21 January 2015
Memories of a Nation: British Library loans at the British Museum
The British Museum’s exhibition ‘Germany – Memories of a Nation’ and the accompanying BBC Radio series have followed on from Museum Director Neil McGregor’s earlier ‘Histories in Objects’ projects, using artefacts from 600 years of German history “to investigate the complexities of addressing a …history which is full of both triumphs and tragedies.”
The objects in question include many spectacular loans – from Tischbein’s famous portrait of Goethe in Italy to Barlach’s hovering angel from Güstrow (and not forgetting a VW Beetle in the Museum’s Great Court). The British Library also lent a number of items, and as they prepare to return home after the exhibition closes on 25 January, here is a brief description.
Among the first exhibits visitors see is a map of Germany, printed in Eichstätt in 1494 (British Library Maps C.2.a.1), one of the items used to illustrate Germany’s changing borders over six centuries. A far larger map of a far smaller area is the ‘Seld Map’ (Maps *30415.(6.)) showing the city of Augsburg in the early 16th century, which is used to exemplify the power and importance of the ‘Free Imperial Cities’ of the Holy Roman Empire. It is easy to become lost in both maps: in the Eichstätt one trying to work out the geography and identify the different cities, and in the Augsburg one simply enjoying the meticulous detail of the streets and buildings and of the small figures passing to and fro among them.
One of the Library’s two copies of the Gutenberg Bible is placed in the section of the exhibition highlighting German technological achievements and inventions, in this case the printing press, perhaps the most influential invention in Western history. This is the copy printed on paper from King George III’s library (C.9.d.3-4); the other is on vellum and belonged to the collector Thomas Grenville(G.12226).
The opening page of the Gutenberg Bible (Mainz, ca 1455) C.9.d.3.
Another Bible, printed less than a century after Gutenberg’s invention, shows how far printing technology had advanced in that time. However, it is not in the exhibition primarily as an example of printing but rather to illustrate the huge influence that its translator, Martin Luther, had on Germany’s religious life and on the German language. This particular Luther Bible from 1541 (679.i.15 and 679.i.16) is one of my own favourite British Library treasures. It is a large-format edition, bound in two volumes, each bearing a handwritten inscription by Luther himself; the first volume also has inscriptions by fellow-reformers Johannes Bugenhagen, Georg Major and Philipp Melanchthon.
The Bible in Martin Luther’s translation: Biblia, das ist, die gantze Heilige Schrift (679.i.15). Luther’s inscription, starting with the opening of the 23rd Psalm, is on the left
Our other printed books in the exhibition may be less visually exciting, but still tell important stories. Three of Goethe’s works are exhibited in a case which illustrates both his literary career and his scientific interests. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Leipzig, 1774; 12547.aa.21.) is the work which brought him international fame at the age of 24 and became the cult novel of the day. The drama Iphigenie auf Tauris illustrates the more mature classicism which followed the young Goethe’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ years, while an edition of Faust (Heidelberg, 1832; 11749.de.6) published in the year of Goethe’s death represents the drama that became his life’s work and has often been seen as the quintessential work of German literature.
In the section of the exhibition looking at political developments in 19th-century Germany is a work which has a particular connection to the British Museum itself: Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1872; C.12.b.1.). Marx famously worked on the book in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum, and he presented the copy on display (although sadly he didn’t see fit to inscribe it) to the then British Museum Library, now part of the British Library. It is appropriate that this book should be displayed in an exhibition gallery now situated above the Round Reading Room; indeed, although I wrote earlier about the items ‘coming home’ to the British Library, for almost all of them this exihibition marks a temporary return to their previous home in the Museum. An exception is the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto; London, 1848; C.194.b.289), shown alongside Das Kapital. This was acquired by the Library in 2010, filling a long-felt gap in our holdings.
Cover of the Communist Manifesto, published by German political exiles in London
For those unable to get to the exhibition in its last days, some of the items described here are pictured in the accompanying book and some are discussed in the BBC series, where you can also hear BL curators among others discussing Gutenberg, Luther and Marx. And, although some are restricted from general use on account of their value, all will, of course, soon be back in the British Library.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies
19 January 2015
Afterthoughts on the Spanish Gothic
Despite the success, in their time, of works such as Agustín Pérez Zaragoza y Godínez’s Galería fúnebre de espectros y cabezas ensangrentadas (1831), the Gothic presence in the canon of 19th-century Spanish literature is not great. José Cadalsoʼs Noches lúgubres (British Library 1480.a.27), published in El Correo de Madrid (o de los ciegos) in 1789-90 must have been the first and most successful Spanish imitation of Edward Young’s works, but they remained, in their time, an isolated phenomenon. José María Blanco White’s Vargas: a Tale of Spain (1822; N.98), which could have been an apt example for our purposes, was written in English and published in London, and did not circulate much in Spain. Later in the century we could cite José de Espronceda’s longer poems, El estudiante de Salamanca (1837- ; published in book form in 1840) and El diablo mundo (1841; 11451.de.33), or pick some of the Leyendas that Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer published from 1858 onwards in magazines such as El Contemporáneo. The names and titles are conspicuous enough, but none of these canonical texts seems to match the rich concept of the Gothic imagination that the Terror and Wonder exhibition has illustrated.
Yet by the mid-19th century, stormy nights, deserted streets, dark and lonely churches, convents and palaces had become commonplace in Spanish literature; more specifically, they had become a must for the opening scenes of any fictional text that intended to reach and seduce a wide audience. Judging by the number of texts that open on these notes it might seem that, despite the apparent lack of a local Gothic tradition, certain sections of the ever-growing reading public had fallen under the spell of terror and wonder. Indeed, many contemporary critics saw the new readers as avid consumers of any kind of cheap thrills that the publishing industry would produce. Although no single phenomenon can explain by itself the spread of Gothic imagery in Spain, the so-called popular novel did play an important part in bringing it closer to the historical present. Eugène Sueʼs novels Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif errant were widely read in Spain during the 1840s and 1850s, and his poetics of urban phantasmagoria were quickly appropriated and utilised by, among others, Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco. Ayguals, a prolific writer and literary entrepreneur, took Sue’s texts as a model for his own Historias-Novelas, which dealt with what he considered to be the main (political, moral, religious) concerns of his Spanish contemporaries.
