 Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Caitlin Cundell and I'm the Associate Curator and Head of Drawing, Print and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. In today's talk, the antique and print, the classical past and the visual arts in the long 18th century, our speakers will explore how print culture shaped the visual and allegorical language of neoclassicism. At the same time, they will consider Michelangelo Paragalese's drawings and popular set of prints, many of which are currently on view in Cooper Hewitt's exhibition, Mr. Paragalese's Curious Thing, Ornament in 18th century Britain. Enormous thanks to the Mark Family Foundation Endowment Fund for their support in the exhibition and our program today. If you are in the New York area, we hope you will come see the show before it closes on January 29th. There will be an in-person tour of the exhibition this Friday, January 20th, led by curator Julia Siemens, who you'll hear from today. We'll drop a link for more information about the tour in the chat. For today's program, we encourage you to use the chat box to engage with your fellow attendees. At the end of the presentation, I will open the discussion for questions for both our speakers. You can submit questions during the lecture via the Q&A icon at the bottom panel of your Zoom screen. Closed captioning is available through the CC icon. Today's program is being live streamed and recorded, and you will be able to find it on the Cooper Hewitt YouTube channel, along with other lectures. I'm truly honored to introduce our speakers today. Dr. Julia Siemens is the Assistant Curator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Prior to joining the Getty, she was Assistant Curator of Drawings, Print and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, where she curated exhibitions, including Mr. Paragalese's Curious Things. Dr. Adriano Aimanino is Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Department of History of Art at the University of Zuckingham and Program Director for the Master's Program in the Art Market and the History of Collecting. Julia will give us a brief overview of the exhibition, and then we'll hand things off to Adriano. And now over to you, Julia. Thanks, Caitlin. Give me one second to share my screen. Let me know if that didn't work for some reason. I hope you can see it. Adriano, if you can nod at me as well, let me know. Okay, great. It is with absolute delight that I speak to you about this exhibition today, which as Caitlin mentioned, I think it opened in October of last year and is on view at Cooper Hewitt through January 29, 2023. Adriano has asked me to speak for about 10 minutes, giving a brief overview of the exhibition, and I'm going to spend extra time discussing one of the show's key themes. Which is the role played by antiquity and inspiring the 18th century British works of art on view. My hope is that this will set the stage for Adriano's much more in depth look at the antique in print. But before I launch into a more detailed discussion of the exhibition, I want to take a moment to focus on the group of works that really form the core of the show, the heart of the project. And that's a set of nearly 70 large scale watercolor drawings in Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. You see some of them here on screen. There are more than a dozen on view in the exhibition, but I cannot encourage you strongly enough. Let me advance the slide, unsuccessful to go see them in person. These are fascinating, strange and tremendously fun drawings by a little known artist who nevertheless demonstrates an astonishing proficiency with the watercolor medium. He's used a fine dry brush to create decorative compositions that are bursting with color robustly modeled and which portray lively sensibility, which seems to be seek a kind of delight in mining images of the antique past defined motifs and patterns with which to enliven his contemporary world. The artist in question is Michelangelo Paragalese, an Italian artist whose date of birth is not known. He arrived in London around 1760 and seems to have remained there until his death in 1801. Perhaps the best introduction to Paragalese is his own, issued as part of an advertisement announcing his arrival in Dublin for a visit in the year 1786, in which Paragalese described himself as an artist who has long applied his attention to the ornaments of the ancients and has had for 25 years past the honor of designing and painting rooms, ceilings, staircases and ornaments for the first nobility and gentry in England. In other words, our mysterious Mr. Paragalese is a painter and ornament designer who specialized in creating neoclassical decoration for the British elite. Now the function or purpose of Cooper Hewitt's watercolor drawings is not known, but recent investigation into their close connection with a series of pen and ink print designs by the same artist in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum has made clear that Cooper Hewitt's watercolor colors are connected to the creative process behind Paragalese's best known output, which is a series of prints issued first in 1777 and added to through the rest of his life, showing ornament designs, and these closely connected prints. We can see here through the connection with the Morgan drawings belong to a single kind of creative project. We are very grateful to the Morgan Library and our colleagues there for letting us borrow a number of their drawings to put on view in the exhibition. Now I'm going to quickly move through the show, but I want to first point out the fact that the exhibition is on view in the Marx Gallery at Cooper Hewitt, which is a space that retains the original both neoclassical decoration of the Carnegie Mansion, which is Cooper Hewitt's home. And this is deliberate choice in order to call attention to the design labor that goes into creating beautiful spaces like this one. This show begins with two drawings from the Morgan Library's collection that show Paragalese designing interior ornament, not unlike the that which we find in the Marx Gallery. The drawing on the left, we actually know is connected to a project that Paragalese undertook under the famous architect Robert Adam for Sion House, a project about which Adriano is of course the expert. But this is really the first documented project that we have Paragalese working on in England in the 1760s, and nearby is an image of a room which we know he contributed to the Long Gallery or library at Sion House here in a print of the works of Robert Adam. Quickly though we move to Paragalese's print project which he began, as I said in the late 1770s, and it's a little bit too complicated to get into now but it's very clear that in creating his print series, Paragalese was in fact inspired by the Cooper Hewitt watercolors. He reworked those designs created new collages of print designs and you can see here where he's pasted together pieces of paper in order to create prints that will reflect his ideas in the Cooper Hewitt watercolors. So there's just some discussion of that design process in the exhibition, but also I'm showing you here a detail that shows some of Paragalese's little inscriptions that appear on the print designs and this for me was a really fun discovery. Because what we're looking at is Paragalese's record of where he's found his inspiration, and that is in a major encyclopedia of images of the ancient past produced in the early 18th century by a French monk called Mofaco. And you can see here that he actually has written Mofaco and