James H. Beck (1930–2007)

Beck verdeelt de besproken periode die meer dan honderd jaar beslaat in drie generaties. Hij maakt vervolgens nog een onderscheid tussen een lyrische en een monumentale visie, waardoor het onderzoek in een overzichtelijk kader wordt geplaatst en de ingewikkelde maar boeiende materie die de basis voor de schilderkunst vanaf die tijd vormt, volledig kan worden gewaardeerd. Naast het werk krijgen ook de levens van de kunstenaars de nodige aandacht, waarbij steeds de historische context in beschouwing wordt genomen.… (mehr)

At the end of his thought provoking, informative and thoroughly entertaining book, James Beck says that those at the top of the museum world have the power to change Duccio into Matisse. In other words, these days, anything, whatever its quality, can be passed off as the finest masterpieces known to man. Beck’s intervention is timely, since the art market has been transformed drastically by the new dealer-led culture which propels works of dubious quality to the forefront. Beck is aware of all this; his book may be read as a warning against letting claims for old masters accelerate out of control. At the same time, although an attitude of healthy scepticism is desirable, that should not give the green light for mischievous de-attributions founded on distrust of another’s scholarship. What is needed is true objectivity in making these decisions about authorship in the first place, but unfortunately, as Beck points out, many art historians, scholars and curators are swayed by the rewards, both financial and academic, which come with new discoveries.

Beck’s book is organised into four main sections: an introductory chapter, ‘The Lost Art of Connoisseurship’; a detailed three chapter analysis of the Madonna of the Pinks, including an exposition of the circumstances surrounding its attribution and acquisition; another chapter, ‘Connoisseurship Gone Astray’, lamenting the bad state of connoisseurship in an oversexed and uncontrollable market; and a case study of another controversial public purchase, a Madonna and Child alleged to be by Duccio, but completely rejected by Beck.
Beck’s opening essay ‘Connoisseurship in Crisis, will be instantly recognizable as the kind of anti-modern jeremiad that seems to pop up frequently these days. This approach laments the loss of visual intelligence and its replacement by a cursory scanning of the image, no substitute for attending to nuance and the subtle aspects of the work. We have lost the ability to look at older art, mainly due to the barrage of reproductions and copies that flood the art world. Having said that, Beck is appreciative of the emerging PowerPoint technology, which offers the detail on the big screen. And we should remember that the great Renaissance scholars Bernard Berenson favoured working from photographs. One of the most fascinating observations made in this pessimistic overview is that “voices and music came to impact “mere” seeing This reminds me of David Hockney’s recent complaint about the I pod supplanting the visual, although Beck stops at the technology of mobile phones. After having argued that the visual is being continually degraded by reproductive technology, Beck turns his attention to how connoisseurship is taught. In art history departments it’s greatly neglected: iconography and contextual approaches have brushed it aside. I accept that connoisseurship is indispensable for educational institutions, but I can’t agree with Beck’s other claim that connoisseurship has no place in a sociological or materialist analysis. I might cite T.J. Clark’s recent difficult book on Poussin which turned close looking, detailed looking at the materiality of the painting almost into a political exercise. I think that Beck is right about a lot of things, but his view of connoisseurship in relation to other methodologies is too simplistic and typical of Renaissance scholars’ hostility to new ways of seeing old images. Rounding off this section is a useful description of an exercise designed to sharpen one’s connoisseur skills- a checklist of things to note when performing the analysis.

The second section consists of three chapters on various aspects of the troublesome Madonna of the Pinks. Beck leads off by telling the story of how this particular painting came to be given to Raphael. Enjoying himself immensely Beck pours scorn on the conclave of 25 art historians, scholars and curators who foregathered during 8-9th November 2002 to pronounce judgement on the painting. As Beck points out, this conclave, this magnifici, to use his word, is not as impressive as it seems as fewer than half were “recognised Raphael specialists.” It would be invidious and unfair to name anybody- you’ll have to read the book- but I can see what Beck means: if you are making a decision about using public funds to purchase specialist old masters, then surely only very strict experts should be invited to submit their opinion. Having severely damaged this “consensus” Beck turns his attention to considering the limitations of the Madonna of the Pinks, and they are legion. His case is carefully built up, mainly from comparing copies-mainly French- with the attributed painting. Beck’s itemization of the shortcomings of the MOTP are numerous, but among his criticisms are problems with proportion, support, lack of fit within Raphael’s development, awkward modelling and pose. He’s also far from convinced by the scientific arguments, especially when they are used to support such a problematic attribution. Infrared reflectography might reveal underpainting/underdrawing in the MOTP to be by Raphael, but it does not follow that the paint on top of it is too. Yet, according to Beck’s connoisseurship the underdrawing in the MOTP is not typical of Raphael’s practice. A comparison with another small Madonna from this period, the Garvagh Madonna seems to bear that out. The GM is an undisputed Raphael, but the underdrawing for that is a clearly formulated linear drawing which differs markedly from the freehand of the MOTP.

Then there is the problem of provenance: where was the MOTP first seen? The work’s first sighting was a print engraved by Giovanni Farrugia, dated 1828, and it is known that a similar picture with this type of composition was sold to the Duke of Northumberland in the mid 1850s. However, the Farrugia engraving does not resemble the MOTP, so it is probably not based on that work. It seems likely that the London picture may have emanated from the studio of the Camuccini Brothers in Rome since they had two versions of the MOTP, a fact that the NG consensus apparently did not know. Complicating matters, we could not only be dealing with a copy after a lost Raphael, but with an invented provenance, probably from the 1830s, in which case the NG’s partly base their attribution on a painting, purportedly from the early 16th century, but possibly created just before 1833.
After constructing a very convincing case for de-attributing the MOTP from Raphael, Beck opens up on the deluge of claims and discoveries of recent years. Connoisseurship in Crisis really shows Beck warming to his theme of how connoisseurship now serves the needs of a capitalistic art market supported by the dubious “discoveries” of those eager to make their mark, fortune or reputation. Amongst his targets here is a crucifix attributed to Michelangelo, the infamous Fifth Avenue Cupid, and a modello for the Piccolomini Library in Raphael’s early career. One suspects that Beck is using this example to undermine the attribution to Raphael made by scholars in the 2005 Raphael exhibition at the NG. It need hardly be said that the curators of that exhibition were part of the consensus that secured the MOTP for the same gallery.

Beck concludes his damning indictment of contemporary connoisseurship with his account of the attribution and subsequent purchase of a painting, thought to be by Duccio, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, the situation turns out to be more bizarre than the London story. Here we are dealing with a painting that was not viewed “in the flesh” by scholars who published monographs on Duccio. The experts worked from b/w photographs, hardly a good basis for serious connoisseurship, and that body of opinion has buttressed much of the “favourable reception” of the “Duccio” according to Beck.… (mehr)