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Article

Ashburnham Pentateuch  

Dorothy Verkerk

Illuminated manuscript of the first five books of the Old Testament (now incomplete), dating from the late 6th or early 7th century (Paris, Bib.N., MS. nouv. acq. lat. 2334) and named after the English collector Bertram Ashburnham. Also known as the Pentateuch of Tours, the Ashburnham Pentateuch is one of the oldest surviving pre-Carolingian Vulgate manuscripts of the Old Testament. In its present condition, it lacks the last verses of Numbers and all of Deuteronomy; while 18 pages of illustration and 1 frontispiece survive from the original 65 pages with illustrations. The illustrated pages comprise several scenes generally arranged in two or three bands, although some pages have one or two large scenes, others combine illustration and text. Painted tituli that follow the Vulgate accompany the miniatures; however, beneath the painted titutli are preliminary inscriptions penned in ink that follow the Vetus latina text.

Based upon stylistic, iconographical and codicological evidence, the Pentateuch appears to have been made in a late 6th- to early 7th-century Italian scriptorium. Twelve pages were added in the 8th century by scribes from Fleury; an additional restored page (fol. 33) was added in the 7th century by a Touronian scribe. The illustrations often deviate from the exact retelling of the biblical text. The column of smoke and fire, for example, in the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea is depicted as a large candle held in two hands, a reference to Easter Vigil liturgical ceremonies (fol. 68...

Article

Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale  

Stephanie Luther

[CESCM]

French organization founded in Poitiers in 1953. The Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale (CECSM) is affiliated with the Université de Poitiers, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), and the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. The founders, among them historian Edmond-René Labande and art historian René Crozet, began CESCM as a month-long interdisciplinary study of medieval civilization, inviting foreign students to participate. CESCM has since developed into a permanent organization but maintains the international and interdisciplinary focus of its founders.

CESCM continues to hold its formative summer session, known as ‘Les Semaines d’études médiévales’, and invites advanced graduate students of all nationalities. The summer session spans two weeks and includes sessions on a variety of topics, each conducted by a member or affiliate of CESCM. CESCM supports collaborative research groups and regularly holds colloquia attended by the international scholarly community.

Since 1958 CECSM has published ...

Article

Kim Chŏng-hŭi  

[ho Ch’usa, among others]

(b Yesan, Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, 1786; d Kwach’on, Kyŏnggi Province, 1856).

Korean calligrapher, painter, scholar and poet. He was also a lay Buddhist. Born into a family related by marriage to the imperial household, from an early age he showed his talent for calligraphy, studying with Pak Che-ga. Kim had an extremely successful civil service career before being exiled in 1840 and again in 1848.

In 1809 he accompanied his father on a mission to China and went to Beijing, where he met such eminent scholars as Wen Fanggang (1733–1818) and Ruan Yuan. The scholarship of the Qing period (1644–1911), in particular the northern stele school of calligraphy (see China: Calligraphy), which chose as its calligraphic models the stelae of the Han (206 bcad 220) and Northern Wei (ad 386–534) dynasties, made a deep impression on Kim. His own style of calligraphy was characterized by vigorous strokes with a strong contrast between thick and thin lines. This style, known as the Ch’usa (i.e. Kim Chŏng-hŭi) style, was highly influential in Korea and well respected in China (...

Article

Coste, Pascal(-Xavier)  

Barry Bergdoll

(b Marseille, Nov 26, 1787; d Marseille, Feb 8, 1879).

French architect and writer. The designer of many of the principal public buildings of Marseille, he also published the first accurate records of the Islamic monuments of Cairo, North Africa and the Middle East—a central interest of mid-19th-century architectural theorists and ornamentalists.

After studying both engineering and drawing in Marseille, Coste began his career in 1804 as site inspector and draughtsman for the Neo-classicist Michel-Robert Penchaud, a municipal and departmental architect, for whom he worked for a decade. In 1814, on the recommendation of the architects Percier & Fontaine, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the ateliers of Antoine-Laurent-Thomas Vaudoyer and Jean-Baptiste Labadye (1777–1850). An encounter in Paris with the geographer Jombert, who had been a member of the scientific mission that accompanied Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, was to influence his subsequent career. In 1817 Jombert recommended Coste to Muhammad ‛Ali, Khedive of Egypt (...

