Connoisseurship and the Investigation of Materiality: Four “Rembrandt” Drawings in Weimar*

The aim of this paper is to present the productive interplay of connoisseurship and material analysis when dealing with drawings by Rembrandt – or previously attributed to him – in the collection of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. This concerns the more precise determination of the drawing materials used and the reconstruction of the genesis of the drawings discussed. The material analysis allows us to decide whether and how Rembrandt’s inks can be used to determine authorship at all. The “material turn” in drawing studies thus intervenes in the discussion about authorship and opens up a broader production aesthetic perspective. No longer the “style” but rather the handeling becomes the decisive criterion for answering the question “Rembrandt, or not?”

“The condition most habitual with him, work”: David’s Portrait of Napoleon in His Cabinet at the Tuileries

In Napoleon in His Cabinet at the Tuileries (1811–1812), Jacques-Louis David designed a new portrait type wherein the emperor appears to have been up all night working for the welfare of his subjects, furthering the legend of an indefatigable administrator. This essay explores the relationship between Scottish patron and French artist in the fulfilment of a commission, the process of working through post-revolutionary consular and imperial modes of portraiture, the references to civil and military affairs meant to affirm public reports about the emperor’s administrative accomplishments, and the conversation about the relative value of status and money as compensation appropriate for the achievement of a new portrait identity. Despite the brilliant subtlety of David's conceit, Napoleon was content to continue to subsidize the overblown imperialist rhetoric of François Gérard and others.

On The Origin of the Milky Way by Peter Paul Rubens: Astronomy, Astrology and Mythology in Early Modern Europe*

Painted in the final decade of his life, Rubens’s autograph work The Origin of the Milky Way defies interpretation. The artist was a contemporary of Galileo though attempts to evidence a meeting have so far failed. He had already painted a series of night skies and had many recent books on astronomy/astrology, as well as ancient texts, in his library. This is a painting full of plausible stellar bodies none of which quite fits into a recognised constellation. Nor does the image accurately accord with any mythological narrative. So, is the Milky Way here simply a pretext to depict Juno as Queen of the heavens? I propose that Rubens was a learned eclectic for whom Aristotelian views of the cosmos could meld both with contemporary earth-centred arguments about a providential universe and with new Copernican theories. Uniting his interest in pictorial space with newfound possibilities for understanding the cosmos, Rubens draws on the ancient Roman concept of sparsio, or abundance, with which he would have been familiar through his friendship with Hugo Grotius. Executed a few years after the fifty-three-year-old artist had married his fecund second wife, then aged sixteen, The Origin of the Milky Way constitutes a witty and profound meditation on female generosity within a framework of universal laws.

“Malerische Dichtungen”: Two Landscape Paintings of 1916 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

During 1916 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created a group of landscape paintings, based on his experiences at the Kohnstamm Sanatorium in Königstein, which were more symbolic in character than his previous landscapes. This essay shows that contact with Carl and Thea Sternheim, who encouraged a reengagement with Vincent van Gogh’s paintings and letters, played a role in this change. Kirchner’s recognition of how Van Gogh could express an affect through his painting was reinforced by Dr. Kohnstamm’s writings about empathy’s role in artistic expression. Artistic practice and aesthetic theory were joined in representations of Jena done during Fall 1916 in which Kirchner transformed the landscape through formal means into symbols of his emotional relationship to that space.

The Anachronic Madonna Lactans: Impersonations of the Nursing Virgin by Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, and Vanessa Beecroft

This article examines Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #216 (1989), Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait/ Nursing (2004), and Vanessa Beecroft’s White Madonna or VBSS.002 (2006) in relation to the medieval and Renaissance artworks these photos quote and re-instantiate: Jean Fouquet’s Virgin of Melun (1452–1455); Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Madonna del Latte (1325–1335) and Leonardo da Vinci’s Litta Madonna (1490s); and Tino di Camaino’s Charity (1321) and Jan van Eyck’s Lucca Madonna (1436), respectively. This juxtaposition — framed by reference to Alexander Nagel’s and Christopher Wood’s concept of “anachronism” and to Aby Warburg’s notion of the Pathosformel — helps us ask new questions and gain new insights about the “old masters” under discussion.