Chair

Gerard Vaughan (University of Melbourne)

Panellists

Flavia De Nicola (The Catholic University of America, Rome), Alice Martignon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Dorothee Wimmer (Centre for Art Market Studies at Technische Universität Berlin), Sina Knopf (University of Zurich)

Classicist taste in the early 19th century art market: Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi’s exports from Rome to France and England

Flavia De Nicola (The Catholic University of America, Rome)

On 1st October 1802 the Chirograph of Pius VII Chiaramonti, issued the following day with the Edict of the Cardinal pro-Camerlengo Giuseppe Doria Pamphilj, marked a turning point, though not definitive, in the controversial effort to restrict the export of artworks from the Papal State. Prior to this date, the distinguished intellectual Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi (1754 – 1827) seized some relevant business opportunities by utilizing his expertise in art collecting and dealing between Rome and other countries.

Based on unpublished export licences housed in the Archivio di Stato di Roma, and a comprehensive reexamination of the documents in the Archivio Storico dell'Accademia di San Luca, this research delves into two main cases: the first examines De Rossi’s export of some paintings to France for the general officer Jean-Gabriel Marchand. This painting lot includes works by Neoclassical landscape painters such as Francesco De Capo (notices 1775 – 1804). The second case focuses on De Rossi’s sale of eight paintings to England for the baronet Sir Simon Haughton Clarke. Notably this lot showcases works by Classicist painters such as Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino (1591 – 1666) and Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665).

This paper explores the lesser-known but crucial role of De Rossi’s as a painting collector and dealer. His pursuits were not only aligned with his personal collecting interests, but also closely followed the prevailing trends of taste. By examining the coherence of the sold painting lots, the study reveals how the shaping of Classicism and Neoclassicism as the preferred styles guided the choices of international dealers and buyers in the art market.

Wilhelm von Bode and Venice: The acquisitions on the lagoon city for the Königliche Museen zu Berlin

Alice Martignon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

At the end of the XIX century, Wilhelm von Bode, to enrich the collections of the Königliche Museen zu Berlin, started to visit various European cities and travelled through Italy, staying mainly in Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Florence, Rome, and Venice. This contribution aims to provide an original excursus on Wilhelm von Bode’s acquisitions of works of art and objets d’art in Venice from

1881 to 1907. The lagoon city was one of the principal destinations on his Italian “Grand Tour”, here the German art historian and connoisseur bought cultural goods in the most prestigious antique galleries along the Grand Canal. This information comes mainly from the study of export licenses conserved at the Historical Archives of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts and at the Central State Archives (Rome), from the correspondence between the Venice Export Office and the General Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts (also at the Central State Archives, Rome), as well as from documents (letters, receipts, invoices, telegrams, business cards and notes) conserved at the Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.

Capital investment? Tax politics and art collecting in Berlin ca. 1900

Dorothee Wimmer (Centre for Art Market Studies, Technische Universität Berlin)

In late nineteenth-century Germany, museum friends’ associations and the cultural elite of Germany’s industrial centres “supported” public art collections, most of which were incorporated into municipal or federal agencies and managed by administrative experts such as Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929) in Berlin. Bode began his career at the Royal Prussian Museums (Königlich Preußische Museen) during the so-called Gründerjahre, the founding years of the German Empire, when Berlin was experiencing an economic and political boom. Towards the end of his life, he complained in his memoirs: “One should not forget that they [private collectors] saw the value of their collections increase by hundreds of thousands or even millions, while their donations to the museums amounted to only a small percentage of these sums, if they could be persuaded to give at all.”

With the huge increase in wealth ca. 1900, did the commercial bourgeoisie in Berlin place an emphasis firmly on capital investment even when it came to collecting art? This is the point at which tax policy came into the equation, a key turning point in Prussia at the end of the 19th century. The question is: Did the great tax reform in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1891 and 1893 encourage citizens to convert their assets into works of art and similar items? After the introduction of the wealth tax in 1893, the upper middle class elite was able to rearrange its capital tax-free by investing in works of art as a subsidized asset class, due to the networks and expertise of museum directors like Wilhelm von Bode. The lecture will explore this interconnectedness between tax politics and art collecting in Berlin ca. 1900.

“Without Commercial Profit”: The interest and collaboration of agents in transnational museum exchanges

Sina Knopf (University of Zurich)

The active intervention of museum directors during the Nazi regime is still visible in the collections of many European museums. It was a common and accepted practice at the time to sell, but more often to exchange, works of art from museum collections to acquire new objects to fill existing gaps or to restructure the collection, often according to the regime’s taste in art. Exchanges became an attractive form of acquiring new works due to the lack of museum budgets and were achieved in alliance with the authorities. The directors deliberately intervened in the museum’s collections, selecting works of art that were considered redundant and have been selected for disposal or exchange. The exchange contracts in the archives provide evidence of such transactions and have recently been studied by scholars. These transactions often reveal the connection between museums and the art trade, as museum directors and their representatives were well connected to the players on the art market and played a crucial role in the European art trade, both as buyers and sellers of objects. While the connection between museums and the art trade, especially before and during World War II, is well known, the nature of the agents’ involvement and their interests have not yet been sufficiently explored. The agent not only mediated between the two parties but also advised on selecting the works of art from the collection or the commercial valuation of the objects for the exchange. For this service, many agents do not ask for commercial profit and participated in such exchanges for other non-financial reasons. The case study of a transnational exchange between museums in Germany and France before the outbreak of World War II illustrates the importance of agents in such transactions and highlights the reasons for their involvement. Furthermore, the case studies emphasize the crucial role of agents as strategists in planning the exchanges, the commercial valuation of museum objects, and the indirect intervention in state collections.