museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
III. Aquamanile, by a member of the Gronau family, Gdansk, Poland, c. 1650. Silver, 30 by 18 by 27 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Ralph Harmon Booth Bequest Fund, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, and funds from Friends of Polish Art, 1989.66. This silver aquamanile takes the form of a rampant lion, on whose back sits a winged Amor armed with bow and arrow and symbolising love triumphant. By the mid-seventeenth century, the aquamanile had ceased to be merely a practical utensil fashioned of base metals and had become a vehicle for the silversmith's art. This example displays the fantasy and brio characteristic of Gdansk, the pre-eminent silversmithing centre in seventeenth-century Poland, together with a baroque love of allegory.
Attributed works:
V. Head of a youth or an angel, attributed to Bartolomeo Bellano. c. 1460-70. Bronze, 15.5 by 12 by 13 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and City of Detroit purchase, gifts of Robert H. Tannahill, Mr and Mrs Keith Davis, K. T. Keller, Mr and Mrs Sol Shaye, Arthur H. Nixon, Mr and Mrs Russell McLaughlin, Mr and Mrs James Holden, Lillian B. Anderson, Dr Robert W. Gillman, and Francis Delehant, by exchange, 1992.42. This head is probably a fragment from a complete figure or monument. Since its discovery in an English private collection in 1991, the bronze has been associated with the circle of Donatello; recently scientific and scholarly evidence has pointed to the northern Italian sculptor closest to Donatello, Bartolomeo Bellano, working in Padua in the 1460s. This is the first Quattrocento northern Italian humanistic bronze to enter the museum's otherwise comprehensive Italian sculpture collection.
Attributed works:
VI. Bust of Ottaviano Acciaiuoli, by Ercole Ferrata. c. 1659. Terracotta, 67.9 cm. high. Founders Society Purchase, the Jennifer C. Stoddard Foundation, the General Membership Fund, with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts; gifts from Edsel B. Ford, Julius Goldschmidt, the Italian-American Citizens of Detroit, the Estate of W. Hawkins Ferry, Cameron D. Waterman, Miss Alma L'Hommedieu, City of Detroit Purchase, by exchange, 1998.58. This terracotta is the preparatory model for the over life-size marble bust commissioned for the tomb monument of Ottaviano Acciaiuoli (d.1659), in S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Florentine church in Rome. Acciaiuoli, a member of a prominent Florentine banking family and a senator in Rome, wears the costume of a distinguished public figure, including the lawyer's robe. The exceptional freshness and originality of the modelling and the historical significance of the sitter and the monument place this work at the zenith of the museum's Italian baroque sculpture collection.
Attributed works:
VII. Bust of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Giovanni Bandini. c. 1572. Marble, 83 by 73 by 32 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 1994.1. The Florentine Giovanni Bandini carved this over life-size bust after Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-74) was created Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1570. In this official image, Cosimo wears the guise of a Roman military hero: a mantle, or paludamentum, draped over an antique cuirass. The portrait, however, is veristic rather than idealising, depicting the grand duke in his maturity with receding hairline and wrinkled forehead. This bust will be featured in the exhibition The Legacy of Michelangelo: The Medici and Late Renaissance Art in Florence, to be held in Florence, Detroit and Chicago in 2002-03.
Attributed works:
X. Antiope and Jupiter as a satyr, by Ignaz Elhafen. c.1690. Ivory, 12.7 by 11.4 by 2.2 cm. Gift of Mr and Mrs Gordon L. Stewart, 1996.26. One of the foremost ivory carvers in Germany during the baroque period, Elhafen worked in Rome and Vienna before becoming a court artist to the Palatine Elector Johann Wilhelm in Düsseldorf. Elhafen excelled at ivory relief renditions of master paintings, either reproducing the entire composition or selectively borrowing from them to create inventive new works. This mythological scene, based on an engraving after a painting by Joseph Heintz, depicts the nymph Antiope and Jupiter in the guise of a satyr, seated beneath a tree overgrown with grapevines and with Cupid asleep at their feet.