Article

Czeschka, Carl Otto  

Peter Stasny

(b Vienna, Oct 22, 1878; d Hamburg, July 30, 1960).

Austrian printmaker, painter, decorative artist and writer. He studied painting with Christian Griepenkerl (1839–1916) at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna (1894–9). From 1899 to 1900 he renovated the Patronatskirche of Emperor Francis Joseph in Radmer an dem Hasel, decorating it with frescoes. At the same time he received his first illustration commissions from the publishers Gerlach & Wiedling in Vienna. From 1900 he was a member of the Vienna Secession (see Secession, §3). In 1902 he became an assistant tutor in draughtsmanship at the Kunstgewerbeschule (now Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst) in Vienna, and in 1905 he took over a class in painting and draughtsmanship, being one of Oskar Kokoschka’s first teachers.

In Autumn 1905 Czeschka joined the Wiener Werkstätte. Under their auspices he produced jewellery, fabrics, wallpaper, enamelled pictures and furniture, and repoussé work and glass windows for the Palais Stoclet, Brussels (...

Article

Frommel, Carl Ludwig  

S. Träger

(b Birkenfeld, Rheinland-Pfalz, April 29, 1789; d Ispringen, nr Pforzheim, Feb 6, 1863).

German painter and printmaker. From 1805 to 1809 he studied under Jakob Becker and the engraver Christian Haldenwang (1770–1831) at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe. In 1809 he went on a study trip to Paris, where Empress Josephine commissioned him to paint a series of 12 landscapes in watercolour. In 1813 he went to Rome on a scholarship, remaining there until 1817 and becoming, with Friedrich Gmelin (1760–1820), part of the Nazarene circle. He also visited Sicily with the architects Friedrich Gärtner and Daniel Ohlmüller. After his return to Karlsruhe he became Professor of Painting and Engraving at the Akademie in 1817. He executed numerous etchings (e.g. Ponto Lupo in Tivoli, 1815), engravings and paintings from his drawings and watercolours of the Italian landscape, and many of these were published in such folios as Arriccia (1820), Tivoli (1822), Ätna...

Article

Golden Haggadah  

Katrin Kogman-Appel

Richly illuminated manuscript of the Passover liturgy together with a series of liturgical poems to be read during the Passover week (London, BL, Add. MS. 27210), possibly made in Barcelona, c. 1320. This text was to be recited during the seder ceremony at the eve of the Passover holiday. Like most medieval Haggadot (see Haggadah), the Golden Haggadah has no colophon, and its scribe and patrons are unknown. It contains both marginal decorations and a series of full-page miniatures preceding the text and displaying a fully fledged cycle of biblical illustrations following the books of Genesis and Exodus from the Creation of Man to the Crossing of the Red Sea. Stylistically both types of decoration are indebted to early 14th-century Catalan Gothic art.

Similarly, the imagery of the biblical picture cycle also draws on Christian Old Testament iconography and reflects a familiarity with Christian art. The artists and patrons of the Golden Haggadah adopted Christian pictorial sources in a complex process of adaptation and modification, translating the Christian models into a Jewish visual language meaningful in its messages to the Jewish readership. Avoiding themes and iconographic features of a particular Christological concern, the imagery also reflects a close affinity with the traditions of late antique Bible interpretation (Midrash). This points to a specific circle of scholars active in Iberia during the 13th and early 14th centuries as being responsible for the imagery of the cycle. The use of traditional midrashic Bible exegesis is typical for Sephardic Rabbis of anti-rationalist standing, who opposed earlier philosophical trends and followed, rather, scholarly trends common among the Tosafists of northern France. It has also been observed that some images adopt a more specific anti-Christian stance and address polemical issues....

