Italy,in One Last Turn and the Sphinx ....Will Talk and is finally sent to the ‘Teatro Europeo’,but he remains tentative,asking Shall I be an Extra or Take a Starring Role?With Italy’s involvement in the war,artists were soon required to reconsider their position.Italy was a relatively young country,having been unified only in 1861,and this war offered it a way of bringing its people together against a shared enemy.Artists began to produce propaganda sup-porting the troops and encouraging other Italians to do the same.Works such as Amos Scorzon’s The Unstoppable Avalanche show Italy’s army as a huge boulder,des-troying German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers;raising morale amongst the troops and bringing a positive message back from the frontline.The swing from anti-interventionism to support for the army is also apparent in I Have Given a Lot ,by an unknown artist,which criticises former Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti for his prolonged neutrality,and encour-ages the public to support schemes such as the National Loan,which financed the war.
Nonetheless,the main targets of ridi-cule were the Emperors of Austria-Hun-gary and Germany.The artist Fram depicts Franz Joseph as a decrepit old beggar in I Die in Despair ,and Kaiser Wilhelm II as a hideous medusa in The Innocent ,an image very similar to Retrosi’s The Face of War .Raffaello Ferro derides the Kaiser’s greed for territory,as he portrays him forcing his recognisable helmet onto a globe in German Global Domination .Ferro also turns his mocking tone on his fellow countryman,the poet Ga
briele D’Annunzio,in the stand-out work of the exhibition.Dante,who lends a quote to the title,My Poor Verses Have Been Thrown to the Wind ,appears as a porter to the ostentatious nationalist D’Annunzio,who is on his way to the Scoglio di Quarto to make a fervent irredentist speech.
The range of work in this show,cover-ing 11artists over the duration of Italy’s involvement in the war,can make the exhibition seem a little disparate.Never-theless,Virgilio Retrosi’s crisp designs,consistent motifs,and use of bright colours against the neutral tones of the paper pull the exhibition together,as these elements appear to some extent in the other works.Fram,in particular,shows a comparable
level of style,with work reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec.In addition to the satirical basis of all these works,a more surprising feature is the humanity.Even Giulio Gigli’s Futurist Dynamic Vision of Befana ,which starts the exhibition,the word ‘Miseria’stands out amongst the explo-sions,flags,helmets and bullets inscribed with the surname of Futurist leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.All the artists featured in this exhibition seem to be concerned with the Italian people,particularly the army,although not necessa-rily the politicians.They did,however,rally behind what-ever fate the country’s lea-ders chose for it;whether that was neutrality or inter-ventionism and the aim of reclaiming lost land in Trieste and the Trentino.Nadia Marchioni’s cata-logue article provides con-
text for each work in relation to the political issue it portrays,and the role of the key artists in the development of style.Although the essay opens with a quote by Umberto Boccioni,one of the Futurists who volunteered to fight in the war as members of the Lombardy Volunteer Battalion of Cyclists and Automobilists,Marchioni does not overly stress the Futurist connection.This is refreshing because,as mentioned earlier,the style and sentiment of these works are quite different,and they have previously been paid little attention in their own right.It would,however,have been interesting to read more about the relationships between the Futurists’propaganda through printed media and these postcards.Furthermore,the lack of information on who commis-sioned each work,and exactly when,leaves us frustratingly speculative in our associa-tion between the events,the artworks,and the political bias behind them.Although some are a little rudimentary,the majority of these cartoons are charming in their satire and depict an interesting and tumultuous period in Italy’s recent history.
rosalind m c ever
Art writer,Leeds
JAN VAN DER HEYDEN (1637–1712)peter sutton with jonathan bikker,taco dibbets,norbert middelkoop,marijn
schapelhouman,arie wallert
Yale University Press in association with Bruce Museum,Greenwich,Connecticut and Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam 2006$65.00d 40.00256pp.110col/70mono illus isbn 978-0300119701
E
very survey book of Dutch seven-teenth-century painting features a view of Amsterdam by Jan van der Heyden.Perhaps few who admire his paintings realise that this versatile man also demonstrated a lifelong talent for engineering:van der Heyden is notable today as much for his invention of a fire-pump that enjoyed success throughout the following century and for his perfection of the street lamp when overseer of Amster-dam’s lighting,as for his painting.Like many an artist known for one kind of painting,in this case the cityscape,one rarely sees more of van der Heyden’s oeuvre reproduced than a single,typical work.Now Peter Sutton,director of the Bruce Museum but best known for his
extended
Virgilio Retrosi L ’lba (Sunrise),c 1914--18.From Barbed Wit:Italian Satire of the Great War by Michael Moody et al.
