fl urn Rome in the 18r.li Century •ii" On the cover: Giovanni Battista Piranesi Detail of the Fontana di Trevi WS'? 0FP/C6- SLIDE UBRARY Artists in Rome in the 18th Century: Drawings and Prints The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 28 - May 7, 1978 Copyright © 1978 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art • This exhibition has been made possible through <^ a grant from the Esther Annenberg Simon Trust V V The drawings, prints, and oil sketches brought together for this exhibition offer eloquent testimony to the rich diversity of artistic activity in eighteenth-century Rome. They are the work of artists of many nationalities—Italian, French, English, Dutch, Flemish, and German—but all were executed in Rome in the course of the century. The city retained in the 1700's its position as a major artistic center, though outdistanced by Paris for first place. Rome continued to be the city to which artists came to learn, by studying and copying the ruins of Classical Antiquity and the great works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Papal and princely patronage continued to attract artists from all Europe, but commissions were no longer on the very grand scale of previous centuries. History painting remained a Roman specialty, occupying the highest rank in the hierarchy of painting. Preparatory drawings for major projects by Giuseppe Chiari, Pompeo Batoni, Benedetto Luti, and the Frenchman Pierre Subleyras document this side of Roman production. Sculpture flourished—witness drawings by Pietro Bracci and Camillo Rusconi for important tombs, and Luigi Vanvitelli's designs for the throne of St. Peter. Landscape and cityscape enjoyed an increasing vogue and an improved status in academic esteem. Early in the century Netherlanders like J. F. van Bloemen and Gaspar van Wittel shared the market with local practitioners such as G. B. Busiri. And it was the North Italian Giovanni Paolo Panini who became the greatest master of Roman view painting. The French Academy, established in the previous century, was a Roman artistic institution with an authority that reflected France's political and cultural hegem­ ony in Europe. Prize-winning French painters and sculptors came to Rome at royal expense to finish their training with the study of Rome and Roman art. Natoire (for many years director of the Academy), Claude-Joseph Vernet, Fragonard, Hubert Robert were all formed in this Roman milieu. English and German artists came in increasing numbers as the century went on, and many of them—like Richard Wilson, J. R. Cozens, and J. P. Hackert—were practitioners of landscape, above all of Roman landscape. 210094 For many of us, our introduction to Rome and its monuments is through the etch­ ings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the bicentennial of whose death in 1778 is to be commemorated this year. A native of Venice and student of his father, a stone­ mason, and his uncle, an architect, he often designated himself architetto on his prints. He was as keenly interested in the Roman architecture of his own day as in that of Antiquity, and this exhibition includes his views of some of the major archi­ tectural realizations of the eighteenth century—the Trevi Fountain and the new facades of S. Giovanni in Laterano and S. Maria Maggiore. Also present are Piranesi's most personal inventions, the Prisons, the Grotteschi, and some of his imaginative recreations of Antiquity. Through his French publisher, Piranesi came to know most of the artists in resi­ dence at the French Academy, and to influence and be influenced by them. Before Piranesi's arrival in Rome, Subleyras had already etched his own Christ in the House of Simon, and J. -B. Pierre had in 1735 recorded in etching a RomanCarnival masquerade. Jean Barbault, represented here with his publication of Roman anti­ quities, was a colleague, collaborator, and finally the rival of Piranesi. Hubert Robert, friend and sketching partner of Piranesi, celebrated for his landscapes and ruin fantasies, etched a charming Soirees de Rome. French artists like Louis Le Lorrain participated in the design of Rome's many festive occasions. One of these was the Festa della Chinea, an annual event in which the Grand Constable of Naples presented a mare as tribute to the Pope; the decorations of the fireworks machines for the Chinea were recorded each year in etchings. The section of the exhibition devoted to prints ends fittingly with the collaboration of a Frenchman and an Italian, Louis-Jean Desprez and Francesco Piranesi, Giovanni Battista's son. They recorded, in large hand-colored etchings, the celebration of the Quarant'ore in the Vatican and the illumination of the Cross at the crossing of St. Peter's during Holy Week. All of the prints and oil sketches, and most of the drawings in this presenta­ tion, come from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the exhi­ bition has been significantly enriched with drawings generously lent by: Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design The Pierpont Morgan Library The Estate of Anthony M. Clark Richard and Trude Krautheimer John Steiner An anonymous collection DRAWINGS AND OIL SKETCHES Ango (French, second half of 18th century) Scene of Martyrdom Red chalk. 