Though Ayguals used the label Historias-Novelas to advertise many of his works, it is rarely as accurate as in El Tigre del Maestrazgo, o De grumete a general (1846), a sort of novelized biography of the Carlist general Ramón Cabrera (1806- 1877), who had nearly led his troops to victory in some campaigns of the First Carlist War (1833-1840). The second edition of the novel (12490.g.7) was published in 1849, in the wake of the Second Carlist War (1847-1849) that led Cabrera into exile, first in Marseille, then in Wentworth, near London.
Title page of El Tigre del Maestrazgo (Madrid, 1849) 12490.g.7.
The first pages of the book set the scene. The novel is dedicated to the memory of Ayguals’ brother, Joaquín, who fought in the First Carlist War on the Liberal side, and was killed by “the ferocious Cabrera” in 1835 alongside 62 other Liberal soldiers.
The second hall the readers will have to cross before they enter the realm of fiction is an emphatic funeral poem that the author wrote when a cenotaph was erected in his home town to honour the memory of the 63 Liberal soldiers:
A prologue follows where the author explains his reasons for writing the novel and paints a first portrait of Cabrera – known everywhere by his nom de guerre, el Tigre del Maestrazgo – as a daredevil tactician and a “ruthless terrorist, arsonist and murderer” driven not by his ideals or his sense of strategy but by sheer thirst for blood.
And then the novel itself starts, with the description of a stormy winter night in Tortosa, Cabrera’s home town: the howling wind, lightning and thunder, fire and flood all suggest that something terrible is about to happen. “Sighs of agony and doleful cries for help resounded everywhere”; and in the house of a poor and honest fisherman, a heavily pregnant woman feels as though she is bearing “a beast that tears my insides out”. She is about to give birth to Ramón Cabrera, el Tigre del Maestrazgo.
The topics and devices of such an opening scene served the author’s aesthetic and ideological purposes well: the troubles and catastrophes that attend Cabrera’s birth in December 1806 – Ayguals evokes the flooding of Tortosa in previous years, but no such event seems to have occurred in 1806 – are a sign of what his life and deeds will mean to his contemporaries. Within the narrative structure of the novel, this scene acts as a sort of overture, but in the act of reading, it seems to serve the same purpose as the dimming of lights at the theatre as the curtain goes up and the spectators enter the dark realm of fiction.
Gothic imagery in the rest of the novel seems restricted to the description of the clergy and the religious institutions that supported the Carlist movement. Ayguals identifies the binary opposition of Liberals and Carlists with the binary opposition of Progress and Fanaticism, which soon becomes one of the driving forces of his novel (the other being melodrama). Despite this narrative turn, reading El Tigre del Maestrazgo we get the impression that the engravers who illustrated it were keen to return to Gothic imagery whenever the occasion arose, as the following image (from vol. I, p. 146) shows:
Although the face does not really resemble other portraits of his that we find throughout the novel, this is supposed to be Cabrera, on the scaffold, about to be executed, and haunted by the ghosts of the people he had murdered. The description of this nightmare takes barely three lines in the text, yet the image it suggested was too fascinating to let it go.
Santiago Díaz Lage, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela/Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3
12 January 2015
Collecting the Renaissance: Aldus Manutius and his legacy
2015 is the 500th anniversary of the death of Aldo Manuzio (or Aldus Manutius in the equally familiar Latinised form which he himself used), one of the most important figures in the history of printing and publishing. When he was active, these trades were still in their infancy (the new technology of printing with moveable type had spread to Italy by the 1460s, within two decades of its first appearance in Germany) and Aldus did much to shape their development not only in Venice, where he set up his publishing house, but across the continent more generally.
Aldo Manuzio / Aldus Manutius, from Antoine Augustin Renouard, Annales de l'imprimerie des Alde (Paris, 1834). British Library 11917.f.34.
In what promises to be a crowded schedule of exhibitions, conferences and other events taking place all over the world to mark the occasion (see the Manutius Network 2015), the British Library has entered the field early with a small display drawing on its incomparable collections of Aldine editions in the Ritblat Gallery: Collecting the Renaissance: the Aldine Press 1494-1598. The display is open to the public until Sunday 25 January.
What makes Aldus so lastingly significant in the annals of printing and publishing in Italy and beyond? He started his career as a typical Renaissance humanist, passionately dedicated, like so many in 15th-century Italy, to the study and recovery of the classical tradition – in Aldus’s case especially Greek – and, as a teacher, with its transmission. It is possible that he first moved in the late 1480s or early 1490s to Venice, the home of many Greek scholars in exile after the fall of Constantinople, in order to pursue the study of the language more intensively. His interest in publishing was sparked off there, in the city which was already – and would remain for the best part of the 16th century – the hub of the European booktrade, and grew directly out of his scholarly interests, as part of a wider cultural project to disseminate books in Greek and promote the study of major authors such as Aristotle. His first edition, published in 1494 and included in the display, was the Erotemata, a Greek grammar by Constantine Lascaris.
Aldus maintained his scholarly interests and his standing as a scholar: his printing house became a celebrated meeting point for learned men from all over Europe, some of whom contributed directly to the firm’s editions, and his last book published in the year of his death 1515, also in the display, was his own Greek grammar on which he had been working all his life. But printing in Greek was not for the faint-hearted (or impractical); it presented significant technical and editorial challenges which Aldus seems to have relished and it is his natural flair for all the aspects of the profession which was the foundation of his enduring success. One of the most striking aspects of his activity is his appetite for innovation and experiment with books as material artefacts, with formats, typefaces and page design. Many of these innovations – for example, the pocket-sized and enormously successful series of Latin and Italian classics he began to produce round the turn of the century, the quintessential ‘Aldine book’ – proved to be turning-points which shaped the subsequent development of book production and of the book trade all over Europe.
Petrarch, Le cose volgari (Venice, 1501) G.10714.
Dante Alighieri, Le terze rime (Venice, 1502) 1071.f.3.
The British Library display includes copies of some of the most celebrated editions produced by Aldus, as well as a few books published by his descendants – his son Paolo and grandson Aldus junior – who carried on the firm after his death, with only intermittent success; while sharing his scholarly interests, they lacked his business flair and acumen.
The celebrated and enigmatic Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499 could not of course be omitted: it is perhaps the iconic Aldine edition, despite its being in almost every way an unclassifiable one-off and certainly uncharacteristic of his overall production (most famously for being copiously illustrated with elegant and densely allusive woodcuts). But the Hypnerotomachia is shown here for its ornate sixteenth-century binding, indicating how much its French owner, Thomas Mahieu (Maiolus), prized it, just as the small-format editions of Italian and classical texts are exemplified by copies – of Martial, Virgil and Petrarch – personalised by their purchasers with richly illuminated title-pages. These features show the parallel focus of this small display – on Aldus and his dynasty but also on his collectors, both in Aldus’s time and much later, whose bibliophilic passion for his editions did so much to preserve his fame. It is their libraries, dispersed over the centuries, which have gone to enrich the Aldine resources of the UK’s national library and to make them into the comprehensive, various and multiple collection the current display allows us to glimpse.
