What is my dissertation about?

The Elector of Saxony’s wire drawing bench (1565) is an extremely complicated piece of art and technology which remains relatively unknown outside France and Germany. It deserves to be more widely known not only amongst the general public, but also art and cultural historians too, due to its unique straddling of the Renaissance art and scientific world.

An unknown V&A Cabinet - some thoughts

I'm on the cusp of handing in my dissertation and to both my delight and dismay, I'm still finding potentially relevant interesting additions. As I explained to the lovely assistant curator at the V&A last week, it's as if the bench has provided the key to many doors and I'm being invited in to explore. Two items have come to light this week and I wanted to  quickly get some thoughts down on paper. The first is related to my V&A visit, and the second is a Jost Amman woodcut which I have just discovered. I will be focusing on the first below.

On Thursday afternoon we went down to the old post office which serves as the storage for one of the most interesting museum collections in London. As we were issued security passes, the AC was there waiting to escort us upstairs to a massive lumber room with the most interesting rolling shelves contents I've ever seen. As she identified the right shelf, we looked around us, taking in the stag horn mirror, a golden bed stead, 1950s sofas, and various interesting shapes covered in white dust sheets. Like an attic of sleeping beauties, waiting for a visit from someone who knows where to find them.

Hunting and the Wire Drawing Bench

First half of the panel

The Ore Mountains were not only central to Saxony because of their seams of wealth, but they also provided a hunting environment rich in game, fowl and fish. Scholars are unanimous in their commentary that for the highest echelons of society, hunting, hawking and angling as sports were an integral part of European culture, and was for some, a consuming obsession.[1] If Charles Bergman is to be believed, hunting played a part in the creation of nations; ‘royalty asserted their rights to the ownership of the forests of their countries and the hunt was closely associated with the assertion of national control by European monarchs over their lands and people’.[2] 

Jost Amman and the Wire Drawing Bench

You know when you're racing against the clock and you can see a deadline waving a chequered flag? Of course this is the time that I'm having some seriously interesting conversations with experts, as well as trying to piece together a totally wild iconographic programme. However I wanted to get this on here because it raises some points which I should probably investigate but I'm scared of venturing too far off the landscape point.

It's also entirely the work of one of the people who knows the bench best, Stephanie Deprouw. Although we have not yet met, we have had some wonderful exchanges, so any mistakes are mine, because of my terrible French.

Marquetry decoration on August I's wiredrawing bench

Wood; the material out of which which the bulk of the bench is made and decorated. It is essential to look more closely at it, especially with my focus on the landscape and the environment. 

Marquetry as a way of adorning objects has a long history. Evidence of its practice has been traced back to the ancient Egyptians, with the Greeks and Romans carrying on the tradition of beautifying their furniture with rare wood inlays. In fifteenth-century Italy, a method of decoration called intarsia became very popular amongst the elite. Solid timber was hollowed out then filled in with valuable metals, precious stones, ivory and rare woods. Marquetry differs from intarsia; thin layers of wood veneer are cut, collected in a design, and laid out over the surface which is to be decorated’ rather than inserted into a hollowed out base.[1] This jigsaw of different wood veneers is precisely how the bench decoration was made.

More on the bench: Hunting for a direction

What the heck is it?

What I am about to describe has never been done so completely in English, as far as I know. The images were afforded a mere quarter of a paragraph in Gunther Heine's 1990 article about the bench. I can't say with the same surety say that it hasn't been done in French or German, but if it has, I haven't yet found it. Given my focus on geography of art, the landscape images were demanding that I take a closer look so I took a flying visit to the Museum of the Renaissance in Ecouen, to look at the those images specifically. This is what I constructed in transit so it's rough and ready.

I need to orientate you so you can piece together a map of the bench in your head. Imagine you are standing at one short end of it, looking all the way down towards the good light and the window. That illuminated end is the end with the image of the man in his workshop and the elaborate coat of arms of the Elector of Saxony. But you're not there yet, you see the monogrammed AM in the landscape. Crouch down and move to the right. Underneath the long jousting tableau, which you've already admired, there is the first square picture. There are four of these, two either side of the end pieces.

Introduction to August's Wiredrawing Bench

In the heart of royal Dresden, along the Augustusstrasse, attached to the back of the Royal Mews, a 102 metre long ceramic mural dominates the street. Known as the Procession of Princes or Fürstenzug, Saxony’s rulers from the first, Konrad the Great (1127-1156) to the last, Friedrich August III (1904-1918) are shown. Originally painted between 1870 and 1876 by artist Wilhelm Walther to celebrate the 800 year anniversary of the Wettin dynasty, they were originally presented in limewash and stucco but were made permanent in Meissen porcelain in 1906-07.[1]

The Decoration on August's Wire Drawing Bench

The wire drawing bench in Écouen is the only remaining object of its type. Although many plain wooden goldsmith's benches can be found in museum collections, this one from 1565 is unique. Just as modern scientific instruments are functional and lack a certain mystery, these plain workaday benches are nothing like the Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench. They have been employed as indispensable goldsmith tools since the middle ages. An engraving by Etienne Delaune demonstrates how the bench was used; the long wooden beam was equipped with a crank, pliers and pulling iron, and used for drawing and profiling metal wires.