Article

Gude, Hans Fredrik  

Ernst Haverkamp

(b Christiania [now Oslo], March 13, 1825; d Berlin, Aug 17, 1903).

Norwegian painter. He was the most renowned Norwegian landscape painter of his time. At the age of 12 he was enrolled as a pupil of Johannes Flintoe (1787–1880). After attending evening classes at the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, he went to Düsseldorf in 1841 to study privately with the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910). In 1842 Gude was admitted to the landscape class at the Akademie under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He was later appointed an assistant teacher at Schirmer’s private studio, and he succeeded his master as Professor of landscape painting both at the Düsseldorf Akademie (1854–62) and at the Karlsruhe Akademie (1864–80). In the 1840s Gude established his reputation in Norway and on the Continent with powerful images of the Norwegian mountains. These were shown in the Kunstforening galleries in Düsseldorf and Christiania and at the Berliner Akademische Kunstausstellung, where Gude exhibited throughout his life. ...

Article

Osman Hamdi  

S. J. Vernoit

[Edhem, Osman HamdiHamdi Bey]

(b Istanbul, Dec 30, 1842; d Eskihisar, Gebze, nr Istanbul, Feb 24, 1910).

Turkish painter, museum director and archaeologist. In 1857 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for 11 years, training as a painter under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. On returning to Turkey he served in various official positions, including two years in Baghdad as chargé d’affaires, while at the same time continuing to paint. In 1873 he worked on a catalogue of costumes of the Ottoman empire, with photographic illustrations, for the Weltausstellung in Vienna. In 1881 he was appointed director of the Archaeological Museum at the Çinili Köşk, Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul. He persuaded Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg 1876–1909) to issue an order against the traffic in antiquities, which was put into effect in 1883, and he began to direct excavations within the Ottoman empire. As a result he brought together Classical and Islamic objects for the museum in Istanbul, including the Sarcophagus of Alexander, unearthed in Sidon in ...

Article

Hoffman, Friedrich Gottlob  

Christopher Gilbert

(b Belgern, nr Leipzig, 1741; d c. 1806).

German cabinetmaker. By 1770 he was established as a master cabinetmaker in Leipzig. An important early patron was the art dealer Karl Christian Heinrich Rost (1742–98), who commissioned furniture closely based on French and English models. In 1788 Hoffman obtained a loan to extend his business in Leipzig and a subsidiary workshop at Eilenburg; his total workforce was 16 tradesmen. In 1789, after a dispute with the local guild of cabinetmakers, he published his first pattern book, Abbildungen der vornehmsten Tischlerarbeiten, welche verfertiget und zu haben sind bey Friedrich Gottlob Hoffmann, wohnhaft auf dem alten Neumarkt in Leipzig, an anthology of designs for household furniture, mostly inspired by the Louis XVI Neo-classical style. In 1795 he produced a second catalogue, Neues Verzeichnis und Muster-Charte des Meubles-Magazin, in which English design types are dominant. A number of pieces corresponding to plates in these two pattern books have been identified (e.g. sofa, ...

Article

Janmot, (Anne-François-)Louis  

Nadia Tscherny

(b Lyon, May 21, 1814; d Lyon, June 1, 1892).

French painter and poet. He belonged to the Lyon school of painting, characterized by idealistic and mystical tendencies similar to those of the Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites. His Christian beliefs, which are very apparent in his art, were strongly influenced by neo-Catholic apologists. From 1831 Janmot studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. In 1833 he went to Paris, where he became a student of Victor Orsel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He also attended Ingres’s studios in Paris and Rome. His technique was deeply indebted to Ingres, but emotionally and intellectually he was more closely allied with Delacroix, whose enthusiasm for the literature of Dante and Shakespeare he shared. Janmot’s style combined the precision of Ingres with the meditative devotion of Orsel. His predilection for heraldic compositions, based on symmetry and repetition, his use of profile and flattened form and his luminous colour were all influenced by a love of such early Italian painters as Giotto and Fra Angelico. Janmot’s style has much in common with that of fellow Lyonnais and pupil of Ingres, Hippolyte Flandrin....