Thomas Mahieu's binding (top) and a typical page-opening (above) from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice,1499) C.24.c.19.
The display has been curated jointly with the Warburg Institute in the University of London, which will be hosting a one-day colloquium in February on the similar theme of Aldus and his cultural legacy seen from the perspective of bibliophilia and its connections with the antiquarian book trade. It is hoped that a permanent record of the display, with images, will be included in one of the 2015 issues of the Bibliographical Society’s journal The Library.
Stephen Parkin, Curator Italian Studies
22 December 2014
‘Russian glory’ of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley
As part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014, the exhibition “Oscar Wilde. Aubrey Beardsley . A Russian Perspective” was on show at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (23 September–30 November 2014). Six items from the British Library collections travelled to Moscow and were on display there this autumn.
Red leather dispatch box given to Lord Alfred Douglas by Oscar Wilde with the inscription ‘Bosie from OW’. (Add Ms 81833 A)
Draft of Oscar Wilde’s poem ‘In the Gold Room’, [1881]. First published among ‘Flowers of Gold’ in Wilde’s Poems (1881). - (Zweig MS 199)
‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, 1897-1898. Printed proof sheets with autograph corrections for the first edition. (Add MS 81634)
Photograph of the Hotel D' Alsace, where Wilde died (Add MS 81786)
A letter from Oscar Wilde to Edmund Gosse, dated 23 February 1893 and sending a copy of his Salomé (Ashley MS 4610) and a lithographed design by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for the programme for the first performance of Salomé in Paris in 1896, with a portrait of Oscar Wilde (Add MS 81794) were also shown in the Moscow exhibition.
As a gift from the Museum the British Library received the exhibition catalogue, in which the curators Zinaida Bonami, Anna Poznanskaya, Olga Averyanova and Alexey Savinov explain that “in Russia, Wilde and Beardsley’s artistic aesthetics were a major influence on the formation of the style and concept of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement in St. Petersburg in the 1890s”.
Mir iskusstva, cover by Konstantin Korovin (P.P.1931.pmb. and P.P.1931.pmo)
However, the first response to Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic views as formulated in his book Intentions (the British Library holds multiple copies of the 1891 edition, including copies with various inscriptions by owners and the author) was given in an article published in 1895 by the literary critic Akim Volynsky in the journal Severnyi vestnik (The Northern Herald; RB.23.b.6255, also available on microfilm, Mic.F.622). Zinaida Hippius, at that time a young poet and recent literary debutant, was also close to the journal and in 1896 published a novella Zlatotsvet (Oxeye) (No 2-4, 1896), where “the story’s main character, the Decadent Zvyagin, presents a paper on Wilde’s aesthetic theory (apparently based on Intentions) to a circle of wealthy literary dilettantes”. Published eight months after Wilde’s trial, the story “provides a lively satirical picture of the St Petersburg artistic circles that had begun to discuss both Wilde’s writings and his reputation” (Evgenii Bernstein).
The first exhibition of English and Scottish watercolour painters was organised in St Petersburg by Diaghilev and influenced the young Russian artists who formed the artistic circle of Mir iskusstva, such as Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst, Konstantin Somov and others. The Moscow journals Skorpion (The Scorpion), Vesy (The Scales) and Zolotoe runo (Golden Fleece) also paid tribute to both Wilde and Beardsley.
Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings for Oscar Wilde’s tragedy Salomé
Vesy. Cover by N. Feofilaktov (Available on microfilm, Mic.F.430).
One of the Russian artists Nikolai Feofilaktov, as well as working in a style close to Beardsley’s (see the example of his work above), even tried to look like Beardsley in one of his profile portraits. Some of the images of the British Library collections of modernist Russian journals are available via the Russian Visual Arts project website.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Russian Studies
References:
Oskar Uail'd, Obri Berdslei: vzgliad iz Rossii [Exhibition catalogue]. (Moscow, 2014) YF.2014.b.2604
Evgenii Bershtein. ‘Next to Christ’: Oscar Wilde in Russian Modernism, in The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, ed. Stefano Evangelista. (New York, 2010) p. 289. YC.2010.a.8522 and 18 (2010) 1765.882485).
Literary Journals of Imperial Russia, ed. by Deborah A. Martinsen. (Cambridge, 1997) YC.1998.a.1041 and m03/41941
Obri Berdsleĭ: izbrannye risunki, predslovīe i kommentarīĭ A. A. Sidorova (Moskva, 1917) LB.31.b.14196 and C.190.c.13
Sidorov, A. A. Obri Berdsleĭ: zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Moskva, 1917) C.190.c.14.
Evreinov, N. N. Berdsleĭ (S.-Peterburgʺ, 1912) YA.1994.a.12090
17 November 2014
Mysterious Manuscripts, lost and found
In the current British Library exhibition ‘Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination’, pride of place is occupied by Horace Walpole’s foundational 1764 shocker, The Castle of Otranto.
Walpole’s preface reads:
The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. [...]. The style is the purest Italian. [...]
Whatever [the author’s] views were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times, who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them.
It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work [...] yet I am not
One day, as I was in the Alcana of Toledo, a boy came up to sell some pamphlets and old papers to a silk mercer, and, as I am fond of reading even the very scraps of paper in the streets, led by this natural bent of mine I took up one of the pamphlets the boy had for sale, and saw that it was in characters which I recognised as Arabic, and as I was unable to read them though I could recognise them, I looked about to see if there were any Spanish-speaking Morisco at hand to read them for me; nor was there any great difficulty in finding such an interpreter, for even had I sought one for an older and better language I should have found him. In short, chance provided me with one, who when I told him what I wanted and put the book into his hands, opened it in the middle and after reading a little in it began to laugh. I asked him what he was laughing at, and he replied that it was at something the book had blind to my author’s defects.
So Walpole is but the translator from a found (and then lost) original, and therefore cannot be held responsible for its contents.