annotated it on his print design. And so in realizing this, all of a sudden it became clear to me that Cooper Hewitt's watercolors in fact are almost entirely based on images found in Mofaco's encyclopedia. And so there are some examples of Mofaco on viewing the gallery as well as other places where we can see how Paragalese minds the ancient images both for whole compositional ideas but also motifs and patterns. We can see him playing particularly with color which seems to be a fascination of the artist where he explores this kind of riotous multiple candy tone color that I really admire. We can see that it's so important to him to introduce color and he's made color notes on his drawings. Here you see a detail of the Cooper Hewitt, sorry of a Morgan drawing in preparation for a Cooper Hewitt drawing where he's annotated places to, for example, leave the paper white in order to let the white shine through in reserve to create highlights, different tones to apply, as well as an annotation in the bottom right corner marking the page and book in Mofaco where he's found this great design. Here just a few more examples of the way in which he's pulled images out of this collection of compendium of antique source material. In the gallery we encourage audiences to see this transformation which takes place from the printed source material to the watercolors to reworked and more embellished designs that then ultimately become Paragalese's popular ornament prints. And it's from his advertisements for the ornament prints that we get the phrase curious things. He when encouraging people to seek out his prints describes these individual antique citations as curious things. When I talk about his selling of the prints we have a great opportunity in the gallery to see the way that these objects actually left his studio at the Morgan. There's a set of unbound wrapped sort of booklets of prints. And these came directly from Paragalese's studio it's they come with a flyer, which is a print proof in which he's explaining the pricing and how to subscribe to his proposal so it's great to imagine someone walking out of his shop holding one of these booklets of prints within the gallery we have a reproduction so that visitors can see how the prints were used by working designers here in Dublin to inspire their own projects. As well as an example of a chair, which bears Paragalese's name has nothing to do with him, but relates to the legacy of his fantastic designs, as they trickle through history since the late 18th century. I want to just finally conclude with two more works of decorative art and my on view in the gallery those examples of ceramics here flanking the fireplace and on either side of that mirror they make two very different points. On the left, we have an ancient crater, which is on view because of the connection of this wonderful ornament that runs along the base of the object, which is sometimes called a betrubian wave or running dog, which is in a version updated with a floral motif in a Paragalese drawing nearby, which then also can be found on the wall of the gallery itself. And so we wanted to help viewers see the longevity and ubiquitousness of this ancient ornament in our own experience today. And then finally, a moment where we can look at Wedgewood pottery products of the late 18th century in Britain just like Paragalese's drawings, where we can see a connection between other artists working and interested in the ancient past and Paragalese's own project. And here are the famous Portland vase copy this in a later version out of the Wedgewood studio in which Wedgewood is imitating an ancient object then in England, which Paragalese only knew from his mofa called Prince source, and so Paragalese doesn't quite understand the material of this glass base. And I think this is the place where I will pass over the lecture to Adriano, who I think starts with this object and his lecture. So I hope we'll turn now to him. Perfect. Can you hear me. I had to relocate meanwhile. So, great. Thank you so much, Julia and excellent that you finished with that slide and maybe the audience was able to see on the Montfacon print of the Portland vase and inscription with the name of Bartoli who will be one of the heroes of my paper. So I'm trying to share my screen. Can you see my screen. Great. So I will. Perfect. So, great. So I will today I will just fall on from what Julia just just explained. And in a way I will try to analyze the much broader context in which Paragalese drawings and plates were produced. So by outlining a phenomenon that characterize European visual and intellectual culture in the long 18th century as the title of the paper suggests. And this phenomenon is the reception of ancient and mostly Roman reliefs freezes sarcophagi wall paintings vases gems and coins through the medium of print in the arts and culture of the time. So broadly speaking from the second half of the 17th century to the 1820s. So, because of this long chronological span. Today I will adopt a bird eye view to the phenomenon a bird eye approach to the phenomenon rather than focusing on a granular analysis of its details. And at the end I will try to draw some conclusions from everything that I will try to draft in the next 40 minutes or so. So in 1795. In his story a pictorica dell'italia so the history of Italian painting which can be considered in many ways the summa of Italian and in many ways also European art historiography of the age of the Enlightenment the famous antiquarian and art historians Lanzi defined the 18th century as il secolo del rame so the century of copper. And and Lanzi was here referring to that exponential growth of the printed image, whether engraved or etched and of illustrated publication that characterize of course the age of the Enlightenment. This is really a result of the stress posed by the scientific revolution and the culture of the Enlightenment on visual evidence and communication as the major factor in the progression of knowledge and in the study and classification of the world. So, in this sense, the ACME and as it were the symbol of the sprint culture of the 18th century is really are really the 11 volumes of plates which were published between 1762 and 1772 to a company, of course, did a role and so an enormous enterprise that lasted for 10 years and I'm showing you the plate for gravure so engraving because of the subject of today's lecture. So if encyclopedias, dictionaries, natural history books, technical treatises, art treatises so an exponential growth in their illustration. And this is also the case for antiquarian publications that dealt with the classical past. So I'm showing you here just a selection of some of the most famous antiquarian publications of the period that illustrated all sort of different objects from the past from reliefs to intaglios and cameos to and this is more for Julia, the publication, the antiquite explique that was just mentioned by Julia, where he select all sorts of artifact from the antique dividing them by subject rather than by typology, but also wall painting and paintings in general and vases. Many of the publications that you should whether you see here today are selected from the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum and in general I will try to show you many objects from the Cooper Hewitt collections but the same exercise could be done with most collections of drawings, and artworks in the western world. I've also put together this collage of engravings and etchings just to show you also the sheer beauty of some of these antiquarian publications, a