Article

Mannlich, Johann Christian von  

Rüdiger an der Heiden

(b Strasbourg, Oct 2, 1741; d Munich, Jan 3, 1822).

German painter, lithographer and administrator. He received his first training from his father, Konrad Mannlich (1701–58), court painter to Christian IV, Duke of Zweibrücken. In 1758 he was sent to the drawing academy at Mannheim by Christian IV, and in 1762–3 accompanied him to Paris, where he met François Boucher, Carle Vanloo and also Christoph Gluck and Diderot. His work from this period reveals the influence of French Rococo, for example in The Surprise (a scene from ‘Blaise the Shoemaker’, an opera by F.-A. Danican Philidor; Regensburg, Staatsgal.). He studied in Paris under Boucher in 1765–6, at the Académie de France in Rome under Charles-Joseph Natoire in 1767–70 and also visited Naples; on his return journey to Germany he met Anton Raphael Mengs in Florence. During 1770–71 he made a great many copies of paintings, including one after Raphael’s Madonna della sedia and another after Correggio’s Madonna of St Jerome...

Article

Müller, (Johann) Friedrich  

Ingrid Sattel Bernardini

[Maler Müller]

(b Kreuznach, Jan 13, 1749; d Rome, April 23, 1825).

German painter, engraver, draughtsman, poet and Playwright. From about 1765 he was taught by Daniel Hien (1724–73), court painter to Christian IV, Duke of Zweibrücken, with 17th-century Dutch painting as his model. Müller showed a talent for realistic depiction of animals, especially horses, and landscape, including farm scenes. The Duke gave him an allowance so that, from 1769, he was able to attend the Mannheim Akademie. Müller’s friendship there with Ferdinand Kobell and Franz Kobell (1749–1822) led to a considerable mutual influence in the work of all three. Müller also established himself as a poet at this time, becoming one of the representatives of the late 18th-century German literary movement known as Sturm und Drang. In the course of the 1770s Müller wrote a celebrated series of idylls, the lyric drama Niobe and the first parts of his Fausts Leben dramatisiert, all issued in editions with his own engraved illustrations. Life drawings and etchings from this period are in Mannheim (Städt. Reiss-Mus.), Frankfurt am Main (Goethemus.) and Monaco-Ville (Archvs Pal. Princier). At this time, however, Müller’s work as a poet and dramatist was more widely known and admired than his work as an artist. His study of the famous collection of casts of antique sculptures in the Antikensaal at Mannheim, and of paintings in the picture gallery belonging to the Elector ...

Article

Pini, Ermenegildo  

Peter Boutourline Young

(b Milan, 1739; d Milan, 1825).

Italian scientist, philosopher, writer and architect. His early education took place in Milan, Monza, Rome and Naples between 1756 and 1765. Having joined the Barnabite order in 1756, he became a member of the regular clergy of S Paolo, Milan. In 1766 he was appointed professor-in-ordinary of mathematics at the Università di S Alessandro in Milan, where he also taught chemistry, mineralogy and canon law, and in 1772 he became professor of natural history. While best known for his work in geology and natural history, he is also remembered for his treatise Dell’architettura: Dialoghi (1770), which includes all the plans of the church of S Giuseppe at Seregno. Pini himself designed the Neo-classical interior of the church, which was completed by Giulio Galliori (1715–95). The treatise is arranged in the form of two Socratic dialogues by mathematics students in Milan and Longone. The first deals with the dome and the centrally planned church. The students exchange opinions on the mathematical calculation of domes, arches and vaults; Francesco Borromini is praised for his great technical ability, while his successors, in particular the French, are condemned for being responsible for ‘depraving the good taste of architecture’. The students conclude that intrinsic beauty is to be found in simple geometric shapes and that architecture can derive examples from the classical repertory. The second dialogue deals with fortifications and is of considerable importance for the study of the engineer ...

Article

Ōtagaki Rengetsu  

Karen M. Gerhart

[Ōtagaki Nobu]

(b Kyoto, 1791; d Kyoto, 1875).