Where could Walpole have drawn inspiration for this preamble? Perhaps in one of the best-sellers of his time: Don Quixote. In Book I, chapter ix, Cervantes breaks off his narrative, or rather, he comes to the end of his original:
In the First Part of this history we left the valiant Biscayan and the renowned Don Quixote with drawn swords uplifted, ready to deliver two such furious slashing blows that if they had fallen full and fair they would at least have split and cleft them asunder from top to toe and laid them open like a pomegranate; and at this so critical point the delightful history came to a stop and stood cut short without any intimation from the author where what was missing was to be found. [...]
This reflection kept me perplexed and longing to know really and truly the whole life and wondrous deeds of our famous Spaniard, Don Quixote of La Mancha [...] The discovery of it occurred in this way.written in the margin by way of a note. I bade him tell it to me; and he still laughing said, ‘In the margin, as I told you, this is written: ‘This Dulcinea del Toboso so often mentioned in this history, had, they say, the best hand of any woman in all La Mancha for salting pigs.’
When I heard Dulcinea del Toboso named, I was struck with surprise and amazement, for it occurred to me at once that these pamphlets contained the history of Don Quixote. With this idea I pressed him to read the beginning, and doing so, turning the Arabic offhand into Castilian, he told me it meant, ‘History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian’. It required great caution to hide the joy I felt when the title of the book reached my ears, and snatching it from the silk mercer, I bought all the papers and pamphlets from the boy for half a real; and if he had had his wits about him and had known how eager I was for them, he might have safely calculated on making more than six reals by the bargain. I withdrew at once with the Morisco into the cloister of the cathedral, and begged him to turn all these pamphlets that related to Don Quixote into the Castilian tongue, without omitting or adding anything to them, offering him whatever payment he pleased. [...]
And from then on Cervantes cites Cidi Hamete as his source.
Where did Cervantes get this idea for framing his text? We need look no further than the romances of chivalry of which Don Quixote is in large part a critique. Such subterfuges were a staple of the genre. This section from Baldo has all the elements which Cervantes picked up. In summary:
We three masters and three great rabbis, knowledgeable in herbalism, set sail in search of a great antidote. Off Alexandria we saw an island, more the work of artifice than of nature. There we found splendid buildings overgrown with wild vegetation: lizards and snakes fled from our sight. In time we reached a cave, unlit by the sun, where darkness and dampness reigned. Inside we found a great hall, and in it tombs of marble, one of which showed a statue of an old man with a scroll in his hand reading ‘Here lies Merlino Cocayo, poet of Mantua’. His other hand pointed to a cavity in the wall, with a iron chest labelled ‘Here are the books of the poet Merlino’. Inside were many books on magic, astrology, medicine and alchemy. At the sound of a great thunder we fled, taking the chest of books with us: these were the herbs we sought. I gave this book to the printers so that it could be better known, in translation. (Baldo (Seville, 1542); Alvar and Lucía 79-83).
While the author of Baldo uses the lost manuscript to tease the reader in right at the start, Cervantes was too canny to waste the topos of the lost manuscript right there in the prologue, where he slily says he is not Don Quixote’s father but his (its?) stepfather: he waits until he’s built up the suspense before breaking off to give a false origin to his book.
By way of pictorial illustration we can only offer a fanciful portrait of Cidi Hamete, as no authentic likeness of him is known: not is there any authentic portrait of Miguel de Cervantes.
Cide-Hamete Benengeli, from Jacinto María Delgado, Adiciones a la historia del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha, continuación de la vida de Sancho Panza (Madrid, 1845), facing p. 205. British Library Cerv. 480 (H. S. Ashbee’s copy)
Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies
References
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto (Dublin, 1765). RB.23.a.5931
A. Ramos García Rojas, ‘Variciones en centro y periferia sobre el manuscrito encontrado y la falsa traducción en los libros de caballerías castellanos’, Tirant, 11 (2012), 47-60
Sir Henry Thomas, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry. The revival of the romance of chivalry in the Spanish peninsula, and its extension and influence abroad. (Cambridge, 1920). 011853.s.70.
Carlos Alvar and J. M. Lucía Megías (ed.), Libros de caballerías castellanos: una antología (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2004)
Miguel de Cervantes, The ingenious gentleman: Don Quixote of La Mancha: a translation with introduction and notes by John Ormsby. (London, 1885). 12489.k.4. (Available online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Don_Quixote)
31 October 2014
A Variety of Vampires
The average English-speaking reader, if asked to draw a picture of a vampire, would probably be inspired by Bram Stoker’s description of Count Dracula as portrayed in our current exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination – a suave, sinister figure inhabiting a mysterious castle from which he makes nocturnal sorties to spread terror throughout Transylvania, returning at daybreak to lurk in his coffin, replete with blood which trickles from a corner of his mouth. But Transylvania does not have a monopoly on vampires – and not all vampires have fangs.
Stoker, of course, was an Irishman, from a country with a rich tradition of eerie stories of its own. However, much closer to the home of Dracula (remember those sheepskin-clad Slovaks whipping up their horses to carry their mysterious load on the first stage of the Count’s voyage to Whitby), two authors writing in Czech conjured up their own versions of the legend – as different as the writers themselves.
At first sight Jan Neruda (1834-91) seems an unlikely character to spin tales of the supernatural. Although he is best known today to non-Czech readers for his short stories, it is his Povídky malostranské (‘Tales of the Lesser Quarter’) which secure his reputation, with their lively accounts of the people and streets of old Prague. However, he was also a widely-travelled writer of feuilletons, and it is not Prague but the Greek island of Prinkipo which provides the setting for his story Vampýr (‘The Vampire’), published in an 1880 edition of his collection Arabesky (British Library YA.1997.a.13960(2)).
The narrator and a friend have been enjoying a holiday in Istanbul, and at the end of their stay they decide to make an excursion by boat to Prinkipo, accompanied by a Polish family – father, mother, a delicate daughter with a slight dry cough, and her fiancé. Neruda describes the idyllic landscape, with its leaping dolphins and the fragrance of the ancient pines, in detail, and the party decides to take lodgings in a local hotel run by a Frenchman. While relaxing in the sunshine, they catch sight of a mysterious artist, a Greek with flowing black hair, pale face and deep-set dark eyes, sketching nearby; he had travelled on the same boat, but slips away almost unnoticed, only to be heard quarrelling with the innkeeper as they return. The latter explains that he is known as ‘the Vampire’ because whenever anyone dies in the area he appears at once with a likeness captured in advance, ‘like a vulture,’ as the disgusted innkeeper remarks. At a sudden shriek from the mother, holding her fainting daughter in her arms, the bridegroom races after the artist and hurls him to the ground. From his portfolio flutters a sheet of paper – a sketch of the young girl, eyes closed, a myrtle wreath encircling her brow.
