The Master of the Unruly Children and His Artistic and Creative Identities
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The Master of the Unruly Children and his Artistic and Creative Identities Hannah R. Higham A Thesis Submitted to The University of Birmingham For The Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Art History, Film and Visual Studies School of Languages, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham May 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis examines a group of terracotta sculptures attributed to an artist known as the Master of the Unruly Children. The name of this artist was coined by Wilhelm von Bode, on the occasion of his first grouping seven works featuring animated infants in Berlin and London in 1890. Due to the distinctive characteristics of his work, this personality has become a mainstay of scholarship in Renaissance sculpture which has focused on identifying the anonymous artist, despite the physical evidence which suggests the involvement of several hands. Chapter One will examine the historiography in connoisseurship from the late nineteenth century to the present and will explore the idea of the scholarly “construction” of artistic identity and issues of value and innovation that are bound up with the attribution of these works. Repeated but unsuccessful attempts to establish historical identities for our Master have resulted in the unique characteristics of our corpus remaining undefined, and the context in which the sculptures were produced inadequately established. Chapter Two surveys Florentine tradition, in which our Master is rooted, and highlights a practice of copying that is evident in the corpus, but also indicative of common workshop production. New classifications into which the corpus (Appendix I) is divided are then proposed and discussed. Despite the singularity of subject matter associated with our Master an analysis of the iconography of the sculptures has never been carried out. Chapter three contains a detailed argument connecting the works of our Master, through iconography, to the revered theologian St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the humanist revival of antiquity, debates on the reformation of the Church, notions of Charity and Grace, and the political situation in Florence in the early sixteenth century. For Columbus and Mrs Eaves ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first and foremost thanks are to my knowledgeable, kind, and extremely patient supervisor David Hemsoll - no doubt more humerous than St. Bernard but no less my guide through some often dark circles. I thank you. The wonderful History of Art Department at the University of Birmingham have looked after me for several years as have my old friends and colleagues at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Their practical advice and assistance has been invaluable. Special thanks must go to Nick and Tina in the Fine Art Library who have been particularly crucial to bringing this PhD to completion. My colleagues at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery have more recently shown great kindness and forbearance over the past year. The staff of other UK libraries have also been very helpful, including the Warburg Institute Library, the Fine Art Library at the V&A and in particular the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute. In my attempts to piece together the corpus of the Master of the Unruly Children I have been extremely fortunate to meet scholars in museums and universities across the world, who have been unbelievably responsive to my requests to see collections, files, and most illuminating of all, to have conversations. In the UK these have included Peta Motture and Charlotte Hubbard at the V&A, Charles Avery, Donal Cooper, Jill Burke and Victoria Avery, the staff of the Daniel Katz Gallery, plus all those wonderful Renaissance colleagues I have met at conferences and seminars over the last five years. In Europe, I have met or been in contact with Frits Scholten and Aleth Lorne (with whom I was thrilled to work on the Amsterdam Madonna and Child), Volker Krahn, Marc Bormand, Alessandro Cesati, Philippe Sénéchal, Tommaso Mozzati, and many remarkable staff in the museums (large and small) of Florence. I was warmly received throughout the US and thanks are owed to Bruce Boucher, Gary Radke, Alan Darr, Jon Seydl, Maureen O’Brien, Marietta Cambareri, Alisa Chiles and especially to Lucy Bradnock for her exceptional hospitality at the Getty in LA. Jonathan Canning and the staff of LUMA in Chicago also facilitated a wonderful summer in the US which allowed me to see and meet so many incredible artworks and people. For their love, support and advice, both personal and professional, I must end by thanking my friends and family. My Birmingham-based friends, Brian Scholes, Melanie