subject that too often is considered to be terribly boring but obviously it is not. So if ancient reliefs, sarcophagi, vases, gems, and coins had already acted as a great source of inspiration for Renaissance artists, at least from Brunelleschi, Masaccio, and Ghiberti onwards, or at least from the early 15th century onwards, and if some of them had been already published from the 16th century onwards, I'm thinking for instance at that great visual encyclopedia of antiquity that is La Frerie Speculum Romane Magnificenser, which is published in different dates from more or less from the middle of the 16th century onwards, it was only from the second half of the 17th century and up to 1820, 1825 more or less that a selected number of these artworks was canonized, interpreted, and diffused throughout Europe thanks to a series of antiquarian publications. And if the impact of publication dealing with full statues in the round, so I'm talking about the Apunlo Belvedere, the Lacombe, the Venus de Medici for instance, if the impact of this publication on the arts of the period and on the study and classification of classical statuary has been studied thoroughly, an overall study, an holistic approach to the reception of these images and their immense impact on European visual and intellectual culture in the 18th century is still lacking. So I'm talking about figurative narrative images after the antique and from now on I will call them images of the antique for the sake of conciseness. So historie, histories, these images which unlike single statues in the round offered images of action stories and compositions from classical antiquity. These antiquarian publications, these 17th century and 18th century publications were produced all over Europe, but especially the most relevant ones and the one that had a more long lasting impact on European imagery were produced by a circle of antiquarians and art historians who gravitated around the Academia di San Luca and the French Academy in Rome from 1660 onwards, more or less, who were trying to both to preserve the artistic heritage of ancient Rome in print, but at the same time to offer images of classical composition, classical proportion, classical historical narrative that could be used as models by artists in an effort to in a way reform contemporary art which was perceived by many of them were academicians as corrupted by the eccentricities of late Baroque aesthetics. By far the most influential publications were produced by the art historians, the Vasari of the 17th century, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, and the skilled draft man, engraver and antiquarian Pietro Santibartoli. Their publications, most more or less from 1666 to the end of the century, and they published together more or less 11. Publication constitute actually the largest 17th century surveys of antiquities and monuments of ancient Rome from wall paintings to gems to triumphal arches to triumphal columns, etc, etc, etc. I'm just showing you a selection of images from their publications. But by far the most important publications that they produced is the Admiranda Romana Roma Antiquitatum Vestigia, so a collection of reliefs both public and private that you could see in Rome, ancient reliefs that you could see in Rome. The Admiranda Romana Roma Antiquitatum Vestigia is really in many ways the key to understand and in many ways unlock the iconographic consistency or the lack of iconographic consistency of many decorative cycles of the 18th century. So it's really an immensely important publication and its reception was cannot be overestimated. So you see a very convenient, a very not terribly expensive repertory of narrative images of the antique. So the impact and I will go into that of this publications on the 18th century from an antiquarian artistic point of view is immense, but why, why were these images so this printed images so successful and so popular. For many reasons, and I will focus only on four reasons more or less. First and foremost, because of accessibility. So these images provide access to artworks, reliefs, gems and coins, which very often were in Rome. So you had to travel to Rome to see them. Very often they were difficult to access because in private collection, things that gems, intaglis and cameos, for instance, and sometimes were difficult to survey. I'm just showing you, for instance, a section of the forum of Nerva, the so-called Colonnaccia. They're still there in Rome today in a print by Piranesi. And if you wanted to copy, I hope you can see my cursor. If you wanted to copy the freeze of the Colonnaccia, you had to pull up a ladder, you had to go up there and very often these images and reliefs were fragmented. So accessibility, first and foremost. Second, standardization. So a process of standardization that these printed images allowed. Most of these reliefs were in uneven condition in terms of preservation, in terms of size, in terms of integrity. We know that, for instance, this section of the freeze of the Colonnaccia, looking specifically at that section here, already in the 17th century was in fragmentary condition because we have survived in drawings. While, of course, the plate of Bellori and Bartoli in the admiranda offers a wonderful, consistent, integrated two-dimensional image that can be literally used immediately as a visual reference by artists throughout Europe. In a way, they offered, you see, sort of like narrative images of the antique in the absence of ancient paintings, of famous ancient paintings. Until the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1738 and 1748, narrative ancient images, ancient painting, were very few. The famous Aldo Brandini wedding is an exception. Third, they offered an interpretation of the subject of these freezes, a very authoritative one because it was produced and provided by Bellori. You see that in the captions and the accompanying text of most of these plates, Bellori interpreted the subject of relief that were very difficult to interpret. So this is another relevant point to stress. So these images could be also used in order to be integrated in iconographical programs throughout the houses of the 18th century in Europe. Fourth point, and probably the most important one, they provided a canonized, selected group of images that became well known throughout Europe and the Republic of Letters, images that had been selected by authoritative antiquarians, whose publications, of course, were present in the libraries of patrons, artists, architects, travelers and antiquarians all over Europe. The reception of Bellori and Bartoli publication, and I'm focusing only on their publication, but there are others, especially Montfacon, for instance. Montfacon that I will get back to Montfacon in a second, whose publication has been already mentioned by Julia and me at the beginning, but I will focus on Bellori and Bartoli. So the reception of the publication is really paramount and you can trace, one can trace in many ways this reception adopting a clear set of criteria. First and foremost, the physical presence of these publications in the libraries of Europe, from the Library of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg to the Library of Louis XV and XVI, to libraries of travelers and aristocrats, to the libraries of most art academies of the 18th century. Just to give you an example, this is the book produced by Bellori and Bartoli on the Colonna Triana, on the Trajan Column, and this is the first book that entered the Library of the Royal Academy of Art in London. And as you can see here