A Bronze Spinario Ascribed to Antonello Gagini Author(S): James David Draper Source: the Burlington Magazine, Vol
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A Bronze Spinario Ascribed to Antonello Gagini Author(s): James David Draper Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 114, No. 827 (Feb., 1972), pp. 55-59 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/876871 . Accessed: 22/05/2014 22:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Burlington Magazine. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 139.132.1.23 on Thu, 22 May 2014 22:16:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE galleries will know that one can never do exactly what one would like, that certain limitations on lucidity are imposed NUMBER 827 . VOLUME CXIV FEBRUARY 1972 by, for example, the size of certain canvases which will only go into certain rooms. Galleries have a tiresome habit of refusing to lend themselves to the works of art one wishes Editorial to put into them. But within the restrictionsimposed by the architecture, Mr Fahy has been most successfulin conduct- NEW ROOMS AT THE METROPOLITAN ing the eye and mind through six centuries of European VISITORS to the paintings department of the Metropolitan history. The system has been adopted of exhibiting the Museum, New York have always been disturbed in the past collection more or less chronologically by national schools, by the necessity to pursue the works of a single artist or each room painted in the colour appropriate to the school school through a succession of rooms. Rembrandts and it houses. Thus the Italians are against dark red back- Vermeers, Italian Quattrocento altar-pieces, the Venetian grounds, the Dutch against dark green, the French against High Renaissance were scattered throughout the vast dark blue, and so forth. These deep, saturated colours have building on Central Park, so that those of us who hoped to the effect of making the pictures appear much brighter get beyond fleeting pleasure to reach the deeper satisfaction than they used to when set against pale beige or pastel of enlightenment by making comparisons, found our efforts shades. Especially successful are the Impressionist pictures frustrated - and this was all the more aggravating since against blue walls, now looking as though they really were we sensed that the standard of quality throughout the windows opening on the countryside, as their painters building was uniformly high and that the possibilities of intended them to look. In contrast, one now appreciates understanding were there, if only they could be exploited. how much the moderns (still hanging on white walls) But the very nature of the formation of the collection pre- would benefit if set against darker backgrounds: only cluded any proper sense being made out of it. The Metro- pictures by the greatest masterslike Picasso survive, but they politan had received fabulous bequests of whole collections would survive anywhere. of pictures only on condition that each one should be kept Other excellent innovations are the installation of fuller intact, with the result that instead of becoming a single and more informative labels, attached to the walls instead of public collection, it grew into a series of private collections to the frames, giving as well as the usual summary infor- competing with its own separate acquisitions. This situation mation, the date or approximate date of each picture, and could not be allowed to continue indefinitely, and permis- various changes in attribution; and the reframing of no less sion was obtained from the Trustees or heirs of the Altman, than 137 European paintings, replacing the existing frames Bache and Friedsam families for the integration of these with antique frames of the same period as the pictures. bequests as far as possible with the remainder of the collec- The Raphael altar-piece has been placed in a magnificent tion. The four galleries of the Altman Bequest, for example, Renaissance tabernacle made about 1505 in the workshop are no longer contiguous, and now each one is adjacent to of Antonio Barile. One room is set aside for temporary the galleries containing related pictures from the Museum's exhibitions drawn largely from the Museum's collections. collection. The inaugural exhibition 'The Painter's Light' was a selec- This change was accelerated by the fact that all forty- tion of thirty-five paintings of all periods in which light three rooms disposed on the second floor at the head of the played a positive role in a composition. Later exhibitions will grand staircasehad to be stripped for use for a seriesof special adopt similar themes, cutting across the normal divisions of exhibitions commemorating the Museum's Centennial, time and place. while the permanent collection was displayed for two To the Rembrandt Aristotlehave