8/31/2023 0 Comments Vienna italy glass making![]() ![]() ![]() Her idea, to bring Venice to Boston, came to fruition when the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened its doors in 1903. He introduces us to major collectors: Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (1828-1905), whose private museum in Palo Alto, Calif., houses one of the most important Venetian glass collections in the country and Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), whose interest in Venice was likely sparked by a meeting with Henry James during an 1879 tour of London and Paris. Mann has selected 140 works to explore this story and delves into the lives of both artists and prominent collectors who put Murano glass, mosaics, lace and jewelry at the forefront. In this show we see the ways in which American artists and writers took delight in Venice and Murano, capturing street scenes and seascapes as well as vignettes of Murano’s glass artisans. Visual artists, including John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, also were drawn into the region’s light, architecture and inherent drama. ![]() The magic of transforming modest materials into hand-blown marvels and stunning mosaics inspired many visiting artists to these real or imagined fiery spectacles in works such as Charles Frederic Ulrich’s “Glass Blowers of Murano,” a painting also made into a photogravure. Wallace-Dunlop was pronouncing that “Venetian blown glass is now as nearly perfect as anything human can be.” “Thanks to Salviati’s relentless pursuit of technical perfection and the young glassblower’s highly competitive spirit, they were able to transcend the technical skills of their ancestors and achieve an absolute mastery of their medium in a remarkably short time,” Sheldon Barr writes in an essay in the exhibition catalog. Murano artisans thrived in an environment in which they were encouraged to experiment and innovate. Salviati artisans undertook the restoration of mosaics in Venice’s St Mark’s Basilica, and then took on projects for modern churches and other institutions, including London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. These luxury objects were appreciated for both their beauty and their difficulty of creation. Domestic interiors might display objects “for art’s sake” and hand-blown art glass works had the capacity to dazzle and enchant.Īnyone who has watched a talented glass artisan at work is spellbound by the transformation of simple elements into objects of refinement. It was a time when arbiters of taste promulgated the idea that domestic interiors could serve as compositions in their own right – artfully coordinated and arranged just as a painter might choose and place colors and forms on a canvas. A few wealthy Americans began to amass major collections, seeing in them the ideas touted by the Anglo-American Aesthetic Movement. Many American visitors visited the glass factories of Murano during their travels, enjoying access to an industry known for its secretive practices and closely guarded formulas. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum photo by Albert Ting.īetween 18, the revival of Murano’s renowned glassmaking industry was matched by a surge in American tourism. Installation image, “Sargent, Whistler and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano,” 2021. This exhibition explores this cultural period and the paintings, etchings and drawings it inspired. The revitalized industry was fueled by the virtuosity of its craftsmen who elevated their objects from souvenirs to museum-quality objects. ![]() In time Salviati’s operation would mushroom into a constellation of companies that restored and produced elaborate mosaics and hand-blown art glass for export.īy the turn of the Twentieth Century, Venice had reclaimed its mantle as a major glassmaking region, with new generations of Murano artisans creating complex and colorful goblets and bowls based upon historic forms and techniques. WASHINGTON, DC – When Crawford Alexander Mann III, curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian Museum of Art, began work on “Sargent, Whistler and Venetian Glass: American Artists and The Magic of Murano,” he turned to new scholarship to expand upon this venerable story.įor centuries, Italian ambassador Armando Varricchio writes in the exhibition catalog, Venice had overseen a thriving maritime glassmaking empire, and the island of Murano in the Venice lagoon had played a major role, drawing upon the art of Southwestern Asia and adapting it for specific markets.īut this history was interrupted by Austrian occupation it was only in the mid-Nineteenth Century, with Italian unification after 70 years of Austrian control, that a glassmaking revival got underway.Īntonio Salviati (1816-1890) would play a major role in Murano’s renaissance by establishing a small firm to assist with the restoration of Italy’s treasured mosaics. “Portrait of Abraham Lincoln” by Enrico Podio, 1866. ![]()
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