Kunstgeographie: A brief guide for the perplexed

What is Kunstgeographie?

Literally translated, kunstgegraphie means the geography of art. Whereas the history of art looks at art in its historical and time-related context, the geography of art looks specifically at place. DaCosta Kaufmann sets it out clearly, 'if art has a history, it also at least implicitly had, and has, a geography; for if the history of art conceives of art as being made in a particular time, it also put it in a place'. (Towards a Geography of Art, p1)

Therefore when looking at art, you should think about geographic issues, in addition to everything else. Ask yourself what are the antecedents to a change in style? What are the particular environmental factors, societal, economic, personal, psychological, climate, materials that have encouraged this change? And why should the place of art not be as important as the history of that same art; after all, both have informed it equally, in my view.

Strange Beauty and Augustus, Elector of Saxony

Altdorfer 'Landscape' 1518-20

It seems you can travel miles in search of a certain historical figure, and not realise that useful insights could be hiding in plain view. After a trip to Dresden to see Elector Augustus of Saxony's family home, I decided to visit to London's National Gallery 'Strange Beauty' exhibition. This is not a review because I am too late and its failings have been done to death. However for my purposes the exhibition was a success because it helped me frame some interesting art historical questions, as well as send me off in an unexpected direction.

Naturally I got distracted; in the introductory room I was able to spend quality time with the Arnolfini Portrait, where you could get up close and personal without the usual crowds (yes, I'm happy to pay to be alone with it); as well as some stunning engravings and woodcuts by Cranach and Holbein. The latter's Dance of Death (1526) showed how a tiny skeleton can imbue a scene with an emotional sense of loss - the unwilling toddler being led away was heart stopping. Another dual highlight was Dürer's Melancholia I and an engraving of a self portrait. That arresting gaze missed nothing; whilst the reflection of the windows captured the illumination of his own soul. 

The various Cranachs were, as usual, inscrutable and teasing. Finally I was getting there. Cranach the Elder spent a lot of time at the Elector of Saxony's court and was highly esteemed as an artist and diplomat. Cranach chose to depict the naked people of the mythical silver age fighting one another, against a backdrop of wild mountains and greenery. Instead of focusing on the positives of this age, where Jupiter introduces the seasons and agriculture, he shows the senselessness of men beating each other. The graceful, perfectly coiffed women with their toddlers look on. The fleshy tones and juxtaposition of violence and babies is disturbingly captivating. 

When the kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony in Dresden was founded by Augustus, Elector of Saxony in 1560, paintings were subordinate to technology and other crafts. However, despite his practical focus, August cherished Cranach the Younger's Adam and Eve which he kept with his treasures. These slim paintings may lack either the sculptural monumentality of Michelangelo or the anguish of Massacio's Adam and Eve, but they have a power and allure of their own. The elegance and simplicity of the gestures catch them on the cusp of the fall; the calm before the storm, the moment of silence before the death and horror. You catch your breath at the inevitability of their temptation and they act as a reminder that we now need to rely on our industry to survive.

From Cranach to the second to last room where I finally captured my Elector; 'Nature and beauty' was the theme. I copied the text which explains the rationale of the pictures in this room. 

Critics have sometimes described German Renaissance art as ugly because of excessive emotion or natural detail but the images themselves present more subtle relationships between beauty, nature and artistry. Durer wrote of his constant search for accurate proportion but he also observed that the human body exists in varied shapes and sizes. Rather than searching for universal ideas of perfection German artists created beautiful images by exploring the diversity of the human form whether variations in body type the effect of ageing or the expressive power of gesture. 

They often lavished equal attention on topography and foliage since mountainous forest landscapes signalled Germanic identity and history. Albrecht invented the new genre of independent landscape omitting all human subjects. But in many figurative images too, landscape setting plays a vital part. Nature in these works is never an objective truth to be recorded. Instead the natural world becomes a subject for creative investigation.

It was Dürer's 'Illustrations of perspective from 'Four Books on Measurement' (1538) I saw Augustus. Augustus was constantly measuring everything, from surveying the land to mapping the heavens. He was looking to the art of science to work out the relationship between things. One article states, 'a 1580 handwritten catalogue lists 2,345 works in his collection from all fields - the classics, theology, history, medicine, surgery, law, mathematics, architecture, astronomy, tournaments and festivals, warfare, mining, numismatics, mineralogy, biology and agriculture'. So not so much creative investigation but early modern natural philosophical experimentation on what the earth can produce for the benefit of the Elector and his state.

