which

Warren has appended new documen-

tation relating to the maker.

The weaknesses in the collection

reflect the areas where Wallace

did not seek to make purchases. He

did not acquire Greek or Roman

antiquities, for instance, nor was he

interested in buying many marbles or

terracottas. But there are outstanding

exceptions, such as Pietro Torrigiani’s

marble Head of Christ (around 1516-

20), originally from the west side of

Westminster Abbey’s Jesus or Islip

Chapel in the north transept, which

was conserved and redisplayed as a

result of research for the catalogue.

There can be no doubt that the

Wallace Collection’s new catalogue

was a labour of love for the scholarly

sculpture connoisseur, Jeremy

Warren. He has succeeded in his

mission to explain that Sir Richard

Wallace’s “deepest love was the arts

of the Renaissance” and his hope

“that this catalogue will demonstrate

just how great [his] achievement was

in building a collection of mainly

Renaissance Italian sculpture which

though numerically relatively small,

contains so many works of art of

outstanding quality and interest” has

been fulfilled.

• Susan Jenkins is a curator and researcher
  who has written extensively on 17th- and
  18th-century decorative and fine arts

Glocal dynamics

versus the R-word

Roman art shared a common visual repertory throughout the Empire, but there

were significant variations in local styles. By Peter Stewart

The Wallace Collection

Catalogue of Italian Sculpture

Jeremy Warren

Paul Holberton Publishing, 846pp,

2 vols, £250 (hb)