Vient de paraître / Just published

The Lion Gate is an icon, a piece of art more than 3300 years old, representing the glory of Mycenaean Greece. Preserved in situ, it has passed through time and circumstance, witnessing its own civilisation fail and many others flourishing since. Often considered as an emblem for the royal house of Mycenae, it is the only surviving piece of large-scale sculpture of the Greek Bronze Age. The quality of its creation, its symbolic force, and its prime position towering above the entrance gate to the site that epitomizes a period that gave rise to enumerable legends may be seen as framing the atmosphere in which this book was written.

It is the fruit of collaboration, not only between the two authors* but also between a vast community of researchers that are interested in studying and reviving plaster casts of ancient monuments. It should be seen as being part of this wider movement of rehabilitating cast collections after a long period of neglect between 1930 and 1990. 

                                                                                                                      * Jan Driessens & Tina Kalantzopoulou

Publ. Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2024
Registration of copyright: D/2024/9964/40
ISBN: 978-2-39061-514-9
ISBN PDF version: 978-2-39061-515-6

Printed in Belgium by CIACO scrl        duc@ciaco.com

Edited by Miriam Szőcs, Márton Tóth. / Museum of Fine Art, Budapest / Hungarian National Gallery, 31 juil. 2024 - 178 pages

Casting a New Light delves into various aspects of collecting and showcasing plaster casts, an important phenomenon that shaped European and American art museums from the nineteenth century onwards. It explores international connections and influences in the establishment of cast collections while also shedding new light on the role and uses of plaster casts in the antiquity and in the era of historicism. The volume offers valuable reflections on the intricate contexts of the contemporary reception of these collections, presenting new perspectives on their significance and future, including various conference papers and several case studies.

ISBN 978-615-6595-23-2

CONTRIBUTORS

Géza Andó was curator of the Classical Antiquities section of the museum''s plaster cast exhibition in the Star Fortress, Komárom, and of the visible storage at the National Museum Conservation and Storage Centre in Budapest. 

Flavia Berizzi is a restorer of cultural heritage, specialising in plaster casts. She studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and the Sapienza University in Rome. 

Rune Frederiksen (+2023)  He held a research fellowship at Oxford connected to the University collection of plaster casts of ancient sculpture. From 2016, he was employed by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek as Head of Collections and Research. 

Eszter Hajós-Baku is an expert in the reservation of built heritage. Her main research field is sacred architecture in the interwar period, especially in Hungary. She has a special interest in historical plaster casts. 

Jean-Marc Hofman has been deputy curator of the cast gallery at the Cité de l''Architecture & du Patrimoine in Paris since 2004. 

Júlia Katona is an art historian, researcher, and curator.  She is head of collection and curator at the Schola Graphidis Art Collection of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. 

 Eckart Marchand has been Assistant Archivist at the Warburg Institute in London since 2008. From 2014 to 2023, he was also a member of the International Research Group Bilderfahrzeuge: Iconology and the Legacy of Aby Warburg. He has worked extensively on plaster and plaster casts, studying their functions both as copies of well-known originals and as models in sculptors'' workshops. 

Eszter Süvegh is currently working on her PhD thesis on grotesque depictions in ancient Greek art. She is an employee of the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, she joined the ancient Greek and Roman plaster casts project in 2018, 

Miriam Szőcs is head of the Department of Sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Between 2013 and 2021, she worked on the project of the refurbishment of the plaster cast collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, being the chief curator of the plaster cast exhibition at the Star Fortress in Komárom. 

Beáta Szűts Since 2016, she has been in charge of the management and study of the collections of historical plaster casts, historical textbooks, and drawings. 

Holly Trusted FSA (formerly known as Marjorie Trusted) was senior curator of sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from 1990 until 2018, and was the lead curator for the Cast Courts at the V&A. 

Lorenz Winkler-Horaček is the curator of the Cast Collection (Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik) at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he is also a professor of classical archaeology. He received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1991, and worked for fourteen years at the University of Rostock. 

AUTRES PUBLICATIONS RECENTES

Le Paradis en boutique

L'édition de sculptures religieuses au xixe siècle

Pauline Carminati

364 pages - Éditeur : Presses universitaires de Rennes -Publication sur OpenEdition Books : 7 mars 2024

ISBN numérique : 978-2-7535-9754-9 - DOI : 10.4000/books.pur.196246 - ISBN (Édition imprimée) : 978-2-7535-9471-5

RESUME

Kitsch, industrielle, mièvre, sulpicienne... Autant de qualificatifs péjoratifs appliqués depuis longtemps à la statuaire religieuse d'édition du xixe siècle, qui déterminent encore notre regard sur ce patrimoine. En grande partie conservés dans les lieux de culte, les témoignages matériels de cette production se dégradent bien souvent dans l'indifférence ou subissent des interventions de restauration inadaptées. Au-delà des a priori, l'ouvrage entreprend de sortir cette statuaire de l'impasse.de la critique héritée de l'entre-deux-guerres pour la réinsérer dans le contexte professionnel, technique, artistique et spirituel qui l'a vue naître, et en renouveler la compréhension. À partir de l'étude d'un fabricant parisien emblématique, la maison Raffl, il s'attache à poser les jalons d'une histoire de l'édition de sculptures religieuses entre le Concordat et le concile Vatican II. De multiples angles d'analyse sont adoptés pour mieux documenter cette activité et apporter un nouvel éclairage sur les liens qui unissent son développement aux enjeux contemporains de l'Église catholique. L'ouvrage met en lumière ces relations complexes et montre l'évolution des regards que le catholicisme a portés sur cet art religieux moderne, exporté aux quatre coins du monde.