Hubert Robert

Статья посвящена иконографии сюжета "Вид моста сфинксов" Гюбера Робера: найдены картины с аналогичным сюжетом, рисунки, гравюры, копии подражателей, а также уточнены датировки рисунков и топография замка / The article is devoted to the iconography of the plot "View of Bridge of Sphinx" by Hubert Robert: paintings with a similar plot, drawings, engravings, copies of imitators, and the dating of the drawings and the topography of the castle

Mystery surrounds the origins of Fragonard's 'The swing', since its existence is not documented until 1782, fifteen years after it was painted. A conservation and research project undertaken at the Wallace Collection, London, has provided important new information about the painting's early history and points to the probable identity of the man who commissioned it. by yuriko jackall

Tous droits réservés © Revue d'art contemporain ETC inc., 1991 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de

H ubert robert (1733-1808) has always held sway as France's premier painter of large-scale depictions of ruins and architecture. Made primarily in the 1770s and 1780s, these paintings were intelligently designed to hang in interior settings alongside three-dimensional architectural flourishes (gilded moulding, mirrors, window treatments) and they were universally coveted by Paris's most fashionable collectors. 1 The retrospective organised by the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2016-17, demonstrated, however, that Robert was a far more versatile artist than this description suggests. Italianate landscapes, piquant genre scenes, lush gardens, even depictions of sober Revolutionary prisons on earthenware plates flowed from his brush at one moment or another. Indeed, given this breadth of talent, another question emerges: how did an artist so manifestly untrained, one lacking 'artistic personality' when he arrived in Rome as a student in 1754, 2 distinguish himself in just a few years-so much so that shortly following his return to Paris in 1765 he was hailed as one of France's leading painters? 3 In short, how did Robert become Robert? Documentation that might answer this question is sparse. 4 The son of attendants to the powerful François-Joseph II de Choiseul Beaupré, marquis de Stainville, Robert spent his teenage years studying at the elite Collège de Navarre, then in the rue de la Montagne Saint-Geneviève. For a son of servants, this was a privilege and it assured him a classical education not available to most artists. However, it also meant that his technical

Si le parterre anglais de Vaux-le-Vicomte a visiblement été conçu sur la parcelle des Jumeaux du temps de César Gabriel Choiseul Praslin, entre 1777 et 1785, c'est à Archibald MacMaster, un jardinier écossais, proche de Thomas Blakie, que Renaud César Louis de Choiseul Praslin, confie la transformation du jardin à la française en jardin romantique à partir de 1791.

Texte revu et corrigé en février 2024.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the paintings of Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine (1745-1830).

The monograph discusses works collected in the Polish and foreign museums and by private owners, examines the paintings known thanks to their pre-war photographs and reproductions, as well as introduces to the scholarship works previously listed solely in the 18th-century auction catalogs. The publication includes a detailed timeline of the artist’s life and a richly illustrated introduction to the vast body of his works seen in the context of French and Polish artistic culture of its time. The catalog was drawn by Konrad Niemira, PhD, the author of, among others, collection of essays Bazgracz. Trzy eseje o Norblinie and Honor bez egzageracji. Magnackie zakupy i świat rzeczy paryskich w XVIII wieku.

Publication supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

https://sklep.muzeumliteratury.pl/produkt/katalog-obrazow-catalogue-of-painting-jeana-pierrea-norblina-de-la-gourdaine-1745-1830/

К челябинской картине обнаружены рисунки Гюбера Робера Руанского замка (Лувр); гравюра с аналогичным сюжетом Пьетро Антонио Мартини,  выполненная с картины Гюбера Робера "Вид моста сфинксов" по заказу господина де Курмона./Hubert Robert's drawings of the Rouen Castle (Louvre) were discovered for the Chelyabinsk painting; engraving with a similar plot by Pietro Antonio Martini, made from the painting “View of the Bridge of the Sphinxes” by Hubert Robert, commissioned by M. de Courmont.

