Unknown, Tragic Mask of a Young Man, about 150 B.C., Greek, Terracotta, 17 cm, VEX.2010.3.104, Département des Antiquités Grecques, Etrusques et Romaines, Musé du Louvre, Paris, France, CA 1958, Hervé´ Lewandowski. Réunion des Musée Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

Attributed to the Capodarso Painter (Sicilian, about 350-325 B.C.), Recognition Scene from Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos (A); Three Draped Standing Female Figures (B), 330-320 B.C., Greek, Terracotta, 24.5 x 30 cm, VEX.2010.3.55, Museo Archeologico Regionale "Paolo Orsi", Siracusa, Italy, 66557, Su concessione dell'Assessorato ai Beni Culturali e dell'identita, Siciliana della Regione Siciliana – Palermo.

Attributed to the Tarporley Painter (Greek [Apulian], active 400-375 B.C.), Three Chorus Members in the Moments before or after the Performance of a Satyr Play (A); Three Draped Youths (B), 410-380 B.C., Greek (Apulian), Terracotta, H: 33 x Diam. (rim): 36 cm x (foot): Diam.: 15.8 cm, VEX.2010.3.1, Nicholson Museum, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, NM 47.5.

Attributed to the Choregos Painter (Greek [Apulian], active 390-370 B.C.), Bust of Dionysos and Comic Actors, One Costumed as Papposilenos, (A); Dionysos with a Satyr and Maenad (B), 390-380 B.C., Greek (Apulian), Terracotta, H: 38 x Diam (mouth): 40.3 cm x (foot): Diam.: 18.4 cm, VEX.2010.3.92, John L. Severance Fund, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1989.73.

Attributed to the Tarporley Painter (Greek [Apulian], active 400-375 B.C.), Three Chorus Members in the Moments before or after the Performance of a Satyr Play (A); Three Draped Youths (B), 410-380
B.C., Greek (Apulian), Terracotta, H: 33 x Diam. (rim): 36 cm x (foot): Diam.: 15.8 cm, VEX.2010.3.1, Nicholson Museum, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, NM 47.5.

Attributed to the Choregos Painter (Greek [Apulian], active 390-370 B.C.), Bust of Dionysos and Comic Actors, One Costumed as Papposilenos, (A); Dionysos with a Satyr and Maenad (B), 390-380 B.C., Greek (Apulian), Terracotta, H: 38 x Diam (mouth): 40.3 cm x (foot): Diam.: 18.4 cm, VEX.2010.3.92, John L. Severance Fund, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1989.73.

Attributed as close to Asteas (Greek [Paestan], active about 350-320 B.C.), Paestan Red-Figure Neck Amphora, about 340 B.C., South Italian (Paestan), Terracotta, H: 47.7 x Diam.: 19.8 cm x (foot): Diam.: 14.2 cm, 80.AE.155.1, Gift of Stanley Silverman, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, California.

 

J. Paul Getty Museum
The Getty Center
1000 Getty Center Drive
310-440-7300
Los Angeles
The Art of Ancient Greek Theater
August 26, 2010–January 3, 2011

The Art of Ancient Greek Theater is the first exhibition in the United States in over 50 years to focus on the artistic representation of theatrical performance in ancient Greece. Assembling international loans of antiquities from many museums and private collections, the exhibition illustrates the ways in which dramatic performance was depicted in the visual arts of ancient Greece between the fifth and the first centuries B.C. The exhibition is being presented in conjunction with the Getty Villa’s annual outdoor theater performance, Sophocles’ Elektra.

“Ancient art and theater share a strong and enduring connection — one that is inspired by mythology and the social, cultural, and political realities of life in ancient Greece and Rome,” says David Bomford, acting director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “With this exhibition and our annual production in the outdoor theater, we are delighted to bring ancient theater alive at the Getty Villa and invite our visitors to join us and discover how those themes found in ancient times persist today.”

The Art of Ancient Greek Theater spans centuries of artistic production throughout the Mediterranean. The exhibition showcases magnificent Athenian and South Italian vases as well as significant marble reliefs and numerous terracotta masks and figurines drawn from major collections in Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Elaborate costumes, complex choreography, scenic architecture, and the mask — which continues to be an icon for tragedy and comedy — are vividly depicted in the visual arts of ancient Greece.

An introductory section introduces visitors to the architectural and physical environment of ancient Greek theater. The importance of drama to civic and religious life in the ancient Greek world is reinforced by a large map, locating about 100 ancient theaters in the Mediterranean. The map is complemented by marble sculptures of actors and poets as well as a model of the Theater of Dionysos in Athens, the home of the festival of the Great Dionysia, where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were originally performed.

