Renaissance Tapestries and Textiles Diplomacy

In London earlier this year Professor Jeremy Boudreau, the director of the British Institute's History of Art department, gave the inaugural Harold Acton lecture at the Italian Embassy, on "Renaissance Tapestries and Textiles Diplomacy" examining the Medici family's collection of Italian Spalliere tapestries, which are currently on loan from the Palazzo Pitti Museum and on show in the Breakfast Room of the Italian Embassy. 

Lucky for us Professor Bourdeau was kind enough to give The British Institute a ‘backwards view’ of the talk from a Florentine perspective. He unravelled the important collection of rarely displayed tapestries for us, explaining their political and economic significance in the time of the Medicis, proving once and for all that there’s more to the tapestry tradition than just a pretty covering.

In 1545 Cosimo Medici set up the first examples of tapestry workshops using Flemish weavers as a ‘start up’ of sorts to teach their trade to Florentine artists. Cosimo was cunning, rather than simply importing the skill of foreign hands he invested the time and the energy to ensure the creation of a ‘local’ art form by providing the basis for trade to be adopted and artisans to learn and practice their skills within the city. 

Not only this but Cosimo ensured motivation for his artisans, establishing two rival workshops at the same time. One was led by Jan Roost and the other by Nicolas Karcher, the first patronised by the Duke of Ferrara and the second by the Duke of Mantova. The healthy competition of the two workshops within the city is undoubtedly one of the reasons they tirelessly produced some of the most spectacular tapestries we have to date. 

The State dining room with the Medicean Spalliere Tapestries. Image by Federico Zonno.

Bourdeau’s keen academic eye is inspiring. He takes us through overarching themes, explaining the traditional techniques of tapestries and the scenes of grotesques, the cherubs, garlands and festoons of flowers, species of birds, fish and other animals, the fantastical creatures intertwined with luscious foliage as well as the Spalliere (Tuscan 15th and early 16th century painted wall panels and hangings) of the time. He also draws our attention to minute details on the tapestries that reveal their changing identity in the Florentine realm, inscriptions such as ‘FATTO – IN - FIORENZA’, an early 'Made in Florence' or ‘Made in Italy’ if you will. Another example that crops up is SPQF a play on SPQR, the initialism used by the Roman Senate and People, small but potent symbols of the growing pride felt in Florence for their adopted Flemish art.

Yet context with these artworks is key and Bourdeau made sure to guide us into the two rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio that the site-specific tapestries were originally designed for, Sala dei Dugento and the Sala dell’Udienza. The wall coverings truly clothe the rooms, leaving not a spot untouched by gold and vivid colours from floor to ceiling. Only last year saw the newly restored Sala dei Dugento and its vivid depictions of Joseph ‘the prince of dreams’ open to the public for a special exhibition. We can only hope after its success that more such public reunions of the tapestries with their settings will follow. 

The Sistine Chapel and Tapestries

When looking at the elaborate weavings it's easy to realise how Florence was being reinvented by the Medici. Under Cosimo it was rapidly becoming a centre for tapestry production but the artwork was also introducing a new vocabulary for Renaissance paintings from the ‘cartoons’ the Flemish weavers used as drafts to transform into tapestries. In fact many ‘cartoons’ themselves stand alone now as artworks recognised in their own right (several in London’s V&A museum). 

Tapestries were a means of displaying a story as well as boasting about one’s wealth. In Rome Boudreau highlighted perhaps the most famous example of the Sistine Chapel. Here tapestries were originally paired with the paintings (as if they weren’t decorative enough!) and designed to hang under the ornate scenes on the walls depicting Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles (1515-1520) woven in silk and wool with silver-gilt threads. It seems absurd that another layer of opulence could be added to such a treasure chest of a Chapel, yet excess seems to have been all part of the game.

Jan Rost and Nicolas Karcher, Spalliere with grotesques based on cartoons by Bachiacca (1545), Silk, gold, silver and wool tapestry, Italian Embassy London

Boudreau amusingly recalled the comments of the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, who was shocked after visiting the Pontiff exiled in Orvieto declaring that “Before reaching his [Pope Clement VII] chamber we passed three chambers all naked and unhanged.” When even the Pope lacked the grandeur of ‘clothed’ walls, one knew something was up. 

Intriguingly although based on Italian cartoons and designs many tapestries of the time were still produced in Brussels and outside of Italy. It was mainly through the persistence of Cosimo that Italian weavers were eventually able to take over from their original Flemish masters. 

One of the most interesting moments of the evening came towards the end of the talk where Boudreau attempted to put the young Cosimo’s rule in context with the other leaders of the time. He jokingly observed how he must have had a rather bad ‘inferiority complex’, flashing up images of Henry VIII, Charles V, Paul III and Frances I, it’s easy to see why. Meeting and surpassing the expectations of political visitors was paramount, dazzling, distracting and even intimidating guests with the beauty of ornate tapestries was all part and parcel of playing the part. 