now to be added two in years the north wing or put into storage. The opportunity outstanding acquisitions: the Velazquez Juan dePareja, much to rehang the main rooms after the exhibitions were over improved in a recent cleaning; and the Annibale Carracci was too good to be missed. And by a lucky chance the Coronationof the Virgin from the Aldobrandini Collection, opportunity coincided with the appointment of a new bought from Mr Denis Mahon, a key picture of the last young curator, Everett Fahy, who was blessed with both the years of the Cinquecento and a blue-print for Seicento and the to energy sensibility necessary carry out the for- Classicism. We have not found an excuse for illustrating midable reconstruction. Only a young man with a fresh any works from the European Paintings Galleries in this outlook could have undertakensuch a task, and his superiors' issue. But among the sculpture in the Metropolitan Mr confidence in him has been justified by the results. Draper has resuscitated a beautiful forgotten Spinario which Anyone who has been responsible for the rehanging of he publishes with a new attribution in the article that follows. JAMES DAVID DRAPER A Bronze Spinario Ascribed to Antonello Gagini THE Spinario given to the Metropolitan Museum by George quality, no scholar seems to have paid particular attention Blumenthal in 1932 (Figs.I and 3) sits in calm obscurity to the bronze. in a corner of the marble patio from Velez Blanco. Passers-by The piece was twice published, in the 1927 Blumenthal have rubbed the boy's toe gold, but despite its exceptional catalogue, and in a note by Joseph Breck soon after it was 55 This content downloaded from 139.132.1.23 on Thu, 22 May 2014 22:16:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of New i. Spinario,here attributed to Antonello Gagini. Bronze; height, 87 cm. (Metropolitan Museum Art, York.) This content downloaded from 139.132.1.23 on Thu, 22 May 2014 22:16:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A BRONZE SPINARIO ASCRIBED TO ANTONELLO GAGINI presented to the Metropolitan Museum.1 Breck noted that found in the Gagini literature two mentions of Spinariosby it had been in the collection of Count Friedrich von Pour- him, one in bronze. For even though he has been studied talks, the last German ambassador to czarist Russia, an very little in recent years,9 Gagini was deeply admired erroneous assertion arising from a letter of I922 from Bode through the last century and is one of the best documented to Arnold Seligmann and Rey.2 Seligmann had sent a of Italian artists. photograph, apparently inquiring rather nervously whether The first mention of a Gagini Spinariois in Cajo Domenico it was identical with the Pourtales Spinariothat disappeared Gallo's Annali della citta di Messina of I758. Although we when the German embassy was plundered in I914.s Bode know now that Antonello was born in Palermo in 1478, the assured him it was the same and that it had been included son of Domenico Gagini, Gallo was patriotically eager to in the Berlin Renaissance exhibition of 1898 but never present him as a Messinese artist. Thus he says Antonello photographed. The Spinariolent by Pourtales to the Berlin was born about I484 in Messina.xo Gallo gives a brief, exhibition measured 72 cm, whereas the present one measures fantasy-historyof Antonello's student days in Rome, learning 87 cm.4 And the Pourtal s piece can be seen, after all, in a drawing from Raphael and sculpture from Michelangelo, photograph of the principal gallery of the exhibition. It going so far as to say he executed reliefs for the Julius tomb, shows a boy with much longer hair and a knottier tree where he excelled in drapery and where Michelangelo said stump.5 The Blumenthal bronze clearly did not come from 'che i Scultorinell'avvenire andassero dal Gaginoper far vestirele the Pourtalks collection. loro statue'."lHis early history cannot of course be known The famous ancient bronze of the boy extracting a thorn with any such assurance, but it is likely that Gagini was from his foot was ever a source of inspiration to artists, versed in the art of the mainland. especially after Sixtus IV gave it greater prominence by On his return to Messina, continues Gallo, Antonello causing it to be moved in i471 from the Lateran to the "Dilettossiancora di gettarestatue di Bronzo,come fello a conoscere Palazzo dei Conservatori where it remains.6 Numerous in quellad'un Giovanettoal naturalein atto di cavarsidal pie una copies made throughout the Renaissance are known, ranging spina, ad imitazioned'un altra simile, che vedesiin Campidoglio, in size and degree of independence from an Antico statuette si scorgein questolavoro' il buongusto anticostatuario assai ben with gilded hair7 to the large and faithfully exact replica inteso,e leggesia pih di essa Opus Antonii Gaginu A.