Japanese poet, calligrapher, potter and painter. Shortly after her birth, she was adopted by Ōtagaki Mitsuhisa who worked at Chion’in, an important Jōdo (Pure Land) sect temple in Kyoto. In 1798 she was sent to serve at Kameoka Castle in Tanba, where she studied poetry, calligraphy and martial arts. She returned to Kyoto in 1807 and was married to a young samurai named Mochihisa. They had three children, all of whom died shortly after birth; in 1815 Mochihisa also died. In 1819 Nobu remarried, but her second husband died in 1823. After enduring the tragic loss of two husbands and all her children, Nobu, only 33 years old, cut her hair off and became a nun, at which time she adopted the name Rengetsu (‘lotus moon’). She lived with her stepfather, who had also taken vows, near Chion’in. After his death in 1832 Rengetsu began to make pottery, which she then inscribed with her own ...

Article

Ruhl, Ludwig Sigismund  

Ingrid Sattel Bernardini

[Sigmind]

(b Kassel, Dec 10, 1794; d Kassel, March 7, 1887).

German painter, printmaker, illustrator and writer. After having lessons in drawing from his father, the sculptor and printmaker Johann Christian Ruhl (1764–1842), Ruhl studied from 1806 at the Kassel Kunstakademie. In order to gain a more thorough training in history painting, he spent the winter of 1812–13 studying anatomy at the university at Göttingen and then a year at the Akademie in Dresden.

Ruhl achieved his first successes in Kassel with pictures of horses, as Horse Race in Antiquity (1813; Kassel, Neue Gal.). In 1815, after serving in the Hessian cavalry fighting Napoleon, Ruhl continued his artistic studies in Munich and formed a close association with the painter Carl Philipp Fohr. The two shared an enthusiasm for chivalric romances and undertook joint commissions to illustrate them. Examples by Ruhl include drawings for Ludwig Tieck’s Melusine (c. 1815–16; Kassel, Neue Gal.; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.)....

Article

Ryōkan  

Cecil H. Uyehara

(b Echigo Prov. [now Niigata Prefect.], 1758; d 1831).

Japanese Zen monk, calligrapher and poet. He became a monk at the age of 18 at the temple Kōshōji, Okayama Prefecture, but, being a wanderer for most of his life, never attained high monastic rank. He is known for his poetry in Japanese and Chinese and his individualistic, indeed idiosyncratic, swiftly brushed style of calligraphy and is one of the most respected calligraphers of the late Edo period, receiving more attention and study than his contemporaries Maki Ryōko and Ichikawa Beian. His modern popularity has given rise to an increasing number of Ryōkan forgeries. Most of his extant calligraphies consist of letters and poems in his own hand, much of the subject-matter deriving from his everyday experiences, as for example the letter brushed in ink on paper between 1806 and 1810 (Tokyo, N. Mus.). Ryōkan studied the 100-character text by the Chinese calligrapher Huaisu, the calligraphy of the legendary 4th-century ...

Article

Skredsvig [Eriksen], Christian  

Ingrid Reed Thomsen

(b Modum, March 12, 1854; d Eggedal, Jan 19, 1924).

Norwegian painter and writer. After a year at Johan Fredrik Eckersberg’s painting school and the Royal School of Drawing and Art in Christiania (now Oslo), Skredsvig studied in Copenhagen (1870–74), first as a pupil of Vilhelm Kyhn and later at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Besides landscapes, his main interest was animal painting. In 1874–5 he studied in Paris, in museums and with Léon Bonnat. From 1875 to 1879 he worked in Munich, where among others he was influenced by Arnold Böcklin. Skredsvig painted landscapes based on sketches made in Norway but using German models, as in Evening in the Mountains (1878, priv. col.; replica, 1882, Bergen, Billedgal.), a typical studio work in its smooth finish and use of local colour.

Returning to Paris in 1879 Skredsvig again studied briefly under Bonnat and others. Works from this period such as Unloading Snow by the Seine (...