Hamlett, Duncan Fielden, Jan Smaczny and John van Boolen, have ensured my survival these past six years and made a return to the city a truly enjoyable experience. Special thanks must go to Richard Verdi for his constant friendship, his expert advice, and his patience in reading some early and very ill-formed drafts. More recently, I would have been unable to submit this thesis without the incredible assistance of Paris Agar, who has worked with me day and night over the past few months to collate and format the one hundred and seventy-nine images and their credit lines, and been a meticulous pair of eyes on all footnotes and references. More importantly she has been an amazingly calm and kind friend. To all of the above and especially to Duncan Yuile and my parents, my thanks and love always. CONTENTS List of Illustrations Introduction 1 Chapter 1: 8 The Construction and Deconstruction of the Master of the Unruly Children Chapter 2: 75 The Master of the Unruly Children in Context and a Proposal for New Classification Chapter 3: 165 Madonnas, Charity and Unruly Children: Subject and Usage in the Corpus of the Master of the Unruly Children Conclusion 251 Appendix I: Corpus of the Master of the Unruly Children Appendix II: ‘A Terracotta “Madonna and Child with a Book”: Ascribed to the Master of the Unruly Children: New Physical Evidence and Interpretation’ Hannah Higham & Aleth Lorne Appendix III: Illustrations Bibliography LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS See Appendix III for illustrations Unless listed, dimensions are unknown Fig. 1 Master of the Unruly Children, Infant St John the Baptist in a Grotto, c.1512- 27, glazed terracotta, 32 x 33 cm, formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed 1945 Fig. 2 Master of the Unruly Children, Madonna and Child with a Book, c.1512-27, terracotta, 60 cm high, formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed 1945 Fig. 3 Master of the Unruly Children, Quarrelling Children, c.1512-27, terracotta, 27 cm high, Bode Museum, Berlin, damaged 1945 Fig. 4 Master of the Unruly Children, Bust of the Infant St John the Baptist, c.1512- 27, terracotta, 25.4 x 23.5 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 5 Pierino da Vinci, Two Winged Boys, c.1540, sandstone (pietra serena), 43.3 cm high, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 6 Master of the Unruly Children, Two Quarrelling Boys, c.1512-27, terracotta, 27.9 x 16.5 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 7 Niccolò Tribolo (attributed to), Boy and Girl with a Goose, 1840-60, cast terracotta, 70 x 35 x 23 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 8 Master of the Unruly Children, Charity, c.1512-27, terracotta, 54.5 x 40 x 21 cm, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Fig. 9 Master of the Unruly Children, Madonna and Child, c.1512-27, terracotta, 60 cm high, formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed 1945 Fig. 10 Master of the Unruly Children, Charity, c.1512-27, terracotta, 61.5 cm high, formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed 1945 Fig. 11 Master of the Unruly Children, Charity, c.1512-27, terracotta, 61.5 cm high, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 12 Unknown Florentine, Madonna and Child, c.1525-50, terracotta, 57.2 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Fig. 13 Master of the Unruly Children (attributed to), Madonna and Child, c.1512-27, polychrome terracotta, 74.9 cm high, formerly in the Bardini Collection, Florence, now in Private Collection Fig. 14 Giovan Francesco Rustici, Equestrian Battle Group, c.1510, terracotta, 46.5 x 24 x 4.5 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris Fig. 15 Giovan Francesco Rustici, Equestrian Battle Group, c.1510, terracotta, 44 x 47 x 23 cm, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence Fig. 16 Master of the Unruly Children, Equestrian Battle Group, c.1512-27, terracotta, 59 x 63 x 26 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence Fig. 17 Master of the Unruly Children, Equestrian Battle Group, c.1512-27, terracotta, 56 x 52 x 26 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence Fig. 18 Andrea del Verrocchio (assisted by Leonardo da Vinci), The Baptism of Christ, 1472-75, oil on wood, 177 x 151 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Fig. 19 Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, 1481-82, oil on panel, 246 x 243 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Fig. 20 Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin of the Rocks, 1483-86, oil on panel, 199 x 122 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris Fig. 21 Master of the Unruly Children, Madonna and Child, c.1512-27, polychrome terracotta, 55 x 30 x 22 cm, formerly in the collection of Mrs Benjamin Thaw, now in Fundação Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro Fig.