37.9 x 30.5 cm. Inscribed in red chalk at lower right, Maria Angeli/Canini. Copy after a fresco by Giovanni Angelo Canini (ca. 1617-1666) in the apse of S. Francesca Romana, and not S. Maria degli Angeli as Ango's inscription says. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 65.112.6 Jean Barbault (French, 1718-1762) Studies of sculpture and of figures Brush and brown wash, over a little black chalk. 26 x 19.5 cm. Inscribed in pen and brown ink at upper center, ce contour est tendre. Sketches for vignettes in the first volume of Barbault's Les Plus beaux monuments de Rome ancienne (1761). Lent by Richard and Trude Krautheimer Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Italian, 1708-1787) Seated nude youth Red chalk on beige paper. Squared in red chalk. 28 x 20.8 cm. Study for the figure of Hercules in the 1742 Choice of Hercules, now in the Uffizi. Lent from the Estate of Anthony M. Clark Studies of three nude male figures and a detail study of a left hand Red chalk. 20.8 x 30.3 cm. Studies for the Apostles that appear to the left of Christ in Batoni's Christ giving the Keys to Peter, in the Coffee House in the garden of the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bequest of Harry G. Sperling, 1975.131.5 An Allegory in honor of Pope Benedict XIV Red chalk, heightened with white, on brownish paper. 36 x 25.1 cm. Engraved in 1745 by Johann Jakob Frey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 1973.156 Jan Frans van Bloemen (Flemish, 1662-1749) River landscape with two figures at right Brush and tempera. 9.2 x 23.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 61.20.1 River landscape with a church on a hill at left Brush and tempera. 8.9 x 23.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Roger Fund, 61.20.2 Pietro Bracci (Italian, 1700-1773) Project for a tomb Pen and brown ink, brown and gray wash, over black chalk. 39.7 x 26.8 cm. Study for the tomb of Cardinal Carlo Calcagnini, erected in 1746 in S. Andrea delle Fratte. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Florence and Carl Selden Foundation Gift, 66.139.2 Project for a tomb Pen and brown ink, gray wash, over black chalk. 40 x 27 cm. Another study for the tomb of Cardinal Calcagnini in S. Andrea delle Fratte; it comes closer to the finished tomb than the previous drawing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Florence and Carl Selden Foundation Gift, 66.139.1 Giovanni Battista Busiri (Italian, 1698-1757) River landscape near Narni Pen and brown ink. 27.5 x 41.9 cm. Inscribed in pen and brown ink on verso, veduta a narnni giu [?] nel fiume and Giovanni Battista Busiri del: 1730/Romano. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Harry G. Friedman, 60.66.6 Giuseppe Cades (Italian, 1750-1799) The Virgin as Protectress against Evil Pen and brown ink, brown and a little gray wash, over black chalk. 44.8 x 30.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 1970.113.2 Giuseppe Chiari (Italian, 1654-1727) The Adoration of the Magi Red chalk, over slight traces of black chalk. 28.5 x 32.4 cm. This is very probably Chiari's own copy of his Adoration of the Magi of 1714, a painting now in Dresden. The drawing was engraved in the same direction by BenoTt Farjat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 66.135 Tommaso Conca (Italian, 1735-1822) The Triumph of Apollo Pen and brown ink, brown and gray wash, over black chalk. 41.5 x 41.5 cm. Identified by Anthony M. Clark as a study for Tommaso Conca's ceiling fresco in the Sala delle Muse in the Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome. Lent by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Three female figures Black and white chalk on yellow-green washed paper. 29.3 x 19.8 cm. Anthony M. Clark suggested that this group was studied for one of the subsidiary panels in Conca's decoration of the Sala delle Muse, Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome. Lent by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum John Robert Cozens (English, 1752-1797) View of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum in Rome Watercolor. 25.3 x 36.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund, 67.68 Louis Durameau (French, 1733-1796) St.