on the upper left right corner of the screen, this was donated by Sir Joshua Ringel on the 7th of January, 1769, immediately after the foundation of the Royal Academy in London. Certainly to be used as a model for young students in the composition of complex compositions and scenes of war for sure. So physical presence in the libraries of Europe. Second citation of the admiranda and in general of Bellori and Bartoli publications in the literature of the 18th century. And I'm just showing you, I mean, several typologies of publication from the 1720s to the 1820s, and from England, Germany and France. So covering exactly a pan-European spectrum in many ways. The first one is the most famous guidebook for the Grand Tourist of the 18th century. Jonathan Richardson account of some of the statue's bus reliefs, drawings and pictures in Italy. And wherever there is a famous relief that was cited in the admiranda, he certainly reports it. This is the Lonely Planet as it were of the 18th century. All our treatises and this doesn't need any introduction. Winckelmann Gesichthe, although Winckelmann was very critical towards the previous antiquarian tradition, especially the Roman antiquarian tradition. Every time that he mentioned a famous relief or a famous gem or a freeze, he quotes both the admiranda and you see also Montfacon. Or the catalogue of the Musee Royale, so of the Louvre put together by Clarac, started by Visconti and put together by Clarac. And every time a famous relief is mentioned, it is also reported whether it was engraved grave in the admiranda or not. So you see really, it's really a pan-European reception that spans the long 18th century. Third point, we can see their reception in the sketchbooks, in the artist's sketchbooks of artists travelling to Rome on their grand tour in order to round off their education in the living presence of the antique and of the old masters of the high renaissance. This is one of the wonderful sketchbooks by Jean-Louis David of the Roman sketchbook in the Getty Research Institute collection and you see that David actually literally copied verbatim the plates of the admiranda. So artists both copied the plates of the admiranda or copied the original reliefs that had been included in the admiranda. And this is an interesting phenomenon because if in the 16th and 17th century, in the first half of the 17th century, an object, a relief that had been copied several times by artists was eventually published in print because of its importance. Now the phenomenon is the opposite. The print and the authority of the print conditions the way through which the artist approach these images of the antique and report them in their sketchbook. But by far the most rewarding in a way criteria through which we can see the reception of these images of the antique and the Loren Bartoli publication in the 18th century is to see and to trace their impact on the visual arts of the age of the Enlightenment. In tracing this one can adopt two different approaches. One is to focus on the fortune of single images that have been engraved in the Loren Bartoli or in many or in Montfaco or in many other publications and trace them throughout the century. So as it were, so to speak, one can focus on the grammar of these images of the antique, but one can also see how these images were copied and interpreted in order to create a dialogue with each other in interior decoration. So focusing on the six syntax of this of the way in which these images of the antique were used and I will focus on the syntax later on. So if we approach, let's say the grammar aspect, I will focus on two example, but the same exercise can be done for a canon of more or less 100 120 120 artworks. The Borghese dancers, the most famous relief that was displayed at Villa Borghese from 1607, but then printed today's in the Louvre because was after the Treaty of Tolentine went to France and never came back, was printed in the Admiranda Romana Romantiquitat on vestigia was then reprinted by Montfacon. So in a way a print of a print a meta print that that allows for further impact and further reach European reach but you see the Montfacon. Every time he lifted the plates the Montfacon is a collection of images lifted from previous antiquarian publication. So whenever he lifts an image from the Admiranda he writes the Admiranda Romana Romantiquitat. So it's really a sort of like meta print Montfacon had an enormous circulation which in a way reverberate the impact of the Borghese center Borghese dancer to the four corners of Europe and bang their their impact on European art is phenomenal. But as I said this can be done for many, many objects from their inclusion in a ceiling by Robert Adam to a French 17th century copy to the Danish Royal Palace in Copenhagen where they used as over as freezes in the Arctic from a villa outside Warsaw and chimney piece by Belanger in Paris a house in Dublin which today is the James Joyce cultural center. A clock designed by Valadier a center table produced by the Prussian factory in Berlin several caps as Cagliola table in Florence Wedgewood a painting by by Tony Verlitz in Germany and Scotland so really upon European diffusion of these images of the antique. If you think that these reception is only limited to the decorative art. I've chosen a second example to show you their impact also on the way on the way artists really absorbed these images in their paintings and sculpture. This is the famous relief of endymion on Mount Lafmos before in the Albani collection and since the middle of the 18th century in the capital and collection is still today embedded in one of the walls of the palazzo novel was published by Bottari in his catalog of the Capital Museum, copied in red shock by Pompeo Batone in this extraordinary drawing which today is in the Eaton College library part of the top and collection and then uses as inspiration by right of Derby by Hugh Douglas Hamilton and in his young shepherd by john Gibson. As I said I could multiply this exercise by 100 more or less. So let's focus now on what is probably more interesting in any way so on the syntax of these images after the antique how these images were actually used to establish a dialogue with each other and to dialogue with other. Citations of classical sculpture and classical architecture. This type of consistent and widespread use of Prince from the Lord and Bartol in Montfacon happens for the first time in Europe in Britain from the 1720s onwards. I found the first citation from the Logan Bartol in relief in the Berlin castle in 1680 but that it's more an isolated case while actually in Britain from the 1720 you have a widespread use of them. This is because a new ruling class that had emerged from the glorious revolution of 1688 identified itself with the senatorial class of of ancient Rome in the age of Augustus. And hence embraced classicism wholeheartedly I'm generalizing here but for the sake of clarity focus on the fact that the new political elite of England and Britain in general really identified with the political elite of the Augustan age. So this type of of classicistic of classical use of sources then will spread all over Europe, wherever a new ruling elite or a royal family wish to support they claim their claim to power by referring to the political authority and the cultural authority of ancient Rome. A phenomenon that is known by the historians from a larger perspective as translazio imperi and translazio studi so a transfer of this political authority and study and culture of ancient Rome to the new powers in this case the new