Karel Hlaváček (1874-98), who himself succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 23, might appear a more likely creator of vampires despite being one of the founder members of the athletic Sokol movement and the president of its Libeň branch in Prague. He was also, however, a representative of both the Decadent and Symbolist movements, and published several collections of poems in this spirit. One of these, Pozdě k ránu (‘Late towards morning’; Prague, 1896; X.907/10067, published in a limited edition of 200 copies), includes a poem entitled ‘Upír’ (The Vampire), in which the poet describes his vision of an unknown country ‘without shadow, without light’ which no-one had ever visited before. Here a strange being appears ‘in the pale colours of a delicate old lithograph’, his heavy brows overshadowing green eyes with pupils huge and black as if from atropine, hovering on black wings at once velvety and metallic. The last descendent of a once mighty line of dukes, kings and magnates tremble before him, and their daughters long for him silently and secretly. The poet apostrophizes him as a ‘proud white barbarian, lover of all that is sick and pale … living off the vital force of the juices of virgins … symbol of decadence!’, returning ‘late towards morning from mystical orgies’ just as ‘in the accursed yesterday and rotten tomorrow’…
Frontispiece from Karel Hlaváček, Pozdě k ráno; X.907/10067.
The haunting nature of these lines, at once alluring and repellent, encapsulates the spirit of Decadence and reveals the qualities which make the figure of the vampire so irresistible to members of that movement. With no need to resort to gory exaggeration, both Neruda and Hlaváček evoke a figure whose compelling blend of the erotic and the morbid continues to exert a lasting fascination.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak
26 September 2014
Kazimir Malevich - pioneer of Russian abstract art
“Look, just look, the Vistula is near”. Poster designed by Kazimir Malevich with caption by Vladimir Mayakovsky (Moscow, 1914). HS.74/273(3)
Having just viewed the excellent Malevich exhibition at Tate Modern, I was reminded that many of the images on display appear in items held by the British Library. For example the figure of an officer on one of the series of anti-German propaganda postcards in the “Works on paper” section with the caption “Look, just look, the Vistula is near” appears again on one of the lithographed posters Malevich designed for the project “Today’s Lubok” in the same year. In both the postcard and poster (which uses different colours) you can already see the tendency towards depicting the human figure as being made up of geometrical shapes, the use of bright colours (also found in Russian folk paintings or lubki) and the stylised patterns (e.g. to depict grass) of contemporary Primitivist paintings.
The British Library holds four lithographed First World War posters designed by Malevich. One of these – “Wilhelm’s Merry-go-round” (HS 74/273(4)) – is also displayed in the British Library’s current exhibition Enduring War.
Kazimir Malevich, “Prayer” from Vzorval by Aleksei Kruchenykh. (St Petersburg, 1913). C.114mm.28.
Also included in the “Works on paper” section of the exhibition is Malevich’s “Molitva” (Prayer). This appears in the lithographed Futurist publication Vzorval by Aleksei Kruchenykh (known in English as “Explodity”). It is in the Cubo-Futurist style which combines the multi-viewpoints and cylindrical machine like shapes of Cubism (cf. Léger) with the dynamic approach of Futurism though here applied in the Russian manner to a static meditative pose rather than depicting movement.
During his Futurist period Malevich developed the theory of alogism where colour is divorced from the object that is being depicted. This combined with the irrationalism of the Russian Futurists can be seen in An Englishman in Moscow (1914) where objects of different scale and unnatural colour are combined in a surrealistic collage.
Nikolai Punin, Pervyi tsikl lektsii. (Petrograd, 1920). C.145.a.2.
There are several examples of book covers designed by Malevich included in the exhibition. One also held by the British Library is his cover for Nikolai Punin’s, Pervyi tsikl lektsii (First cycle of lectures). This cover exemplifies the use of bright colours and geometrical forms of Malevich’s abstract Suprematist style for a book about drawing in modern art.
Kazimir Malevich, O novykh sistemakh v iskusstve. (Vitebsk, 1919). C.114.n.46.
In 1919 Malevich joined the art school set up by Chagall in Vitebsk. Here he began to produce books that promoted Suprematism as the correct method for modern art. His ideas were elucidated further in the manifesto O novykh sistemakh v iskusstve (On New systems in Art) published in Vitebsk in 1919. This publication was hand produced in the Art School by transfer lithography with a linocut (see above) by El Lissitzky. It was republished in abbreviated form by Narkompros as Ot Sezanna do suprematizmu (From Cezanne to Suprematism) in 1920. (C.127.g.11.)
“A spiritualistic séance in the Kremlin” from Mikhail Karasik, Utverditeliu novogo iskusstva. (St Petersburg, 2007). HS.74/1966. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
An interesting use of Malevich’s Suprematist imagery can be seen in Mikhail Karasik’s artist’s book of 16 lithographs entitled Utverditeliu novogo iskusstva (To the Affirmer of the New Art). In No.6 “A spiritualistic séance in the Kremlin: Stalin calls upon the spirit of Malevich” his black square and a robotic looking figure together with the letters of the artists’ collective UNOVIS are merged into a contemporary photo of Stalin making a speech.
Peter Hellyer, Curator Russian Studies
References
Other original works by Malevich held by the British Library:
Kazimir Malevich, Bog ne skinut: iskusstvo, tserkov', fabrika [God is not cast down: art, church, factory], (Vitebsk, 1922). C.114.n.33.
Kazimir Malevich, Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu: novyi zhivopisnyi realizm [From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: new painterly realism], 3rd edition. (Moscow, 1916). C.114.mm.25.
Artists books containing illustrations by Malevich:
Daniel Kharms, Na smert’ Kazimira Malevicha [On the death of Kazimir Malevich], (St Petersburg, 2000). Lithographs and commentaries by Mikhail Karasik. Cover decorated with a fabric design by Malevich. HS.74/1743
Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, Igra v adu [Game in hell], 2nd enlarged ed. (St Petersburg, 1914). Cover and 3 lithographs by Malevich. Cup.406.g.2 and C.114.mm.41.
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Pobeda nad solntsem; opera [Victory over the sun: opera], music by M. Matiushin, (St Petersburg, 1913). A set design by Malevich appears on the cover. C.114.mm.9.
