The Italian Presence in American Art, 1860-1920Irma B. Jaffe Like a magic potion, Italianita has seeped through the stream of American aesthetic consciousness ever since Benjamin West stepped onto Italian soil in 1760. The first period of this artistic phenomenon was investigated in The Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860 and the book at hand thus continues this intellectual exploration in its development during the following sixty years. Those decades between the Civil War and World War I brought to a climax the growing sense of American continental nationhood, and this strengthened perception of national identity was reflected in American art. A synthesis was achieved in which American values and images were fused with the great tradition flowing from its Italian source. Among the themes that arise from this examination of the role that Italy played in shaping American art is first and foremost the struggle to resolve the issue of what American art ought to express: our European heritage or our cultural independence. This question penetrates to the heart of the most widely debated topic in present-day American culture - multiculturalism. The reader may well find previously unconsidered relationships between our past and present, and may be led to reconsider problems posed by the conflicting needs of unity and diversity in our nation. Other themes that appear in these essays deal with the development of American wealth and its role in influencing the taste of the period, and with feminism. In these pages it will be noticed how very closely American art mirrors the American Experience. While all art reflects the cultural context in which it is created, the nature of American art, predominantly Romantic-Realism, makes the link between ideaand image particularly visible. What becomes evident is that "the Italian presence" was almost never a simple matter of direct influence; rather it was an experience for American artists that afforded them, above all, insight and inspiration. Italy was America's muse. |
Contents
Carr 2 Frederic Edwin Church and Italy | 23 |
Nicolai Cikovsky Jr 3 Inness and Italy | 43 |
OConnor 5 The Murals by Constantino Brumidi | 81 |
Robert O Jones 6 Italian Inspiration in Maitland | 97 |
William H Gerdts 9 American Memorial Sculpture and the Protestant | 133 |
Osborne 13 Lizzie Boott at Bellosguardo | 188 |
Margherita Azzi Visentini 17 The Italian Garden | 240 |
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Academy in Rome Academy's aissance Ameri American Academy American Art American artists American Renaissance Arch architect architecture Archives of American Armstrong Berenson Boston Brumidi Capitol Cass Gilbert century Charles Charles Follen McKim classical collection Color commission Cooper-Hewitt decorative depicted dome Dumbarton Oaks early Elihu Vedder Elizabeth Boott Duveneck Exhibition Catalogue Farge figures Florence Frank Duveneck Frederic Edwin Church French fresco frieze Gallery George Gifford Gilbert Henry James historical Ibid inspiration Italian gardens Italian Renaissance Italy John Henry Twachtman landscape later letter Library Lizzie Boott Lizzie's London McEntee McKim Mead & White ment monument Morgan Munich mural Museum of Art Oil on canvas Olana painter paintings Paris photographs Plate Platt Renais Roman Rome rotunda Sandro Botticelli scenes Siddons Mowbray sketches Smithsonian Institution Stanford White style taste Tenth Street tion tradition trip ture U. S. Capitol Vedder Venetian Venice Washington William wrote York
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Page 6 - But, besides those great men, there is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere...
Page 6 - True or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them — the wistfulness of exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a sentiment of ineffable melancholy.
Page 3 - He requires that the hair should be thick, long, and locky; the forehead serene, and twice as broad as high; the skin bright and clear (candida), but not of a dead white (bianchezza); the eyebrows dark, silky, most strongly marked in the middle, and shading off towards the ears and the nose; the white of the eye faintly touched with blue, the iris not actually black, though all the poets praise 'occhi neri...