Although we weren’t able to head down to the State dining room to observe the tapestries first hand as the original audience at the Italian embassy were after the talk, the lecture was still a truly immersive experience. Julia Race, the Institute’s director, described the experience as akin to walking with Bourdeau through the Palazzo Vecchio, and it’s true – he led us by the hand.

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An Englishman in New York

Director of the British Institute of Florence Julia Race & Artist Bill Jacklin 

This week's Culture Talk saw British Artist Bill Jacklin take to the floor with an immersive and intimate survey of his works from New York. Jacklin left London in 1985, after studying Graphics at Walthamstow and painting at the Royal College of Art and moved permanently to the Big Apple, whose energy attracted him. Here he discovered Manhattan had not really been painted after WWII, and many of his first subjects came from scenes he witnessed on a daily basis that remained common but neglected by the artistic community. 

As a draughtsman Jacklin responds directly to stimuli, to images he encounters in real life, many sketches (often as many as 40/50 studies) form the basis for a painting and the final composition that piece will take. He began by looking from the windows of his apartment on 6th Avenue, and his second floor studio in the famous Meat Market, finding renaissance crucifixion scenes in the hanging produce brought in and out by the butchers each day. 

Light is a fascination for Jacklin: ‘light and the effect of light on surfaces’. It’s an interest that enlivens what would normally be mundane scenes; even in ‘Sandwich Eaters’ he finds beauty, a strange geometry and light that frames ordinary figures in vividly new perspectives. Double images are also a feature of his work, a trait developed from his love of film and his continuous drafts, where occasionally he will simply paint a scene, only to look again a moment later and paint the same subject again as it has changed. By paralleling the camera Jacklin emphasizes the mystical qualities of paint, his subjects capture the essence of things, the refracting light of fireworks in the sky, the subtle reflections of raindrops as they fall. His skill as a speedy draughtsman also allowed him unprecedented access to the city; his photographic eye permitted entry to Police station waiting rooms and other contested spaces where cameras were unable to enter. 

Despite wandering the entire city Jacklin found himself drawn back to certain places again and again. He went up to 87th avenue to replicate the crowds walking down by the Rockefeller centre, 42nd Street ‘when it wasn’t Disneyland’, Grand Central Station – looking back he laughs realising he’s only really painted a few streets of New York. One of these recurring subjects is skaters, but also the chess players in Washington Square which in Jacklin’s eyes becomes a triptych, figures represented in double as they move from one frame to another. A ‘sister painting’ depicts the same place at night with a woman invading the scene as she runs after her stolen bag. 

Turner is a clear influence, as is Whistler, the crowds of the city become something mystical in Jacklin’s eyes, a surging force where ‘the movement of the crowds are forming my music, my muse’. The rhythms of a scene replicate themselves in paint, Washington square and the skaters are portrayed as ‘swirling and whirling’, ‘I'm a sucker for that subject’ he confesses, the motion of bodies a means of portraying the intimate relationships between people as they’re played out upon the ice. 

'I never paint anything if I haven't been there. I have to have a relationship. I paint about Relationships.' After all 'making a drawing is making a mark'. For Jacklin the process of creation is practically primal: 'I'm creating my own language, the painting comes out of the making of a mark'.  Listening to him talk about his process is captivating: ‘The paint informs the subject it’s not the other way around’. 

He works large but often starts out small, showing us the pastel studies for a painting that only measures 12 inches but turned into 12 feet by its completion, almost it seems by accident: ‘you do it and then you've done it’. Moving through different sizes, moving through different modes of interpretation and presentation, these transformations of the work become a means of articulation, enabling Jacklin to ‘work through who I am’. 

Jacklin is quick to note at the start of his talk the strangeness of having an Englishman talk about his New York art in a city as culturally rich as Florence. The last few slides he shows us are the few pieces he has completed in the past of Florence with the rich reflections and colours of the dying sun shifting in a mirage of the Arno. Talking about the crowds milling in Piazza del Republica it’s hard not to wish that perhaps Jacklin might make Florence the next city he encounters in paint. ‘I guess that’s the difference between Florence and New York’ he ponders when looking back at his New York work, ‘things change much faster, a building comes up and comes down.’ ‘I paint about change’.

When asked how he knows his work is finished he notes that there’s a running joke that it’s only ‘when the truck comes up’ to collect it. His best work so far? ‘What I’m going to do next’. Let's hope Florence might see some more of Jacklin in the years to come. 

