Wilhelm Von Bode

Smuggling the Renaissance: The Illicit Export of Artworks Out of Italy, 1861-1909 explores the phenomenon of art spoliation in Italy following Unification (1861), when the international demand for Italian Renaissance artworks was at an all-time high but effective art protection legislation had not yet been passed. Making use of rich archival material Joanna Smalcerz narrates the complex and often dramatic struggle between the lawmakers of the new Italian State, and international curators (e.g., Wilhelm Bode), collectors (e.g., Isabella Stewart Gardner) and dealers (e.g., Stefano Bardini) who continuously orchestrated illicit schemes to export abroad Italian masterpieces. At the heart of the intertwinement of the art trade, art scholarship and art protection policies the author exposes the socio-psychological dynamics of unlawful collecting.

https://books.google.pl/books/about/Smuggling_the_Renaissance.html?id=EfHJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

“Fortuna e sfortune della Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio di Andrea
Mantegna ora alla Gemäldegalerie di Berlino” in Brigit Blass-Simmen, Neville Rowley and Giovanni C. F. Villa (eds.), Capolavori a confronto.
Bellini/Mantegna. Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio, exh. cat. (Venice,
Fondazione Querini Stampalia, 21 March-1 July 2018), Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale, 2018, pp. 51-61.

Wilhelm Vöge (1868–1952) gilt nicht nur als Entdecker ganzer Kontinente auf der kunsthistorischen Landkarte, wie es Willibald Sauerländer formulierte, er hinterließ auch vielfältige methodische Anregungen. Bahnbrechenden Erkenntnissen zur gotischen Säulenfigur und zum Naturstudium der Chartreser Bildhauer folgten die weniger bekannten Forschungen Vöges zur Skulptur und Medaillenkunst der Renaissance.

Der Band versammelt die Beiträge der Internationalen Tagung in Schulpforte zu neueren Forschungen und zur aktuellen Positionsbestimmung des 1952 in Ballenstedt verstorbenen Kunsthistorikers.

Wilhelm von Bode’s spirit of acquisition in turn-of-the-century Berlin would result in forming a significant and comprehensive collection of Donatelloesque plaquettes, here explored for their function and influence in the genesis of plaquettes as a genre of sculpture.

Die Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft gehörte zu denjenigen Institutionen, die am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts in Berlin sogenannte Leihausstellungen organisierten und damit das kulturelle Geschehen der Reichshauptstadt maßgeblich mitbestimmten. Diese Ausstellungen präsentierten als ‚ephemere Museen‘ überwiegend Gemälde, Plastiken und Kunsthandwerk aus Privatbesitz, die für wenige Wochen als Leihgaben bereitgestellt und in diesem Kontext häufig zum ersten Mal öffentlich gezeigt wurden. Sie dienten so der Sichtbarmachung und Erforschung bislang größtenteils unbekannter Werke der Alten Meister. Weiterhin versuchten die Initiatoren dieser Ausstellungen kunsthistorische Inhalte und Zusammenhänge geschlossen darzustellen, um so auf Bildung und Geschmack des Publikums wie auch der zeitgenössischen Künstlerschaft einzuwirken. So erarbeitete die Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft unter der Leitung Wilhelm Bodes ein konsequentes Ausstellungsprogramm, das einen umfassenden Überblick über die bevorzugten Sammelgebiete der Berliner Connaisseurs wie James Simon, Adolf von Beckerath oder Oskar Hainauer gab.
Der Vortrag wird die Beispiele der 1890er-Jahre als Teil eines ausstellungsgeschichtlichen Phänomens in den Blick nehmen und der Frage nach ihren jeweiligen Organisations- und Inszenierungsstrategien nachgehen. Es soll untersucht werden, wie diese Privatbesitzausstellungen didaktisch gestaltet waren und ob sie einem konkreten Forschungs- oder Bildungsanspruch folgten. Zugleich soll ein Einblick in das im späten 19. Jahrhundert jedoch europaweit verbreitete. bislang jedoch kaum erforschte Ausstellungsformat gegeben werden.

Despite the almost undeniable importance of polychromy for the appearance and effect of sculptures, art historical research in the past concentrated primarily on their three dimensional qualities. This can be seen not least in the exclusive attribution of objects to the sculptor; the painters have hardly been the subject of scientific interest. Following the sharp demarcation of the genres constructed in the course of the Paragon discussion in the 16th century, research mostly showed disinterest or even distrust for the contribution of painters to finished sculptures, which is why the original polychromy of many works of art of the Florentine Quattrocento was removed. In addition to the conservation focus of the Munich VDR Conference 2019, this article examines the approach of art history to polychromy, focusing on Italian and, above all, 15th-century Florentine sculptures.