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Slovo kak takovoe [Word as such.], (Moscow, 1913). Cover illustration (Reaper) by K. Malevich. C.114.mm.23.
Troe [Three] by V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, and E. Guro, (St Petersburg, 1913). Cover and drawings dedicated to the memory of E. Guro by K. Malevich. C.105.a.7
Zina V. and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Porosiata [Piglets], (St Petersburg: EUY, 1913). Cover (Peasant woman) and illustrations (including “Portrait of a builder”) by Malevich. C.104.e.21
Useful reference sources:
Malevich edited by Achim Borchardt-Hume. (London, 2014.) [Catalogue of the Tate Modern exhibition]
Leaflet text of Malevich exhibition at Tate Modern by Simon Bolitho.
03 September 2014
Matisse and Tériade
The spectacular display of Jazz (Paris, 1947), one of the greatest livres d’artiste, is one of the highlights of the magnificent exhibition Matisse: the Cut-outs at Tate Modern (until 7 September; then at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 12 October 2014-8 February 2015).
The book, a turning-point in Matisse’s use of the cut-out technique, is a life-affirming explosion of colour and energy produced in the face of life-threatening illness (Matisse started to work on it in 1943 while convalescing from a serious operation). It was published in a limited edition of 270 copies, and 100 albums of just the prints were also produced. In the exhibition all the prints from one of these albums are shown, together with facsimiles of all the texts. The display of the book in its entirety has the great virtue of allowing visitors to compare all 20 original cut-out models (the maquettes) with their stencil reproductions in the printed book shown with Matisse’s accompanying handwritten texts. It also enables them to appreciate why the artist was originally disappointed with the resulting loss in the book (despite the extreme care taken by the printers to reproduce the exact colours of the originals –the production of the book took nearly five years), of the contrast between the different paper surfaces of the original cut-outs.
In his introduction Matisse plays down the importance of his texts and asks for the reader’s indulgence, explaining that their role is a purely visual one, as a black and white counterpoint to the colours of the plates or as ‘asters to the composition of a bouquet of more important flowers’. This is a modest way of introducing his succinct and enthralling reflections and aphorisms on art and life. In one of them he compares his technique of cutting with scissors directly into the gouache-coloured paper to a sculptor’s carving into stone. In another, he describes lagoons (recollections of his trip to Tahiti in 1930 and the subjects of three prints) as one of the seven wonders in the paradise of painters. Some texts are veritable prose poems. The subjects of the book’s 20 plates are taken from the circus, folklore, mythology, and personal artistic practice or reminiscences. The title Jazz was thought up by Tériade, the book’s publisher, whose ambition was to to produce a modern illuminated manuscript. Though unrelated to the subjects depicted, the title is perhaps an indication of the book’s spirit of discovery and improvisation.
Tériade was a key figure in the Parisian art scene for some five decades. Born in Greece in 1897 (‘Tériade’ is a francized form of his real name, Efstratios Eleutheriades) he went to France in 1915 to study law but soon abandoned his studies for art journalism and, later, art publishing, following in the footsteps of his compatriot Christian Zervos (the publisher of the monumental catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s works). He first met Matisse and published his first article on the artist in 1929 and the collaboration between the two men continued until Matisse’s death 25 years later
Henri Cartier-Bresson ‘Tériade and Matisse’ 1953. Photograph taken in the garden of Tériade’s Villa Natacha. From Tériade & les livres de peintres (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 2002) British Library L.B.31.b.28002
Matisse was a subject or contributor in all of Tériade’s editorial or publishing ventures. The entire range of their collaborations is listed and illustrated in the exhibition catalogue Matisse et Tériade (Arcueil, 1996; L.B.31.b.16914), from the first article Tériade wrote about Matisse in Zervos’s Cahiers d’art, to Matisse’s contribution in Minotaure, the avant-garde magazine which Tériade edited between 1933 and 1936, for which the artist designed one of its famous covers and the various Matisse-related issues of Verve (the arts magazine published by Tériade, 1937-1970), nos 1(1937), 3 (1938), 4 (1938), 8 (1940), and 13 (1945).
Minotaure, Cover of no.9 (1936). C.180.d.1. Lithograph after Matisse’s ink drawing.
Cover of Verve: revue artistique et littéraire, no 8, June 1940 (Cup.800.g.3.), showing ‘La Symphonie chromatique’, a lithograph after Matisse’s cut-out maquette for which 26 colours were used.
Tériade’s greatest publishing venture was the 27 livres d’artiste illustrated by, among others, Chagall, Braque, Giacometti, Léger and Picasso. Matisse illustrated five of them (the highest number by a single artist): Stéphane Mallarmé Poésies (1932), Lettres de la Religieuse Portugaise (1946), Jazz (1947), Poèmes de Charles d’ Orléans (1950), and Une Fête en Simmerie (1963), and these are also richly-illustrated and documented in this catalogue. Moreover, the catalogue led to the generous donation by Tériade’s widow, Alice, of her husband’s publications, art collections and part of his archives to the Musée Matisse at Le Cateau-Cambrésis (the artist’s birthplace). The occasion was marked in 2002 by the inauguration of a permanent gallery dedicated to Tériade and the publication of Tériade et les livres de peintres, a comprehensive catalogue of all the artists’ books he published.
Both catalogues are a valuable and touching reminder of a great and fruitful friendship, also celebrated in the wonderful series of photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1951 in Tériade’s Villa Natacha at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, in the last of which Matisse is only present in spirit, by his signature on the great painted tile decoration (‘L’Arbre’ – the preparatory study of which, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is in the exhibition) which can be seen behind Tériade, its dedicatee, a personification of the joie de vivre that characterises all his collaborations with Matisse.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tériade in the dining room of Villa Natacha, 1953. From From Tériade & les livres de peintres
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
References:
Minotaure: revue artistique et littéraire (Paris, 1933-39) C.180.d.1.
Verve (Paris, 1937-60) Cup.800.g.3 (French edition), or Cup.800.g.4 (English edition).
Henri Matisse Jazz (Paris, 1947). C.108.eee.16.; a modern edition with facsimile of the prints and transcription and translation into English of the texts (Munich, 2001) is at YC.2003.a.11186.
Hommage à Tériade (Grand Palais, 16 May to 3 September 1973). (Paris, 1973). S.E. 293/49
Hommage à Tériade [Diploma Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts]. (London, 1975). X.419/3145.
Jack D. Flam Matisse on Art. Revised edition. (Berkeley, 1995) 95/24994.