mega powers of northern Europe. I will focus on one image which is the famous Stone Hall at Houghton Hall, designed by William Kent for Sir Robert Walpole, the fact prime minister of England in the first half of the 18th century. And among a full size bronze copy of the Lacón by Girardin, busts of Roman emperors, porphyry vases and citation of classical architecture we find a consistent use of reliefs sculpted by Reisbrach relief that are based on the engravings in the admiral Romano Antiquitatum vestige. If we look at the opposite side we see how in detail how this syntax worked, because what is important to stress here is that these images very often were used in a purely ornamental way as a generic reference to the antique. But if the patron was educated enough, if he or she, because there are many female patrons as well, had been on a grand tour, if they belonged to antiquarian society, if they owned an antiquarian library, the sources were used also to create consistent iconographical problems. So here behind the bust of Robert Walpole, portrayed by Reisbrach as a Roman hero with the paludamentum fastened on the shoulder with a clasp, we have a relief by Reisbrach, which works as an ornamental, which copies one of the roundels of the Arch of Constantine through the engraving in Belloi and Bartoli at Miranda. And you see that of course the medium is the print because the image is in reverse. You see that the veil image, so the sacrifying figure is to the left while in the original is to the right. So a clear indication that of course this is copied through the printed image in reverse rather than from a drawing of the original. Because in the 18th century, English holes in country houses or urban palaces became progressively associated with the atrium of ancient Roman houses. And because many ancient Britain sources like Vitruvius Cleany described how the ancient Romans displayed in their atria, so in their atriums, the moral strength, the piety of the family through images of the ancestors through military trophies to images that refer to sacrifices and piety. So the new Roman senators of the age of Robert Walpole portrayed a similar set of objects and references to piety and moral strengths, images of themselves and of acquaintances, busts of acquaintances, family members and ancient Roman emperors, but also images of referring to piety and moral strengths. Because these roundels had been interpreted by Bellore as the sacrifices of the Emperor Trajans, sacrifices to the gods, Diana, Paul, Lo Hercules, before he went into battle or into hunting. So you see basically the importance of this phenomenon is goes well beyond the ornamental use of these images in the sense that actually in the previous decorative cycles of the age of the Baroque, if you wanted to convey the idea of piety, you would have probably showed the three theological virtues or the allegory of temperance or the allegory of prudence and piety. Images and allegories lifted from the pages of Cesarehipa iconology or similar publications, while now the same concept and the same program is evoked through reference to real ancient images. So to ancient Roman values rather than modern Catholic Roman values and this is very, this is very valid for a Protestant country like Britain. So these images of the antique really constitute in many ways the building blocks of European classicism of the 18th century, and they really signal the drastic change in European iconography, allegorical language and taste. The same I'm just showing you other use of images of sacrifices as over mantles in many halls of Britain in the 18th century. Also, all of these sacrifices involve the pouring of the blood of the victims on an altar with fire so conveniently located according to the law of the column above. All this stimuli and this classical culture, which is very widespread also in the Rome of the 1730s and 40s and 50s, but I focused only on Britain, really converged in the Rome of the 1750s. A Rome that in the 1750s really became the academy of Europe where you could meet Clarissot, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Robert Adam, Winkleman, Cardinal Albani, all of them meeting each other and establishing a dialogue that eventually contributed to the foundation of a new taste and a new aesthetic. A new aesthetic that today we call anachronistically new classes, but was called then the true style of antique architecture, antique sculpture and antique decoration. The most important figure by far, together with Piranesi, of course, and their lives are absolutely intertwined in the definition of this new true style of antique decoration, which he was a very good self promoter, Robert Adam. That he found through a careful search into the purest source of antiquity is the Scottish architect Robert Adam, who spent four years in Rome on his grant work between 1754 and 1758. Adam in Rome assembled a huge paper museum, a paper museum that involved prints from the Lorian Bartoli drawings from Montfacon, from K. Luce, Mariette, Stosch, et cetera, et cetera, but also whenever an image and an ancient relief or a wall painting. This is lifted from the, of course, from the lodge in the Vatican, which provided another renaissance, in this case, very good source for decoration in the ancient style, together with ancient prototypes. But whenever something had not been published in the famous publication was drawn by Adam in his assistant, so that eventually he came back to London with this huge paper museum. That could be shown to potential clients and that eventually really made his success and is really the basis for his meteoritic rise and affirmation as the most important architect of the second half of the century in Britain. What Adam could offer in a way to his clients was an imaginary recreation of the interiors of ancient Rome. Where, of course, the new senators could display their political and cultural allegiances through the show of a cultural code, all of which a multi-layered, multifaceted system of citation from ancient Roman architectural model from copies of Greek's culture. Which could be found in Rome and from, of course, all these images of the antique that we have discussed so far. So a multi-faceted reference to the antique where all these images were called to dialogue to each other. Just to give you an example, this is the home of Sion House. Sion is one of the earliest creation of Robert Adam. So it's really a laboratory for the establishment of this new true styling architecture and decoration of neoclassicism. And here you have in the hall a direct citation of a Roman basilica, citation of the Apollo Belvedere and the Dying Goal, some real statues of Roman consular figures, but also in the attic you have, again, the roundels of the Arch of Constantine. A very stark black and white, Doric, moral whole, while the vestibule is completely different and a different type of dialogue is established there. What you have to consider as well is that most of Adam's patrons, but this is true for most of this neoclassical interior strut, Europe, owned many of these antiquarian publications on which the decoration was based in the library. So they created very sophisticated architectural interiors in which that included in themselves the sources of their own compositional logic and decorative principles. So that, in a way, these antiquarian books could be easily lifted from the library and shown to the visitors, many of which had been on their own, many of which could, in a way, share and start a dialogue in front of this reference to the antique. And to