11. Là encore, je me permets de renvoyer à mes remarques en introduction du tome II de Histoire des droites en France intitulé Cultures, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1992. La mise au point la plus complète sur le sujet est celle de Serge Berstein (dir.). Les cultures politiques en France. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1999. Définitions et frontières | 27 « technique » et le phénomène « culturel ». Pour les étudier, nous nous accordons sur un nombre restreint de propositions. Proposition numéro un : le médium n'est pas donné : il est à construire. Ce n'est pas un vecteur neutre mais il n'est pas non plus le tout de la communication : l'imprimerie ne diffuse pas une idée nationale qui lui préexisterait. Proposition numéro deux : il existe une opposition centrale entre transmission et communication, objets de prédilection, respectivement, des historiens de la culture et des anthropologues. Proposition numéro trois : lorsque l'on parle de technique, il faut aller au-delà d'une approche mécaniste. L'écriture, ce ne sont pas seulement les caractères en plomb. Proposition numéro quatre : le médium a toujours deux faces-une technique et une institutionnelle. Le monde américain privilégie la première, les Européens, la seconde. passif +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Un bilan, c'est aussi un passif. Au passif, il faut mettre d'abord l'obstacle représenté par le principal médiateur de ce projet, dont l'image sociale et politique obère le développement. Le journalisme, même dans la rubrique « Culture », s'intéresse d'abord aux hommes. La personnalisation d'un champ est un accident constant dans la vulgarisation scientifique. Nous n'y avons pas échappé. Au passif aussi, figure la somme de malentendus engendrés par un mot en quête de ses médiations. Nous ne nous intéressons pas aux institutions et à leurs mots (c'est votre problème), mais aux mots et à leur devenirinstitution (c'est le nôtre). Au passif, enfin l'institutionnalisation, si modeste qu'elle soit, de la médiologie. Un mot qui ne crée pas son institution est appelé à disparaître. Mais l'institution, sitôt en branle, à la fois accrédite et déforme le sens. poUrqUoi ? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pourquoi s'être lancé dans cette aventure ? En premier lieu parce que le devenir-force d'une production symbolique est une question centrale. Karl Marx se posait la question : comment les idées, s'emparant des masses, peuvent-elles devenir force matérielle ? Il ne répondait pas… L'idéologie

A ceiling is the upper interior surface of a room. Sometimes simply the underside of the structure above (be it a roof or a floor), other times an independent membrane, the ceiling has an ambiguous tectonic status. Miming structure but rarely structural, and often with an unobvious materiality, ceilings offer an unsurpassed field for representation, metamorphosis, and architectural "Nachleben". This course explores the richness and ambiguities of the ceiling-an architectural element charged, so says Gottfried Semper, with the task of overcoming "the oppressive feeling evoked by any separation between us and the open sky." The Ceiling Graduate seminar at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, spring 2023 The Ceiling Graduate seminar, AHO spring 2023 Course director: Mari Hvattum 24.01. Introduction of the course & the case studies 31.01. Adam Sharr (University of Newcastle), The Tectonics of the Suspended Ceiling + Case study presentations 07.02. Desmond Kraege (University of Lausanne), Illusionistic Ceilings in the Italian and French Baroque + Case study presentations 14.02. Tim Anstey (AHO), On Finishing + Case study presentations 21.02. Erik Langdalen (AHO), Eero Saarinen, atrium ceiling in the American Embassy, Oslo (1959) + Case study presentations 28.02. Mari Lending (AHO), Anish Kapoor, Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto, Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, 2022. + Case study presentations 07.03. EXCURSION WEEK 14.03. Adrian Forty (The Bartlett), William Kent, ceiling of the Blue Velvet Room at Chiswick House (1729) + Case study presentations 21.03. Christian Hermansen (AHO), Chapel ceiling in La Ciudad Abierta, Valparaiso (ca 1990).