22The ArtBook volume 14issue 4november 2007r 2007the authors.journal compilation r 2007bpl/aah
Exhibitions,Museums and Galleries
study of Pieter de Hooch,focuses his own light on van der Heyden,combining his talents with the teamwork of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.Sutton’s lengthy essay,ran-ging from life and art to optics and perspective and personal inventions,pro-vides the fullest discussion ever of van der Heyden.Jonathan Bikker,recent author of a monograph on Rembrandt’s pupil Drost (see The Art Book ,vol.13issue 3),adds a note on original owners of van der Heyden paintings,whose technique is examined closely by Arie Waller.A catalogue of 38paintings and 16drawings follows,supple-mented by a valuable dual-language supple-ment on the critical history of the artist.What do we learn from this first monograph in English (and first exhibi-tion in seven decades)that cannot be conveyed by a typical painting of an Amsterdam canal or church square?Van der Heyden’s prosperous family was Mennonite,a denomination that advo-cated withdrawal from civic duties,a seeming contradiction for this most en-ga
ged of municipal citizens.He married in 1661and produced a first dated painting (no.4)in 1663,and he is recorded as having sold a 1667image of the Amster-dam Town Hall to Cosimo de’Medici of Florence (Uffizi;no.9).His role as over-seer of city lamps began in 1669,and the fire pump that he invented with his brother Nicolaas led to a 1673supervision of city fire equipment.A firefighting book written by Jan in 1690is dedicated to a quartet of city burgomasters.Paintings continued to appear well after his appointments to the city offices,particularly during the 1670s.At his death in 1712van der Heyden
enjoyed the burial of a prominent citizen,and his prosperous estate included a sizeable collection,including 73of his own paintings,indicating that painting was not necessary for his living.
Sutton’s discussion of the cityscape offers a very useful survey of the origins of this distinctly Dutch genre of painting (a topic not really addressed since a 1977exhibition,originated in Toronto by Richard Wattenmaker),which crystallised in the 1650s out of earlier topographic prints and maps.Specific images of the Amsterdam City Hall and Dam Square became a hall-mark of van der Heyden as well as of Gerrit Berckheyde,and are well discussed in Sutton’s essay.Sutton also adduces Jan
van
Jan van der Heyden,View with the Jesuit Church St.Andreas,Dˇsseldorf,1666.Private Collection.From Janvan der Heyden by Peter C Sutton.
r 2007the authors.journal compilation r 2007bpl/aah volume 14issue 4november 2007The ArtBook 23
Exhibitions,Museums and Galleries
der Ulft as another major pioneer,possibly van der Heyden’s own teacher.Here,and throughout the catalogue,a wealth of comparative images appear,some in colour, but most are small in scale and difficult to read for important component elements.
Van der Heyden’s early works include paintings on glass(no.1)and panel,chiefly imaginary landscape or architectural sites as well as images of churches.He was cele-brated for his minute rendering of details. Later works maintain vivid detail but offer more controlled lighting and atmosphere, suggesting the wider city settings,such as the Westerkerk and Keizersgracht(no.13). Well-composed canal scenes,especially emphasising older church structures,char-acterise further Amsterdam scenes,but Sutton notes how composite and composed these scenes actually were,cobbled out of individual sites as motifs.
Van der Heyden also ventured away from Amsterdam,ranging as far away as the Rhineland(Cologne churches)and as far south as Brussels(Old Palace,nos.32 and33).Views of other Dutch cities, including smaller,picturesque sites such as Veere and Delft as well as varied castles and estates in Holland,also form a substantial part of his oeuvre.Some of these overlap with more general images better characterised as landscapes,going back to his earliest pictures on glass. Sutton’s essay ends with a provocative suggestion that Italian vedute might have been shaped by Jan van der Heyden;he points to both Canaletto and Bellotto as beneficiaries,but especially Gaspar van Wittel,known in Italy as Vanvitelli,at the end of the seventeenth century.
Onefinal,masterful category of paint-ing by van der Heyden,not as familiar to non-specialists(albeit with an example from Budapest serving as the cover of Marie¨t Westermann’s survey,A Worldly Art, 2005)is his still-lifes(nos.29,38),some ten of them.These luxury goods actually exemplify the kind of objects in a collec-tion such as that of the artist himself,and a few date from the very end of his life. More specifically,they depict scholarly cabinets or studies,replete with atlases and globes as well as art works.
