An Eighteenth-Century Weekend

This past weekend seems to have been my weekend for immersion in a time period and in two media that I don’t usually look at much – the 18th century and drawings and pastels. There are two exhibitions in these media currently on view in New York.


As I mentioned in my previous posting about the exhibition of medieval fashion at the Morgan Library, on Saturday, I joined two friends for two shows there.

The second, smaller show was “The Age of Elegance: The Joan Taub Ades Collection”. It runs through August 28. The show is small, only 40 items, ranging from the 17th to the 19th centuries, but of amazing quality and interest. The four items that struck me in particular are all 18th century.

Dietzsch, Dandelion With Butterfly
and Caterpillar, Private Collection,
Gouache on vellum

The first two were positioned right inside and next to the gallery entrance.

They are works by the German woman artist, Barbara Regina Dietzsch (1706-1783), someone with whom I have not been previously acquainted. They are paintings of flowers and insects, executed in gouache on black paper, and they are truly amazing. The first is of dandelions (in their puffball stage) and the second is of a tulip. Both are beautifully depicted and feature caterpillars and other bugs. The detail of the drawing and the delicacy of the execution are astonishing. I have never seen such an illusion of diaphanous tangibility in two dimensions before. The exact images are not available online, but I did find an available image that is very close to one of the two in the exhibition.

The second drawing that caught my eye is a small drawing, in red ink, of the mythological subject, “Mercury and Argus”, by Francois Boucher.

Independence Day Connections

John Trumbull, The Declaration of Independence

American, 1826

Washington, DC, U.S. Capitol Building

 

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s the BBC produced a series of TV programs on the history of science called “Connections”.* The premise of the program, presented by James Burke, was that there are sometimes surprising connections that lead from one new idea or process to another in the development of science. The shows were as much fun as they were instructive. And, thinking about the painting by John Trumbull of “The Declaration of Independence” reminded me of them because I can make some connections of my own from it. 

 

Trumbull was commissioned to paint a series of large paintings for the newly built U.S. Capitol Building, in the new city of Washington, DC, in 1817. The first of these was “The Declaration of Independence”. You can read about the details of the painting on the U.S. Capitol website.1 

The composition was based on a smaller version of the painting that Trumbull had done in 1786 while resident in Paris, where he had assistance from Thomas Jefferson himself in planning it. Prior to this Trumbull had served in the Revolutionary army and had studied in London (under the American expatriate artist Benjamin West) and in Paris. And this is where the ‘connections’ come in.

 

John Singleton Copley, Collapse of the Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords, 7 July 1778

American, c. 1779-1780

London, Tate Britain

 

 

Trumbull’s composition clearly derives from the western European tradition of ‘history painting’. Its immediate antecedents are such paintings as “The Collapse of the Earl of Chatham” by another fellow American abroad, John Singleton Copley, and, above all, the contemporary draft of “The Oath of the Tennis Court” by Jacques-Louis David.

 

 

 

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Tennis Court

French, 1790

Versailles, Musée Nationale

With their clearly constructed interior space and important figures in the center of the composition, these paintings trace back to such 17th-century paintings as “The Sacrament of Marriage” by Nicholas Poussin and “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt.

Poussin, Sacrament of Marriage

French, 1647

Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland

Rembrandt, The Night Watch

Dutch, 1642

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

And these paintings themselves trace back to Renaissance works such as Raphael’s “School of Athens” and Ghirlandaio’s “Zechariah Confirming the Name of John the Baptist”.



Raphael, School of Athens

Italian, 1509-1510

Vatican, Apostolic Palace, Stanza dellla Segnatura

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Zechariah Confirming the Name of John the Baptist

Italian, c. 1485-1490

Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Tornabuoni Chapel

These paintings in turn eventually trace back through time to the great narrative mosaics of the Roman Empire. 

Among these are “The Alexander Mosaic” from Pompei and the “Voyage of Ulysses” from Tunisia.

 

 

Alexander and Darius, Mosaic from Pompei

Roman, 1st Century BC

Naples, National Archaeological Museum

 

Ulysses and the Sirens
Roman, 3rd Century AD
Tunis, Bardo Museum

These differ from the productions of other ancient cultures such as Egypt and Mesopotamia which do not include narrative scenes.  However, like these earlier cultures they are set in an eternal anywhere and any when.

The process by which these Roman works became those of Copley, David and Trumbull lies in the Christian connection. For, as Christianity became accepted after its recognition by Constantine it moved into larger spaces than the house churches and catacombs of the periods of persecution.

It was mosaic narratives that first decorated these spaces, such as at the Roman churches of Santa Pudenziana and Santa Maria Maggiore.

 

 

Christ in Majesty

Roman Apse Mosaic, 4th Century AD

Rome, Santa Pudenziana

 

 

 

 

Joshua at Jericho
Roman, c. 432-440
Rome, Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

 

 

These first narratives are set, like their non-Christian contemporary images, in a kind of eternal nowhere, nowhen.  But, as Christianity took hold in Europe and, especially following the decline in literacy that resulted in the aftermath of the barbarian invasions, the desire to describe the actual settings of Biblical events as an aid to evangelization and teaching took hold. Especially after the development of perspective in the fifteenth century, it became more and more possible for artists to create a realistic image of the settings of Biblical stories and, eventually, for historical, non-Biblical subjects.  Instead of anywhere and anywhen, they became recognizably concrete, related to a specific place (even if imagined) and a specific time.

 

 

 

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. John the Baptist Preaching

Italian, 1486-1490

Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Tornabuoni Chapel

 

 

 

 

Dieric Bouts the Elder, The Last Supper

Flemish, 1464-1467

Leuven, Sint-Pieterskerk

 

 

So, as with much of western European and American civilization, the secular world owes much to the Christianity that has been its religious and cultural ground.

© M. Duffy, 2011

___________________________________________________________
1.  http://www.aoc.gov/art/historic-rotunda-paintings/declaration-independence

*  Some of the episodes can still be seen on You Tube, although less clear than they were when originally broadcast. (June 2025)