Simon-Mathurin Lantara dont la réputation de précurseur de l’école de Barbizon a été forgée tout au long du XIXe siècle, se situe plutôt dans le veine du paysage classique, et proche des recherches de Vernet. Le dessin du musée Lambinet à Versailles, qui s’intéresse au château de Clagny en ruines, révèle aussi le probable travail de Lantara d’après l’estampe, et un certain attrait pour la ruine composite à la mode.

In 1765, French painter Hubert Robert (1733-1808) returned to Paris after having studied in Rome for eleven years. This was the start of a brilliant career that saw him rise to prominence within the institutions of the French artistic world, drawing commissions from the most prestigious art collectors of the day. His paintings mostly depict decaying imaginary buildings, obviously inspired by his familiarity with the ruins of Italy, but also by prints representing ancient sites in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, as far as Baalbek and Palmyra. However, beyond this rather simple temporal relationship, his ruin paintings also include many structures that do not entirely match historical typologies but indeed entertain hidden similarities with French architecture of his own time. Galleries such as can be seen in his "Finding of the Laocoön" were understood by contemporaries as representations of ancient spaces, but they are in fact far closer to a series of churches erected in and around Paris from the 1760s onwards. Several of his paintings of ancient-looking urban environments, including "The Ripetta Harbour" and "Architectural Landscape with a Canal", even appear to have inspired projects for monumental squares in central Paris. Eighteenth-century France liked to identify as the heir to ancient Rome, and valued modern architecture that supported this claim. This paper shows how Robert’s paintings legitimised the typologies developed by the architects of his time, by representing them in ruins, as if they enjoyed the prestige of having been designed by the ancients. Besides uncovering the complex temporality of Robert’s ruin pictures and their position within a nexus of relations to both Antiquity and the Early Modern age, I interrogate the role of eighteenth-century painting in mediating architecture’s relation to its past.

EXHIBITIONS become synonymous with the last days of the ancien régime , the quality of the works chosen for this exhibition and their scholarly framing in a social, literary and visual context have pushed Fragonard's prints, drawings and paintings to tell us more. 1 Catalogue: Fragonard amoureux. Galant et libertin. Edited by Guillaume Faroult. 200 pp. inci. 200 col. ills.

National Museum of Women in the Arts and Scala Publishers Limited, 2012). 144 pp. $45 .00. ISBN 978-1-8575-9743-1. This thought-provoking exhibition of seventy-seven rarely seen works by thirty-five French women artists, active during the period 1750-1850, was assembled from French national museum and library collections by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., its only American venue. As an organizing construct, the title "Royalists to Romantics" mixes political and aesthetic contexts for the volatile one-hundred-year period embraced by this ambitious show. The sheer number and quality of the women' s works displayed here helped to dispel prior assumptions about the relative scarcity of women in the art world during this era and the presumably crippling limitations they faced. To further counter and complicate these assumptions, the exhibition catalogue provides brief but informative essays by three prominent scholars who, in recent decades, ha...

Cet ouvrage collectif examine les liens qui unissent Stendhal, malgré ses dénégations, à Winckelmann. Il s'efforce de dégager les principaux aspects de la réception du savant allemand par l'écrivain français, et de mettre en évidence les termes du dialogue que ce dernier instaure avec l'historien de l'art.

My  article  aims  to  interrogate  the  tension  between  space  and  time  in  Diderot’s philosophy starting from the tableau of the imagination and its specific functioning. By  examining  the  category  of  ragoût –a  culinary  preparation  that,  during  the  18th century, became an expression of an aesthetic of the relationship and harmony between the parts and the whole –I will show how it plays, between the Lettres sur les souds et muets,  the Essais  sur  la  peinture,  the Salonsand  the Regrets  sur  ma  vieille  robe  de chambre, its central role in defining an idea of dynamic spatiality, within which reality and representation coexist in relationships of mutual tension and correspondence. In  fact,  the  ragoût  reveals  a  conception  of conveniencewhich,  by  interweaving  space and  time,  recalls  the  processes  of  human  reason  and  interrogates  them  in  pictorial  and real space, making it habitable and comprehensible: if a detail always reveals a totality, activating a process of orientation in reality, when the relationship between the parts and the  whole  breaks  down,  the  world  itself  falls  apart.  It  is  the  law  of convenienceand ragoût that regulates the world: to change one’s dressing gown is to redefine one's life entirely. If this does not happen, if the relationship between the fragment and the whole is broken, as in La Grenée painting exhibited at theSalon 1767, Penelope appears more suited to a beer hall than to the majestic but sober palace of Ithaca.Keywords: ragoût, anachronism, imagination, space-time.