Trotz der kaum zu verkennenden Bedeutung von Farbfassungen für das Erscheinungsbild und die Wirkung von Bildwerken konzentrierte sich die kunstwissenschaftliche Forschung bislang überwiegend auf deren dreidimensionale Qualitäten. Dies zeigt sich nicht zuletzt in der ausschließlichen Zuschreibung der Objekte an den Bildhauer; Fassmaler als solche waren kaum Gegenstand wissenschaftlichen Interesses. Stattdessen begegnete die Forschung – der im 16. Jahrhundert im Zuge der Paragone-Diskussion konstruierten scharfen Abgrenzung der Gattungen folgend – dem Anteil der Fassmaler am fertigen Bildwerk mit Desinteresse oder gar Misstrauen, weshalb bei nicht wenigen Arbeiten des Florentiner Quattrocento noch in jüngerer Zeit die ursprüngliche Fassung entfernt wurde. In Ergänzung zum restauratorisch-konservatorischen Schwerpunkt der Münchner VDR-Tagung 2019 untersucht der Beitrag die Haltung der Kunstgeschichte zur Fassung, wobei italienische und vor allem Florentiner
Bildwerke des 15. Jahrhunderts im Mittelpunkt stehen.

Analizzare i metodi attributivi permette di comprendere in che modo i conoscitori abbiano sviluppato una serie di tecniche di osservazione in grado di comprovare le proprie attribuzioni. Nel ripercorrere le diverse acquisizioni, gli errori e i fraintendimenti si evidenzia come questo sforzo epistemologico abbia indotto un approfondimento delle convenzioni rappresentative. L'analisi dei dati visivi non fece soltanto progredire lo studio delle opere d’arte ma pose le premesse fondamentali per la storia dell’arte come oggi è concepita. Con i conoscitori inizia la filologia visiva e tanto le loro acquisizioni quanto le difficoltà nel verbalizzare le loro intuizioni sono all’origine dello studio peculiare dei documenti figurativi. Nel 1957 Ernst Gombrich, nel succedere a Rudolf Wittkower, lo pose in evidenza in una prolusione nella quale ricordava come lo stile e le convenzioni rappresentative siano dei messaggi in cifra che ci giungono dal passato. Spesso intuiamo i loro possibili significati e i legami che intercorrono tra loro, ma soltanto lo sforzo cosciente dello storico dell’arte, non dissimile da quello del connoisseur, permetterà di decodificarli e tradurli, seppure parzialmente, nel linguaggio verbale.

This article presents a Virgin and Child  by Piero del Pollaiolo preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in
Strasbourg, which so far was presumed to have been lost in a # re in 1947. Even if the painting was badly
damaged and largely burnt on that occasion, its quality is still visible today, and will be even more noticeable
after the forthcoming restoration.

This essay focuses on the international Art Market in Rome, exploring the complex relationships between dealers, collectors and connoisseurs around 1900. Drawing from unpublished material dating from the 1880s to 1914, this essay presents a picture of the global art business in the newly elected capital of Italy, showing how this art market was as important as Florence and Berlin. The central role of the Eternal City in the emerging global art market is outlined  through an analysis of Wilhelm von Bode and Stefano Bardini's networks in Rome. The revival of their relationships with characters like artist-dealer Attilio Simonetti and archeologist Ludwig Pollak provides an engaging view of this unique time. This examination shows how the role of the dealer, the agent and the connoisseur were highly interconnected even when acting in different capacities.

The 1860’s saw the first successes of Stefano Bardini’s dealing career as well as the proliferation of professional academic expertise and its concomitant expression in publications.  From the early 1870s, Bardini maintained an active and energetic relationship with Wilhelm von Bode, first, because Bode had an ambitious collecting agenda on behalf of the German museums, as well as on behalf of several wealthy collectors.  Just as important was Bode’s prolific scholarly publication record which laid the foundations for what continue to be the norms for attribution as well as the practice of connoisseurship of Italian Renaissance sculpture.  Bode’s numerous publications promoted his professional expertise, which in the late nineteenth-century art market was an ever increasingly valuable commodity in Europe and abroad. And every bit as much, it promoted all of the Bardini objects which heavily populated the writings of Bode.  Circuitously, Bardini would then go on to cite the published authority of Bode, while at the same time, provide comparisons to other versions of objects—extant siblings, as it were—that Bardini had also put into circulation.  On the basis of archival material in Florence and Berlin, using the example of the so-called Pazzi Madonna, this paper reconstructs, in part, the microhistory of its transaction and the concomitant issues of branding, marketing, provenance, attribution and authenticity.

