Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

IN XANADU DID KUBLAI KHAN... The new Queensland Art Gallery has facilities - so the recently published , presentable, but fairly expensive catalogue claims - that are comparable to any in the world . Be that as it may, architect Robin Gibson has created a work of art that is more than a mere facility, it is a magnificant civic monument , an august temple of the muses. Architectural license has resulted in two entrance halls so lofty and vast that they delegate art to a secondary, decorative role, or tend to make a painting look silly if it is any smaller than Michelangelo 's last Judge· ment in the Sistine Chapel , a work apparently not far beyond the reach of the Gallery's ambitiom, program. Stretched along the Brisbane River, the six level building presents itself as a severe but not inelegant composition of cubes and rectangles assembled from slabs of cream-coloured concrete. Shallow ramps and expansive flights of steps convey the awed visitor to the exhibi– tions, to sculpture courts and hanging gardens. An expanse of water, turbulent by day and a mirror by night, passes from the outside through the entire huilding, creating a myriad of cool reflections. This River Alph fonns a sunless sea in the greatest pleasure hall of all, unmarred by art, and ends in a set of fountains with an effect like a field of aqueous dandelion~ . After seventy-five years of makeshift accom– modation the present site was finally approved . But the Gallery is only stage one of a cultural centre that will eventually comprise the Museum, the Centre of Perfonning Arts, the Restaurant and Auditorium Complex, and a new building to house the Queensland State Library . The Gallery Art Foundation and policy decisions in the late 70s have already produced a spectacular enrichment of the European collection. In the past two or three years the Gallery has acquired the quite exceptional painting of the Virgi11 a11d Child h'ith Saints James. Catherine a11d Peter ( 1496) hy the so-called "Master of Frankfurt ", a Re.111rrectinn hy Jacopo Robusti (better known as Tin tore Ito), a 1'11rtrai111f Mardi<'.\'<' Filit'I'" Spi1111/a by Anthony van Dyck, and the titian– esque 1'11rtrai1 11fa Y111111g /,ady by Peter Paul Rubens. Donations from Harold de Yahl Rubin had already provided for outstanding examples of French Impressionism and the three Picassos, among them I.a Belle flollandaise which was lent In the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the Picasso retrospective in 1980. European sculpture of the 19th and 20th centuries is well represented with works by Degas, Renoir. Rodin, Bourdelle, Epstein , Moholy-Nagy, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore , hut the Gallery also houses a rare wax relief of the Flaxcllati,m of Christ by the Flemish-Florentine sculptor Giambologna, one of the models for six bronze reliefs executed for the Grimaldi Chapel in Genoa (now at Genoa University). The three other extant models are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Accidentally "discovered" in the 14 Queensland Museum in spite of its otherwise well recorded provenance, the Brisbane relief was presented to the Art Gallery in 1965. In 1980 the opportunity arose to purchase a remarkable, fifteen inch high bronze group of Hercules and Queen Omphale, dated c 1700, and attributed to the Florentine Baroque sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini. $80,000, given by MIM Holdings Ltd, was a reasonable price. Although the only known record of the piece is its sale from the Lelong Collection in 1903, a similar version exists in the Victoria and Albert Museum. After his training in Rome, Foggini became one of the leading sculptors in his native city of Florence. In 1687 he was appointed Grand Ducal Sculptor and took over the studio and foundry of his predecessors Ferdinando Tacca and Giambologna which was the centre of Florentine bronze production. 2 In 1979 the fourth and present Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Raoul Mellish, began negotiating with the Victoria and Albert Museum and with the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for a major loan exhibition of Italian Renaissance bronzes to mark the opening of the Gallery on its new premises. The Oxford bronzes are from the Fortnum Collection while th.ose lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum \I-ere bequeathed by George Salting, an Australian who lived in London. The wax relief by Giambologna has been included in this exhibition but, oddly enough, the For,gini is shown separately, although it demonstrates well the further development of this art form. The European bronze statuette, originally devised as a votiv figure in ancient Greece, had already become a valued collector's item in Roman times. Interest in bronzes was revived during the early Renaissance by humanist and antiquarian study. Statuettes were frequently produced as a substitute for the authentic antique object but they soon became recognised for their own artistic worth as well. In the I 5th and 16th centuries they often related to the mythology and ornament of antiquity. Serious collecting of bronzes began with the Duke de Derry in Burgundy, and in Florence with Cosimo de Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, a great patron who established a private museum in which human– ists and artists could study. The Venetians, the ruling houses of Ferrara, Urbino, Milan and Genoa , popes and cardinals soon followed suit. In Mantua, an inventory of 1496 lists about eighty such bronzes, and the fervour of collecting them also took hold of the wealthy merchant classes and educated connoisseurs. In the 16th century, Giambologna 's bron1es became prized objects and were used by the Medici as diplomatic gifts to rulers and other VIPs, assuring the dissemination of his style throughout Europe and initiating a tradition in Florence still continued by Foggini. Small bronzes had their place in domestic settings, on the festive table and on the scholar's desk, and they were meant to be held in the hand and examined closely. They hover on the borderline of the Applied and Fine Arts and often function as firedogs, candlesticks, ink– wells, salt cellars (such as the fine figure of a kneeling youth bearing a shell on his shoulders by the late 16th century Venetian artist Girolamo Campagna), and vessels in the shape of sea monsters, often derived from the engrav– ings of Mantegna. They are essentially sculptural idols of wealth and good taste and were sophisticated status symbols of superior skills. The .iarly Renaissance tradition of bronze casting was begun by two Florentines, Donatello and Ghiberti, the creator of the Baptistery Doors in Florence. Donatello was also active in Sienna and Padua where his work initiated major schools of sculpture in bronze. The exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery includes works from Padua, as well as from other principal centres such as Rome, Mantua, Venice and Ravenna. One of the·few Florentines to be represented by name is Filarete (1400-1469) whose dates, incidentally, are quoted incorreotly in the exhibition catalogue and on the label. His are two restrained but powerful figures of the Virgin and St John that may originally have formed part of a crucifixion scene. Filarete was also the author of the first signed and dated (1465) Renaissance br nze, a reduced version of the 2nd century equestrian monument of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and of the bronze doors of St Peter's of 1433. One of the most prominent members of the Paduan circle and an indirect pupil of Donatello, was Andrea Briosco, 1470-1532 (again the dates given in the catalogue are inaccurate), who is generally known as Ricciv because of curly hair style of many of his figures. Ideas and models were widely distributed among the workshops in Padua and it is difficult to make a definitive distinction between "Riccio" and "School of Riccio", as very few documented bronze works, among them only one small bronze, exist. Hence his name is often applied more or less indiscriminately to related works that keep appearing on the art market. The standard work on this artist is the 1927 mono– graph in German by Leo Planiscig. Although he was in no way a servile imitator, Riccio's style is strictly classical. A more arcadian, attributed example with the typical, black patination is