Gli schizzi e dipinti prodotti da Hubert Robert durante il lungo soggiorno romano alla metà del Settecento testimoniano la ricerca di scorci parziali e inediti e una sensibilità ai temi urbani che promuove un uso del capriccio architettonico, un genere di grande successo commerciale, in chiave critica. L’analisi delle opere attraverso cui rielabora il Porto di Ripetta dimostra la sua capacità di combinare i monumenti romani e, allo stesso tempo, di indagarne la natura e le radici tipologiche.

Sketches and paintings made by Hubert Robert during his long Roman stay in the mid-eighteenth century testify to the search for partial and unpublished views and a sensitivity to urban themes that promotes a use of the architectural capriccio, which was a genre of great commercial success, in a critical key. The analysis of the works through which it re-arrange the Port of Ripetta demonstrates his ability to combine Roman monuments and, at the same time, to investigate their nature and typological roots.

This thesis encompasses the phenomenon of the French picturesque garden in the second half of the 18 th century, with a particular attention to the socio-cultural context, to the international influences, and to the relationships with the other fine Arts. The example of the Désert de Retz is then examined, a particularly interesting case due to both, its historical and documentary relevance, and its presently ambiguous and unresolved character, deeply impacted by centuries of transformations and dejection, and yet still powerfully evocative. The physical description of the Désert is followed by a commentary on the theme of the restoration of historical gardens and by a sketch of a project that aims to uncover and make legible the original meaning and atmosphere of the individual elements that constitute its physical and conceptual backdrop. The renovation of the art of the garden in the second half of the 18 th century meets a new need for a more direct and authentic relationship between Man and Nature, which was considered by the Sensualist philosophy as the primary source of knowledge, emotions, and feelings. In parallel to the definition in architecture of the theory of character, the literature develops the idea of a "talking" garden, capable to transmit precise feelings ranging from visual satisfaction to esthetic-sensory pleasure, inspired to the classical canons or to the more recent concept of sublime. A symbolic dimension is often associated to the garden's formal appearance, with the goal of spawning a large range of passions and moral reflexions in the spectator's mind. Similarly, in more mundane gardens, the ethical content is substituted by the will to awe and to amuse the onlooker. We can locate the main models that contribute to the character of the French picturesque in the irregular Chinese and English gardens, in the landscape paintings by Lorrain, Poussin, and Rosa from the 17 th century, and in the classical and exotic architecture. Its principles and specifics are documented through the study of treaties and through a typological and thematic analysis of the most frequently used elements. The garden becomes a place of synthesis and experimentation, a pays d'illusion that mirrors the cultural interests and the collective imagination in the stylized forms of an ideal nature choisie, where art is omnipresent both physically and in the ability itself to look and "feel" the landscape. From the comparison with poetry, paintings, and theater several important similarities and reciprocal influences can be observed: the art of the garden employs themes, theories, methodologies, and expressive techniques that had previously been experimented by other disciplines; on the other hand, the garden reaches the dignity of an artistic and literary subject. In the Désert de Retz (1776-1785) we can highlight the main themes of the picturesque as interpreted by its owner, Racine de Monville (classicism, exoticism, arcadia, ruinismo, passion for botanics, and physiocratic interest for agriculture). In spite of the degradation, the disappearance of several fabriques, and the substantial changes of the vegetal context, Retz still embodies the spirit of the picturesque garden, also thanks to the restoration process that began in the Seventies.