Giovanni Morelli fu una figura dibattuta, se non addirittura controversa, sia presso i contemporanei sia nel dibattito critico successivo, che giunse nel corso del Novecento ad una quasi completa rimozione e in seguito ad un recupero orientato prevalentemente ad indagare gli aspetti epistemologici del metodo attributivo che Morelli aveva elaborato. Le proposizioni teorico-didattiche di Morelli, le modalità di trasmissione del suo metodo alla cerchia degli amici ed estimatori, i risultati non sempre coerenti dell’applicazione del metodo attributivo da parte dei morelliani, i dibattiti, le polemiche, le cattive recensioni scaturite dal confronto con altri approcci e scuole suggeriscono oggi una diversa prospettiva in cui affrontare una nuova indagine sul metodo morelliano, ovvero le modalità di trasmissione ai membri del Morelli Circle. In questo contesto è possibile individuare i nodi critici del pensiero di Morelli, leggerne l’impatto sulla coeva cultura italiana e sull’educazione di un circolo di collezionisti-conoscitori appartenenti alla classe dirigente della nuova nazione, scorgere un riflesso sulla retorica del discorso nazionale, che tra il 1883 ed il 1887 fondava sui centenari di Raffello e Donatello i pilastri di una rilettura del Rinascimento in chiave politica.

At the heart of the Bode-Museum in Berlin,
opened in 1904 under the name Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum,
is a monumental evocation
of a church interior in the Florentine 15th-century
Renaissance style. The ‘Basilica’, as the space
is named, has always been seen as symbolical;
yet, when one studies the successive dispositions
of the works in the museum over a century,
one senses that the Basilica has often been felt
as a curatorial problem: should the major altarpieces
of the collection be displayed in the
lateral chapels of the Basilica, in keeping with
their original religious destination, or be hanged
on the walls of the other, “secular” galleries of
the museum? Addressing this question will suggest
that the very center of a museum can also
be a gigantic void.

A nineteenth-century invention, the old master monograph corresponded with the increasing interest in life writing among the reading public and the development of connoisseurship in art history. This article looks at the production and reception of two major monographs to gauge the contribution of Maud Cruttwell to the study of old masters. In particular, it discusses her interest in the personality of the artist as an aesthetic and ethical project that she perceived as a form of self-cultivation in the wake of Walter Pater’s aesthetics.

In November 1888, writing to the German museum official, Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929), the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) stated that he was certain that “eight marbles and 12 terracottas” in South Kensington (V&A) were fake, and that without doubt, upon further study, there is “much to be found rotten.” He mused to Bode of other doubts, that he would not discuss until he had inspected them himself. Four days later, Bode responded that, for the most part, he agreed with Bardini. However, Bode disagreed with Bardini that two of the Madonnas—a marble attributed to Donatello and a relief in gilded terracotta—were fakes. Bode concluded by telling Bardini that he would be very happy if Bardini could induce South Kensington to sell them as fakes, as he would happily buy them.
Drawing upon the one hundred years’ worth of archival material in the Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini (ASEB) and the Archivio Fotografico Eredità Bardini (AFEB), in Florence under the jurisdiction of the Polo Museale Toscano, identified are Bardini’s strategies for branding, marketing and transacting hundreds of Italian Renaissance objects that were made in the nineteenth century. The end result is the establishment of a rubric, or a formula per se, along which lines his fakes can be identified and located with predictability. Also discussed are issues of contamination of the canon and scholarly literature along with the associated complicity that necessarily insures the continued opacity of the situation today.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a crucial period for the consolidation of art history as an academic discipline in German-speaking countries. That period also witnessed a sharpening of attitudes toward the genres of the discipline’s literature — attitudes sometimes shaped by the different tasks art historians confronted when working in a museum or university. The status of the catalogue raisonné cannot be viewed in terms of a simple dichotomy between these two fields of activity, however, the less so as the opinions of individual protagonists occasionally changed over time and according to circumstances. As such, the numerous voices assembled in this contribution reveal an interesting variety of methodological approaches. The artist’s biography emerges here as a telling counterpoint to the evolution of the catalogue raisonné at a time of elated nation-statehood that was of paramount importance for the history of art history. https://tidsskrift.dk/passepartout/issue/view/9502

"I accuse American and British academia and its members of purposely spreading a fake his- tory of the origins of the modern museum. Still today, academics and other art professionals carry the wrong idea of the modern museum and wrongly think of the “white cube” as an American invention authored by MoMA andAlfred Barr, Jr. America, paraphrasing Serge Guilbaut, not only stole the idea of modern art from Paris but also the idea of the modern museum from Berlin. The U.S. was too anxious to step out of the belittling shadow of the European avant-garde in the post-war era. But not content with that, it set out to rewrite the real history of the advent and making of the modern museum."

