On Tuesday April 25, 2015, Joseph Gallivan interviews Dawson Carr, about Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece, which is on display at the Portland Art Museum through July 9, 2017.
Exhibition curator Carr is the Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art at the museum, and he will talk about how the work ended up in America, who painted the missing panel, and what computer techniques were used to age it so it fit in.
This show was recorded at KBOO on April 15, 2017, in Studio 3.
From the press release:
Reunited: Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece
Portland Art Museum presents
full 14th century altarpiece, completed through a collaboration among conservators, curators, and mathematicians
PORTLAND, Ore.
The Portland Art Museum is pleased to present an exhibition
that brings together eight dispersed 14t century
paintings, and a recreated missing
panel, so that the altarpiece can be seen and appreciated as one magnificent work of art. This reunion
allows visitors to see the Museum’s
Resurrection of Drusiana
in its
original context in the upper left corner. Donated
by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
in 1961, the painting is one of the finest Early Italian narrative scenes in the Pacific
Northwest.
“This type of exhibition is staged very rarely, so visitors should take advantage of this
special opportunity to see one
of the Museum’s early Renaissance paintings in its
magnificent original context,” said exhibition curator Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet
and Richard Geary Curator of European Art.
Ghissi worked in the Marche, the mountainous Italian region between the Apenn
ines
and the Adriatic Sea. The
St. John Altarpiece
is most extensive ensemble of his work
to have survived, but its original location remains a mystery. It was made in the 1370s
following a typical format for chapels and small churches, in which a large ce
ntral
image of the
Crucifixion
is flanked by smaller narrative scenes. In this case, eight
episodes are devoted to the life of John the Evangelist, who was most likely the
patron saint of the church. True to the spirit of the burgeoning Renaissance, each
s
cene is depicted with great clarity, drama, and humanity, and the ensemble
demonstrates that Ghissi was consistently a masterful storyteller.
During the 19th
or early 20th
century,
the altarpiece
was dismantled and
sawed apart because individual panels
co
uld be sold more lucratively to art
dealers and collectors. In time, all of the
known elements entered U.S. museums.
Portland’s painting and three panels in
the North Carolina Museum of Art
(NCMA) were the gifts of the Samuel
H. Kress Foundation. Three add
itional
panels are in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, and the central
Crucifixion
is in
the Art Institute of Chicago. After
more than a century of separation, the
paintings are now reunited in this exhibition, first displayed at NCMA last fall, that
retell
s the story of this Early Renaissance masterwork.
Because the ninth painting has never been found, Dutch conservation specialist
Charlotte Caspers was employed to re
-
create it using 14th
-
century materials and
techniques. Caspers worked with NCMA Curator o
f European Art David Steel and
Chief Conservator William Brown to determine the probable subject, composition,
coloring, and other details; then she created the panel with the same type of
pigments and gilding used by Ghissi 650 years ago. The exhibition i
ncludes a video
of the process along with an extensive display documenting all of the pigments and
other materials used.
The bright, gleaming new panel would look
out of place alongside works that had aged
for centuries, so Duke University
mathematicians d
eveloped algorithms to
age Caspers’s work digitally using the crack
patterns and faded colors of the original
panels as a guide. A photograph of the
virtually aged ninth panel will be installed to
complete the
St. John Altarpiece
. The Duke
team also used C
asper’s panel to calculate
algorithms to reverse the effect of aging on the original panels. The resulting images
will be displayed, along with Casper’s panel, to give visitors an impression of the
altarpiece as it would have looked in the 14th
century. Vi
deos explaining the work of
the mathematicians will be available in the gallery.
“It was a true collaboration between conservators, curators, and mathematicians,” says
Steel
, who will discuss the process in a public lecture at Portland Art Museum on
April
2
. “Everyone learned from each other’s research, and it resulted in this
fascinating exhibition that combines art history, mathematics, and technology.”
Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Curated in
Portland by Dawson
Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European
Art.
Public Program:
Reuniting a Masterpiece
(A
pril 2, 2 p.m.
)
For more than 20 years, David Steel
, C
urator of
E
uropean
A
rt
at the N
orth
C
arolina
M
useum of
A
rt
,
has been on a quest: to bring tog
ether all of the nine panels that
originally formed an altarp
iece by the
14th
-
century artist Francescuccio Ghissi. Eight
of the panels are in museum collections, including the Portland Art Museum, but the
final panel has never been located. This led Steel
to propose a radical solution: Why
not re
-
create the missing panel? Come hear more about the journey to reunite this
incredible work of art.
About the Portland Art Museum
The seventh oldest museum in the United States, the Portland Art Museum is
internati
onally recognized for its permanent collection and ambitious special
exhibitions drawn from the Museum’s holdings and the world’s finest public and
private collections. The Museum’s collection of more than 45,000 objects, displayed
in 112,000 square feet o
f galleries, reflects the history of art from ancient times to
today. The collection is distinguished for its holdings of arts of the native peoples of
North America, English silver, and the graphic arts. An active collecting institution
dedicated to prese
rving great art for the enrichment of future generations, the
Museum devotes 90 percent of its galleries to its permanent collection.
The Portland
Art Museum recognized both Native American art and Photography as fine art years
earlier than peer institutio
ns, with a commitment to collection in these areas and the
dedication of permanent galleries for displaying the work. This ongoing commitment
is demonstrated in the arc of Native American exhibitions in 2016 and 2017 and a new
space for showcasing Contempo
rary Native Art.
The Museum’s campus of landmark buildings, a cornerstone of Portland’s cultural
district, includes the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, the Gilkey
Center for Graphic Arts, the Schnitzer Center for Northwest Art, the Northwe
st Film
Center, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Center for Native American
Art. With a membership of more than 22,000 households and serving more than
350,000 visitors annually, the Museum is a premier venue for education in the visual
arts. The
Portland Art Museum welcomes patrons with disabilities. For information on
exhibitions and programs, call 503
-
226
-
2811 or visit
portlandartmuseum.org
.
The Portland Art Museum welcomes all visitors and
affirms
its commitment to making its programs and
collections accessible to everyone. The Museum
offers a variety of programs and services to ensure a
quality experience and a safe, inclusive environment for every member of our diverse
community. Learn more at
portlandartmuseum.org/access
.
IMAGE
S
:
Francescuccio Ghissi (Italian, active from 1345
-
1374),
St. John Altarpiece
,
1370s, tempera and gold leaf on wood, including paintings from the Portland Art
Museum, the North Carolina Museu
m of Art, Raleigh, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Resurrection of Drusiana
,
1370s. Tempera and gold leaf on wood. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Reconstruction by Charlotte Caspers of the missing pa
nel
of the Ghissi
Altarpiece
,
commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North
Carolina, 2012
Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently the Business Reporter. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com
- KBOO