Il semblerait que le discours historique et critique sur l’art en Occident, avant même l’iconoclasme et l’aniconisme de tableaux modernes, ait d’entrée de jeu été travaillé par le ressassement de la mort imminente de la peinture. Cet article veut montrer comment cette problématique – l’impossible survivance de la peinture – a pu être aussi formulée par la peinture même. Il s’y emploie en s’attardant à deux oeuvres d’Hubert Robert (1733-1808) où des conceptions opposées de l’histoire, progressiste ou cyclique, sont traduites spatialement : Le Projet d’aménagement de la Grande Galerie du Louvre et son pendant La Vue imaginaire de la Grande Galerie du Louvre en ruines (1796). Ce dernier tableau relève l’échec de la fonction de conservation du musée puisque la peinture en a disparu sans laisser d’autres traces que sculpturales, pointant peut-être ainsi l’incurable destin moderne de ce medium. Mais déjà le premier tableau de la paire, par le pivotement de l’axe latéral du récit sur la pr...

Simon-Mathurin Lantara dont la réputation de précurseur de l’école de Barbizon a été forgée tout au long du XIXe siècle, se situe plutôt dans le veine du paysage classique, et proche des recherches de Vernet. Le dessin du musée Lambinet à Versailles, qui s’intéresse au château de Clagny en ruines, révèle aussi le probable travail de Lantara d’après l’estampe, et un certain attrait pour la ruine composite à la mode.

Les voyageurs du dix-huitième siècle qui tentaient de retrouver et de documenter les sites de villes antiques célèbres butèrent souvent sur un problème de taille : les cités dont ils avaient tant entendu parler avaient disparu, ou se limitaient à un amas de décombres. Du moment que l’objectif des publications issues de ces voyages était de joindre, à un texte détaillé, une représentation imagée des lieux parcourus, les dessinateurs devaient fournir des vues des sites de ces villes. Mais, tandis qu’il existait des typologies compositionnelles familières pour les images architecturales, qui s’appliquaient facilement tant à Palmyre ou a Athènes qu’à Rome, les cités disparues soulevaient des problèmes d’un ordre différent. Que représenter, lorsque la ville et ses édifices étaient insuffisants à la création d’une image répondant aux attentes esthétiques du public occidental ? Et, du moment que l’image elle-même ne permet pas d’indiquer l’importance du site représenté (contrairement au cas d’une gravure d’un temple quasi-intact), comment s’articule le rapport entre la planche et le texte qui lui confère sa signification ? La présente communication, fondée sur une première étude d’ensemble du sujet, proposera plusieurs éléments de réponse à ces interrogations, à travers trois cas d’étude (Sparte vue par J.-D. Leroy, Herculanum représentée par Hubert Robert dans le Voyage pittoresque de Naples et Troie examinée dans le Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce) présentant des rapports spécifiques entre site, image et significations historiques.

In a famous passage of the Salon du 1767, Diderot took cue from a painting by Hubert Robert and sketched a brief definition of his “poetics of ruins”. When it comes to the genesis of the “poetics of ruins”, Diderot scholarship has mainly focused on the hypothesis of an influence of Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful on Diderot, neglecting to explore other possible sources. The present article turns some occasional remarks by André Monglond and Jean Starobinski – which referred to the echo of Ecclesiastes in Diderot’s work – into a concrete philological hypothesis. Particular attention is also devoted to a review of David Hume’s Of Tragedy, published in the Correspondance littéraire in 1760: the analysis of this text can provide a more nuanced understanding of Diderot’s reading both of Hume and of Burke’s Enquiry.

A short illustrated-publication describing the history and recent evolution of the landscape gardens of Méréville (Essonne), realized between 1785-1792 by the architect Bélanger and the landscape painter Hubert Robert for the marquis de Laborde.

