The Chelsea Pietà A paper read by Matthew Martin, National Gallery of Victoria The European ceramics collection of the National figure groups represent a relatively rare phenomenon – Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne includes one of the a clear and indisputable adoption of Baroque imagery great masterpieces of 18th-century English porcelain in English porcelain. Here the religious character of art: a Pièta modelled by Joseph Willems, dated around the imagery so adopted is significant. The Baroque 1761 and produced by the Chelsea porcelain factory. was a style particularly associated with the Counter- (1)1 Reformation in Europe where its dramatic, affective Well known to scholars of 18th-century English emotional power saw it adopted for propagandistic porcelain, this model (of which only three examples are purposes by the post-Tridentine Roman church. known2) is one of only two models on religious subjects The modeller of the Pietà, Joseph Willems, born at recognized from Chelsea. The other model is a group Brussels in the Roman Catholic Southern Netherlands of the Madonna and Child; both were modelled by in 1715,3 and a member of the Society of Artists of Willems and first produced during the Red Anchor Great Britain from 1760 to 1766, was supplying period (1753-57) of the factory’s production. Both figure models to the Chelsea factory during the 1750s and was effectively the creator of a ‘Chelsea’ style of porcelain figure.4 Although there survives no specific mention of the Pièta group in auction records, the catalogues for the Chelsea sales of 1755, 1756 and 1761 mention the model of the Madonna and Child. (2) In the catalogue of the 1761 auction, Lot 80 in the Third Day’s Sale on 2nd May is described in the following terms: ‘A most magnificent groupe of a MADONA and JESUS, curiously enamelled, upon a PEDESTAL of the fine mazarine blue enriched with gold’.5 The presence of these figure groups at the factory’s London sales suggests that they were intended for the home market – that is to say, they do not represent productions specifically intended for export to the Continent.6 It was Bernard Watney who first suggested that the immediate source for Willems’ model is to be found in the marble sculpture (1712-28) by Nicolas Coustou (1658–1733) on the high altar in the choir of Notre Dame in Paris.7 This sculpture formed part of a larger installation memorialising Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The initial conception had come from Louis XIII 1. Chelsea Porcelain Factory, Joseph Willems, Pietà, c1761, 38.5 who had in 1638 dedicated his kingdom to the Virgin x 28.5 x 22.8 cm. National Gallery of Victoria (D2-1989). in thanksgiving for the delivery of an heir – Louis 75 The Chelsea Pietà – Matthew Martin 2. Chelsea Porcelain Factory, Joseph Willems, Virgin and Child, 3. Nicholas Coustou, Pietà, 1658-1733. Notre Dame de Paris 1758-1769, 31.2 cm high. British Museum (1948,1203.57) ‘Dieudonné’, the future Louis XIV – after twenty-two of the material being removed during the French years of marriage. Revolution and partially returned in the 19th century. Louis XIII died before the project could be realised Coustou’s Pietà was set in a niche behind the high and it was Louis XIV who saw his predecessor’s altar, flanked on either side by the kneeling figure of wishes brought to fruition, inserting himself into the Louis XIII offering up his crown to the Virgin, this monument as he did so. Louis XIV was more than work by Nicolas’ brother Guillaume Coustou, and sixty years old when he commissioned the memorial. Louis XIV, by the Coustous’ uncle Antoine Coysevox, It was begun in 1699 to designs by the architect Jules kneeling before the Virgin, giving thanks for his life. A Hardouin-Mansart (1645/46 – 1708) and completed gilt-bronze mise au tombeau relief by François Girardon nearly fifteen years later under the direction of Robert adorned the front of the altar upon which the Pietà sat. de Cotte (1656 – 1735). (3)8 The elaborate ensemble consisted of many statues, Knowledge of Coustou’s Pietà was disseminated reliefs and decorative elements. Only parts of the throughout Europe via engravings. An engraving monument remain in Notre Dame today, much of the memorial of which the Pietà forms a part by 76 Matthew Martin – The Chelsea Pietà Jacques François Blondel, after Ferdinand Delamonce, connoisseurs. In his Paris Journal for 1734, the painter was published by Jean Mariette in Paris in 1727. (4)9 Joseph Highmore mentions this group on the Great Another engraving of the Notre Dame altar installation, Altar with admiration, only he wished that the figure by Antoine Hérisset, was published in J A Piganiol de of Christ ‘lay higher in the lap or that the Virgin’s La Force, Description historique de la ville de Paris et de ses knees were more horizontal for this fig: seems as if it environs in 1765.10 The Coustou altar group was known might slip off her hands too being elevated supposes it to and admired by at least some contemporary English secure.’11 4. Jacques François Blondel, after Ferdinand Delamonce, Elevation du fond du choeur de N.D. de Paris et de son autel principal, published by Jean Mariette, Paris 1727. British Museum (M,37.31) 77 The Chelsea Pietà – Matthew Martin 5. Anthony van Dyck, Lamentation, 1635, oil on canvas. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen (Inv.404) Coustou’s sculpture clearly draws upon what is the Begijnhofkerk in Antwerp where the figure of the a common compositional formula in 17th-century Magdalene kissing the hand of the dead Christ closely Flemish Roman Catholic devotional art of the type parallels the figure of the angel kissing Christ’s hand seen, for example, in Anthony van Dyck’s magnificent in Willem’s porcelain group;13 the 1628-32 Van Dyck Lamentation of 1635 held in the Koninklijk Museum Pietà in the Prado, a version of which is also to be found voor Schone Kunsten, in Antwerp. (5)12 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Here again It seems clear that Willems, a Fleming, was also the Magdalene is kissing the wounded hand of the dead familiar with this tradition of Counter-reformation Christ – Christ’s hand brought up to her mouth with sacred art and echoes of this imagery can be seen in her left hand, her open right hand brought up before his porcelain model. Far from being a mechanical her chest – is reminiscent of gestures in Willems’ model reproduction of its marble prototype, Willems’ which differ from the marble group of Coustou. (6)14 porcelain Pietà introduces a number of significant This is the 1617-20 Pieta with St Francis from the high changes to Coustou’s conception. Willems’ Pietà is altar of the Capucine church in Brussels by Rubens a carefully nuanced composition in its own right, where the pose adopted by the weeping virgin, eyes demonstrating a keen awareness of the exigencies of cast heavenward, may have influenced the pose of the porcelain medium and of the requirements for Willem’s figure; and the 1617 Descent from the Cross by successfully transforming a monumental ecclesiastical Rubens executed for the Church of the Capucines in sculpture into a domestic-scaled figure group. Lille where the figure of Christ, especially the curving In this regard, a number of instructive comparisons sweep of the right arm, offers an interesting parallel to may be made between Willems’ model and 17th-century Willems’ porcelain composition. Flemish devotional paintings. These include the 1629 These comparisons could easily be multiplied. Lamentation by van Dyck executed for the high altar of Born in the Catholic Netherlands, and no doubt 78 Matthew Martin – The Chelsea Pietà 6. Cornelis Galle I, after Anthony van Dyck, The Lamentation, 7. Tournai Porcelain Factory, Pietà, c 1766. Carnegie Museum 1600-1650. British Museum (1891,0414.660) of Art, Pittsburgh (63.17.3) receiving at least part of his artistic training there, it images providing inspiration for Willems when he is highly probable that Willems was familiar with comes to dealing with a devotional subject. many of the best known devotional images of the Willems takes Coustou’s monumental, hieratic 17th century produced by the great Flemish masters liturgical sculpture, a work with an emphatic frontality Rubens and Van Dyck, especially those works which designed to dominate the sightline down the nave of were reproduced in engravings and circulated in that the cathedral to the choir, and skilfully transforms this form. It should be borne in mind that engravings is into a small-scale work intended for viewing at much after paintings were not merely a means of circulating closer quarters. He reduces the four figures of Coustou’s images of famed modern artworks for the benefit of composition to three, drawing them in close to one other artists – woodblocks, engravings and other prints another, creating an upward spiral of exaggerated after religious paintings were themselves circulated as diagonals, to be read from multiple viewing angles, relatively inexpensive devotional objects.15 Moreover disrupting the horizontal, frontal orientation of the we know from the inventory of his possessions taken marble original and injecting into the group a far on his death that Willems owned a sizeable number greater degree of dynamism. In many ways, Willems’ of engravings on various subjects, including religious model may be judged a more successful sculptural images.16 It should not surprise us then to find such composition than Coustou’s rather static work. 79 The Chelsea Pietà – Matthew Martin It would appear that the model of the Pièta held unlikely.