classical Rome. So this is just a collection of images from Sion House where I just opposed the print to the grizzile, to the lunettes, to the painting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If the sources used by Robert Adam are mostly still in the 1760s and 1770s, the publication by Bellore and Bartoli and Mufakon, step by step from the 1760s onwards, a new canon of images after the antique started to appear, especially after the discovery of Pompeii and Herculane, publication the focus on ancient wall paintings on vases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So a new canon that does not replace the success of Bellore, Bartoli and Mufakon, but integrates and is very often quoted in order to show that you were up to date with the latest archaeological discoveries and the latest antiquarian publication. I will just focus on one publication here, the famous Antiquità d'Hercolano Esposte, so the antiquity of Herculane, explained, which was published by the Royal Printing Press in Naples from 1757 in eight volumes from 1757 onwards, and that diffused throughout Europe the knowledge of the wall painting and the objects found at Herculane. And so Pompeii here in Sionaus is one of, if not the earliest citation from one of the plates of the Antiquità d'Hercolano Esposte. I will show you just. I would like to say as well that most of these antiquarian publications have been scanned and digitized in the last 20 years, mainly by the Getty Research Institute. So if you type on Google the title of any of these antiquarian publication and then you put Archive, which is the site, Archive.org is a wonderful site where you can find most of this digitized version. You will access all of these extraordinary 18th century works online. I will show you just another image from the Antiquità d'Hercolano Esposte, probably the most famous of all of them, the Cupid cellar, which we became an iconic image of the antique throughout Europe. Here is a design for a fabric, French fabric design in the Cooper Hewitt Museum where the Cupid cellar is associated with other reference from the antique. So at this time, from the 17th century, 1770 onwards, the syntax of this citation of images from the antique becomes more and more complex and elaborated and inserts individual images in more complex ornamental pattern. We should not fail to mention also caused the publications by Piranesi and Robert Adam, which offered not only reference to single antique objects, I will focus now, focus now only on these images of two satires, sacrificing a goat on an altar, which was embedded by Piranesi in a chimney piece, which is today a barely house in England. So Adam and Piranesi could, because I will get back to that in a few seconds, but I'm about to conclude. So Adam and Piranesi could offer both the grammar and the syntax of this language by embedding reference to single objects in more complex decorative schemes and the impact of their publications is paramount. I'm just showing you, for instance, Verlitz Palace in the south, where some of the decorative schemes are literally lifted from Robert Adam plates. There is also a reference, of course, to Raphael de la Madame, which is used as the most accurate Renaissance recreation of an ancient decorative schemes, but then still in the panels we have a citation of the Palladis Artes from the Forum of Nerba, that we saw already in the plates of Bellori and Barton. So it is in this context that Michelangelo Pergolesi produced his designs for various ornaments, which became in itself one of the most widespread sources for decoration between the late 18th century and the early 19th century. You see that what Pergolesi is doing is really basically to offer ornamental schemes and referring, again, as Julia has clearly pointed out, to ancient gems, coins, vases and reliefs that had been published both by Bellori and Barton, but also by Montfacon. And I'm just focusing on basically the same drawing that was shown by Julia by showing you that some of the cameos were literally lifted from publications by Bellori and Barton. This is a publication on the gems of Agostini, which was then reprinted by Montfacon. And we saw exactly the same image in the Cimni piece by Piranesi, a few slides before, but also, of course, a reference to the most famous vases surviving, cameo vases, surviving from classical antiquity, the Portland vases, which was before in the Barberini collection, then the Duchess of Portland collection, and today is in the British Museum collection. These had been engraved by Bellori and Bartoli, reprinted by Montfacon, and the impact of this on the 18th century is enormous. Here we see a wedge wood replica of the Portland vase, but you see that Piranesi is very inventive, because he's turning a cameo vase, which he knew only through probably the prints of Bellori, Bartoli and Montfacon into an ancient Greek vase, or what they thought at the time, a Traskin vase, many of which had been produced and published by Dan Carville and Hamilton in a famous publication of the 1760s. So, what general consideration, and I'm concluding, what general consideration can we draw from all this? What was the impact of the century of Coppa in the reception of the images of the antique and on the reception of the classical tradition in general? I'm showing you here one of the copper plates from Piranesi, Antiquità Romana, they're all preserved in the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome. So, the impact was very complex and can be approached from many different points of view, but it will focus mostly on three aspects. Starting from a detail in a way, we could say that the Bellorian project, as it were, so the project of reforming contemporary art based on classical models really blossomed only in the 18th century after Bellori's death, when a more fertile ground for the establishment of a classical aesthetic was established. So, the 18th century can be understood in many ways, this classical reception of images of the antique can be really understood in many ways as the end result of the Bellorian project, something that still needs to be in many ways considered. Secondly, and more generally, we can say that the process of standardization and reproduction of canonical ancient models through print is the result of the aesthetic of academic classicism, an aesthetic that privileged the imitation of ancient canonical sources, so in technical term imitatio, the imitative rhetoric of classicism over the inventiveness of individual artists, an inventiveness that could lead to eccentricities and errors, so imitatio. So, it is in many ways, if you consider these are virtues or a vicious circle, depending on your point of view, where an aesthetic that supports reproduction is in itself cemented to reproduction and through the printed image. Third point from an even more general point of view, one could argue that this democratization and diffusion of the antique that was allowed by these prints, by these images, and access to the antique that was absolutely unknown to previous centuries, and now it's very fashionable to say that the culture of the Grand Tour and the culture of classicism of the 18th century is an elite culture, of course it was an elite culture, but compared to the 15th, 16th and 17th century, was a culture that was much more widespread in all different classes in the 18th century and really shared by the European Republic of Letters, was in a way can be understood from the lens of the social historians as a minimum common denominator that allowed for the dialogue between different