The exhibition is organized in three general themes. The first theme is devoted to the historical context of ancient Greek performance. Springing from the worship of Dionysos, theatrical performance developed out of the god’s religious rites and festivals. Objects on view depict actors, costumes, masks, choruses and chorusmen, with Dionysos the god of theater as motivator and benefactor.

The second theme focuses on tragedy and the satyr plays and will present comparative installations of vase-paintings inspired by ancient performances of Athens’ renowned tragedies: Aeschylus’ Oresteia; Euripides’ Medea, Herakles, Children of Herakles, Andromache and Iphigenia in Aulis; and Sophocles’ Oedipus. Objects representing satyr play will be anchored by the exceptional loan of the great Pronomos Vase from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.

The third theme of the exhibition features comedy. Depictions of comic parodies and farces, where gods and centaurs share the stage with plotting slaves and thieves, and genre vase-painting represents costumed and masked actors in scenes on ancient stages, include some of the most vivid painting from the ancient world.

“We hope that our visitors will come away with a rich understanding not only of the context of ancient Greek theatrical performance but of the many ways artists interpreted the choruses and plays they witnessed. These vase-paintings, reliefs and figurines are often the only evidence we have for many aspects of ancient drama. Significantly, the heightened visual style and attention to details such as costumes and choreography result in portrayals of ancient actors, poets, and musicians that give us an immediate sense of their performance on stage,” says Mary Louise Hart, associate curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, who curated the exhibition.

During the run of The Art of Ancient Greek Theater, the Getty Museum presents Sophocles’ •Elektra• directed by Carey Perloff, artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, with a new translation commissioned from Timberlake Wertenbaker. Elektra will be performed in the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, September 9 through October 2, 2010. In addition, the Villa Theater Lab presents Understanding a Satyr Play: The Trackers on November 19 and 20, 2010.

The exhibition is accompanied by a companion volume co-authored by Mary Louise Hart; Michael Walton, Professor Emeritus of Drama at the University of Hull, United Kingdom; François Lissarrague, Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales Centre Louis Gernet, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris; Martine Denoyelle, École des hautes études en sciences sociales Centre Louis Gernet, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art; and H. Alan Shapiro, W.H. Collins Vickers Professor of Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University.

Unknown, Statue of an Actor Costumed as Papposilenos, 2nd century, Roman, Marble, H: 94 cm x (base): H: 25 x W: 25 x D: 5.7 to 6.8 cm, VEX.2010.3.118, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, Italy, 135769, Photo: Vanni / Art Resource, NY.

Unknown, Thymiaterion in the Form of a Comic Actor Seated on an Altar and a Separate Theatrical Wig, first half of 1st century, Roman, Bronze with silver inlay, variable, 87.AC.143, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, California.

Unknown, Actor Holding a Mask, about 350 B.C., Greek (Attic), Marble, H: 78 x W: 25 x D (with attached mount): 17.6 cm, VEX.2010.3.2, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark, IN 465, Photograph: H. R. Goette.

Unknown, Manuscript Fragment from Sophocles' Ichneutai, late 2nd century, Roman, Papyrus, 23.1 x 38.2 x 0.9 cm.

Hans R. Goette, The largest of remaining ancient Greek theaters, the theater in the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros was constructed in two phases. The first phase is dated to 330-300 B.C. and could hold an audience of about 6,200. In 170#160 B.C. the seating area was expanded to hold about 12,000 spectators.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The Duel After the Masquerade, 1857-1859, Oil on canvas Unframed: 39.1 x 56.3 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 37.51, EX.2010.2.30

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The Death of Caesar, 1867, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 85.5 x 145.5 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 37.884, EX.2010.2.1.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Snake Charmer, about 1870, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 83.4 x 122.1 cm, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.51, © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1955.51 (photo by Michael Agee), EX.2010.2.63.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down), 1872, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 97.5 x 146.7 cm, Museum purchase. Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, 1968.52, Photograph by Craig Smith, EX.2010.2.8.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The Muezzin, 1866, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 81.3 x 64.8 cm, Gift of Francis T.B. Martin (bequest), Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, JAM 1995.37, EX.2010.2.53.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Prayer in a Mosque, 1871, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 88.9 x 74.9 cm, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 87.15.130, Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY, EX.2010.2.47.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Pygmalion and Galatea, about 1890, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 88.9 x 68.6 cm, Gift of Louis C. Raegner, 1927. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 27.200, Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY, EX.2010.2.3.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The Artist’s Model, 1895, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 50.5 x 39.5 cm, Dahesh Museum of Art, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1995.104, © Dahesh Museum of Art, 2010, EX.2010.2.43.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Napoleon in Egypt, 1867–1868, Oil on wooden panel, Unframed: 35.8 x 25 cm, Museum Purchase, John Maclean Magie, Class of 1892, and Gertrude Magie Fund, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, 1953-78, Photo: Bruce M. White, EX.2010.2.54.