Attributed works:
XII. Perseus and Andromeda, by Joseph Chinard. c. 1786. Terracotta, 84 cm high. Founders Society Purchase, Joseph M. de Grimme Memorial Fund, Joseph H. Parsons Fund, Ralph Harman Booth Bequest Fund, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts General Fund, and funds from Mr and Mrs Randolph J. Agley; with gifts from John L. Booth, Mrs Frances G. Boynton, Mrs William Clay, Mr and Mrs Edsel B. Ford, Lillian Henkel Haass, Mrs Allan Shelden, Harry G. Sperling, Robert H. Tannahill, Virginia Booth Vogel, Mr and Mrs Edgar B. Whitcomb, City of Detroit Purchase, by exchange, 1996.32. This terracotta group is the artist's own reproduction of his original version, for which he won first prize in a competition held at the Academy of St Luke in Rome in 1786. Following his return to Lyon, Chinard completed this exact replica, adding a drum-shaped base decorated with low reliefs of the marriage of Perseus and Andromeda and figures of Minerva, a Nereid, Cassiopeia, Fame, and Victory. Chinard specialised in elegant, finely detailed terracotta sculpture like this group, intended as works in their own right, rather than merely models for bronze casts or marbles.
Attributed works:
XIII. Vase with cover, Doccia Porcelain Manufactory, Florence, c. 1748-50. Modelled by Gaspero Bruschi after a wax by Massimiliano Soldani. White Doccia porcelain, 60 by 34.3 by 21 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 1990.245. In 1990 the Detroit Institute of Arts acquired an important private collection of twenty-three Doccia porcelain sculptures and plaques dating between 1745 and 1755. The most magnificent is this monumental vase designed by Gaspero Bruschi, the factory's artistic director. Bruschi loosely based this unique work on a slightly earlier pair of wax models of vases by Massimiliano Soldani, then in the collection of Doccia's patron Carlo Ginori. Founded by Ginori in the mid-1730s, the Doccia factory mastered the technical challenges of porcelain sculpture early in its history, a period now known as the 'glorious years'.
Attributed works:
XIV. The boar hunt, Vincennes Manufactory, France, c.1751. Modelled by Jean Chabry. Soft-paste porcelain, 16.5 by 21.1 by 31.8 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund; gifts from W. Hawkins Ferry, Henry Ford II, Mr and Mrs James Whitcomb, John L. Booth, Mrs Ralph Harman Booth, Mr and Mrs Edgar B. Whitcomb, Mrs Russell Alger, Henry Goldman, Mrs Walter O. Briggs, and Mr and Mrs Trent McMath, by exchange, 1993.64. This is one of a pair of groups acquired by Detroit, the other showing an imaginary hyena hunt. The sculptor provided Vincennes with terracotta models for them in November 1750, basing the compositions on paintings by Jean-Baptiste Oudry and, very likely, a direct study of the wild animals at the royal Menagerie at Versailles. Despite their realism and violence, the groups were almost certainly destined for the banquet table, where they would have formed part of the elaborate decorations for the dessert course.
Attributed works:
XIX. Tapestry: The rape of Proserpine, Beauvais Manufactory, France, c. 1755-70, after a cartoon by François Boucher, c.1748. Wool and silk, 370 by 310 cm. Founders Society Purchase, with funds from Mr and Mrs Gilbert Silverman, Mr and Mrs Anthony Soave, and Mr and Mrs Stanford C. Stoddard, 1999.1387. The Rape of Proserpine is one of nine mythological subjects from the Beauvais tapestry series Les amours des dieux, designed by François Boucher between 1747 and 1751. Of all the subjects, the Rape of Prosperpine is among the rarest, documented as being woven on only seven occasions. This particular tapestry may belong to the sixth royal set, ordered by Louis XV in 1766-68; at top centre is an oval patch of later weaving, presumably added to replace a coat of arms.
Attributed works:
XV. Napoleon I, Sèvres Manufactory, France, 1810, after a model by Antoine-Denis Chaudet. Hard-paste biscuit porcelain, 51.5 cm. high. Founders Society Purchase, with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Mr and Mrs Stanford C. Stoddard, Mrs Jennifer C. Stoddard; gifts from Lauretta R. Boell, Miss Alma L'Hommedieu, Mrs Orren Scotten, Mr and Mrs Edgar B. Whitcomb, City of Detroit Purchase, by exchange, 1997.8. The Sèvres Manufactory produced biscuit porcelain busts of Napoleon beginning in 1805, based on a marble portrait by Antoine-Denis Chaudet; only five are known in this larger size. The busts, which align Napoleon with imperial Rome by endowing him with the idealised features of Augustan portraiture, are potent expressions of the emperor's assiduous promotion of his self-image through all branches of the arts.
