This article discusses Lasa marble, a bright, white and weather-resistant stone quarried in South Tyrol, which in the course of the nineteenth century came to be considered equal, and even superior, to Carrara marble. Because of its quality, Lasa marble has been and continues to be exported worldwide. The article considers the ‘new Carrara’ in light of three art-historical topics: its rediscovery against the background of the intertwining of the young disciplines of geology and art history in the nineteenth century; its use and semantic quality in the context of the new buildings along the Ringstrasse in Vienna; and finally, the various projects for the establishment of artists’ colonies at the quarries of Laas, the declared objectives of which were rooted between monastic harmony and tourism-oriented calculation.
{"title":"‘New Carrara’: Lasa marble in the service of artistic ideas and economic interests during the long nineteenth century","authors":"Ingeborg Schemper-Sparholz, Caroline Mang","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.7","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses Lasa marble, a bright, white and weather-resistant stone quarried in South Tyrol, which in the course of the nineteenth century came to be considered equal, and even superior, to Carrara marble. Because of its quality, Lasa marble has been and continues to be exported worldwide. The article considers the ‘new Carrara’ in light of three art-historical topics: its rediscovery against the background of the intertwining of the young disciplines of geology and art history in the nineteenth century; its use and semantic quality in the context of the new buildings along the Ringstrasse in Vienna; and finally, the various projects for the establishment of artists’ colonies at the quarries of Laas, the declared objectives of which were rooted between monastic harmony and tourism-oriented calculation.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45018301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although one of the most celebrated sculptors of the nineteenth century, little is known about Bertel Thorvaldsen’s relationship with the white marble he sculpted from. Today, scholars generally accept that Thorvaldsen knew how to sculpt in marble; however, for many years - including during his own lifetime - people regarded his investment in the white stone as somewhat detached. Taking the debate around Thorvaldsen’s marble-carving skills as a point of departure, this article analyses the evidence at hand: the marble sculptures themselves as preserved in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen. Exploring the preserved surface textures on selected marble works, this article argues that Thorvaldsen engaged and experimented with different types of textural effects and marble types, revealing a yet unseen sensitivity towards the historic and symbolic significance layered in the stones themselves.
{"title":"Thorvaldsen’s marble connections","authors":"A. Skovmøller","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.5","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Although one of the most celebrated sculptors of the nineteenth century, little is known about Bertel Thorvaldsen’s relationship with the white marble he sculpted from. Today, scholars generally accept that Thorvaldsen knew how to sculpt in marble; however, for many years - including during his own lifetime - people regarded his investment in the white stone as somewhat detached. Taking the debate around Thorvaldsen’s marble-carving skills as a point of departure, this article analyses the evidence at hand: the marble sculptures themselves as preserved in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen. Exploring the preserved surface textures on selected marble works, this article argues that Thorvaldsen engaged and experimented with different types of textural effects and marble types, revealing a yet unseen sensitivity towards the historic and symbolic significance layered in the stones themselves.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46247135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Beginning with a question about how the spectator apprehends a figure or bust in marble as a representation, this article uses eighteenth-century portrait busts in marble to explore how competing theories about representation and the apprehension of art might be applied to a distinctive class of sculpture in a particular material from a specific period. It explores how the terms of a debate formulated by E. H. Gombrich and Richard Wollheim about pictorial illusion might be applied to our perception of sculpture, and goes on to examine the ways in which contemporary accounts of viewing eighteenth-century portrait sculpture might be understood within this context.