Denis Diderot, in his famous 1765 Salon commentary, imagined taking a long stroll through the landscapes represented by Claude-Joseph Vernet, one of his favourite painters. He described moments when he would stop to take in the view, when he would look down at a raging torrent from a high bridge over a rocky chasm, when he would take a boat trip over a sea inlet, and when he would finally spend a restful night in a castle visible in the background of one of the pictures. Diderot’s Salons were officially restricted to a very small readership numbering several of the crowned heads of Europe, but contemporary sources seem to indicate a wider unauthorised diffusion within Parisian society. In any case, similar comments can be found in many French journals of the time, indicating that it had become common for informed viewers to imagine themselves within the fictive space of the painting.
While this phenomenon has been analysed, as regards Vernet and landscape painting, by Michael Fried (Absorption and Theatricality, 1980) and Ian Lochhead (The Spectator and the Landscape, 1981), its importance for the sister-genre of architectural painting has not yet been examined. What appears essential in this case is not only how viewers perceived paintings, but also how this perception in turn may have inflected the artist’s conception of the picture. The most important example here is Hubert Robert, who dominated the field of French architectural painting during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, his images often include unusual spatial locations from which figures within the fictive space of the picture could enjoy interesting views on the rest of the scene. For instance, when representing a real building, Robert often adds elements such as balconies, loggias and rooftop pergolas, which constitute agreeable and accessible spaces that might attract the viewer’s curiosity and will to explore. In other cases, he places figures in these locations (sometimes reaching out to each other: for example one figure leaning out of a window and another on a ladder), further underscoring their accessibility.
A study of several pictures by Robert, and passages from Diderot and other writers’ Salon criticism, will address these topics in order to better comprehend the importance and scope of spatial experimentation on the artists’ part, and imaginary explorations on the viewers’ part, as well as the possible interaction between the two. Robert’s strategy of modifying spatial situations will also be analysed with reference to the Russian Formalists’ concept of “ostranenie” or “enstrangement”. From this juxtaposition – so we suggest – can be drawn an idea of “making space strange”, or more generally searching for “spatial interest”, a notion which may constitute an important tool for an analysis of Robert’s work.

At times it is assumed that neoclassicism aspires to the regularity of lines and to the brightness of figures as if these were solely based on the equivalence of light and beauty. However, instead of shying away from or fear shadows, European neoclassicism has sometimes embraced them in its figurative system. The revaluation of the night acquires a creative function from Piranesi to Hubert Robert. In Italy, Alessandro Verri brings together the cult of classical beauty and nocturnal sceneries in his novels Le Avventure di Saffo (1782) and Le Notti romane (1792-1804), the writing of which reflects the antiquarian culture of the time and is influenced by the apologetics of Catholicism. This essay intends to trace the contours of Verri’s experimental neoclassicism in his mature work, and situate it in the context of the history of literature and the fne arts in Italy and Europe between the 18th and 19th century.

Il neoclassicismo è talvolta assunto come un’aspirazione alla regolarità delle linee e alla chiarezza della figura, come se fossero basate unicamente sull’equivalenza tra luce e bellezza. Tuttavia, lungi dal fuggire o dal temere le ombre, il neoclassicismo europeo le ha, in alcuni casi, accolte nel suo sistema figurativo. La rivalutazione della notte diviene una funzione creativa da Piranesi a Hubert Robert. In Italia, Alessandro Verri unisce il culto della bellezza classica e le scenografie notturne nei suoi romanzi Le Avventure di Saffo (1782) e Le Notti romane (1792-1804), la cui scrittura riflette la cultura antiquaria del tempo ed è influenzata dall’apologetica cattolica. Questo saggio intende tracciare i contorni del neoclassicismo sperimentale di Verri nelle sue opere mature, collocandolo nel contesto dello sviluppo di letteratura e Belle Arti in Italia e in Europa tra il XVIII e il XIX secolo.