classes in the pan-European Republic of Letters, so we should always try to understand this phenomenon in its own context. So this democratization of the antique is many in many ways a paradox, because on the one hand this diffusion was supported by the principles of the European Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters, the principles of classification, clear taxonomy, visual evidence, diffusion and circulation. However, this very same culture promoted a critical approach to established cultural structures and certainly to the principle of authority and the image that they generated can in many ways be considered a swung song of classicism and of the reception of the classical tradition in the early modern period. As the century of copper promoted on access to classical images unseen before, but at the same time undermined the claims of academic classicism, the classical and academic principles, opening up the aesthetic field to alternatives and to the revival of different pasts, such as the Gothic for instance, which led to that historicism and eclecticism in taste that became dominant in the 19th century, so really this diffusion of images is in a way one of the most important elements of the visual culture of the 18th century, but because of its diffusion really leads to a new taste, a new styles and a new aesthetic that will become prevalent in the 19th century. Thank you very much. I hope I didn't overrun too much. Yeah, 42 minutes. Thank you so much for that extraordinary talk and Julia for the wonderful introduction to the exhibition. Just a brief moment for questions. So I'm going to ask one that brings us back to Paragalese if that's all right. Both of you showed us this remarkable moment for Paragalese watercolor where he copies the Portland vase and misunderstands thinking it's in the Etruscan style. And Adriano, you took us all the way back so we understood that that comes from Etruscan Bartoli to Mont-Falcon, this idea of the meta print and Paragalese sort of drawing on that and then later turning it into his own print series. One of the things that I see multiple people are struck by is the idea of the color in Paragalese's watercolors and he's being very specific in his understanding of antiquarian color. I don't know if you could both talk about what Paragalese's other colors are. I know Julia used the word riotous to talk about how vivid they are. And if that's sort of typical of this new neoclassicism that Adriano you sort of carried us through in the long 18th century or from what you need to Paragalese. I think Julia should start. Adriano question just in the sense that I know that he's done a lot of work on the Robert Adam drawings and the drawings collected by Robert Adam that were in England and available for study at the moment. In particular, hired Italian collaborators who he knew had some or he believed had some kind of access to looking at ancient Roman painting but there was also a resource in England at the time of drawings after the antique that had a lot of color. It's not quite Paragalese's colors, but have a similar kind of feeling and I think Adriano, the top of the collection in particular is a key resource area right so they were certainly looking at drawings after the antique that were in England at the time right. Definitely and also Adam was very much interested in this something that you really see in Adam and not before what you see in British decoration but also European decoration really the Brits led the way but then as you've seen this became a pan European paste. This reference in the first half of the 18th century are mostly in grisaille or in black and white. The Stone Hall of Houghton is a very good example in that sense and Adam really introduced color variety contradictions and what he called the picturesque in architecture. So that you move from one room to the other and each room had a different plan, a different elevation, a different section, different colors, different materials, different reference to different typologies and models in architecture and sculpture and decoration. So he's very keen on color because of course this type of color, this vibrancy, which was absolutely unknown to basically the patrons of the first half of the 18th century could then be replicated in his creations, many of which were brightly colored. So he's one of the first who actually, William Kent does the same but Adam capitalizes on William Kent and then provides a much more in a way colorful type of architecture. He uses exactly these wonderful drawings in the Topham collection for instance which were at Eton already in the 18th century, which were commissioned by this antiquarian called Richard Topham and they were all executed in Roman ship to England. But also he wanted his collaborators like Brunias, Manocchi, Pergolesi, Richards, etc, etc to produce a lot of drawings with vibrant colors so that they could start thinking in colorful terms about composition. In the Sohn Museum there are some Pergolesi drawings, some Brunias drawings, there's a wonderful album of Brunias drawings at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and there are some of these Manocchi drawings, I don't have any of them here but they are absolutely pop. They are completely, it's like neoclassicism on speed, so you can imagine it's like this sort of like decorative elements with really vibrant purple bright yellow colors that were produced by Manocchi for Robert Adam. It's a great point and I'll just add that Manocchi, Brunias, these other people that Adriano is mentioning are collaborators from Italy who worked in England in the Robert Adam studio so this idea of bringing Italian intellects, artists, skilled workers to Italy to collaborate on to England to collaborate on British projects is really important and Pergolesi is a key figure in that group. There's a great way in which these colors are both rooted in the antique but the antique also provides an opportunity for these artists to let their fantasy goes go totally wild in their projects. Thank you to another one of the questions from our audience who asked what it would have been like for Pergolesi and other Italian immigrants working in London trying to compete with as she established local fitters like Adam, can either of you speak a little bit more to that. I have a little bit just a sort of biographical information about Pergolesi specifically which is that he really became part of a group a community of Italian artists who supported each other and he lived in a neighborhood, Golden Square in London where other Italian immigrants lived there was a whole community that seems to have you know supported each other and work together, but certainly they were the lower level below far far below Adam and the other William chambers and the other major architects were producing the classical buildings. But there was always a hunger for their skill set. I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Exactly is exactly this and also remember that Adam called them my mermidons sorry was very possessive with his with his collaborators. And he made them sign a contract by which they could not draw for anyone else, not only for their own personal pleasure, while, while working for the Adam office. And probably, as well as Brunias, as well as many of them started to create their own as Richard son is another important figure started to create the wrong publication and creation once they had left the Adam office but in terms of so there's no competition without them they worked for him, if you see what I mean so as