Landscape was all. I don't know whether Augustus saw the romantic beauty of his wild forests and mountains, or if he saw the mineral ore, timber, and wealth that they provided. However it is the mountainous forest landscapes signall[ing] Germanic identity and history which has provided me with raw material for consideration. The wiredrawing bench is covered with images of a mysterious forested landscape and set against some of the images in this exhibition, it can only be described as 'germanic'. Altdorfer and his dramatic landscapes are going to provide some very interesting ideas.

The exhibition ends with questions and says, 'today art galleries avoid identifying aesthetic qualities with national character'. I agree, 'national character' is a very woolly and unhelpful phrase. However when a patron like Augustus commissions a work of art or technology, it is necessarily going to be identified with him and his personal interests. Where his interests are so forcefully tied to the identification and exploitation of his state's natural resources, do they produce a 'national character'? If a place is famed for its silver mines and industrial processes, and one of the tools of that process - the wiredrawing bench - is highly decorative, it is logical to assume that the images are inspired by the local landscape. Thus the work of art takes on a national character and demands an explanation in that context.

And this is what I'm setting out to investigate. 

Dresden Thoughts

I'm currently looking up at the sky. Reclining in the welcome silence of the hotel's quiet room with a cup of fruit tea. It's a fabulous place to collect one's thoughts and anticipate the weekend to come. The art historical odyssey of tomorrow and Sunday was merely words on a page today; though at least we know where we're going.

This visit has a purpose. Last year in Paris I came across a very special object in the Musee de la Renaissance. The Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench is a perfect MA dissertation topic and I started work on it straight away for my summer report. You can take a lot from books and journal articles, but to truly get under the skin of a patron and his works, you have to see his place. His home. His culture. So here I am, banging on the door of the Royal Palace.

Le banc d'orfèvre : L'électeur de Saxe: Book Review

This collection of essays is the eighth in the National Museum of the Renaissance series of specialist guidebooks. Covering fascinating exhibits such as petit point embroidery from 1570-1610, painted marriage chests or cassoni, renaissance bronze reliefs, and a 16th century Mexican crucifixion triptych, this new volume in the series is dedicated to one item from the museum's collection.

The Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench arrived in Paris in the late 19th century's when the royal Dresden collection was dispersed after the economic disaster which succeeded the Napoleonic wars. In the 1880s the bench was initially destined for the Musee Carnavalet but when they decided to dedicate it to the history of Paris they looked to sell off the bench and its tools. In a sculptural exchange with the Musee de Cluny, it joined that collection until war broke out in 1939. Afterwards, the Cluny decided to focus on an earlier historic period, so the bench remained in safe storage until 1977 when the dedicated Renaissance museum in Ecouen was opened. From 1981, inspired by 16th century etchings, it was presented to the public as part of a goldsmith's workshop. However in 2010 both its technical and artistic aspects were reappraised and it was put in room reflecting the nature of a prince's kunstkammer - surrounded by beautiful scientific objects. 

Work in Progress: Digitisation Projects in Museums

This is part of a wider project that I am currently working on. I am about to start on the actual evaluation of what the National Museum of the Renaissance, has achieved with its partners regarding Leonhard Danner's goldsmith's bench. However the digital art history aspect has been fascinating to read about.

Leonhard Danner; Designer, Engineer, Inventor

Leonhard Danner of Nuremberg (V&A)

There is something curiously and inevitably contrary about the figure of Leonhard Danner, the sixteenth century Nuremberger engineer/inventor. A tireless figure who we can only imagine through the machines he left behind, the scope of which indicates the breadth of his expertise, imagination, whilst channelling the vision of princely patrons. Biographical details of his life are scant and unreliable; as befits a successful, wealthy, gentleman engineer we know roughly what he looked like but his date of birth is either 1497 or 1507. What we do know is that by 1585, married to his second wife Dorothea, he died a wealthy citizen, enjoying for a brief time an Imperial Privilege derived from timber. 

Passez-moi l'absinthe...

Le banc d’orfèvre

It's time for a change topic wise. I have a summer project to do and guess what? I've chosen another awkward one. The Research Project, we students are told,  'is your first piece of extended, independent research. It draws on the methods, issues and skills that have been raised in the Research Skills seminars and in the Core Course.'

It continues, 'the Research Project is principally concerned with the PROCESS of research rather than solely with the RESULTS of that process. It might have a practical or applied focus, for example, it could be based on a museum or a gallery, an exhibition or arts policy. Or it might focus on a particular work of art that explicitly raises questions of interpretation'.