The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell

                       

Continuing with the botanical theme (see my post on visiting the orto botanico) this week's cultural talk at the British Institute was about ‘The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell’. Although well known and respected in Liguria, the Riviera and the Martine Alps, this intrepid botanist, writer, and artist remains relatively unknown in the UK. Impressive given that there are several species named after him, everything from Pimpinella bicknellii, a beautiful small white flower, to a particular type of Australian ant. 

Next year is Bicknell’s centenary so I’m sure this won’t be the last we’ll be hearing about his work and beautiful watercolours over the next few months. 2018 is also the release date for his first official biography by Valerie Browne Lester, which should hopefully give more context to the prolific recorder and the 7,000 plus artefacts, of pressed flowers, letters, and paintings that he left behind. Graham Avery, previously a fellow of the European Institute and now at St. Antony’s College Oxford, and Bicknell’s own relative Marcus reflected in their talks that Bicknell never courted the English elite while he was working, he didn’t go to any of the important meetings and practiced outside of England, so his impressive legacy has largely been ignored. 

We began the evening with a short documentary produced by french film maker Rémy Masséglia, which certainly transported us all into Bicknell’s Riviera world. With swooping landscape shots of the luscious fields and mountainous areas that Bicknell explored it certainly set the scene beautifully for Graham Avery’s brilliant exploration into the self-taught botanist's work. Born in 1842 in Herne Hill near London, the 13th child in a large family, Bicknell ended up studying at Cambridge University and entering the Anglican church. After doubts with his faith he wrote ‘I fear I have become rather narrow’, and soon after taking on the chaplaincy at All Saints Church in Bordighera threw off his dog collar at the age of thirty-five and threw himself into the flowering plants and ferns of the surrounding environment and neighbouring mountains. His first published book Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera, came soon after in 1885. 

In 1897 he discovered prehistoric engravings while out walking in the mountainous Fontanalba and took to heading out each day to make delicate rubbings and copies of the engravings in order to raise awareness of their existence, sometimes lying flat out on the rocks for several hours to capture the images as precisely as he could. He loved the area so much that he ended up building a house there which he named Villa Fontanalba. Sadly the estate is now owned privately, but from the sounds of it, the hand crafted interiors with their mural walls and hand-painted scenic depictions rival that of the Bloomsbury group. 

One very interesting point that was made when flicking through Bicknell’s elaborately decorated guest-book for his Villa Fontanalba (which alone speaks volumes for the care and artistry that Bicknell took with the details of his home) was that he had written the entire document in Esperanto. Apparently this was common for Bicknell who was deeply involved in the movement for the universal language pioneered by a Polish doctor that envisioned a means of international communication. He was even vice president of the Esperanto society in Italy. 

Described by Avery as ‘incredibly modest’ his humble work ethic of concentrating on recording his findings (as opposed to interpreting), hindered his fame abroad. At one point Avery laughed and compared the fascination that Bicknell had with flora and fauna akin to collecting stamps, with each botanist always eager to see a specific they had yet to see before, specimens were traded around like stamps, each flower had its own particular fascination and worth to the beholder. Bicknell spread dried plants all over the world in correspondence with a variety of influential botanists, a dedicated writer his commitment to communicating with his friends, family and contemporaries can be attested by the vast paper trail he left behind, such as his 700 plus archive of postcards and letters to Émile Burnat. His carefully hand illustrated notes are incredibly inspiring in a world where pen and ink correspondence feels fairly neglected (also an excellent reminder that it's always a good idea to send more postcards). 

It was wonderful to learn so much from such a passionate assortment of people about a man whom otherwise I would probably have never come across. I particularly loved the fact that Bicknell preferred wild flowers over cultivated ones, one book he owned was called 'the triumph of the dandelion', and I think the title says a lot about the optimistic spirit of this adventurous botanist.  

Graham Avery ended by telling us all the best places to visit Bicknell’s work. For those interested they are as follows: Biblioteca Bicknell (Bordighera), Musee des Merveilles (Tende), and Val Fontanalba. They've all certainly made it on to my ever growing list of places to visit! 

For more information about Clarence Bicknell click here.

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Picasso and the meaning of Guernica

Robin Blake after his talk / Picasso painting

When Pablo Picasso visited Italy in 1917 he went to the Sistine Chapel. Once there he admired the Raphaels: 'Good, very good,' he observed, 'but it can be done, don’t you think?' Turning to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, he paused: 'Now this is more difficult.' Out of the astonishing 15,000 paintings Picasso produced during his lifetime, Guernica is the most powerful and well known. It is also, like Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, a work whose sheer size is part of its potency. Robin Blake started the spring season of cultural talks at the British Institute of Florence with a brilliant lecture on the painting, movingly on the same day (26 April) as that terrible massacre of the Basque town of Guernica all those years ago.

