Ornament of the Academy
Academician Marc Fumaroli, president of the Amis du Louvre, is a distinguished scholar and essayist, whose writings on 17th-century art reveal a profound knowledge of its cultural context, writes Robert Oresko.
Robert Oresko, Monday, 25th August 2008
Building of Palazzo Barberini began late in 1628 to designs by Carlo Maderno, but his death two months later left the execution in the hands of Bernini and his assistant, Francesco Borromini. The weighty palazzo was the critically important external sign of power, the more necessary after the marriage in October 1627 of Taddeo Barberini to no one less than Anna Colonna. In a staggering display of erudition, Fumaroli dissects the iconography of Pietro da Cortona’s ceiling fresco in the central salone (Fig. 4) and the significance of the dominant honey bee, both in its composition and in the family imagery, drawing on a number of sources, from pharaonic legend to Urban viii’s own poetry. He also suggests, strikingly, that reports of Barberini munificence may have made an impact on the young Louis XIV, determined to wrench the role the Barberini had created away from Rome and transfer it first to Paris, later to Versailles.
Although immersed in the 17th century, Fumaroli extends his range well beyond. His articles on Antoine Watteau, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, François Boucher and the 18th-century antiquary Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières, Comte de Caylus, date from the mid-1990s and the first years of this century. Beyond the ancien régime, Fumaroli has published Chateaubriand: poésie et terreur and an appreciation of the drawings of Fernando Botero.
One of the primary lessons of Marc Fumaroli’s work is the indivisibility of historical analysis. The history of art cannot be detached from a broader cultural history, certainly not from that of literature and letters, with any more validity than it can be separated from political history. The capacity to view painting as part of a larger whole and to have mastered so many strands of the historical discipline gives Fumaroli’s work a distinguished place in the ‘Republic of Letters’ that he so frequently evokes.
LATEST NEWS & COMMMENT
Manhattan transfer
The Lower East Side, once home to immigrants and aspiring artists, is no receiving the uptown treatment.
Shakespeare in stone
The National Trust's plans to acquire Seaton Delaval Hall are a tribute to a genius who has inspired writers and artists for centuries.
In pursuit of collectors
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating the centenary of the directorship of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell with an exhibition that makes clear that he was in many ways the first modern museum director.
Comments
Post a comment