Sutton also tentatively proposes the artist’s likely use of a camera obscura,but without the distortions of light and perspective to be found in Vermeer and not as a crucial element in his images.
Jonathan Bikker’s study of patronage turnsfirst to the patrician,burgomaster family of the Huydecopers,especially
Joan II.Other burgomasters and civic
employees seem to have owned several van
der Heyden works.Wealthy Mennonite co-
religionists,led by Pieter Block and Jan van
Lennep,also surely sought his paintings.
Bikker plausibly suggests this group as the
owners of some of the pictured estates.
He also notes knowledgeably that one of
the Westerkerk views(Wallace Collection)
replicates the canal scene across from the
house of the wealthy Coymans family.
Most of the highlyfinished drawings in
ink and wash stem from Amsterdam and
representfire-fighting topics,including
damaged houses.
One other note:the corporate sponsor of
this exhibition is Reed Elsevier,the con-
temporary incarnation of a Dutch imprint
that is celebrating a major anniversary of
425years.The huge current profits of that
company stem from its heavy commitment
to electronic delivery of scholarly journals;
however,this handsome book and art
exhibition make a welcome antidote to the
online world of today’s corporation.
larry silver
University of Pennsylvania
THE ARTS IN LATIN AMERICA
1492–1820
joseph j rishel with
suzanne stratton-pruitt
Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with
Yale University Press2006d45.00$75.00
592pp.431col/45mono illus
isbn0-300-12003-6
T his magnificent volume catalogues,
according to one of the show’s
sponsors,‘thefirst comprehensive
exhibition to explore the convergences of
indigenous American,European,African,
and Asian cultures and the creation of new
identities and art forms in Latin America’
from the arrival of thefirst Europeans
until the birth of modern nations some
300years later.Organised and premiered
at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in late
2006,the exhibition travelled to the Anti-
guo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico
City(a superb setting mere blocks from the
permanent homes of many of the Mexican
works here)andfinally to the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art in mid-2007.Work
created within13present-day countries is
represented.Separate catalogue sections
address decorative arts,textiles,Hispanic
silver,Brazilian silver,sculpture,painting,
and furniture,each preceded by one or two
overview essays.Preceding the catalogue
section are seven introductory essays ran-
ging from‘Art in colonial Latin America:
A critical review’by Joseph J Rishel to‘Asia
in the arts of colonial Latin America’by
Gauvin Alexander Bailey to‘Artisans and
artists in Ibero-America from the sixteenth
to the eighteenth century’by M Concepcio´n
Garcı´a Sa´iz.Without exception,I found the
essays to be fascinating and informative.
The illustrations in both essay and
catalogue sections,too,are usually fasci-
nating and informative.Sometimes they
are a beautiful and utter mystery,as in the
sixteenth-century Inca uncu(tunic)covered
in a grid of24repeating geometric designs
called tocapu,whose meaning‘has yet to be
deciphered by scholars but may represent
heraldic or lineage symbols’,according to
Dilys E Blum.A somewhat later uncu from
characteriseLake Titicaca features nearly identical
tocapu on the front but adds a lower register
which includes seemingly European-influ-
enced arrow-pierced hearts and heraldic
lions among the Andean warriors.Both
tunics are illustrated at much larger size
and discussed in greater detail by Elena
Phipps in The Colonial Andes:Tapestries and
Silverwork,1530–1830(Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art and Yale University Press,
2004),highly recommended for those
whose appetites are whetted by the present
volume.The number,variety,and selection
of images in The Arts in Latin America1492–
1820is impressive,but the number of full-
page photographs is very small consider-
ing the quantity of artworks rich in baroque
detail that beg to be examined closely.Still,
I would not want to sacrifice any of the
existing text or images or to make an
already very large volume more unwieldy.
Casta paintings are a fascinating genre,
depicting mixed-race couples and their
offspring,and usually produced in sets of
14to16.‘Invented in early eighteenth-
century New Spain’,the genre‘provides a
multitude of information about daily life
in New Spain,including food,clothing,
and entertainment’,as well as‘sending a
message to the mother country(for most
of the series seem to have been intended
for export to Spain)of the material wealth
and natural abundance of the viceroyalty’,
according to M Concepcio´n Garcı´a Sa´iz,
who discusses in some detail14paintings
dated1763by Miguel Cabrera,the master
of the genre and one of New Spain’s
greatest painters.Fourteen of an original
16paintings,reunited in the exhibition
24The ArtBook volume14issue4november2007r2007the authors.journal compilation r2007bpl/aah Exhibitions,Museums and Galleries

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