Blake began by transporting us back to the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris for which the piece was commissioned, a world of grand gestures where the Spanish Pavilion – with a beautiful statue by Alberto Sanchez,‘The Spanish People Have a Path that Leads to a Star’ – sat right next to the Nazi one. This was a time when Spanish republican art was still vibrant, and the chance to exhibit at the Biennale was an honour.

Since Picasso is quite unlike his Spanish contemporaries, Blake compares him to the Paris Surrealists with whom he worked, whose aim was to invite the viewer to be puzzled. Blake defines Picasso’s skill as one that manages to capture ‘the meeting place between the private and the mythic’. He was a master of balance, depicting, as Blake poetically puts it, ‘The harlequin and the whore / the matador and the minotaur'.

Robin Blake speaking in the Harold Acton Library 

What Picasso was able to depict in Guernica is not defiant heroism – but a fall from this: a tragedy. The job of tragedy for Picasso was to provoke fear and pity and to hold them in equilibrium. Looking back through his work, it’s clear that for Guernica he drew strongly on the bullfights of his homeland. The suffering picador’s horse is an image that tortured Picasso from a young age. ‘He saw the horse as an innocent,’ Blake notes: after all a bullfight ‘is not the horse’s fight’. What Picasso saw in the horse was pity, and with this pity he evoked fear, bringing a greater conception of tragedy to the tradition of the Spanish people. Although Picasso experimented greatly in the 1920s and 1930s, it’s possible to see an abiding theme in the horse as prey to the rampant bull. The innocent tragic figure, however distorted, pervades his work.

Blake showed us how it was this repetition of tragedy and horror, the subconscious themes of his earlier work, that Picasso drew on for Guernica. The painting is 'grounded in reality and emotion', and also 'particularly rooted in its time and place'. Through the drafts of the painting it is possible to understand the movements of Picasso’s vision and its evolution. Following the news of the bombing of April 1937 Picasso abandoned his original idea of depicting the artist’s studio for the commission, choosing instead to tackle the devastation of war head on.

Over several days he created a series of sketches; then he stretched a huge canvas and got down to work. Although he didn’t like studio assistants, his lover Dora Marr produced a series of photographs recording the stages through which the canvas developed: the tangle of bodies that appears at the feet of the horse and the bull, the sudden additions, as flames appear, then the sun. What becomes evident is that he was still working out what he was trying to do as he went along. The process of completion was a process of understanding. 

What Marr’s images also show are Picasso’s whims: at one point, very late in the process, he experiments with collage, but then rapidly discards the idea. Dora even helped adorn the central horse. Change is constant. The sun suddenly becomes a light bulb; a lamp takes the same shape as those lamps held by the concrete statues that Picasso originally intended to bracket the canvas in the pavilion. Studies of the mother and child characters develop in isolation. At one point the mother climbs a ladder clutching her child – one of Picasso’s only coloured sketches for Guernica to survive. The revolutionary fists that appear in so many of the first outlines as a central motif fade into the chaos. Violent defiance and hope through pain is eventually abandoned as pity and fear take over. Picasso comes to realise he doesn’t need revolutionary fists in order to create something truly revolutionary!

When it was finally completed the piece was ‘mind-bogglingly large’, roughly 8 by 4 metres. The canvas was rolled, wrapped, and taken to Paris. Initially it wasn’t well received: with no sickle and no promise of victory it hardly depicted the socialist-realist vision of defiance that many were hoping for. However, in a few years what had once been a local disaster was becoming a wider phenomenon: as world war broke out many cities were bombed and Guernica was on tour. Eventually it settled in MOMA in New York, where it stayed for more than thirty years, and finally gained the reputation it deserved as a great statement of pacifism and of powerful anti-war sentiment.

Half of the joy of talks like this is the proximity of speaker to audience. What would normally be a didactic process becomes one of collaboration. When Blake opened up to the floor, asking the audience what Guernica meant to them, there were some impressive answers. One person noted the importance of an isosceles triangle that structurally held the painting together, and how it gained from this. Another recalled visiting the painting the day after 9/11 and how its potency gained new and stirring connotations. Dubbed one of the most important paintings of war in the twentieth century, what is most striking about Guernica is how its meaning is far from fixed. If anything this talk confirmed that part of Guernica’s incredible sway over its viewer is its ability to constantly garner new meanings. One can’t help but feel that like Picasso’s changing sketches, the significance and meaning of Guernica is still evolving in our own troubled times. 

For more information about the cultural programme at The British Institute of Florence visit the programme here. 

Interestingly in Naples there is currently an exhibition called Picasso-Parade featuring Picasso’s work from his Italian journey in 1917. After this talk I’m certainly thinking of hopping on the train to pay his work a visit!

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