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- Convenor:
-
Ricardo Mendonça
(New University of Lisbon)
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- Location:
- Multiusos 3, Edifício I&D, Piso 4
- Start time:
- 15 July, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Reproductions of works of Art have played an important role in the construction a global web of information. Not only did they provide a foothold for a better appreciation of Art, but also set rules that enabled the transference of knowledge between different establishments, countries and cultures.
Long Abstract:
In the past years several studies have pointed out the role prints and replicas had in the spread of general basis of knowledge and taste. Through it all, since the Renaissance that classical sculpture came to be the forerunner of an important trend and inspired the meditation on the rules of Beauty. The role played by antique objects in the much appreciated Italian Art helped settling down a common ground for aesthetical appreciation in Europe. Art treaties can, in this way, synthetize the will to define rules based on steady models that ought to inspire Artists in the creation of a new World. Furthermore, one would hear in XVIII century that best new words of Art, were the ones that are more alike to the Antique.
In this sense, not only did this prototypes provided the foothold to better appreciation of Art, but also laid the foundations for the institutions that came to be regarded as keepers of Knowledge such as Academies, Museums, and even, Universities, given the role plaster casts acquired in the teaching of Archeology and Art History.
This panel seeks to reflect on the role reproductions of works of art had in the transference of knowledge between different institutions, countries and cultures and how they helped defining the notions of common culture, taste, and aesthetics.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Alexandra Kocsis (University of Kent)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to investigate how works of art were (re)contextualised by the means of additional narrative texts on the margins of the image in sixteenth-century single sheet prints.
Paper long abstract:
A considerable number of sixteenth-century reproductive prints differed from modern artistic reproductions at least in one respect; namely they contained not only a depiction of an image but also a narrative text concerning the topic of the depiction. Images printed in hundreds of single sheets were published to a much broader audience than the circle of privileged viewers of a painting or a fresco. Loosing their original context, both in space and regarding the audience, these images needed (new) interpretation. Printmakers and publishers applied explanatory or supplementary texts to give new meaning or reassure the original message of the reproduced image. By the means of mixing image and text, these prints were intended to spread visual information about a certain piece of art, but they were also meant to transmit textual knowledge about antique mythology and history, or they served to enhance religious thoughts and meditation on a certain topic. Image and text were read simultaneously in these single sheets, thus literary references were used parallel to pictorial allusions. By decoding both visual and textual messages of the prints, this paper aims to get a more detailed picture on the early history of reproductions. Most importantly, it is intended to show that the notion of artistic value did not completely overshadow the "functional value" of these prints. Although prints slowly changed their status and became collectors´ objects valued for the mediation of style and famous images, in certain cases they were still similar to devotional prints of the fifteenth century.
Alberto Faria
Paper short abstract:
The copy of prints, drawings and paintings of great master´s was a current exercise in the apprenticeship of artists and played a crucial role in the learning process of the first art academies in Europe. This paper present’s some nineteenth century Portuguese academic drawings that reveal the exercise of drawing after prints of works of great master’s.
Paper long abstract:
The Faculty of fine arts of Lisbon, heir of the former Academy of fine arts of Lisbon, founded in the nineteenth century, holds a valuable academic drawing collection dated between 1830 and 1935 that witnesses the patterns of taste and the methods followed in teaching drawing.
Prints after paintings of great Master’s like Raphael, Guido Reni, Charles Lebrun and many other artists comprised the first steps in the process of learning drawing at the former Academy of fine Arts of Lisbon. The copy of these prints followed a rigorous methodology where it was important in first to register the contour of the figures, the scale and finally the light, the shades and the chiaroscuro effects. The process of copying prints helped the students to familiarize themselves with the works of the great master’s and constituted the previous.
Ricardo Mendonça (New University of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
Plaster casts taken from the finest statues and monuments testify the continuous evolution in modern art institutions. In this paper we will show how these transformations reflect a new awareness in the value of Art, and the advancement in the concepts of education, collecting and museology.
Paper long abstract:
Plaster casts, taken from the finest statues and monuments, can often testify the continuous transformation in the taste for Art, throughout modern history. In this paper we will show how the display of these objects came to reflect various cultural challenges engendered by society and the evolution in the concepts of education, collecting, museology.
The beginning of this movement is more strictly recognisable in plaster casts, sent from Italy, to other European countries from the XVI century onwards. Furthermore, it is interesting to single out that, the collections assembled in Art Academies, laid the basis for the first public museums of sculpture, in a time that State museums, had less valuable collections. In this sense, the story of art museums in the nineteenth century proves that, also outside of Italy the collecting of sculpture had its origins in the influence laid by classical antiquity into Occidental culture.
In this period, Germany's University collections came to be regard as role models, especially in the field of classical archaeology, thus paving the way for one of the most enduring senses of utility for casts. Therefore, the reproductions of sculptures and ornaments acquired by Academies, Schools of Art, Universities and Museums synthetize the multiple commitments and challenges this institutions embraced, symbolizing today the esteem in which the originals were held up until the nineteenth, and the hatred for retrograde teaching methods, in the course of twentieth century.