 

J. Paul Getty Museum
The Getty Center
1000 Getty Center Drive
310-440-7300
Los Angeles
The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme
June 15-September 12, 2010

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) enjoyed the heights of artistic and commercial success in the second half of the 19th-century as a powerful academician and respected professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; however, with the eventual triumph of Impressionism, post-Impressionism, and the modernist avant-garde — which defined itself against establishment figures like Gérôme — his reputation suffered greatly in the early 20th-century.

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme is the first major, comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in nearly 40 years and proceeds from a new wave of scholarship that is reconsidering Gérôme’s importance both as a painter and sculptor. The exhibition includes iconic paintings and sculptures that span Gérôme’s entire oeuvre from his “néo-grec” beginnings to his tremendously popular and often controversial history paintings and Orientalist works.

“The influential French writer Émile Zola famously remarked that there wasn’t a living room in France that didn’t have an engraving or print by Gérôme during the late 19th century,” xeplains David Bomford, acting director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “It is surprising, therefore, that his achievements in both painting and sculpture have been so greatly overlooked by scholarship for the past century. Gérôme’s success brought academic painting to an artistic pinnacle — having an immeasurable impact on future generations of artists as well as to the new mass entertainments of the 20th-century, especially film.”

Bomford continued, “The Getty is delighted to build upon a renewed interest in this seminal figure among young art historians, and to give scholars and the general public the first opportunity in decades to see so many of his masterpieces in one place.”

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme traces the artist’s career thematically and chronologically. The exhibition addresses Gérôme’s imaginative use of antique themes and sources, his inventive strategies as a history and genre painter, his complex relationship to Orientalism, and his contribution to the history of sculpture. The exhibition simultaneously considers his productive engagement with photography and the legacy of his art in early 20th-century cinema.

Gérôme’s artistic career began in the studio of Paul Delaroche in Paris in the 1840s and he accompanied the master to Italy to continue his studies. He returned to Paris and attended the École des Beaux-Arts, entering the Prix de Rome competition in hopes of returning to Italy, but he failed to qualify for the final stage in 1846 because of his inadequate figure drawing. Consequently, Gérôme became obsessed with painting the perfect nude—an ambition he would harbor throughout his life.

For the Salon of 1847, he submitted The Cockfight (1846; Musée du Louvre), which featured two scantily-clad adolescents and two fighting cocks in an idyllic classical landscape. The picture received great acclaim because he used a refined, classicizing manner to depict a witty, light-hearted scene about adolescent sexuality on the grand scale of serious history painting. The novelty and appeal of such accessible genre scenes provided Gérôme entree into the art world as the head of the so-called “néo-grec” movement.

Despite his proclivities as a genre painter, Gérôme also manifested serious ambitions as a history painter, for history painting remained the highest genre in the theoretical hierarchy authorized by the French Academy and inculcated by the École des Beaux-Arts. He announced these ambitions at the 1855 Universal Exposition in Paris, where he exhibited a huge allegorical composition entitled The Age of Augustus (1855; Musée d’Amiens), an official government commission which sought to flatter Emperor Napoleon III who was frequently compared to Augustus. The painting was based on a passage in Bossuet’s Histoire Universelle (1681) that evoked the apogee of the Roman Empire under Augustus’ pax Romana in the first century A.D. and the simultaneous advent of Christianity with the birth of Christ. Gérôme’s theatrical arrangement features an enthroned Augustus receiving the homage and tribute of a tumultuous host of subject peoples, in the midst of whom Mary and Joseph kneel in adoration over the Christ Child. Monumentally ambitious in size and conception, The Age of Augustus was nevertheless a critical failure, and Gérôme would subsequently turn his attentions to the far more lucrative arena of small-scale historical and Orientalist genre painting.