The book of Ecclesiastes, one of the books of the Old Testament, is thought by most to have been written around the third century BCE. Its influence has been enduring and far-reaching. Its sentiments are so universal that they remain relevant and thought provoking even today. What is the meaning of life? For what purpose do we exist?
In The Living Dead: Ecclesiastes Through Art, visitors are invited to explore the main themes from the book of Ecclesiastes through the visual aid of artworks spanning from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Featuring European masterpieces from many major museums and collections worldwide, the exhibition invites guests to contemplate universal ideas.

Connecting post-imperial studies to ruin studies, The Conquest of Ruins reconstructs and analyzes the Roman Empire’s afterlife as Western Europe’s history of neo-Roman mimesis. Each moment in the long European history of imitating Rome, from Charles V to the Nazi empire, generated its own mimetic practices as well as a vast body of texts reflecting on the history and theory of Roman and neo-Roman empires. The Romans’ monumentalizing empire-making and theatricality of politics pre-structured later imitations. These moments of neo-Roman mimesis created the ancient empire as the ultimate expression of imperial power. At the same time, they also produced a never-ending series of scenes about Roman ruins. The first of these ruin scenarios originated with the Romans’ conquest of Carthage. Constructing the ancient Roman metropole as a ruined stage, these scenes thematize the enigma of Rome’s fall. They also define empire’s time as eschaton or endtime and raise the question about how to ward off the end. Operating in this endtime, political leaders, imperial theorists, and artists went in search of strategies to fortify their empires. The book traces this obsession with the Roman empire’s ruinous end from Augustus to Hitler, Polybios to Carl Schmitt, Virgil to Riefenstahl, and Roman to Nazi architecture. The author combines intellectual history with literary/visual and psychoanalytic methods of analysis concerning identification as Besetzung/occupation and the nexus of visuality, power and desire. She proposes a model of imperial mimesis and the neo-Roman imaginary and analyzes the theatrical form of ruin scenarios across different textual and visual media. She also develops a notion of realism proper to the political aesthetics of neo-Roman empires. This notion is based on the ruin’s absent presence and mimesis as a mode of representation that demands both recognition and imitation.

Artists have long taken pleasure in representing themselves at work, in their studios or academies, out and about in a landscape or recording their own likeness. Immersed in nature, artists are often shown almost lost in the geographical vastness they are recording. Depictions of the artist in
the studio are about creative concentration
and introspection and, like self-portraits, are reflections on practice and identity. The care taken in recording the studio apparatus of easels, palettes, or assistants grinding pigments, indicates their significance for practitioners. The studio might be the everyday workshop of dirty brushes and sculptural debris, but it is also the place of allegory and myth where artists perform or dream. A selection of drawings from the sixteenth to
the twentieth century, mainly from the Katrin Bellinger Collection, illustrates the variety of ways in which artists have represented themselves and others making art.

Viterbo e la Tuscia, i nuclei insediativi dei Monti Cimini, le forre e gli orridi, le necropoli rupestri non si sottrassero alla fortuna incontrata dall'antico e dal paesaggio italiano presso gli artisti e gli intellettuali europei di età moderna e, per essere posti lungo le tradizionali reti viarie di collegamento da e per Roma, a sud delle colline toscane e a nord della campagna romana, e già lungo i convenzionali tracciati della cosiddetta Via Francigena, furono oggetto di un’assidua frequentazione e di un’altrettanto alacre attività grafico-pittorica, evocativa dell’antico, di illustrazione a corredo della letteratura periegetica, celebrativa dei fasti dell’aristocrazia, pittoresca indagatrice delle peculiarità orografiche e botaniche.
  Cospicuo fu il parterre di artisti europei che tra Settecento e Ottocento soggiornarono in Tuscia. Tra questi: Gaspar van Wittel, Claude Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert, Franciszek Smugliewicz, William Turner, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. In riferimento alla loro produzione è stato definito il presente contributo  con l’intento precipuo comunque di segnalare intorno ad alcuni nuclei tematici, significativi episodi di pittura di paesaggio, urbano e di soggetto naturalistico.

