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

the superb figure of Pa11. listening to the echo of his own music, from the Ashmolean Museum. From whatever side it is viewed, the sculptural quality of this bronze is unimpaired by its function as an inkwell. An outstanding bronze in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Mc/1•al(1'r by a Mantuan artist know11 as Antico because of his adherence to the style of Roman antiquity, has not been included in this exhibition ; instead, there are two interesting pieces, probably cast from his models, a figure of Andromeda and a Venus Felix . A version of this Venus with a greater claim to authenticity is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, again with the black patina characteristically contrasted against a heavily gilded background. Another famous antique motif in the exhibition, this time from the workshop of Severo da Ravenna, is Spinario, a youth extracting a thorn from his foot and here combined with a shell to serve as an ink– well. Among the most pleasing Mannerist pieces from the later 16th century is the anony– mous Florentine statuette of a boy with arms raised in delighted surprise. A small and exceed– ingly elegant group of Venus and Cupid in the manner of Giambologna (from the Ashmolean Museum) displays the spiral movement that marks many of his sophisticated and technically brilliant compositions. A rather sumptuous bronze is Latona and Her Children, also from Oxford, a Roman work attributed to Guglielmo della Porta whose name is embarrassingly misspelt on the label. In a display of anatomical virtuosity Latona is shown in an extreme contraposto, an elegant, serpentine contortion and a typically Mannerist device. A Venus a11d Cupid, ascribed to Vincenzo Danti, is also among the pieces from the later 16th century ; this is a highly finished group in which the artist demonstrated his skill in achieving different textures for skin, hair cloth and stone. The intimately related figures of Cupid and Venus exhibition is one of the finest Mannerist bronzes in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the late 16th century figure of N<"ptum• With a Scahorsi· by a great, although not very prolific exponent of this art, Alessandro Vittoria who was a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino. Bronze was an expensive material and even small statuettes were generally cast hollow by means of the "cire perdue", or "lost wax" method. Accurate accounts of the techniques used in the Renaissance have survived in the writings of Leon Battista degli Alberti (c 1550), Pomponius Gauricus (1504) and Vanoccio Beringuccio ( 1540), but particularly in the l.frcs of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects by the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari ( 1550) and in the Trc>atises of the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini ( 1568) whose dramatic description of how he cast his monu– mental Paseus with the head of Medusa in Florence in the early 1550s makes good reading. It was a sign of skill to cast bronzes in one piece but in the 17th and 18th centuries artists became more expedient and look to casting in separate sections. The Bronzes in Brisbane are complemented nicely by a set of fourteen Renaissance draw– ings, some of them studies after the antique and related to the bronzes from1he collections of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. There is ,~ also Giambologna's only known dr.1wing, a D,•sign for a Fu1111tai11 in pen and brown ink, Tintoretto's Samson Slayinl( th e Philistine, a Study of a Headless Statue by Baldassare Peruzzi, and four drawings of varying quality by followers of Raphael. The Three Studies of a Venus is a traditional but probably incorrect attribution to the 16th century sculptor Raffaello da Montelupo who was left handed. Among the more remarkable drawings is a lavish Desig11 For a 1-:wer in ink and grey wash with suave figures, elaborate grotesques and other antique ornament by the Florentine Mannerist Francesco Salviati. But the most outstanding is undoubtedly by Baccio Bandinelli ( 1593-60) a Florentine sculptor whose promi– nence was due to his self~steem and his ability in gaining commissions, rather than to the quality of his work . As a draughtsman, however, he is sometimes unsurpassed. His Head Of Woman in red chalk is an exquisite p rtrait of a dignified and sensitive Florentine and the viewer is promised a rich reward for a closer attendance to her image. The opportunity to study such things is not a co'mmon one and it is necessary to immerse oneself in the spirit of these remote objects in order to gain an understanding of their aesthetic language. Scant information and insufficient expertise not only question the purpose of the acquisition and display of important works of art, they also encourage the charge of official aloofness. The austere little exhibition pamphlet contains a cryptic note by the Assistant Keeper of Sculpture at 1 Giambologna: Flagellation of Christ, wax relief c 1579, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 2 Giovanni Battista Foggini: Hercules and Queen Omphale, bronze c 1700, Queensland Art Gallery. 3 Andrea Riccio: Pan listening to Echo, bronze c 1530, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. the Victoria and Albert Museum, Malcolm Baker. But then it is not the office of the lending institution to supply the generally available infonnation, but that of the organisers. As yet the Queensland Art Gallery is like a red carpet leading to a closed shrine. Information on future policy was not exactly abundant. When I arrived from Sydney my appointment with Director Raoul Mellish wa~ cancelled owing to an industrial dispute - the security staff were on strike which wa~ well timed considering the Bronzes and the Kandinskys from the Guggenheim Museum and a collection of Treasures from Japan which were then on exhibition. In moments like these curators are relegated to night duty . They are already in short supply and expected to deal with works outside their area of specialisation. The loan exhibition from England had been added to the considerable responsibilities of the Curator of Decorative Arts, Glen Cook . Hopefully, as the machinery of a new Gallery begins to run smoothly, policies will be defined and resources matched to a didactic approach that will benefit the public. The Renaissance bronzes and drawings will next visit Melbourne and will be on show at the Gallery of NSW from October lo December - the exact dates of their itinerary were still a matter of conjecture at the time of writing. • Till Verelle11 held a fellowship at the Warburg Institute (London) anJ currently teaches th e History of Art at the City Art lnstit11te, Sy dn ey. 3 15