From Darkness to Light: Writers in Museums 1798-1898 - cover image

Copyright

Rosella Mamoli Zorzi; Katherine Manthorne

Published On

2019-03-12

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-549-4
Hardback978-1-78374-550-0
PDF978-1-78374-551-7
HTML978-1-80064-570-7
XML978-1-78374-723-8
EPUB978-1-78374-552-4
MOBI978-1-78374-553-1

Language

  • English

Print Length

392 pages (xviii+374)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 27 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.07" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 30 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.19" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1636g (57.71oz)
Hardback2033g (71.71oz)

Media

Illustrations44
Tables1

OCLC Number

1107380784

LCCN

2019452878

BIC

  • WTHM
  • A
  • AB
  • AG

BISAC

  • ART000000
  • ART059000
  • ARC007010

LCC

  • NK2115.5.L5

Keywords

  • museum lighting
  • exhibition spaces
  • America
  • Japan
  • Western Europe
  • nineteenth century
  • twentieth century

From Darkness to Light

Writers in Museums 1798-1898

From Darkness to Light explores from a variety of angles the subject of museum lighting in exhibition spaces in America, Japan, and Western Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Written by an array of international experts, these collected essays gather perspectives from a diverse range of cultural sensibilities. From sensitive discussions of Tintoretto’s unique approach to the play of light and darkness as exhibited in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, to the development of museum lighting as part of Japanese artistic self-fashioning, via the story of an epic American painting on tour, museum illumination in the work of Henry James, and lighting alterations at Chatsworth (to name only a few topics) this book is a treasure trove of illuminating contributions.

The collection is at once a refreshing insight for the enthusiastic museum-goer, who is brought to an awareness of the exhibit in its immediate environment, and a wide-ranging scholarly compendium for the professional who seeks to proceed in their academic or curatorial work with a more enlightened sense of the lighted space.

Reviews

Based on a conference in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, in 2016, this compilation of essays covers interrelated subjects chiefly focused on the introduction of artificial lighting in museum galleries, and writers’ reactions to it at different sites in Europe and America

Stephen Wildman

"From Darkness to Light: Writers in Museums 1798–1898. Edited by Rosella Mamoli Zorzi and Katherine Manthorne". The Burlington Magazine (0007-6287), vol. 161, no. 1400, 2019.

Contents

Introduction: From Darkness to Light: Writers in Museums 1798–1898

(pp. 1–6)
  • Rosella Mamoli Zorzi
  • Katherine Manthorne

1. Tintoretto: An Unexpected Light. Lightnings, Haloes, Embers and Other Glowing Lights

(pp. 9–24)
  • Melania G. Mazzucco

2. The Artificial Lighting Available to European and American Museums,1800-1915

(pp. 25–40)
  • David E. Nye

3. Tintoretto in San Rocco Between Light and Darkness

(pp. 43–52)
  • Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel

4. John Ruskin and Henry James in the Enchanting Darkness of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco

(pp. 53–70)
  • Rosella Mamoli Zorzi

5. Light at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco

(pp. 71–78)
  • Demetrio Sonaglioni

6. The Light in the Venice Ducal Palace

(pp. 79–86)
  • Camillo Tonini

7. Latent in Darkness: John Ruskin’s Virtual Guide to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice

(pp. 87–98)
  • Emma Sdegno

8. Venice, Art and Light in French Literature: 1831-1916

(pp. 99–106)
  • Cristina Beltrami

9. One Hundred Gems of Light: The Peale Family Introduces Gaslight to America

(pp. 109–116)
  • Burton K. Kummerow

10. Illuminating the Big Picture: Frederic Church’s Heart of the Andes Viewed by Writers

(pp. 117–128)
  • Katherine Manthorne

11. Italian Genius in American Light: The James Jackson Jarves Collection at Yale

(pp. 129–140)
  • Kathleen Lawrence

12. Shedding Light on the History of Lighting at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

(pp. 141–150)
  • Holly Salmon

13. Seeing Beauty: Light and Design at the Freer Gallery, ca.1923

(pp. 151–164)
  • Lee Glazer

14. Lighting up the Darkness: The National Gallery, London

(pp. 167–176)
  • Sarah Quill

15. Sir John Soane

(pp. 177–188)
  • Helen Dorey

16. Chatsworth, a Modern English Mansion

(pp. 189–200)
  • Marina Coslovi

17. Daylight and Gold: In the Galleries With Henry James

(pp. 201–210)
  • Paula Deitz

18. Remarks on Illumination in Nineteenth-Century American Travel Writings on Madrid’s Prado Museum

(pp. 211–220)
  • Pere Gifra-Adroher

19. To Look (and to See) in the Nineteenth Century: At the Uffizi and Elsewhere

(pp. 223–238)
  • Cristina Acidini

20. Ways of Perceiving: The Passionate Pilgrims’ Gaze in Nineteenth-Century Italy

(pp. 239–260)
  • Margherita Ciacci

21. 'In the Quiet Hours and the Deep Dusk, These Things too Recovered Their Advantage': Henry James on Light in European Museums

(pp. 261–270)
  • Joshua Parker

22. 'Shedding Light on Old Italian Masters': Timothy Cole's Series for The Century

(pp. 271–284)
  • Page S. Knox

23. 'Into the Broad Sunlight': Anne Hampton Brewster’s Chronicle of Gilded Age Rome

(pp. 285–294)
  • Adrienne Baxter Bell

24. In Praise of Shadows: Ernest Fenollosa and the Origins of Japanese Museum Culture

(pp. 297–306)
  • Dorsey Kleitz
  • Sandra Lucore

25. Premonitions: Shakespeare to James

(pp. 309–318)
  • Sergio Perosa

26. The Museum on Stage: From Plato’s Myth to Today’s Perception

(pp. 319–322)
  • Alberto Pasetti Bombardella

27. Time and Light

(pp. 323–332)
  • Antonio Foscari

Contributors

Rosella Mamoli Zorzi

(editor)
Professor of American Literature, Emeritus at Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2778-6168

Rosella Mamoli Zorzi is Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari and President of the Venice Committee of the Società Dante Alighieri. She has published widely on American writers and Venice, American writers and Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, in such essays as 'Jacopo Tintoretto, John Ruskin e Henry James' (1996),'Tiepolo, Henry James, and Edith Wharton', in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 1998. She has edited several volumes of Henry James's letters, among them Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro (1998), Beloved Boy. Letters to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899–1915 (2004), Letters to Isabella Stewart Gardner (2009). She has co-curated several exhibitions and written in their catalogues, see Gondola Days. Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle (2004), Sargent's Venice (2006), Two Lovers of Venice. Byron and Constance Fenimore Woolson (2014). Her more recent work is the book 'Almost a Prophet'. Henry James on Tintoretto (2018).

Katherine Manthorne

(editor)
Professor of Art History, Graduate Center at City University of New York
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7876-4372

Katherine E. Manthorne is Professor of Art History, Graduate Center, City University of New York. She focuses on hemispheric dimensions of American art, from Tropical Renaissance. North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839–1879 (1989) to Traveler Artists: Landscapes of Latin America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (2015). Her research on American landscape art has resulted in The Landscapes of Louis Remy Mignot: A Southern Painter Abroad (1996); Luminist Horizons. The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam (2006); and Eliza Greatorex & the Art Women in the Age of Promise (forthcoming). She is currently organizing exhibitions for the Newark Art Museum and Laguna Art Museum. Manthorne was formerly Director of the Research Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.