E. Tériade Écrits sur l'art. (Paris, 1996). YA.1997.a.3905
Claudia Beltramo Ceppi Zevi (ed), Matisse et Tériade [Exhibition, 1996-1997: Museo Mediceo, Florence and Musée Matisse, le Cateau-Cambrésis] (Arcueil, 1996). LB.31.b.16914.
Beatrice Lavarini Henri Matisse Jazz (1943-1947) : ein Malerbuch als Selbsterkenntnis (Munich, 2000) YA.2001.a.22816
Tériade et les livres de peintres [Exhibition, Musée Matisse, 2002]. (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 2002) LB.31.b.28002.
Karl Buchberg [et al.], Henri Matisse: the cut-outs (London, 2014). [Awaiting shelfmark]
Cover of the catalogue Matisse et Tériade (Arcueil, 1996). L.B.31.b.16914
02 July 2014
The Triumph of Mannerism – Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence
De Triomf van het Maniërisme (The Triumph of European Mannerism), a mammoth (518 items) Council of Europe exhibition in Amsterdam in 1955 was the first comprehensive examination of Mannerism – the dominant, and previously overlooked, artistic style between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, roughly between 1520 to 1600. It was followed, a year later, by the Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, on Pontormo and early Florentine Mannerist art. In 1972, L’École de Fontainebleau, an exhaustive (705 items) examination of French Mannerism, largely indebted to Italian artists working for Francis I, completed the trio of major exhibitions that led to a proliferation of monographs, conference proceedings and exhibitions on Mannerism which continues unabated. In the first half of 2014 alone there was a rich crop of Mannerist shows: El Greco in Toledo and Madrid (one on his library and one on his influence on modern art), Pontormo drawings in Madrid, and Baccio Bandinelli and Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence.
Pontormo & Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of Mannerism revisits the subject of the 1956 Florence exhibition. It follows the stylistic development of these two leading artists of early Florentine Mannerism in roughly chronological order but with separate sections on their portrait paintings and their drawings (they were both remarkable draughtsmen). They had much in common, both temperamentally and artistically. They were ‘born under Saturn’ (i.e. they were eccentric, restless, and anguished) and were influenced by Michelangelo’s paintings and by Northern Renaissance prints, especially Dürer’s.
The exhibition, as its title indicates, also aims to demonstrate that, after their common beginnings in the workshop of Andrea del Sarto, the careers of the two artists took different directions. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family for the rest of his life,whereas Rosso, thanks to his republican inclinations, was forced to lead a peripatetic existence, working in various artistic centres in Tuscany and also in Rome and Naples before going to France, where he spent his last ten years in the court of Francis I, becoming one of the key figures of the School of Fontainebleau. This last period of Rosso’s output, though examined in the catalogue, is largely omitted in the exhibition as it was the subject of a major show in the Château de Fontainebleau last year which demonstrated the far-reaching influence Rosso’s allegorical decorations exerted, through prints, on subsequent generations of artists. The present exhibition includes, nevertheless, two contrasting, examples from Rosso’s French years, his Pietà and Bacchus, Venus and Cupid, the first tragic and austere, the second erotic and voluptuous.
Rosso Fiorentino, Pietà (ca 1538-40). Paris, Musée du Louvre. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Rosso Fiorentino Bacchus, Venus and Cupid (ca 1535-39). Luxembourg, Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art. Image from Wikimedia Commons
The exhibition is a feast for the eyes. It opens spectacularly with three enormous detached frescoes, by Andrea del Sarto, Rosso, and Pontormo, from the atrium of the Church of SS Annunziata, all newly restored for the exhibition. Numerous other works have also been cleaned recently, sometimes with unexpected results – the cleaning of Rosso’s The Marriage of the Virgin has made St Joseph, traditionally depicted as an elderly man, look even more youthful whereas the head of a donkey, previously obscured by layers of grime, has been revealed in the background of Pontormo’s magnificent Visitation.
Rosso Fiorentino, The Marriage of the Virgin (Ginori Altarpiece) 1523. Florence, Basilica di san Lorenzo (Image from Artemagazine)
Pontormo, Visitation (ca 1528-29). Carmignano, Pieve di San Michele Archangelo. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
The Mannerist treasures in churches and museums in Florence and surroundings are
overwhelming. They include Pontormo’s most famous work, his otherworldly Deposition/Lamentation, in the church of Santa Felicita and his beautiful lunette fresco decoration of Vertumnus and Pomona, in the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano. Palazzo Pitti has the world’s most important collection of Andrea del Sarto paintings, the Uffizi an incomparable collection of paintings by Bronzino, Pontormo’s pupil and himself the subject of a memorable exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi four years ago. Bronzino’s frescoes for the Chapel of Eleonora da Toledo are in the Palazzo Vecchio where several rooms were decorated by Giorgio Vasari, Johannes Stradanus, and Francesco Salviati and other artists of the second generation of Florentine Mannerists.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
A Select Bibliography of Florentine Mannerism and the École de Fontainebleau
Pontormo, Rosso and Mannerism in Florence
Pontormo e Rosso: atti del convegno di Empoli e Volterra progetto Appiani di Piombino. [Congress held on Sept. 22, 1994 in Empoli and on Sept. 23-24, 1994 in Volterra]. (Florence, 1996). YA.1998.b.216.
L’Officina della maniera: varietà e fierezzanell’arte fiorentinadel Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530. (Venice, 1996). YA.2000.b.284.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence (exh. cat., ed. by C. B. Strehlke; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A., 2004–5). m04/.37453
Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of mannerism / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2014). LF.31.b.10009.
Pontormo
Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino : [tenuta al] Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, marzo-luglio 1956. (Florence, 1956). YV.1989.a.419.
Pontormo: disegni degli Uffizi / catalogo di Carlo Falciani. (Florence, 1996). WP.4334. v.79.
Pontormo, dibujos (Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, 12 de febrero-11 de mayo de 2014) [comisariado, Kosme de Barañano] (Madrid, 2014). LF.31.b.11064
Rosso Fiorentino
Cecile Scaillierez, Rosso. Le Christ mort. (Paris, 2004). YF.2014.b.2174
Antonio Natali, Rosso Fiorentino: leggiadra maniera e terribilità di cose stravaganti. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2006). LF.31.b.3723.
Le roi et l'artiste: François Ier et Rosso Fiorentino : Château de Fontainebleau, du 23 mars au 24 juin 2013 / commissariat, Thierry Crépin-Leblond, Vincent Droguet. (Paris, [2013]) YF.2014.b.420.