The importance of the works by Donatello or his immediate followers in the Sculpture collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin has been built relatively recently in museums history, and almost entirely thanks to one person: Wilhelm Bode. This collection is often considered as an ensemble; yet, it hides the fact that every single acquisition has been a special negotiation led by Bode, whether to have a work in exclusivity, to lower its price or to hide the attribution he believed was right. Browsing through this collection, it will be possible to understand more in-depth the relationship between Wilhelm Bode and the art market.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

The 1860’s saw the first professional successes of the Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini, as well as the birth of scholarly expertise and publications.  One of Bardini’s first clients was Wilhelm Bode, who was charged to stock the German museums with world-class art and decorative arts.  Bode was also ambitious with respect to advising wealthy collectors, with the hope that they would make bequests to the museums.  At the same time, Bode maintained a prolific scholarly publication record which laid the foundations for what is still the practice of connoisseurship of Italian Renaissance sculpture.  And those numerous publications promoted all of the Bardini objects which heavily populated the writings of Bode.  Bardini would then go on to cite the published authority of Bode, while at the same time, provide comparisons to other versions of objects—siblings, as it were—that Bardini had also put into art market circulation.  On the basis of archival material, this talk discusses the “poster child” of the current exhibition in Palazzo Strozzi, the so-called Pazzi Madonna, deconstructing the microhistory of its transaction from Bardini to Bode, along with the issues of branding, marketing, provenance, attribution and authenticity.    https://www.britishinstitute.it/en/news-events/events/wednesday-lectures/581/stefano-bardini-wilhelm-bode-the-madonna-pazzi-puzzle

Deriving from material in the state and city archive of the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini, as well as material from the Berlin Zentralarchiv, this paper presents a case study that illustrates the ways in which Bardini & Co. contaminated the canon.  The bas-relief of the so-called Madonna della Rosa exists in at least five versions.  Four have a provenance no earlier than the nineteenth century (there is no provenance information given for fifth version).
This particular composition was first published by Wilhelm von Bode in 1894 with an attribution to Donatello. The literature was thereafter amended to accommodate art market tastes. Archive evidence suggests that, from the combined use of photographs and plaster casts, Bardini & Co. produced at least some of the versions.  This is but one example of the numerous times that dubious objects were put into circulation by Bardini, and then written into the scholarly literature by Bode, which in turn raises questions about their relationship and the real agency of Bode.

Rudolphe Kann (1844–1905) was a prominent art collector of the late 19th Century, who in the span of over twenty-five years, built one of the most significant private art collections in Europe. This paper is predominantly based on the thorough analysis of previously unpublished correspondence between Rudolphe Kann and his trusted advisor Wilhelm Bode, spanning between the years 1887 and 1905, preserved at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Zentralarchiv. My contribution focuses on exploring Kann’s collecting practices, Bode’s role as an advisor, taking into account his position as the director of Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum and clarifying the kinds of benefits he sought in return for his advisory services. Furthermore this contribution outlines the circumstances of the sale of Kann’s collection to company Duveen in 1907, presented from the perspective of Wilhelm Bode, illustrating the process of negotiating the sale’s conditions and further exploring Bode’s relationships with the members of the Kann family and with Joseph Duveen, highlighting all acquisition Bode managed to include in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum following the sale.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

Deriving from material in the state archive of the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini, this paper presents a case study in order to illustrate the ways in which Bardini & Co. contaminated the canon.  The so-called Madonna della Rosa exists in at least five versions:  a marble in the Victoria & Albert Museum, a painted papier-mâché in the Bode Museum, a stucco in the Acton collection in Villa la Pietra, a terracotta in the Giovanni Morelli collection in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, and one in a tabernacle sold in 1916 by a protégé of Bardini’s, Elia Volpi.  Of these, none has a provenance prior to the 19C; the one in London possesses the earliest provenance, as having been purchased in Florence in 1863.  Bode purchased the Berlin version from Bardini in 1887, and Morelli bought his in Florence in 1891.  The Madonna of the Berlin and Bergamo versions holds a rose, as does that in a gesso copy in the Bardini deposito, whereas the versions in London, the Acton and Morelli collections do not.
This particular composition was first published by Bode in 1894 with an attribution to Donatello. By 1903 (Lord Balcarres), and then in 1907 (Schubring), the Berlin version was connected in print to the marble version in London, which itself was declared a fake.  Whereupon, in 1913, Schottmüller amended the attribution from fake to Donatello.  Archive evidence suggests that, from a photograph of the one in London, Bardini & Co. produced at least some of the versions.  This is but one example of the numerous times that dubious objects were put into circulation by Bardini, and then written into the scholarly literature by Bode, which in turn raises questions about their relationship and the real agency of Bode.