Starting in the late 1850s, Gérôme proved incredibly canny in choosing popular historical subjects ranging widely from ancient Greece and Rome to modern-day France and staging them in instantly memorable ways. He imbued historical scenes with a heightened degree of “realism” that reflected the scientific, positivist ethos of the period with its emphasis on visual observation and tangible facts. He refused poetic generalizations and idealizations when rendering his protagonists, faithfully executed archaeological details, and devised new compositional strategies that helped create a dramatic sense of eye-witness immediacy. In The Death of Caesar (1867, the Walters Art Museum) for example, Gérôme went to great lengths meticulously reconstructing the Roman Senate, offering the viewer a commanding panoramic overview. With cool, photographic detachment, he focused on the inglorious aftermath of Caesar’s assassination — the unceremoniously abandoned corpse, the overturned throne and blood-spattered statue in the foreground, and the exultant group of Senators exiting the hall in the remote background. The charged void between them, accentuated by the vastness of the surrounding architectural space, imbues the solemn scene with tremendous dramatic power.

Alongside such historical scenes, Gérôme also regularly exhibited Orientalist genre paintings in the Salon. In 1853, thanks to the government commission for The Age of Augustus, Gérôme was able to finance a trip to Constantinople, the first of many journeys to the East that would provide Gérôme with endless pictorial inspiration. Much coveted by collectors, his Orientalist scenes were also universally acclaimed by the critics for their incisive characterizations of ethnic types, their extremely high level of precise detail, and their ostensibly photographic exactitude. However, emblematic works like The Snake Charmer (c. 1870, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute), which shows a naked boy handling a python for the pleasure of a group of mercenaries, were fantasies with an often tenuous basis in reality, combining elements from diverse sources and playing upon popular cultural stereotypes about the East.

Throughout his career, Gérôme was inspired by antique sculpture and he was a staunch proponent of an academic style based on the mastery of the human figure, so it comes as no surprise that he refocused his attentions from painting to sculpture in his later years. He debuted his first sculpture at the Universal Exposition of 1878, exhibiting a large bronze gladiator trampling on his victim, a figure extracted from his painting Pollice verso (1872, Phoenix Art Museum. Inspired by the discoveries of modern archeology, he would go on to experiment actively with polychromy and mixed-media, producing works that ranged from full-scale, tinted marbles to small bronze and ivory statuettes. He enjoyed cross-referencing his painting and sculpture, painting himself, for instance, as a sculptor in his studio at work on one of his statues. He also mythologized his role as sculptor in paintings like Pygmalion and Galatea (1890; The Metropolitan Museum of Art), which refers to the ancient Roman myth about a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation and succeeded in bringing her to life through the intervention of a goddess.

Like many painters at the time, Gérôme highly valued the new medium of photography. The exhibition includes a small cluster of paintings and photographs from the 1850s to illustrate Gérôme’s engagement with the medium from the beginning of his career. Photographs taken by the artist’s companions on his adventures — as well as images he might have seen while abroad — that are thought to have influenced composition and subject matter in many of Gérôme’s paintings, are also included. The influence of the medium can be seen in his works’ smooth surfaces, high level of detail, and strong contrasts of light and shadow, as well as their assumed stance of matter-of-fact neutrality.

His technique was well-suited for photographic reproductions of his work, which would be printed in mass and sold extensively internationally by the dealer and print editor, Adolphe Goupil, who happened to be his father-in-law. Gérôme’s important association with Goupil is illustrated in the exhibition by archival materials from the Getty Research Institute’s collection, including a rare, limited-edition volume of photogravures issued by Goupil in the United States.

Gérôme’s realist innovations were proto-cinematic and his more sensational images would have a major impact on film. Directors ranging from the early silent era to contemporaries like Ridley Scott have openly acknowledged his influence on their productions. This relationship is illustrated through the reproduction on the gallery walls of several film stills that quote directly from some of Gérôme’s most sensational paintings.

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme is organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, in association with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. The Getty’s presentation is curated by Scott Allan, assistant curator of paintings at the Getty Museum, and Mary Morton, former associate curator of paintings at the Getty Museum and presently curator and head of the department of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Additional curatorial support for the exhibition has been provided by Laurence des Cars and Dominique de Font-Réaux of Louvre-Abu-Dhabi, Edouard Papet, curator of sculpture at the Musée d’Orsay, and Guy Cogeval, president of the Musée d’Orsay. After premiering at the Getty this summer, the exhibition travels to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where it is on view from October 18, 2010- January 23, 2011, and then to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid from March 22-June 12, 2011. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue published by the Musée d’Orsay in English and French as well as a smaller scholarly publication, which presents recent scholarship on the artist, published by the Getty.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, Markos Botsaris, 1874, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 70.2 x 54.6 cm, Terence and Katrina Garnett, San Mateo, California, EX.2010.2.58.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The CarpetMerchant, about 1887, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 86 x 68.7 cm, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 70.40, EX.2010.2.4.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, French, 1824-1904, The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer, 1863-1883, Oil on canvas, Unframed: 87.9 x 150.1 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 37.113, EX.2010.2.2.

