drawing
- Museum number
- 2017,7013.1
- Description
-
Interior of the Neonian Baptistry, Ravenna; baptism taking place by large font, with parents, priest and various religious figures, architectural features of the interior carefully recorded. 1842
Watercolour and bodycolour over graphite
- Production date
- 18 August 1842
- Dimensions
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Height: 290 millimetres
-
Width: 415 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- On the advice of the Duke of Sussex, whose portrait he was commissioned to paint in 1840, Solomon Alexander Hart travelled to Italy on the 1st September 1841. During the year he spent there, Hart visited Venice, Perugia, Florence and Rome, as well as other smaller towns en route. His obituary in ‘The Athenaeum’ reported that he ‘made [in Italy] a collection of sketches of architectural interiors and famous sites which were intended for publication.’ (The Athenaeum, p. 821) Susan Tumarkin Goodman speculates that Hart may have been influenced in this idea by the success of the Scottish artist David Roberts’ 1837 publication ‘Picturesque Sketches in Spain’ and the first volume of his ‘Sketches in the Holy Land and Syria’ (Tumarkin Goodman, p. 173). However, this project never came to fruition. Instead Hart used the sketches he had made as inspiration for the backgrounds in many of his religious, historical and literary scenes executed in the subsequent decades.
This drawing depicts the Baptistry of Neon in Ravenna. Originally the site of some Roman baths, the building was converted into the form depicted by Hart in the 5th Century by Bishops Ursus (circa 400) and Neone (451-75), under whom the interior decoration was completed. The stucco designs carefully picked out in the current drawing depict various prophets (flanking the windows of the octagonal structure). These figures continue the hierarchical decorative scheme, which begins in the centre of the ceiling with Jesus and John the Baptist, encircled on a secondary tier by the apostles. The porphyry marble inlay of the lower walls predates the religious scheme, and is believed to be a remnant of the original baths.
The figures, clothed in what we may loosely describe as ‘medieval’ garments, stem from Hart’s imagination. The combination of carefully observed interiors and fictional historical or religious scenes is a trope that runs throughout Hart’s work. For example, his Academy diploma work ‘An early reading of Shakespeare’ (1839, RA Collection 03/968), which shows an imaginary group of late 16th-century people listening to a reading of the Bard, has as its background a fireplace he had sketched five years earlier in Wells (see RA collection 3/7345).
Further Reading:
S. Tumarkin Goodman, ‘The Emergence of Jewish Artists in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, New York, 2001.
‘Mr S.A. Hart, R.A.’, The Athenaeum, 18 June 1881, p. 821.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2017
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2017,7013.1