Attributed works:
XVI. Mlle Charlotte Meissonier, by Vincenzo Gemito. c.1880. Terracotta, 41.5 by 31.5 by 21 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 1995.31. Charlotte Meissonier was the granddaughter of Ernest Meissonier, the Parisian realist painter and a close friend of the Neapolitan-born sculptor Gemito who worked in Paris between 1877 and 1880. This terracotta, executed within a year of Charlotte's birth in 1879, exemplifies Gemito's intimate portraits of children. Wearing a wide lace-trimmed collar, Charlotte is caught in a natural restless movement, the sensitive modelling of her face capturing the soft features of babyhood. This terracotta portrait is the only example by Gemito in a museum collection outside Italy.
Attributed works:
XVII. Tea and coffee set (tête-à-tête), Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, Vienna, c. 1799-1804. Hard-paste porcelain with coloured enamel decoration and gilding, tray 41.3 by 33 cm. Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, 1988.69. This breakfast set is decorated with exquisitely detailed miniatures of the grounds of Pavlovsk, the imperial summer palace outside St Petersburg. The sugar bowl bears the gilt cypher 'JAP', the monograms of Archduke Joseph of Austria and his wife, Archduchess Alexandra Pavlovna, the daughter of Czar Paul I. The set may have been a presentation gift to mark the Austro-Russian Alliance in 1804 or else a remembrance present to Alexandra's mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna, after Alexandra's death in childbirth in 1801.
Attributed works:
XVIII. Ewer and basin, Chantilly Manufactory, France, c. 1735-40. Tin-glazed soft-paste porcelain with polychrome enamel decoration and silver mounts, ewer 18.4 cm. high. Founders Society Purchase, with funds from the Jennifer C. Stoddard Foundation, Mr and Mrs Stanford C. Stoddard, and the Stoddard Family Foundation, 1995.70.1-2. This rare octagonal ewer and matching lobed basin date from the early years of Chantilly's production, c. 1735-40. Although the forms derive from contemporary Paris silver, the painted decoration faithfully reproduces imported Japanese Kakiemon porcelains. Chantilly's patron, Louis-Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé, made his enormous collection of Kakiemon porcelain available to the factory painters, who meticulously imitated the characteristic motifs, such as banded hedges and asymmetrical flowering branches, and the bright palette of iron red, turquoise, green, and yellow.
Attributed works:
XX. Chiné velvet, Lyon, France, designed before 1770 by Camille Pernon. Silk, 203.8 by 55.9 cm. Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts in honour of Henry Grix, 1995.4. Camille Pernon, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Lyon, designed and wove this sumptuous velvet for the Prince of Asturias's new country retreat, the Casita del Principe, near the Pardo Palace, north of Madrid. This length is presumably extra metrage, not required for the wall coverings and seat furniture in the Velvet Room of the small pavilion. Extremely rare in the 18th century, chiné velvets demand a challenging and labour-intensive technique. The supplementary warps are printed in the various colours before the velvet is woven.
Attributed works:
XXI. Pickle stand, Bow Manufactory, England, c.1755. Soft-paste porcelain with bone ash, polychrome enamel decoration, 34.3 cm. high. Founders Society Purchase, with funds from Jean and Joe Hudson, Linda and John Axe, Mr and Mrs John L. Booth II, Mary Kay and Keith Crain, Maureen and Jerry P. D'Avanzo, Cynthia and Edsel Ford, Mr and Mrs Roger Fridholm, Reginald and Anne Harnett, Gerhardt and Rebecca Hein, Mrs Wilber Hadley Mack, Richard and Jane Manoogian, Mr and Mrs Richard Janes, Donald and Marilyn Ross, Susan and David Thomas, Patricia and Ted Wasson, and Robert Welchli, 1999.22. This whimsical porcelain pickle stand is formed of ten shell dishes arranged in graduating size on a base simulating an underwater accretion of rock, seaweed, sponge, and coral. Small marine shells, moulded from life and painted in a vivid Rococo palette of lilac, yellow, blue, and pink, enliven the entire form.