Bronzino
Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Berkeley, 1993). YK.1994.c.10.
Bronzino: artist and poet at the court of the Medici / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2010). LC.31.b.8601.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: the transformation of the Renaissance portrait in Florence / Carl Brandon Strehlke; with essays by Elizabeth Cropper ... [et al.]. (University Park, Pa, 2004). LC.31.b.2261.
Cellini
John Pope Hennessy, Cellini (London, 1985). L.45/3693.
École de Fontainebleau
L’École de Fontainebleau [catalogue of the exhibition in the Musée du Louvre and the Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais]. (Paris, 1972). X.410/5309.
Primatice: maître de Fontainebleau: Paris, Musée du Louvre, 22 septembre 2004-3 janvier 2005. (Paris, 2004). YF.2006.b.1071
Dominique Cordellier, Luca Penni, un disciple de Raphaël à Fontainebleau. (Paris, 2012). LF.31.a.4504.
Xavier Salmon, Fontainebleau, le temps des Italiens ([Heule?], 2013)]. LF.31.b.9839
Francesco Salviati
Francesco Salviati et la bella maniera: actes des colloques de Rome et Paris. (Rome, 2001). Ac.5233.a/284.
Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) ou, La bella maniera / sous la direction de Catherine Monbeig Goguel. (Paris, 1998). LB.31.b.17992.
Andrea del Sarto
Andrea del Sarto, 1486-1530: dipinti e disegni a Firenze : [catalogo della mostra a] Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, ... nov. 1986-mar. 1987. (Milan, 1986). YV.1987.b.798.
Giorgio Vasari
Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: art and history. (New Haven; London, 1995). YC.1995.b.4896.
Giorgio Vasari disegnatore e pittore, a cura di Alessandro Cecchi. (Skira, 2011). LF.31.b.8051
Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona ( 1519-21) Poggio a Caiano, Villa medicea. Image from Wikimedia Commons
30 June 2014
Early Photography in Spain
The Spanish National Library in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional de España; BNE) has mounted a small, but representative exhibition drawn from its photographic collections, entitled ‘Fotografía en España (1850-1870)’. In that period, demand for photography grew rapidly as a means of documenting events and of capturing images of landscape, famous buildings, city landmarks, and art works. Photography also became a new medium for portraits of leading contemporary figures and of the family. It was also important for recording infrastructure projects.
Several of the photographers who worked in Spain were foreign. One of them was a Welshman, Charles Clifford (1819-1863), who set up business in Madrid in late 1850. He produced a considerable body of material over a short period of time, including the album Voyages en Espagne (1856), consisting of some 400 images of famous civil and ecclesiastical buildings and monuments.
Charles Clifford. Palacio de la Reina, Barcelona (1860). BNE.
Clifford’s success brought him the patronage of the Queen Isabel II. He recorded some of the construction projects being undertaken in her reign, notably that of the canal which brought a secure supply of fresh water to Madrid and which bears her name. In fact ‘Canal de Isabel II’ is still the name of the water utility of the Madrid region. He also accompanied the Queen on her royal journeys around Spain.
Another leading photographer, the Frenchman Jean Laurent (1816-1886), began his career in Madrid before Clifford. He too specialised in city views, buildings and monuments, and also in photographing works of art. The BNE exhibition includes his photograph of the Congreso de los Diputados and also of Velázquez’s Las Meninas.
Jean Laurent. Congreso de los Diputados, Madrid (1855-60). BNE.
Both Laurent and Clifford produced images of the Alhambra, considered probably the most picturesque (in the literal sense) site in Spain and an undoubted draw for the growing number of travellers in the second half of the 19th century. Another favourite destination was Santiago de Compostela, and the exhibition includes a photograph of the Pórtico de la Gloria by another British photographer, Charles Thurston Thompson (1816-1868).
The exhibition includes a number of other subjects. There are portraits, e.g. of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (author of The Three-Cornered Hat), the actress Adelaida Fernández Zapatero and the painter José María Castellanos; a female nude; and various ethnographic scenes.
The British Library does not systematically collect photographs. However, a number of special collections are held. Among these is a relatively little-known collection of photographs of Spain by British photographers. There are 230 photographs by Clifford, gathered in three albums, two of topographical and architectural views and the other of images of armour from the Real Armería in the Royal Palace in Madrid. It is probable however that some of the photographs contained in this last album were the work of his wife, Jane, although they are generally attributed to Charles Clifford. Jane Clifford was an accomplished photographer in her own right and maintained the studio after Charles’s death. One of the albums of views (1785.c.1) was part of the bequest to the British Museum in 1900 of Henry Spencer Ashbee, the noted collector of works both of Miguel de Cervantes and of erotica.
Charles Clifford. Calle de Alcalá, Madrid , with the Cibeles fountain (ca. 1857) 1785.c.1, no. 57.
Charles Clifford. West door of Salamanca Cathedral (ca. 1858). 1704.d.9, no. 65.
The Library also holds 39 photographs by Charles Thurston Thompson, some of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the rest of the monastery church of Santa Maria da Vitória, Batalha, in Portugal. These are held in two albums. Thompson held a post as photographer of art works at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). In 1866 he travelled to France, Spain and Portugal on a photographic expedition on behalf of the Department of Science and Art.
Charles Thurston Thompson. Pórtico de la Gloria, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, with the statue of the Saint (1866). 1811.a.18, no. 4.
Geoff West, Lead Curator Hispanic Studies
Bibliography
Lee Fontanella, La historia de la fotografía en España (Madrid, 1981). LB.31.b.6876
Lee Fontanella, Clifford en España. Un fotógrafo en la Corte de Isabel II (Madrid, 1999). LF.31.b.5746
See also the British Library’s historic photographs feature: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/photographicproject/index.html and the online catalogue of photographs: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/photographyinbooks/welcome.htm
European studies blog recent posts
- Tulips: Dutch, Turkish, or Flemish?
- Gnomes and Gardens
- Italian Connections Unearthed
- “Rendez-vous at the British Library”: 6 December 2024
- Taras Shevchenko display at the British Library
- Meet the Curators: A News-themed Session – 23 June 2022
- ‘Breaking the News’: Tajny Detektyw – crimes and sensationalism in interwar Poland
- ‘Ill scratches the bear’, an endangered proverbial species
- Nordic Comics Today: A Day of Events
- Kater Murr at 200: ‘the cleverest, best and wittiest creature of his kind ever beheld’