MAFDAD01 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES CONNOISSEURSHIP 1 (Old Master Paintings)
1,000 WORDS (including footnotes and citations)
How do we come to attribute paintings to certain artists? Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891) is one of several art historians who have attempted to codify the ways in which we make decisions based on stylistic details. Read the assigned text, Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, Art History:
A Critical Introduction to Its Methods (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2013), pp. 48–64, which explains Morelli’s methods and Bernard Berenson’s response to them.
Then, using their approach, discuss the attribution of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (MET) of the following painters. You will need to analyse and describe the differences between ONE OF THE PAIRS of artists below.
To what extent do you feel Morelli’s and Berenson’s methods of connoisseurship succeed in determining which artist painted the works? You will need to reflect on how useful, or how limiting you find their approaches. Are there aspects of the task that you feel they have ignored or failed to give enough weight?
Study paintings by ONE OF THE PAIRS of artists below in the MET.
Botticelli and Carlo Crivelli (you may focus on religious works)
Bronzino and Moroni (you may focus on portraiture)
The paintings supplied all have excellent high-resolution images that can be accessed online through the Metropolitan Museum of Art Website. To access high-quality images, use the links below or the Search tool to the right of the following webpage:
For Botticelli’s paintings:
For Carlo Crivelli’s paintings:
For Bronzino’s painting:
For Moroni’s paintings:
Illustrations must be supplied to support your argument. You should be working at a level of close detail.
Note that each of these artists is well represented at the National Gallery. You are encouraged to deploy the National Gallery paintings as comparative material.
