print;
book-illustration
- Museum number
- 1850,1014.1028.7
- Description
-
Illustration of a detail from Giotto's fresco depicting Mary returning to Joseph's house in the Arena Chapel, Padua, showing a procession with the Virgin in the centre, women behind her and men and a musician in front; page six of Maria Callcott's "Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua" (London, Printed for the author, by Thomas Brettell: 1835)
Wood-engraving
- Production date
- 1835 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 100 millimetres (image)
-
Width: 210 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- For all the illustrations see 1850,1014.1028.1-13
For more information about the history and context of the "Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua", see the curatorial comment to 1850,1014.1028.1.
A tangible indicator of the influence of the Callcotts' book is found in the appropriation of one of its illustrations by Anna Jameson (1794-1860). In Jameson's 1845 publication "Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters", the essay on Giotto includes an illustration which bears a striking resemblance to the single figure of the Virgin in Callcott's illustration of the wedding procession. In comparing Jameson's figure with the female figures in both the original fresco and Callcott's copy of the scene, it is clear that Jameson's unidentified figure is (presumably a copy of) Callcott's Virgin. The action of the hands of both figures is the same, as is their hairstyle, but both nineteenth-century versions have also fundamentally lost what could be termed as the 'rustic monumentality' of Giotto's Virgin in their features and the delineation of their physical mass. If Jameson had not visited the Arena chapel herself, the Callcotts' 'Description' would likely have been the only visual record of the chapel available to her at the time. In the first edition of the "Memoirs" Jameson also praised the Callcotts' volume, writing: "Of [the Arena] chapel the late Lady Callcott published an interesting account: there is exceeding grace and simplicity in some of the outline groups with which her work is illustrated, particularly the Marriage of the Virgin and St. Joseph."
Literature:
Carly Collier, 'British Artists and Early Italian Art, c. 1770-1845', unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Warwick 2013 (Chapter 7).
Carly Collier, ‘From “Gothic atrocities” to Objects of Aesthetic Appreciation: The Transition from Marginal to Mainstream of Early Italian Art in British Taste during the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Frank O’Gorman and Lia Guerra (eds.), "The Centre and the Margins in Eighteenth- Century British and Italian Cultures" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) pp. 117-139.
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua
- Acquisition date
- 1850
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1850,1014.1028.7