 

Audran, Gerard (1640-1703) after Le Brun, Charles (1619-1690), Battle at the Milvian Bridg, detail, 1666, Etching and engraving, Battles of Alexander, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2003.PR.34).

Edelinck, Gérard (1640-1707), after Le Brun, Charles (1619-1690), Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander, detail, [ca. 1675], Etching and engraving, Battles of Alexander, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2003.PR.42).

Audran, Gerard (1640-1703), after Le Brun, Charles (1619-1690), Triumphal Entry into Babylon, detail, 1675, Etching and engraving, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2003.PR.33).

 

J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Villa
17985 Pacific Coast Highway
310-440-7300
Pacific Palisades
Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV
May 18-October 17, 2010

Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV explores a little-known facet of late 17th-century reproductive engravings. The exhibition examines the prints' rich vocabulary and illuminates the context in which they were made between the mid-1660s and the mid-1680s. While it focuses on the relationship between Charles Le Brun (French, 1619–90) and the printmakers who reproduced his compositions, the exhibition also interprets the prints and their inscriptions in light of Le Brun’s ambitions and struggles as a court painter, designer, and print publisher in the highly competitive atmosphere surrounding Louis XIV.

The works in this exhibition and related catalog  reproduce Le Brun’s narrative compositions in the Grand Manner, the genre in which a heroic protagonist engages in a morally significant action — a battle to be won, a victory to be celebrated, or a vice to be avoided. By disseminating these subjects in printed form, Le Brun presented to both collectors and artists his mastery of the most complex type of art. In turn, the quality and size of these prints allowed him to demonstrate the unprecedented authority over the fine arts in France.

The 11 large prints featured in Printing the Grand Manner were clearly intended to evoke the grandeur of Le Brun’s large-scale paintings and tapestry designs that illustrate events from the exemplary lives of ancient rulers such as Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great.  A prodigious artist and designer, now best known for his work at Versailles, Le Brun was Louis XIV’s principal painter, leader of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and director of the huge royal manufactory at the Hôtel des Gobelins, the integrated workshops where hundreds of artists and craftsmen produced the fine objects that gave the age of Louis XIV its veneer of splendor and grandeur.

“Le Brun used prints strategically to promote his agenda. Naturally, he wanted the best printmakers to reproduce his compositions and to disseminate them in the best possible light. As a painter and leader of the arts who experienced the power of prints in his own career, he was able to encourage the development of printmaking in France,” says Louis Marchesano, the Getty Research Institute’s curator of prints and drawings.  “In retrospect, we know Le Brun’s own interventions in the field of prints paid off because the material and stylistic excellence of the large prints whet the appetites of collectors and critics well into the 19th-century.”

Le Brun was most successful at the height of his power in the 1670s, when he oversaw the publication of the Battles of Alexander, a suite of five images comprising his Persian and Indian campaigns. With his reputation and authority at stake, he convinced the Crown to spare no expense on the quality of the paper and the size of the impressions. Pulled from 15 copper plates, large printed sheets had to be assembled into a suite of five separate images. The Alexander suite was made by two of the best artists at Le Brun's disposal, Gérard Edelinck and Gérard Audran. Showcasing Audran’s astonishing mixed etching and engraving technique, the four prints by him were judged to be the epitome of printmaking, in part because they appeared to improve upon Le Brun’s original paintings, a rather unusual judgment in favor of prints.

During this period, Le Brun oversaw the production of a small group of monumental engravings and etchings that ranged in size from 2-1/2 by 3 feet to 3 by 4-1/2 feet. Marchesano adds, “Despite the fact that no other moment in the history of art witnessed such a concerted production of unusually grand reproductive prints by a single artist, this visually compelling group of images has not drawn the attention of specialists or the public. In part, this is because the prints are difficult to handle and display. Our goal at the Getty Research Institute is to make them accessible and heighten awareness of them.”

•Printing the Grand Manner• is curated by Louis Marchesano, curator of prints and drawings for the Getty Research Institute. Accompanying the installation is an illustrated GRI publication with essays by Louis Marchesano and the renowned specialist of 17th and 18th century art Christian Michel: Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV.

 

Audran, Gerard (1640-1703), after Le Brun, Charles (1619-1690), Battle at the Milvian Bridge, detail center, 1666, Etching and engraving, center sheet: 74.2 x 102.2 cm, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.PR.34).