Mit 144 Exponaten präsentierte die Louvre-Ausstellung Hubert Robert. 1733 -1808 -Un peintre visionnaire seit langer Zeit einen Überblick über das Schaffen des Ruinenund Landschaftsmalers Hubert Roberts. Ebenso wie die Ausstellung bezieht auch der Katalog gezielt Roberts Tätigkeit als Dekorationsmaler und Gartengestalter mit ein. Der Katalogteil folgt dabei dem Ausstellungsparcours. Umfassenden Aufsätzen folgen kurze einführende Essays zu einzelnen Sektionen und jeweils dazugehörige Exponateinträge. Die chronologisch angelegte Ausstellung ordnete Roberts OEuvre in Sach-und Themengruppen, um den in Teilen einförmigen Sujets eine konzisere Rahmung zu verleihen. Besonders eindrucksvoll war der Auftakt der Ausstellung mit dem frühen, während seines römischen Aufenthaltes entstandenen graphischen Werk, das im Katalog von Guillaume Faroult eingeleitet wird ( S. 122-123 ). Hier setzt sich Robert mit dem Rom seiner Zeit auseinander und bereitet bereits viele Motive vor, die später in seinen Architektur-und Ruinengemälden monumental ausgearbeitet werden sollten. Dabei waren es nicht allein die antiken Ruinen, die sich der junge Stipendiat der französischen Akademie in Rom zeichnerisch aneignete. Vielmehr galt sein Interesse etwa den Monumenten der Renaissance-und Barockarchitektur wie der Villa Madama, der bröckelnden Fassade des Palazzo Poli mit dem stillgelegten Trevi-Brunnen oder dem kapitolinischen Palast. In seinen Zeichnungen nimmt Robert jedoch stets eine Perspektive ein, die die Paläste, die bereits in seiner Zeit als touristische Sehenswürdigkeiten galten, nicht im Sinne einer Vedute im Bild festhält. Vielmehr werden sie aus der Perspektive eines sotto-in-su monumentalisiert und durch das Hinzufügen von Staffagefiguren aus dem einfachen Volk in einen spannungsreichen Gegensatz zum Leben der kleinen Leute gebracht. Schon hier deutet sich an, was seine monumentalen Ruinengemälde später besonders auszeichnen sollte. Dem Betrachter fallen die häufig dargestellten Zeichner ins Auge, die offenbar als Stellvertreterfiguren des Künstlers fungieren. Unter ihnen sind jedoch auch erstaunlich viele Zeichnerinnen auszumachen. Mit ihrem Zeichenstift halten sie wie besessen alles fest, was ihnen in Rom vor Augen tritt. Dabei nehmen sie Perspektiven ein, die die gefühlte Übergröße der antiken Reste zum Ausdruck bringen. Während Margaret Morgan Grasselli Roberts zeichnerisches OEuvre chronologisch einordnet ( S. 57-64 ), argumentiert

A later iteration of this article was published as "The Princesse de Monaco, Hubert Robert and the invention of the ‘Vieux château’ of Betz", Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes (2017)

This essay looks at the design and construction of an elaborate series of false medieval ruins -- the so-called 'Vieux-château' created for the Marie Catherine de Brignole-Sale, Princesse de Monaco (1736-1813) at her domaine of Betz (Oise) between 1782-1789. It considers the role of the landscape painter Hubert Robert and the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart in its design and construction. It proposes that this elaborate medieval pastiche was intended to garner public sympathy after her romantic liaison with Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, Prince de Condé (1740-1818) had caused her to be expelled from court.

This essay considers how the built landscapes designed by the landscape painter Hubert Robert (1733-1808) served to define and legitimize the identities of his aristocratic clients and patrons. It considers the gardens of Ermenonville, Méréville, La Roche-Guyon, Betz and Mauperthuis.