Julia said is quite a hierarchical structure of architectural offices. The architect or the architects, and then the draft man working for them. Very often, the architect would have provided the initial sketch and then they were supposed to finish it and create finished drawing presentation drawings, etc, etc. I know a few attendees have to leave but since we have so many questions, I'll ask to keep you here for just a few more minutes. You sort of have a follow up question about the color so there's a question is the use of color and paralyzed these drawings and other contemporary drawings after the antique was it widely reproduced in print. Was it equally experienced through print or more restricted to the private spaces of the interiors or just the drawings themselves. I will only just say that one of the great things about those advertisements in which pergolasie tries to convince people to buy his prints one of the things he says is that they are perfectly fit for coloring. So the idea is that people could also purchase the prints and perhaps as a genteel artistic activity color in as according to their own imagination and there are still a number of colored prints that show up. You can buy them on eBay. I haven't found anything that match exactly his own watercolors and we don't really understand why he spent so much time coloring the watercolors only then you know to move to a print production I don't quite understand that. But there was an interest in capturing that color also for the private collector and perhaps the private collector might actually pay an artist to color his prints I'm not sure if you've seen that Adriano. Whereas the private sphere and and interior decorations certainly lots of people had colorful homes. I'm sure. And the general tendency of I'm thinking actually. No no you're right I never thought about this actually this is a very good question. Different publications were of course producing black and white so the engraved great plate is in black and white. But increasingly from the 1717 60s onwards this black and white engravings could be colored. So we see for instance. A very widespread diffusion of color plates from Hamilton vases from Miri. The Stigia. Sorry from Miri plates for the double sour which was taught by them to be the bath of Titus. One of which is in the Cooper unit museum and I showed it in my in my collection of plates at the beginning. And then many others so some of these publications could be circulated in black and white but also colored if you were willing to pay. A lot of money but also some of this publication like Hamilton vases were actually produced in black and white but then circulated already colored. In fact they are incredibly expensive to buy even today but they were incredibly expensive to buy back then. But it's true this is the value of color and the importance of color in these images of the antique is really something that you start to see from the 1760s onwards I would say probably because is that element that the print lacked until then and the discovery of the whole paintings of companion colonium trigger trigger the new interest in of course the colors of antiquity. Also the vases of course. I'll pivot. I'm going to give one question each to you and then we'll wrap up. Adriano, you received a question about your final point in your lecture. And was asking for clarification. Does that mean that the democratization and accessibility of prints that you talked about led to a saturation and possibly a boredom and a desire to look for new tastes such as the Gothic. Well it's a very, very, very complex phenomenon that I could only just sketch. I would say that. And I'm generalizing here so I raise my hand. I would say that if the classical tradition and the reception of the classical tradition. had worked as the most potent stimuli for invention and artistic creativeness in the 1560 and 17th century by the 18th century, exactly because of this canonization of taste that was supported especially by the European academies, not everybody and not all academies by the majority of academies. Certainly they become canonical models, they become canonical models that young artists were supported to copy for years and years just to give an example. The young artists joined the Royal Academy in London in 1769, for instance, they were supposed to spend at least four years in the so called school of the antique. So in a room where they would have copied classical statues and classical reliefs in order to train their eye on ideal beauty and on the classical ideal. Only after five years they were upset they were admitted to copy of the live model. So to the school of nature, where they could draw of course the human figure in all its imperfections. Right, but having been trained for five years on the classical ideal they were supposed to correct the human imperfection of the live model against everything that they had learned in the previous five years as you can imagine a curriculum like that can only create opposition and a search for new models, for new stimuli and for new sources for creativity. We know that many artists in the academies of Europe started to rebel against this type of curriculum already by the end of the 18th century. And then you have of course the romantic revolution if this term has still any value where of course the reference to a classical past are very often abandoned in favor of really different set of value so yes definitely the standardization the canonization will dilute and will make canonical something that before was a source of creative inventiveness I would say. Thank you so much. Well, as you say it's quite a complex question but I think that was a wonderful, wonderful beginning. Julia, I'm going to ask you to conclude with a very specific question which is we are asked if you know anything more you can share about the provenance of how particularly these drawings and prints came to both Cooper Hewitt and to the Morgan. I do actually I know a little bit it's just a crumb that came out of research. I think that. So the Cooper Hewitt drawings like the Morgan drawings were bound in an album previously they they traveled together as a group and then have since been taken out of those 19th century albums. And we know that I think both sets of drawings were snapped up at sales in England in the late 1880s. The Cooper Hewitt drawings then probably were given to the museum in the early 20th century. But both and Morgan in fact, I think the drawings actually date back to early in the Morgan collection as well. I don't know from before the late 19th century and I wonder whether perhaps they somehow stayed within a shop of some kind we know that prints were still made after Pegalizes drawings after his death. And so certainly they were kept and treasured by his community in some way, and then they disappear off the radar there in England, until being purchased at auction in the late 1800s. And I'll just say that one great nugget is that once I had realized that so much of our drawings come from Malfa call it was very satisfying to see that in the 1880s a description of the drawings as Pegalizes drawings after Malfa We know what we're looking at here. Anyway, so they came from England around 100 years ago. Well, I'm going to cut it off there, but I want to say a huge thank you to Adriano and to Julia. Thank you to all of our attendees for joining us virtually. For those of you who can be there in person on Friday, Julia be giving a tour at 1pm. The exhibition closes on January 29. Thank you again to our extraordinary speakers. Thank you.