Attributed works:
XXIII. Seated woman, by Jean-Léon Gérôme. c. 1890-95. Marble with polychromy and wax, 43 by 35 by 35 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 1997.1. The Seated woman is an extremely rare example of Gérôme's innovative work in polychromed sculpture, a medium which experienced a revival in the nineteenth century, following the discovery of small painted figurines at the Greek city of Tanagra in 1873. Gérôme, who disliked the 'coldness of marble', tinted the skin, hair, and facial features of this figure with coloured wax, most of which is well preserved. The Seated woman is the only complete polychromed sculpture by Gérôme in an American museum collection and, until its discovery in a private collection in Paris in 1996, was known only through a painting by Gérôme, itself lost, called My portrait.
Attributed works:
XXIV. La Petite Parisienne, by Paul Gauguin. c.1881. Patinated plaster, 27.7 cm high. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 1999.59. This rare plaster sculpture, formerly in the collection of the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard, is the artist's own reproduction of his red- and black-stained wood sculpture, shown at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1881. Gauguin's interest in sculpture grew during the late 1870s and 1880s when he began experimenting with plaster, terracotta, marble, and wood. His early sculptural works often take their subject matter from Parisian street life, such as the fashionably dressed woman out for a stroll portrayed in this work.
Attributed works:
XXV. Rocking chair, by Carlo Bugatti. c.1903. Beechwood covered with vellum, water-colour and coloured pencil decoration, yellow-tinted varnish, 88.9 by 41.3 by 53.3 cm. Founders Society Purchase, John and Ella Imerman Fund, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts General Fund, 20th-Century Decorative Arts and Design Fund, Joseph H. Parsons Fund, and Ralph Harman Booth Bequest Fund, 1992.211. This streamlined chair represents a refinement of the cobra or G-shaped chair that Bugatti introduced at the International Exhibition in Turin in 1902. Like the earlier chairs, this rocking chair makes use of a cantilevered seat attached only to the front leg supports. Such chairs, with their emphasis on plastic forms, represented a revolutionary new style in furniture. Bugatti covered the wood with parchment to disguise the joints, and decorated the surface with tinted varnishes and patterns applied using colour pencil and water-colour.
Attributed works:
XXVI. Cabinet from the suite 'La Mer', by Louis Majorelle. c.1910. Oak, veneered with mahogany and exotic woods, mother-of-pearl, wrought iron mounts, 201.9 by 124.5 by 40.6 cm. Gift of Richard A. Manoogian, 1994.126. This cabinet, part of the bedroom furniture suite called La Mer, exemplifies the luxurious materials and sophisticated abstraction of naturalistic motifs employed by Louis Majorelle in Nancy. The iron hinges resemble clusters of seaweed; decorating the upper section is an underwater seascape with fish, squid, and coral pictured in various woods and mother-of-pearl. Received as a gift in 1994 following the museum's exhibition, Decorative Arts 1900, this cabinet is the first major example of art-nouveau furniture to enter the permanent collection at Detroit.
Western art unattributed:
I. Casket lid, French (Paris), c. 1340-50. Ivory, 12.8 by 24.3 cm. Founders Society Purchase, New Endowment Fund, Henry Ford II Fund, Joseph M. de Grimme Memorial Fund, Mr and Mrs Allan Shelden III Fund, Benson Ford Fund, Mr and Mrs Robert Hamilton Fund for Medieval Art, Paul Zuckerman Fund, David L. Klein, Jr. Memorial Foundation, with funds from Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman, and Margaret H. Demant in honour of Peter Barnet, 1997.6. Large ivory caskets represented the most luxurious products of the ivory workshops in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris. The carving on this lid depicts a theme prevalent in courtly romances, the Attack on the Castle of Love: at right two knights climb ladders to the ramparts and a third prepares the catapult of roses. This important ivory was acquired on the occasion of the exhibition, Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, held in Detroit and Baltimore in 1997.
Western art unattributed:
II. Lectern cover, German (Westphalia), c. 1350-1400. Linen embroidery on plain weave in three stitches: German interlacing, plaited braid and chain stitch, 69.2 by 124.8 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund with a contribution from the David L. Klein, Jr. Memorial Foundation, 1989.47. White-on-white linen embroideries, such as this rare fragment, are associated with Westphalia during the late gothic period and generally confined to ecclesiastical textiles, such as altar cloths, Lenten veils, and lectern covers. The border of this lectern cover illustrates an episode from the life of St Giles (d. c.710), who lived as a hermit in a cave near Nîmes and founded a monastery, now known as Saint-Giles-du-Gard, in Provence. Fewer than a dozen pieces of German medieval whitework survive, most in church treasuries.