{"title":"Sculpture and representation: apprehending marble portrait sculpture in the eighteenth century","authors":"M. Baker","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.2","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Beginning with a question about how the spectator apprehends a figure or bust in marble as a representation, this article uses eighteenth-century portrait busts in marble to explore how competing theories about representation and the apprehension of art might be applied to a distinctive class of sculpture in a particular material from a specific period. It explores how the terms of a debate formulated by E. H. Gombrich and Richard Wollheim about pictorial illusion might be applied to our perception of sculpture, and goes on to examine the ways in which contemporary accounts of viewing eighteenth-century portrait sculpture might be understood within this context.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43569734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on two British sculptors who straddled the worlds of practical geology and sculpture in the nineteenth century, and in particular how their work affected the scientific and popular understanding of marble. Francis Chantrey and William Brindley were both long-term members of the Geological Society of London and contributed practical understanding of stone to the development of the geological discourse on white and coloured decorative marbles. This article looks at Chantrey’s use of fossiliferous British ‘marbles’ and his role in the growing comprehension of Carrara marble as a metamorphosed limestone in the 1830s. The second part of the article deals with William Brindley’s discovery and popularization of coloured marbles from ancient quarries around the world, and the role of these stones in contemporary imperialist discourse.
{"title":"Two sculptor-geologists and the perception of marble in nineteenth-century Britain: Sir Francis Chantrey and William Brindley","authors":"M. Sullivan","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.10","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on two British sculptors who straddled the worlds of practical geology and sculpture in the nineteenth century, and in particular how their work affected the scientific and popular understanding of marble. Francis Chantrey and William Brindley were both long-term members of the Geological Society of London and contributed practical understanding of stone to the development of the geological discourse on white and coloured decorative marbles. This article looks at Chantrey’s use of fossiliferous British ‘marbles’ and his role in the growing comprehension of Carrara marble as a metamorphosed limestone in the 1830s. The second part of the article deals with William Brindley’s discovery and popularization of coloured marbles from ancient quarries around the world, and the role of these stones in contemporary imperialist discourse.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46494567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.
{"title":"A ‘milky mass’ and ‘uniform material’: white marble in eighteenth-century French discourses on sculpture and geology","authors":"Marthe Kretzschmar","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.9","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49031938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to the classical tradition, marble sculptures were to be made of ‘pure’ white material. This remained an aesthetic ideal even after archaeological findings had revealed evidence of ancient polychromy. This article argues that tinting as well as natural staining on marble figures in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not only aesthetically but also morally reprehensible, because they violated the ideal of homo clausus. This term, coined by the sociologist Norbert Elias, conceptualizes a subject that imposes ‘self-restraint’ to control its physical body and its emotions. Perfect control was seen embodied in the ancient images of the gods, which were assumed to have been made of immaculate white marble. Any colouring, whether of natural origin or deliberately produced, seemed to contaminate this concept. My investigation is focused on the historical justifications for John Gibson’s scandalous Tinted Venus, and figures of veined marble rejected in France on similar grounds in the late eighteenth century, such as Christoph-Gabriel Allegrain’s Venus and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Frileuse. I examine how the coloured veins and tints of the stone gained semantic qualities in female figures, where a blush or a vein seemed to reveal emotions and desires and thus infringe the ideal.
{"title":"Impure stone and the threat to decency: marble tints and veins","authors":"M. Wagner","doi":"10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2021.30.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000According to the classical tradition, marble sculptures were to be made of ‘pure’ white material. This remained an aesthetic ideal even after archaeological findings had revealed evidence of ancient polychromy. This article argues that tinting as well as natural staining on marble figures in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not only aesthetically but also morally reprehensible, because they violated the ideal of homo clausus. This term, coined by the sociologist Norbert Elias, conceptualizes a subject that imposes ‘self-restraint’ to control its physical body and its emotions. Perfect control was seen embodied in the ancient images of the gods, which were assumed to have been made of immaculate white marble. Any colouring, whether of natural origin or deliberately produced, seemed to contaminate this concept. My investigation is focused on the historical justifications for John Gibson’s scandalous Tinted Venus, and figures of veined marble rejected in France on similar grounds in the late eighteenth century, such as Christoph-Gabriel Allegrain’s Venus and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Frileuse. I examine how the coloured veins and tints of the stone gained semantic qualities in female figures, where a blush or a vein seemed to reveal emotions and desires and thus infringe the ideal.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42351056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：