Western art unattributed:
IV. Pendant to a rosary or chaplet, North French or South Netherlandish, c. 1500-25. Ivory with traces of polychromy, 7 cm. high. Founders Society Purchase, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Insurance Recovery Fund, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts General Fund, General Art Purchase Fund, Henry Ford II Fund, Mr and Mrs Robert Hamilton Fund, with contributions from Mr and Mrs Robert Hamilton and the David L. Klein Jr. Memorial Foundation, 1990.315. This miniature carving served as a memento mori. The death mask on one side is joined to a grisly skull; carved on the collarbones is the Latin inscription, 'O MORS QUAM AMARA EST MEMORIA TUA (O, Death, how bitter it is to be reminded of you)'. The horrifying realism of the death mask and the skull being eaten by worms and salamanders demonstrates the carver's masterly skill.
Western art unattributed:
IX. Table cabinet (stipo al tavolo), Florence, c. 1620. Pearwood, ebony, alabaster, pietre dure, 61 by 105.5 by 35 cm. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund; gifts from Mr and Mrs Trent McMath, Mrs Allan Shelden, Mrs William Clay Ford, Robert H. Tannahill, Mrs Ralph Harman Booth, John Lord Booth, Mr and Mrs Edgar B. Whitcomb, Mr and Mrs James S. Whitcomb, K. T. Keller, Virginia Booth Vogel, and City of Detroit Purchase, by exchange, 1994.77. Plaques in commesso, or Florentine mosaic decorate this small collector's cabinet. The Medici grand-ducal court workshop in Florence mastered the technical challenges of cutting hard stones to produce increasingly naturalistic pictorial compositions in the early seventeenth century. The plaques on the drawer fronts depict a menagerie of exotic and indigenous animals in a variety of coloured hard stones against a contrasting background of black slate (paragone). On the central door, flanked by alabaster columns, is a large plaque portraying Orpheus taming the animals with the music of his viol.
Western art unattributed:
VIII. One of two plates with scenes from the life of Jacob, by Suzanne de Court, Limoges. c. 1580-1600. Enamelled metal with polychrome and gilded decoration, 24.4 cm. diameter. Founders Society Purchase, Joseph M. de Grimme Memorial Fund, funds from A. Alfred Taubman, Gordon and Linda Stewart, John L. Booth, Sr. Memorial Fund, Alan and Marianne Schwartz; gifts from Mrs Byron C. Foy, W. Hawkins Ferry, Mr and Mrs Richard H. Webber, Mrs Russell Alger, Mr and Mrs A. D. Wilkinson, Mrs Walter O. Briggs, Mr and Mrs David B. Moreing, Mr and Mrs Ralph Harmon Booth, John Lord Booth, Mr and Mrs Edgar Whitcomb, Lillian Henkel Haass, Mrs Trent McMath, Mrs Henry Stephens, by exchange, 1995.15 and 1995.16. The two plates, acquired together in 1995, belong to a larger series illustrating scenes from the book of Genesis. Signed with the monogram of Suzanne de Court, the plates are characteristic of her œuvre, notably in the application of intense blue and green translucent enamels over gold foils and the use of opaque white enamel for the flesh tones. The principal painted scenes from the life of Jacob are based on engravings by Bernard Salomon, published in Lyon in 1553 and repeatedly used by Limoges painters into the seventeenth century.
Western art unattributed:
XI. Armchair, Venice, c. 1730-40. Gilded walnut, upholstered à chassis with a modern voided velvet, 140.5 by 86 by 88 cm. Founders Society Purchase, with funds from the Joseph M. de Grimme Memorial Fund, the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Mr and Mrs Stanford C. Stoddard, Mrs Howard J. Stoddard, and the European Decorative Arts and Sculpture Fund, 1991.132. This exuberantly carved armchair adapts the most conspicuous design elements of the European Rococo to a voluptuous form, grand in scale, ceremonial rather than functional, and ideally suited for the grand reception room of a Venetian palace. An English grand tourist acquired this chair as part of a suite of seating furniture while in Venice in the mid-eighteenth century; the chair remained in the Norfolk country house until shortly before its acquisition by Detroit in 1991.
